The Grand Distraction and the Dark Design

The circus you witnessed this week is merely a distraction. It has nothing to do with the actual policies of the Trump/Musk administration.

This is a cross-post from Planet Waves on Substack. If you are an in-house Core, Astrology or Galaxy subscriber, you can find this article on your My Account feed on the Planet Waves home page. Thank you for your business and your trust. — efc

Google AI data center.

Dear Friend and Reader:

The question that nobody is asking is: Why?

Why exactly do we need “artificial intelligence” at all? What purpose is it going to serve? Everyone knows what a blender is for; try making a frozen margarita without one. There is no good answer to the AI question. There are only bad answers, and very bad answers.

And why were the tech billionaires all sitting in the front row at the inauguration with the cabinet in the second row? If you’re wondering where technocracy fits into the Trump administration, consider the Sun-Pluto conjunction in Aquarius representing the new administration. [Hear special edition Starcast.]

That is about the power of the technological establishment to control, well, everything. Does your blender need an IP address? Does your body need one?

Trump signs executive orders in the Capital One Arena

Politics, of a Certain Kind

But first, let’s talk politics. Of a certain kind.

The newly minted president spent his first day and into the night in office signing executive orders — many of them in a stadium full of cheering supporters.

Conservatives have long complained about the courts “legislating from the bench,” which is actually called “precedent” or “common law” and is the way our legal system is supposed to work.

And then we witnessed executive orders with the effect of law being churned out by the dozen. Nobody knows how many; or somebody does and did not tell anyone. This nifty website from ABC News has a partial list that links back to the White House website for the full text. This one from WDSU may be better.

As of Wednesday, Google was not complying.

Here are Some Free Samples

But just for a little taste, in case you have not been riveted to your news feed, here are a few of them, compiled with the help of my comrade de plume Jon Rappoport.

— The Mexican drug cartels were declared foreign terrorist organizations. That’ll fix ‘em.

— The U.S. withdrew from the Paris Climate Accords and the World Health Organization.

— He ordered federal employees back to work five days a week; some were coming in only two days every two months.

— He rescinded 78 Biden administration Executive Orders, actions, and memoranda.

— He renamed the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. As of Wednesday, Google Maps was still calling it by its original name. I am uncertain why it wasn’t renamed the Gulf of Florida, Louisiana and Texas. Will the state of New Mexico be renamed?

— He changed the name of Mount McKinley back to Mount McKinley. (In 1975, the state of Alaska requested that the mountain be officially recognized as Denali, as it was still the common name used in the state and was traditional among Alaska Native peoples. Biden granted that request.)

— He delayed the TikTok ban for six weeks.

What good is the border wall if you can just walk around it?

All of This — and the Big Beautiful Wall (BBW)

— He declared a national emergency at the southern — meaning Mexican — border, ordered the DOD to send troops to secure the border and expedite the completion of the border wall…that big beautiful wall he never completed.

— He shut down the CBP One app, thereby canceling migrant appointments for entrance into the U.S. They can’t come in illegally, and they can’t come in legally. Other than that, they are welcome.

— He declared a national energy emergency, promoting domestic oil production. (There are currently 41 other national emergencies in effect.)

— He rolled back mandates on electric vehicles. They can now accept diesel fuel.

— He slapped a 10% tariff on goods imported from China, Mexico and Canada.

— He suspended federal agencies from issuing new regulations.

— He granted pardons to roughly 1500 people convicted in the Jan. 6, 2021, protests at the Capitol. We have been living through the Year of the Pardon.

— Contrary to the 14th Amendment, Trump ordered agencies (starting 30 days after the order) not to recognize babies as citizens if their mothers were “unlawfully present” at the time of birth and their father was not a U.S. citizen or a lawful permanent resident. No more anchor babies! These kids would be citizens of no nation.

Ringmaster Jonathan Lee Iverson performs during Barnum's FUNundrum in NY in 2010.

No More Woke — Go Back to Sleep

— He canceled DEI (“woke”) policies within the federal government, declared there are only two sexes and canceled mandated language on gender within the federal government.

Yes, Trump ordered that men are men and women are women. The circus can now go back to saying, “Ladies and gentlemen! Boys and girls!” and nobody can arrest the ringmaster.

And speaking of the circus: that’s what this all was. It was the “circuses” part of bread and circuses. He took the advice of Bob Fosse: Razzle ‘em. Dazzle ‘em. Razzle-dazzle ‘em! He proved Frank Zappa right: politics is the entertainment division of the Military-Industrial Complex.

This was all a smoke screen; a scrim; the magician’s assistant doing her thing while the magicians behind the scenes did theirs, no doubt laughing.

He signed the orders in a stadium, on television. That makes it a show.

Immigrants pray while hoping to be processed by U.S. border agents for asylum after crossing over from Mexico on May 9, 2023 in El Paso, Texas. Illegal crossings are currently at a five-year low point.

Serious Negative Consequences for Many

It is a fact that some of these orders will have serious negative repercussions for people whose lives are hard enough — particularly the policies making it difficult or impossible to seek asylum in the United States, and the expected crackdown on those in the U.S. without proper paperwork.

The attempted cancellation of the birthright citizenship guaranteed by the 14th Amendment was pretty brazen. I’ll give him that. Much of American law as we know it is mediated through the 14th Amendment, including due process of law and equal protection under the law. It makes state officials beholden to support and enforce federally guaranteed civil rights. He seems to be saying stop me if you can.

