Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning with Sasha Stone

The death of Charlie Kirk and the reaction to it have shaken millions of Americans, at least those who have managed to hold on to their humanity in the past ten years. Even if the prominent Democrats in the party tried to project a uniform message of decency, to condemn the violence and offer condolences to the family, it was increasingly evident that they were no longer in control of their own party. Not even President Barack Obama himself could set the tone for these people, so consumed with hatred are they. Maybe they thought selling fear for ten years and calling Trump and his supporters an existential threat was a good idea because it would motivate their voters to the polls. Instead, they've created a Frankenstein monster that is now roaming the quiet countryside and scaring the crap out of normal Americans.They want all of us in this country to join them, to agree that Charlie Kirk got what he deserved. He supports gun rights, after all. That alone meant they would shed no tears for him, his wife, or his kids. That was the least of it. On TikTok, Blue Sky, and X, they went on and on, plastering the social media apps with negative stories about Kirk to erase any legacy the Right might try to build in his name.And maybe they thought the rest of America would agree that they should close off their hearts and separate themselves from their empathy to serve the greater political cause that has taken the place of just about everything else in their lives. But they miscalculated how normal people view violent death, especially political assassinations.On TikTok, many users were expressing their anger at the Left, and some of them even said this was it; they were no longer a part of the Democratic Party. Here is a video:And Jennifer Sey just registered as a Republican from “unaffiliated.”And Colin Wright redrew his famous chart:This is the last thing the Democrats needed. All they have left is Zohran Mamdani and Gavin Newsom's meme factory of would-be nepo babies of the Lincoln Project. They have no vision, no hope, no policies, no fixes, no solutions - nothing. All they have is this. Their hatred of anyone who doesn't conform and comply. Their approval rating has never been lower. Registrations are down by the millions. They're losing the support of Gen-Z. They have no plan to bring voters in except to draw more militant fanatics, and now, they've once again exposed how lacking in any common decency they have become. Congratulations, Democrats, oops, you did it again.From the New York Post:They're an army of Lord of Flies whose parents coddled them and raised them to believe all of their finger paintings were masterpieces, that their traumas defined them, and were “gentle-parented,” and when that didn't work, were drugged into perfection. They don't seem to understand that no one deserves to die just for having a different opinion.When one person's death means nothing to you and all you do is make a video where you calmly recite the reasons you don't care and why no one else should care? What is left of you?They sound like modern versions of the Stepford Wives who say exactly what they're supposed to say, repeating it almost word for word like robots:There is no one to pull them back from the brink. They collect so many likes that it messes with their heads. Their followers demand more, give us more. They're punished if they dissent, if they disagree, if they do any critical thinking whatsoever. Anyone who uses TikTok and any social media app knows that it's dominated by the Left. We built it, after all, oh so long ago. Even the Democrats themselves are under the control of the fanatics in their party, which is why they all felt emboldened to boo Charlie Kirk's name when they called for a moment of silence. Even if they didn't agree with it, why would they want to show the public just how petty they are?Not that we needed this tragic event to expose that ugly truth. It's been obvious for some time that the Left has been hijacked by the modern equivalent of the Manson Family. Joe Biden was the George Spahn-like figure who presented the mask of normalcy for what was most definitely not normal.All they had to do was the bare minimum, either stay silent or offer condolences and some generic comment on free speech and how political violence is never okay. But they couldn't even do that. Why? Because there is nothing left of them. All they have is this pathological need to control everyone and everything, whether it's destroying the careers of convicted thought criminals or celebrating their assassinations. All they know is they wanted them gone. In all of their lies about Charlie Kirk, their endless posts with hundreds of thousands of likes that prop up their own manufactured goodness as if to say, See, we still have the moral high ground, they came off somehow looking worse than they ever have. Charlie Kirk was a nice guy. They're celebrating his death because they didn't know that. They didn't know that because no one would tell them. Not their own social media feeds, not the legacy media. And when Ezra Klein tried to tell them with a New York Times op-ed, they began attacking him too, because of course they did. The dehumanization is a feature, not a bug. Here is Benny Johnson and Chris Cuomo:The Left so badly wants this to be a “both sides” issue, but it isn't. The Right mourned the death of Congresswoman Melissa Hortman. They did not blanket X or Blue Sky or any other social media site, smearing her. They would not have posted something like this on the Right:But until the people with the real power on the Left condemn them, nothing will change. They can make any false reality they want. They can tell themselves any lies they want. But what we've seen now in how they've responded to something that would shake any normal person out of their partisan stupor could cost them not just for the midterms but for 2028 and beyond.They think they have the narrative well in hand because the media is so supportive of everything they do. But every once in a while, they go too far, and they end up red-pilling Americans who shrink back in horror at who and what they've become and want no part of it.I am not saying “The Left” killed Charlie Kirk. Maybe someone on the Left did. Maybe they didn't. It doesn't really matter because they've shown their true colors in their perilous moment in our history. It's like that scene in The Dead Zone when Martin Sheen picks up the baby to protect himself. There is no unseeing that.They might think the silencing of Charlie Kirk will cripple the MAGA movement and everything he's done to build Turning Point USA and mobilize the young. But because of his death, MAGA will be more energized, not less, more motivated, not less, more determined than ever to save America from this madness. And they must because they are our only hope.Charlie Kirk has left a legacy, whether they realize it or not. It isn't just how psychotic they've become, and how so many of us have fled. But it's all of those young people he inspired who adored him. They will remember the assassination of Charlie Kirk. It will shape their youth the way the killing of Martin Luther King, Jr., RFK, and JFK shaped generations before. They will know that he was killed to silence him, and they will remember how the Left reacted to his death. And they will grow up knowing that it was wrong.Most of all, they will know that he built a movement that would ultimately defeat the most powerful political machine in American history. And if he can do it, so can they./// This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

After a shift at Zepeddie's Pizzeria in Charlotte, North Carolina, Iryna Zarutska boarded the train and quickly made a decision where to sit. Did she think about her safety? Did she fear sitting in front of a Black man with dreadlocks and a face twisted into worried knots? Or did she find a seat far away from him, just on a hunch?The truth is that Iryna had no real choice. If she avoided the seat in front of the Black man, she might look like a racist. She had no reason to fear him, after all, because she was sympathetic to the plight of racism in America and even had the words “Black Lives Matter” and “I can't breathe” scrawled on a chalkboard in her room. She was learning to speak English, and what better way than to get to know the villains and the heroes in America in 2025? She was just 23, having arrived in the US at the age of 20, with a degree in art and restoration from Synergy College in Kyiv. She joined a settlement of other Ukrainian refugees in Charlotte. She knew enough to tuck her hair into her cap, keep her glasses on, and not look like the blonde beauty that has now blanketed all social media. If you look like that, no one will leave you alone. But a little fear would have done Iryna good, as it would do any young woman riding the train at night. Fear is her only protection. The problem is, when it comes to Black men, white women are shamed out of that fear. They don't want to appear like racists or Karens. They won't grab their purse in an elevator or avoid sitting too close to a Black man. They don't want to buy into the stereotype that has white women fearing Black men for centuries.As she boarded the train that night heading home, she could not have known that the man she sat in front of had thirteen previous arrests and was diagnosed with schizophrenia. She wrapped her arms around her body and seemed to display a sense of foreboding. She looked afraid of something or someone, just not of the guy sitting behind her.With her earbuds canceling out all noise, she might not have heard the man take out his knife. Before she knew it, he was stabbing her neck, killing her. Did the other passengers scream? Did anyone try to do anything to alert her to the danger? No. They were too afraid. When her murderer finished, he paced around the train as the passengers huddled in fear, with blood dripping all around him, her blood. She escaped the war in Ukraine only to be murdered by a country also at war, at war with the truth. The truth about crime, about mental health, about Defund the Police, about bad governance.There was a time when this would have been a major news story. Now, after 2020, this story would have to be memory-holed, like every other story where a Black man is the perp. The only stories that go viral now or become major news stories are those that fit the narrative - it's white men, incels, “white supremacists,” and MAGA you have to fear. So, how would Iryna have known to even be afraid or cautious that she might want to find a seat far from everyone on the train? Maybe she wouldn't wear her headphones. Maybe she would look around at everyone, even the guy sitting behind her. But she didn't. Here are Megyn Kelly, Rich Lowry, and Charles C. W. Cooke.Stories like these are reported on local news, but they never capture the attention of the major networks or legacy media, like this story of a woman in Chicago who was beaten to a pulp by a repeat offender. Reporting on white women as victims might devalue their brand. It might generate outrage and an uproar that they are contributing to racism and discrimination. But what about Iryna and other young women just like her? Will we send them out into the world without warning that violence can come at any time, no matter the skin color?And why is everyone okay with the double standard? The silence by the media on deaths or killings that don't involve a white man? How do they get away with lying to their viewers and their readers? Has the New York Times even covered this story? If they do, it will likely be only to call out “MAGA” for turning it into a story about race.“Don't be a Good White Liberal” Those were the words I told my daughter many years ago when she went off to college. “Always protect yourself, no matter who it is. Don't let white guilt prevent you from being cautious.” I had to tell her that. I had to drill it into her head. It would be our secret. She would never have to tell anyone, but she would know. What prompted me to tell her that was the story of Lily Burk from 2009. She was the daughter of a progressive Liberal who helped her mother feed the homeless in Los Angeles. She attended one of the expensive, fancy private schools I could never have afforded for my daughter. One day, Burk wanted to practice driving, so her mother sent her out to run some errands. She happened to see one of the homeless people she fed for charity. She knew him. He knew her. He pressured her to drive him to an ATM and get him some money. Her card didn't work. So he bashed her head against the dashboard and murdered her.That was long before Black Lives Matter, before Defund the Police, before cashless bail. Even then, it wasn't exactly easy to talk about a crime like this, much less warn our daughters as they headed off to college. But that story haunted me. Even now, I can't imagine what it must have been like for her mother to wonder, How could I have let her take my car? How could I have raised her to be so trusting? Why didn't I tell her to be cautious even around homeless Black men? I knew I had to get the message across to my daughter, Don't be a Good White Liberal at the cost of your own safety. You'd think I would have followed my own advice. But white guilt runs deep. That's why in 2023, I fell for a scam. I thought it was a call from my bank. I could tell the caller was Black, so I was as accommodating and trusting as I could be, not wanting to seem like a Karen. He told me that someone had stolen my bank card, and he listed my purchases. Somehow, he had my account information. Then he said, “Did you wire $4,000 to someone?” And in a panic, I said NO! He said he'd stop the payment, but I had to confirm that it was me. That was my mistake. If I hadn't been trying not to be a racist, I might have doubted him or asked him if I could call him back, but I was too worried about his feelings. Once he got my confirmation, he was able to disappear with $5,000 from my bank account, all the money I had. I've never told that story because I am ashamed of how stupid I was, how easily manipulated I was, and that white guilt. It turned out to be a harbinger of things to come. The next year, I was canceled by Hollywood and called a “racist,” which would wipe out my income. Oh, the irony.The story here isn't to fear Black men or that Black men are more dangerous. It's that white guilt often means ignoring the gut instinct for self-protection. The false narrative pushed out by Hollywood, the legacy media, and the Democrats - that only white men are bad or violent will ultimately make all women unsafe, and hiding the truth to fit the narrative will get more women like Iryna killed.Every night I go to sleep, I worry about my daughter. I want Trump to send the National Guard into Cleveland. I want her to be protected while living in such close proximity to a high-crime city. But if she can't be protected and the streets can't be safe, then let her remember to protect herself, to be aware of who and what is around her at all times. I made her watch the video. I don't want her to be another girl on the train, failed by weak leaders and undone by white guilt. Iryna deserved better. She deserved to fulfill her life as an artist. To maybe get married, maybe travel back to Ukraine when the war is over. But most of all, she deserved to be safe, to be left alone, to make it to her stop just so she could get off the train and find her way back home safe and sound.The GoFundMe for Iryna has now raised $112,616. // This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

In anticipation of a Fourth Turning series for paid subscribers, my friend Andy just posted our conversation about the Fourth Turning and various other topics. His youtube is The Generation Report and his Substack is Fourth Turning Chronicles. Hope you enjoy! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

Everything changed for me in early June of 2020, when the Tom Cotton essay appeared in the New York Times and all hell broke loose on Twitter. I was scrolling the app to my detriment, as I always do, and all of a sudden, it was like the night Donald Trump won the election. Big trouble in blue-check city. The New York Times published an op-ed that called for the military to be brought in if the riots could not be controlled. Even typing that sentence, calling them “riots” instead of protests, was a thought crime and could not be said out loud, so you can only imagine how horrifying it was for the reality deniers on Team Fragility to hear Cotton's thesis statement, “This week, rioters have plunged many American cities into anarchy, recalling the widespread violence of the 1960s.”It was dangerous because it was the truth. Like this scene in The Insider, where Jeffrey Wigand's story has to be buried because it might disrupt a corporate merger at CBS News, except this time it might upset the Times staffers and the Twitter hive mind.The point was, Cotton was not only telling the truth — a truth all of us could see with our own eyes — but he was reflecting the majority opinion of Americans. That's why Bari Weiss and James Bennett asked Tom Cotton in the first place to represent the other half of America that the New York Times and everything under the Left's control abandoned. I sat in my apartment, gobsmacked that all of this was playing out. Here we'd spent months on lockdown, making our own hand sanitizers and masks. My daughter was sent home from her senior year of college to have her graduation on my balcony. And all of a sudden, none of that mattered because “systemic racism” mattered more. Yeah, that's what the experts told us.All of these years later, after everything we've seen and learned about that time in our history, we know the Democrats needed it to be bad — bad enough to pressure Americans into voting out a one-term president with a strong economy. It's just that I didn't know that then. All I knew was that no one would talk about it. If you did, your career would be over.The Tom Cotton op-ed would change the course of my life forever because that was the moment I could suddenly see that I wasn't getting the truth. I was getting the negotiated truth, the narrative, what they wanted me to know. I began to wonder, what else wasn't true?It was also the moment everything changed for Bari Weiss, who'd been hired to shake up the media bias at the New York Times. Everyone I knew on Twitter swarmed her, attacked her, and attacked the Times the day the op-ed was published. They were dragging out the history of James Bennett. They were accusing the Times of “putting Black bodies in danger.” The staff felt unsafe, and before long, Bari Weiss became the problem.They kept the piece up but affixed an embarrassing disclaimer at the top, which is still there:After that, Bari Weiss didn't just resign. She took a flamethrower to the Times in a fiery resignation letter that was the shot heard round the world, or at least the internet. She wrote:But the lessons that ought to have followed the election—lessons about the importance of understanding other Americans, the necessity of resisting tribalism, and the centrality of the free exchange of ideas to a democratic society—have not been learned. Instead, a new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper: that truth isn't a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else.Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor. As the ethics and mores of that platform have become those of the paper, the paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space. Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions. I was always taught that journalists were charged with writing the first rough draft of history. Now, history itself is one more ephemeral thing molded to fit the needs of a predetermined narrative.They thought that was the end of Bari Weiss. They'd chewed her up and spit her out. Boy, were they wrong. It is now one of the greatest success stories ever told, almost on par with Donald Trump defeating the machine and winning again. According to Puck News, Bari Weiss and the Free Press have now been offered a deal upwards of $200 million to sell the site to Paramount/Skydance and put Bari Weiss in charge of guiding CBS News back to some kind of credibility. Even if Weiss doesn't take the deal, it's still a victory lap for her. There will be rumblings that this deal only took effect because of Weiss's overt pro-Israel stance after October 7th. No doubt, she will be hit from both sides over that one. What happened to MeBecause of Weiss, I started a Substack too, five years ago, in July of 2020. By then, I was already a pariah on my side. I could not use Facebook because of the ongoing attacks, which would still exist should I make my return, which I never will. I'd been swarmed and harassed on Twitter/X more times than I could count. On July 11th, I wrote my first Substack post:On the one hand, I am worried that if I start writing what I've been thinking it will be met with harsh reprimands. At the same time, there are not enough people on the left willing to speak up to talk about what is happening for fear of being called out, shamed, and put out of work. I run my own business, but in this climate, the fear is real. A few angry phone calls can put anyone's source of employment in jeopardy. I'm having a hard time keeping my mouth shut, is the only problem. I see a disaster looming and I feel like joining those brave voices that are trying to shift the course of the Titanic which is about to slam into the iceberg.Nobody read it. No one knew it even existed, but it made me feel better that I didn't have to suffer in silence. Keeping it confined here meant I could still earn an income at my other site, AwardsDaily.com, one I'd been running for 26 years and earning a decent income from for almost as long. In ordinary times, my own website would be where I wrote what I thought and felt, but I knew even the most subtle dissent offered up would be the end of everything. I'd made a name for myself on Medium writing from the other side of the aisle, and I couldn't return there either. In both cases, the readership did not want to hear what I had to say.I kept thinking I had to be that person with the machete, clearing away the sticks and weeds, snakes and spiders, so others could safely travel after me, especially my daughter, who deserved to grow up in a free country where she did not have to be afraid to say what she thought and believed, that she could write any book she wanted to write. I couldn't know that the more people read this Substack, the closer I'd dance to the flame. It didn't really take off until Real Clear Politics began linking to my column and Megyn Kelly interviewed me on her show. So did Glenn Beck. Now, somehow, miraculously, people were paying to subscribe and wanted to hear what I had to say.But this world is kept far, far away from the other world, the Doomsday Cult, the bubble of the Left. Most of them had no idea what I was up to because they would never even think to look. To them, all of those bad people on the outside are to be shunned and ignored.At some point, though, considering how many people there were out there gunning for my destruction, I knew I had to come clean and come out and let all of them know what I thought and where I stood. I also wanted to use whatever voice I had to help Trump win, to defeat them. I was too loud and too obnoxious on Twitter. I was careless. I was doing what I have always done in the 30 years I've been online. I didn't change. Everything around me did. I made a joke mocking “White Dudes for Harris,” and that tweet went viral, with people whispering that I was a “white supremacist” and a “racist.” That caught the attention of the Hollywood Reporter, and they thought a story on my political shift would be interesting. They called me a “Maga Darling,” and that was the end of that. That ended any hope of making money on my website. Even though I defended those who were getting canceled many times, I was still taken aback by how it felt to have all those doors slam shut and all those people turn away. It was isolating and, in some ways, terrifying.The crime I committed was crossing the Trump line. Most heterodox voices refuse to cross it. They'll mingle with Trump supporters, but they will hold that one card back, knowing that when the ship rights itself, they might want to play it. So I don't have the same happy ending Bari Weiss does. I can't take a victory lap, at least not yet. She has her whole life ahead of her. I have my whole life mostly behind me. I'm eternally grateful that there are so many readers out there who get something out of what I write. In some ways, this has been the summation of my life online, tapping out words on the screen, hoping that those words land in the hearts and minds of readers. Hoping that I can be heard. I don't know what I would have done with that. I will never stop saying thank you for saving my life.I don't know if Weiss will take the deal. $100 million or even $200 million means she'll be set up for life. She will never have to struggle. It will also mean she is less free. It means they can “cancel” her again, and believe me, they will try. If she is the head of CBS News, everything will be her fault. The bad ratings no one on the Left talks about now will suddenly be the headline in every mainstream media outlet. Every story will be heavily scrutinized in a way it never was before. They manifest failure where no such failure exists, and they'll never give her any credit. She should heed the wise words of Megyn Kelly, who has been there and done that:Either way, if she's sitting on $100 million, maybe it won't matter. Then again, who knows, maybe she can lead a revolution in the legacy media too./// This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

Part One | Part TwoI didn't just leave the Democratic Party. I ran screaming from them. On Friday night, I was reminded once again why.The news hit X that Trump had died. It wasn't true, of course, but for some reason, those who think that the only way to gain back power from Trump is “mess with him” or “troll him” seemed to think this was funny.But as usual, the Left can't meme. It wasn't funny. It was chilling because of how obsessed with Trump they've been and how their hatred has boiled over into madness.It became a frenzy, a wild-eyed bacchanalia on TikTok. They were smiling and cackling at the mere thought of “it finally happening.”After all, the TikTok trend of “when it happens” has been flourishing on the app, along with “somebody just do it,” for quite some time. They're strung-out junkies by now, hunting for that dopamine hit that comes from blurting out what shouldn't be said.Looking at their eyes, their crazy, crazy eyes, always makes me think of the Manson followers who had that same look, especially as they skipped through the courthouse while on trial for having slaughtered innocent people who were enjoying a hot August night in 1969 before the creepy crawlers came.The conclusion at the time was that they'd been brainwashed by Charlie. But how he brainwashed them wasn't that different from how the Left has brainwashed their followers. He surfed the wave of the anti-establishment counterculture, finding easy targets to dehumanize and blame. Are you angry? He seemed to say, take it out on them. They deserve it.The evil was at the top - cops were “pigs,” the rich “deserved” to die, which is why when Susan Atkins, aka Sadie, plunged the knife into the pregnant stomach of Sharon Tate, she only felt relief and a kind of euphoria:The Left of today reminds me so much of my childhood growing up as a hippie kid in Topanga during that time. I was too young to really remember the Manson murders, but I could sense the vibe shift in the wake of them. It was their inability to hold power, how the silent majority rejected them, that transformed the “make love not war” hippies into violent radicals.I also knew that we all believed religion was too oppressive, which is partly what birthed the counterculture movement in the first place. Sex, drugs, and rock n' roll only took us so far, I remember that, too. I was a child of the narcissistic “me” generation, where kids were sidelined as adults chased their bliss and “found themselves.”The rise of feminism also meant women adopted a false sense of security, and serial killers and rapists began sprouting up like mushrooms all through the 1970s. I remember the gas lines and the malaise. I remember the pendulum shift, and how welcome it was when our culture finally became too exhausted of the hippies, especially after the violence, and opted for a different kind of life.Money and success were the fix in the 1980s - mortgages, marriages, kids, jobs. But even that failed to do the trick. We were still broken and empty inside. By the 1990s, just as the self-help revolution and therapy culture arose in the wake of the FCC allowing Pharma to market to consumers, we turned to the brave new world of psychologists and psychiatrists who would “fix” us, heal us from our trauma and abuse.After a while, though, how we were abused, what made us victims, would eventually become our identity. For years, every time I met a man or anyone, I would tell my story of abuse to put it all into context: see me as a victim, feel sorry for me.In 2008, the Wall Street bailout of $700 billion was the crisis that sparked the Fourth Turning, according to Neil Howe, who co-authored the book with the late William H. Strauss. But it was an important year for another reason. It was the rise of Barack Obama, the iPhone, Twitter, and Facebook.While the bailout would awaken the public and eventually birth two populist movements — Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party — the rise of Obama would be the religion we didn't even know we needed. It was a collective sense of purpose where everyone had a seat at the table, but mostly focused on marginalized groups, everyone but the majority.We colonized the internet as Obama built his coalition on Twitter, as civilization began to migrate into virtual spaces. Because we were all connected, we could decide the rules of behavior, of language, of status. We remade a new America online to address our collective trauma and abuse and build a better America, a shining Woketopia on the Hill.As wealth and power shifted Leftward under Obama's rule, much of America's rust belt was abandoned. We didn't realize this as we tinkered with our perfect little world, our insulated bubble. We were so cut off that we almost speciated, with an entirely different language from the rest of America.The ruling elites could find absolution by borrowing oppression. They could elevate the marginalized and use them as a protective layer as the populists began rising up against the government.The Democrats, as the party of the wealthy, didn't have to address their needs or even acknowledge them. Turning the public against them by convicting them as “racists” in the media and in the court of public opinion served the Democrats well. Now, they had an existential crisis because Trump was leading the populists, and they were about to shock the world by winning.Mass PsychosisTrump's win would kick off Trump Derangement Syndrome, otherwise known as mass psychosis. Maybe it wouldn't have afflicted so many and gone on for so long if the people at the top - the Democrats and the ruling class - cared enough to calm things down. But they didn't. Having a public crippled by mass psychosis served their needs.Trump Derangement Syndrome: The Movie begins there. It was never about Trump. He was what Alfred Hitchcock would call “The MacGuffin.” It's the thing people in the movie care about, but the audience knows doesn't matter.As they chased their Macguffin for ten years, they had no idea that the real story unfolding was what happened to all of them. What happened during COVID, during lockdowns? What happened to a group of people who were fed the Russiagate lie, and even now, it has never been corrected or debunked.What happened to people who were told by the New Yorker, the New York Times, and the Washington Post that fascism was coming to America? What happened to the young people who absorbed and internalized the unending and relentless focus on the evils of Trump as the media cherry-picked the worst things he said and dumped them into the churn?And all for what? To turn out voters when the candidates don't drive enthusiasm? They never once thought using fear for that long would ultimately cause a mental health crisis in this country, especially among the young?By 2020, I could no longer endure the daily ritual, the two minutes of hate for one more minute.It felt like poison. I had to know whether it was true or not. Was Trump really all of these things we believed him to be, or was he the guy we all remembered from the 1980s, the guy in Home Alone? Or, in the worst-case scenario, was he the Goldstein-like figure from Orwell's 1984, used only to keep their voters in compliance and full of hate?So I did the hard thing and I decided to find out for myself. I watched Trump's rallies heading into the election, all five a day. I saw his supporters for the first time. They were nothing like as described. They were intersectional, for one thing, all different races, gay people, and even trans people.The one thing they had in common was that they did not belong to the ruling class and were not part of the Doomsday Cult. They were sick of Trump Derangement Syndrome: The Movie. They were exhausted by it. They wanted to move on. So did I.For me, finally seeing that none of it was real, that Trump wasn't who I was led to believe he was, that he was the Macguffin, and his supporters were not mouth-frothing brown shirts fueled by racism. And that meant, for me, there was no going back. It took all the courage I could muster — my Soylent Green is People moment, my To Serve Man is a Cookbook plea to say to them, “It's not about race. It's about class!”But class had been eliminated out of necessity. If America is a systemically racist country, then Barack and Michelle Obama are still oppressed, which gives them status. But some white guy strung out on fentanyl dying on the streets in Wisconsin is still an oppressor and has no status.Are they surprised the revolution happened to them?The Trump They Invented Never ExistedThe story the Left has been telling itself is how Shakespeare once described life in the play Macbeth: A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.Focusing solely on Trump for ten long years has meant they have never made any progress in solving the problems that put Trump in power in the first place.They've only hurt themselves because there is no version of this movie that comes to anything good. Should they take back power, what is their plan for the rest of the country that voted for Trump? Gulags? Mass deportation? Firing squads?Trump Derangement Syndrome has all but collapsed the empire, with Hollywood barely clinging to life, network television hemorrhaging viewers, and a rising counterculture movement they can't keep up with. Their jokes aren't funny. Their movies are unwatchable. Their moral superiority is unbearable.Voters are fleeing like rats off a sinking ship.The Democrats themselves have been recorded now as having no faith in the direction of the country, down to zero for the first time in history.Unfortunately, there is no snapping out of it any time soon. They are trapped in a hell of their own making and have arrived at the abyss. Their Great White Hopes, such as Gavin Newsom and JB Pritzker, seem to think that “fighting back” must also mean reflecting the mass psychosis that has distorted their perception of reality.But a great leader would be the one to help them out of it, offering rationality and critical thinking. A good leader would welcome Trump's help with crime to save mothers from having to worry about their children, but this is not a party that cares about them. This is a party that only cares about the ruling elite, still stuck in the Doomsday cult.It should not be about Donald Trump 10 years laterWhat has destroyed the Democrats and the Left was never Trump. They could have easily beaten him. They just had to be a little less crazy. But they couldn't even do that. The voters had in Trump someone who could see the working class at all, let alone help address their problems. But really, most of us voted for Trump as a way outThe Democrats have become so disconnected from reality that they believe it's acceptable to sterilize children and amputate their body parts, among other horrors.There is no such thing as a sane Democrat. Even those who seem semi-sane, like Rahm Emanuel, will buckle under the question of “gender affirming care.”That made voting for Trump in 2024 one of the easiest things I've ever done. I will spend the rest of my life reminding every single Democrat that they not only went along with it, but they also fought to preserve it. They own this and every terrible thing that will happen in the next ten years as children wake up and become adults and realize what has been done to them.That's just one of the reasons I think Trump is the Gray Champion of this Fourth Turning, the one we're living through now. 8 years ago, Neil Howe was asked this question. He wasn't prepared to answer it because Trump's presidency had not yet been tested.All of these years later, it's hard to see Trump as anything else:And maybe that's why a death fantasy was their last best hope. Maybe deep down, they know this is the end. Trump Derangement Syndrome: The Movie is nothing less than the rise and fall of a once-mighty empire and a disastrous campaign that has all but destroyed the minds of a generation.What the Democrats don't realize or won't accept is that the pendulum wants to swing. So let it. But until they find their way out of mass psychosis, we should do everything we can to keep them as far away from our schools and our government as possible.It brings me no pleasure to watch the empire fall, but I always knew it would. We built an empire of lies. I also knew that sooner or later, the truth would bring the whole thing crashing down.You can't stop what's coming. It ain't all waiting on you. That's vanity. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

