Trump v. 2.0 – Let’s change the subject

On the 20^th of January 2025 Donald J. Trump was sworn in as the 47^th POTUS. And the Western world held its collective breath. The Western liberal elites were alarmed. The Orange man hath returned, they thought, dreading what might come. Conservative elites were quite happy – at last, a return to sensible values, they thought. They were not to be spared. Roughly half of the American voting public was relieved and happy with the result, while the other half shared the sentiments of the liberal elites. So, the question is, what is to become of America over the next four years? And by extension, what will become of the West under this administration? For more, read on…

Trump was inaugurated at the White House at 12:02 pm, time noted by the author. I watched it live, as astrologers would. We will get to the astrology in a moment. The chart for his administration is below (bigger):

Thus far the new administration has enacted the following major policies:

• Offering buy-outs to a wide swath of federal employees, with around 75,000 having taken the offers so far – far fewer than the White House had hoped. There are 2.5 million federal employees.
• Ending financing for USAID and the NED, the latter which is the proxy CIA cut-out formed by Ronald Reagan to ‘promote democracy abroad’. USAID was formed by JFK. It was used as a tool for regime change operations in many countries, in addition to real aid work in developing nations. The raid on USAID was more political, but needed nonetheless.
• The DOGE infiltration of the US Treasury. This one has raised legitimate concerns.
• Withdrew the US from the Paris Climate Agreement. Bloomberg has taken up the cause.
• Withdrew from the WHO. Trump did that in his first term, Biden reinstated it.
• Granted pardons for many of the Jan 6^th protesters. Those with other criminal charges remain in jail.
• Imposition of tariffs on Mexico (walked back), Canada (walked back) and China, the latter having imposed counter-tariffs. Your iPhones are safe – for now.
• Declared a national energy emergency. This will affect the Endangered Species Act. Drill, baby, drill!
• Is sending $1 billion in weapons to Israel (currently on hold), including 4,700 1,000 lb bombs. He also lifted the hold on about 3,500 2,000 lb ‘bunker buster’ bombs. Thus far they have refused to send the MOAB. (Since that link they appear to have authorized it.)
• Abolished DEI mandates in federal institutions. It’s back to nature in Washington.
• Large-scale deportations of illegal migrants. A few have already been sent to Gitmo. This one has been lacklustre so far. Trump is angry about it. (It’s not sustainable.)

Most of the over 200 executive orders he signed on entering office have yet to be acted upon. However, it has only been a few weeks into this administration. Added to the above is that his Cabinet has been loaded with hawkish Israel-firsters – Say it ain’t so! – most of whom have been confirmed. The most controversial, as in RFK Jr., Kash Patel and Tulsi Gabbard, are still awaiting at full Senate vote. If they are confirmed, then we will see some real movement on the issues confronting the nation, for good or ill.

Thus far, though, what we have seen is not much in the way of earth-shaking events. Buy-outs of federal workers were large under Clinton. “W” lifted the ban on offshore drilling, in similar fashion to Trump’s call for greater production. Obama deported more people in each of his terms separately than Trump did in his first term. The US has been supporting Israel since its formal founding in 1948. And the slow-motion Nakba has been ongoing ever since.

Trump’s withdrawal from the WHO happened before, was reinstated by Biden and then left again by Trump, in what appears to be more political than anything else. It is the same with the Paris Agreement. In fact, most of what has happened thus far has the taint of political bias behind it and a bit of vendetta. Libertarians and Republicans favor small government anyway, meaning less regulation and thereby oversight. And when we look back, what we find is a cyclical precedent for what we see with this administration. We recall this from the post on the election:

“On the day of the election Musk tweeted “Novus ordo seclorum”, from the Latin, broadly meaning ‘a new order has arrived’, more literally meaning ‘a new order for the ages’. The phrase appears on the reverse side of the American $1 bill, since 1935. In 1935 a new order had arrived for the US, in the guise of the New Deal. Musk’s tweet refers, of course, to the election of Trump and the presumed commencement of a new world order. We’ll see about that. There is a new world order emerging…There is a change of government indicated in the [US] chart, though, the possibility of which occurs roughly every 44 years, shown by the direction of a combination of Mercury/Ceres/Uranus to the US Midheaven (MC).” [and vice-versa]

When we re-examine that chart, below, we see the syzygy of the combination mentioned. That post also goes on to describe what happened in the US every 44 years, since the Midheaven represents the sitting government. Given our current circumstances in the US that cycle is worth contemplating.

