We're now days ahead of the 2016 presidential election. It's been a long and agonizing slog, which has now degraded into an insult to the intelligence of anyone with a shred of decency.
At the same time, there are many interesting features to this election cycle, one of which is people seeing through the whole "lesser of two evils" thing. The choice between two candidates who don't represent your views is no choice at all.
Though Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump seem to be two vastly different people, they have one thing in common: Many Democrats don't like Clinton, and many Republicans don't like Trump. In this and other ways, the two-party system is fragmenting.
This is the first contested presidential election happening under what I am calling "full digital" conditions—that is, after the portable computer (smartphone) has taken over reality. It's also happening under the influence of an aspect that I associate with digital conditions, called the Uranus-Eris conjunction in Aries.
The last time the Uranus-Eris conjunction happened (also in Aries, because Eris moves so slowly) was in 1927-28, at the dawn of the mass media age. Now it's back, as the effects of the digital age are being seen for what they are: chaos in culture, confusion of self-concept, and a totally distorted relationship to body. The chaos you're witnessing in the world, and may be feeling in your own life, has a source.
Recently there was a Full Moon directly aligned with this conjunction, which came with a flood of accusations of sexual assault leveled at Donald Trump, and others that Trump pointed back at Hillary and her husband, former president Bill Clinton.
The Sun and Moon personalized the effects of the distant, difficult-to-perceive conjunction, making it real to anyone who can see, hear, or feel. Normal people like us don't live our lives this way; we have humbler goals and more modest problems. Yet we're all taking this crazy trip, surfing along on the gushing innards of some people who have some serious issues. And in a few days, one of these families will be selected to occupy the White House.
One thing the digital realm has done, among other things, is induced a society wide out-of-body experience. The Internet is a synthetic astral plane. We were promised an "ascension" back in 2012 at the Mayan calendar turnover, and those predicting it were right. We ascended out of our bodies and into the datasphere. Human lives are now inseparable from the internet, or at least that's how we live.
Robotics are taking over; the cyborgs being trained to be human and the humans trained to think like machines are racing to meet in the middle. The real question is not "When will robots be indistinguishable from humans?" The question is "When will humans be indistinguishable from robots?" In some ways it seems like we're very close.
So far, my theory of what's happening in the 2016 election has been based on media analysis. My core concept is that digital technology has so gutted the human sense of self that total chaos has taken over. Today, I have another theory, one that I learned from Wilhelm Reich. The two approaches are compatible because they both involve our relationship to our body—and how that relationship can be exploited.
Sexual Assault and the Trump Campaign
Now that sexual assault has become the dominant theme of the Trump campaign, it's a good time to introduce another explanation of what's happening. In recent weeks, we learned that Donald Trump really does shove his tongue into the mouths of unwilling recipients, reached under the skirt of his fellow passenger in first class, and walked in on the Miss Universe contestants' dressing room.
His first wife accused him of raping her (then recanted), and there's a federal lawsuit in New York City by a woman who is alleging that as a child she was repeatedly raped while being held prisoner by Trump and an associate.
Many women are now coming forward with horror stories, some of them prompted by Trump's outright denial of such conduct during one of his debates. One of those women was a reporter for People magazine, sent to interview Trump about his happy marriage; she got a tongue shoved into her mouth, and told many people about it at the time (including her former journalism professor).
If even a few of these allegations are true, it's a serious issue. Most sane people know they have a high probability of being real. This is based on Trump's own affirmation: He said he did it; the accusations have been coming out for a long time. This was no "October surprise." We've been dealing with his insults at women through the whole campaign. These include his memorable attacks on Megyn Kelly of Fox News in reprisal specifically for calling him out for his hatred of women.
One thing I observe is that Trump's position is merely an expression of the consistent position of the Republican Party in its treatment of women: opposing the right to family planning, birth control, and abortion. That's an almost-sly attack on the personhood of women. Trump makes it overt, even suggesting that women need to be punished for having an abortion.
His running mate, Mike Pence, signed a law this year requiring women who miscarry or terminate a pregnancy to bury or cremate the fetus, forcing them to do so at their own expense.
The truly impressive thing is that as of today, about 43 percent of the voting American public is likely to vote for Trump. Indeed, it's not just impressive—it's all that matters. The attack on women has become the centerpiece of his campaign. It seems like a scandal, but it's far more than that; it's the heart of the matter. And you might ask: Who would respond to this?
There's a lot of history here. A doctor named Wilhelm Reich was the first to explain the connection between sexual repression and the rise of fascism, a form of government that Trump aspires to.