As a lifelong Democrat, I always thought the problem of gun violence was easy to solve. Just get rid of the guns. It was one of the most important issues for us as Bill Clinton rallied voters to the polls in 1992. But back then, it wasn't mass shootings that we worried about. It was handguns. Just look at this scene in Aaron Sorkin's The American President, released in 1995, where Michael Douglas has to bury protecting the climate to pass a weapons bill, but by the end, he realizes he doesn't have to sacrifice anything. He can and will get both.Four years later, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold would become famous by shooting up Columbine High School with illegally purchased weapons. That led to the renewal of the now-expired 1994 Assault Weapons Ban originally implemented after Patrick Edward Purdy killed five children at an elementary school in Stockton, California, in 1989. We had a joke back then called “going postal,” referring to the same kind of person who would open fire on post offices or other office buildings. It seemed like men reacted violently to being rejected, either by a job or a woman. School shootings were rare. But Columbine hit differently than any tragedy that came before it.It wasn't just the crime itself; it was the pleasure the shooters took in carrying it out, performing for the security cameras, the casual cruelty, and later, how they became subversive icons. All of these years later, many of our early theories about them turned out to be wrong. They weren't really bullied. For them, it was more about the thrill of killing and gaining fame for it. By 1999, two significant changes had occurred in American society. The 24-hour news cycle, thanks to the O.J. Simpson trial, and the rise of the internet, which could give us our news even faster. However, it did something else as well. It allowed ordinary people to become famous overnight. That's still true. Anyone can get famous for anything. Mass shooters also have their influencers and platforms. But even more importantly, like the Columbine shooters, they are all caught up in the romance of building a mythology behind their planned shootings, their grand statements against society as they carry out their evil acts. They seem to have empathy for other shooters. They want to be like them. They want to be feared and remembered. The more evil the deed, the greater the myth. The endgame always seems to be suicide, go out with a bang. Solving that problem, understanding it, trying to get ahead of it, proved too difficult, so we pivoted to the guns. Always the guns. Just get rid of the guns, and the problem will be solved.Like these TikTokers: I used to believe that. I also demonized people who carried them, and it was an easy excuse to blame the other side. What else is new? At least we want to do something about it, I would say. For this reason, I began studying mass shooters. I thought that if I could identify the one thing they had in common, maybe we could find a way to reach them before they decide to pick up a gun.Every time I brought it up to anyone I knew on the Left, I would always get the same answer: it's the guns. Take away the guns, solve the problem. They didn't want to talk about anything else. If you lived through the Oklahoma City bombing and 9/11, it seemed obvious that if people want to kill, there are other ways. Just look at suicide bombers, or people who drive trucks through crowds, or go on stabbing sprees. No, guns just made it easier, but taking them away is not only impossible, it doesn't solve the problem. In my research, I came across a site called GunViolence.org. They lay out just how rare mass shootings are compared to the rest of the shootings in America. I was shocked when I actually looked at the numbers. Here is their ten-year review:Gun deaths are part of the everyday reality for many working-class families living in high-crime cities, and yet, in the post-George Floyd America, even talking about “Black on Black” crime is strictly verboten. It has to be the guns. On August 27, the same day as the most recent shooting in Minneapolis at a Catholic school, several other people lost their lives to gun violence. Like this:And this:And this - a man shot in his home in Mississippi. Two more:How about this shooting, captured on Facebook Live and viewed by millions in Chicago: The same party that thinks guns are the problem have not only refused Trump's help to bring in the National Guard to clean up crime, but have also attempted to “defund the police,” called all police “racists” all through 2020, and continue to ignore crime in cities like Los Angeles where all of the products have to be locked away and criminals aren't even prosecuted for theft under $1000.There is no question that the Democrat brand lately stands for defending and protecting criminals and crime rather than protecting citizens. They won't talk about how residents in DC are relieved to be able to walk on the streets and feel safe at night. This latest shooter, Robert/Robin Westman, bought his guns legally. Giffords.org gives Minnesota a grade of “B.” Yet, here are their suggestions to improve that grade:None of these improvements would have stopped Westman from shooting his gun through the window while Catholic students were praying on the second day of school. He did it because he knew that they were too trusting and that there would be few barriers in his way. For a guy like Westman, or any of the latest trend of trans and nonbinary perpetrators of violence, wearing a mask of a woman offers an extra layer of protection, but it also reveals someone who doesn't want to be who he is in a society that no longer has any use for men. Not only won't they look into it, but their greatest fear coming out of the event was whether they would offend the transgender community.You see how easy it is to blame the guns? Then, you never have to look at anything else, uncomfortable things, things no one can even talk about.And for those complaining that the Republicans are “politicizing a tragedy,” know this: all the Democrats have done for the last 30 years is politicize tragedies. Never let a crisis go to waste. And the answer is always the guns. Because “it's the guns,” we never had to face what we'd done to contribute to making this country worse. We never had to confront what the feminist movement had done to men. Listen to how these women talk on TikTok. It isn't just that men have fled the Democratic Party. It's that they've been abandoned by them and, worse, they've been demonized.I am not excusing violence, certainly not mass murder, certainly not of children. But how can we not even talk about what has happened to men over the past 20 years that has brought them to the point where so many of them feel like there is no place for them in society, that they are loathed at best, invisible at worst? And if we don't understand them, if we don't see them, if we don't know how to reach them, how can we possibly stop them? Oh, don't worry, we'll just take away the gun. That will solve the problem.We never had to confront what psych meds might have done to potential mass shooters. We weren't even allowed to bring it up lest we offend those afflicted with mental illness. At least now, under Trump, we have RFK, Jr. to take a look, finally, at whether or not these drugs had any impact on mass shootings. After the massacre at Sandy Hook, I realized we lost the gun debate. Adam Lanza's guns were locked up. But he stole them, shot his mother in the face, and went on a rampage, where he would later end his life.I knew that wasn't about the guns. It couldn't be. So what else was going on? How can we prevent this problem from happening again? The guns? Seriously? That's all you got? Yes, that's all they got. Even now. But what I know now is that we have to do the other thing. We have to pivot to protecting children — schools, churches, parks, restaurants. We must ensure our buildings are shooter-proof, just as we make sure they are earthquake-proof. Debating about guns for 30 more years isn't going to do anything. And then, we have to have a serious conversation about the deeper issues at play, not just with the most recent shooting, but with all mass shootings. How is it that they become celebrities? Why do men feel left behind? Why do they think they need something like this to be valued? Why did this shooter and so many others of late feel they had to transition or identify as something other than a man to be seen and valued? What can we do as a society to help them?We live in a take-no-prisoners new world of algorithms and isolation. It will likely disrupt our species in ways we can't even fathom. But one thing I know for sure is that to make the conversation only about guns is to be unprepared for everything that's coming next. // This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

Before the fascists came, America was finally on the right track. As the saying goes, when you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow. That's what happened with our violent but mostly peaceful revolution in the Summer of 2020. When Joe Biden took office, we had complete control over the message and could fire anyone at will if they used the wrong pronoun, doubted the election results, or dared to defy mask mandates or lockdowns. Or even wore a red hat. We erected a high fence around the Capitol. We shunned, destroyed, de-banked, fired, bullied, harassed, and abused anyone who ever supported Trump. The hearts and minds did follow, they had to. We'd laid the groundwork for our revolution decades before. Most Americans were unaware of it. So were most parents until lockdowns. Then, unfortunately, they saw, but by then it was too late. A whole army had come of age and now, had taken to the streets. Conform or else.That's how culture changed, and it changed dramatically, almost overnight — all were in compliance. Movies, fashion, books, the arts, comedy, and yes, museums finally did what they were supposed to do - tell us how to think, what to think, and whose side to be on. America wasn't ready for that back in the 1950s when Communist hunters in government and Hollywood punished those seeking to use culture as a conduit for dogma. It's the Conservatives once again attempting to purge American culture of an infectious mind virus. When Trump gave a speech at Mount Rushmore, it was a warning, like Mein Kampf. America knew where we were headed, but they put him in power anyway four years later. Then again, how do we really know he was elected? Like they say on TikTok, “he wasn't shot, he didn't win, he is on the list.”We know how close the election was. Just as when Hitler won in Germany, Trump's win was close enough to rob him of his mandate to decide America wants change. America doesn't. America is “woke” and likes it that way, and if they don't, too bad.Now, the fascists want the Old America back. They want people to feel proud of their country and be inspired to make the most of themselves, regardless of skin color or class. As if that's even possible in a White Supremacist empire founded by colonizers on stolen land on the backs of oppressed and enslaved people. But we're going to fight them, just like we will fight them, trying to close the border or clean up crime or end the crisis of unhoused persons. Fortunately, we have complete control of the BBC, NBC, CBS, ABC, The New York Times, and the Washington Post. They will project our message - they have to. They know that and have since 2020. And that message will have to be that Trump wants to eradicate all mentions of slavery, pretend it never existed at all. When Jillian Michaels tried to explain to the Good People at CNN that purging the “woke” from the Smithsonian wasn't about erasing slavery, it didn't go so well:But she's a fascist-apologist, which means we must do what we can to exclude her, purge her, and silence her. There is only one point of view allowed in our America. Anyone who tries to criticize us or dismantle what we built over the past 20 years must be destroyed. That is anti-fascism.So that meant she had to go on News Nation to try to further explain what she really meant.It doesn't really matter what Jillian Michaels thinks. What matters is what we tell her to think, and if she doesn't go along with it, she must be punished. We want every child or teenager forced to visit the Smithsonian with their school or their parents to know they should be ashamed of not just the color of their skin (if they are white) but of their country, its history, and its so-called heroes. We want every Black child or teenager who is forced to visit the museum to also know that they are forever and eternal victims; we need them to be. We need an endless supply of oppressed people to continue demonizing the oppressors and preserve our power. Not to mention, raise money from wealthy, guilty white people who need absolution for their sins of wealth and privilege. Otherwise, what's the point?Yes, it's to make everyone feel welcome, but they must know their place as symbols of oppression and never be allowed to rise beyond the menial jobs white people won't take. That keeps them in their lane. It's better than life in the third world. And it helps justify our movement. One exhibit depicts what looks like the Baby Jesus and family caught by border agents while trying to cross over the wall. Art must tell us what to think. This image conveys the migrants as martyrs under an oppressive system. It's a message that we project across all facets of culture under our control. We guide viewers on how to interpret this image and draw a conclusion about America. The message must be that all people who cross the border do so seeking democracy and a decent life. They are good. If you see them as terrorists or rapists or gang members, you are bad. You are a racist. If there is a Sydney Sweeney ad that celebrates “good genes,” well, the Gap will answer it with how we're all supposed to reflect female beauty as every color of the rainbow, because the Sydney Sweeney ad was racist. Here is another exhibit which reflects how we see our protected groups — it's never about achievement. It's only about identity. Identity is achievement. From the White House: I mean, of course, we know that Irish and Italian immigrants were attacked and prevented from voting and working in the US. They were white. But we can't tell that story because it muddies the message. All children need to know is that Benjamin Franklin was a racist. Art should depict any person who is marginalized as saintly and god-like. Here is an example of one of our children who is probably the last generation to know the truth before the fascists came.All school children should learn, as early as possible, about the various identity groups in case they might belong to one — surely they are aware of this even as toddlers. What we used to call a fetish is also now identity:The American History Museum's “LGBTQ+ History” exhibit seeks to “understand evolving and overlapping identities such as lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender, queer, transsexual, transvestite, mahu, homosexual, fluid, invert, urning, third sex, two sex, gender-bender, sapphist, hijra, friend of Dorothy, drag queen/king, and many other experiences.” If this were actual art, there would be an exhibit labeled “The Woke Eye view” and offer some critical thinking of Critical Theory. But that would be blasphemy. Artists have always spoken truth to power, and we have all of the cultural power, so we decide the message. Because identity matters, the transgender fight is on par with Jim Crow in our ideology, so if you remove any of it, it is like you are erasing Black history, too.Illegal immigration is identity. Crime is identity. Theft, carjacking, murder, and rape are identity, unless you're white. Then you drive the news cycle for several weeks as we lament the harms of “white supremacy” on our society.If you try to stop any of it, then you will be screamed at, “F— you! You f—ing fascists! Why are you here? I don't want you in my city!” So said one brave resistance fighter who then, in a fit of pure rage, hurled a footlong sub at the Gestapo then fled the scene. We turned that into art, too. Ordinarily, we might care that the sandwich would make for a pretty good meal for an unhoused person, or that it costs carbon emissions to grow the animal, slaughter it, then drive the meat to Subway, and finally put the sandwich together, probably all labor by people of color or other marginalized groups. We might protest him or cancel him on social media for his carbon footprint. But that would be in ordinary times. These are not ordinary times. Anti-fascism is preventing crime in the cities because policing crime is another form of oppression. Anyone who supports making the streets safer is a fascist. All of the Good White Liberals agree: Fascism is here. Even Bill Maher says so. Sure, he kind of has to because if he doesn't, he might not get invited to the parties anymore. Or his show might be canceled outright. Or maybe he believes it. We get to say what kind of lawfare amounts to fascism. Terry Moran gets to say. Sure, we raided Trump's home and indicted him, took his mug shot. Threw Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro in jail for Contempt of Congress, tried to throw Trump in jail, tried to throw him off the ballot, probably tried to shoot him; we might have de-banked a few and kicked people off social media. Fired them for offensive words, ideas, or headlines. But you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.It all works together. Keep teaching that America is an empire of “white supremacy” and Black and Brown people must turn to crime and drug addiction just to survive it, well, then, we don't want the National Guard in our cities, because what would happen if they cleaned up crime? No crime, no democracy. We need the museum to explain why we need DEI, why we have crime, and why we need to accept crime and homelessness as a part of normal life in a sick and broken country like ours. As long as our country is sick and broken, then our movement is justified. We must eradicate fascism and restore democracy. 2020 was only the beginning. We just need to ensure we have complete control over the young. We want them as early as infancy. We want them in preschool. We want everything they see and everything they learn to be our message. Our America. Was it Orwell who said, “Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.” That is our fight now. Who controls the present? We need to protect our message that not all are created equal. Our history must remind us every day that we should feel shame about our past, because how else to justify our survival? // This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

When I was struggling in my 20s, I would receive a $50 check from my dad every week. It would come from Gene Stone's Janitorial Service. He's dead now, and he would never want to be remembered that way. He was a jazz drummer, after all, and that is what he wanted people to know about him. But he also had a janitorial service where he would clean office buildings owned by his friend Dave from high school. Dave made it big in real estate and threw my dad a bone by giving him a reliable route to clean his office buildings. My dad needed the money, so he went every day on his route, cleaning toilets, washing down countertops, and vacuuming the carpets in low-rent buildings deep in the San Fernando Valley.I know the route because he gave it to me when I was a struggling single mom who wanted to raise my baby and not put her in daycare. And for a time, I worked as a janitor so I could bring my baby with me. It was honest work, except for those few individuals who seemed to take pleasure in ruining a bathroom in ways that no one would ever say out loud, much less write about in a Substack post. But I cleaned them, and I did the best job I could to make my pops proud and not embarrass him in front of his friend Dave. Now, we see the Gavin Newsom meme factory being praised by the media and the Left, for making fun of janitors.They think they're just doing what MAGA does, making fun of people. They make fun of Scott Pressler by calling him Nancy Mace. They make fun of Trump's assassination and the bandage. Except, as usual, the pod people have it wrong. Trump doesn't make fun of janitors. He doesn't make fun of gay men. Rick Grenell, the so-called “janitor,” is gay.Not only doesn't Trump make fun of the underclass, but he also took over the Kennedy Center and now the Smithsonian to do what our cultural overlords would never do: open up America's culture to everyone. As it is, both of these government institutions have served the upper-class whites who need absolution for their sins of wealth and privilege, so they virtue signal with social justice to shame all of those bad people over there who do not “believe” in their colonization origin story.I know what it is to be among the sneering class. I know what it is to virtue signal. I know what it feels like to be a “white savior” and how, for years, that was the only way people like me could feel any sort of purpose or worth. Because otherwise, we were just another “white supremacist.”I also know how this ideology benefited those at the top, and how ashamed I once was that my dad was once a janitor. Because, like all of those in Hollywood and everywhere else in American culture, what you want is to be part of the rarified elite, no janitors allowed. As long as you virtue signal, you are seen as “good” and “pure.”Well, not anymore. Newsom's desperate bid to unseat America's alpha male is reminiscent of a jungle fight between two silverback gorillas. My money is on Trump. For ten years, the Left has tried to mock him, humiliate him, defeat him, and all they got for it was a lousy White Dudes for Harris t-shirt and a humiliating loss in November of 2024.Trump has made a fool of every Democrat for ten years, and he'll make a fool of Gavin Newsom, too. Although he might not have to. The way it looks to me is like watching George Bailey and his future wife dance at the edge of the pool, not realizing they're about to fall in. They think the cheering is for the dancing.Newsom's obsession with Trump has reached almost stalker-level. He so badly wants to be Trump that he'll stop at nothing, it seems, and is perfectly happy to abandon the moral high ground to get there. But, as usual, because the Left can't meme, he's doing it wrong. Their imitation of Trump and MAGA is off because they are depicting the version they see, not the version that exists. They don't get it that much of what drove Trump's popularity was empathy. People like me couldn't stand watching their endless obsession, the unending hatred, the nonstop attacks. That's partly why I left the party. And all they're doing now is helping to rally MAGA once again. Newsom is a try-hard pick-me. He is the sleazy villain in a Lifetime movie. He's giving snooty college brat who bullies the nice guy. Don't forget where our hearts landed with the movie Breaking Away.He's the wrong one in a 1980s high school romcom, like James Spader in Pretty in Pink:His meme army, flying high on Adderall and Wellbutrin, probably thinks making fun of the working class is a winning pitch, and maybe it is for the upper class, who have run out of every other option. I mean, it's not like they have anything to offer the people, right?You can't feed your family with memes. They have no plan for the future, no vision, no way of governing the whole country except perhaps to throw half of us into gulags. What do they have left except to imitate what has defeated them? And when you've lost Joe Scarbrough:The party that is already too online is feeding the beast the Left has morphed into, as they have become consumed by their pathological hatred of Trump. So maybe that's right — this is exactly how to win hearts and minds of soulless sociopaths. According to Harry Enten, it's working! They're hoping mockery and bullying by a white guy who tweets in all-caps will work as political viagra to restore morale among their base. Ultimately, what they seem to crave is their own version of Trump. Newsom is so power hungry that he is happy to go along with it. But Trump is a survivor. He was raised to be a killer by a father who would not tolerate weakness. How else could he have survived two impeachments, four indictments, a felony conviction, two assassination attempts, and non-stop attacks from the empire for ten long years? By contrast, Newsom won't survive even one scandal. Listen to him try to defend stealing his friend's wife:Oh, and let's not forget when he ran like a coward from Erin Friday: First, he made headlines for saying allowing biological men to compete against biological women was “deeply unfair,” then he backtracked, because of course he did.Ben Shapiro opened his show with the latest scandal involving Newsom, who, of course, pivoted to Trump when called out:Newsom's tyrannical COVID policies destroyed the minds of children, not to mention small businesses. We watched them all close down. He kept students locked down longer than he should have. And that cost California a $2 billion settlement for students hurt by the lockdowns, and there is no way to recover what they've lost. Besides, Sheriff Chad Bianco is hot on Newsom's heels, highlighting the governor's obvious weakness when it came to leading California through a crisis. Newsom is now in a mad scramble to prevent gas prices from soaring to $8 per gallon. Environmental groups are coming for him, just as the LGBTQIA lobby came for him. He'll cave because he's spineless. His biggest problem is that he can't meme his way out of being a white, heteronormative male in a party that supposedly speaks to the marginalized. Gen Z, Black voters, and women will need to be on board for Newsom to win the primary. If Newsom and Kamala Harris, for instance, or even AOC, go head-to-head, then they will be at war with themselves. Who are we, they will ask, are we the party that can only win with white men? Or are we the party that wants to make history?Either way, in focusing only on the soulless bullies in his party, Newsom will have a hard time selling his own rotten policies to the Rust Belt. He won't be running against Trump. He'll be running against JD Vance. I'd bet the farm on JD. Why? Because he came from nothing, survived an abusive, drug addicted mother, fought to defend our country, and wrote a brilliant book about forgotten America.And the more they boo him, like they did at the Kennedy Center…Or kick him out of restaurants, as they did in Scotland, the more likely people like me will stand up for him and stand behind him.JD's success was earned, Newsom's was not. Just as Newsom hides behind his zillennials who do his meming for him, he will have to rely on the legacy media to transform him from a cipher into a man of substance.But if you're making fun of janitors, you're making fun of my dad and others like him who didn't have a powerful aunt in San Francisco but had to make money the old-fashioned way - they had to earn it. No one who makes fun of janitors should ever be President of the United States.The hardest work Newsom has ever done is slicking back his hair for a photo op. He's survived nothing. He's built nothing. He stands for nothing. And in that way, he's the perfect representative for today's Democratic Party. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

Nobody would discuss how strange everything became on the Left after Trump won the first time. But here's the truth: We went stark raving bonkers, especially the women.There was never anyone to pull us back from the abyss. The legacy media profited from our collective hysteria. The Democrats amplified it to scare voters to the polls. It worked for a while, until it didn't.And most of all, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton seemed to like watching the world burn on their behalf. I never thought that at the time, but looking back on it, I can see how cynical they were, how greedy for power they became. Along with the legacy media, Hollywood, and all institutions and corporations, we were their weapons of war, and they never seemed to care what that would do to us over time.The day my father died, I arrived at the VA hospice five minutes too late. His body was still warm. The day before, I recorded this scene from It's a Wonderful Life. The next day, he was dead.When the hospice nurse handed me his flag and said, “On behalf of the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump…” I burst out laughing. I was laughing at my father's deathbed.It was like a Facebook status update come to life, where I seemed to believe my narrative of who I was and what I stood for had followed me into that room, or that everyone else in that room would find it as ridiculous as I did that Trump was the president. No one else laughed. It wasn't funny. And I seemed delusional.I wish I could say that was my wake-up call, but it wasn't. That was only the beginning. It would get so much worse.When my younger sister, a Bernie supporter, showed up, we were screaming at each other in a hospice with all of the other dying veterans and their families within earshot. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

I sometimes wonder what it must be like at bedtime for the New York Times' Peter Baker and his wife, The New Yorker's Susan Glasser. Do they worry that the Gestapo will kick down their door and haul them off to Alligator Alcatraz for writing negatively about Trump?Do they watch out their window for the bright light of a circling Black Ops helicopter? Do they cling to each other in the dark and whisper like they're Anne Frank's family hiding from the Nazis?For them and millions just like them enjoying their lives at the top of the food chain, every day is the end of democracy, the end of America, the end of the world. They are afflicted with the disease of hyperbole, and they can't seem to find their way out of it.Once you use up threats to democracy, Hitler, fascist, dictator, Nazi, racist, rapist, pedophile - you have nowhere left to go. You've hit the wall. You can't get any more extreme than the most extreme.Because they can no longer distinguish between fantasy and reality, they are too crazy to lead this country, and Americans know it. Nothing they do now can fix the problem because the problem is everything - it's the empire. Americans rightly chose the less crazy side in 2024. They chose the real America, not America online.I got online 30 years ago. I helped build the empire. I fought like a good soldier for the Democrats until I could not stand living inside of what became a Doomsday cult anymore, and in 2020, I left.Since then, I've been sifting through the wreckage of the last ten years, trying to make sense of it. Was this just the unintended consequences of a movement rooted largely online? Is that how we became so disconnected from the truth and reality? Or was there more?As the Russiagate hoax unravels, and hungry reporters like Matt Taibbi excavate just how deep the rabbit hole goes, I have to wonder, was any of it real? Were we just tools of the establishment to prevent a populist uprising? Have they destroyed the collective mental health of millions of Americans just as a power grab?When a real revolution hit the streets in the Summer of 2020, a generation believed they were fighting the system because they were told that Trump was the system. They didn't realize they were the unwitting puppets of a much bigger system. A “hearts and minds” campaign that destroyed their sense of reality, this country's unity, and any hope of coming out of it.What the last ten years are starting to look like to me is that our government orchestrated the same kind of “color revolution” they've used to manipulate the elections in other countries. Only this time they did it here. They had the motive, the means, and the opportunity.Motive - to destroy the man who threatened our king, Barack Obama. Means - they controlled everything from the legacy media to Hollywood to social media. Opportunity — create an ongoing crisis that would require a “whole of society” approach to combat, such as communism or COVID-19.The same people who manufactured protests in other countries likely did the same thing here, at least to some degree. Why wouldn't they? All they had to do was sell Trump as an existential threat who only won because Putin meddled in our elections. And just like that, he's illegitimate.The press wasn't going to challenge them. They'd spend ten years going after Trump. No one in the #resistance would either because they couldn't be seen as “normalizing” a fascist. All institutions, corporations, and celebrities were all in on the war effort.And yet, they failed. Trump beat them at their own game. How did he do that? Because Trump was someone who didn't just build his platform online, as the Democrats have done. He also invested his time in America, the place. He built his house of bricks, and the Democrats did not.A New America OnlineIt all sounded good when Barack Obama built his coalition and his army of devoted followers on Twitter. I was one of them. The first record of an Obama Twitter account was in March of 2007. He signed up for it but hadn't used it and had just 23 followers.By May 5th of 2007, Obama was using Twitter to speak directly to his now 1,475 followers.On November 3, 2007, Obama was building a much bigger coalition, laying out his plans and appearances, and now had 5,000+ followers.Heading into the election, the last capture is on November 1, 2008.I got on Twitter around that time, too, because Obama was the new thing, and so was Twitter. They grew up together and, in doing so, birthed a new America online —a new empire, a new utopia. As of today, Barack Obama is followed by 130 million people, second only to Elon Musk.This might explain, at least in part, why all of us perceived Donald Trump as such an existential threat. Trump used Twitter, and he had been using the app himself since around 2010.Politicians speaking directly to the people, as though all of us could reach out and touch them, is without precedent in American history, at least in the modern age.It might have seemed like all of us were ahead of the game back then. We had complete control of the media narrative. If we wanted to spread the lie that Mitt Romney was a sexist because he said he had binders full of women, we could.But Trump had a platform and a voice equal to that of Obama's. That meant there was only so much we could do to shape the narrative. Trump did it all on his own as his Tweets began to drive the news cycle, especially after he won in 2016. And how could they not?It must have driven Hillary Clinton and the Democrats insane that Trump had access to Twitter and could say whatever he wanted to say, and they could do nothing about it.By the time the 2016 election rolled around, Trump had 13 million followers and Hillary Clinton had just 10 million. The differences between the two campaigns were stark. Hillary's side was all about identity-making history and centering on women and people of color.Trump's was about delivering for the people. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