The preceding points bring us to the administration chart, shown at the start of this post. There are some immediate stand-outs:

• The chart is heavily centered along the Meridian axis, with a Sun/Pluto conjunction in the 10^th house in Aquarius conjunct the Midheaven (MC), opposite Mars in Cancer on the 4^th house cusp (IC).
• Mars is retrograde, and in Cancer, ordinarily signifying it as being weak. However, Mars is out-of-bounds (OOB), giving it more strength but also making its effects unpredictable and usually more destructive. Mars has been OOB since the start of this year. Think: ‘uncontrolled Mars turned inward’.
• Eris is in Aries, that sign being intercepted in the 12^th house. Eris forms the apex of a t-square with the Sun/Pluto/MC opposite the Mars/IC axis. Eris accompanied Mars on the battlefield, described in the recent Capricorn letter under a look at the full moon.

What we have thus far is an administration at war – we could say a civil war, confined to the Federal Government, Congress and the state apparatus. This is the political situation at present. The Midheaven (MC) represents the sitting government, while the IC (4^th house cusp) represents the opposing parties. Trump and Co. have gone to war against the people and factions who have opposed Trump in the past. But more to the point, we see a battle between the oligarch factions who have funded the two sides – conservative and liberal, Wall St. and Silicon Valley. The Sun/Pluto conjunction represents oligarchies in general. That conjunction also represents the drive for power and influence and the huge egos that go along with that drive. We certainly have that with this administration.

There is quite a lot of what we would call ‘smoke and mirrors’ with this administration, shown in the chart firstly by the placement of Eris in the twelfth house (secret enemies of the state, intelligence community, CIA, NSA, foreign agents, institutions in general), the latter all vying for influence and setting the MC/IC parties against each other. This could all prove to be very destructive to the state itself and/or to the Trump administration. What it represents in the wider view is a situation wherein the state eats itself from within, much the way of dying empires. It can also be seen as a battle between Democrat and Republican factions, but that is only the view on the surface. However that is exactly where the powers-that-be would prefer that we focus our attention. The actual struggle goes much deeper, as alluded to above.

Eris can be a very subversive and vengeful influence in a chart, which is what we see in this chart. We see this from her mythology. Her Roman name was Discordia (sower of discord). Because of her slow motion (560 years) she has been in Aries since 1927, but only in the last few decades has her influence been felt in US administrations. In fact, the first time ever that Eris squared the Midheaven of a Jan 20^th administration was in 2018, during Trump’s 1^st term. The Jan 20^th ritual of inaugurations was established from 1937 onwards. But in this administration Eris squaring the MC is like pouring gasoline on a fire because of the squares with Mars and Pluto. How do we see this happening?

There is a building in Venice called the Doge’s Palace. The Doge (‘Duke’ in English) was the highest elected official in the Republic of Venice. Elon Musk’s Dogecoin and his DOGE organization (it is not a government institution) were not named after the Doge of Venice, but unconscious currents of thought may have played a role in the naming, because as it turns out Musk and his cohorts are intent on having a big say (they think) in the money supply of the nation. That means control over the government in a major way. Musk may see himself as a kind of duke, but for reasons we won’t discuss here, he may not go the distance with this administration. If the DOGE is allowed to have its way it would form a secret or parallel government (12^th house). Concerns over such a state of affairs have prompted a federal judge to block access to the Treasury records by the DOGE. There will be more of that to come.

There is politics in the actions of the DOGE, too. The first entity to be attacked was USAID. USAID was attacked because of abuse by the Democrats for the purpose of attacking Trump and some of his allies. Almost immediately social media was flooded with info – much of it without confirmation – about who had received funding from USAID, some of it false – like the story that celebrities were paid by USAID to go on photo-ops in Kiev at the start of the war in Ukraine. Not all of what is being revealed is harmful, and it is still early days. One good thing to come of the revelations was the fact that over 6,200 journalists were funded by USAID, which the American media are now calling ‘independent’ journalists or organizations. Such organizations are not ‘independent’ if they received foreign funding. Instead, USAID-funded media outlets functioned as propaganda outlets used for regime change projects.

