When the hilarious clips of Katie Porter losing her temper went viral, I thought What a great skit that would make on Saturday Night Live. Would they dare? The answer came the following Saturday. Of course not. Why not? Because on the Left, they protect their own. The alignment of culture, media, and the Democrats has been a deadly one for them in all ways. It has caused a mass exodus of people like me fleeing the bubble for more honest and truthful alternative media. It has led to empty theaters across America and a ratings free-fall in cable and network news.Desperate times call for desperate measures, which is why CBS News hired Bari Weiss and why we’re just starting to see Hollywood attempt to pull away from the monoculture. But it might be too late. As the lines go in No Country for Old Men, “Well, it’s a mess, ain’t it, Sheriff?” “Well, if it ain’t, it’ll do ‘til the mess gets here.”Welcome to No Country for Old Media, where a story as big as Arctic Frost meets deafening silence inside the bubble, where once again, Axios stands alone.Lucky for me, I listen to the Real Clear Politics podcast every day, which is where I first heard about the story. If these guys are alarmed about it, I know it’s more than just partisan politics. Carl Cannon, Tom Bevan, and Andrew Walworth are straight shooters. It’s a sign of how fast new media is growing that they’ve now announced they will be joining the Megyn Kelly channel on SiriusXM. Is it worse than Watergate? I think so. But you have to look at the big picture, not just one story. The Democrats’ ten-year war to prevent Trump from representing those who voted for him and to deny half the country their right to representation remains one of the biggest scandals in American history. We’ve never had an administration refuse to step aside because they didn’t like the winner and decide for the American people that their votes didn’t matter because one side had all of the power. It was never Trump who refused to leave. It was Barack Obama and the America he believed he had forever shaped.Since the Democrats have complete control of the legacy media, they decide what matters. They have manufactured nearly every major crisis where Trump is concerned. So much so that they’ve inadvertently manifested a Boy Who Cried Wolf scenario for themselves, which is why they’re so dangerous now. They are willing to do and say anything to win a war they’ve already lost. This press conference was ignored by the legacy press, but it’s worth listening to. It lays out in shocking detail just how deep the rabbit hole goes.It’s No Country for Old Media because they can’t cover a story like this, no matter how big it gets. They don’t chase the story anymore. Just as Tommy Lee Jones in the movie is always a day late and a dollar short chasing the bad guys and can’t save the hero, our old media is too afraid to tell the truth and doesn’t get there until much later, if they get there at all. How long did it take them to talk about Joe Biden’s cognitive decline? After Nixon thoroughly humiliated the Democrats in 1972, winning every state except Massachusetts, his approval numbers were at an all-time high. Taking down a guy that popular was compelling news for the American people, who watched his approval numbers crash, and then watched him resign over it.A crash like that isn’t something you see every day, and it’s certainly not the case with Trump. His approvals have been steady because they have been attacking him nonstop. But the legacy media is MIA on all of it. Why? Because they’re part of it. It was the massive alignment of power that I finally could see in 2020, which is why I left the Democratic Party. I believed they had too much power and that the election was anything but “free and fair.” I was a Biden voter, but I assumed we would be on a level playing field. We weren’t. 2020 was a pivotal year for me and many others. I had been Joe Biden’s #1 best gal until the Summer. When the violence began and the legacy media covered it up, it radicalized me, you might say, for the truth. I could see that Trump was gaining ground over that summer, with his five rallies a day and how insane the Left had become. He won Iowa, Ohio, and Florida, which meant that without the way they changed the laws for ballot collecting and counting, he probably would have won. But the election was already over long before election day. That isn’t how our elections are supposed to go. Candidates make their case to the people, and the people vote.But the Democrats collected the majority of their ballots before campaigning was even over, which required keeping the public in the dark about many things, like Biden’s age — they hid him, as they did Kamala Harris’ incompetence. And then, there was the rising fanaticism on the Left and the violence over the Summer. They kept it all hidden from view, just like they’re doing now. What I saw was not so much a rigged election as a rigged system. The “Secret bipartisan campaign” in TIME Magazine lays out exactly how widespread this effort was to subvert American democracy. They all believed it was their right to do so. But it never was. They manufactured an illusion to fool the public. It was the legacy media's job to expose those lies. They never did. Not then, not now.Trump might have been unable to lose. His inability to accept the loss might not have been what we want in our leaders. But as a Biden voter who was now horrified and disillusioned with my party and all of American society they controlled, I was grateful Trump took them on. I also knew January 6th was a much too convenient tool to dismiss everything the Democrats did to drag Old Joe over the finish line.Even now, they can’t confront their own corruption, or even the plain facts about what Joe Biden did to elbow out competition in 2024, what George Clooney did, what Obama did, and how undemocratic it was to put Kamala Harris in without the voices of the people whose votes should matter more. They don’t have to confront it or even talk about it because the legacy media, like Hollywood, like so much of our society, has their backs. It was never about Trump at all. It was about their refusal to step aside and allow America to change. Arctic Frost is an opportunity for them to come clean and admit everything they did to stay in power, and how badly that has hurt them as a party and a movement — how badly it has hurt America — our trust in our institutions and our ability to coexist as a country. Even if the Democrats have destroyed themselves by becoming too corrupt to function, it is how the press became their willing puppets that is the real tragedy here. We don’t need more propaganda. We need more truth in our news.Getting there months or years later is not good enough. Things are moving too fast. This country is changing. Technology is changing. It’s adapt or die. This is no country for old media. It’s time to leave them behind. To quote another line from No Country for Old Men, “You can’t stop what’s coming. It ain’t all waiting on you. That’s vanity.” //Tip Jar 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 imagine right about now, the group chats between Hillary Clinton, Neera Tanden, and Huma Abedin are lit. Democratic Socialism is at the gates. Once upon a time, that was their worst nightmare. Now, it’s their inevitable reality. If Andrew Cuomo does somehow pull off a miraculous last-minute one-in-a-million win in New York, he will do so without any help from the establishment Democrats. But even a weak endorsement from Hakeem Jeffries for Zohran Mamdani is enough. They know their goose is cooked. Even if they’re not happy about it, they have no choice but to go along with it.We wanted to smash the Patriarchy. They wanted to smash the oligarchy.I am old enough to remember how those of us in the I’m With Her army fought viciously with “Bernie bros” throughout the 2016 primary, calling them