A few years ago, if Sydney Sweeney had appeared in an American Eagle ad talking about her “good jeans/genes,” the uproar would have been just as deafening as it is today. By the end of the day, American Eagle would have pulled the ads. Sweeney would have been forced to issue a pandering, simpering apology. But none of that happened. Instead, Sweeney was celebrated, American Eagle's stock soared, and most importantly, the Puritanical Woke scolds have never looked more ridiculous. But most Americans aren't buying it. They're rolling their eyes at this level of hysteria and outrage over a silly jeans ad featuring a hot blonde, the kind we used to see all the time for all eternity until right now.Woke ideology has always been artificial and performative. It was never rooted in reality. It was a cosmetic fix for a ruling class that was too rich, too powerful, and too white. They needed symbols of virtue to absolve themselves of their privilege. It came at too high a cost. Their empire is collapsing all around them. You can't fool all of the people all of the time. Sooner or later, we must face reality and the truth.What is the truth? While beauty is in the eye of the beholder, there is still a standard, and there always has been. Take this woman, for instance. On what planet would she not be the beauty standard, and yet here she is pretending otherwise just to virtue signal to the fascists in the cult:What it all looks like to me is good old-fashioned bullying. What has shifted between older Gen-Z, younger Gen-Z, and Gen-Alpha is that they no longer want to look like sexless, genderless militant activists. This has always been acceptable for non-white women. It is only white women who have been shamed and scolded and told to de-center themselves. The best way to do that is to ugly themselves up and to celebrate everything but their beauty and their sex appeal, which was a way to punish them.So, you'd have movies like Barbie, where the hot blonde was front and center, but then standing behind her, like strategic Chess pieces, were the mandated intersectional, representative coalition. They thought it was giving equality, but it inadvertently read like “white supremacy.”Right about now, young women will flock to American Eagle to wear those jeans, signaling exactly the opposite message: they want to look hot, sexy, and desirable, because who wouldn't? Those jeans will make them feel like what it must have felt like to wear a leather jacket after The Wild One was released. American Eagle isn't trying to send a message so much as they are trying to sell jeans. After the Great Awokening, they pandered, like everyone else. Here are some examples of their previous branding:Now compare that to the latest Sydney Sweeney ad: Her ad cuts through the conformist, oppressive, stagnant monoculture like a hot knife slicing through birthday cake. Who wants to be associated with the screeching school marms on the Left now? Not teenagers, that's for sure. Calling everything racist has jumped the shark, as they say. It feels stale and yesterday's news. It doesn't feel modern, hip, and cool. Those protesting it are only making the jeans and Sweeney more popular.The criticisms were that the ad was “Eugenics” and “Nazi propaganda,” just because Sydney Sweeney said her genes determined her hair and eye color. But obviously she wasn't referencing either of those things because she knows what she's famous for.Sweeney is leaning into what has given her notoriety in our culture. She has what one might call a good “rack.” I can relate. That was sort of my entire life, being seen as the girl with a good “rack.” And every woman who has one also knows the “eyes up here” line. But Sweeney does it with a wink. She isn't shaming men for looking or noticing. She's showing them she's okay with it. How do you think we reached 8 billion people on the planet? The male gaze and women's desire to be gazed upon are nothing less than the forces that produced the entire human race.That alone is controversial now. But if the topic were only sexuality, that would be one thing. The really agonizing thing is the part about her being a white woman. That is, to the Woke, a mortal sin because whiteness is the original sin, the evil that lives inside of all of us who are white. This fanaticism has ravaged the confidence and identity of white men and women who seek to alter themselves not to be who and what they are out of shame. They dye their hair pink and blue. They wear septum piercings. They shave their heads. They wear drab clothing and try not even to look pretty. They find a way to be included in the LGBTQIA+ category so that they can be among the protected groups.In the most serious cases, they attempt to transition themselves out of their genders, which can and has sterilized them. The Woke support and celebrate this without even realizing how close that is to Eugenics. One million abortions a year can also be seen as a form of Eugenics, since all that really means is controlling births. This idea that white people should stop having babies or that we need to bring in more people of color to make our country less white is itself a form of Eugenics.True, the Nazis used it in an attempt to curate the master race, but Eugenics was practiced in this country up until the 1950s. Women were sterilized if they were seen as unfit mothers. Those who were not smart or had mental problems were also sterilized to purify the gene pool. There is only one movement that supports the sterilization of young people who can't consent, and it's not the Right.The Racism PanicThe idea that there were racists, racists everywhere, seeped into our culture after the election of Barack Obama. The fundamental differences between Liberals and Republicans on race were evident in a poll by the Washington Post that showed Liberals deliberately dumbing down their speech when speaking to Black and Brown people vs. Conservatives who don't. That meant the Right felt free to criticize Black people where the Left never would, unless it's Clarence Thomas.The panic began around 2012, with Obama's re-election and the rise of the Tea Party and Freedom Caucus. We were all conditioned to believe that these were “white power” groups rising up to attack and remove the first Black president. By then, Critical Race Theory was being taught in public schools, such as my daughter's. This coincided with Gen-Z getting online and finding their way into militant tribes that decided your worth by your identity. Before long, they formed an army of fanatics while most of us were not paying attention.They sold Trump as a “racist” and his supporters as the second “Confederacy,” and all of us believed it. Most people I know on the Left still believe it. You can imagine these two forces converging and what that might do to a society. It was nothing less than mass hysteria for the four years Trump was in power. The good news is that every episode of mass hysteria throughout our history is eventually punctured when the accusations become too ridiculous for the people to tolerate any longer. It was the accusation of witchcraft of the Governor's wife in Salem in 1692. It was “Have you no decency?” in the 1950s amid the Red Scare. I've been waiting for this moment for a long time. It always seemed like we were almost there, but the tyrannical mob would rise up and squeeze out their confess-as-a-witch-to-live apology, and we'd be back in it.So far, I don't see an apology from Sweeney or American Eagle, and I hope I never will. Because if they never apologize, they'll learn the only lesson corporations, institutions, and Hollywood need to learn. Let them get mad. Let them throw a fit. Eventually, they will exhaust themselves and take a nap, just like toddlers. I have the unfortunate curse of being ahead of the curve. It stems from 30 years online, and 25 of those years predicting the outcome of the Oscars. I've conditioned myself to read the signs that tell me where the consensus is headed.I have been warning the Left, the Democrats, and Hollywood for some time that the pendulum wants to swing and that if they don't see this coming, they will be left behind. Most of them didn't listen to me, but instead exiled me from our utopian diorama that denies reality to serve the elite. But the Sydney Sweeney ad and the reaction to it are proof enough that the tyrannical Woketopians have lost much of their power to force everyone into compliance. We're not all the way through the woods yet, but we're getting there. All thanks to a hot blonde and a company that could see the writing on the wall. Maybe now, we have good movies back. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

In their 10-year coup to spy on, discredit, impeach, and unseat the twice-elected President of the United States, Donald Trump, the Democrats have only made him stronger and more resilient.As Chris Matthews explains:By contrast, they've emerged from all of this as wild-eyed Doomsday preppers who have finally gone full Pizzagate, scraping the bottom of the barrel to chase a scandal that was never theirs to begin with, and one they never cared about until right now.Will there ever be any accountability for what they've done in their attempts to override American Democracy, disenfranchise half the country, and preserve their power?Will they ever confront the truth that Americans were so desperate to be rid of them, they were willing to re-elect the twice-impeached, four times indicted, convicted felon? Who would want them in charge? They have no plan, no optimistic vision, and no solutions.They have only one thing: an ongoing mass delusion that Trump is the ultimate evil. It is that delusion that has driven the hysteria that has led to the collapse of their empire. They just haven't figured it out yet. They lurch from one social media fantasy to another, all about Trump. And each time, it takes them deeper into their delusions as they lose all of their power.If sex is involved, whether it's an imaginary trip on the Lolita Express to Epstein Island or paid Russian prostitues defiling him on the bed the Obamas slept in, or his night with Stormy Daniels, his dressing room encounter with E. Jean Caroll, these insane, repressed, puritanical women who define the typical Democrat now can't seem to get enough.Give us more, their clicks and views say. We're bored. We need salacious details, no matter how ludicrous, contradictory, or implausible they may be. We need an injection of something other than the mind-numbing boredom of a monoculture that has become so sanitized and preordained that even Lifetime movies can no longer do the trick. Trump is their dirty little secret, the forbidden fruit, the dance with the Devil.The first version of Trump sold to us was that he was a raging racist because of the Obama birther story and other myths that helped create an existential crisis that required a “hearts and minds” effort to eradicate:That version led to violent attacks against Trump supporters in 2015.The next version was that he wasn't a playboy from the 1980s who could get any woman he wanted; no, he was a “rapist” thanks to the Access Hollywood tape and the multiple women who came forward to tell their stories, none of them believable.That led to the #MeToo movement, where due process and the presumption of innocence were disregarded, as once accused, forever guilty. You weren't accused of something; you were accused of being something. It was inside of you, spectral evidence, just like the witch trials in Salem. Every time someone was canceled in effigy of Trump, just as the hangings in Salem, it was a celebration for another battle won against an ultimate evil.One version of Trump made it all the way into the highest reaches of government. Imagine, a failed attempt to paint Trump as colluding with the Russians to win an election fell short, so they had to spin a yarn that the racist and rapist was also a Russian asset, compromised by kompromat.I believed it! I'd already bought the books on Putin in late 2016, how could it not be true? Rachel Maddow had told me night after night after night, laying it all out in painstaking detail. Here she is in June of 2016 dropping those breadcrumbs. Of course, I believed it because I believed her. I trusted her. I trusted them. They wouldn't lie to me, would they?The Clinton campaign even said so. They proved it with the changes made to the GOP platform to please Putin. That had to be true, right?No, it turns out. It wasn't true—none of it. Not only that, but it involved Barack Obama and his henchmen. If the lie that Trump was a Putin puppet resulted in Hillary's win, great. But what if she lost? Why not push out the lie anyway? Why not hobble Trump at the outset?Why not make him illegitimate just as he once suggested Obama's birth certificate was? Who wouldn't go along with it? We were all conditioned to follow the breadcrumbs and believe whatever they told us about Trump, so why wouldn't we believe this?It turned out to be a convenient pivot. It didn't have to be that Hillary Clinton was a high-risk candidate with more baggage than the Kardashians on a ski trip to Aspen. She was “likable enough,”up against a once-in-a-generation political talent like Trump.It didn't need to be the Clinton campaign's decision to focus on Georgia rather than Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. After all, the New York Times said she couldn't lose.Someone as powerful as Obama, a man we all treated like a god, could not lose to Donald Trump. He couldn't have stood on stage with Katy Perry and Bruce Springsteen and had an election go that badly. None of them could stand it, not in the FBI, not in the legacy media, not any of us.No, it had to be Putin.In reality, it was actually much less complicated. It was a one-in-a-million strategy laid out by Steve Bannon way back in 2012:They had to manufacture the Russiagate story because they couldn't face the ugly truth about what they had become, how they'd abandoned the rest of this country and insulated themselves in their castle in the sky. By the end, they were no different from other upended aristocracies when the people had had enough.This is not a complicated story if you are living in reality. The 2016 election recalled the infamous quote about the lavish ball held in honor of the 290th anniversary of the House of the Romanovs held in the Winter Palace, Saint Petersburg. But it was a moment that would symbolize the empire's ultimate collapse.While Democrats now have to fend off their own Communist uprising, 2016 wasn't one. It was the populists, a genuine grassroots movement that reflected the voice of a country that was sick of an elite ruling class lecturing them about how to speak, how to live, and what to believe in. Sneering at them. Judging them. Shutting them out.And yet, that couldn't be the reason Trump won. It couldn't be the people who made that decision. The people never decide, at least not when it comes to President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. They live by another quote, one from Citizen Kane:“People will think…””What I tell them to think.”The Russiagate lie was pushed through the feedback loop —a self-contained bubble that went from morning news, through the churn of social media, to legacy media headlines, up to cable news and late-night “comedy.”Those who questioned it, such as Matt Taibbi, Walter Kirn, and Aaron Mate, saw their careers evaporate, and their friends turned against them.Even after the entire thing was exposed and condemned in the Columbia Journalism Review, it hasn't made its way into the bubble. Everyone I know on the Left still believes it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

Dear Ms. Maher,You don't know me, and there is no reason why you should. I am mostly a nobody. If people know me at all, they know me as a former Oscar blogger whose public support for Trump destroyed my so-called “career.”But really, I am not all that different from you. Or at least, I didn't use to be. I come from your world, more or less. Not that I was ever a tech-savvy, globtrotting millennial in charge of National Public Radio, but it would not have been unusual for me to take a picture of myself in a mask in November of 2020, wearing a Joe Biden hat.In November of 2020, however, I was already afraid of the Democrats retaking power. Things had gotten weird on the Left, Ms. Maher. Really, really weird and no one would talk about it, least of all NPR or PBS. Then again, they couldn't talk about it because they would be destroyed if they did. Everyone knew that, and everyone just went along with it, especially you.I am a creature of the Internet and a former lifelong Liberal who left the party and the movement in 2020 after things had derailed so badly that I could no longer stand to be associated with them. It was the dehumanization of half the country. It was the corruption within the Democratic Party. It was the dangerous future in store for the nation's young people.It took me a while to finally get kicked out of Woketopia for good, banished to the virtual gulag. I made a joke about “White Dudes for Harris,” suggesting finally “white power” was back in style. But one thing about the Woketopians, they have no sense of humor. None. It's been stripped away and replaced with yet more of the suffocating, repellent monoculture that's been shoved down our throats for these long ten years.They all thought I was serious, that I really meant it, that “white power” was back. Thousands saw the tweet. A close friend of mine would text me to see if I really meant it. I wanted to joke that no self-respecting “white supremacist” would be caught dead praising “White Dudes for Harris,” but I was already in too deep.That caught the attention of a reporter named Rebecca Keegan, who was a devoted NPR listener and a true believer in the causes of the Left. She called me a “MAGA darling” in the Hollywood Reporter. A major studio pulled their ads that day, and everything I built over the last 25 years as a “woman-owned” business went up in flames almost overnight.It's quite a story, Ms. Maher, but it's one people like you wouldn't even want to talk about. To you, it isn't “cancel culture,” it's “consequence culture.” Well, you might call the defunding of NPR and PBS the same thing, it's “consequence culture” as a populist movement decides to finally fight back.How it started…You were just ten years old when I got online, Ms. Maher. The year was 1994. Bill Clinton was still the president. Much like it did last year, my life had fallen apart, and I needed a reset. I found the perfect escape on the Wild, Wild Web, where I would live out the rest of the next 30 years of my life. I had a baby in 1998 and, as a single mother, built a website devoted to the Oscars in 1999.I also helped birth an entire industry, and before long, even The New York Times would have an Oscar blogger. I appeared on NPR a few times as an Oscars expert. I would attend film festivals all over the world and hobnob with the rich and famous at fancy parties.I would be invited to cover the Oscars, attending as a guest for almost ten years. I would make money from movie studios that thought my voice was influential enough to advertise on my site. I could buy a new car. I could support my daughter. I could pay my rent.I would use my website to advocate for a more diverse and inclusive Oscars by promoting women and people of color for the awards. I did this even before Barack Obama won in 2008, which coincided with the rise of Twitter, Facebook, and the iPhone. I wouldn't realize it until much later, but all of that coming together at once would allow us to build a necessary “inside” where we could eventually banish the undesirables to the “outside.”We all caught the wave at the same time. We had come out of the 90s era of therapy and psych meds, and now, we were ready to build our Shining Woketopia on the Hill. As society migrated online, it was all under our control. We would ultimately build an empire that represented nearly all of the power in America - cultural, political, educational, and institutional. But only a select few would be invited in.My daughter attended all of the progressive public schools in Los Angeles. We listened to NPR on the way to and from school. I was a PTA mom, a progressive, active Liberal who cared about the climate and racial inequality. I barely noticed around 2014 when my daughter began feeling depressed from what she was learning in school.As a white student, whose best friend was Black and whose president was Black, she was now being told to stand outside the circle and de-center herself from the students of color. She was taught that she was part of the oppressor class and was among the “colonizers.” This disease was inside of her; it was her “whiteness.”I didn't realize then just how deeply indoctrinated our public schools and universities had become. When she graduated from high school, only one of her friends wanted to transition to become a boy. Her mother, a Conservative, refused to give her puberty blockers and amputate her breasts, though she would finish the job when she turned 18 and is now living as a boy.By the time my daughter graduated from college, two of her roommates were on cross-sex hormones, changing their sex as a couple. A boy she had a crush on had now fully transitioned and is living life as a transgender woman. And no one in the media, not at NPR or PBS, ever warned them. They were indoctrinated now, too. COVID paranoia and lockdowns only served to heighten the growing anxiety and fear about saying or doing the wrong thing. Wokeness arrived first as a low-frequency hum, a reaction to the election of the first Black president. As Republicans began to obstruct his agenda, we called them “racists.” The Tea Party was racist; it had to be. The Freedom Caucus was racist; it had to be. Our president was perfect, and the only reason anyone would object to anything had to be racism.The “social justice warriors” who came of age online on sites like Tumblr ballooned into a massive army of zealots. None of us saw this coming, and by the time we did, it was too late. The protests at Evergreen College were the first indication that something had gone very wrong. Holding a professor hostage because he went against the doctrine? It should not surprise you, Ms. Maher, that NPR and PBS did not cover that either, although it would have made a compelling episode of Frontline. Had they come even remotely close to telling the truth throughout this era, maybe things would be different now.That left it up to independent voices to cover the growing scandal at Evergreen, the transgender contagion, and the obsession with race. That is how evolution left NPR and PBS in the dust. Those looking for truth and common sense had to escape the bubble. I'm guessing you never did, Ms. Maher.The army that took to the streets in 2020 was not peacefully protesting; they were demanding diners raise their fists in support of Black Lives Matter. They were demanding everyone put a Black square on Instagram, or else. My niece threatened to cut off all ties if I didn't. I told her she was in a cult.When I saw the video of Sue's 100-year-old mattress store in Kenosha burning as the city was consumed by a false narrative perpetuated by the media, that Jacob Blake was unarmed and there to break up a fight, I tried to post about it on Facebook. I was shouted down and told I cared more about property than I did about people. You agree with that, don't you, Ms. Maher? When Tom Cotton published an op-ed in the New York Times reflecting what the majority of Americans believed, that if the protests could not be controlled, we must “send in the troops.” Then I watched everyone online lose their minds over the truth - once again, the truth, always the TRUTH.By the end of it, James Bennett and Bari Weiss would be out at the New York Times. They would not be the only ones at the Times or other news outlets. Writers and editors would lose their jobs for posting headlines like “Building Matter Too.” Or because some overly fragile staffer felt unsafe and called them out for something, like racism. Hundreds and hundreds of “cancel culture” purges taught everyone the same lesson: say nothing, or you're next. A glance at your tweets around that time, Ms. Maher, suggests that you were fully on board with all of it, too - a true believer in the cause, probably like everyone else who runs a public radio station across America. So when you say they're “collateral damage,” know this: in a monoculture, everything is the same. If it isn't, you lose your job. That you did not listen to Uri Berliner's brave testimony in the Free Press, but rather demonized him for speaking out, should have been enough to force your resignation by the Board of Directors, but I'm guessing they're all on the same page as you. Your resignation letter might look something like this, posted by Representative Brandon Gill:You remember him, right? He grilled you pretty hard, and you maintained a poker face throughout, gaslighting all of us. It's not “fascism” that canceled Stephen Colbert and defunded public broadcasting. It's democracy. Your side was voted out by the guy you spent ten years trying to destroy. That alone should send the message that whatever you were doing backfired. Maybe you'll learn the lesson. Probably not. I can promise you those community radio stations in Trump states don't have any Trump supporters listening to them. And though I do notice some subtle changes in the coverage at NPR after a few casual searches, I'm afraid it's too little, too late. Those local stations are likely to be as woke and indoctrinated as NPR and PBS have become. They have to be because everything has to be in a monoculture like ours. There is no other option but for all of us to leave it behind. We don't want this indoctrination anymore - not in our schools, not in Hollywood, not in science, not in culture, and not in our news. Our American story has always been that we shook off the class system that decided our station in life at birth, that anyone could rise regardless of their status, where they were born, their skin color, or their gender. Obviously, we haven't always lived up to that ideal, but it is still our story.The Woketopians tell a different story. And it's one you believe in, Ms. Maher. Or at least you pretend to because as long as you pay obeisance to the cult, the activists will leave you alone. As I strolled through the Farmer's Market in my very white, very liberal town this morning, I was awash in hedonistic pleasure. The smell of fresh strawberries, bountiful basil, organic olive oil, a whiff of lavender carried by the wind, freshly ground coffee, and someone playing music in the distance. You would fit right in here, Ms. Maher, in a sunhat with a smile on your face, because this is where you belong, inside utopia. But I also know none of these smiling faces I pass know me. For all of their hybrid cars, the lawn signs, the pleas for “kindness,” the careful, gentle language so as not to offend all come with an implicit threat: obey our rules or we will destroy you. Milan Kundera explains what happened to the Left, as we built our Woketopian empire, in the Book of Laughter and Forgetting:To quote one of the greatest films ever made, one Hollywood will never come close to making again, No Country for Old Men. You can't stop what's coming. You can't stop what's coming. It ain't all waiting on you. That's vanity. Nothing will ever be the same when this is all over. The good news is that the empire's collapse will usher in a renaissance —a big bang of brand-new culture that is alive, fearless, and rooted in truth, not dogma. The best thing you can do is what I did: escape the bubble now and realize those who don't agree with you aren't your enemy. They are your fellow Americans. // This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

It was a story that moved like wildfire and showed no signs of slowing down. The more Hillary Clinton denied it, downplayed it, and attempted to pivot away from it, the more it was just too salacious to leave alone. And so it will go with the Epstein Files. The Epstein Files are giving me flashbacks. I find myself, as a former “vote blue no matter who” Democrat, wanting to say, Are you all insane? Chasing this non-story when Trump's presidency is at an all-time high? Don't you know what this will do? Don't you know how long the Democrats have been waiting for something like this to finally end MAGA and destroy Trump?The Democrats have been given a gift. They didn't have to lift a finger. MAGA did it all on their own. Trump is stuck in an impossible situation. He can release the so-called “files,” which probably amount to a lot of names, perhaps some being blackmailed, but no crimes, no convictions, just an angry mob with pitchforks and a story that will never die.In the post-Me Too America, it is once accused, forever guilty. There is no such thing as due process or the presumption of innocence. Releasing those names with no real crimes attached will ruin their lives. This is class warfare via social media mobs. It's the heads of the wealthy elites they want. They care less about how they get them. On the one hand, no president should talk to the people or his supporters like that. After all, his own son, Don Jr. was out there just as caught up in The Epstein Files as everyone else. But Trump wasn't. He didn't campaign on it and never talked about it at rallies. On the other hand, Trump deserved some credit for his monumental last couple of weeks, not to mention having been shot in the head just one year ago. How many of his supporters actually care about this if he never campaigned on it?The Democrats aren't quite celebrating but I can tell, as a former Democrat, that they know a good thing when they see it, just as the Trump side knew the Hillary Clinton email story was a winner to eat up oxygen, drive the media narrative even if, in the end, it came to nothing more than salacious gossip. “But her Emails” was meant to convey the ironic message that the email story was more important than our impending climate apocalypse. For me, that was the crisis, and thus, everything else had to be put aside.I find myself now looking at “Gender Affirming Care” and feeling like this is the crisis that demands everyone put everything aside for, even if I know it won't play out like that because I remember how nothing could slow down the email story and nothing could help Hillary Clinton win, no amount of fear or threats could change people's minds about their vote.Trump isn't heading into an election, but the Democrats want their power back, and they don't think they should have to do anything for it except attack Trump. And attack they will. MSNBC posting on TikTok from Turning Point:Nothing will slow it down because influencers on the Right are less invested in electing candidates and stopping them, and more invested in being the anti-establishment voices that draw the clicks and views.Now that they sloppily affixed the whole scandal to Israel, they have the “Free Palestine” crowd driving up their traffic and making them money. Why would they stop now? Burn it all down, who cares? They are Watergating themselves.Years ago, when I was a Democrat making this same argument about Bernie Sanders and his challenge to the Clinton presidency, I would say they're ratf*cking themselves. They are doing what the opposition would do to fracture and break up a coalition, thereby guaranteeing Hillary's loss, which is partly how I won $100 by predicting Trump would win.However, I later felt bad about that. That's not Democracy. Let Bernie run, let him build a movement, let the chips fall where they may, and I still believe that. But man, it's hard to watch this go down and not think, Are you seriously going to throw it all away on this? But this isn't the first time these so-called MAGA influencers have been busting up the coalition. From the Tariffs to the bombing of Iran to the One Big Beautiful Bill, it seems not a week goes by that I'm not out there on X sounding like Han Solo in Star Wars begging the Millennium Falcon, “Can you hear me, baby, hold together?”I understand MAGA is not a cult. I learned that when I watched them boo Trump for asking them to take the vaccine. No self-respecting cult leader would allow for that. Do you think Jim Jones would have allowed any one of his members to say, “That's okay - I don't need to drink the Flavor-Aid, I'm good.” I also know that the Epstein story runs deep within the movement and that they all believed Trump would release the files and the truth would come out. But the truth was something they had already decided before it was found in evidence, and now they're left feeling angry and betrayed. To make matters worse, Trump's messaging seems to indicate that something is in that file that would be damaging to him; otherwise, he would not keep saying it's a hoax by the same people who cooked up Russiagate, etc.Michael Wolff is out there talking about seeing photos of Trump with Epstein:Here is Victor Davis Hanson telling Glenn Beck he thinks Epstein was blackmailing influential people with photos just like that, which would then force them to invest in his properties, making him very rich. You don't have to be a genius here to put two and two together.Meanwhile, Alan Dershowitz notes that the Democrats are weaponizing the story, as they would, of course. Turnabout is fair play.A Legacy Press that Became PropagandaI understand why journalists like Megyn Kelly and others don't want to be CNN for Trump 2.0 and thus, will chase the story regardless of their own personal preference for political leadership. I get that. They have to be a trusted voice because once they lose that, they're done. She has never backed off of a story, no matter who it might hurt politically. It should not have been the media's job to pivot away from the email story to help one candidate win the election, but that was the message they took from 2016. They felt overwhelming guilt for helping to elect a “fascist,” and from then on, would never hold a single Democrat to account for anything. That decision would doom the Democrats to an even greater fate, nothing less than the rise and fall of a once-mighty empire.MAGA isn't an empire, but it is the rare grassroots populist movement that, for once, put the working class at the front of the line and, for once, beat the administrative state and the deep pockets of the lobbyists. Winning was practically a miracle. The whole thing seemed to be held together by duct tape, glue, and a lot of hard-working people who wanted to make change and did so by organizing, with their small donations and, yes, with Trump—a once-in-a-generation political talent who could withstand almost anything.Almost anything.So you can understand Trump's frustration now that he's just seen the best two weeks of his or any presidency in my lifetime, and those who are now fueling another “But her emails” story aren't the legacy media at all, but his own base.But if it's a pedophile ring they're waiting to see exposed, they will be disappointed. For one thing, none of the alleged thousands of child victims have come forward in this, the era of Me Too, where they could be famous and rich overnight for doing so?They could be hugely popular on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, telling their story, blowing the case wide open. They would be all over social media by now. But all we really have are women, some of them underage at the time, suing for massive payouts. All this will do ultimately is put power back in the hands of the worst people imaginable, people who don't think children can consent to sex crimes but have no problem talking them into slicing off body parts and sterilizing them.It will be power back to the people who want to open the border and who think booing JD Vance at Disneyland is the right thing to do. The Left used to be the side that didn't care about married men cavorting on an island with barely legal sex workers. How could we, with Bill Clinton ogling Monica Lewinsky while she snapped her thong in front of him? No, we had no choice but to excuse his peccadillos. We wanted to win, hold power, and change the world. That mattered so much more than who Bill Clinton was having sex with this week. But the Right, they've been consistent where infidelity and sex were concerned. They were Me Too before we were Me Too. That's why they defended those who accused Bill Clinton of rape and harassment. They traded all of that for a chance to win with Trump, too. The Epstein case, however, because it looms so large in their collective imaginations, might be what the Democrats hope for: that moment when Trump's whole coalition implodes. It runs so deep with so many of them that it defines everything they are and everything they believe. You might as well ask them to give up religion. Who knows, maybe they'll get lucky and the whole thing will magically appear. Bill Gates, Bill Clinton - all of those rich and powerful elites caught as part of a massive pedophile ring that leaves Pizzagate in the dust. Or not. The thing about conspiracy theories, as everyone knows, is that the more people you have to add to them, the less likely they are to be true. Dr Grande explains how the very thing that made Trump popular might be the very thing that brings him down.No, this is only the beginning, and everyone knows it. The Left knows it most of all, and if you can't see that now, someday you will. Someday, you will be saying, “But the Epstein Files.” This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe

