America's Fraud Complex
The end of Teflon Don. A 1973 vibe. America and the AR-15. Astrology can explain.
America this month reaches a pivotal moment in its years-long identity crisis. This once in two-generations cycle is a painful awakening to our deepest flaws and in astrology, we call this the Chiron Return.
This was the same cycle at work during the most damaging presidential corruption scandals in U.S. history, including Watergate, and the most devastating losses, including the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. It coincided with the deadly flu pandemic of 1918 and the Prohibition years, the violent and divisive post-Civil War years and the birth of the abolitionist movement to end slavery.
This latest cycle began just as Americans realized they’d fallen for a Russian psy-op that helped put Donald Trump in the White House. That was April 2018. As you know, it’s been a real laugh riot ever since.
Chiron in Aries: April 17, 2018 to April 14, 2027
We’re now five years into this nine-year transit, a period historically indicative of chickens coming home to roost. It shares a vibe with 1973, when Vietnam veterans returned defeated and demoralized just as the U.S. Senate began its televised Watergate hearings, escalating the scandal that led to Richard Nixon’s resignation.
The karmic lesson of this transit on a personal level is true self-acceptance. As a nation, that means realizing that everyone is part of the whole, regardless of race, ethnicity, pronouns, politics, sexual proclivities or position on abortion. It means resisting the comfortable urge to settle into “us” versus “them” and instead seeking ways to get along so we can all move forward and live peacefully.
During the last Chiron in Aries transit, Marlo Thomas pitched this lesson in the TV special, “Free to be You and Me.” The rise of environmentalism led to new laws protecting the Earth and the first Gun Control Act was passed. The post-WWI progressive movement of the early 20th century, during another Chiron in Aries transit, resulted in the ACLU, women’s right to vote and protections for the working poor.
During the next two years, like the late 1960s and early 1970s, this process is aggravated by a series of eclipses along the Aries-Libra axis. These amplify the healing process. It becomes impossible to ignore the problem.
Our “now or never” moment begins with this week’s Aries Solar Eclipse and sparks change off and on through June 2026.
Historically, this wake-up call arrives as political scandal.
America’s Past Chiron Returns
1973-1974: Vietnam War ends, Nixon resigns
1923-24: Prohibition, death of a sitting president and scandal
1874-75: The bloody aftermath of the Civil War
1825-26: The birth of the abolitionist movement
If Chiron in Aries is teaching us anything, it’s that we’re our own worst enemy and the time has come to surrender. This will be especially evident in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election as Chiron returns to its precise location when America was born.
This process ultimately leads to a more conscientious nation with the courage to admit its failures. But first, we have to confront some gnarly truths, like our legacy of pretending to be the victim while acting as a perpetrator.
Which leads directly to Donald Trump’s role in this process. It’s still early days in the Litigation Era, but the narrative around Teflon Don has turned a corner. He’s now the first former president charged with a crime and closer than ever to actual consequences. He’s been indicted for paying hush money to a porn star and faces a half dozen other criminal and civil investigations. This is Libran justice served by a high femme beauty, a Venusian domaine.
Meanwhile, other lieutenants in the Republican culture wars — U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and Rupert Murdoch — are facing their own charges of hypocrisy and corruption.
Murdoch gave up about six months of net annual income ($788 million) in a settlement to keep Tucker Carlson off the stand. This after months of libelous revelations in the Dominion Voting Systems’ suit. He’s headed back to court on another voting systems libel suit, this one for $2.7 billion. Click here for more on the astrology of Fox News.
And then, there’s the fact that Justice Thomas’ questionable entanglements with a major Republican donor may have broken the law, and certainly exposed the impunity enjoyed by the high court. This narrative is just getting started. Astrologers note: Thomas is feeling the full measure of transiting Pluto in Aquarius on his natal Moon. Plus, we’ve got two more years of the Aries-Libra eclipses to correct power imbalances.
Trump, Murdoch and Thomas serve as ideal avatars of America’s blind ambition and its consequences. Success and greed, this lesson teaches, mask a deep-seated fraud complex and winning at all costs is a losing game.
