“Sing, O muse, of the rage of Achilles, son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans.”
-Homer, The Iliad
On Friday, there was a shooting at the airport in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Five were killed and at least six others were injured. An American citizen and military veteran (Esteban Santiago, born March 16 1990, time unknown, New Jersey) is the alleged shooter, and is now in custody.
We are all allowed some moral choice in our decisions, but do you ever get the feeling the deck is sometimes stacked against some of us a bit more than others?
***
“There is nothing alive more agonized than man, of all that breathe and crawl across the earth.”
War makes people crazy. You may not like to think so, but it does, and we have known this about warfare as long as such a thing has existed. The Iliad, written about 2800 years ago, knew that full well. It is the story of the end of the Trojan War, and is focused in large part on the character of Achilles. Achilles was the greatest warrior among his people. Being brave and wise, as it turns out though, isn’t enough to keep your from losing your marbles when you see your best friend killed in front of you, when you’re trapped in the middle of a decade-long war kept going in part by human ambition and by the capricious interference of various Gods who couldn’t agree on how a war should be approached, or whether or not the outcome is clear and worthwhile.
Of course, we’re a lot more civilized than that now. We have elected officials to handle these things for us instead of Zeus and Apollo and such.
***
Esteban Santiago was a Private First Class and combat engineer. He was deployed to Iraq in 2010 and was the recipient of half a dozen medals. His family says he came back changed, and not for the better. At one point he sought help with his mental health but was apparently unable to get it, or get enough. They took his gun away, but it was returned to him after it was determined that hearing voices, believing your mind is being controlled, and having the urge to join ISIS was not enough to infringe upon his right to gun ownership. Also: there just wasn’t enough help to be had, given that The Gods decreed seven times previously that spending tax dollars on Achilles and his kind was not justified.
…Or, something like that. Maybe I have the two stories confused, what with being so similar and all.
***
And so it came to pass that on January 6th 2017 at 1:30 PM local time, Esteban Santiago picked up the gun he had legally brought in his luggage at the Ft. Lauderdale Airport. With transiting Saturn closely square his Mercury (ruler of his already troubled mind), and transiting Sun and Pluto conjunct on top of his already pretty delusional Neptune, and the local Midheaven conjunct his Mars. Esteban calmly unpacked his gun and did the unpredictable (yet totally forseeable) and unpreventable (yet totally unnecessary) thing and started killing people.
It’s just a good thing we have Gods and/or astrology to blame these things on, otherwise you could almost say this was “a preventable tragedy.” What a relief it was just a random thing, and no one could have seen it coming.
So, hey. Don’t worry yourself about it.
“I wish that strife would vanish away from among gods and mortals, and gall, which makes a man grow angry for all his great mind, that gall of anger that swarms like smoke inside of a man’s heart and becomes a thing sweeter to him by far than the dripping of honey.”
***
Seen your January 2017 horoscope yet? If not, CLICK HERE for it!
Read Previous Post