Some say Trump won a second term one year ago today when his head was almost blown off on live television. Maybe that's true. Maybe it isn't. Luck was most certainly on his side that bright, beautiful day in Butler, Pennsylvania. I'd been looking forward to the rally because he was returning to a place made almost famous in MAGA lore by Tucker Carlson, who explained Trump's appeal better than anyone else ever had.So when Trump was almost assassinated, the first question I had was Why Butler? Even one year later, it seems odd that it happened there, especially since US intelligence already knew Trump's life was threatened, and outside in Butler, there were many rooftops, and many ways to climb on top of them. It wasn't secure, but then again, MAGA rallies seemed like the last place anyone would get away with shooting Trump. In September, another assassin would give it a shot, a burned-out Gen-X surfer dude who wanted to “save democracy.” But one year after Butler, it's as though the tragedy never happened at all. The Left never fully absorbed it and is awash in assassination porn every day, and the Right, well, let's just say there are many forces at work to break up the grassroots movement otherwise known as MAGA.Here is a look back at the good, the bad, and the ugly of this past year. The GoodOne year after Butler, Trump's presidency has been a smashing success when you look at everything he's accomplished, from the historic bombing of Iran's nuclear facilities to the ceasefire between Israel and Iran, to passing the One Big Beautiful Bill, and several key Supreme Court decisions in his favor. The tariffs seem to have worked out, and the economy is humming. One year after Butler, the Secret Service has been overhauled. They will continue to reform the agency, they say, to prevent something that catastrophic from happening again. One year after Butler, Corey Comperatore is remembered as a hero. He protected his family from gunfire. But to those he left behind, they don't feel like there has been enough closure on the case - how could they have left them unprotected? But on Saturday, the community came together to honor Corey with a motorcycle ride called Corey's Cruise:Corey's Cruise, that's the MAGA spirit. Paying tribute to one of their own.One year after Butler, journalist Selena Zito published the definitive account of that day. A Pennsylvania native, Zito captures Butler and cares enough about the place and its people to tell the story of its history and why it mattered that Trump came to Butler at all. He's the only sitting president ever to do so, she says. Zito has seen Trump in a way no other mainstream journalist ever has, and even tops Tucker Carlson, I think, in explaining Trump and his appeal. Maybe because she knows the time and place of which she writes, or maybe it's something else, an ability to see what other people can't. One year after Butler, it has been promises made and promises kept for people like me. I voted for Trump for two reasons. To protest the unprecedented, authoritarian lawfare by Joe Biden and the Democrats and to put an end to the gender madness that was destroying the minds and bodies of children. It is still hard for me to believe this is going on in America with no guardians on the Left to protect kids. When I see videos like this, I am reminded of why I voted for Trump and why I would vote for him a thousand times over:One year after Butler, the Trump administration is going after John Brennan and James Comey for Russiagate:Matt Taibbi has been on the story for years and goes into it at length on America This Week.The BadOne year after Butler, Elon Musk, who said he became a Trump supporter that day, is now a Trump hater, someone so filled with rage and resentment that he started his own political party just to hurt Trump. And said on Twitter that Trump is in the Epstein Files, which put the whole ugly scandal into motion.The truth? Musk was likely burned after Trump shut him out of the inner circle. The richest man in the world might be among the most fragile, and hell hath no fury like an Elon scorned.Tucker Carlson is parting ways with the Trump administration because of Iran and Israel, now proclaiming Israel is the one behind the Epstein cover-up. He's also saying, in his recent speech for Turning Point, that it's no big deal to kick biological men out of women's sports. Who cares? One year after Butler, fair weather MAGA like Andrew Schultz, Theo Von, and Joe Rogan aren't ride or die Trump supporters anymore. They chose him at the time as the better option, but if Trump doesn't give them exactly what they want — not fund Ukraine, wash their hands of Israel, or reduce the government deficit, whatever it is, they're free agents now ripe for the picking.One year after Butler, a war has broken out between the head of the FBI, Dan Bongino, and Attorney General Pam Bondi over the promised release of the Epstein Files. MAGA wants Bondi to be fired or to step down because of it. She made it seem like there was a client list and they would be naming names. But then abruptly announced that no, there isn't one and case closed.So Trump has had to take to Truth Social to defend her and try to steady the ship, but more and more people are reading this like a cover-up. In other words, MAGA is leading a Watergate-like situation to take down its own leader. into its own leader, doing the Democrats' dirty work without even trying:Both the Left and the Never Trumpers are using the Epstein case in hopes of dividing and conquering MAGA. And from the looks of it, they're winning. It reminds me of that song from U2, So Cruel, “I gave you everything you ever wanted, it wasn't what you wanted.”Even though the Democrats had the files all through Biden's presidency, they are counting on people being stupid enough to believe them when they pretend to care:The UglyOne year after Butler, almost no one cares about the shooter, Thomas Crooks. He is a ghost. If Thomas Crooks had succeeded, would he have been made a hero like Luigi Mangione? Is that what he was seeking, that kind of adulation and respect? He was not only a nobody, a loner, but like so many others, spent his formative years on lockdown, online. Who knows who got to him?One year later, the lesson was not learned because the tragedy was never fully absorbed. All they knew was that they were angry the shooter missed. We have to assume that, yes, Crooks would have been remembered well if he hadn't. Instead, he was shot and killed in the blazing sun on a rooftop at just 20 years old. One year after Butler, comments like this are not just accepted but encouraged. Nothing has changed for the Democrats and the Left; their propaganda press and the so-called “resistance” have not done a single thing differently after their defeat. They didn't absorb what happened on their side, the debate, the cognitive decline, the George Clooney op-ed, and Kamala Harris' terrible campaign. If anything, they've become even more emboldened to amplify their hate against Trump, as if they never saw him shot at all, as if they didn't just suffer the greatest political humiliation in modern American history. But they did. We were there. We saw. All it's meant to them, one year after Butler, is that they have to wish harder for Trump's demise. They have to get louder and meaner. One year after Butler and the Left still have no power except for one Democratic Socialist on the rise, who is leading them even further into fanaticism. The day I called Trump “My President”If I'd never left the Doomsday Bunker and found my way to watching a MAGA rally, I'd have never humanized Trump either. I, too, might have said about both of these attempted assassinations, “Too bad he missed.” But I did escape. I had to leave when the hatred I was engaging in made me feel sick. I knew I had to do something to understand better why we were on one side and they were on the other, and why we felt it was okay to treat half the country like human garbage.At first, the MAGA rallies were like homework. I was looking for the smoking gun. Was Trump really Hitler? Was he a bigot and a racist? No. He was just someone who didn't follow our strict rules of language, which had become so rigid that we didn't even know what basic words meant anymore, like man and woman. Over time, the rallies became, for me, the one bright spot amid a long, miserable, dark winter. They were celebrations with happy people. None of them judged each other. All of them were part of an America that people like me had abandoned long ago. Finding my humanity in 2020 would change the course of my life, something I could never have predicted would hit me in middle age. All I knew was that I had to do what I thought was the right thing, and humanizing my enemies was it. So, of course, I was watching Trump's rally in Butler. I wouldn't miss it. When I saw Trump was shot, I said, “Please, God, not my president.” My president. I didn't vote for him in 2020, so how could he be my president? And besides, he hadn't even won yet.I can't really explain it except to say that by then, I knew the forces that had been marshaled to remove Trump from power by any means necessary, and there were only a few months left before it was too late for them. Would they really go this far? Could they? Would it have been like shooting fish in a barrel to find vulnerable people who might want to make something of their miserable lives by becoming famous for taking out Public Enemy Number One?I guess it's as Rupert Pupkin says in The King of Comedy, “better King for a day than schmuck for a lifetime.”One year after Butler, we'll never know the answer to that. If there ever was any evidence, it's long gone by now. It could just be that lockdowns caused real harm to the minds of the young, especially young men, and no one has bothered to look into it.One year after Butler, I know I made the right choice when I voted for Trump. I'll be forever grateful to him for rescuing this country and its children from the clutches of fanaticism. And you can't watch as many rallies as I have and come away not liking the guy. Those still awash in rage and delusion might find, decades from now, that they missed out on one of the most spectacular moments in American history when this country elected one of its brightest lights. // This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe

Violence is in the air after Luigi Mangione assassinated CEO Brian Thompson and became a hero of the Left. It's in the air by politicians who now want protesters to get messy, to get bloody. All for a necessary photo op, they believe will finally, at long last, turn the public against Donald Trump.Mangione, as it turns out, was a useful weapon in this war. Back in December, novelist and co-host of America This Week, Walter Kirn, foresaw the connection and predicted the rise of a young, charismatic populist. Sound familiar?Kirn saw something much bigger. He could see the connection between what Mangioni represented to the Left and the gathering storm that would ultimately find its way toward Zohran Mamdani and the current wave of populist revolutionaries.From the New York Post:The NCRI study traces the cultural shift back to the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, allegedly by Luigi Mangione, in December 2024. What followed, researchers say, was a viral wave of memes that turned Mangione into a folk hero.With Karen Bass and Gavin Newsom in California, and Mamdani in New York vowing to obstruct ICE, we can see a culture already defined by political violence rising to new heights either to get a photo op that depicts Trump as an authoritarian fascist, or to start a stand-off with the military, one that could go down in the history books.But as with all of the pet causes by the Democrats, this one goes against public opinion, just as their support of biological men playing against women in sports goes against it. Most Americans are in favor of deporting illegal immigrants.The question now isn't whether there will be violence as ICE continues to find and deport as many illegal immigrants as possible, but how bad the violence will be. What is a cause worth fighting and dying for? From Ben Shapiro:What they hope the violence will do is shift public opinion back in their favor. But they've never learned the lessons of the past, why Trump won in 2016, and why he just won again. For the “resistance,” there is no third option where they realize they're the problem and reverse course. Instead, they double down on everything they've already been doing for the last ten years, which has only resulted in Trump becoming more powerful. The Power of StoryThe more people believe in a shared story, the stronger the movement. Our story? We'd solved America's problems—maybe the world's. Racism, along with every other "ism" and "phobe," was the enemy. Eradicate it, craft a language that welcomes everyone, and we'd be healed.Healed from what? The scars of our 1970s childhoods were shaped by the reckless "Me Generation." We emerged into the self-help era as victims or abusers, our lives battered by addiction and trauma. Entire industries sprang up to mend our wounds.We sought salvation in the self-help aisles of bookstores, therapy sessions, medications, and Oprah's group chat every day at 3pm. Relationships crumbled—too many men were toxic or narcissistic. We studied attachment theory, embraced cognitive therapy, and chased perfection: the perfect parenting, car, words, diet, causes, schools. Our children became extensions of our quest, expected to embody that same flawless ideal.When they fell short, we fed them into the self-help machine to mold them into better versions of ourselves, even medicating them to make them more perfect - a practice that would lead us all too easily into “gender affirming care,” the greatest medical scandal in recent history. What we really needed was a higher purpose, a unifying movement. That arrived with Barack Obama, whose Hope and Change brought us together. To us, he was perfect, and even more than that, he was a perfect reflection of the America we wished we had. By then, thanks to the rise of the internet, social media, and smartphones, we had control and influence over nearly every aspect of American society. Why not use the new frontier of the internet to remake the America we wanted? Why not build our Shining Woketopia on the Hill? And so it was written, and so it was done. We closed ourselves off from the part of America that didn't share our beliefs, and over time, we forgot it even existed. Trump's shocking win marked the moment the dream was punctured and reality flooded in. A revolution by “we the normal.”Trump represented everything we believed was wrong with our country - he epitomized all of the bad things we complained about - racism, misogyny, sexual harassment, sexual assault. It wasn't just that he offended our god and our King when he challenged Obama's birthplace. It was that he said whatever he wanted to say, and in our Woketopia, then and now, that is strictly forbidden.Language must be curated, softened, and made more polite — a form of Newspeak for the modern age. But the flip side of that was people who were too fragile to accept the truth—truth in words, truth in politics, truth in comedy, truth in art, truth in science, truth in elections.And if words are violence, if words cause staffers at the New York Times to feel unsafe, if movies like Gone with the Wind need trigger warnings, there would be no surviving Trump and the rise of free speech in a culture that no longer believed in it.But violence turns out to be, for the Left, the answer to the fear inside them they can't control, like dogs or bears or snakes who lash out when they feel cornered and threatened.A History of ViolenceWhat drove the early violence by the Left was the commonly held belief that Trump was a racist and his border policies were rooted in the Right's desire to rid this country of Black and Brown people. Thus, when mobs acted out, like they did in 2015 and throughout Trump's first term, it was justified. Racism was the ultimate sin, like being an accused witch in Salem or a Communist in 1950s America.Prominent Democrats pushed out the idea, which was then echoed and amplified by what Trump would eventually and correctly call “fake news.” The Democrats loved the violence, as it turns out, because they thought that the people would show the rest of America that Trump was bad. They also began to believe that their uprising against Trump was a fusion of both the Civil War and the Civil Rights movements of the 1960s.By the Summer of 2020, they funded and encouraged violence while also downplaying it. Buildings set on fire, businesses destroyed, and an angry mob banging on the fence of the White House were all excused as “mostly peaceful protests.”However, what I was seeing unfolding, which alarmed me enough to start speaking out, was that something was very wrong with the Left. It wasn't until the Evergreen stories started coming out that I realized we'd built a fanatical army of not just woke scolds but a Red Guard-like generation who did not believe in limits on imposing their will upon the people.Diners were compelled to raise their fists in support of Black Lives Matter. The statues were coming down. Writers, editors, and celebrities were all being canceled and fired. Movies, literature, TV, comedy, architecture, science, even knitting, cooking, and exercise had to be transformed. It was tolerated because of what our culture had become after eight years of Obama and four years of Trump. The powerful, mostly white elites who run everything felt guilty. So they let it go on. I watched Hollywood devour itself. When the film Green Book won Best Picture, the Left exploded. It was a harmless movie about a friendship between a bigot and a gay Black man, and THAT was racist? Yes, because one of the screenwriters was a Trump supporter.The center could not hold. Though Joe Biden was dragged over the finish line in a corrupt election that would finally cause me to leave the Democratic Party, there was no coming back from what the Left had become. It was only a matter of time before the empire collapsed. I tried to warn them. Here is a DM exchange between me and Neera Tanden back in August of 2020:And then I predicted the future:The GOP did, in fact, take all three branches in 2024. But the message was never getting through. They didn't want to hear it then, and do not want to hear it now, so what other option do they have but to try to persuade by force?Vive La ResistanceI cringe looking back on being a “resistance fighter.” To think we'd convinced ourselves that we were like the French singer in Casablanca who sings loud enough to drown out the Nazis.It's that self-righteousness we felt, that entitlement, that moral superiority that would ultimately be our undoing, that Trump happened to us, rather than the people who voted for him. The fantasies by the wealthiest and most famous among us to viciously attack Trump, pull him from limb to limb, seemed to know no bounds. Somehow, violence has filled in the empty spaces. It's what Walter Kirn could see in the reaction to the Mangione assassination: this idea that violence was another way to build clout, even to virtue signal, in a narcissistic utopia. We believed ourselves to be the chosen people. But because the people didn't want us, didn't love us, didn't want our America - our shining Woketopia on the hill - we blamed them. We blamed their votes. We smeared them. That casual dehumanization did lead to violence. And it's likely to get much worse.The Party of HateI've lost so many friends, people I've known for years, ex-boyfriends, and colleagues. It was surreal to watch them pull away, to block, to unfriend, or attack me so relentlessly that I had to block them. They don't know who I am anymore, and I don't know who they are anymore.They have become defined by that collective hatred, that poisonous intolerance that has driven so many people like me away from the party. The worse they get, the more violent they become, the less Americans will want them in power. When I start to think about whether there will be a blue wave in 2026, I think about 1972. In 1970, four students were shot at Kent State for protesting the war. It did nothing to change public opinion, but it did put Nixon on a path toward a record landslide victory. It was just one of a series of violent events that scared the public away from the Democrats, with the Manson murders in 1969 being another.Those students believed in a cause worth dying for. History has mostly vindicated them. The Left of today believes they're fighting Hitler and “concentration camps.” Some believe it is a cause worth dying for. There's just one tiny problem: it isn't true. The reason I keep telling my story is that I know so much of what we lived through will disappear down the memory hole. But we should never forget how crazy it all became and how hard it was for all of us to find our way back to a united America. // This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe

I remember the exact moment when I realized I loved my country. The year was 1997. The place was Italy. The affliction was love. The guy had a Che Guevara poster on his wall. I had no idea who that was. He was talking about Israel and how terrible they were. I had no idea what he meant, so I just nodded along. But then he started trash-talking America.So I said, “Well, you sure like our Marlboros, our Levis, and our movies, don't you?” It could have been a joke, but it somehow wasn't. I wasn't mad exactly, I was defensive. And that's how I knew I loved my country, and why I was an unapologetic American.Like Kevin Kline in A Fish Called Wanda:As we gather together on the Fourth of July to celebrate the nation's birthday, I'm struck by just how polarized we still are. It is as bad as it was during the last Civil War. So, how can we feel as if we are still “One nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all?”They don't feel that way on the Left, and they make sure everyone on the Right knows it. They hiss and shriek and moan and scream at Trump and his supporters as though they are living under an oppressive emperor rather than just having suffered a humiliating defeat in November.If only they called him an emperor. They've gone all the way to Hitler. Once you've reached Hitler, there's nowhere left to go.But maybe that's wrong. Perhaps there is still somewhere else to go, taking what is a virtual Civil War and transforming it into a hot war, or at the very least, a violent uprising. If, say, a few blue states decided to secede from the union, over mass deportations or transgender ideology, what then?Zohran Mamdani has promised, if he's elected, to obstruct ICE, even if it means he gets arrested by the feds.Gavin Newsom has already taunted Trump into arresting him for obstructing ICE. Mayor Karen Bass in Los Angeles and all of the wealthy donors who put her in power are making mass deportations the central issue for the Democrats. Is it a cause worth fighting and dying for?They've taken to social media to proclaim “Alligator Alcatraz,” which is designed as a deterrent to discourage gang members, drug smugglers, and other criminals from risking crossing the border illegally, “Alligator Auschwitz.”This illustrates perfectly how it is that the Left has become the crazier side. What Trump says could be seen as potentially removing American citizens, but it's not clear exactly what he means. If you do not exist in reality, what he says can mean whatever you want it to.They react with the same level of panic as they had with the Access Hollywood tape, Russiagate, E. Jean Carroll, Stormy Daniels, “good people on both sides,” “losers and suckers,” Ivanka Trump, Elon is a Nazi, impeachment, impeachment, indictment, indictment. They are the party that cried wolf.Their helplessness in the face of Trump's wins is then taken out on those they know.Most people on the Right have a story like that. I have lost many friends over the past ten years, and much of it even before I ever decided to vote for or support Trump. It's just that I asked too many questions. I didn't follow the rules.It isn't just the betrayal of voting for Trump, although that's a big part of it; it is the mandated directive from inside their Doomsday Cult. They must purge those who do not align with their views, and even those who know or are friends with Trump supporters are also banished, swarmed, and attacked.So, how can we celebrate as one country if so many of those who rule our culture and dominate so much of our society are this intolerant?A New America OnlineI've lived online for 30 years. I helped build what would become a vast utopia of a new America. Our superpower was creating our own reality and then presenting it to the media, who then transformed it into the status quo.Much of the early internet took shape in the George W. Bush era. Not many people realized the power of social media back then, but Barack Obama did. It's not likely Bush would have even been elected if social media had been around. The Republicans were slow to catch on. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe

Zohran Mamdani's primary win marks the end of the Democratic Party as we once knew it. Maybe they realize it, probably they don't, but it makes no difference. The truth is, it was already dead. They spent ten years going to war on Trump while also using him to scare their voters to the polls, with their endless crisis.Without a combative media to keep them in line, they didn't have to offer the people much of anything because they knew they would vote blue no matter who, as long as Trump was on the other side.Mamdani did the unthinkable. He ran as an unapologetic Democratic Socialist. He seemed to arrive almost magically to sell Gen-Z the dream. A showbiz nepo baby and former rapper, he was a whole lotta of charisma waiting for his ticket to ride. Has the Democratic Party found its new leader?There is still a question as to whether Mamdani can indeed pull out a win in the general election. Voters might turn out in droves to stop him. But maybe, just maybe, they won't. Perhaps they'll overlook high crime, “gender affirming care,” and the border crisis to explore what state-run grocery stores might look like.It's not really his policies that brought him to victory so much as his revolutionary spirit - he's like the living embodiment of the Summer of 2020. He wants to tear it all down, too. It's the demographic he appeals to that might herald a real revolution, considering it's the same demographic that backed Obama in 2008—Upper-Middle-Class white college kids.David Friedberg from the All in Podcast:Like Obama, Mamdani is cut from the same cloth. He hung out with them. He went to college with them. He was indoctrinated alongside them. He speaks their language. He knows their world. They'll follow him anywhere.Note the viral songs already hitting TikTok, where young women shake that groove thing as they chant his name.Mamdani tapped into Indoctrination Nation, the Evergreen generation that believes America is a corrupt, “white supremacist” empire crippled by Capitalism - but could you please hand me my iphone so I can make a TikTok?This generation came of age in a convenience culture that gave them everything they wanted when they wanted it - Uber, Netflix, abortion, DoorDash, Tinder, TikTok, iPhones, Google, and ChatGPT. Why can't they have democratic socialism if they want it?Because they don't really know what it means, and they don't care. They are a generation ready for the big moves, no more playing it safe. The Democrats should have listened to David Hogg, who was a harbinger of things to come.The Death RattleAfter Mamdani's win, it was all quiet on the Leftern Front. Bill Clinton was the first to weigh in. It was like cautiously approaching a coiled rattlesnake. Don't make any sudden moves.But the Democrats old enough to know the history must be in a panic. They know why Hillary had to crush the Bernie movement like a bug. They know how bad it got. So bad that Sarah Silverman and Al Franken had to try to calm down BernieMania as the crowd chanted “WAR HAWK” at Hillary.The Party Elders recall the bad old days, when they were undone by the Eugene McCarthy faction of the party because they were perceived as too extreme for the silent majority. They remember the catastrophic loss of George McGovern.They recall Jimmy Carter's malaise and how Uncle Teddy primaried him, ushering in 12 years of Reagan and Bush. They remember the dark days of the milquetoast normies who couldn't inspire crowds - like Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis and John Kerry.Playing it safe worked until it didn't. Now they'll have to play it bold with an army at the ready, the same army they funded and praised all through the Summer of 2020 with the Autonomous Zones, torching businesses, all to sow chaos, to do the bidding of the Democrats just to take Trump out of power.This army had no choice but to absorb what a weaponized, biased press corps told them every day of their lives - when they called Trump a fascist, when they called him Hitler. The hysteria kept mounting, and purging bad people wasn't enough.This army is ready for a different war, a bigger war - a war against Israel, against ICE, against Trump, Capitalism, Free Enterprise, the gender binary, the cost of rent, mortgages, fossil fuels, and now, the Democratic Party.The legacy media have been covering up their violent riots, outbursts, and protests for a long time, so much so that most people on the Left don't even know about it. Even in the Summer of 2020, they didn't turn it into a significant news story. Why? Because it always had to go one way, it always had to be about Trump.The media will never take responsibility for what they've done, how they've lied for so long, and what that did to the minds of the young who spent the last ten years believing a fascist dictator had overtaken America.This army that torched Teslas and set cars on fire in Los Angeles has been hiding in plain sight, but the rest of the country is about to get a much closer look. Just wait until this Summer, because that army now has a real leader in Mamdani.Call Him DaddyAs Operation Midnight Hammer brought the might of the American military down on Iran's nuclear facilities, Trump was carefully, steadily coming in for a landing. As the passengers screamed and howled, imagining the absolute worst, Trump did what he always does - he hit the bullseye.Some were calling for his impeachment. Others regretted their vote and called him a “war criminal.” There was talk of regime change in Iran and a MAGA Civil War. It was pure chaos.But then, the plane touched down, and everyone burst into applause. After a few setbacks, a ceasefire was established. Even the leaders of NATO were impressed. How could you not be?As he racked up win after win after win, Trump was having the best two weeks of either of his presidencies.This week made one thing abundantly clear: Trump won the ten-year insurrection, coup, and war on his presidency, his supporters, and democracy itself. He beat them at the ballot box, he beat their lawfare:He beat them at the schools, stopping indoctrination and the denial of biological reality:In ordinary times, Trump would be hailed as the comeback kid who has erased the lies told about him in his first term and remade himself as one of the most consequential presidents in American history.But that was not going to happen because the so-called “resistance army” believes itself to still be at war with Trump.One of their favorite conduits is Natasha Bertrand at CNN, who was an easy mark to spin the narrative the Democrats needed, that Trump and Operation Midnight Hammer had failed:But the early findings are at odds with President Donald Trump's repeated claims that the strikes “completely and totally obliterated” Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities.Missing in that report was that it was “low confidence,” and should never have been tossed out like bloody chum to draw the sharks.One of the reasons people like me no longer trust them is that we know the game by now, too. We'll find our information elsewhere from people we trust to tell us the truth, people who, unlike the Democrats and their corporate press, are looking out for the public's best interests. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe

After the bombs dropped on Iran's nuclear facilities, there were some rumblings on X that the mission felt eerily familiar. Mike Benz said Operation Midnight Hammer is the same mission that plays out in the grand finale of Joseph Kosinski's Top Gun: Maverick.His followers quickly pointed out that they're using fighter jets in Top Gun: Maverick, not the stealth B-2 bomber. The $2 billion plane is called the “ghost of the skies” because it is undetectable on radar.Even if the rough details are the same, the mission is slightly different because in the film, the pilot's skill is everything.Top Gun: Maverick is the American film industry at its finest, just as Operation Midnight Hammer is the American military at its finest. The film gives back more than it takes. It doesn't lecture us. It doesn't try to fix us. It merely entertains us for a couple of hours by reminding us why we need heroes and why we'll always respond to the Hero's Journey.We need heroes because, as the Buddhists say, life is suffering. We need them because every day we wake up alive is a good day. But most of our days are mundane and ordinary. And that might explain why Top Gun: Maverick resonated so deeply three years ago.After COVID and the Great Awokening brought Hollywood to its knees, the film industry desperately needed a Deus ex Machina. When Top Gun: Maverick made upwards of $700 million, it looked like it had finally arrived. It also earned a well-deserved Best Picture nomination and probably should have won, but it's been a while since they picked the actual Best Picture of the Year.Like the first Top Gun, Maverick was criticized as military propaganda. But we do ask our soldiers to fight and die in war as we sit in cafes with matcha lattes, so it's the least we can do to make a movie celebrating them.It turns out that Top Gun: Maverick isn't propaganda for the military. It's propaganda for the human race. It's propaganda for even having hopes or dreams at all. It's propaganda for feeling like a winner when the whole world is against you. We need heroes to take us on that journey. Even if we didn't know we needed them, we only have to watch them on screen to understand why.Tom Cruise in Top Gun is our ordinary world. He's brought back into the extraordinary because he's the only pilot who can fly like that and reach Mach 10.What's so great about Top Gun: Maverick is that while it shows our hero succeeding, it also shows him pushing too far and failing. We're now hooked to see if he can learn his lesson.Like all heroes, Maverick must be blessed with something special that makes him the only person who can save the day.It might sound silly when reduced to the basics, but a tried-and-true formula works. We root for the hero we know. The harder it is on him, the more invested we become.Top Gun: Maverick, to my mind, has very few flaws. But it does have one. They chose the girl to fly the critical mission. I didn't buy it. Maybe we can believe that extraordinary women exist just as extraordinary men do. It's only a movie, after all. But suspension of disbelief only goes so far. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe

I once believed that the worst thing that could happen to this country was to have a Conservative Supreme Court. That was supposed to be the end of everything. I would scream those words into the abyss all through 2016 to anyone who didn't want to vote for Hillary Clinton, “THE SUPREME COURT.”I grew up on the Left, after all, and nothing scared us more than Christianity in our schools, in our corporations, institutions, and in our courts. If Trump won, he would appoint Conservative Christians to the highest court in the land, and that would be the end of Roe v. Wade, the end of the feminist movement, and women's rights.Well, it turns out, we didn't need Conservative Christians to do that. The Left did it all on their own, leaving just one right in place, the right to terminate a pregnancy, or, if you prefer, kill our babies. We use soft language like “choice” and “terminate” as though that changes the reality.Now that the Left has been assured that the pace of abortion did not slow down and women can use abortion like reproductive bulimia - have fun now, deal with the problem later - they've moved on to more pressing matters.I don't think abortion should be illegal. But you know what should be? “Gender-affirming care” for minors. That is the most grotesque example of soft language ever invented by my former side. Call it what it is - sterilization. Top surgery is a double mastectomy. Bottom surgery is castration.In all the ways I feared religion and Christianity infiltrating our schools and institutions has now been left in the dust by a dangerous, fanatical, unstoppable cult that has left too many young men and women destroyed and mutilated in its wake.What a fool I was. Now, I am so grateful for Conservative Christians. I'm so grateful to Donald Trump, who put them on the court. I am glad we lost, even if I didn't know that in 2016. Now I do. Now I can see.Because Hillary Clinton lost, we did not get control of the court. And thank God for that. Because if we had, there is no way the bill from Tennessee to ban “gender affirming care” would have been upheld.Like everyone else on my former side, I was convinced Trump's win in 2016 would end everything we held dear, especially the Supreme Court. We'd been fighting with the Right for years to get control of it. We watched Merrick Garland's appointment obstructed, and we fumed.After Trump won, we became an unhinged, hysterical, angry mob of women who felt it was our right to convict Justice Kavanaugh of rape in the court of public opinion.And to demonize and depict Amy Coney Barrett as the Handmaid.But what I know now that I did not know back in 2016 was that when a society excuses and allows for the young to be sterilized, that's when the bottom drops out, whether it's Eugenics or “gender affirming care.” I didn't see the problem. I was comfortable with the soft language of the Left. We were the good people standing up for marginalized groups.It took me years to realize just how insane the Left had become. But it's one thing if it's just about cancel culture, destroying Hollywood, comedy, art, and book publishing. It's a whole other thing if we're allowing irreversible harm to be done to the minds and bodies of children.But thankfully, God invented Conservatives and they rose to do what we could not, just as they did back before the Civil War to end slavery and for the same reason — they believed it was morally wrong. Now, they are back to stop the Democrats from doing something morally wrong. It's the Christian Right yet again that is on the right side of history.I'm not a religious person, though I wish I could be. I imagine there is relief in that connection to something more powerful than yourself, and maybe that is what so many of these young people need, not “gender-affirming care.” This de-transitioner realized she was made in God's image, which helped her find her way out.I always believed religion was dangerous and destructive. But whatever I thought about religion, and whatever the Left thinks about it now, it can't touch what madness has been manifested by the Left. Look at what they've done.Christianity, we all believed, was the source of bigotry against gays and lesbians. We wanted no part of that. I still don't. But today, I am grateful that they have been fighting this fight because I do not think we could have done it without them.Matt Walsh has been relentless. He's not only reported on the horrors of “gender-affirming care” on his show but also appeared in town halls and government, and helped push the fight in Tennessee to ban the practice. He deserves much credit today.It's ironic, isn't it, that it has been left up to many Conservative Christians to state biological reality. Growing up, I was on that side, and they weren't. Now, the Left has pulled so far into madness that the Conservative Christians are the more pragmatic side.They lock arms with independent thinkers who function as the sane middle, like Colin Wright, Andrew Doyle, Gays Against Groomers, Christina Buttons, and Peter Boghossian:The forces that oppose them are powerful, as this statement by the American Psychological Association shows. But the resistance forces are stronger.The Democrats are collectively too stupid to understand that this is not the hill to die on.The Climate of Fear This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe

