More Saturn in Sagittarius: The Birth of Trash Radio
In my previous post, I wrote about how last time Saturn was in Sagittarius, we saw the end of hot-metal printing and the transformation of newspapers. At the same time that this was happening in the centuries-old home of newspapers, Fleet Street, something else important ended for radio in the United States.
Now just to recap. Sagittarius is the sign that rules publishing and broadcasting. Sagittarius spreads knowledge. When Saturn transits Sagittarius, we’re going to see changes in how that works.
So back to the mid-1980s. In the United States, this was when something called the “Fairness Doctrine” was repealed. This was a statute that had been in place since 1949 (Saturn in Virgo, putting limits on speech.), which declared that anyone with a public broadcasting license was duty bound to relay multiple points of view when discussing matters of public importance.
The repeal of the doctrine resulted in a boom in talk radio. A space was created for conservative hosts such as Rush Limbaugh — who was for a decade in the early noughties the most listened to radio show host in the United States.
Suddenly, you were free to say just about anything. So for the last 30 years, American airwaves have been dominated by this torrent of right-wing opinion. Much of the mud thrown at the Democrats, and especially Hillary Clinton, was flung from those studios. The discourse of this current election is the harvest of all those years of trash talk.
At the same time that Saturn was in Sagittarius in the 1980s, so was Uranus, the planet of freedom — and radio.
What is interesting is that right now, with Uranus in Aries — and Saturn in Sagittarius again — we’re enjoying the real arrival of the individual podcast. Podcasting has been around for a while, but it’s gone mainstream in the last couple of years.
Saturn will be making a lovely trine to Uranus from December 2017 and into the next year. It’ll be interesting to see what evolves.
Christina, this particular article exemplifies part of what you’re talking about. Apparently, American Society is experiencing one of its periodic “throw the others out” phases. If I had time, I don’t at the moment, I’d do the research to track these truly awful rises in social ostracism on the part of white males in this country. Those periods are truly terrifying and seem to lead to mob mentality and periods of true danger to those who aren’t part of the perceived majority, ie white and male. It’s times like these when I truly dislike being an American.
http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/alt-right/
I have been thinking a lot about the 1850s in America — the lead up to the Civil War, which kicked off when Neptune went into Aries….
Both the Revolutionary and Civil Wars kicked off when Uranus was in Gemini. The next Uranus ingress into Gemini is coming up in 2025!
🙁