Most of the orders were Trump’s form of claiming to straighten things out and/or keep campaign promises. While some were cheering the withdrawal from the WHO and laughing about the Gulf of America, most people were missing the point — a point that may not be obvious until it’s too late.

Equally distracting is certified creepy guy Pete Hegseth being put up as nominee for defense secretary. So too is Elon Musk doing his rendition of the sig-heil salute.

Yes, it’s all so repugnant or fantastic or unbelievable, and you’re supposed to stare in amazement at that and nothing else. This was all done to provoke a reaction from you, and distract you from the actual meaning and purpose of this administration.

The Inauguration: I study and collect charts about the development of technology. This chart reeks of an AI and big tech agenda. It’s as if AI is the government.

The Pluto in Aquarius / AI Factor

Before I get to what I think that purpose is, consider that the United States is supposed to be a constitutional republic (which we incorrectly call a democracy, which means rule by the people). We are said to be a government of laws and not men.

What Trump in effect did was declare himself supreme leader. Maybe you like him and don’t think he’s a dictator, but he sure wanted you to know that he can act like one. One might ask: how is all this possible? Why does it seem like there is no longer any structure in place that can stop any of this? Does anyone care?

It’s all very exciting, innit.

But: What is this all a distraction from? My theory is that the actual goal of the Trump 2.0 administration is to impose digital ID. That’s it. The rest, from their viewpoint, are side dishes and table ornaments.

Digital ID is the key component of this thing that has many names: Web 3.0, the blockchain, the Great Reset, Agenda 2030, and so forth. This is related to “smart cities” and “15 minute cities” and a lot of other fantasies.

And what is all this? It all relates to the internet of everything, including you. It is an internet that encompasses every living thing and movable object and financial record and medical record all at once. The plan is that it comes back to one thing, called a digital ID, which consolidates your medical records, “vaccination” records, your money and your ability to spend it, your location and your ability to travel, and much else. It is the internet of total compliance.

The Mac Classic — pre-Internet. I had one that ran a BBS using a Global Village modem.

You Probably Don’t Believe That

You would not have believed me if I described the internet of 2025 to you while you were fiddling around on AOL Instant Messenger in 1996 either. There was barely such a thing as a “laptop” and there was no such thing as a “phone” as we think of it and there were no streaming services or anything else we take for granted today.

We have come so far so fast that people are either numb, bedazzled, or totally confused; or you have adapted and are doing business; or you are realizing the frustration of living in this mesh of a total security environment where you have to prove that you are you 10 times a day. If you’re sensitive to the digital environment, have noticed its prison-like qualities, where speech is monitored by robots and censored; where you can just lose your whole Facebook or Instagram or YouTube account just like that for saying the “wrong” thing.

I don’t know how people endure this, and it has changed everything about who we are and how we think of ourselves and one another. Our humanity is weakened and we live in the total thrall of the digital environment very nearly around the clock.

But I can tell you as a student of media environments and as a journalist and as an astrologer: we had better wake up to the reality of what is being planned, and what is being done, or we are condemning our progeny and the entire future to a world that approximates the TV program Black Mirror.

Part of what we are losing is our sense of what is real and what is not; what is right and what is not; and in such a disoriented state, it’s not really possible to tell whether any of this is really happening. We have all reincarnated on an electrical astral plane.

As for Black Mirror, here is a relatively mild trailer. This is a little worse. This is worser. And another. Here is a full episode that I’ve only scanned; it features Jon Hamm.

And on the list of things you might not believe but which is plainly obvious: the “covid” operation was a massive takeover by the purveyors of the technology environment; we were subjected to a digital “pandemic” phenomenon and then herded like cattle into the “cloud” and trained to use “vaccine passports.” That was the beginning of Web 3.0. It all seemed so real.

That’s a lot of energy. The Three Mile Island Unit 2 reactor, near Middletown, Pa., to the left, which melted down on March 28, 1979. Unit 1, recently decommissioned, will be restarted to generate power for “artificial intelligence.” Photo by Richard Hertzler.

We Must Look Right At This

Whether you are cheering or laughing or outraged or terrified or indifferent to the events of the past week, they are here to get you to look the other way.

And we need to be looking right at this. All this massive buildup of AI, that includes Bill Gates recently entering a 20-year deal to restart the decommissioned Three Mile Island nuclear power plant. All that power will be for a ridiculous amout of AI power and only practical thing that can be done with that much bandwidth is to control everything about your existence, with a wide diversity of ways to enforce that control.

If you’re paying attention, you’ve already noticed this is what they said they are planning to do, and they keep saying it — including RFK Jr. and his total digital medical blockchain control of the body.

The advance of technology the past century has eliminated the notion of privacy. We all drag around a digital ball and chain known as a “phone,” which we all know we can’t really live without and which we also know is a handy surveillance and tracking device that can follow us around the globe.

Neither George Orwell nor Marshall McLuhan envisioned anything like this. Not even close.

As Mike Yeadon wrote recently, “The day you sign up for a new format, global, editable, biometric digital ID, that’s the day that any possibility of a continuing, free life, free from perpetual interference and increasing control over every aspect of your existence, ends.”

With love,

Your faithful astrologer,