[This is a slightly different kind of podcast, a news summary - and will have its own podcast feed eventually]Every Fourth Turning, at least since the founding of America, has been defined by a great war: the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and World War II. When I began this Substack a few years back, the world war we might be fighting would be Iran, Russia, and China against the United States and its allies, including Israel. It made sense then. Not so much now. That was before Putin invaded Ukraine, before October 7th, before the United States government pursued Trump like he was a war criminal, before his attempted assassination, and his second win. Steve Bannon says we're already fighting World War III.Now, as Trump declares “unconditional surrender, " everyone wonders, is this it? Is this our great war?Iran doesn't appear to have an ally in Russia or China at the moment. Trump just met with his security advisers and will address the nation later this afternoon. It does feel a little like the post 9/11 drumbeat for war, and we're all still wary and fearful that it might turn into “regime change” rather than a negotiated peace. We will know what their plans are soon enough. The neocons like Lindsey Graham are prepared to go all the way.Earlier today, Tammy Bruce spoke to the press from the State Department:She mentions that Trump has made the same warning, that Iran can never have a nuke, over 40 times, going back to 2011. Here is that video:Dealing with Iran has been one of the main conflicts between Trump and Barack Obama, so it's easier to see how it started and how it's going. Trump's administration is not the Bush administration. If the 2008 Wall Street meltdown was the crisis that sparked the Fourth Turning and the mission is, as Steve Bannon says, to dismantle the Deep State that took us to the $700 billion bailout, then a big war in the Middle East would fracture the MAGA coalition. For his part, Benjamin Netanyu has said he believes Iran threatens America too, and indeed, they've been trying to assassinate Trump. If there is a graceful way to end the threat without getting into war, that's the path Trump will want to take.A MAGA Divided Cannot Stand.MAGA is split over whether or not to aid Israel in its fight against Iran. Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones, and Marjorie Taylor-Greene are locking arms with Dave Smith and Glenn Greenwald to push back against any involvement. Breitbart reports that members of the Squad have now joined Thomas Massie to limit Trump's power on Iran:From Breitbart:While he remains the sole Republican backing such a legislative effort, several top Democrats from the far-left of the Democratic Party, including “Squad” members Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and Ilhan Omar (D-MN), have indicated they are signing on to the Massie proposal.Alex Jones is opposed to any help or aid in Israel's war, writing:Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon discussed our involvement, with Bannon urging Trump and MAGA to keep their eye on the ball. He means to go after and dismantle the Deep State:Raheem Kassam sums up the internal conflict well:Ice Raids Paused, Then UnpausedThe Iran conflict is not the only dividing issue in MAGA. There is a split between those who want to support farms and hotels with their large immigrant staff, many of whom are undocumented and have worked for the companies for decades. Versus the opposing side, who insist Trump must not back off even an inch when it comes to mass deportations. Trump listened to them and retreated from his original plan to offer a potential middle ground.Federal Agents Arrest NYC Comptroller & Mayoral Candidate Brad Lander At Immigration CourtAccording to the Left, Lander was arrested for asking to see a warrant. But the truth is, he was arrested for assault, per a Fox report:New York City Comptroller Brad Lander was arrested by Department of Homeland Security(DHS) agents on Tuesday after allegedly assaulting a federal officer. The article quoted a DHS spokesperson,"Our heroic ICE law enforcement officers face a 413% increase in assaults against them—it is wrong that politicians seeking higher office undermine law enforcement safety to get a viral moment, no one is above the law, and if you lay a hand on a law enforcement officer, you will face consequences."Letitia James said:"This is profoundly unacceptable. Arresting Comptroller Lander for the simple act of standing up for immigrants and their civil rights is a shocking abuse of power. No one should face fear and intimidation in a courthouse, and this is a grotesque escalation of tensions. The administration's rampant targeting of New Yorkers only makes our communities less safe."The Democrats had four years of the Biden administration to do something about the border. They didn't. Instead, they encouraged millions to flood in, many of them unvetted. Yet, because the migrants represent an oppressed group, the Democrats can't turn away. They are choosing this as one of their base issues because it feeds their ongoing delusion that they are living under a fascist dictator. No Kings vs. Army's 250th AnniversaryThe coverage of the No Kings protest was amplified to look like a grassroots movement, even though it was well-funded and populated by the same people who had protested in the “Hands Off” event not long before. It reached roughly the same number of participants, around 5 million. This will be their playbook for the next five years.The legacy media muted the coverage of the Army's parade, and if they covered it at all, they covered it as militaristic, fascist-like, and compared it to North Korea.Here is a balanced report by Mark Halperin, Sean Spicer, and Dan Turrentine on 2Way:Assassination NationThe Democrats will not let the crisis of the recent shootings of Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota go to waste and are currently calling the shooter the “MAGA assassin.”On the list of targets were 45 Democrats, “including dozens of Minnesota lawmakers and members of Congress such as Rep. Angie Craig, Rep. Ilhan Omar, and Sen. Tina Smith. It also included members of Planned Parenthood, philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, who has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to the organization, and several healthcare centers across the Midwest,” according to Fox9.As usual, the reaction to the shootings, horrific and tragic though they are, is far less than we saw for the assassination of the healthcare CEO Brian Thompson by Luigi Mangione, who has been turned into a martyr and a hero by the Left. Both assassination attempts against President Trump were not treated the same way by the legacy media, and coverage was muted. Again, we turn to 2way to hear balanced coverage.If you think we're living through crazy times, you would be right. Every Fourth Turning feels transformational in good and bad ways. Change is all around us. These are just a few pressure points we are currently hitting as a country.Let me know if you like this format. Until next time.[I hope to turn this into video but I ran out of time to do it today. Next time]. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe

In the Fall of 2021, Donald Trump was selling a hardcover book about his presidency called Our Journey Together. It would be self-published because it had to be. No publisher would touch it, no author would write it, and no critic would be caught dead praising it.January 6th was meant to be the end of the Trump story. He was to slink back to Mar-a-Lago, disgraced and a failure. They all said his book was a joke, a Putin-like rewrite of what really happened in his first term. Obviously, it had to be a lie - covering up the crimes, treason, and corruption.But something told me I should get that book anyway and hold onto it. It might matter someday. Maybe, I thought, the Trump story wasn't over quite yet.So I paid the hefty price for the signed copy and waited. When the package arrived, it came in a plain cardboard box. I breathed a sigh of relief because I thought if the UPS guy knew I was buying it, he might accidentally lose some of my packages next time, or who knows what else.I knew I wasn't a Trump supporter because I was still holding on to what I thought were my principles as a lifelong Liberal. I didn't vote for Trump in 2020, and as long as that was still true about me, I was protected from their wrath. I would find out years later just how bad it was to admit you supported Trump, let alone voted for him.Much of what we have experienced over the past ten years will be memory-holed. No one will remember how treacherous it was back then to buy Our Journey Together. Now, I keep it to remind me of what it felt like to be that afraid and how foolish I was to give them that much power over me.That's what Trump has done for the past ten years. He's refused to give the mighty empire power over his story. He's decided to tell it himself, even if he has to self-publish a book. He'll dress up in a tux with Melania and attend Les Miz at the Kennedy Center, even if some of them boo him. He'll celebrate his birthday on the same day as the 250th anniversary of the creation of the United States Army, even if they mobilize their infantile “No Kings” protest.Trump insists his version is the truth, and two narratives go to war every day. But the thing is, Trump's is the better story. It's like the end of the movie Life of Pi, where the lone survivor of a shipwreck has the choice of whether to tell the good story or the bad story. One will destroy you, and one will inspire you. It's used as a metaphor for religion, but it works here, too.Trump's is the better story because he's a better storyteller. For all of Trump's obvious gifts, that one has served him the best. He's mastered it for his entire life, starting all the way back in high school, where he would just stand in front of a crowd and tell stories.For the past ten years, many people have needed to believe in Trump's story, many of them discarded and forgotten by the empire. Over time, more and more people were drawn in as each side played its role. The Left hunted Trump down and cast themselves as the villains. How could they have ever thought that was a winning strategy?That is what I find most inspiring about Trump. That's why so many of his supporters remain loyal to him and fiercely defend him, even when — especially when — he makes mistakes.In 2020, I was in a very dark place. I was caught up in the so-called #resistance. I believed Putin had Kompromat on Trump. I believed it all. I read all of the books. I hung on to every word Rachel Maddow said.But things would change in those four years. It would become dystopian on the Left. I would feel the mob's wrath one too many times just for speaking out and pushing back about things I knew to be true. I also had no other social life except Twitter and Facebook during lockdowns, where the daily ritual of hate aimed at Trump, his staff, his family, and his supporters began to feel like poison.I didn't want to be a part of it. If, for no other reason, I'd been the target of hate for so long, and I empathized with them. Worse, I knew I was wrong to dehumanize a whole group of people, no matter what the excuse was. Dehumanizing them had already led to violence on the streets before, during, and after Trump's first term.I knew enough history to have asked myself the question more than once: What would you do? What would you do in Salem in 1692? What would you do in Germany in the 1930s? What would you do in the Jim Crow South? I'm not comparing them. I'm just saying the mechanism is the same, and the person I wanted to be, and believe I am, is someone who would not go along with it, especially since my life wasn't in danger.Thus began my journey over to Trump's side of things. I wanted to know whether our version of Trump was true. Was he a threat to Democracy? Was he a virulent racist and “white supremacist”? If I watched enough of his rallies, I might find the smoking gun. Maybe I would have enough proof to justify everything we did to try to destroy him. But that never happened.In 2020, he had survived COVID and was out doing five rallies a day, flying in on a helicopter, circling the crowd overhead, then greeting them with a handful of red hats, tossing them to the crowd. And I watched every single one of his rallies. And as time went on, something happened to me. I guess you could say I was like the Grinch.My heart grew because I saw people who had every reason to be miserable, full of hate, and resentful, as the media describes them, but who were none of those things. They were happy. They were joyful. Trump made them laugh. They danced. It was one big party—a glowing oasis of fun amid an endless, dark winter on the Left.I'll never forget hearing Trump at a rally in Miami in the pouring rain. I remember thinking, This is amazing. The press will never cover this. They could never. They could never write about people who loved Trump that much, to stay out there as the rain pounded down.But of course, that was the story. That was the real story. That was the truth. What I saw in Trump and MAGA is what Tucker Carlson saw in this often-played video summarizing the Trump movement just before the 2020 election.Trump speaks a language called Normal American. It's one we on the Left abandoned long ago. After years of curating our language to be pristine, inoffensive, soft, and kind, we became too fragile to speak Normal American.But Trump can talk to anyone, especially normal Americans. That's why he could fly to so many different states, land anywhere - a McDonald's, a pizza joint, or even East Palestine, Ohio, and fit right in.Normal American can sometimes be offensive. Some of us still speak it when we think no one is watching or listening. To the Left, that means we use all of the slurs that prove we are an ist or a phobe. But no, it just means the occasional dirty joke, or talking like we all used to, without fear and at ease.What I love so much about Trump is his persistent, unshakable optimism. He refused to accept the Left's rewrite of him. They could never destroy Trump because they weren't fighting the real guy; they still aren't. Their ridiculous “No Kings” protest on his birthday is a fantasy about someone they invented who doesn't exist in real life.They don't see the Trump we all see—the guy who faced them down for a decade and triumphed. Four years of attacks, framed as a Russian asset, impeached twice, indicted four times, convicted of a felony, called a racist, a rapist, a fascist, a dictator, a criminal, a felon, Hitler and now — a King. A guy who was almost assassinated twice, took a bullet, survived it, then got on stage just days later to give a 90-minute speech. You bet that's the better story.In all of that time, the Democrats never did the one thing they would have to do to defeat Trump: offer the people something better. The reason they don't is that they can't. They want America back the way it was before Trump. But it's never coming back because we, the people, voted for it never to come back.If they think they can somehow force those who speak Normal American to ever listen to them over Trump, they're fooling themselves. They can throw as many tantrums as they want, but that won't fix who they are. That's why they lost the election. It's never been about Trump. It's always been about them.If anything, Trump was the guy who spelunked into our Doomsday Bunker like SEAL Team Six to get us the hell out of there. You can throw all the lawn signs at us you want. We're not going back.What watching Trump for five years has taught me is just how weak so many of those I once saw as heroes really are. They've never looked so small as they do right now, never so petty as all of them cosplaying oppression just because they lost an election and can't face the humiliation. This is a public episode. 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“All you have to do, I tell myself, is keep your mouth shut and look stupid. It shouldn't be that hard.” - Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale.Last month, Margaret Hoover lobbed Hillary Clinton with sickeningly sweet softball questions for a lengthy interview about her new book. What book was it? Who knows, and who cares? Whatever it is, almost nothing in it will be the truth.When asked what advice she would give to the first woman president, Hillary paused — a pregnant pause that seemed to say, “Well, why can't it still be me?” as the audience laughed. Then, she said, “Don't be a Handmaiden for the patriarchy,” like all the women on the Right.But she's wrong. Republican women aren't the Handmaids. On the contrary, they've put the so-called “feminists” to shame. They aren't afraid of the fanatics on the Left who tried to force all of us into compliance. They have spoken out without mincing words about scientific and biological reality.Most importantly, they have been the only women in government willing to stare down the cult that seeks to erase women. Not a single Democrat has that kind of courage, male or female. But it's those who call themselves “feminists” who have been exposed as cowards and frauds. They are the real Handmaids.I didn't use to think so. I thought Hillary Clinton fought for the rights of women and girls. That's how she sold herself, anyway, and liberal women like me bought the lie. I even downloaded an audio copy of The Handmaid's Tale, thinking it would resonate with me as part of the “resistance.”But as the story unfolded, a chill went down my spine. It didn't remind me of the Right. It reminded me of the Left, everything that had happened to us after Trump won the first time, and how quickly mass hysteria consumed us and how obedient we all became in the wake of it.As if to prove my point, I knew I could not tell my friends we were the side living the Handmaid's Tale. As I began to pull away from my fellow comrades on the Left and directly challenge the new rules of the Woke, I thought some women who called themselves leaders would rise up and speak out. They never did.When I realized that the transgender social contagion had captured a generation of young girls and boys, and how so many of them were waking up to what happened to them at the hands of professionals, therapists, clinicians, and experts, I waited for strong female leaders to stand up for them, to protect them. They never did.When the fanatics on the Left rewrote the rules of biological reality, like there is no difference between men and women, that “trans women are women,” whether they're competing in sports, Jeopardy, or Chess. I thought the strong female leaders who fought so hard for Title IX would speak up and fight for women and girls to compete fairly. They never did.Hillary Clinton's silence on these fundamental rights to protect women and children has been deafening. Even though her history will be written by pandering sycophants like I used to be, who will never call her out for her silence and complicity, some of us will never forget.She and the other “feminists” leave quite a legacy. A whole generation of young women raised to sell themselves out, women like Olympic athlete Simone Biles, who exposed herself as a Handmaid on X by attacking Riley Gaines in a deeply personal way, calling her a “sore loser.”But imagine if Biles had to compete against biological men. Would she stand by and say nothing? Would she chant “trans women are women”?The real fight for women's rights, and the rights of children, has exposed the so-called feminists like Hillary Clinton, Jane Fonda, Gloria Steinem, and every female Democrat in Congress as too weak and ineffectual ever to be real leaders.They've turned a blind eye to stories of girls being forced to share a dorm with a man pretending to be a woman whose visible erection gave him away. They said nothing when a sex offender infiltrated the Wi Spa in Los Angeles and exposed himself to little girls and women, with protesters outside chanting Trans Women are Women.The Democrats haven't just gone along with it; they've gaslighted and shamed any Republican who dares to try to end the madness. They work hard every day to make sure young girls are told they do not have the right to speak up for their own protection, for fairness in sports, because it will ruin their lives if they do.Handmaids don't speak out. They can't. Handmaids do as they're told. Handmaids live in fear. Handmaids bow to their authoritarian leader. That's not the women on the Right, Hillary, that's you.Whatever the feminist movement used to be, it's been hijacked by approval-seeking narcissists who cling to abortion as the only act of empowerment they have left. They do not realize that all that does is further erode the rights of women. If babies don't matter, then mothers don't matter. If mothers don't matter, civilization collapses.The first thing cults do is separate children from their mothers. It's easy to see why. If you break that bond, they can be more easily controlled—both the women and the children.Like Hillary Clinton, Simone Biles might not know what Riley Gaines has suffered when she was trapped in a classroom and held hostage as activists surrounded her, screamed at her, and mocked her fear—all of giving a speech.Instead, Biles and the rest of the Handmaids of the Left have basked in the adoration bestowed upon them by the cult that rewards them for their obedience.But because of their “don't ask, don't tell” strategy of dealing with a problem they can't solve, it's been left up to a growing chorus of voices speaking out - loudly, boldly, and without fear.What does Hillary think that Trump, the man she called a rapist and a misogynist did what she never could, that he signed an Executive Order to protect women in sports.What does she think about his proclamation that it's time to end the madness of “gender-affirming care?” Does it bother her that a man has done the dirty work? Who knows, no one will ever ask her that question. She exists in her own insular bubble, a padded cell that keeps the hard questions out.But the man she insists we should all fear is the one who helped rescue women and children from the clutches of fanaticism.It Takes a Village to De-Trans AmericaThe list of those who have stuck their necks out includes women and men from all backgrounds, on the Left and the Right. Megyn Kelly has become a singular force in the movement. As her media empire has grown, so has her voice. Her videos are seen by millions every day. The story of how this war was won cannot be told without her.The women of the Right that Hillary Clinton smeared deserve much credit, too, for staring down the cult and using their power in Congress to give victims a platform.Many women who still consider themselves Democrats are out there fighting, uniting with Republicans to pass legislation, like Jamie Reed, a former gender clinician who now goes state to state, ensuring bills protecting children from “gender affirming care” are passed.Those the Left shunned and exiled for speaking inconvenient truths are also out there fighting, like Jennifer Sey, who has launched a clothing company called XX-YY Athletics, which celebrates female athletes and points out the differences between the sexes.Here is their latest ad.And then there are the parents who are mad as hell and aren't going to take it anymore.Outspoken Detransitioners like Chloe Cole and Prisha Mosley have given a face to the destructive effects of social contagion.There are even many in the gay and trans communities who understand cultists have hijacked their movement, and many of them are out there fighting too./// This is a public episode. 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I wasn't sure I'd be able to finish the Jake Tapper/Alex Thompson book, Original Sin. I downloaded the audiobook, narrated by Tapper, to listen to as I drive across the country from California to Ohio to see my daughter for her birthday. Out my window, I see the same running commentary of the real America I witnessed years ago, which changed my mind about Trump and MAGA. When you see Trump's name arising in unexpected places in nearly every state, from Arizona (“Viva Trump”) to Nebraska to Iowa to New York, you know something significant has shifted in this country.It felt like a secret cry for help among forgotten and abandoned Americans. I see it even now:I was not encouraged by the book's first chapter, which describes a world where the Democratic Party isn't corrupt, where they don't hand-pick candidates and then force everyone to “Vote Blue No Matter Who,” where identity politics don't rule the day, and where the democratic process is allowed to play out. What a load of garbage. To quote Deep Throat in All the President's Men, “Oh, but it's touching.” Just imagine Gavin Newsom attempting to challenge Kamala Harris. She might be the world's worst candidate, but all points lead back to her; you have to start there, whether they had a primary or not. They knew that, which is why they skipped the foreplay and went straight to a first-ever installed candidate for president. So I didn't think listening to an entire audiobook shaped by a false premise and awash in false media narratives would be a good use of my time. Maybe I'd listen to, I don't know, the new Mark Twain biography.As Victor Davis Hanson points out, Jake Tapper is an unreliable narrator because there would be no Biden cover-up if the media had done its job:Had Original Sin been written by Tom Wolfe, Gore Vidal, or even Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi, it would have been the searing indictment of a deep state plot foiled by Mr. McGoo, told with bemused irony. But it is dead serious, for better or worse.But I must say, in the end, I'm glad I stuck with it. It might not be the definitive account of the rise and fall of a once-mighty empire I would have wanted, but it is a surprisingly revealing look behind the curtain all the same.Could it really be that Jeffrey Katzenberg and Steven Spielberg were brought in to “direct” Joe Biden with better light, sound, and acting coaching? Yes. Could it be that Rob Reiner and Jane Fonda broke down in hysterics at some mansion in the Hollywood Hills after the debate? Yes. If the aim was to scapegoat Joe Biden, they failed. He comes off as the most sympathetic, a victim of a massive machine of creeps that chewed him up and spit him out. Do they legitimately believe we would sympathize with some fat cat in Hollywood who threatens never to write another check unless they push Biden out? We're supposed to care about what the donors think? Tapper seems to have emerged from the grim experience with a bit of a perspective shift. At least now, he's able to talk about the problems the Democrats have in a way he hasn't in the past ten years. The value of Original Sin, at least for someone like me who fled the party in disgust in 2020 after watching them use their power to take our elections away from the people and decide their outcome, isn't so much that there are any new revelations. But it's a book written from the inside, with access to over 200 voices anxious to be heard. That meant following the events as they unfolded in real time, and let me tell you, there is pleasure in that. I found it cathartic, not just because the Democrats had it coming, and got everything they deserved, but for the sheer joy of witnessing the most most powerful people in the world have their asses handed to them by the very democracy they claimed they wanted to protect. That George Clooney, Steven Spielberg, and Jeffrey Katzenberg were so heavily involved in the politics of the Democrats makes it all look like the Wizard of Oz, pulling back the curtain and exposing the ugly truth. Hollywood might make this into a series for HBO or Netflix, but since the co-founder and chairman of Netflix, Reed Hastings, was one of the fat cats who threatened to withhold funds unless the Democrats got rid of Biden, I'm guessing we won't get the whole story. But if they wanted to tell it like it really happened, it would make one hell of a tale.The Story That Writes ItselfHollywood doesn't have the guts to tell the whole story. They can't because they're part of it. They're way too cozy with the Democrats, and if they really wanted to tell the truth, they'd have to admit, as with Michael Corleone, they are part of the same hypocrisy. At best, they could cobble together something that paints Trump as the ultimate evil that vain and selfish Joe and Jill Biden allowed to take back power. The real story is how they built a powerful coalition and had no choice but to turn to corruption to preserve that power. This would make a great long-form series.Episode One—The “hope and change” candidate lights up the world and chooses an “old white guy” to be his Veep, just as JFK did with LBJ, a cynical ploy to make his youth and inexperience (and, in this case, skin color) more palatable for a nervous electorate. Episode Two - The “hope and change” guy doesn't like the “old white guy” as the successor of his powerful coalition, which now includes all of culture, all corporations, all institutions, all media, and all social media. Why go backwards? The “old white guy” with a stutter who just lost his beloved son to brain cancer was no longer useful to the “hope and change” guy. No one thinks much of it as he's kicked to the curb and embarrassed as not electable enough, not desirable enough, and past his sell-by date. So, the “hope and change” guy picks the “Wall Street Sweetheart,” the former First Lady and Secretary of State, to become the “first woman POTUS.” With the help of a grassroots populist movement and an “Old Socialist” challenging the “Wall Street Sweetheart,” the party is fractured, and Trump wins. Episode Three - The establishment and the Obama coalition decide that Trump should not be allowed to rule, forget democracy! Who needs it? No “old white guy” was supposed to win, least of all that guy. Millions pour into the streets in an orgy of self pity, imagined oppression, fragility, privilege and narcissism — mass hysteria takes hold, cancel culture grips the left. Hundreds lose their jobs as they desperately try to undo the election results and get rid of Trump. They impeach him, they frame him, they smear him, they attack him. The OG “old white guy” waiting in the wings isn't looking so bad. An easy, lateral move. An establishment pick. One “old white guy” for another.Episode Four - 2020 is its own whole episode. It has to be. It was the year the Democrats sold their souls to the Devil to cling to power. They spent $1 billion with a “well-funded cabal” of elites to fund and amplify the racial protests, change election laws, $400 million to collect ballots, and trot in experts to lie about everything from the laptop to COVID to the protests. They censored Americans on social media, and the FBI forced censorship of the laptop. The country sinks. Media credibility is destroyed. Large swaths of the electorate abandon the Democrats. But the “old white guy” wins. So finally, he gets his dream at long last, to be president of the United States. Episode Five - The “old white guy” is finally the savior he always dreamed he'd be. He became a blank check for Black Americans, trans Americans, and especially women of color. He would finish what the “hope and change” guy started. Are we topless at the White House?But the “old white guy” bungles the withdrawal from Afghanistan, and his approval ratings tank. Americans don't see a nice old grandpa anymore. They see George Spahn, who just moved the Manson Family into the White House, and now they're running the country.Now what? He goes after Trump and MAGA, calling them fascists, extremists, and a danger to society. If the “old white guy” can't have the presidency, then no one will.The “old white guy” isn't so nice anymore. Trump is indicted four times, convicted, and takes a mug shot that goes viral. They've sold their soul to the Devil, after all, they're not going to give up power so easily. Episode Six - The final battle. Trump teases and torments the “old white guy” and forces him to debate. Trump mocks him mercilessly at his rallies for not knowing where he is. For Trump, beating him will be a cake walk for anyone not sucked into the false reality pushed by the legacy media.Trump and Biden debate rematch. The “old white guy” crashes and burns so hard it nearly sets Rob Reiner's hair on fire. “He just lost the election,” Dana Bash scribbles on a note to Jake Tapper. What now for the empire that was never the resistance?Trump survives an assassination attempt at Butler the following month. His entire campaign is transformed. Elon Musk joins his dream team. This was our last best hope for America. We wanted out. We wanted something new. We wanted to be set free:But inside the Bubble, it's Original Sin. It's denial. It's a legacy press that lies to the monarchs, lies to their voters, sending them cascading into yet more hysteria. Please make the bad orange man go away! For the sake of democracy! Please give us our utopia back! Jane Fonda, Steven Spielberg, Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, David Simon, Jon Stewart, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, and Rob Reiner are losing their minds. It's a dystopia full of aging, frustrated aristocrats who can't keep democracy down. We're about to lose our democracy, they cry. Biden will lose us our democracy, they insist. How can this be happening? Get rid of the “old white guy.” GET RID OF HIM! For the sake of democracy! “We need a new nominee,” says George Clooney. Who's we? What happened to democracy? Now, the duly elected nominee, aka “the old white guy,” must step aside to save democracy? Yes, that is where the Democrats arrived in their pitiful last gasp to salvage and preserve their power. They cynically install the “woman of color” because they know all points lead to Kamala Harris. Their flock will fall in line as they always have. Push him out, push the “old white guy” out in a palace coup worthy of a fading, useless, self-serving monarchy on the brink of collapse. Trump wins again. We see the “old white guy” grinning in the oval office and having the last laugh. They used him. They lied to him. They flattered him. Then, they kicked him out, all because they were exposed and couldn't hide the truth anymore.As the scene fades to black, we see a close-up on Jake Tapper lying in bed, working it all out. Holy s**t, he thinks. Someone has to tell this story. He picks up the phone, “Alex? Hi, it's Jake. I was wondering if we might talk.” I mean, come on. It's Ishtar Part Two. It writes itself.Do I think you should read Original Sin? Absolutely. It might not be the whole truth. It might be spin for the Democrats to regroup and recover. It might be reputation laundering for the media. But for me, it was an early Christmas present, if only for the delicious pleasure of watching them squirm as their corrupt plot to cling to power unravels. I can't think of anything more satisfying than that. Original Sin proves two things: the Democrats are creeps and they got exactly what they deserved.Somewhere in Iowa, 8pm.// This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe

Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson writing an exposé of the conspiracy and cover-up to hide Joe Biden's cognitive decline is like the Watergate burglars writing a book about Nixon's alleged corruption. The conspiracy and cover-up are coming from inside the house.“A cancer on the Presidency”To most of us who aren't inside the bubble of the Left, the Tapper/Thompson book looks more like a rescue mission than a Mea Culpa. They have a book to sell, and they know who their best and most profitable buyers are - people who read the New Yorker with disposable income who have thrown money at the Democrats for almost a decade, all with the promise that they'd make the bad orange man go away.What I know after a decade of irresponsible fear-mongering is that the “original sin” was the moment the Left, with all of the power, called itself “the resistance,” and with the help of a complicit press corps, went to war on a duly elected president and his supporters.Everything that came after that, up to and including Biden's decision to run, was the result of a ruling class that refused to relinquish power, did not respect the voices of the people, and used everything in the kingdom to systematically dehumanize, demonize, and exile the other half of the country, or anyone who did not go along with them.As part of the resistance after the 2016 election, I should have seen who Trump really was — the guy on Celebrity Apprentice, the real estate playboy we all knew from the 1980s. But in our collective fever dream, we thought he'd somehow been captured and compromised by Putin, and had transformed into an evil fascist, racist, rapist dictator second only to Hitler.We drew a line. We were on this side, and anyone who voted for, was kind to, or associated with anyone on the other side was kicked out of utopia. We owned everything, so we could raise the drawbridge and forget about everyone else. We cultivated a dystopian fear bunker that policed thought and speech and strictly forbade any truth-telling lest it hurt the Democrats and helped Trump.That's all they had left because everything else had failed. So, when a crazed lunatic surfer dude believed he was “saving democracy,” he picked up a gun and tried to shoot Trump. That was proof enough of the damage caused by the once-respected legacy press, and it was their “original sin.”And even after that, a freaked-out, unhinged group of people on TikTok actively call for the assassination of Trump with their “when it happens” and “somebody just do it,” memes.So when James Comey posts a photo of a message in the sand to “86” the 47th president, it takes on a different meaning than just a funny joke. He was, after all, the FBI director, and whatever happened with that other shooter in Butler?Their “original sin” has divided us, polarized us, and worst of all, betrayed our trust far worse than not reporting on the Biden story. Lying about Trump was worse. Making him a supernatural receptacle of all the evil in the world was worse.They're still out there doing it now - like Lawrence O'Donnell, Tim Miller, Rick Wilson, Rachel Maddow — All the President's Media perpetuating the kind of groupthink via deception that got them into this mess.Ten years of pumping hysteria into the veins of Americans, and what do they have to show for it? Nothing. Selling fear worked for a while, until it didn't. After ten years of it, with a new generation coming of age that wasn't plugged into cable news or the legacy media, Americans went looking for normalcy that they somehow found in Donald Trump.All anyone had to do was what I did, and what so many other people did: take a look for ourselves at Trump and MAGA. Once we did that, we'd never trust the media ever again.Follow the MoneyThe reason the excerpt in the New Yorker is about George Clooney is for their target audience. Who else would care? Frontloaded with Clooney's journey to Sudan and subsequent charity work seems designed to signal to the reader that the fate of the Democratic Party wasn't up to some actor past his prime. No, he was important. And for a time, he was.Nothing illustrates the disconnect of today's Democratic Party better than the fundraiser in LA that “shook Clooney to his core” because Joe Biden didn't recognize him. All that money, all that power, all that celebrity, was exactly the wrong message to sell to a beleaguered working class sick of the sight of them.His house in the South of France, his “big movie” for Netflix, his phone call to Julia, and his brush with politics all explain his New York Times op-ed that forced Joe Biden out and put Kamala Harris in. Clooney said that Biden “saved democracy” in 2020 and could save it again by stepping aside.Imagine that kind of hubris to believe Joe Biden had the power to save Democracy and that somewhere deep inside, George Clooney believed he could save it too. What they mean is to save their empire, to preserve their power. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe

Whatever it is we did to kids that started around 2013 has led to whole generations of freaked-out, delusional cult members who can barely function now when things don't go their way. There is no turning it around. There is no changing what so many of them believe.This militant army worked well for the Democrats, but I do wonder if any of them looked at Kenosha or Portland and thought, What have we done?Because so many adults were too afraid to confront the problem until the problem grew up and joined the workforce, that power is out now, and it is destroying the Democratic Party, not to mention everything else the Left controls, faster than you can say Holy Woketopia Batman.That fear that has crippled all of them surprised me. I didn't know so many would be so willing to conform, stay quiet, say nothing, or join the mob and pick up a stone. I don't know, I guess I thought there would be more like me, people willing to stand up and push back.Lionel Shriver talks about this personality type while on a recent episode of the Triggernometry podcast.Speaking of mania, I'll never forget how a film critic named Sean O'Connell once wrote a film review about Pixar's Turning Red. He didn't particularly like the movie because he wrote from his perspective (normie white dude). The attacks came fast and hard, from young Asian girls who had begged for representation in movies, to the scolds on Twitter. Then came the agonizing op-eds. By the end, he didn't lose his job, but he almost did. He had to apologize and take down the review.It went all the way to this:Even after his apology, the tweets that flooded in continued to punish him for not liking what is (not a very good movie in the first place) about a 12-year-old girl getting her period. He was being honest, as film critics are supposed to do, but not anymore.They even escalated it and asked him to name names:Sean O'Connell should have stood up to them. He should have done what I did every time they came for me. You turn around and you flip them the double bird. It isn't that hard. Yes, you will lose almost everything, but in return, you will gain your self-respect.If they can't even tell the truth in a film review back 2022, how can they possibly fix what is wrong with any of it, from Hollywood to the Democratic Party?Send in the DudebrosIt's obvious to everyone that Democrats are repelling men. All men. Young men, old men, Black and Hispanic men. They've decided the reason for that is the “woke crap” that many can't stand but will never admit out loud.They say they've gotten the message. Now, they figure they don't have to do much, like offer the public a way out of the madness that has afflicted their party, and thus, all of the cultural, corporate, and educational institutions they control.No, it's a messaging problem, not a policy problem. They only have to dispatch a few mascu-bros to get the talking points out that they hate the “woke crap” too but they still want to be good people and do the right thing, unlike the other half of the country who are bad people, and don't want to do the right thing.It's easy to spot the likely paid influencers on TikTok who almost look normal until they start parroting the talking points of the madness of the Left. And then, just like that, we're sucked back into the crazy.Oh, it isn't as bad as the women who dominate the party and TikTok. If I spend too much time surfing that algo, as I often do for research, I come out of it thinking, is that really what became of it all-thirty years of progressivism, feminism, and activism, and it ends with delusion and mania?Influencer Henry Sisson has emerged as a supposedly brotastic anti-woke Democrat on Piers Morgan.Then, there was David Hogg on Bill Maher, pretending it's possible to bring some sanity to the party so young men can “get laid and have fun.”Perhaps it is a good strategy. Just give those who can't stand the wokeness a reason not to worry about it anymore.Reactions like that might help them accomplish their goal of bringing people back to the party, especially men, but I doubt it. Matt Walsh is correct when he says they were never cool.Ultimately, their reality disconnect prevents them from ending their ongoing mass hysteria. Take this piece at Daily Kos (yes, it still exists, shockingly), by this person, note the pronouns in bio:She/Her writes:That March story about Enola Gay was part of an electronic preliminary pull that flagged certain words that might unearth woke content. That didn't mean Pete Hegseth banned it. As with the children's book by Julianne Moore, it was put in the “to be looked at” pile, but that didn't stop the headlines.If you see that many headlines hitting your feed and it's spread far and wide, and people you trust and admire, why wouldn't you believe it? And if they are being misled to that degree, how can they ever be expected to pull themselves out of it? And if they are not telling us the truth but just trying to hurt Trump, how can we trust them?After all that, they dumped him anyway. Lesson learned, eh, David?The Democrats have become so afraid of blowback that they have to try to get their message out anonymously. But do they ever ask themselves how we can address the needs of the people if we are that afraid of our own party?Recently, Mark Halperin spoke for them in an attempt to force the Democrats to the table to confront some of it.Why They're Stuck with itWokeness isn't a “fad,” like a tramp stamp tattoo you mature your way out of, then seek to remove. This goes deep, probably deeper than anyone ever knew back in 2012 and 2013 when the “whole of society” effort began unfolding in schools, in institutions, and online to gently introduce Critical Race Theory as a new way of seeing ourselves in the world. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe

“The last spectacular ball in the history of the empire ... [but] a new and hostile Russia glared through the large windows of the palace ... while we danced, the workers were striking and the clouds in the Far East were hanging dangerously low." - Grand Duke Alexander MikhailovitchThe theme of the Met Gala this year was Black Dandyism. In case you don't know what that is, The Met explains:Black Dandyism is cool and all as its authentic self. I'm not sure it maintained that coolness last night with “radical chic” on full display as a symbol of virtue for the powerful watching in real time as their empire comes crumbling down.You no doubt noticed the vibe shift. Something seemed off about it. It was like the Blue Origin flight. It felt inauthentic, all for show, a ritual to genuflect to their chosen status symbols while disguising who they really are.Not that they will be criticized by the people who matter to them. Those outlets that aren't owned by Donald Newhouse, the billionaire who owns Vogue and the New Yorker, worth around $18 billion, wouldn't dare say a word. Everyone is to applaud and praise them for their goodness and moral virtue.But as I watched the parade of famous Black artists walk the red carpet, alongside ashamed, self-hating white celebrities who looked like they'd been kidnapped and who couldn't wash away the fear in their eyes, I could see the man behind the curtain, or in this case, the woman.Who are they kidding? This was not power or progress, not for any of them. The Met Gala served the same purpose it always has: to make rich white people look good. How they measure what defines good is all that has changed.The white guilt among the wealthy in our modern Gilded Age is thick. They know something is ending. They can feel the ground shifting beneath their feet. Just as the very wealthy in the late 1800s did. They have no choice but to try to buy absolution by bribing the virtuous to be their facade.They have no choice. They know the mob would eat them alive if they didn't defer, de-center, elevate, platform, and do something to make their insular world seem like the good place, not the bad place. They have to be on the right side to survive a little bit longer, to hold their place in society, even as, especially as everything falls apart.They didn't call it “virtue signaling” during the Gilded Age. They called it Civic Virtue, which has a long history in America, going all the way back to the Revolution. It is one of the reasons we see so many of the big names from that era splashed across major institutions, like the Andrew Carnegie institution, etc.The billionaires alive today are all expected to give back to society in a way that justifies or absolves them of their sins. But something else entirely is going on with what we saw at the Met Gala and with Blue Origin. It wasn't Civic Virtue so much as virtue signaling.But it does seem strange in a year when Donald Trump and his MAGA Deplorables won the popular vote, where he is attempting major change to elevate the silent majority, to attend this spectacular ball and to send yet another message to America that you are not invited to this party because we think you are bad people, racists. So we'll celebrate in front of you. We'll rub it in as though we never lost the election at all.The wealthy aristocracy in our country has figured out that they need shields. They must hide behind people whom no one would dare attack or criticize. It is the reversal of the fanaticism that afflicted and ignited the mob when the streets were filled with protesters in the Summer of 2020.What we see now is their way of healing from the trauma of the agreed-upon reality that emerged that Summer. Most people don't remember how unprecedented this uprising really was. Remember chanting through the neighborhoods in Seattle?If you were cowering in your home as a Good White Liberal, what did you make of that? How much guilt did you feel? Their escape hatch for all of this madness we've been living through, a fake-pretend fix to oppression because Lulu Lemon and the Lifetime Network now center Black characters and de-center “whiteness.”I'll never forget my white friends in Santa Monica, of all places, hurling themselves in front of “Black bodies” because the cops were less likely to shoot them. They all believed this delusion, even in Santa Monica. But now, there is a reversal of that dynamic playing out. White people need Black people and other non-whites or LGTBQIA+ members to hide behind. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe

Kamala Harris might have many gifts, but intelligence is not one of them. How else to explain her speech, where she compared today's Left to a herd of protective elephants?Here is the clip:As with most of Kamala Harris' speeches, there was no there there. It was delusional gobbledegook that seemed to get really obvious things wrong, especially the way she ended the speech by saying this country doesn't belong to those in the White House but to “we the people.” Yeah, uh, what part of winning the popular vote is not “we the people,” Kamala?I thought of that line in The Big Lebowski:The Democrats have decided their leader should be Kamala Harris, and they set her loose, careless metaphors and all. What else can they do? Tell the truth? “Sorry, we tried to make Kamala Harris happen again. We already knew she was a tragically weak candidate who couldn't even win in her home state of California, and is mostly known for her extreme cringe and her viral word salad clips. But she's a woman of color, and white women will never vote for a normie white dude, so let's make Kamala Harris great again?”Granted, most people on the Left have become so disconnected from reality that they can't see the big picture anymore, but even still, if there is one thing we know about elephants other than that they are intelligent, empathetic creatures, it is that they, like all mammals, protect their young to ensure reproduction and survival.And of all animals to drag into this mess, why must it be elephants? This is a strange thing to be outraged about, but I love elephants. I love them like I love pigs. It isn't just that they are intelligent, although they are ranked number five on the list from How Stuff Works (pigs not far behind).I love their deep empathy because I have too much of it and can relate. I love how they remember those who protected and raised them, even decades later. I hate that they are hunted and butchered (just as I hate factory farming with pigs). I realize I must accept these realities, but it doesn't make it hurt any less.But mostly, like all mammals, elephants are known for being ferocious protectors of their young, so much so that the entire group is often involved in saving even one calf.You should see what a mother elephant would do to anyone who came near her baby with a surgical scalpel or dangerous, irreversible drugs to sterilize them for life.Do you think elephants would be casually aborting their children or allowing gender clinics to guide them toward irreversible harm to their bodies, all in the name of some imaginary mass delusion? Do you think elephants would divide people based on skin color and gender identity and deem those the most vulnerable?Elephants are matriarchal because the older female elephants have gathered enough knowledge to help guide and lead the herd through treacherous terrain. The males must leave when they become adolescents and form a herd with other males who teach them what they need to know.For the Left, they like the part where elephants form a herd of females and exile the males. They don't like the part where the most important thing to them is ensuring reproduction and survival.That's last thing they do on the Left now. They seem to be actively trying to extinct themselves, whether it's buckling to a dangerous cult that sterilizes the young, or encouraging abortions to the tune of one million per year.Those who have paid the highest price for this are the children whose mothers can't protect them because they are cowards, not like mother elephants, that's for sure. Fathers, too. They've been castrated metaphorically and literally. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”―George Orwell,1984It isn't that one crazy, alleged animal-abusing Democrat who just introduced articles of impeachment against Trump who will define Resistance 2.0.It's the more serious threat that looms ahead should the Democrats take the House next year.Steve Bannon has become the harbinger. He predicted it in 2018, and he's predicting it now.He's right. They have no other plan for America, not in the four years Trump was in power the first time, not for Biden's four years, and not now. They have one directive: to purge Trump and MAGA from utopia.It's beginning to look a lot like 2016, only this time I'm watching from the other side of the door. I escaped, but only just barely. I sometimes look back at who I was then and scratch my head. How could I have been that easily manipulated? How could I have believed them?I believed it all. I read every book on Putin. I hung on every word that came out of Rachel Maddow's mouth. I believed the New York Times had our best interests at heart. I could not believe or even imagine that the people I trusted would eventually expose themselves as weaponized, partisan propaganda machines.I try to connect with the Democratic centrist I used to be because that is still where most of my friends and family are, not to mention all of American culture and most institutions. They live in a completely separate reality, and I live in this one.The only comparison I can make takes us back to just before the last Civil War. One reality not only justified slavery but also existed inside a utopian Antebellum paradise of Southern Belles and wealthy plantations, but also believed ending slavery was an existential crisis they could not survive. How else to convince so many to go fight and die for a cause?The pre-war propaganda whipped both sides into a frenzy that would eventually take them to war. From War History Online:In the decade prior to the Civil War, the American press began flourishing and evolved rapidly in terms of technology, output, and distribution. Meanwhile, the number of newspapers expanded and a new style of weekly pictorial publications filled with comics and illustrations became popular and widespread in northern and southern states.This mass distribution of picture-based media was eagerly and voraciously consumed by the American public. It also proved ideal for distributing and disseminating propaganda and successfully pushed divisive ideologies from both sides of the divide.Sound familiar?When the Union Army won the war, however, their utopian paradise in the South was upended, which kicked off episodes of mass hysteria that would eventually lead to Jim Crow laws, the KKK, segregation, and worse.It's easy, especially for the modern-day Left, to see those crimes against humanity as a disease that lives inside of white people, the sin of racism, a war they believe they're still fighting today.The side that suddenly had all of the wealth and power after the rise of Silicon Valley and the marriage between the Obama coalition and culture was lacking only one thing: spiritual reliefI was part of it. I was a “woke” blogger, though we did not use that word then, and many don't dare use it now. What mattered to me was elevating non-whites and other marginalized groups in the film industry. That gave me, a white woman, a sense of purpose, a deeper meaning for my work and my life, something I'd never felt before.But to be “woke” as translated for white people means believing you share your country and your culture with racists afflicted with “white fragility.” At first, it was an idea that spread, but by 2020, it was mandated.It makes sense when you consider our country expanding onto the new frontier of the internet, where the free market, cities, towns, and demographic groups mattered less than this giant swirling soup of humanity we suddenly had to make sense of. What better way than to divide us up into easily recognizable categories?2016 was, to all of us, a sign that the Confederacy had returned, especially since Trump was now a prominent figure on Twitter, just like Obama had been. We saw his win as an act of war. We were to obstruct, block, shun, attack, or resist. He was not to be allowed to govern, which would ensure his destruction, or so we thought.What we didn't do, however, was listen to the voters. They were invisible to us because we wrote them off as angry white deplorables clinging to their guns and religion. They don't deserve representation. No, it wasn't we who failed. It was Trump who invaded us and is now oppressing us.We couldn't see things any other way. Because we were the “good” side and those people over there had to be the “bad side.” The nation's first Black president, we believed, was hated by white Americans, and now, they were coming to dismantle his legacy, our utopia, and Make America White Again. They still believe that. It is existential to them, which explains the ongoing need to purge their utopia of threatening people.Those same realities that decided who got to stay and who had to go also existed in George Orwell's 1984. What is “cancel culture” anyway, but virtual gulags?Anyone who didn't agree with the reversed hierarchy was out. You couldn't just go along with it; you had to believe it. You had to love Big Brother.Orwell had it so right when he wrote in that last paragraph, “He was in the public dock, confessing everything, implicating everybody.”I could feel it, the mass dehumanization. It didn't sit right with me. I was disgusted by how my side was behaving, but it wasn't until I walked in the shoes of Trump supporters that I knew for sure that this really was a Civil War.No, Trump supporters were not getting lynched or put in concentration camps or a gulag. But the mechanisms at play are the same. I've never seen people in America feel emboldened to attack another group this way, but no doubt it has happened many times throughout our history.To justify that they are the “good” side, they must continue to find victims of oppression based on skin color or gender identity. They don't seem to care that much about the hollowed-out, torn-down neighborhoods in the middle of the country, where people of all skin colors are suffering. No, it has to be those who come from other countries, helpless and faceless, defined only by one thing: the color of their skin. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe

The rage and hysteria are escalating. They're openly calling for Trump's assassination.They're marching, they're protesting, they're screaming into the void for what, they don't know. Something has been taken from them, something they desperately want back. It's been ten long years of fighting, but nothing has worked. There is no way out for them. They're trapped.If you talk to one of them, they will tell you they believe things that aren't true. Trump is taking away Social Security and Medicaid. They've eliminated the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. They've eliminated the Department of Education. They're “disappearing” people from the streets and sending them to concentration camps.The truth doesn't seem to matter and hasn't for a long time now. Hyperbole is all because they have nothing left to sell, no vision for America's future. Who would they be if they weren't the people hunting Donald Trump? They do not know. They've destroyed themselves trying to destroy him.The headlines fed to them supercharge their rage. These are mostly educated white women in real life, but in their fantastical imaginings of their cosplay resistance, they are warrior protectors of every oppressed group. It's all coming true. Doomsday is here.They don't like the word “hysteria” because it hearkens back to the dark ages when women's mental health issues were mislabeled that way. It's the word. It's always the word. They felt like no one could hear them scream. Out of that eternal frustration came the feminist movement, a movement now dead in its tracks.It's the word “hysteria,” like the word “woke,” like the word “illegal,” like the word woman like the word “homeless,” like the word “fat.” Change the word, change reality.These white women can't be feminists anymore because that makes them “white feminists” or “Karens.” They hate those words too. They must always defer, apologize, step back, de-center themselves, and elevate women of color who matter more. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe

I have known Joseph Massey For quite some time now, we have always wanted to do an interview, but we never made it happen for one reason or another. Now, after we collaborated on a video (see below) and he's written a brand new book that has shot to the top of the charts at Amazon, thanks to an appearance on Megyn Kelly's show, we thought it was a good time to have a deep conversation about everything from his faith, to his poetry and of course, to the craziness of the Left and cancel culture.We will be giving away five free copies of America is the Poem. Joseph will select interested participants from the comments. Please leave a comment if you'd like to be considered. I will contact the winners for addresses.Have a listen to the podcast above, and here is a link to the book on Amazon:America is the Poem video, Joseph and I collaborated on together:Joseph's appearance on Megyn Kelly's show:A sampling of photos of Massey's work, but you can find more at his Instagram.For more or to subscribe to Joseph's Substack, click here: Joseph Massey Hope you enjoy our conversation, and let me know if you'd like to hear more interviews from me. I hope to post one more thing for Easter Weekend, but otherwise, please enjoy the holiday, and for those celebrating Passover too. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe

The Wall Street Journal has dropped a hit piece on Elon Musk. Their headline suggests Elon Musk is farming out his seed and growing crops for a super-intelligent generation to colonize Mars in the near future. That's the story they wish to tell, and it's the story Ashley St Clair is grateful they will tell it. After all, the only thing she seems to want out of this is to be “not a secret.”The story is behind the paywall and I am not that invested to pay for this and other hysterical bleating from Rupert Murdoch's high-minded Conservative outlet. I was a subscriber for many years but lately, I'm not finding much difference there from everywhere else — it's an endless war on Trump. We get it. You don't like him. We get it. You don't like Elon, either.Instead, I'll draw from this piece from The Independent:St Clair, 26, went public with her claims that she and Musk share a child in February. Now she has claimed that the billionaire offered her a one-time payment of $15 million, plus $100,000 a month until her child turns 21, in exchange for her silence.Well, that probably explains Amber Heard's move to Spain and her mystery baby delivered via surrogacy. As long as she never says Elon Musk fathered it, she can live out her life with money and privacy, plus a baby she always wanted (she did not want Elon).Heard was scorched earth anyway by the time she moved to Spain. Maybe this was the cash infusion that got her there and allowed her to live out her days in comfort caring for her baby girl. Here is a picture of the two of them:Heard, like St Clair, went into this with her eyes open. Unlike Sinclair, and not needing a bounce of fame, Heard (maybe) took the money and ran.By contrast, St Clair seems to very much want everyone to know who fathered her baby, and why wouldn't she? In a time of influencer culture, what could be a better narrative than Mean Old Elon flew her somewhere exotic, filling her head with pretty little lies, and then filling her womb with sperm, whereupon a baby was made?Where did that baby come from? It came from you, Ashley. That's what happens when you spread your legs for Daddy. Take note.To pretend she had no idea this was where the whole thing would end up is absurd. She knew he wanted to father a child with her. She didn't know that no one would ever know about it and what good is sleeping with, much less having a baby with the richest and arguably second most famous man in the world if nobody knows about it.Good for her she came of age in a culture of victimhood. Everyone is a victim, especially grown women, didn't you know? As yet another single mother with a mystery baby, she is a nobody. As one of Elon's baby mamas, however, she can now become a somebody, a superstar of her wildest dreams. Maybe that's right, maybe it isn't, but money is nothing compared to fame, unless you're Amber Heard.St Clair acts like she just gave birth to the b*****d child of King Henry XIII and is fighting for him to be recognized as a royal. And now, has cast herself as the brave martyr, the poor peasant girl the King commanded to lay back and take it. She rejected the offer. “I don't want my son to feel like he's a secret,” St Clair reportedly told Musk's fixer Jared Birchall, who runs Musk's family office.And:St Clair claimed that Musk has used his wealth to silence some of the other women who have had his children, according to the report.And:St Clair gained an insight into Musk's “paranoid” way of thinking when they dated in 2023 after meeting in the spring of that year. Their romance began on Musk's social media platform X after he began to interact with her posts.She was invited by Musk to visit X's headquarters in San Francisco. From there, he took her on a separate trip to Rhode Island on his private plane, where the Space X CEO was visiting one of his sons at college, and then later on a getaway to St. Barts for New Year.During their time together, Musk frequently talked to St Clair about having children, she claimed. “The first time they had sex, Musk joked that they should ‘pick a name' for their future child,” the outlet reports.On the trip to St. Barts, she told Musk that she was ovulating. “What are we waiting for?” he reportedly replied, and their son was conceived, according to St Clair.I'm less interested in the part of the story where Elon Musk wants to populate to colonize Mars with his version of a super-intelligent offspring, or as the Left will very likely dub it, a “master race.” The part of the story I am interested in is the idea that Ashley St Clair, or any woman who spreads her legs for Elon or allows his sperm to be injected into her, is, in any way, a victim.Ashley St Clair knew exactly what she was involving herself in, but she could not stop herself because almost no young woman could. Many young women go through the ritual of pretending to fall in love with a rich old dude so they can then get pregnant and be financially taken care of for the rest of their lives. Everybody knows that. Get that honey, or else no money is the new get that ice, or else no dice. Ashley apparently thought she was Cinderella, that she'd get the fairy tale. Most women want that too. They want the romance. They want the wealth. They want a good father. They want the faithful man. They want a happy ending. They also want to be empowered. They want a man who will listen to them and hang on every word. They want a man who will be attracted to only them for the rest of their lives. They want a country that remains attracted to old women, fat women, and women who are not traditionally pretty. They want it all because they have been told they deserve it all, because they're “worth it.”Well, you can't have it all. If Ashley St Clair wanted a husband and a father for her child, the last person she would so willingly sleep with is Elon Musk, who made no secret of telling her yes, I would love to impregnate you.” But no, I'm not exactly looking for a commitment. What did she expect? He would abandon everything, rush by her side, marry her, and they could, oh, I don't know, go live happily in a SpaceX Tiny House?Fanatical activists are out there calling him a Nazi, fire-bombing Teslas, and trying to destroy his businesses, and here's Ashley whining, WAAAA, pay attention to ME!! That's not to say anyone should approve of plugging willing women in order to produce as many children as possible. But the FLDS does it too, minus the sex with underage children part. That's AmoreI speak from experience. I went to Italy to meet a man I fell in love with on the internet. I spent a month there. I came back pregnant. He was furious. He did not want me to have the baby, like every man who engages in casual sex except Elon Musk. Trust me, the used part is not “have a baby with me, and I'll pay you $15 million to keep it under wraps.” The used part is, “Let's have fun, and if you get pregnant, you'll abort the baby, right?” Would I have loved a real relationship and a real marriage with a happy home and lots of kids? Yes, of course. I wanted the fairy tale, too. But the whining by Ashley St Clair and the pearl-clutching by both the Left and the Right of what these women have CHOSEN to do with their bodies is nauseating. They are not children. They are not Handmaids. They are not victims. Ashley St Clair all but begged him, “Impregnate me Elon!!” And we're supposed to feel sorry for her now?The truth? She wants control of all of it. She wants the lavish lifestyle and to be known as the woman Elon Musk plucked off the internet to father his super-intelligent Mars space force. She was so pretty and so smart he chose her! What else is she going to be? How do you keep that a secret for 20 years? She didn't make that choice for her kid. She made it for herself. Own it, Ashley. And to Conservatives glomming onto this, I will quote an email I just received from the Daily Caller's Editor At Large, Geoffrey Ingersoll:It's for that outcry on the right to become so loud that Trump simply has to part ways with Musk. As far as motivations go, this much could barely be described as ulterior. Onlookers in public can see the real goal.I supported my daughter on my own. I worked jobs that I could do either with her in a backpack (sports photography), sleeping on my chest (movie critic), working from home (horoscope writer) or in a stroller nearby (working as a janitor). Eventually, I built my own business, which was successful enough that we would be fine—a “woman-owned” business everyone on the Left approved of until they found out I voted for Trump.But I don't regret that decision, just as I don't regret flying off to Italy and getting pregnant. Raising my daughter has been the best thing I have ever done, and there is no close second. But it was my decision. Just like it was my bad decision not to have babies I could have had. I wish I could blame feminism or the men who got me pregnant, but I have only myself to blame. And I live with that regret every day of my life.Do I feel sorry for the kids involved because they don't have a father around, and is that good role modeling for men? Sure, I feel bad for them. No, it's not good role modeling for men. Like my daughter, every kid deserves that. I'll never forget when she was dressed up for prom and came out to show me how pretty she looked, and how much it hurt my heart that no father was around to tell her.She's the one who paid the price for MY DECISIONS, just like Ashley's child will pay for hers, for better or worse, but honestly, you could do a lot worse than $15 million plus $2 million more. Take it from someone who once had to scrounge for change because the Tooth Fairy arrived one night unexpectedly, and I had no money to put under her pillow. No one offered me a payout, that's for sure. But it didn't matter how broke we were. That's the thing about parenting: you make it work. You aren't born a parent; you become one. Take responsibility for your own decisions, Ashley. You will need a good explanation when your child gets older, and you have to explain to him why he's so famous now.//end This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe

I listened with an open mind to this illuminating interview between Bari Weiss at the Free Press and Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen, two of the founders of Axios, about how the public lost trust in the media.As we watch them scramble to explain why they covered up Joe Biden's cognitive decline, what we see instead of an apology is an excuse.There has never been any real reckoning of what happened to them after Trump won in 2016, all through his first term, especially in 2020, when they lost much of the public's trust for good.The legacy media took a side, but worse, they positioned themselves as superior to the other side, which meant that not only weren't they chasing the story, but they weren't paying attention to those who were.The Biden/Trump debate was Toto pulling back the curtain and exposing the Wizard of Oz. There was not much they could do after that. The jig was up.It didn't break news for anyone who got their news outside the bubble, however. There, the media is endlessly mocked for its pandering, weakness, and propaganda.How it StartedHow it's going:The opening paragraphs:The collective post-debate gloating from conservatives is in full swing this week, as Democrats reckon with the ongoing political fallout. But the immediate response on the right has focused less on the fact of Biden's potential mental decline than on alleging that Democrats and the mainstream press colluded to hide it.That's the kinder, gentler explanation. The alternative is that they are SO BAD at their jobs, such terrible reporters, so in the tank for one political party that they couldn't see what was right in front of them for four years. Pick one.It's hard to sympathize when so many of us were left twisting in the wind, dealing with major issues in American life, from COVID to the protests to lockdowns to the woke madness in our schools. We needed a legacy press that would tell us the truth, not do the bidding of one political party.True, they could have lost their jobs for it. That happened everywhere. Reporters lost their jobs for a headline, “Buildings Matter Too.” Donald McNeil lost his job at the New York Times because some overly fragile brat tattled on him and accused him of being a racist. But so what? Someone had to stand up for objectivity and journalism, didn't they?What Happened to MeThe mania around race and racism was on a low simmer after Trump won the first time. Cancel culture was in full swing. We'd already gone through the first wave of a mass hysteria episode around the Me Too movement. But none of that could compare to what happened to us when we were all locked down from COVID and the George Floyd video hit the internet.It was seen by millions all over the world within minutes. Right after the video hit, a fake image of Derek Chauvin wearing a “Make America White Again” MAGA hat also made the rounds, driving up the rage meter just before the largest protest in American history erupted on the streets, breaking lockdowns and forcing the Left to pivot from social distancing to masks.It would be days before the story of the fake photo was corrected. Probably even now, many still believe it was real. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe

The worst thing that's ever happened to the Democrats is democracy.It must be quite an existential crisis that, after all that, the rest of the country rejected their opinion of Donald Trump. That the guy they said was a rapist, a racist, a fascist, a dictator, a Nazi, a bigot, a transphobe, a misogynist, a Russian asset, a criminal, a felon, a fraudster, a fake, a traitor, an election denier and insurrectionist, an extremist, a terrorist, a white supremacist, a phony that they impeached twice and indicted four times, and became the first presidential candidate with a mug shot, and to be convicted of a felony still won the popular vote.That has got to really burn.But it isn't the Trump side that is now in a perpetual state of shock because it existed inside a utopian bubble, cutting itself off from the rest of America. It isn't the Trump side that cosplayed World War II for so long that it lost touch with reality about either our world now or what really happened in World War II. It isn't the Trump side that was the empire.Their war-torn resistance fighters were so disgusted that none of the Democrats had done enough to “stop Hitler Trump and his Nazi leader, Elon Musk,” that their approval numbers were at historic lows. DO SOMETHING, their supporters cried.So Cory Booker took to the Senate floor to remind them of what they still stand for. And to rally the troops. He prepared in advance for the performance of his life. He denied himself food and water to go the distance. It was, for him, a chance to audition for the part of Charismatic Leader, the democrats so desperately need.Booker found a way: It's not Left or Right but right or WRONG.It's a far cry from Obama's “not red states or blue states, but the United States.” The Democrats no longer believe that. They went from “don't normalize Trump and his supporters” to it's more than justified to demonize, dehumanize, even terrorize them. They are “bad people.” They're no longer welcome. Not in our culture, restaurants, movie theaters, family gatherings, and, most of all, our democracy.Their anger stems from their class privilege of having everything they need, yet they can't accept losing something they want.Here is Batya Ungar-Sargon:Either the Democrats really are caught up in a mass delusion about who Trump is and why he won, or else they're the drama club, and none of it was ever real.Splendor in the GrassI wasn't just in the Drama Club in high school. I was the undisputed queen. Just ask anyone who went to high school with me. I was a terrible student. I barely graduated. My nickname was “no-show Stone,” but the one thing I showed up for was the Drama Club.That's me as Elizabeth Proctor in the high school production of The Crucible.In case you've never seen or read The Crucible, Elizabeth Proctor was John Proctor's pregnant wife who was accused of witchcraft but who was spared because of the presumed innocence of her baby. Her husband, John Proctor, would be hanged.I could never have known that all of these decades later, we'd all be living in a Salem of our own making, and I'd be once again an accused and condemned witch.Inside the drama club, I had a magic mirror - a small group of people who thought I hung the moon. My Drama teacher thought that too. I was his favorite, at least for a time. I didn't know the word “grooming” back then, but looking back on it, I see that's probably what he was doing—a pinch here, a grope there. On the last day of my junior year, he French kissed me just before I went away for summer break.That Summer, he drove up to my house and dropped off a copy of the play Splendor in the Grass. I took that to mean I would be cast as the lead, the part Natalie Wood played in the movie. As the queen of the Drama Club, I got all of the leading roles. Of course, I would play Deannie.But when it came time to cast the play, the part went to someone who wasn't even in the drama club. She was the prettiest girl in school: the Head Cheerleader and the Homecoming Queen. Our teacher had broken the silent code of the drama club - nobody from the outside is allowed in. Because if they do, our fantasy world is shattered.That's all we had. We weren't the popular kids, the cheerleaders, the jocks, the science nerds. We were people who didn't belong anywhere else. But we also liked escaping into a fantasy world of being another person other than ourselves.During the Me Too movement, my friends would always bring up our drama teacher, but honestly, I was more angry that he'd given my part away to a prettier girl.In reality, the Homecoming Queen was the right person to play Deannie, even if our teacher probably just had the hots for her. She was good, too—better than I would have been. Because she was popular, everyone in the school came to see the play.We were all big fish in a small pond, which gave us power we weren't willing to relinquish. But having the whole school see our play meant reality was here, whether we liked it or not.I often think about the drama club now when I watch Christopher Guest's hilarious Waiting for Guffman, which is about a self-important director of a small town theater group and their delusions of grandeur.And that's also what I see when I look at the democrats and all of the performative protesters and activists on the Left, from Eric Swalwell to AOC to Jasmine Crocket to Chuck Schumer to Cory Booker, to all of these delusional people who believe Musk did the Nazi salute and Trump is Hitler.They are Waiting for Guffman. They are the drama club.It's a cosplay fantasy, a dystopian Renaissance Faire. None of it is real. The American people have been watching this performative outrage for almost a decade. They wanted to turn the channel so badly they voted for Donald Trump a second time, and now, here they all are, once again, caterwauling about the very democracy that just took them out of power.They still believe that doing exactly the same thing for this long will get them a different result, the very definition of insanity.But there's a darkness too, a rising violence. What they all mean when they say “Hands off” is not just “hands off” our government, but “hands off” everything else too.Along with keying Teslas and violent outbursts against Trump supporters, there is a hashtag making the rounds on TikTok called “when it happens,” where users fantasize about Trump's death.Identity First vs. America First.During the last Civil War, the two conflicting realities were that a country founded on freedom could not own human beings vs. the false reality that slaves could not survive as free human beings and that there would be chaos and collapse if things changed.Now, we find ourselves once again at a crossroads with two factions believing in two completely separate realities. This time, it's not about westward expansion but rather our migration onto the new frontier of the internet, AI, and the upcoming robot revolution. What will this country be going forward? What will be our values? What will define male and female? What will decide power?You can see each of our potential futures laid out before us. Whole generations have come of age in virtual reality, where they can choose their own avatars and have their own audiences for their own show. It's all performative. But to be included, you must follow the rules. If you don't, out you go. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe

Like everyone else on the Left, I grew up wanting to exist in the rarified air of NPR. It was, to me, like the green light at the end of Daisy's dock in The Great Gatsby: the place you don't belong but the only place you want to be.I was thrilled when NPR invited me to the studio in 2012 for an interview. I even took a picture of the parking lot—anything with NPR on it.I'd finally made it, ma—top of the world.I woke up with Morning Edition and spent the afternoon with All Things Considered. It required no effort at all. It was always on every time I got into my car and drove somewhere, and in Los Angeles, everyone drove everywhere.Long before controversial CEO Katherine Maher was hired at NPR, listeners were already dropping like flies. Any honest person knows that NPR changed dramatically. Even my sister, a die-hard Democrat, joked with me in 2020 that she had to stop listening because every episode seemed to be about a “transgender migrant crossing the border for an abortion in Texas.”Maher's testimony at the “Anti-American Airwaves: Accountability for the Heads of NPR and PBS” will be seen by most on the Left as something along the lines of the House of Unamerican Activities in the 1950s and for similar reasons. Here, in the most viral exchange, Rep Gill even brings up Marxism.Like this moment, this hearing will be shape-shifted into a story that paints them as the victims and their side as the side standing up for free speech.The truth? They abandoned objectivity long ago, if they ever had it at all. I used to think they did. I was a faithful believer in people I thought had our best interests at heart. It took me years to understand why the Republicans have been complaining about them since their inception.Maher is a stunner, even at her age, with her platinum blonde bob and Hepburn cheekbones. She's probably not used to being dragged before a tribunal and made to answer for how NPR has abused the public's trust. But abuse it, they have.She might not also be aware that this is a revolution. No, heads didn't roll, but the 2024 election was a triumph of the people, by the people, and for the people—a revolution made possible only by Donald Trump's alliance with Big Tech and Elon Musk especially.To the Left, in their delusional fever dreams, they are the oppressed side. They're the #resistance like back when German tanks rolled into Paris. But they're not. They never were. They were always the empire. How do I know? Because I was one of them. I was an enthusiastic participant in the movement that would overtake much of American society, grow its power with the rise of the internet, and spread its fundamentalism like a fungus, one that is now killing its host.A revolution because there was no other option.A revolution because the kids were at risk.A revolution because this isn't a country that likes to be ruled over by an elite, out of touch aristocracy and never has. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe

Many of you have asked me to post the New York Times profile because you don't have access to it, but I think that might violate copyright laws. So, I thought I'd read it aloud instead, with some added commentary. If you're interested, have a listen.Here is a link to bypass the paywall.The first part is just me talking free-form and unscripted, so don't be alarmed that it doesn't sound like the usual. If you like the free-form style, let me know, and I'll do more of them. Song used at the end: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe

I posted this story already, but I thought you might like a video version. The audio will go out on the podcast feed. You can find the text here. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe

I have a soft spot for the Dirtbag Left now that I never used to have. Listening to them viciously destroy the Democratic Party scratches that itch. They were ahead of the curve, and the Democrats would have been better off not snuffing out the movement way back when.But snuff it out, we did. Back in 2016, I was in a Facebook group devoted to doing nothing but hating on the “Bernie bros.” I spent too much of my precious time trying to stop them as a movement because they threatened Hillary Clinton's win. Like every Democrat now, I was afraid of democracy.The Democrats find themselves in that place where the three characters from Jaws end up. They've tried harpoons and three barrels on him, and nothing has worked. They finally decide to try Hooper's shark cage, even though Brody knows there's no chance it will work. “You got any better suggestions?” barks Hooper.That Quint entertains the idea of bringing in Hooper's cage at all was the miracle. And the desperation.The Democrats are ready for the anti-shark cage, and so Bernie Sanders and AOC are on a western tour to “stop the oligarchy.” They finally have the exact right enemy in Elon Musk and Bernie's “billionaires.” Musk represents the death of their dream, that no one can get there on their wits, hard work, and ambition alone. No, this is a country where no one can rise unless everyone can rise.Trump's tariffs are a potential solution to America's crippling problem of income inequality that has destroyed the middle class. That's the MAGA populism at work. Bernie's populism fixes the problem with much bigger government. The rich pay more to redistribute the wealth.Is this finally the moment when we can Make America Socialist Again? A major step forward from FDR's New Deal and Johnson's Great Society? Do the Democratic Socialists have a real shot at winning the nomination away from the feckless, flaccid centrists?Is this finally the moment when the Dirtbag Left and the identity politics utopians merge to create one big movement, a Green New Deal? Will Trump's radical change finally be the thing that pushes the majority in a direction they never would have gone?Recent polls show that younger generations are much more accepting and fond of socialism than older generations. It's not that hard to do the math and see what might be coming next.How it StartedAccording to Neil Howe and William Strauss's 1997 book, 2008 was the crisis that sparked our Fourth Turning. This pattern plays out every 80 years, with each generation being born and living a lifetime before everything radically changes to restart America in a new direction, like the American Revolution, the Civil War, the Great Depression, and World War II.We still don't know how big or how bad our Fourth Turning will be. To Strauss and Howe, the $700 billion bank bailout was the moment the public woke up to the imminent disaster of income inequality and a bloated oligarchy. The bailout birthed two populist movements: Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party.Occupy Wall Street became the Bernie movement which, after Hillary's loss in 2016, was dissolved into the Democrat machine. The Tea Party became Trump and MAGA. The question we have to ask is which side will prevail when the Fourth Turning comes to a close, when the policies are cemented and the country is united?According to Howe's new book, The Fourth Turning is Here, he edges ever so slightly to the Left's side of things because the dominant generation, the Millennials, are a “go along to get along” personality type.At the moment, at least to me, the MAGA side offers more for ambitious millennials, especially young men. MAGA is now the side of innovation and economic growth. If they succeed, there will be no need for a rescue mission.But if they fail? Ben Shapiro has been dropping the prediction for a few weeks now that if Trump's economy begins to fail, the power that will rise is the equal and opposite reaction to Trump's populism: a lurch to the hard left.Bernie and AOC are ready to bring the movement back.Is this finally the moment where both Bernie and AOC have the right kind of anger and the right enemy they need to tap into the collective outrage of all of those crazy people out there losing their minds? People like this: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe

As SpaceX and NASA elegantly brought Crew-9 down from outer space to splash into the waters of the Gulf of America, with dolphins cresting the surface to greet them upon their arrival, the lunatics on the Left were burning up the last remnants of their political capital. They were destroying Teslas. Yes, that's right. With a beautiful example of American exceptionalism playing out in front of the millions watching from home, the Left took the opportunity to march around in their poopie diapers and tell America that all they know how to do is destroy things. Anyone who might have regretted voting for Trump because they were moving too fast was suddenly reminded of why they voted for him in the first place. Because the other side is stark, raving bonkers.They have already humiliated themselves at Trump's address to Congress. Their approval numbers have never been lower. It isn't just that they are feckless, rudderless, and leaderless; they are also doing the one thing no political movement should ever do if it wants to rise to power: showing Americans that they are prepared to act out violently when they don't get their way.Granted, they have the luxury of an entire legacy press corps that will run cover for them, praise them, and pretend it's no big deal. But we know it's a big deal because we've been living with their violent outbursts for ten years. Now that they've decided to interpret Elon Musk's wave to the crowd as a Nazi salute, they feel more than justified to rally as a movement and wage war on a successful car company that produces electric cars. They want every wealthy liberal who ever bought a Tesla to regret it, sell it, or use one of those embarrassing stickers that signal to the mob to skip their car. They're one of the good guys. They hide behind billionaires this and oligarchs that, but they had absolutely no hesitation in bringing down hundreds of businesses, those that had somehow managed to survive lockdowns were then destroyed by a violent mob in the Summer of 2020. Remember Sue's 100-year-old mattress store in Kenosha? In their fever dream—and I promise I am not exaggerating, not even a little bit—they believe their acts of terror and vandalism against Teslas will bring down the company and force Musk into bankruptcy, so he will have to sell Twitter/X because they believe it was stolen from them. What you see on the modern Left is failure everywhere you look. A failed legacy media, a failing Hollywood, and an empire in collapse propped up a failed political party full of failed candidates. Here is failed Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz doing the Hitler salute while trashing a company he could never build, much less come close to making profitable. Walz is roaring back to prove that he didn't fail - he's still that Great White Hope they all said he was. All he has to do is signal to the mob that he can be as vicious as they need him to be. Here is a failed 80s heartthrob, John Cusack, who proves that old Johnny Boy never cracked open a history book. He's not only ignorant, he displays it openly on social media:Here is failed resistance warrior Rick Wilson, who must somehow keep the dream alive after Trump wiped up the floor with him, and very nearly destroyed his credibility. Wilson's infamous pre-election prediction that Trump would lose and lose badly looks a lot more like pissing in the wind, doesn't it:They're not in any condition to lead this country. They're behaving like those late-night rap sessions with Charlie on Spahn Ranch as they plot about the revolution. The look in the eyes of all the “resistance democrats” looks a lot like the crazy eyes of those Manson girls bragging about stabbing Sharon Tate. But here's the thing. They're making it all way too hard on themselves. There is an easier way. It's been right there the whole time. It is the answer to all that ails them. It will work like a charm if only they can embrace that they are the very thing they believe they've been fighting against.Embrace Your Inner Fascists, Democrats. It's time.The Democrats lost their minds so thoroughly and completely over Trump's win in 2016, that they decided this was now their country and everything in it belonged to them. They amassed an unprecedented alignment of power, uniting government with all cultural and corporate institutions. It was all for one and one for all. You know, like the very definition of fascism?All sticks bundled together as one! A fasci!Once they claimed most of American society for themselves, they were able to build a barrier, an “inside” that locked the bad people on the “outside.” Then, the purges began. Break our rules, and out you go. No one was safe, not the powerful, corporations, or the people. Conform or else, which is also the very definition of fascism.It would be Communism, except the Left needs to be seen as better, superior, smarter, more kind, more decent - not equal to everyone else. No, they don't believe that. Fascism, that's the answer. That's why they plunge lawn signs in front of their houses, to tell everyone else how superior they are but also to signal to the mob that they're on the right side. But to embrace your inner fascists, Democrats, you will have to start telling the truth about who you are. Why hide it by now?So let's rewrite this lawn sign, shall we? In this home, we believe:Dictatorship over democracy because democracy means the “wrong” people might win. They don't belong in OUR HOME. As fascists, you don't even need elections at all, and you kinda didn't, did you? Vote blue no matter who, elbow out any competition, force Biden on everyone, and then install Kamala Harris. See how close you already are?Solution: why not build gulags and have them all spirited away? So much easier. Stalin did it. Hitler did it. Mao did it. What's the problem, Democrats? Now, if Gwen Stefani accidentally posts a video with Tucker Carlson in it, or someone lets it slip they are friends with a Trump supporter or, gasp, voted for Trump themselves, you can simply lock them away instead of wasting all of your time and energy destroying their lives. Lies over truth: You lie all of the time, to yourselves and to other people—the legacy media lies. Hollywood lies. Women are men, and men are women, but gender is not binary. Solution: As fascists, there is no argument. You take complete control of the press (oh, wait, you already did) and force everyone to accept your version of the truth (oh wait, you already did!) and then mandate it so all must obey (yeah, you tried that, didn't work out so well). Division over unity: Admit it. You would prefer to be living in a segregated society with Trump supporters banned from your restaurants, your movie theaters, your schools, and your social media. You don't even hide it anymore. Solution: As fascists, you can simply beat them up, spit on them, knock the hats off their heads, kick them out of restaurants, and harass them on airplanes. Oh wait, you already did!Fear over hope: The side where people are afraid to say what they really think is the fascist side. Why are people afraid? Because they know what will happen to them if they ever tell the truth. Solution: Make lists. Stalin did it. Oh, I know he's technically not a fascist, but close enough. Fiction over Science: Like biological men aren't any different from biological women. There is no advantage in sports? Trans kids have always existed. It's healthcare. It's not a cult. There is no castrating young men. They're not men. They're women because trans women are women! Removing breasts and destroying the reproductive organs of young girls is perfectly fine because they're not girls. Solution: As fascists, you don't even need science. You can simply perform your medical experiments at will. If anyone objects, off to the gulag they must go.You see, Democrats, the answer has always been right there. All you have to do is embrace the fascists you really are. You don't even need a leader. It doesn't have to be about race. It can simply be about what you really want: conform or else and all power to the state.Spirited AwayI could never have known what it felt like to be unpersoned by the side I used to call home, to have their attack machines trained on me, on my business, on my personal safety until I walked in the shoes of Trump supporters. I know that I have to be quiet in my town. I can't let them know who I am because I know what that will mean. They won't say hello to me anymore. They will walk the other way when they see me coming. Who knows what else they might do?The most terrifying thing about it isn't so much losing everything. I grew up poor, I struggled to pay the rent for most of my life. That's nothing new. No, it was seeing people I thought I knew participate in the unpersoning of someone they once called a friend. Watching them remove me from their lists and not invite me to screenings or parties because I was no longer worthy of being one of them chilled me to my bones. It's something I'll never forget. I always thought we were the good guys, that we knew the difference between right and wrong, that we wouldn't dehumanize whole groups of people because we didn't agree on everything, and tell them they were no longer welcome in their own country.We have elections so the people decide how they want to be represented. But the Democrats don't believe that at all, do they? They decided our elections didn't matter because the people voting in them didn't matter. Instead of respecting the results, they keep fighting their imaginary war, with their violence escalating to dangerous levels. Power is not something people give up willingly, especially not those who are used to being in control of everything.Your value inside utopia depends on your going along with all of it and doing so with a smile on your face and rationalization in your heart. I'm not really like that, they tell themselves. Except that they are. That is exactly who they are. Do you think Rick Wilson or Jimmy Kimmel or John Cusack or any of those crazy-eyed Democrats on TikTok would hesitate to throw Elon Musk, Trump, and all of their supporters into a detainment center? They would not. You've scared the crap out of America, Democrats. They're not likely to vote for you any time soon. So why not put another line on that lawn sign to read: Fascism, it's not so bad after all. // This is a public episode. 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After my story Who Killed the Oscars was published in Tablet, I received this letter:Indeed, I didn't explain why I voted for Trump in the Tablet piece. It was already too long. No doubt many reading it thought, who cares what she thinks? She voted for Trump. I'm sure there was a time when I would have thought the same thing. I used to be a faithful, loyal Democrat. I used to be a cheerleader for Hollywood. I thought I would do anything for love. But I found out that there was one thing I couldn't do.But know this: it's never been a story about what happened to me. It's always been a story about what happened to the Left.So let's do a Part Two of the Tablet Piece and call it:Who Killed the Democratic Party?The first time I remember voting for the Democrats was back in the 1980s. I wore a Dukakis button as a Women's Only Health Spa receptionist. A customer saw my pin and said, “Why are you voting for Du-Tax-us?” I looked at her, confused. I didn't know why I was voting for him. “Never mind,” she said to me. “You probably never even went to college.”I knew enough back then that we were different from the Republicans. That political divide had lasted since Nixon's days. They were uncool and had all of the power. We were cool but had no power. We were the subversive side, the Blue Velvet to their Top Gun.That customer's words tumbled around in my head long enough to motivate me to go to college and finally graduate from UCLA at 29, the first person in my family to do so. While a student there, I saw Bill Clinton speak. All of that charisma suckered me in, and now I knew why I was a Democrat. It wasn't complicated. I'll have what he's having.After I dropped out of graduate film school to chase some loser dude back to Los Angeles, my life came apart so spectacularly that I escaped to migrate online, where I would work and live for the next 30 years.The internet changed everything. It gave so many of us a voice and a platform. Anyone could have a website online. Anyone could generate news. The question of who would control it was never asked because it was obvious. The Democrats did. We colonized it—the New Frontier in Cyberspace.Obama was as wedded to Silicon Valley as he was to Hollywood. I was in the right place at the right time, a Good Soldier for the Left as a member of a newly mobilized army on Twitter, rallying behind our leader, the nation's first Black president.We were more connected than ever before at a time when more people were alive than ever before. On the “inside,” things always felt so big, so monumental. On the “outside,” life went on as normal among “The Proles.” We were in the early stages of 1984 if Whole Foods catered it.It was an alignment of power not seen since the utopian days of post-war 1950s America when government and culture aligned to snuff out the Communist threat. With an iPhone in my pocket and high-speed internet, I did my duty every day as a Good Liberal fighting the good fight.It wasn't until Obama's re-election bid in 2012 that I understood I was part of a hive mind that could manipulate the media narrative and thus create the reality we wanted. We could stretch the truth—or lie—about, say, Mitt Romney and the “Binders of women,” and it worked. The legacy press would print our headlines. Clickbait would do the rest. Eventually, it trickled down into the homes of ordinary Americans.It wasn't just politics. It went much deeper than that. We were different people now, better people, good people doing things, something the Left never was throughout my entire life as a child of the counterculture 60s and 70s. But to be that good, we need to target people who were that bad. We needed a receptacle for our collective sins. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe

In May 2016, I surprised my daughter for her 18th birthday with a getaway to New York City to see her favorite play, Hamilton, in the Richard Rogers Theater with the original cast. We would fly out for a day and then fly back. It would cost way too much money, I'd get my wallet stolen, but I only had one daughter, and you only turned 18 once.We were both obsessed with Hamilton. We knew every word of every song. It lived inside of us. It wasn't just that it was brilliant, funny, moving, inventive and original. It also reminded all of us what this country's founding principles were about. Best of all, it made learning history fun and cool. It was Schoolhouse Rock for a new generation.When taking long road trips, we would blast the soundtrack, screaming every word. We'd start at the beginning and run through the entire play. Our inside jokes were witty asides from the play that we'd quote to each other so often that we had to force ourselves to stop because, after years of this, it was getting old.By casting so many diverse people to play historical figures and making it a hip-hop musical, Hamilton was a bridge to the Black communities that were so often excluded from the Broadway experience and elite culture in general. Hamilton was for everybody, I thought. That was eight years ago.As a devoted Obama supporter and, in 2016, a Hillary Clinton loyalist, I was overjoyed at the prospect of the first woman president to follow the first Black president. Heading into the election, I wrote this piece:I wrote:The election of Hillary Clinton is one of the most important battles in the war between two Americas. One America was built and maintained exclusively by and for white men. That demographic has awakened extremists on the left and right. The other America redeems the promise of possibility for everyone, no matter their status or skin color or class. That America has produced the nation's first black president who not only lasted one term, but two, and who now promises to make history by helping elect another Democrat to follow his two terms. Electing Hillary Clinton doesn't just say, “We're electing a woman for the first time in our country's history.” It also dares to say the first black American president was so successful he did the impossible by electing his chosen successor.I didn't notice back then that the Clinton campaign rented the entire Richard Rogers theater as a fundraiser. Tickets start at $2,700 a pop. I would never have thought twice about it. We were on the right side. It was an “all-of-society” effort to stop Trump. We were the good guys fighting the good fight, so why wouldn't Hamilton be used that way?Lin-Manuel Miranda's entire career exists only because of Barack Obama. 15 years ago, in 2009, in Obama's first year in office, Miranda performed this at the White House:Over the years, Obama would co-opt the reputations and careers of major artists like Bruce Springsteen, Tom Hanks, and, yes, Lin-Manuel Miranda. They would become ride-or-die for the president, which wasn't something I would have noticed back then.As Miranda's play exploded and became instantly profitable and popular, we all took that to mean that everyone wanted to be included in our America. It was the better, cooler America. But that changed when Trump won. Now, all we could see was a hostile country that just rejected us.Even when the cast called out Mike Pence during the performance to protest the Trump administration, I never thought about whether it was bipartisan or not. I knew it wasn't and I agreed with it. I couldn't see the line between art and propaganda.But now I can. All it took was this statement by the producer of Hamilton, Jeffrey Seller, wherein the play cancels itself, hiding behind the usual gaslighting and rationalizations so common on the left:Notice right off the language here. He is doing what all establishment Democrats and Republicans have done for eight years: ignore the voices of the people. Trump defeated them not once but twice. If you believe in the founding principles of this country, you must respect their voices. But they don't. The message they give is not for all Americans. It is only those Americans who agree with their ongoing delusions about Trump.What they can't stand is that Trump is now saying this culture does not belong only to them anymore. It belongs to all of us, even the unwashed masses all of them abandoned years ago and continue to demonize in films, in plays, in comedy, in journalism, in all of their award shows. We're to accept that this only goes one way. That they have a right to decide what our culture will be and Trump and his supporters do not.You did this. YOU did this. You forced Trump and his supporters to beat down the walls of the castle to be included in America's culture. This is YOUR fault. You politicized it. You pushed propaganda on all of us for years. And now, you can't stand it that you no longer control it, can you?Trump's second win was a complete and total humiliation and repudiation. They still refuse to learn that lesson. They refuse to move aside and allow this country to evolve into whatever it will be now. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe

It's Oscar Sunday, a ceremony fueled by one thing: publicity. We turn ordinary people into gods and goddesses by telling flattering myths about who they are and why they're important. The “narrative” gives voters a reason to care and almost always drives the win.In Hollywood, they're not planning on changing anything, just as the Democrats won't. They haven't noticed that, as they're watching the band play on, the ship is made of iron and will sink.What do they even stand for anymore? Transing the kids, open borders for cheap labor, and most importantly, the war in Ukraine. Attending the Oscars is like supporting the Democrats, like supporting Zelensky—an alignment of power like no other.Unsuspecting dreamers who rise in Hollywood are often warned never to believe their own publicity. Anyone who has ever worked in publicity, or the Oscar race as I have, knows it's nothing but pretty lies. It isn't journalism. It isn't criticism. It isn't the truth. It's like photoshopping a life.The Zelensky myth is necessary to keep hope alive that the Democrats didn't humiliate themselves when they lost to Trump a second time. No, it wasn't their failures. It had nothing to do with selling false narratives about Hillary and Joe, forcing voters to go along with it. This is bigger than an ordinary election. They are at war with the new “axis of evil.” And why not? They're the “resistance,” after all.Zelensky's entitled behavior in the Oval Office was proof enough that he believed his own publicity and lost perspective of who he was in this fight. He's not the man who can demand anything from the United States. But who's going to tell him?Certainly not the legacy media. Not the Democrats. Not Hollywood.Almost as soon as the war began, there didn't seem to be any difference between celebrities, the Democrats and Zelensky. The Ukrainian Tom Cruise was suddenly everywhere, not just at award shows but on television, appearing at celebrity and news events alike, smearing together politics and culture like peanut butter and jelly. His war was supposed to be our war. If you were against it, you were “pro-Putin.” This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe

Warning: This post contains satire. Proceed with extreme caution. Side effects include bouts of critical thinking and unintended laughter. If you find yourself taking it too seriously, please consult with your doctor immediately.In the hottest hell of our imaginations, two Fascists and a Communist escape into a corner bar, the Barbarossa.The black-haired man with a tiny caterpillar mustache sits in an empty booth. He is Adolf Hitler, known to his people as Mein Fuhrer. A shorter man with a thicker, fatter mustache sits at a table in the middle of the room. He is Joseph Stalin, known as Comrade or Generalissimo. And the third man doesn't know where to sit. Barrel-chested and wide-eyed, with a cleanly shaven face—no mustache—he is Benito Mussolini, known to his people as Il Duce.“Sit, Benito,” Hitler says, pointing to the bar. Mussolini does as he is told.A tiny woman with straggly grey hair flying everywhere appears but does not make eye contact with the three dictators. She hovers and awaits her orders, pulling on her white apron. Quivering in fear, she admonishes her considerable sins and accepts her fate.“What are we drinking?” Stalin says.“Tea for me in a porcelain cup,” says Hitler. “And something sweet. Pralines!”“I will just have the usual,” Mussolini says.“Same for me,” says Stalin.The woman scurries back into the darkness and emerges moments later with a bottle of vodka, a tall glass of milk, and a saucer of pralines, which she places before Hitler. He rubs his hands together excitedly like a schoolboy. “Mmmmm, my favorite!” Says Hitler, “But where's the tea!” The woman startles and nods furiously but must first place the vodka on Stalin's table with a shot glass and then finally serve Mussolini his tall glass of milk.As the wench turns to leave, Hitler stews. It's taking too long. He pounds his fist on the table, and the woman races off.“That's always been your problem, Adolf. You are too impatient,” Stalin says, pouring himself a glass. “Impatient and impulsive.”Hitler scoffs. “Enjoy your ‘water,' Joseph. Do you think we're that stupid?”The cursed woman returns, taking care not to spill the cup of hot tea on Hitler as she carefully places it before him. Hitler dismisses her with a wave.“Water,” Stalin says, “How would you ever know, even it was?”“We're already bored of your little tiresome games,” Hitler says.Now, Mussolini pounds his fist on the bar. “Will both of you SHUT UP? We have urgent business to attend to.”Hitler and Stalin share a look. Then, both break into giggles.“WHAT is so funny if I may ask?” Mussolini says.“You, uh, have a bit of a milk mustache, Benito; it looks like mine!” says Stalin.Mussolini slides his sleeve across his face, wiping off the milk, but remains defiant.“Stop laughing, Adolf!”Hitler covers his mouth to try to keep from laughing.“Ha Ha real funny,” Mussolini says. “I used to drink milk for breakfast. Now, It's for my stomach. A terrible ulcer.”“Settle down, Benito,” Hitler says. “We did not gather here to discuss your dietary preferences.”“You're one to talk,” Mussolini says. “Maybe if you'd laid off the sugar, you might have—” This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe

I've been watching in horror for the past ten years as the Left - aka, the people with all of the institutional power - lose their minds. I know they don't see it that way. They think I'm the one who lost my mind. I was radicalized by the Right, they think. I had a nervous breakdown, they think. But the truth is that I haven't changed. The only thing I did was refuse to go along with the madness.Oh, don't get me wrong. I went along with it at first. Even though history told me Trump couldn't lose in 2016, I was still awash in misery and fear not just that year but every year of his presidency until the very last one when I realized everything I once believed was an illusion.I was in a bubble, a feedback loop, built by social media, tribalism, collectivism, and a wildly dishonest legacy press. My mistake was trusting that they were telling me the truth. I was shocked to find in 2020 that they were not. They were gaslighting us, doing the bidding of the Democratic Party, just as they are doing now.As an example of the level of hysteria we're dealing with here, a review posted in Variety details how the Brazilian film, I'm Still Here is a “warning” for the United States. The headline, “It could happen here.” This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe

Everywhere I look, I see the telltale hysteria that gripped my former party back in 2016. I was a good soldier for the Left, fighting for what I believed was the right side. The hysteria spread, infecting every corner of the Left, and at some point, we lost touch with reality.What was this that had happened to us, I wondered. Why had we abandoned our humanity? Why did the side that used to be the good guys, at least to me, feel so comfortable sliding into dehumanizing and degrading half the country? As I began asking questions, sooner or later, I would get the same one back again, “What happened to you?” But the right question was never what happened to me.The Democrats have had almost ten years to figure out that the problem was never Trump. It was always us and the pristine utopian world we built for ourselves using the internet, social media, and a charismatic leader like Barack Obama. It was a New America where everyone got a seat at the table.The Left always says the first Black president rousted the racists out of hiding, and they lost their minds. But the truth is, it was those of us on the Left who lost our minds with the first Black president. It became an addiction for us, this euphoric feeling of changing the world, of making history. Of being good.Trump's win kicked all of us into a level of mass hysteria we couldn't control then or now. As you can see by the headlines, every day is the end of the world - it's a threat to Democracy, a Constitutional Crisis, a Nazi salute, a fascist in the White House. Everyone is to be feared. Every decision they make is bad and dangerous.The Democrats didn't learn the lesson in 2016 that Trump represented a large portion of this country that had been abandoned and forgotten by us. We not only decided we were the chosen people to bring our new world to the promised land, but we also decided they were the bad people — the RACISTS — who must be kept out of our government, our culture, our institutions, our corporations — even our restaurants, our movie theaters, and our award shows.As with most utopias gone wrong, there was no due process or presumption of innocence. It was accuse lest ye be accused. It was apologize or else. It was guilty until proven innocent. We all lived in fear of a tyrannical mob on social media with the power to decide who gets to stay and who must go.What was all of this madness, this hysteria we were experiencing? It was a combination of algorithms our brains were not ready for, and how we'd cut ourselves off from the everyday lives of ordinary Americans. They at least still had one foot in normal. But us? We were crippled by delusion, ruled by hysteria.Trump threatened everything. He knocked down our carefully constructed utopian diorama with glee, and his supporters loved him for it. We just weren't prepared for how hysteria takes hold and scares so many of us all at once. It was pure madness, and we were helpless against it.The hysteria spread to the corporate press, who got most of their information from Twitter, which was a mass hysteria delivery device. And that hysteria trickled down into the homes of anyone watching mainstream cable news. It was at the gym, airports, and the laundry mat. It was white noise in the background, selling our delusions as our new normal —quietly scaring Americans every day of the week.The hysteria brought down the empire as we attacked every potential threat to our utopia - movies, books, history, statues, buildings, words, jokes, poetry, science, marriage, men, the color of our skin, the words that came out of our mouths, what we could say online and what we couldn't. Obey the rules or else. Be quiet or else. Sooner or later, it was bound to get to the kids. And when it did, not enough of us stood up and said ENOUGH.Usually, this would be when the FBI busts in and breaks it all up, but we controlled the FBI, so they would do nothing.I was one of the lucky ones. I got out in 2020 after the mob turned on me one too many times. If it wasn't true about me, everything they accused me of, there was a good chance it wasn't true about MAGA either. And it wasn't. If you wanted to tell my story as a former Good Liberal who was radicalized online, you can think of it like this: I was radicalized by kindness, decency, and a desire to be free.All the Democrats and the Left ever had to do was snap out of it. See Trump and his supporters as actual human beings and not separate us and categorize us by the color of our skin and insist that the bloodshed of history still lives inside all of us. They could reach out and show some decency, let the rest of the country back inside the castle walls. But even that was too much of a risk for an empire in collapse.But be that as it may, until the Democrats get a grip, they must be kept out of power. So herewith are guidelines for the Democrats on how to keep losing elections, and I really think they should listen to me, don't you? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe

“With this Executive Order, the war on women's sports is over.” - Donald Trump, 45th and 47th President of the United States.What must it have felt like for all of those feminists on the Left who have spent the better part of a decade insisting Trump was an enemy to women - a rapist, a sexual harasser, an assaulter — to see so many young girls encircling him as he helped protect their future with the swipe of his pen?What they should be asking themselves is how it ever came to this. How did we raise a generation to believe such falsehoods about themselves or to feel the need to be something other than who they are? Or to lie about the biological differences between men and women or to teach them never to speak up when they know something is wrong.How did it arrive with so many millions of people too afraid to stand up for them? How did we get to 2024 with the Left handing over the cornerstone of their movement to Trump?Look no further than The Coddling of the American Mind as written in the book by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, which has now been turned into a movie:Most people on the Left recognize there is a problem, but they won't agree with so many of us that Trump and his tough love are the way out of it, probably not even Lukianoff and Haidt.But the time for niceties is over. We can't worry about whose feelings might be hurt or who might be offended. No. This is the time to save America and its young from a dominant contagion that has overtaken nearly every corner of American life.It isn't just the denial of science and reality. It's that so many have become so afraid of just words that we can do nothing except blow past them and try to salvage whatever is left.We've arrived all the way on the opposite end of where the Greatest Generation was when they were sent to war to save the world from Hitler. How did we get from Patton and MacArthur and Eisenhower to a generation who believe that words have the power to destroy them? Just words? Imagine George Patton arriving in modern-day America. What would he make of the nation's young people?Or MacArthur. The guy who said, “It is fatal to enter a war without the will to win it.” And “You are remembered for the rules you break.” And “You don't win wars by dying for your country. You win wars by making the other son of a b***h die for his.”How did we get from that to this?I don't know what makes Donald Trump so tough and resilient. But I do know that whatever he has, we could use a lot more of it to help us un-coddle the American mind not a moment too soon. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe

Hunter S. Thompson wrote in his book Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail:The "mood of the nation," in 1972, was so overwhelmingly vengeful, greedy, bigoted, and blindly reactionary that no presidential candidate who even faintly reminded "typical voters" of the fear & anxiety they'd felt during the constant "social upheavals" of the 1960s had any chance at all of beating Nixon last year--not even Ted Kennedy--because the pendulum "effect" that began with Nixon's slim victory in '68 was totally irreversible by 1972. After a decade of left-bent chaos, the Silent Majority was so deep in a behavorial sink that their only feeling for politics was a powerful sense of revulsion. All they wanted in the White House was a man who would leave them alone and do anything necessary to bring calmness back into their lives.”It's hard to believe that the Democrats became so crazy that they made Trump seem like the normal one, the only person who could bring calm back into our lives.I felt happy the other day and thought, what is this strange feeling? It wasn't so much that I was happy with all of what Trump was doing, but he did the one thing that had been keeping me up at night - his Executive Order to end “gender-affirming care” for minors.I'm not foolish enough to think that these big moves Trump and his team are making will bring about permanent change, but he's shaking the tree, standing up to the most powerful forces in the country, and doing exactly what we, the voters, asked him to do.Trump isn't the problem. It's the crumbling empire that refuses to relinquish power and insists so many of its delusions and narratives must be adhered to, even now. Adam Schiff and Elizabeth Warren reminded us that they don't really seem to care about how the election turned out. They didn't even turn the page.They don't seem to have gotten the message that they're still considered too crazy to govern. It's the exact kind of crazy that drove Nixon to a landslide victory and eventually put Reagan in power, keeping Democrats out of the White House for the next 12 years. As things look now, that's exactly how it will play out.I sometimes peer into the crazy on TikTok. Women wearing red lipstick in silent protest. Young and old alike screeching and caterwauling at Trump supporters, pleading with them, mocking and dehumanizing them, then begging them to see Trump as the embodiment of all of the evil in the world. How frustrating it must be for them to know that the silent majority doesn't agree.How frustrating it must be that they keep screaming racists, Nazis, fascists! And still be seen as the crazier side.With the election of DNC Chair Ken Martin and Vice Chair David Hogg, they seem to be sending a message to their voters that they're done with the “woke” thing, and maybe now they can un-crazy themselves with two boring “white dudes.”The last time the Democrats tried to un-crazy themselves, it didn't go so well. After losing every state except Massachusetts in 1972 and the even worse Jimmy Carter presidency, the Democrats settled on the idea that bland and boring middle manager types were better than chasing the dream.This “bland and boring” reset doesn't undo the crazy but disguises it. Look to the future, they say. Gun control, they say. Bring the fight to the Republicans, they say. But they still can't solve the problem because they are the problem.The star, their Great White Hope, their version of the “bro-whisperer” to bring in the young people is David Hogg, mass shooting survivor turned activist influencer.And he's just Ken:The worst sign is that nothing much has changed except appearances. The party is still leaning into the establishment of old, which means they aren't sending a message to voters that they are, in any way, prepared to deal with the mess they made over the past four years.What should worry the Democrats, not that they will pay any attention, is that there is no plan to clean house, which is what they'd need to do to have any real pitch to win back the voters they lost. They seem to be doing the bare minimum, admitting nothing, with Barack Obama still guiding the ship.They really do think they can sweep it all under the rug — hiding Joe Biden's age, the Afghanistan withdrawal, the censorship machine, George Clooney op-ed, how Biden refused to leave, whatever they threatened him with, and the manufactured candidacy of Kamala Harris.How much better would it be for them if they admitted their party had become too corrupt to function? And too crazy to lead? But they won't because that other America still exists inside the utopian bunker they've been hiding in all this time.In choosing David Hogg, the Democrats prove they have no plans to roll back the crazy, which, of course, I already knew. This goes deeper for them than politics. This is who they are. This is how they see the world.With Martin and Hogg (which sounds like a leather boot manufacturer) they're sending a message to those of us who have defected from the party that nothing has changed. There were no lessons learned, no reckoning to be had.Says Adam B. Coleman:When I was a Democrat, we believed in classically liberal principles, like freedom of speech and fairness for all people, not just some people. They elevated serious and, dare I say, likable individuals within the party. At one point, The Democrats seemed like the "cool" party with aspirational and better ideas.But now, The Democrats are the party of dogma. There is nothing inquisitive or reflective about the party. They are verbal one-trick ponies, twisting their words to validate their end-goal ambition regardless if it works or not.I've seen tweets by people who are hoping their ongoing hysteria about Trump's first ten days will send people like me running back into their arms. But the problem has never been Trump. The problem has always been them, what they did to this country, what they did to the party, what they did to themselves.Just like the silent majority ran from them back in 1972 and 1980, so too are we all still okay with Trump, even with the chaos, because he's not them.It took me four years to realize that. But once you see it, you can't unsee it, and there is no going back, at least not until they clean house and un-crazy themselves.So we'll see bland candidates running for president as they attempt to tack to the center, but the crazy will follow them like toilet paper stuck to the bottom of their shoes.The “Mood of the Nation”The last time the Democrats scared America, I was just a kid. I grew up in Topanga Canyon around the same time as the Manson family lived there, not to mention it being a hotbed for old-time rock n' rollers, surfers, and cults. Nothing scared me as much as Charles Manson, whose face stared out at us from the cover of magazines. Those crazy eyes, that “X” scar between his brows. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe

The Intolerant Liberal is a new species that has arrived on the scene. They are not like the liberals of old. They would never make an offensive joke, and they are perfectly happy to not only point out those who do but join in on the mob that punishes them.The Intolerant liberals have forgotten much of the great art that used to define them way back in the day. They have forgotten Shirley Jackson's The Lottery, Arthur Miller's The Crucible, and all of those on-point Twilight Zone episodes, like It's a Good Life and The Monsters, are Due on Maple Street.They've forgotten how funny it was to listen to Sam Kinison make one offensive joke after the next, gifting us with the necessary release of laughter, the very thing we need to stay sane.Richard Pryor would not survive a minute in the time of Intolerant Liberals.Therein lies Survival Tip Number One: They can't take a joke. Oh, boy, can they not take a joke. If every single day is the end of the world, how can anything be funny? It's not funny. It's HARM. Social media has given them a way to dissect every joke and every word said by everyone.Imagine how fast sanity would return if they admitted that Trump was funny.That's all it would take to open up the door to the Doomsday Bunker so they, too, can break free from the mass delusion that they are the “oppressed resistance.” And yet…they can't. They've never been the resistance. They've always been The Empire, an Empire that is now collapsing.The richest Intolerant Liberals in the world seem to need Trump because how else to justify their wealth and privilege while they sell ice cream called “Eat the Rich”?Note how this Intolerant Liberal throws in “book banning,” as though they are the side that has any room to talk. Books aren't banned because they never make it past the assistant's desk unless they project the ideals of Utopia.We've seen how books by JK Rowling and Dr. Seuss have been left off of reading lists, how warning labels have been affixed to movies because the Intolerant Liberals are so afraid of one person's mental breakdown and ensuing social media backlash that they play it safe. Here is a screenshot of a trigger warning, posted by Kat Rosenfield: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe

One Last Ride….=It's been a long time coming, hasn't it MAGA? What a ride it's been for you.As people like me were arguing with Bernie bros about the 2016 nomination for president and were caught up in our unending phantasmagoria about a “reality TV star” who was rising in the ranks on the Right, you were being verbally and physically attacked already, bullied at rallies, spit on, kicked, called racists, Nazis, fascists, bigots. It would only get worse.How far you've come from the last inaugural when so many protesters burned cars and smashed windows, screaming, “Not my president.”The beautiful and elegant Melania Trump never graced the cover of any magazine. They mocked her Christmas decorations and called her an uncaring Nazi.But almost no one got it worse than Ivanka Trump, although all the Trump kids were put through the dehumanizer the Left had become. They were called ugly and inbred. There were jokes about Trump sleeping with his own daughter just because he was proud of her and praised her, as he does all of his kids. This was mainstream on the Left, dehumanization on a grand scale.As long as that was the version we told ourselves — that they were the rich, hollow, power-hungry elites like the cast of Succession, we could convince ourselves we were the hard-scrabble people lifting up the minority class and making the world a better place one marginalized group at a time. But what of the majority?It would eventually lead to the government and their media lying about you on January 6th, riding the hysteria to ban the social media app Parler from Amazon's web server and the then-sitting president of the United States from YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.It seemed there was no place for you in America anymore. But what did you do in the face of that kind of social and political oppression? You rose up, and you fought back. You didn't have to do it by smashing windows or protesting. You did it with true grit, organizing, fundraising, and keeping the MAGA spirit high. You never lost your faith because you knew exactly what you were fighting for and what you were up against.And most of all, your unbreakable loyalty to Trump kept hope alive that one day there might be fairness in government, in our culture, and in our major institutions that decided it was perfectly fine to treat you like hostile invaders in your own country.But people like me had no idea that it was happening. What we heard was that Trump's rallies were violent, that his supporters were beating up Black people, and that his rallies were like Hitler's. If you scare people enough, they'll go along with anything.We were the side that had all of the power. We were the empire. We were never the resistance. That we turned our helplessness and fanaticism into dehumanizing half the country is a shame we should never live down.I didn't realize it until 2020. I was so trusting of people like Rachel Maddow. I listened to NPR without even thinking about their political bias. We were the side that told the truth, I believed. We weren't fooled by Fox News and Breitbart. How could anyone not trust NBC News? How could I ever think that what they told me on CNN might not be the whole story?I didn't realize until the Tom Cotton op-ed disaster at the New York Times that my information was being carefully curated. I watched all of my friends and colleagues crucify Bari Weiss on Twitter for allowing the Cotton piece to be published in the New York Times. It was harm, they said. It would get people killed, they said. It terrorized their staff, they said.Tom Cotton was a United States Senator who merely reported what most Americans already believed. The protests were violent and destructive. A majority of Americans wanted the military to be brought in. Bari Weiss was trying to give the majority a voice in the paper of record.But as we'd done with almost every news story since the beginning of the Trump era, we stretched the truth like taffy to suit our needs. Trump was Hitler, and this was fascism— we'd all convinced ourselves to believe, and with the help of the military “experts,” they trotted out to agree.The truth? They needed the protests to be as violent and chaotic as possible. They encouraged them to make Trump look bad.By 2020, I'd already been the target of so much abuse from the Left. I was called a “white supremacist,” a bigot, a racist, and a transphobe. Many on the Left now just assume it's true —that I “went to the dark side.”Not a day goes by that someone from my former side does not lob me with some kind of hateful insult. Just yesterday, I was told by a long-time follower of my film site that I was a “vile person,” and they regretted ever following me for all of those years. “Enjoy MAGA,” he said. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe

Joe Biden said goodbye. He wanted to mirror Eisenhower, who once warned of the Military Industrial Complex, but Biden saw something equally alarming—the Big Tech oligarchy. He sees Zuckerberg and Bezos attending Trump's inaugural. He greatly fears the power of Elon Musk. He realizes that his side lost control of it and now, he wants all of us to be afraid.Well, I'm sorry, Joe. I can't play that game anymore. It's time to say goodbye. Farewell, Joe Biden, farewell, Democrats. Farewell, hysteria. Farewell to mandated preferred pronouns in everyone's bio. Farewell to being forced to lie about whether or not masks work. Farewell to not being allowed to give people the benefit of the doubt. Farewell to being too afraid to ask questions about an experimental vaccine. Farewell to Critical Race and gender theory in elementary schools.Farewell to the ruling oligarchy — yes, Joe. You were the frontman for it. You can't fool me. I was part of it, too. It was like a daisy chain of paper dolls—Hollywood, all major corporate and cultural institutions, Big Pharma, and all of the ads they pumped into the veins of Americans that showcased the American utopia in all of its splendor. Just take this pill, and you, too, can be with us, in the happy place. Farewell to a government censoring speech via social media. Farewell to the absence of masculinity. Farewell to worrying about every word that comes out of our mouths, what we drive, what we wear on Halloween, what we buy, what we eat, what we watch, what we desire.Farewell to being made to hate ourselves and everything we know to be true but can't say out loud. Farewell to being the oppressors or the oppressed defined only by the color of our skin. Farewell to hating our history, hating our country, hating our heroes. Farewell to virtue signaling our goodness. Farewell to always being told that it's better to keep your head down and say nothing about any of it.Farewell to never being able to take a joke. Farewell to seeing problematic content in every movie and farewell to the warning labels now affixed to all of them. Farewell to seeing all men as predators and all women as victims. Farewell to a country ruled by fear because our leaders can't see it any other way. Farewell to a president who called half the country “ultra fascists,” “ultra MAGA,” and “extreme MAGA Republicans.” Farewell to a government that believes its biggest threat comes from the people of the United States.Farewell to life inside the doomsday cult, where every single day is the end of the world. Farewell to every word taken literally and seen as another chapter of Mein Kampf. Farewell to repression and sanctimony. Farewell to the long, dark winter. Farewell to lawn signs. Farewell to pretending Kamala Harris wasn't a terrible candidate installed by the deep state. Farewell to ever having to worry about speaking the truth. Farewell to the unshakable hopelessness, the unending sadness, the mourning of the long-forgotten Old Left. It's never coming back. Everything has to be rebuilt. Welcome to the beginning of the rest of your life. At least now, you can have a life. Bringing it all Back HomeWatching the confirmation hearings was bringing it all back. Adam Schiff was still out of his mind, braying like he's Cotton Mather in the Oyer in Terminer in Salem, demanding Pam Bondi say Joe Biden “won the election.” Why did it matter so much to him? Are there really that many Americans out there who need to hear those words said out loud?The nominees' worth depended on whether or not they would stand up to the tyrant fascist racist rapist dictator that they impeached twice, indicted four times convicted on a bogus felony charge, all of which eventually landed in the fevered dreams of a washed-up surfer hippie from Hawaii who got himself a gun and tried to kill the president to SAVE DEMOCRACY. And they still lost. They lost the Electoral College and they lost the popular vote. I never get tired of saying that. Talk about owning the libs. What can we do except quote Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire. HA. HA HA HA.That's how much America hates them. After all, how hard could it possibly be to beat Hitler? The problem with utopias is that they can't last. They either must become more authoritarian and thus, less utopian, or they collapse. By the end of our utopia, anyone we knew could be one of those things. A bad person. A sexist. A racist. A homophobe. A bigot. A transphobe. Toxic masculinity. White feminism. Everyone was either an abuser or a victim. The weaker we were, the more we were celebrated. We'd snuffed out all independent thought. We were under constant surveillance by the government, advertisers, AI, algorithms, and each other. We began to wonder what real life even was anymore. It was like Winston and Julia in 1984 trying to carve out some love and lust from the dystopia under Big Brother's ever-watchful gaze, with children spies at the ready to tattle—and cancel—those who broke the rules. So if you say Joe Biden won the 2020 election, like you say 2+2=5, then democracy might have a chance. But if you dare think for yourself and start looking behind closed doors and see things you aren't supposed to see, well, now you threaten democracy.When I pushed open the door of the doomsday bunker and escaped, I knew there was no going back. I also knew I couldn't save anyone, much less the once-great culture I used to love. There is no saving whatever it was we used to call the Left. There is only saving America from what it had become so that all of us at least have a fighting chance.No, it won't be perfect. Yes, it might be chaos — entertaining chaos — but chaos all the same. We'll have to learn how to tolerate each other again, live together somehow, and learn this new way of life suddenly foisted upon us with the internet. Now, we know what it looks like to shut ourselves off from people and ideas we cannot control.If the Democrats on Blue Sky and in the Senate Confirmation hearings are any indication, nothing much has changed on the inside. They're still transfixed by the one guy they couldn't cancel, the one guy they couldn't destroy. 1984 Part TwoAnd maybe now we're about to find out what happens in the sequel. Does Big Brother find a way to regain power by destroying Elon Musk to retake X and make it Twitter again? Do those of us exiled and canceled remain on the outside? Does the New York Times beg Bari Weiss to come back, or The Atlantic to throw themselves at the feet of Walter Kirn, or Rolling Stone magazine, the crap rag it has become, offer Matt Taibbi millions to write for them again?Can those on the inside who have speciated with a whole new language and belief system learn to live with the unwashed masses again? Can they tolerate offensive speech? Can it all be one big, happy, dysfunctional family?On the inside, the news that Carrie Underwood and the Village People were playing at the inaugural birthed a fresh new crop of mass hysteria and rage. So I'm guessing Saturday Night Live won't have Trump back any time soon. The Oscars won't ask him to attend, and those who still believe they control this country will hold onto their collapsing empire until ashes, ashes, it all falls down.I don't know. But it doesn't matter. Because today we say farewell. And oh, how sweet it is. // This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe

Six years ago on Medium, I wrote the following:The Republicans have systematically turned climate change into a partisan issue, you know, like abortion, and have done so to manipulate their gullible electorate into believing the lie that there is no such thing as man-made climate change. They spew the dumbo rhetoric any time they can, that “oh the weather changes all the time.” Or “I don't believe climate change is real — even if the planet is warming, it isn't our fault.”Yeah, it is. You dig up fossil fuels and you burn them, that warms the planet. They were buried for millions of years which, in turn, cooled the planet, making it an ideal atmosphere for all kinds of different forms of life, including us. What's coming next is uncharted territory for humanity. We have no idea how bad it's going to get. We just know it WILL be bad.I was not only furious with rage, but I was quick to blame the other side for deliberately sabotaging our noble efforts to stop the warming of the planet, as though we ourselves were not contributing to it. We acted like we could buy a hybrid here, go vegan there, recycle our plastic, and be absolved from contributing to this existential crisis we all now must face.It isn't that I don't believe the planet is warming, or that sea level won't rise, or that it is directly the fault of so many people on the planet. What has changed is that I no longer blame the other side, and I no longer see my former side as the good guys in the fight. No, I see them as hypocrites. I was a hypocrite too.I'd been in a bubble for much of my adult life because I lived online, in virtual spaces. Yes, I was raising my daughter in public schools, but those were a bubble too. We all belonged inside the same utopia. We read the same articles. We watched the same news. Our worries were the same worries. We spoke the same language, and all of us shared the belief that the biggest threat we faced was climate change and that the biggest obstacle we faced was the Republicans.And then, my daughter moved across the country, and I got a couple of dogs. Rather than fly and leave my dogs at home, I began driving across the country. Those drives changed everything for me, not just how I saw climate change but how I saw my fellow Americans. This was how people actually lived, not how we did, inside our haze of paper straws and cotton diapers.I saw the trucks driving on the interstates to deliver food and goods, the many hotels that require air conditioning and heating, the slaughterhouse trucks providing food for so many in this country, and the tiny houses in the middle of the desert with one embattled air conditioner sticking out of the window.Looking at all of this, all of these places, and all of these businesses, it was easy to see that there was no turning this thing around. There is no way to convince every state and citizen to hop aboard what is an existential crisis for the upper class. Life just isn't like that.Everyone wants things that work, cars that run, planes that fly. They want washing machines, dishwashers, flat-screen TVs, office buildings, emergency rooms, and new computers and tech support lines, to buy groceries they can afford, to get fruit in the middle of winter, to watch movies and doom scroll social media — and “every Tweet warms the planet,” as Roy Scranton once wrote.Even if we could convince every single American to accept our fixes, what would we do about Russia, India, or China? We seemed to have gone all in on fantasy but we're disconnected from reality.What we believe on the Left, or at least we used to, was climate change was Armageddon, doomsday, the end of everything. Therefore, what mattered to us isn't so much that we solve the problems to survive climate change, but that we convert everyone else to our way of thinking. If we could do that, we believed, we could start making the big changes to our country and world.The Left is still haunted by the ghosts of the past, back when we really did have the power and the opportunity to make real change. We squandered that power, and then we blamed the other side. In so doing, we could wash our hands of real solutions, whether it was gun violence, poverty, failing schools, floods, fires, or hurricanes.And now, in the perfect cocktail of high Santa Ana winds, no rain for months, and a city caught off guard, the fires rampaged through the beaches of the Pacific Palisades and Malibu and the mountains of Alta Dena and continue to burn.There were rumors of not enough water, not enough firefighters, and no way to control the speed of the flames as they ripped through the dry brush, burning one house after another as we watched the tragedy unfold on live television or YouTube.This time, the narrative swirled around California's governor, Gavin Newsom, and the Los Angeles Mayor, Karen Bass, newly elected in 2022 as the first female and second Black person to serve. Bass had left the country in January, known as the last month of the Santa Ana cycle that comes every Fall.From the University of California:The region sees about 10 Santa Ana wind events a year on average, typically occurring from fall into January. When conditions are dry, as they are right now, these winds can become a severe fire hazard.//end This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe