My 12th grade political science teacher told me all I think there is to know about politics. I quote Mr. Silverman:

“Politics is power and it’s all about whose ox is being gored.”

It’s funny how you can learn the truth so early in life yet search for years for answers, in this case, for political answers.

Sports and Political Fervor

As the US election nears, I’m seeing more political talk on my social media. Political fervor reminds me a lot of sports fervor, such as with American football.

If I’m watching, say, an Ohio State University game and happen to be an Ohio State University alumnus, it is assumed I am rooting for “my team,” the Buckeyes. If I root for, say, The University of Michigan Wolverines, I will get both angry stares and possibly hostile responses.

If I root for the Wolverines, no one will call me “open minded.” If I root for Ohio State University, no one will call me “narrow minded.”

Yet when we make our political choices, it’s like we’ve picked a sports team and the opposing team hates us by default. It’s important to remember in the US we usually have only two viable choices and many like neither but still exercise their right to vote.

You have to vote for someone, right?

Politics, of course, is far more important than sports. If I root for the Wolverines, no one is going to take away my right to a fair trial or cutoff my only form of sustenance during a Great Depression.

I’m starting to understand why the US elections are held in the sign of Scorpio and am feeling the current Mars in Scorpio transit and am beginning to dread, just a bit, Saturn’s two-year transit of Scorpio that begins on October 5.

Scorpio – Life and Death

Scorpio is a fixed water sign. Fixed means steady in behavior and belief. Water means emotion. The combination creates an emotionally intense, sensitive, never-forget-a-slight personality who treats most matters as ones of life and death. Scorpio understands the motivations of others and is always looking under the surface.

Scorpio loves and Scorpio hates. In response, Scorpios are often loved or hated.

Sound like politics?

When we love our sports team or our political party, any disagreement is like an insult to one’s child – the response is quick and hostile. You can insult a person much more easily than his or her child which brings out a visceral protective and emotional response.

Mars in Scorpio this month has heightened and brought out early the natural intensity of the US election process, what is often called “mud slinging.” It’s going to be a nasty one.

But who’s being nasty? We complain it’s the politicians but I fear we have our own inner mud to release and politics is simply the way to do this, much like how people watch horror movies to release fear.

But politics is real, you say!

I agree and there is a segment of the population that is always engaged in politics. But the discussion of abortion and attendant anger and hostility we have every four years for many will recede the second week of November as the election passes and the holiday season begins.

The election is like a fight in the middle of the school yard – you have to go look. And when you become a spectator, you become involved. You might even root for one of the fighters, yelling their name and shaking your fist.

Letting Go

When you love or hate something intensely, you create attachment.

The lesson for the intense Scorpio is letting go, in hatred for sure, but sometimes in love too. Letting go has a religious term which is called forgiveness. I think forgiveness is emphasized in religion as it releases a person from his or her own emotional prison. It may also help the object of resentment, too, but I think ultimately helps the person doing the forgiving.

When Scorpio doesn’t let go, it falls into a default mode of obsession – that’s what you get when you mix a fixed mode with a water element.

There’s a line from an episode The Big Bang Theory I enjoy which relates to this. The character Sheldon is obsessed with hatred for Wil Wheaton, who is on the opposing bowling team. Wil Wheaton points at Sheldon’s head and says that is where he, Wil Wheaton, is “living rent free.”

Our obsessions allow others to live “rent free” on our energy.

Two More Years

The Scorpio energy originating now will move from an aggressive form (Mars) to a more constricted form (Saturn) for the next two years.

Whoever wins will have to deal with an obsessed, possibly depressed but inevitably emotional environment. While this energy can’t tell me who will win the election, it feels a lot more like Mitt Romney, Pisces sun and Scorpio moon, than Barack Obama, Leo sun and Gemini moon.

The Mud Slinger in All of Us

Scorpio is a sign that likes to dig in the mud to see what it can find. That makes Scorpio the ultimate detective.

The US elections occur during Scorpio and seem to represent a time of digging into others’ mud as well as our own.

Don’t forget that the other event that occurs in Scorpio is Halloween, a holiday where we dress up as ghouls and goblins and knock on people’s door asking for candy.

Sounds a little like politics too, doesn’t it?