Venus in Cancer

I have Venus at one degree of Cancer. Cancer is a water sign, so it's emotional. And it's a cardinal sign, so it's a leader.

There are four elements and three qualities. Four times three equals twelve and there are twelve astrological signs, so each combination of quality and element appears exactly once.

Thus, Cancer is the only emotional leader and it is frequently a strong influence in the astrological charts of military people. The sign is associated with patriotism, which is about a strong feeling about the importance of loyalty to your country, which is a larger cause than yourself.

There is some voice quality and people who have more of it are very emotionally persuasive when they speak. Adolf Hitler rated very high for this quality and it has been suggested that this was a factor in his sway over the German people. 

He really got the German people riled up when he spoke. Whatever you think of old photos of him, the evidence suggests he was very charismatic in person and that likely doesn't translate well to modern media and modern culture, in part because he takes all the blame for World War II, so he gets intentionally cast in a bad light by most sources.

Supposedly, someone removed his highly identifiable mustache from photos and with making it not readily identifiable as Hitler, people rated him as highly attractive and we know he really moved the German people emotionally when he gave speeches.

Napoleon Bonaparte was a callous asshole who cavalierly threw lives away in pursuit of victory. He could do so because his men were fanatically loyal and willing to DIE for him because they felt like he cared deeply about every single one of them.

They felt that way because he had an astounding memory for personal details about his men. He could meet a soldier once and a year later run into him and casually ask him about the wife and kids by name and with other personal details like ages. 

This convinced his men he CARED about them deeply. They felt like he was very heavily invested in them because it gave the impression that he dedicated much of his headspace to remembering everything about each and every one of them.

That isn't necessarily what was going on. In fact, it's probably not what was going on.

Knowing a lot about all your people likely does make you better at deciding who should do what even if you really aren't a nice guy -- so arguably is a valuable quality in a leader even if you have no ethics -- but most likely he wasn't making any effort to remember this. It probably just stuck because that's just how his mind worked.

I say that because I was like that to some degree in my youth, though I'm medically handicapped so it was inconsistent. Sometimes I remembered details about people I met once before and sometimes I didn't.

But I have absolutely had conversations with people who were like "You probably don't remember me. We met once before." and I was like "Oh, sure I remember you. It was a rainy Tuesday and you were going through a divorce."

And then someone who witnessed that conversation was deeply hurt because I had no recollection of having met her before. As a consequence of big emotional reactions like that to something I wasn't trying to do, I have intentionally toned down casually admitting that I trend towards remembering substantial details about people. 

People were sometimes weirded out by it, like they felt it was stalkerish that I happened to remember things I heard about them once. Or they imagined I was their new best friend forever and deeply cared about them when we were casual acquaintances who spoke once for five minutes.

I'm not a General in an Army trying to inspire loyalty in people and convince them to DIE willingly for me. I was a homemaker for years and people frequently had ridiculous, abusive expectations like me remembering them meant I was their bitch and obligated to meet their needs while they did little or nothing for me.

I actually find it rather annoying that my mind works that way. I'm terrible with names and titles these days, but my mind still holds onto social details though I don't typically look that stuff up.

So the way I figure out what movie I'm thinking of that has some scene I'm remembering frequently follows a pattern of "Oh, it has that actress in it. I can't remember her name. But she's married to that actor. I can't remember his name. But he was in a movie with BIG NAME actor." And I start looking at the filmography for the big name actor to identify that film and then find the name of the spouse and Google wife of.

My mind just squirrels away social information like who is married to whom even when I can't remember their names. It's not because I CARE deeply. I tend to not read Hollywood gossip. My mind just absorbs this stuff. I don't know WHY.

I'm good at certain social things and I'm very well aware those things are frequently associated with horrible manipulative unethical awful people. I'm very much not interested in emotionally manipulating people for personal gain, so I experience it as a giant headache for me because people have big emotional reactions to me and there ends up being a lot of downside to that and I frequently feel like there's little to no upside for me.

