Okay so the two cards I had were breach and rivalry and breach is the one where the beavers are so busy working on what they're working on that they don't pay attention and notice that their whole damn is falling apart at the other end so it's about focus and paying attention to the bigger picture in the tradition of seven of cups which is about fantasy and daydream an inability to see what's really there because of the fantasy and daydream s so in this case it's things falling apart that you weren't looking at and paying attention to and

Then the rivalry card is five of wands and that's always got something like rivalry or fighting or it's a card that I've always had a lot of trouble with because it seems kind of vague and every description that you read of it is a little bit different and so I've never had a very clear understanding of kind of what it meant in a reading it just seemed kind of vague

And in this card it's interesting because it's almost like she responded to that so maybe I'm not the only person that has that issue so she's like you know it's these two Gila monsters that are fighting they're these feathers that are set up making it kind of look like it's a cage match or something but in fact even though Gila monsters are you know North American lizards who can bite with poison and they could kill each other blah blah blah in fact that's not what's going on at all it's part of a mating ritual where the the male Gila monsters fight with each other and the winner which nobody knows exactly how the winner is determined I guess it depends on case by case basis but the winner gets the girl

So the idea is there's some stuff going on and we don't really understand what it is because we're looking at it through the context of our own filters and what I thought was really interesting is she said she was writing it in the spring of 2018 and she wished our elections were more like Gila monster fights or Gila monster mating fights whatever so I thought it was interesting that I'm asking a question about the election and she references in her description the elections of 2018 however 2018 were elections that were very much you know was like the the the wave the blue wave but also it was all the women who went in and kind of had a sense of camaraderie and tried to get things done and so so both of these cards are you know kind of to do with perspective and change in that way my cat is menacing me

And then the cards that I drew were the daughter of roots and the mother of feathers and the daughter of roots apparently the Cherokee would for both trail markers and marking important spots they would take the trees and start to kind of weave the branches so they would grow in this very unusual loudest form and be easily identifiable and it's also talking about that this is a really good card for if you're interested in or if the aquarium is interested in you know tarot reading or esoteric mysteries or whatever this card is very much about very much about that and so I took that with breach to be that you know with this election we're going to get a real sense that what we need to do is focus on putting it to place things that will protect the checks and balances that we now understand viscerally that the things that have always been done that were a tradition and a precedent but apparently we're never codified as being something that had to be done and so Trump didn't do them and tried to undermine many other things that are that are codified but perhaps are not strongly enough codified since they've been able to get away with it somehow so I take this as there's going to bureau focus on trying to find a way to make that reinforced and supported and more unbreakable to kind of weave it in in a way that it can't be just ignored and fall apart

And then mother of feathers is very interesting it's very interesting Father of feathers is the the hawk that has the lizard that's bleeding from its eyes and the prairie is on fire and he's all got the wrong attitude about things about how he's all in control well in the mother of others they're talking about that and they're saying in the mother of feathers she's sitting on her throne which is like a stump or something and there are three male birds that are trying to court her but she is not concerned about that when she is ready to pick a mate she will pick a mate and if these three guys leave they will be more along she is not worried about it she has got her paintbrush flower which when it blooms makes the prairie look like it's on fire but it's like a happy and good you know new growth kind of fire not a destructive kind of fire

And I'm not 100% sure

But it seems like that kind of dichotomy of the mating ritual like these two Gila monster guys are fighting fighting fighting for the right to the woman rivalry

But this mother of feathers is just like yeah I'm not concerned with all that I'm doing my thing and I'm just ignoring you guys it seems like that is significant in a sort of a change of attitude about the way things are done as well maybe like we're not focusing on that you know there's two sides and one's going to win and they're going to get the girl but now it's like you know the girl

Which I mean in this I guess represents the country or the people or the state or the state of mind the zeitgeist whatever it represents the thing that there's this fighting to get well you know she's not all that interested in being gotten she's interested in getting s*** done so she's got her you know set in the prairie on fire going on and you know all you fighting people can just kind of f*** off

And that doesn't seem like a nicely wrapped up answer but it feels very satisfying it it feels very you know we're shifting we're shifting our whole focus to not be this b******* but instead to be you know life and new growth and that kind of stuff and then trying to fix all the s*** that was too flimsy to stand up to bad people

I mean we've had plenty of bad people

And we've had plenty of bad people in politics

And we've had periods of time you know starting as early as the second president

Alien and sedition acts

Blah blah lots of bad stuff

But the checks and balances have typically worked eventually not right away

and we swing in cycles we do you know I mean I was just unfortunate because at the time when I became aware of politics was the period of time when they were putting in all the stopgap measures to try to protect against people like Nixon right and then I've watched the whole of my life you know all the regulation and the framework to try to protect anything that could be protected just be chipped away on shipped away at until the point where you know there's f****** homeland security b******* and Guantanamo