So far the DOGE has made incursions into the Treasury, Dept. of Education, the FAA (flight safety), the NOAA (climate), USAID and will try to audit the Pentagon – ‘try’ being the operative word. Good luck with that one. Again, much of the work of the DOGE is political:

“The White House and Republicans have claimed, without citing details, that DOGE is accountable to the president and will be kept away from conflicts of interest. Musk, though, according to lawmakers and attorneys representing federal workers, has violated laws, union agreements and civil service protections.”

There are few things people may want to consider about Elon Musk. He has deep connections with the MIC – the military-industrial complex. He would not be the richest man in the world were it not for US government funding. SpaceX, Starlink and Musk’s connections with Palantier and Peter Thiel show his deep involvement with the US security state. Now the think tanks in Washington are talking about a US version of the Israeli Iron Dome – another arms race, in fact, to be able to counteract any attempt at a nation firing ballistic missiles at the US. They are also looking to finally solve their problems with hypersonic weapons. The US has no equal to a Russian Zircon missile, for instance. Musk would be deeply involved in such projects. Were it not for the CIA as well, Musk would be much the poorer.

What we are not told in the ‘revelations’ about USAID funding is that Musk himself benefitted from it. 47,000 Starlink terminals were sent to Ukraine via SpaceX or the Pentagon, without which the war would probably have ended long ago. SpaceX is an integral part of the MIC. Now consider the DOGE.

The DOGE is tasked with cutting government spending and reducing the bureaucracy, to the tune of $500 billion, even up to $2 trillion, they hope. Musk’s young minions marching into government institutions and demanding records, these people having no government experience or even authorization in many cases, have been recruited for their programming and tech skills instead of financial experience. Congress controls the purse strings of the nation.

Soon enough the DOGE will be hauled into court and probably dismantled. What we have with the DOGE is illegal, unconstitutional, could be seen as an attempt at a type of coup, and it is putting very sensitive information in the hands of people who should never see it. What the DOGE is doing is not auditing. These people are not accountants. Basically, it is spying.

Expect pushback against DOGE to increase considerably as time passes. Government institutions require Congressional approval to be dismantled, even defunded. What we are seeing here is a corporate restructuring and attempt at inserting a technocratic arm into the state apparatus, with the Trump White House seeing the government as a giant corporation, keeping in mind there are thirteen billionaires in his administration. That, too, is represented in the administration chart by the Sun/Pluto conjunction. The money in American politics has shifted from Wall Street to Silicon Valley:

“As billionaires consolidate power within the Trump administration…their ambitions go beyond tax cuts and business-friendly policies. They are laying the foundation for a new political order—one where the ultra-wealthy not only control the economy but also redefine the very nature of the state. Whether this results in further innovation or an erosion of democratic governance remains to be seen, but one thing is clear: Silicon Valley is no longer just lobbying Washington – it is running it.”

When it comes to essentials, the purpose of the DOGE was to considerably slim down the government. What we will see instead in the long term is a litany of legal battles, lawfare and ruined reputations – some deserved, many not – as more and more information comes to light. Exposing USAID has brought some very useful information to the attention of the American public and the world, but that also provides a cover story for what is actually going on behind the scenes, which will likely not be to the benefit of the American public, but instead widen the wealth gap.

Then there are the mooted ‘savings’ to come from government cuts recommended by the DOGE. Where will that money go? The new Star Wars, $500 billion for AI and Big Pharma, and increased military spending are a good start, for the MIC. And finally, we have the tariffs, which will amount to a tax on Americans as well as a foreign policy debacle.

And in the same vein as Ronald Reagan, who was president at the last 44-year syzygy mentioned above, there is talk of reducing taxes yet again on wealth and corporations. If these are passed the budget deficit will increase. With the tariffs overseas exporters will be looking for other buyers. The added tariffs will likely eliminate any tax breaks average Americans would see. And eliminating the Social Security tax on employers will cause future benefits to dwindle.

Moving on, smoke and mirrors were mentioned above in relation to Trump v. 2.0. Mercury and Pluto form a midpoint with Mars in the chart, as follows:

• Mars=Mer/Plu: “Indefatigability, the ability to master great tasks, sharp criticism, the desire to attack others. – A blackmailer.”