racists and misogynists, saying they were “useful idiots” for Trump. We wanted to smash the Patriarchy. They wanted to smash the oligarchy.Most of us Hillarycrats were terrified that Democratic Socialism would pull the party too far to the Left and we’d never win an election again. It was the word “socialism,” and no matter how many times they put “Democratic” in front of it, the song remained the same.Maybe we were the last generation forced to read Animal Farm in high school, but we seemed to remember what so many in the Bernie movement had suddenly forgotten. Not only doesn’t Communism sell, but it doesn’t work. That message never got through, and socialism, Democratic or otherwise, would be like those dinosaur eggs that magically appeared in Jurassic Park. Socialism, like life, finds a way.Look at the Democrats now. They’re all in. Even if they weren’t, they know better than to say so out loud. They also know they’re out of moves. They’ve had their shot, and all it meant was Trump beating them again. But I still wonder what’s going on in those group chats. Does Hillary know that this potentially means the Republicans will rule for much longer? Or does she, like all of the fanatics on the Left, still believe they are just one election away from taking back the country We'd better hope they aren’t. Socialist SocialitesYou’ve heard of Vivek Ramaswamy’s Woke Capitalism. Now, meet Woke Socialism —the hybrid of AOC and Bernie, and their Green New Deal manifesto, merging the two ideologies into one complete organism. Zohran Mamdani is their love child, so perfect for today’s Left that he almost seems like he was created in a lab.You see them everywhere, these socialist socialites. Somehow, it’s become the ultimate pretty girl cred, like “Free Palestine” and “This baby is not yet human.” They like socialism for the same reason they like fat acceptance. As long as homely and otherwise rejected women are allowed in, that gives the pretty girls the freedom to display their beauty without being hated for it. Here are hot girls for Mamdani:We saw this on display at a recent Vogue Hollywood fashion show, populist enough for Gavin Newsom to attend. An array of all designated marginalized and their allies, the virtue signalers, all in one place. It was one big mix of the new Gilded Age and the high-society Woketopians in their finest. Here were two famous transgender models greeted with euphoric cheers.How to reflect social justice while luxuriating in extreme wealth? Just chant Tax the rich! Tax the rich! Tax the rich! That was all AOC needed to abandon her working-class cred to join the high-status Woketopians at the Met Gala.It’s its own kind of evangelical grift. But it is the workaround necessary in the totalitarian America promised if the Democrats return to power. We’ve seen what it looks like. We already know. Obey the rules, or you’re banished forever. AOC’s gleaming face in that photo has been replaced by an angry one. Her speech at the Mamdani rally was very much an “us vs. them” anthem, and by them, she means you, the majority in America that voted for Trump. There is no escaping the fact that the party about to embrace socialism is the party of wealth and the ruling class. It’s an inconvenient detail they all mostly gloss over. Here is Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi on America This Week:It is no longer Bernie’s dream of smashing the oligarchy — they are the oligarchy. The workaround is to make it no longer about class but about race and gender. Then, there are no limits on wealth. The lawn sign people desperately crave the status that comes with being deemed an oppressed group, the highest status attained inside Woketopia. You can borrow oppression by, say, making illegal immigration your most important cause. You can be out there chattering about racists. Accuse, lest ye be accused. And best of all, wealthy and powerful high-status figures like Michelle Obama or Oprah Winfrey can still be oppressed and maintain their status while helping to fund the revolution. Meanwhile, some working-class white man in Wisconsin, unemployed and strung out on fentanyl, is forever the oppressor because they need a constant supply of them — white men, Christians, Jews, and billionaires. Here is Barstool Sports Dave Portnoy:Mamdani must rely on his identity to make wealthy elites feel the same sense of inner purpose we all felt the first time we heard Barack Obama speak. He made us feel worthy because our support of him, just because of his identity, made the country better. We mattered. We were important. We were changing the world. What else does Mamdani have to sell? Sure, he’s charming and charismatic. He has a great social media game. He is offering a vision for the future rather than only Trump hate. But I also wonder, could his pitch have worked if he were a normie white dude selling it? It only barely worked for Bernie.How many will heed this warning?Or this:What Mamdani has, like every other designated marginalized group, is protective status inside Woketopia. No one can ever criticize you once you are deemed oppressed because then you get to call them racists, homophobes, transphobes, more phobes, more ists, and even ignite a mob to chase, condemn, and purge the offender. When I hear Mamdani speak, or any Democrat besides John Fetterman, I hear them always choosing to see the worst, to see all the complaints against policies the majority of Americans care about, like crime and the border, the answer is always that they are bad people for caring about their own lives. They are a racist, an Islamaphobe, or a transphobe. Here is the Great White Hope, Gavin Newsom, doing just that on a podcast: Their inability to see beyond that, or for voters to snap out of it and return to the real world, has put them in their most precarious position since the Civil War.Gone with the Wind If you are wondering how the Left was lost or why they are in a hell of their own making, or why they can’t snap out of it, or why they seem like every day is the end of the world, look no further than the South during the last Civil War. They did not want to give up their way of life, or their utopia, either. They were happy, and they did not realize the rest of the country wanted to move on. When the North decided slavery would not expand to the states, the South was willing to fight and die to hold onto what once was instead of evolving into what must now be. The Left is so desperate to hold onto their way of life, they are willing to fight to preserve crime in the cities, to open the border and allow all of the migrants to flow freely into America, and for Medicare for all and universal education to pay for them too.It was a fixed hierarchy in the American South, just as there is a fixed hierarchy among today’s Left. Just as the South was a contradiction to America’s foundational principles, that all men are created equal, so too are today’s Democrats a contradiction to America’s promise, that class no longer decides success, certainly not gender or skin color, but hard work, merit, and talent do. Obviously, that hasn’t always been true for everyone. But it is the whole point of an America at all. Mamdani insists he wants all New Yorkers to live a dignified life. It sounds great, doesn’t it? Once you start digging into exactly what he means by that, you realize he’s not just talking about economics. He’s also talking about thought and speech.Woke socialism is, for the Left, the best of all possible worlds. As long as the marginalized living in poverty are lifted up and elevated, the wealthy ruling class, the Socialist Socialites, can justify their absurdly comfortable lives in a country that has afforded them more wealth and privilege than most will see in their lifetimes. They’re hoping that if they keep the government shut down, if they make Americans suffer, then we will have no choice but to abandon the American experiment and lean in to the same failed policies that have so many fleeing from all over the world just for the chance to live here and be free. As Orwell warned in Animal Farm, it is human nature that ultimately upends utopia. Sooner or later, the powerful take control anyway because all animals might be equal, but some animals are more equal than others. Music:Tip Jar This is a public episode. 