And then I really really hoped that Obama would turn some of that back I really hope that he would say no no this is a bridge too far we have to turn back to the light

And he didn't do that

And so for all the people who say great president

I say he was a very intelligent and charismatic man and and he was in many ways a very good president especially when compared with Clinton and it must be said it pains me but it must be said Jimmy Carter was maybe the most honorable man that we ever had as a president but he wasn't necessarily the best president

And and part of the reason why he wasn't had to do with that same honor

Where he would do something that was right even though maybe it wasn't the in some very important ways

Honoring our commitments to the shah of Iran for example did not pan out to perhaps have been the right decision but it was for sure the honorable decision and so I mean I think if you look at Carter and then you look at Clinton who kind of preempted the Republicans by moving to the right and I can't help but feel like in some ways facilitated the fact that in a lot of ways the Democrats are now like Nixon Republicans and the Republicans are batshit crazy anti-intellectual fundamentalist Christian conspiracy theory cultist

So I mean when you look at Obama in that framework man he kicked ass

But what I really wanted from him

Was for him to turn back but I considered to be the super duper dangerous things that went on during the Bush administration which were continuation of a line that in my mind started with Reagan but perhaps started before that that was just where I came in to the movie you know

I wanted him to turn that back

And that didn't happen

And then with this presidency it just became some kind of chaotic hellscape where there are no laws and there are no rights and the president is king and he's got you know paramilitary beating people in cities that he has determined are you know like libland and you know up is down in black is white and

And to be honest with you now I don't even remember the point I was making

And I mean maybe these decks are just telling me the s*** I want to hear I don't know that is what I want to hear that is so what I want to hear that you know in the same way that when I was growing up there was no way there was ever going to be gay marriage people weren't even asking for gay marriage

And then things move along and there's a complete sea change and now of course you have gay marriage because The supreme Court recognized that it's just a fundamental right and I mean that came about through a number of different actions that were pretty smart one of which had to do with filing for a separate type of certification where you know the Christian said marriage is between a man and a woman and they're like okay well fine then why don't you let us have civil unions because we're not concerned with the religious aspect we're concerned with the legal aspect and then when it was presented to them that particular way the supreme Court was like well you can't have separate equal no of course they have to have marriage that's just natural but it was years between the point at which literally people would say things and I don't mean just like people I heard on the street I mean like people who were being quoted in the media people who were thought their opinions were important we're saying things like blah blah gay blah blah bestiality like being gay was a sexual aberration in the same way that bestiality was a sexual aberration when clearly they're not the same sort of thing at all

But that was the kind of mindset that was rampant in the country

And to go from that to will of course same-sex couples can get married because if we didn't let them that would be a violation of their rights that kind of sea change

Generalized is what I would really like to see happen and of course there's a way in which culturally the millennials and the zoomers have already instituted some of those things as being just normalized

I mean just a few years ago I was talking to you about non-binary only I don't even know if I was using that terminology and it was weird to you You didn't really know what I was talking about and now you've been living in a community maybe not the specific neighborhood you're in but the state for sure in which it is a very common practice to state or to ask people for their pronouns

So again that's a pretty large change culturally

Although there's still a lot of growing pains and issues with some of the cultural changes

I mean like for example when I was in college a safe space was a place where you could say whatever it was you needed to say and people would not attack you

Now a safe space is a place in which no one is supposed to say anything which might trigger anybody

which I maintain isn't actually possible because you don't know what might trigger somebody so you can avoid the things you think might be obvious triggers but you can't actually know all the things that might trigger somebody

And although I very much like the idea of not being triggered

I'm not sure that if you take that to its natural extension you don't create a situation where people aren't able to learn in a way because they aren't exposed to anything that might be difficult for them and a lot of the learning that we need to be doing involves some real difficult talks

A lot of the things that need to change in the world or in America I should say I'm not going to make generalizations to the world but a lot of the things that need to change in America involve us really needing to have more of a kind of truth and reconciliation situation than a politically correct non-triggering environment

But I'm not trying to make an anti-political correctness statement generally that's not what I'm doing what I'm saying is that there are a lot of societal problems that need to change that involve people changing their attitudes about things in a similar way to the way we went from gay people could never possibly get married to well of course gay people can get married

so I guess what I'm saying is perhaps all these wonderful changes that the deck is telling me are going to happen perhaps they aren't really going to happen perhaps it's just telling me what I want to hear I don't know but it's two different decks and they both tend to be kind of tough love type decks really they're both reinforcing the same message so I cannot help but think that something some of this is going to happen

And they did tell me it's all going to be okay

When I look at things I don't see okay I see scary post-apocalyptic hellscape

But apparently okay