Hudson Valley Astrologer

When I read Ron Chernow’s book on Alexander Hamilton it was easy to visualize Hamilton’s journey up and down the Hudson River from Albany to New York City and back again. He frequently sailed through the heart of the Hudson Valley on his way to New York City for work, then he’d return to his family in Albany. The landmarks described along the way were familiar, but reading about Hamilton’s pastime as a prolific writer of polemical pieces in the journals of the day like the Gazette of the United States was surprising. I was unaware of how aggressive and “full of bile” essayists were in those days. It got so bad that Thomas Jefferson and James Madison supported the creation of the National Gazette to challenge Hamilton’s Federalist Positions with a little muckraking of their own.

I imagine that Hamilton’s arguments under his various non de plumes were just as incendiary to readers then as today’s polemic from the modern blogosphere and podcasting world. Not much has changed in over 200 years in the discourse of the United States, which today’s remains as polarizing as it was, but if I were to pick one public voice that I find particularly vexing I would have to go with Scott Adams.

Adams’ rhetorical style is admirable in its effectiveness, in the sense that he has over one million followers of X for example, writes books and has a successful YouTube channel. He would argue, and Tucker Carlson might also, that the eyeballs are all that matter, but something about his takes smack me of being absurd and dangerous.

Initially I was drawn to his work because of his bold, braggadocio, and comical banter. But something was off. He had a villainous mean streak underneath his righteous rants. Then I read he had lost his voice, like Ariel, and just like Ariel he suffered the humiliation of facing a loss of agency, self-expression, and his entire identity. Of course Adams experienced his loss as it related to spasmodic syphonia, whereas Ariel’s voice was surrendered to Ursula. Nevertheless, part of me wonders if it were no coincidence that Adams lost his voice and was forced to extreme experimental measures seeking recovery and then doubled down on his way of expression once on his way to good health. In other words, perhaps there is some metaphorical truth behind Adams’ over compensatory behavior that was revealed by the condition he was stricken with, some unfinished business lurking beneath the covers, something related to his childhood?

Saturn is in the eighth house in is chart and quindecile Mercury ruler of the third house of communication. Deep seated insecurities, probably related to a deficient and unstable father figure, compels Adams to think and communicate with obsessive compulsiveness in ways which he cannot turnoff. His edge is probably in response to not having control as a child, and so he is driven to control every aspect of his adult life, as well as the lives of others, plus vicariously, through his radically conservative political views, he has become a fireball influencer, but my disagreement with him is that I think he is out of step with the overall zeitgeist of the age, and in fact I am quite sure that most of the extreme right is, despite the success of MAGA.

HVA

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