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Somehow, I missed this story that appeared in Compact Magazine by Helen Andrews, The Great Feminization.” In it, she writes:Cancel culture is simply what women do whenever there are enough of them in a given organization or field. That is the Great Feminization thesis, which the same author later elaborated upon at book length: Everything you think of as “wokeness” is simply an epiphenomenon of demographic feminization.The explanatory power of this simple thesis was incredible. It really did unlock the secrets of the era we are living in. Wokeness is not a new ideology, an outgrowth of Marxism, or a result of post-Obama disillusionment. It is simply feminine patterns of behavior applied to institutions where women were few in number until recently. How did I not see it before?And:The substance fits, too. Everything you think of as wokeness involves prioritizing the feminine over the masculine: empathy over rationality, safety over risk, cohesion over competition. Other writers who have proposed their own versions of the Great Feminization thesis, such as Noah Carl or Bo Winegard and Cory Clark, who looked at feminization’s effects on academia, offer survey data showing sex differences in political values. One survey, for example, found that 71 percent of men said protecting free speech was more important than preserving a cohesive society, and 59 percent of women said the opposite.And this, which would make a great dystopian sci-fi novel:All of these observations matched my observations of wokeness, but soon the happy thrill of discovering a new theory eventually gave way to a sinking feeling. If wokeness really is the result of the Great Feminization, then the eruption of insanity in 2020 was just a small taste of what the future holds. Imagine what will happen as the remaining men age out of these society-shaping professions and the younger, more feminized generations take full control.Yes to all of this. I would also argue that a feminized society has given more power to the LGBTQIA movement because the one identity group not allowed is masculine, heterosexual men. Feminization has meant, to me, a much more boring and dreary culture—agonizing, if you want the truth. Hollywood has never recovered. Her piece explains much of what I’ve been dancing around in the past five years, and it might explain why hatred toward me, especially by women, is so profound. Why am I not behaving like all the other women by obeying the rules of Woketopia?Cancel culture started on the pages of Tumblr circa 2013 when middle school-aged girls began constructing a totalitarian system of control that punished people for stepping out of line. Here was Liat Kaplan admitting she helped start it all. It also has its roots in the rise of Black Twitter, though largely driven by women. When it was co-opted by the more dominant group - white women - it swallowed society whole, at least on the Left and in the bubble.When you think about it, whole generations of girls have been raised to be empowered, while men have been raised to be exactly the opposite, disempowered. How did we think it would turn out? So much of our common theories about what’s happened to us can be laid at the feet of the matriarchy, and the Left’s ongoing insistence that the system of oppression upon which their movement is based has not been fundamentally altered. They still need a fresh crop of oppressed people because that is how white women find their sense of purpose, their virtue signals — illegal immigration, Free Palestine, in order to justify their authoritarian control of our culture and its institutions. They still pretend we live in a rape culture where women are victims and men are predators. And yet, we know things have dramatically changed. Their movement cannot account for that change.I raised a daughter in the same progressive schools and culture that bred this madness. Part of why I write this site and have risked so much is to help clear a path for her to live a freer life and say what she actually thinks without losing everything. But I also watched how boys raised alongside her came of age in a society that punished them for who they were, and many of them wander around aimlessly, or they become mass shooters, or they suffer lives of quiet desperation. And yet, none of us ever thought about why this may be, or at least we didn’t have adequate solutions. We all know what happened with girls and boys in our schools. I watched it happen. The boys had too much energy, couldn’t be controlled, and were constantly singled out as the problem, while the girls thrived. Yet, the only response was to try to change the boys so they fit, rather than change the system to accommodate their needs. I lived all of this because I am, or was, the typical female Liberal. I remember when mostly white women, the Oprah generation, became the most profitable demographic with the most disposable income. We were mostly unmarried, homeowners, business owners, or the ones who went to work while men stayed home with the babies. All corporations aimed their products at us. When Gen-Z became the more desirable demographic, women took it personally, and that explains why they are in such a state now when it comes to Trump and his defeat of Queen Hillary. A society that had empowered women expected a woman to finally be elected president. Women on the Left believe that in a patriarchy, once women pass the childbearing years, they become worthless. After the age of 40 or 50, invisible. But that’s never been true. Post-menopausal women do have value because they can become leaders and grandmothers to help guide younger women. I could go into a whole thing here about human evolution, but I’ll spare you the extra 500 words. I used my own sexuality as a card to play for decades, and then when it was gone, I was lost in some ways. But I also realized that if you re-order society and “smash the patriarchy,” you never have to absorb that shift. You can pretend there is no reality to any of it. Fat women can be sexy, old women can stay young and desirable. If everyone is equal (Marxism), women never have to face getting old and fading away. Makes sense.It’s just a screeching harpie. Relax. The truth is that once you see the feminization thesis, you can’t unsee it. It’s suddenly everywhere. Now, I will look at personal attacks against me a little differently. It’s just a screeching harpie. Relax. The other half of this story that must be told is the rise of Trump in response to it. I’ve written about that too:There is a reason the man who is an affront to these screeching harpies has taken power and won our Virtual Civil war. He’s an unapologetic, heterosexual, masculine man. Barack Obama was not. He was a sensitive, empathetic man who led our country for eight transformative years. If the end result of that was a feminization of society, then Trump is the response to it.I even jokingly made this political ad last year before the election:In all the ways Trump is the Gray Champion of the Fourth Turning, this might be the most profound. The absence of men and masculinity has set society off-kilter. We’ve all noticed, it’s just that no one has articulated it quite as well as Helen Andrews or J. Stone, who wrote the book. Understanding it as a feminization also removes any discussion of race, which is where many get tripped up when discussing wokeness. They see the word “woke” as a dog whistle. And yet, all this time, it had