And if I were male and in a leadership role of some sort, it would probably go very different places than what I frequently experience as insanely abusive and one-sided expectations that I'm supposed to be ENDLESSLY giving and kind and helpful and then get nothing in return.

Engaging emotionally with people is actually a leadership trait though it gets interpreted very differently for women than for men and of course it will go different places depending on your role in life. A homemaker will get different things out of it than a General.

Men who have that ability aren't viewed as girly men. They are frequently viewed as hyper masculine military leaders who inspire fanatical loyalty and it's something somewhat common in very controversial historical despots like Hitler and Napoleon who are not remembered as nice guys or caring people but THEIR people felt they CARED and that's part of why they had the backing they had while their enemies went "I don't get it! WHY would ANYONE follow this ASSHOLE???"

Primate research suggests male leaders are typically military style leaders protecting a private group from outside threats, like big cats hunting them. Female leaders protect the group from internal threats. They are keepers of the peace.

In human society, keepers of the peace probably roughly correlates to politicians and other civic leaders. And in human society, there's no clear, bright line between military leaders and civic leaders.

Historically in the US, presidents were frequently Generals before becoming president. Military service was a stepping stone to political power.

The president is the Commander in Chief of all military branches. It's a significant problem if he doesn't understand how the military works and I think it has greatly harmed the US that this is a thing of the past.

It seems to have changed essentially in my lifetime. I probably learned that "General is a stepping stone to President." in childhood, commented once on that on a classist forum while I was homeless and someone GLEEFULLY schooled me about my information being out of date and that no longer being true.

In recent decades, we increasingly see people with little to no military experience in that role, some of whom were draft dodgers. Our nation has lost its way and I think this one detail probably plays a significant role in that fact while being something not making the radar of most people.

A President with little to no military experience or association is a person in a position of power required to make executive decisions about the deployment of our military forces who has no meaningful framework for doing so effectively and ethically.

The current US President seems to have ZERO ethics and ZERO understanding of military strategy and its relationship to political goals. He seems to have no understanding at all that freedom is paid for in blood and you don't spill that blood for reasons like enriching your spoiled brat children who don't even look anything like you, which makes me wonder if they are actually biologically his.

I don't personally have political ambitions, but as a woman I do wonder what kind of standard we should use here because there are very few women Generals. My vague understanding is that past a certain rank, you need to have some officer version of "your combat stripes" in the form of having held a leadership role in a combat unit and women historically couldn't do that.

So if we insist you must be a high ranking General in specific, that's a Jim Crow style law that boils down to "No girls allowed."

My father was career infantry and a twice decorated veteran (fought in two wars, with honors both times) and my ex-husband was also career infantry, though mechanized infantry, something that may not have existed in my father's day. My first culture is American military culture and I tend to get along well with military personnel and not so well with civilian Americans and I have a long-standing close personal association with people who served in combat units in specific.

But I have had people online mock me and dismiss my association with and knowledge of the military and the sacrifices involved in being a military wife.  So I don't have a ready-made solution dreamed up that isn't defacto a backwards policy reinforcing the heteronormative culture I frequently decry and work towards undoing in my writing.

But if America wants to survive, we need to sort THIS.

The United States of America was conceived of as independent nation states allied together for the common defense. The ENTIRE role of the Federal government was supposed to be maintenance of a standing military serving the freedom of the independent nations of Georgia and North Carolina and South Carolina etc.

And now it's toy soldiers Daddy plays with to make Ivanka richer, probably after the two do some snuggling that people would not merely frown upon but which is a crime under US law. And yet somehow this man remains in office.

Because "We can't PROVE it!" I guess, so go ahead and throw away the lives of our soldiers now that you've stolen the election, admitted to it but SOMEHOW still hold office.

Anyway, if you want people to willingly and enthusiastically put themselves in harm's way, being a leader who speaks to their emotions is an essential part of the formula. Ideally, you should also be ethical and effective and have a very good reason for asking people to risk taking a bullet for you.

But asshole or not, contrary to popular perception, touchy-feely stuff is not a vapid girly quality. It's a quality required by manly men who want people to die for them.