In this cycle, unchecked Aries-level ego will be met with cool-headed justice, Libra’s area. Just ask Bill Cosby. Or Roger Ailes. Or Bill O’Reilly. Or Harvey Weinstein. I could go on.
Chiron and America’s Past
America’s Chiron Return is typically a tenuous moment when we grapple with issues of personal freedom. There’s a greater sense that we must defend our “rights” while at the same time, as a nation, we’re conflicted about who is entitled to what.
Roe v. Wade was passed during our last Chiron Return and rescinded during this latest one. Women’s rights and the so-called “battle of the sexes” were amplified during the last Chiron Return of the 1970s, a clear signature of the Aries-Libra axis.
During the Chiron in Aries transit of 1920, women earned the right to vote, about the same time the flapper movement began challenging rigid Victorian morays. The 15th Amendment, passed during the Chiron in Aries transit of 1870 gave black men the right to vote, but it was nearly a century before they could do so safely with the Civil Rights Act of 1965.
During the Chiron in Aries transit of the 1820s, America reached the “Missouri Compromise” which allowed the new state to have slavery while keeping Maine free. Once again, the nation argued over human rights - those of African Americans - and how and where their rights could be asserted.
Chiron in Aries in the Past
April 1, 1968 to March 28, 1977
March 31, 1918 to March 25, 1927
June 4, 1868 to Feb. 4, 1878
April 9, 1820 to March 5, 1829
Chiron in Aries is a Gen Xer
Though every Chiron Return echoes similar themes, there are clear parallels between today and 1973. Like now, America was processing compound traumas. Like now, the freedoms that had been legislated for underserved people in the decade prior had led to a virulent backlash by conservatives.
Like now, the optimism of years past had soured to grief and cynicism. Inflation and interest rates were sky high. Our president had lied and our national identity was disgraced.
The children of the 1970s embodied this national sense of defeat. Even their name - Generation X - suggests a negation of identity. As they will readily volunteer, this generation was one of the least nurtured in American history, raised to be self-sustaining by ignoring their own suffering. They were old before their time.
This showed up as a hip sort of nihilism in the 1990s. But after 9-11 and the Great Recession, (the mostly white, mostly male portion of) Gen X did not age well.
Many of them were inspired by Trump’s impulsivity and nativism at a time when the world was leaving their kind behind, triggering that early wound of invisibility and neglect. They admired his unapologetic (and false) bravado and they followed him into his (losing) battle and stormed the U.S. Capitol. This segment of Generation X is in for a rude awakening these next few years.
Chiron Return Scandals in History
President Warren Harding died suddenly and the months after his death were consumed by the Teapot Dome bribery scandal that landed a cabinet member in prison, forced the resignations of the attorney general, secretary of the Navy and was considered the worst in history until Nixon. [Chiron Return: June 8, 1923 to Jan. 8, 1925]
The Whiskey Ring scandal of 1875 revealed a five-year conspiracy led by Republican operatives, including President Ulysses S. Grant’s private secretary, to raise campaign money by bribing the U.S. Treasury. The supervisor of the Internal Revenue Service, the chief clerk of the Treasury Department, and a federal attorney were among the 110 convicted. [Chiron Return: May 9, 1874 to March 10, 1875]
The so-called “corrupt bargain” between Speaker of the House Henry Clay and Secretary of State John Quincy Adams that many believed landed Adams’ the presidency during the 1824 presidential election. It had to be decided by Congress.