nothing to do with race except in the way that white women, who dominate the Left, need to virtue signal, and the best way to do that is to use minorities.It also tracks that emotional manipulation drives this. Women are more likely to use emotion as a lever of power, which explains why, for ten years, we’ve seen the rise of mass hysteria. Sure, it’s a cliche to call women hysterical, but how else to explain it? Listen to this woman who is straight out of Central Casting for the kinds of women who control the Left and thus, society.So the question then becomes, how do we stop it? How do we change it? I’m not sure it can be fixed. As I’ve been saying for a while now, there is no saving the Left. There is only saving America from them. We must build anew, build outside of what is in place now. We’re halfway there already. But Helen Andrews believes that once we return to a meritocracy, the problem will take care of itself. It’s hard to argue with that. What a mess we’ve made of things by denying those who are good at what they do to rise in this country of all countries. It had to be Trump. There was no one else with the right set of skills to get the dirty job done. //End song:Link to tip jar. 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

The Democrats are involved in their own cover-up. They’re covering up for a Nazi. How could they! All they’ve done for ten years is scream about Nazis! Trump was Hitler, I was told and told and told and told, leading a Brown Shirt army, awakening the White Nationalists, and radicalizing them to rise up and kill Black and Brown people. I was told the Democrats were the side fighting Nazis! It’s okay to punch one, and they’re all Nazis! The Democrats told us! But there is a Nazi in their midst. A genuine bona fide Nazi by their own rules, a Nazi. We don’t give Graham Platner the benefit of the doubt. That’s not how this works. It’s one strike and you’re out.We convict him in the court of public opinion because these are your rules, Democrats. This is the bed you made, and I’m afraid you will have to lie in it. Why are they having a hard time with calling Platner a Nazi and pushing him out like they all pushed out Al Franken after he was called a rapist? For the same reason they aren’t pushing out Jay Jones for his vicious fantasies about killing the children of Republicans. They don’t think they have to, and they are right. They have the legacy media on their side, and to them, only those on the Right can ever be called a Nazi and have it stick. Political violence only matters if someone on the Right does it. Joe Biden told us that. The people we have to fear most are the radical MAGA extremists. Platner will slither on through because that’s how the game is played.Mark Halperin, Sean Spicer, and Dan Turrentine on 2way.The problem is, they like him. They want him to stay in their party because they need macho, macho, macho men. He’s a macho Nazi! He sounds like a real man, not like a Democrat.They’ll have to convince the ladies of The View, however, because they are not on board. Somehow, they realize that if they give Platner a pass, it essentially renders all of their accusations against the Right for ten years null and void.These are their rules. They set the no tolerance for Nazis policy. And anyone they deem a Nazi is, in fact, a Nazi. So by their own rules, we must conclude Graham Platner is a Nazi. There is no presumption of innocence allowed. There is no benefit of the doubt. There is certainly no tolerance, redemption, or forgiveness allowed. It’s once accused, forever guilty. That is their most powerful weapon against the Right.Everyone is a Nazi who voted for Trump. Elon is a Nazi for waving to the crowd. The media, far and wide, reported that story as an actual fact, and the utopians inside the Doomsday Cult not only believed it but still do. Just ask them. Trump is a Nazi because Trump is Hitler. Ivanka is a Nazi because she is Hitler’s daughter. Melania is a Nazi because she wore an outfit one time that the Left decided looked like a Nazi outfit. The utopians inside the Doomsday Cult not only believed it about Melania in 2020, but still do. Then again, is there anything they wouldn’t believe? Right now, they are rolling around in agony yet again because Trump is demolishing the East Wing to build a ballroom. It sounds like a great idea, and Trump is a builder —so why not?If Obama were building the ballroom, they would hail it as a profound moment in history where America’s “white supremacist” past was finally confronted. They would be more honest about how they really feel about the Founding Fathers, who built this country on the backs of slaves, and the White House is representative of our colonizing, 1692 white male patriarchal past. Obama would be hailed as a hero and celebrated on the pages of the New York Times for tearing down that past and building anew.But since it’s Trump, it is a desecration. Because he’s a Nazi, racist, fascist, dictator, criminal, felon, rapist, and most recently, pedophile. Everyone has to be a Nazi because, as the ruling class, they are the oppressed side. Their otherwise pristine lives were disrupted when the other half of the country, the less powerful half, decided they wanted to participate in our democracy, but also couldn’t stand living under the suffocating totalitarian GOODNESS of the lawn sign people. You’ve heard of the Good Germans, now meet the Good Liberals.Here is a list of what you can’t say, eat, drive, or wear. Everything you ever did in your past is subject to our judgment. We will decide your character and convict you of whatever we damn well please. We will call you racists, and everyone will go along with it. And your life will be destroyed over it. What did you once wear on Halloween that could now come back to haunt you?Once marked by them, your whole life was ruined, now that American society had been sucked into the utopian cult of the Left. You were marked, and that meant you were to be banished, shunned, disappeared as the BAD THING, a NAZI. Which kind of sounds like actual Nazis, doesn’t it? The word Nazi is, to them, a casual adjective. The sky is blue, that flower is pink, that person in a red hat is a Nazi. They don’t think twice about it and have emboldened themselves to say it all the time. They have also screamed it, chanted it, and even used it to justify violence.Charlie Kirk’s assassin believed he was fighting fascism, which is another word for Nazi, because none of these people really know their history. These words are stand-ins for their own helpless hatred and rage against people who don’t agree with them on their totalitarian worldview. When the Epstein story failed to take down Trump, the Democrats decided pedophile was now their favorite word. And all Republicans were guilty of it. They scream it, wild-eyed with spittle spraying out of their mouths. They say it on TikTok to any Trump supporter because, you know, Nazi was played out. Can you imagine Nazi being played out? Now it’s PEDOPHILE!! This is on billboards, on the No Kings signs. They say it casually and frequently, as they use the only weapons they have in our virtual Civil War, WORDS. Words to them are harm and they are violence, so they fire them at will. Freaky virtue signaling podcast host Jennifer Welch, who has almost single-handedly alienated all heterosexual men from the Left, loves to point her bony finger at her fellow Americans. Accuse lest ye be accused. Here she is calling Stephen Miller and other Trump supporters Nazis. What this whole ugly affair has exposed is that they never meant any of it. It was all politics. They just didn’t want to share this country or hand it over to people they deemed beneath them. It was all lies for ten years. They destroyed people based on those lies, and they never thought twice about it. People have actually died and been viciously assaulted. Most of us were victims of a long con. They never believed it. They just wanted to win.Which is why it’s funny to hear Democrats like Jaime Harrison pretend they aren’t the side that has been throwing their fellow Americans away like human garbage for a decade, all because they couldn’t beat Trump.So yes, the Democrats have a Nazi problem, and it’s high time that the Republicans gave them a taste of their own medicine by saying so at every opportunity. Who knows, maybe it will make the Good People of the Left think twice the next time they point their finger and scream NAZI! // 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