He perceives himself as a dictator, and his followers are responding to him like a social monarch who can do no wrong.
That "no wrong" includes contemplating nuclear war, threatening genocide, advocating brutality in his rallies, and torture both psychological and physical. It's worth asking how this happens; it's happened many times before.
We have to look to Dr. Reich for a real clue. Before we go there, please keep one thing in mind: Sexuality is suppressed by crushing women. The oppression of sex is the oppression of women; men come along for the ride as both perps and victims. Women are trained to be both as well.
Suppression of Natural Sexuality
In Reich's observation, the police state draws its power from sexual repression. Sexual repression actually begins in the family, during early childhood. Society is full of repressive methods and ideas, from religion to marketing to advocacy of rape and abuse. But the real damage happens when children are young. Here is a direct quote, though I've done some editing to split up a very long sentence and even longer paragraph.
This is from a book called The Mass Psychology of Fascism: "Suppression of the natural sexuality in the child, particularly of its genital sexuality, makes the child apprehensive, shy, obedient, afraid of authority, good, and adjusted in the authoritarian sense; it paralyzes the rebellious forces because any rebellion is laden with anxiety.
"It produces, by inhibiting sexual curiosity and sexual thinking in the child, a general inhibition of thinking and of critical faculties. In brief, the goal of sexual suppression is that of producing an individual who is adjusted to the authoritarian order and who will submit to it in spite of all misery and degradation. At first the child has to submit to the structure of the authoritarian miniature state, the family; this makes it capable of later subordination to the general authoritarian system. The formation of the authoritarian structure takes place through the anchoring of sexual inhibition and anxiety."
The last few words contain the formula: The formation of the authoritarian structure takes place through the anchoring of sexual inhibition and anxiety. In other words, grafting sexual inhibition to anxiety and making them one emotion.
To sum up, when people are sexually crushed, many problems arise, including what he calls the mystical longing. Suppressed orgasm and withheld sexual gratification induce a frantic state, which include "armoring of the character, [which] is the basis of isolation, indigence, craving for authority, fear of responsibility, mystical longing, sexual misery, and neurotically impotent rebelliousness."
The Mystical Longing and the Charismatic Leader
In a book called The Function of the Orgasm, his most famous work, Reich explains that the "mystical longing" is answered in the form of the charismatic leader.
Donald Trump may grate on many people, and disgust many others. But there's no denying that in a crude and American way, he has a certain charisma. He's akin to a religious huckster: a total hypocrite who makes no sense, and who draws his power on the anger and frustration of his followers.
Make no mistake: In order to forgive his vicious treatment of women, his fans must be sexually frustrated.
Nobody who snuggles and cuddles with their lover, and who draws strength and pleasure from the feminine side of life, is going to like him, or have any use for him. People who have use for him are those who are in sexual pain.
But we're not allowed to talk about sexual pain in our culture—that is, the pain of longing. We can, however, talk about the pain of attack, and that's what the discussion is focused on.
I have no doubt that the mechanics of the Internet have so scrambled people as to make this whole situation worse. Yet the human core reality involves sexually based emotional agony, whatever its source and whatever is facilitating it. In that state, people are susceptible to all kinds of manipulation. Feeling dead inside, they have nothing to lose, and feel like they might gain something.
It's rare that the cycle of sexual repression to politics is expressed overtly—though that's what we're seeing. We are witnessing the charismatic leader who openly hates women drawing his power from profoundly sexually frustrated people.
Where to Go From Here
This is the discussion we need to have. In this environment, it would seem that relaxing and being loving is the last thing that it's safe to do, but that's really the only answer. The actual antidote to this chaos is love and pleasure.
That our environment does not support this is by design. We need to design a new environment. It's true that we're in a predicament, and that requires taking some risks. One of those risks involves questioning whether sexual repression in any form is a good thing. Many would say that we need more repression, though I don't think that's going to get a positive result.
Another involves seeing the way that crushing and demeaning women is not just about women but about all people. While we may not be able to change this in our entire culture, we can change it for ourselves as individuals.
This requires conscious choices and actions. The personal is indeed political, and claiming, honoring, and loving your sexuality is indeed a revolutionary act. When the feedback from your environment says shut down, be afraid, be cold, and do not trust, relaxing and being open is a kind of rebellion. If you think of it that way, it may be easier for you to take part.
It's going to be an interesting few days as the wave of the Aries Full Moon crests and breaks over society. Remember, you have the option to fester on the problem, or to focus on healing.