This is the only midpoint in Ebertin’s book, The Combination of Stellar Influences, that mentions blackmail. But we have already seen blackmail being applied, in the form of tariffs against Colombia, Mexico and Canada. In the cases of Canada and Mexico it was a case of strong-arming those nations to implement policies they had promised the Biden administration but about which they were dragging their feet. In the case of Colombia, it is a de facto American colony and a key element in the cocaine ratline, along with Panama, to the US.

Coercing Colombia to take back their illegal immigrants from the US was easy. The same is now being applied to Jordan and Egypt in the form of cancelling aid if they refuse to take in hundreds of thousands of Palesitians from the West Bank and Gaza. Expect the region there to explode, and soon.

Some comments (for example), especially from Trump supporters, are calling this administration a revolution. An attempted corporate coup is more to the point. Ultimately, what we are seeing is a forceful adjustment, but one which will not fundamentally change the structure of the US government. If we recall, there are checks and balances. There are still Congress and the Judicial Branch with which Trump will eventually have to contend. Uranus represents revolutions, so a look at Uranus in this chart is appropriate in that regard,. We have the following midpoint, looking at this as a mundane chart:

• Ura=Sun/Sat: “Fluctuating attitude towards life, emotional tensions, sudden inhibitions, nervousness. – Unusual circumstances, crises, separation, mourning, seclusion, (imprisonment).”
• Ura=Sat/Plu: A person unafraid of danger, the ability to make sudden decisions in the most difficult situations. – Sudden acts of violence.”

Uranus is well-aspected in the chart, receiving a sextile from Mars and a trine from Mercury, but those influences come from the Mars/IC conjunction mentioned previously and from the 9^th house of foreign affairs and judicial matters. Uranus is in the first house (the common people, interior affairs of the country, and public consciousness). If there is to be a revolution in the United States during this administration it will not come from the administration. It will come from the American people.

Lastly, the Sun represents leadership. Thereby the aspects and midpoints to the Sun bear weight in the analysis. We have looked at the hard aspects to this administration in the preceding paragraphs. The only ‘easy’ aspect to the Sun is from Neptune, showing the power of imagery and the imagined effects this administration has over the public, along with the ideal of MAGA, the imagination this administration has for the nation. The American public could see the nation was headed in otherwise unwise directions from previous administrations and they knew change was needed, which is a big reason Trump was elected. When we look at the midpoint situation we see the following combination:

• Sat w/ Sun/Plu: “Ruthless overcoming of obstacles and difficulties, physical impediment. —Restriction, separation (by higher power, imprisonment).”

In that reading we see the first part of in effect now, in the ruthless overcoming of obstacles. But soon enough the rest of the reading will become evident. Considerable pushback will come over time. People are being tossed out of their jobs and people downstream (affected by) those jobs are starting to seek legal council You can bet on it. Foreign nations are also making their due arrangements.

Trump will be able to cajole and reshape the West to some degree, but he is about to hit a brick wall when it comes to Asia, Africa, the BRICS and so on. All relations therein will be strictly transactional. The latter nations have Trump’s number and they are under no illusions. Trump will have a difficult time with foreign relations, perhaps ameliorated now that Tulsi Gabbard has been confirmed as head of National Intelligence. With Trump about to receive real (as in true, factual) intelligence we may see a more pragmatic shift in US foreign relations, like we just saw with a change in tone toward Ukraine – no NATO, no US troops, no return of lost territories.

Tough talk from the bully pulpit will have little effect on the old, experienced nations of Asia and Russia. The Venus/Saturn conjunction in the 11^th house (allies, diplomacy, foreign contracts) semi-square to the administration Sun/Pluto at the least indicates the White House is facing tempered international realities (Venus/Saturn), and probably a tougher time with diplomacy and allies. Europe might surprise this administration. The Europeans are already talking about reopening NordStream and turning back toward China in trade, which the Washington establishment will seek to scuttle at every turn. Washington sees Europeans as their vassals and Trump has no love for Europeans.

It is only opening days for this administration. Trump has fired the opening shots – BIGLY. But the battle has yet to take form. It will come, especially from mid-year onward. Trump is facing a personal crisis in June, along with the nation. For now we wait and see. We are about to bear witness as to the strength or not of our constitutional order. May it survive and thrive. God bless America.

Featured pic from Business Standard