America’s Chiron Return
within 3° orb of U.S. Chiron
April 27 to Oct. 23, 2023
Feb. 28-June 26, 2024, exact April 20, 2024
Aug. 26, 2024 to April 15, 2025, exact Nov. 8, 2024
Nov. 28, 2025 to Feb. 6, 2026, exact Feb. 18, 2025
Aries-Libra Eclipses
April 19, 2023 - 29° Aries Solar Eclipse
Oct. 14, 2023 - 21° Libra Lunar Eclipse
March 25, 2024 - 5° Libra Lunar Eclipse
April 8, 2024 - 19° Aries Solar Eclipse
Oct. 2, 2024 - 10° Libra Solar Eclipse
March 29, 2025 - 9° Aries Solar EclipseChiron in Myth and Astrology
The Chiron Myth
Chiron was the first of the objects discovered in the asteroid belt between the Sun and Saturn on Nov. 1, 1977. It’s named for Greek mythology’s wise and noble centaur, a master healer and guru to heroes. A tragic figure, Chiron exchanged his immortality to save Prometheus from infinite torture, but dies from his own unhealed wounds.
In astrology, Chiron is where we’re most insecure but hold the power to heal. When an eclipse series activates Chiron — as it will in the U.S. natal chart now through 2025 — there’s the possibility of an amplification of suffering followed by a profound healing.
The Aries-Libra Line
Issues of identity are the domain of Aries, a Mars-ruled sign defined as fiery, fearless, motivated, impulsive and independent to a fault. Aries is the burst of life force in early spring, the pre-verbal state of development, the “me first” inclination and act now impulse to survive. In Greek mythology, Aries is the god of war.
Chiron in Aries is vividly depicted by the talking heads on Fox News and the newest members of the Republican Party. It’s an infantile rage that negates all empathy. It’s a childish resistance to compromise that hurts both sides. This is the forever war fought to preserve sovereignty at all costs. Everything is a high stakes battle. It’s survival of the fittest.
We can’t talk about Aries without considering its zodiac opposite, Libra, the Venus-ruled sign that’s airy, peaceful, collaborative and at times, passive aggressive or codependent. Libra is represented by the Scales of Justice held by Themis, the Greek personification of divine law or the goddess of wisdom who maintained order.
While America’s astrology shows an affinity for true justice with Saturn exalted in Libra, these next few years may be weighted toward our Aries wound. More and more, we may be asking ourselves: What does it mean to be an American, anyway? Who are we, really? What are we willing to sacrifice to be ourselves? How can we come back together?
These are the questions of America’s gun control debate. While a majority of Americans support stricter gun laws, Republican leadership and their rural constituency point to the Second Amendment. American identity, they argue, is rooted in the right to bear arms. We fight, therefore, we exist. This is a true Aries argument.
This is an unenlightened manifestation of America’s Chiron in Aries. Just two weeks after Chiron entered Aries in 2018, Donald Glover, performing as Childish Gambino, brilliantly illustrated this quintessentially American psychosis and its devastating impact on black people in “This Is America.”
As long as we’re firing first, it contends, we’re winning. This is the narrative of a wounded warrior, fighting the losing battle and killing himself in the process.
The Justins, the Tennessee General Assembly + A New Civil War
Consider the extraordinary events in Tennessee. Days after the 0° Aries New Moon of March 21, a moment loaded with the intensity of an epic beginning, a shooter armed with three guns including an AR-15, broke into a Nashville elementary school and killed six people, including three 9-year-olds.
Tennessee has some of the most lax gun laws in the nation, allowing anyone over 21 to buy a gun without a background check and carry openly or concealed weapons without a permit. But this isn’t a rare freedom in America.
Only nine states and the District of Columbia generally ban the sale, manufacture and transport of assault rifles, the preferred weapon in the Vietnam War and now the most popular gun in America.
The March 27 murders sent thousands of parents and students to the Tennessee State Capitol to protest. They inspired the two youngest members of the legislature, Tennessee Reps. Justin Pearson of Memphis and Justin Jones of Nashville to force debate on the state’s gun laws.
Jones and Pearson were gaslighted, lectured and reprimanded and then voted out of their seats, a punishment the Republican supermajority refused to hand down to an admitted child molester in its leadership as Susan Harmeling discussed in Forbes.
“Just because you don't get your way, you can't come to the well, bring your friends and throw a temper tantrum with an adolescent bullhorn,” Rep. Andrew Farmer told Pearson. Here is the Aries archetype, weaponized.