“If the rule you are following has led you to this, of what use was the rule?””Do you have any idea how crazy you are?””You mean the nature of this conversation?””I mean the nature of you.”So goes an exchange in No Country for Old Men, but it’s a conversation the Democrats might have with themselves as they gather for yet another protest after ten years of them. If the rule you are following has led you to this, of what use was the rule?”Protests are meant to be the voices of the unheard. Yet these protests are the voices of those who never shut up. Not for one minute, not for ten years, and all of us have had to endure them like being trapped inside Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory with hundreds of thousands of Veruca Salts.What are their No Kings protests anyway? What have they been since 2016? What are they trying to say? Is it like the ex who smashes all the dishes in the kitchen when her husband tries to leave? I won’t be ignored, DONALD.What’s the point of it? To what end now? Of what use was the rule? The voices of the unheard? More like the side that had everything. All the media, all the institutions, all the culture, and for a time, all of the government. The people had only Trump. They gathered their small donations and, by some miracle, voted him in, because they had a right to be represented, because this is their country too. It was a revolutionary act that mounted some sort of opposition to a movement that had swallowed up much of American society and demanded that we all go along or be left behind.They managed to have the mother of all protests in the Summer of 2020, smashing windows, burning buildings, beating up cops, and throwing massive fits that said WE’RE MAD! But mad at what? Democracy? Sorry, you lost an election?I try to remember being one of them and feeling the same way. But why did we think we had the right to protest an election just because it didn’t go our way? And not just protest, but protest all of the time over everything. Because we had all the power and we couldn’t stand to compromise with the other half of the country. They had to go, MAGA had to go. We canceled them. They’re racists, we said.Elections only counted if the Democrats won. The other side was not allowed to win, try to make a change, or fight for their right to representation. Not in 2016 and not in 2024. So the protests will not end because the people have to be made to suffer for their vote. So fine, the American people said in 2020. Okay, we’ll vote him out. Donald Trump is an existential threat, and our country is pure chaos. Desperate times call for desperate measures, so that, you know, like rigging an election, becomes necessary. And fine, we’ll vote in Joe Biden, maybe that will calm things down - finally, the protests will end. Cut to: a botched exit from Afghanistan, 13 American soldiers dead, two wars in Russia and the Middle East, one long dark winter, a bad economy, and are we topless at the White House?It was like George Spahn had moved in and ushered in the Manson Family. Things were getting weird, and the culture of silence and climate of fear meant no one would tell them that they were freaking America out. The Democrats became totalitarian while in power, not just censoring speech on social media, not just institutionalized cancel culture, and a transgender contagion that was spiraling out of control, an obsession with race and racism and antiracism, and if that weren’t enough, they weaponized the Justice Department and tried to throw Trump both in jail and off the ballot. Suddenly, the Trump chaos wasn’t looking so bad. But we still lived through the first president to have his home raided by the FBI, the first mug shot, and then watched him almost getting his head blown off on live television. None of that made even the slightest bit of difference. They were still somehow the victims even though they lost both 2016 and 2024 entirely on their own.Whose fault was it that Joe Biden, behaving like a king, elbowed out any challengers even though he was in serious decline? Whose fault was it that the Democrats and the media said nothing? George Clooney said nothing until he was publicly humiliated after the debate.Whose fault was it that they pushed Kamala Harris as the nominee, thinking it would be easy to defeat Trump, after all, he’s a twice-impeached, four-times indicted, convicted felon! Whose fault was it that Kamala Harris was a terrible candidate, and every honest Democrat knew that in 2020. But suddenly everyone just pretended not to remember how she was humiliated and triggered by Tulsi Gabbard, and then dropped out because she was polling so badly?Whose fault was it that the Democrats have given their party over to the lunatics who still insist trans women are women and that they should be able to play in sports against real women? “We just need to change the messaging,” said King Barack. What choice did reasonable people have but to vote the Democrats out and keep them out until such time as they can come back to sanity? They fight against mass deportations and want an open border, while also demanding free healthcare for all. They never see any problem with this. To them, it’s a human right that someone else always has to pay for. They are the victims here, and all of America is expected to address their needs OR ELSE. NO KINGS!They’re like the attention-starved kindergartner who can’t stop crying in the corner, the stalker ex who monitors your every move, and the nagging wife who won’t leave you alone, all rolled in one — what about ME? What about my NEEDS? They are the party of the rich, yet pretend to be the voice of the people. As if. That ship sailed long ago. The Bernie Sanders/AOC/Zohran Mamdani brand of socialism is yet more virtue signaling for graduates of Ivy League colleges and wealthy celebrities. As long as you signal Tax the Rich you can chum around with Anna Wintour and Kim Kardashian.It all sounds good, right? Let the poor people have free stuff, and they’ll leave us rich folks alone. They’re happy to pay a guilt tax as long as they can Instagram by day and sleep at night. Give the poor and the marginalized whatever they need, and join me on my yacht after that climate change fundraiser. I would be more sympathetic if, after ten years, they had something, anything other than more protests. If they could face the truth about how crazy they have become. If they could understand just for one minute that they were only getting one side of the story by a weaponized, biased media machine that seems to delight in keeping them mentally and emotionally unhinged. If any of them had any courage whatsoever to stand up to their own party, but they’re too afraid. Even Gavin Newsom is afraid. Who are they trying to convince by now with these protests? Who would be drawn in and want to vote for them? It’s mostly aging Baby Boomers and Jen Psaki viewers, naked grandpas on bikes, women with septum piercings calling babies parasites, and single women who shop at Erewon and Lululemon after high-priced pilates on Sunday.Why would you want to showcase all of that madness when most Americans are just trying to get through the work week? Have a beer on the weekend, maybe take a walk at sunset, maybe drive their Tesla that isn’t smeared with feces