Neptune has pride of place in the birth chart of the United States. It is conjunct the Midheaven of the US (a wide conjunction, 8.5 degrees) and is the most elevated planet in the chart. This prominence of Neptune is very visible in the United States, and even manifests itself in US currency. This placement of Neptune is articulated by the term “American Dream” and displays itself in the concept of Manifest Destiny, a term popularized in the 1840s and illustrated by this famous painting. 
America has been the birth place to many religions and in fact there is a region of Western New York State which is called the Burned-Over District (details are in Whitney Cross’s book The Burned Over District first published in 1950) where many religions erupted, including Mormonism, seemingly after a controversy involving the death of a Mason and the birth of the first third party in America. People new to America are amazed at the strength of religion in the society. Imagine the extreme difficultly of a Non-believer running for any public office, and compare this to any European nation, most especially France. And look at the back of a one dollar bill. There you will see an eye on top of a pyramid, a physical representation of the position of Neptune in the birth chart of the United States. That position was determined in 1935, and was suggested by then Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace, who probably had more knowledge of esoteric symbols than any other government official since, though of course the founders of this country were mostly Masons, and I am told the amount of esoteric symbolism to be found in Washington, DC is considerable. This eye on the pyramid was the reverse of the Great Seal of the United States which originated back from the birth of the country.
As has been talked about before the United States is currently having a Neptune transit, with Neptune square the Ascendant of the United States. This has manifested itself in many ways, but two stand out as being featured prominently in the news media, and demonstrating once again that the media is also under Neptune’s influence. In general, people are now disillusioned with the charade of politics as usual, and this plays out in many ways. The key word is disillusioned, a word of Neptune.
Neptune’s hard transits, since Neptune is a slow moving outer planet, are relatively rare in the history of the country. What we are seeing now is an opening square of Neptune to the Ascendant. As can be see in this graphical ephemeris, it was first exact in early summer of 2016 (black arrow), was then exact in March of 2017 and will make its final passes of an exact square at the end of this year and the beginning of the next year.
The previous conjunction was exact in 1975 and 1976, forty years ago. In the United States this saw a rise of born-again Christians (“Jesus People”) — at this time my astrology teacher became a “Jew for Jesus” and threw away all her astrology book., It seemed to be a time when many who had believed in political change in the Sixties gave up on that idea and turned to spiritual pursuits. While it is difficult to chose an exact chart for this event, a milestone is the release of Bob Dylan’s first Christian album Slow Train Coming on August 20, 1979. Though this was some years after the exact conjunction, it astounded many Dylan fans at the time since he was not known as a Christian (but rather into his Jewish heritage) even though such a song as “I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine” from the album John Wesley Harding may have suggested differently (though of course that album was released after his supposedly almost fatal motorcycle accident and showed a distinct change from what had gone before). But the album was also surprising because his previous album, Street Legal, contained a number of reference to Tarot (“between the King and Queen of Swords”) and other esoteric matters.
In the chart for the release of this album, seen as transits to the United States chart (left), Neptune is past the Ascendant but still close and in the First House. What stands out is the triple conjunction of Sun, Venus, and Jupiter in Leo opposite the Moon of the US. That day represents some type of culmination of trends in America, and the beginning of something new. As we can see from the event chart for the release (right), Uranus was midway between Neptune and Pluto; This period in history represented the beginning of the Rise of Neoliberalism, discussed at length elsewhere in his blog, in the world whose effects have become obvious by now, almost forty years later. It was indeed the beginning of a new trend.
The closing square of Neptune to the Ascendant was in 1933 though 1935, the depths of the Great Depression when Franklin Roosevelt had just taken office. Father Coughlin, a Catholic priest who used the radio to reach a large audience, posed a challenge to Roosevelt whom he first supported; Coughlin later became anti-semitic and began to support some policies of Fascist leaders. Huey Long, the governor of Louisiana, was another early supporter of Roosevelt who split with FDR and offered a “Share our Wealth” program that was more radical than the new Deal of FDR. He was associated with Father Coughlin and was assassinated in the middle of this transit. And of course the Communist Party of the USA saw much gain in its membership as people saw the problems with capitalism. In all these cases, and others, people were all too clearly disillusioned –a Neptunian word — with capitalism. In the graphical ephemeris for this period we can see the squares of Neptune to the US Ascendant; the first exact square is shown by the black arrow.
Neptune transits are also very prominent to the United States chart during the bout of McCarthyism in the late Forties and early Fifties. Neptune was on the MC of the US during the first half of that decade, as the country entered and fought World War II. Neptune then was prominent in the US tenth house at the end of the war and shortly thereafter. Then, as shown in the graphical ephemeris above, Neptune was square the Sun of the United States starting at the beginning of 1948 (black arrow shows first exact square) and the last exact square was in late 1949, though the effects continued into 1950. As mentioned in the above link, the late Forties was the period when the Cold War was really started. Truman was laying the foundation of the Cold War (e.g. the Truman Doctrine) and instituted a loyalty oath for government workers which was then ramped-up by the Republicans, as is their wont, and the forerunners of McCarthy, such as Richard Nixon, were practicing their witchhunting of Communists
One prominent example in the current square of Neptune, which has been mentioned before, is now going under the sobriquet of “Russiagate”. This is the belief that Russia and its demonic leader Vladimir Putin are behind most of the troubles in the world today, and that Putin’s noxious influence has determined the winner of America’s last Presidential election. This is a feature of the ongoing New Cold War, which really came into prominence (though it started with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991) with the violent coup in the Ukraine (though of course it is not called a coup in the mass media, though the President of what has been referred to as the private CIA (Stratfor) has called the event the most obvious coup in recent memory), which took place of February 22, 2014. This was the beginning of a difficult time for the world, and was indicated astrologically by the Grand Cross on April 22, 2014, which can be seen as the starting gun for a dangerous race.
The charges in Russiagate have filled the news, and most seemingly liberal people, those who supported Clinton’s campaign for the Presidency in 2016, assuredly give credence to this belief of Russiagate. But there is really no evidence for this, as former President Obama, former director of the CIA Michael Morell, and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper have all said. People need to realize that there is no there there. Certainly there are many sins that they can get Trump on, but instead many people chase this chimera; that alone should suggest that this is part of the plan to further demonize Russia and avoid any possible detente. But this has not stopped the belief, which is featured prominently in the major newspapers and news channels. As I’ve said before, this is Neptune writ large. This is surely a projection by American officials since the United States has “influenced” the elections of other countries more than once. One example was so famous, involving a President of Russia who was far behind his opponent, that Time magazine even had a cover story celebrating the exploit. One wonders if afterwards Moscow was filled with complaints about “Clinton hacked our election”.
In fact, now almost any meeting with someone from Russia is suspect, innocent contacts with Russian officials are considered a sign of treason, and academic researchers are urged not too seem to close to Russia. Full disclosure: I had a meeting with two Russian women over the Memorial Day weekend of 2012 in a bowling alley in New Orleans, so perhaps I too have been infected.
But recently something else has gripped the news media, and is strongly related to “Russiagate”: the charge, uniformly accepted by the aforementioned mass media, that the government of Syria attacked and killed many people (including beautiful innocent babies) with a poison gas, identified as sarin. As a result President Trump sent Tomahawk missiles to pound Syria, thus proving he is Presidential by committing a War Crime, as all Presidents of the United States, at least as far back as Harry Truman, have done, and turned around the almost universal hatred of him into much (temporary) adulation. Having committed a war crime was always the advantage Hillary Clinton had over him in being presidential.
But the nature of this chemical attack is very hazy. Note that Neptune rules both poison gas and hazy. Several things not mentioned: Syria has no poison gas, according to the United Nations which destroyed those weapons several years ago. Then, as in any crime, one must asked cui bono — who profits. Since Syria was winning the war and about to engage in a gathering to settle the war (in Brussels) this was surely the absolutely worst time to let off an attack by a chemical bomb, even if Syria’s government had them. But of course the opponents to the government of Syria have much to gain from the attack. Then there is the report, also unmentioned in mass media, by a expert in national security and weapons of mass destruction from MIT that the explosion was from a bomb on the ground and not dropped from the air. And of course there is doubt that the gas used was even sarin, since pictures of first responders show them not using any protections that are required for dealing with sarin.
But this bombing certainly gave a boost to the lagging presidency of Donald Trump. In fact, some commentators at MSDNC have suggested that Putin arranged the chemical attack so that his buddy Donald Trump could appear decisive by his response. The Russians themselves believe that Trump certainly knew this was not an attack by the government of Syria, for the obvious reasons given above, so they think that he is still open to talks with them, and that this was just an action he needed to take since he had been so weakened by the Russiagate attacks. So whichever way you look at this incident, it is totally Neptunian. When an crazy idea seems to take control of otherwise rational people, you can be sure Neptune is involved. As we saw previously, there were strong Neptune contacts to the US chart at the beginnings of the Cold War in the late Forties.
Watching these events happen with a knowledge of Neptune allows one to observe the action of Neptune at first hand. It seems like a fog has swept over America, and the fact of Russian interference with American (and those of other countries) elections is taken as fact by so-called reputable news services. Between Russiagate and President Donald Trump, America must be the laughing-stock of other countries, or at least those who are not swept up in the American bubble. And since almost all people — liberals — concerned with civil liberties hate Donald Trump with a passion, they don’t notice what looks at a distance as if the organizations such as the FBI, CIA, and NSA — the so-called Deep State — are attempting a soft coup to replace the elected President of the United States, just as if the USA were a “banana republic”. They have much practice at replacing elected leaders in other countries, and now their skills are being applied closer to home. It is a fitting close to the American Century. Liberals should remember the famous saying from World War Two: First they came for the Communists and since I wasn’t a Communist I said nothing….