Abstract

Beat the Devil

The article focuses on the belief of former U.S. White House chief of staff Ronald Reagan on soothsayer Joan Quigley and consequences of his analysis on White House decisions. He says that counsel of Quigley was not inferior to the analysts who follow more orthodox routes of economic predictions. Nancy Reagan wife of Reagan would never permit her husband to leave home without one or even two time-and-motion. The image of two women, one of them peering into a crystal ball, guiding the policies of the United States, is irresistible in prompting coarse calumnies both on the termagant Nancy and on her pliant husband's abdication of executive responsibility. Astrology is entirely consonant with Reaganism, representing negation of the moral sense, abdication of initiative to the motions of the planets as parsed by the precise time and whereabouts of Ronald Reagan's birth.