or keyed down the side. And hope that their kid doesn’t have to decide which gender to be in preschool or, god forbid, catch a glimpse of a naked appendage while coming upon a protest in the park or just trying to use the girls’ bathroom. Why, Democrats, why? The only semi-reasonable one of them is John Fetterman, whom I once believed should never have run after suffering a debilitating stroke. They were doing it for a yes vote, I thought. Boy, did that turn out to be wrong, and now, he’s their worst nightmare because he thinks for himself and isn’t afraid of them. Now, according to Axios, they’re trying to push him out. That’s right, the only semi-sane Democrat is now persona non grata with the totalitarians because, of course, he is. They punish dissent. That’s why they’re in this mess. Protests signal to the public that the Democrats are helpless, that they have no ability to win elections or to compromise or have any kind of rational conversations about anything, much less any plan to lead America anywhere. Their messaging for ten years now is all or nothing. Give us what we want or we’ll throw a fit. Listen to how insane they are with these TikTok videos:They shun anyone who votes for Trump. They treat the other half of the country like toxic waste. They have no way to attract new voters. Who would want anything to do with them? Sure, they still have lots of money and enthusiastic psychotic delusional voters, not to mention the legacy media and Hollywood.In their imaginary world, Trump is a king, a dictator, and a fascist when in reality, he’s just the guy they could not destroy or defeat. It’s never been Trump. America is exhausted. Ten years of the 19th nervous breakdowns the Left has been having over Trump, only to lose to him again in 2024, and probably to JD Vance in 2028 and 2032, is enough. The Democrats are doubling down on the very thing that makes them so repellent to voters. Helplessness and temper tantrums are no way to lead anyone anywhere. // 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

Heroes are in short supply in America at a time when we need them the most. Hollywood can’t deliver them anymore, that’s for sure. They are too ashamed of themselves and their history to remember how. Heroes seem to be a matter of interpretation, like everything else in our two Americas. But one thing was certain on October 13th: Donald Trump was a hero that day.He was a hero because whatever it is that defines Donald Trump, he was not going to give up on those last remaining hostages. He would bring them home. He found the best people who could get the job done, and with help from leaders all over the world, we watched a miracle.What a difference a president makes. Instead of watching bodies falling off airplanes with 13 soldiers dead in the Afghanistan withdrawal, now we were watching hostages rushing into the waiting arms of their families. We are at war for the narrative of what we all just lived through over the past ten years. It’s like that line in the song from Hamilton, “who lives, who dies, who tells your story.” Who will tell it? How will it be written about in history books? If one half of America tells the story of Donald the Terrible and the other tells the story of Donald the Great, who wins? How will it be preserved on Google, YouTube, and AI? Here is what I know for sure. Trump isn’t Hitler. He isn’t a fascist. He isn’t a dictator. Whatever else he is, the Left has been lying about him. They lie in the legacy media. They lie on social media. They lie to themselves. I know because I lied too. I lied because it was socially acceptable, even encouraged. The bigger the lie, the greater the reward.Over the past five years, I learned something about myself I never knew until Trump. I’m someone who cares about the truth, and that became a problem for me if I wanted to stay inside utopia. The more questions I asked, the louder and stronger the attacks against me became. I was to accept the lies or else. It matters how we tell the story of Donald Trump and the political machine that tried and failed to destroy him. That doesn’t mean Trump is perfect, or that he doesn’t create chaos and push boundaries that can sometimes offend or insult people. However, it does mean telling the truth about him and ensuring his legacy is recorded in history as one of the greatest stories ever told, and the most exciting time any of us will ever live through. Donald The TerribleYou might have had to be like me, someone who has spent 30 years online, to understand how the Left could become so disconnected from reality for so long. They exist inside a perfectly contained bubble that perpetuates confirmation bias through a media/social media feedback loop. Social media, and now AI, are new technologies that we must somehow survive, even though they often deceive us into thinking that what we see and read reflects reality. It doesn’t. AI is a reflection of everything that has already been written. We must work hard to influence it, because it will reflect the lies.Our story begins in 2008, with the election of Barack Obama, as well as the dawn of the iPhone, Twitter, and Facebook, not to mention the Wall Street bailout that gave rise to two populist movements and sparked the crisis that led to the Fourth Turning. We had the opportunity to build a New America, a shining Woketopia on the Hill, with new rules of language and behavior — one big soup of humanity that required us all to find our tribal identifiers. Class went out the window, as did the free market and the silent majority. Identity became a means by which we ranked ourselves and others. Obama was our leader, and as wealth and power shifted leftward and society began migrating online, the Democrats amassed an unprecedented amount of power. If you were living like this, you felt like you were at the cutting edge of something brand new. We were not only leading the country but also the world. The problem was not only that we had abandoned much of America without even realizing it, assuming everyone would be on board with our new direction, but also that we did not build our house of bricks. We cultivated victimhood and fragility, which made us ill-equipped to deal with the rise of Donald Trump.He was our ogre rampaging the quiet countryside while we stayed locked behind the castle walls, terrified that he might storm through the gates. Our comedians became our court jesters, and the legacy media delivered only news that was acceptable to the ruling elite. Hollywood reflected our singular hysteria. We had our magic mirror to tell us, always, who is the fairest of them all. Had there not been a big lie that consumed us that Donald the Terrible was an existential threat, maybe we’d have been okay. But when, at long last, Donald the Terrible was pushed out of office and Joe Biden was installed as a placeholder for our King, Barack Obama, the Democrats couldn’t deliver. They showed the people that they still didn’t care about them, that they would double down on their same toxic policies and force all of us to live under their increasingly strident rules.The border was open. Crime was rampant, thanks to defund the police. Gender ideology was not only a full-blown contagion out of control, but no one was allowed to even talk about it. Somehow, that truth never found its way in. Instead, the lies grew and the delusion took the Democrats all the way to raiding Mar-a-Lago, four separate indictments to put Donald the Terrible in prison. They took his mug shot. They forced him to sit in court so he could not campaign. They slapped him with a nearly $100 million lawsuit for defaming someone who was never defamed. And never, in all of that time, did they once talk about Joe Biden’s failing cognitive abilities. Not once did they turn the camera around to look at themselves and see all the ways they were failing us.History must tell that story. It’s the only way to understand what came next and what made Trump a hero. Donald the GreatWhen I was a Trump deranged lunatic, I was doing what everyone else did every second of every day. I was scouring the world for proof of Trump’s evil nature. So I, too, read Mary Trump’s book on her uncle. I expected to find stories that would serve as the necessary smoking gun, justifying how much of our emotional real estate was now devoted to obsessing over him.Instead, I found myself seeing a different side of Trump than I’d been conditioned to believe, even though that clearly was not Mary Trump’s intention. She wanted me to see her uncle as uniquely dangerous, but how could I after reading the part where Trump was abandoned as a toddler when his mother was sent to the hospital after the difficult birth of his brother Robert? Donald Trump was just two years old, but he was already a fighter. He had to be. He had to survive without his mom at a time when he needed her the most. That was his first lesson in self-reliance. It was also his first lesson in seeing the brighter side of life. He could have spent all these years blaming his childhood and blaming her. But he never did. Why? Because he always paid tribute to his mother and chose the positive, he made his life better, and that is the power of positive thinking.That wasn’t the only lesson in being emotionally tough, but it does explain, at least a little bit, how he was able to keep pushing through attacks that almost no human could survive. He wasn’t babied. He wasn’t coddled. He was thrown right into the deep end.And that is how you get to the guy who did not falter when they used everything in their considerable arsenal to destroy him. Each time they went at him, whether they knew it or not, they were making him stronger and transforming him into Donald the Great. And perhaps that helps explain how Donald the Great came to exist at all. That is what we all saw on October 13th. We saw that guy, the guy who would not stand down and would never allow his enemies to tarnish his good name. Here is Megyn Kelly:The Democrats still have not learned their lesson. If anything, they’ve only gotten worse.They may not like that Trump writes stuff like this:But they always overplay their hand. I don’t happen to think his TIME cover is so bad. To me, it looks like he’s looking to Heaven, and there is a halo around his head. But why should he trust any of them after ten years of attempting to destroy him through imagery? A day before, TIME tweeted this out: Make America Great AgainTrump’s secret weapon has always been his loyal supporters, his MAGA base. He had their backs, so they had his. They showed up on January 6th at great cost to their reputations and their incomes. They were tarnished with lies and propaganda, but they stuck by Trump. It was felt most profoundly in Butler when none of his supporters ran after he was shot. As Trump said so eloquently at the convention just days later, they wanted to make sure he was okay.Then, when he says he isn’t supposed to be here, they chant back to him, “Yes, you are.”This has never been the story of the Fourth Reich and the Second Confederacy. This has always been a love story, a grassroots movement, a basket of deplorables, standing by the only guy who saw them at all, let alone the guy who would fight for the America they want.That was what I witnessed in 2020 when I began watching Trump rallies. I saw happy people who were celebrating. How can they be celebrating? I remember thinking. Why aren’t they miserable like we are? The answer is that, no matter Trump’s many flaws, he has the unique gift of saying what no one else had the courage to say. And through him, they have a voice.Here is Scott Adams:And here is a Trump supporter:Every day, Trump is at war with the truth because there are still so many powerful people who want the lie. But they must know by now that this thing is only moving in one direction. We’re never going back. Best lay down your weapons, Democrats. It’s over. Here is Scott Adams again:The Democrats probably had no idea that in their unending pathology, their TDS, their ten-year temper tantrum that is still ongoing, they would sabotage their own fairy tale, Donald the Terrible, and manifest a better one, Donald the Great.And so we must tell this story over and over again until one day we won’t have to because everyone will already know the truth.// 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’ve been hated by the Party of Hate for five years and counting, maybe longer. For a while, I tricked myself into thinking it was people who didn’t really know me. They judged me on my tweets or my opinions. But then, after I came out as a Trump voter, I felt hate even from the people who did know me.I’ve seen sons disown their mothers, wives disown their husbands. I’ve felt the hatred from the people in my town who put up alienating lawn signs that seem to come from a good place until you think about what they’re really saying: agree with us, or we will hate you. When I was a kid, my stepdad forbade us from using the word “hate.” We were not allowed to say it for any reason, not “I hate brusselsprouts,” “I hate doing the dishes,” or most especially, “I hate you.”I felt it bubbling up so many times - what is a better word, I would wonder. There is no better word, I would conclude. Hate is the word we use to describe that all-consuming heat that bubbles up inside us that we can’t control. There are perfect words for things, or as Anton Chigurh said in No Country for Old Men, “you pick the one right tool.”What is love? I knew what that was the first time I saw my baby’s face. What is hate? What all of us felt in November of 2016 when Donald Trump won the election. From that day forward, for the next ten years, we would be defined by and consumed by hate.The hate wrapped itself around us. It comforted us. It made us feel morally superior and less alone in our misery and less helpless in our actions. It justified everything we did, whether it was protesting Trump’s inauguration or forming the #Resistance. It justified even worse, beating up, spitting on, and knocking the red hats off of Trump supporters. The rulers of the Left’s aristocracy, the empire that is now in tatters, said nothing. They seemed to delight in watching all of us good soldiers protest, even smash windows and burn buildings to show how angry we were, because that made them feel less like the failures they are. Blame Trump, blame the voters for the crime of voting them out. Blame anyone but themselves.All of culture was now consumed by the hatred that blotted out the sun and kept us trapped in a long, dark winter of misery and rage. It was our obligation as citizens of utopia to take a side against the half of America that had betrayed Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Hollywood, universities, corporations, institutions, book publishing, libraries, and restaurants all sent the same message to the Red Hats: you are not welcome here.The directive from on high was not to “normalize” what was not “normal.” The people didn’t just vote in Trump to represent them — that would be democracy. This was something else. This was an affront to all the better people —the ones with all the power. Those who called themselves the good side, the moral side, the side written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by Steven Spielberg, the lawn sign people who say JUST BE KIND, were in the grips of an emotion they could not name, let alone control.You do not speak like we do. You do not believe what we believe. You do not accept our version of reality. We don’t want you here. We hate you. Hate was what we were feeling, and yet hate was a word we’d given away. It didn’t mean this overwhelming sensation that made us use our social media to demonize and dehumanize the working class. It meant people who did not go along with our