Is it any surprise, then, that at the moment Pearson and Jones were expelled, the Full Moon in Libra over Nashville illuminated the same parts of the sky set aflame when Confederate troops fired their first mortars over Fort Sumter, South Carolina and started the Civil War?1
Racism, and the irrational fear, insecurity and entitlement being called forth now2 is the most obvious thematic link between these two events. Pearson and Jones, who are black, were expelled while the third protester, white lawmaker Rep. Gloria Johnson of Knoxville, retained her seat by one vote.
It’s the Aries war cry of fighting fire with more fire that inspires some Tennessee Republicans to argue that more weaponry, more military drills, more security officers, will save the day. But it’s Libran logic that saves lives by restricting access to weapons of war like the AR-15.
Maybe Chiron is trying to show us precisely where our suffering becomes self-inflicted. In the case of the Justins, (white) Americans are deliberately punishing (black) Americans for simply exercising their rights to be American. This is a deep crevice to mine and Sam Reynolds and I explored race along the Taurus-Scorpio axis here.
Ultimately, though, attempts to diminish the authority of Jones and Pearson backfired. They were reinstated to their seats within days by their home counties (the “blue dots in a sea of red,” as they say in Nashville) and became instant celebrities.
President Biden had them to the White House. Vice President Kamala Harris and Barack Obama, spoke up for them. Jones sang spirituals in an airport with Joan Baez. The New York Times wrote about his “trademark white suit” as an echo of past peaceful protests from the suffragist tradition to the N.A.A.C.P.’s 1917 Silent Protest Parade against anti-black violence. Here is the exalted form of Libra, using an aesthetic to telegraph justice.
Reporters, meanwhile, turned their attention to House Speaker Cameron Sexton, the Republican from Crossville, Tennessee who expelled them, and dug up some embarrassing details that now threaten his political future.
Swift consequences — or Libran justice — seem to be the corrective to these destructive outbursts of the Aries shadow.
Chiron and the AR-15
The moment in 1994 when the first federal assault rifle ban was signed into law3 Chiron was a presence, suggesting an acknowledgment of our nation’s vulnerability and an availability to heal. The ban was a bi-partisan effort in response to a deadly 1989 school shooting that killed 34 people in Stockton, California.
But in a post-Sept. 11 climate, when be-headings were regularly broadcast on YouTube and our troops were fighting two foreign wars, a Republican-majority Congress let the ban expire. On that date, Sept. 13, 2004, a Virgo New Moon conjoined Mars, the planet associated with aggression and violence.
Last year, the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act gave states more money for crisis intervention, making it easier to track gun purchases by people with mental illness, domestic abusers and gun runners. But a more sweeping gun reform package introduced by Democrats went nowhere. (Thanks Mars retrograde!)
There’s reason to hope, though. The astrology of the next two years is more 1994 than 2004. We have a better chance now of legislating even more compassion than we’ve had in 30 years, thanks to Saturn in Pisces.
Saturn in Pisces Legislation
The Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Gun Control Act of 1968
The Social Security Act
First federal workmen’s comp program
The U.S. Unemployment Service
The Food and Drug Administration
With America’s Pluto Return during the last few years, we’ve been forced to reckon with our value system, disparity of wealth, manipulated markets, corruption and abuses of power within government and other hierarchical systems.
America’s Chiron Return is a more psycho-spiritual process. It brings awareness to our pain but also offers a bridge to enlightenment. We’re asked to see our suffering from a new perspective in order to bring about the change that’s needed for growth. We clearly have some work to do.
Justin Pearson and Justin Jones were expelled on April 6, 2023 at 1:25 pm. The Confederate pre-dawn mortar fire took place at 4:30 am on April 12, 1861. This was also near the anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King on April 4.
Transiting Jupiter in Aries activates the U.S. Chiron in Aries through mid-May
The first assault rifle ban was signed on Sept. 13, 1994 when the Sun and Chiron conjoined in Virgo.