progressive ideology. It started back in the 1990s with the fight for gay marriage. “Love is love” meant you’re with us. “Hate” meant you were against us. Hate was what all of those bad people over there were, the God people, the Conservatives, that’s what defined them, not us.Without the right words to describe what we were feeling, we had to find other words. Nazi, fascist, dictator, bigot, homophobe, racist, rapist, xenophobe, transphobe. And when that wasn’t enough, we had to go after how he looked, his weight, his hair, his hands, his skin, his relationship with his family, the cars he drove, the food he ate.Trump was the only thing we could see because hate was the only thing we could feel. Like this woman on TikTok who embodies so much of what defines the Left today.It wasn’t that Trump didn’t troll or provoke us or give as good as he got. He did. Every one of his tweets drove us deeper into our hatred. How could he say that? That’s not funny. That’s not a joke. That’s offensive. Presidents don’t talk that way. Who would dare talk that way? Don’t laugh. Take it seriously. Don’t normalize him. Maybe for a while, the hatred was an understandable response to someone who offended everything we stood for. But after years of it, even I couldn’t take it anymore. It wasn’t just poison I could feel — a poison that began to make me sick — it was poison in our culture. It touched everything, ruined everything, destroyed a once-mighty movement, and collapsed an empire. That hate we felt, that united us, meant everything had to be sucked into it, like a black hole. Jokes weren’t funny. Movies were dystopian and apocalyptic, and still are. Keep the people afraid. We are oppressed, said the wealthy ruling class. Hate became a useful weapon for the empire. They could police thought and speech to aim their weapon at anyone who disagreed with them, defied their rules, and thought for themselves. Two Minutes of Hate Although they will deny it and wish for it not to be true, what we all built back when Obama won was like 1984. We built an “inside” that kept everyone else on the “outside.” If you wanted to be on the “inside,” you had to follow our strict rules; otherwise, you were out.In 1984, Big Brother uses Two Minutes of Hate to keep the people consumed by an emotion that prevents them from ever thinking for themselves. Who would want to be hated like that?And yet, that described exactly what it was like to watch everyone I knew every single day on social media. It spilled over into real life because the media drove it — from morning news on NPR and the networks, through the day with social media feedback loops, to cable news, and late-night comedy. It was Two Minutes of Hate all day, every day.I didn’t want to be part of it, and I had to know what was true and what wasn’t. In 1984, we know Big Brother is lying about Goldstein, if Goldstein even existed. The version of Trump we thought existed was the same kind of useful illusion. What was the way out of this, I wondered. I’d already felt the wrath of my friends online for asking questions or breaking our strict code of thought and speech. They hated me, too. So I decided to try to reprogram my brain by cutting off all information coming from the media and social media.It wasn’t easy. I filled up my head with only news from the Right. I wanted to know who they really were. I had to know if any of it was true. What I eventually found out was that no, it wasn’t true. Every screeching accusation is a choice to condemn someone on flimsy evidence without giving them the benefit of the doubt. How can we live like this, I thought. We must be able to tolerate one another. But how? The first thing I needed to do was remember what words really meant. NewspeakNewspeak is necessary in 1984 for the same reason it’s necessary on the Left. Like masks, it identifies who is who in a civilization migrating online, where words are sometimes all we have to decide who is who.Our manipulation of words like 'love' and 'hate' meant that they became elastic over time. We used them for our own purposes to drive our agenda. Break the rules of language, no matter how crazy and ridiculous they become, and you are HATE. The worst offender of Newspeak is undoubtedly “Gender Affirming Care.” It’s a word game for them. You can’t oppose it without opposing the “affirmation” of their gender. It is demanded and mandated. Which is how we get videos like this.Children are conditioned to obey these strict rules because waiting on the other side for them is Two Minutes of Hate, or a lifetime of it.Obey our rules, or else it’s all done with rainbows and unicorns and a smile. Now look at how Charlie Kirk approached this difficult subject, with compassion and grace, but also by edging ever so closely to the truth. Is it any wonder they had to silence him by any means necessary? Child-like words are given for extreme procedures that they are in no way ready for. Top surgery is, in reality, a double mastectomy on a pre-teen or teenage girl who can’t consent. Bottom surgery is either chemical or surgical castration, or mutilating your otherwise healthy organs to fake male body parts. The words became ways to define this bizarre new fundamentalism that has overtaken so many young people, and why so many of them are fleeing for freer, saner pastures. Did you know there was a word called Adultism? It means, “behaviors and attitudes based on the assumption that adults are better than young people, and entitled to act upon young people without their agreement. This mistreatment is reinforced by social institutions, laws, customs, and attitudes.” Heterosexism, cisgender — so many words. All it means is that you cannot question any of it and must follow these words to decide the meaning of things, rather than what you know in your mind and heart to be true; it’s 2+2=5.Trump’s biggest crime was that he stripped away gentle language and spoke the plain truth. None of their weapons of war — the Two Minutes of Hate — worked on him. We forgot the lesson from our childhood about the power of words. They are just words. They are not bullets whizzing through the air from rooftops. They are not shooting a CEO on the streets of New York. They are not setting fire to Teslas.I don’t have to look far to see what the Left has become. I only have to scroll social media, and the algorithm gives me what is most popular. Yes, these are just words, but more and more lately, violence is echoing them. And on TikTok:Sticks and StonesCharlie Kirk was silenced because the shooter said he “spread too much hate” and it could “not be negotiated down.” An assassin did the dirty work. The end result was the same. That he wasn’t immediately silenced, that his voice got louder as people mourned him and defended him, brought the hate back with a white hot fury. I’ve been waiting for five years for those I know on the Left to snap out of it, to thaw out, to find their humanity and their tolerance. Yet every day, it just seems to get worse. Because to them, they are becoming hate while combating what they have defined as hate. That’s not everyone on the Left. I know some brave people who still treat me with kindness and decency. Those who lead their party, however, including their influencers, journalists, celebrities, and comedians, are the ones defined by hate that leave no room for any middle ground.Here is Jesse Kelly:Those who aren’t consumed by hate are too afraid to stand up to the party. They can’t even stand up against text messages that fantasize about violence and death against Republicans. Here is Abigail Spanburger in a debate with Winsome Earle-Sears, refusing to back off her support of Jay C. Jones:But I know that violence on the Left in the era of Trump is not new. The issue dates back to 2015 and has been reported on by Tucker Carlson and Liz Wheeler, tracing its origins to Trump’s first term.But the Left controls the media narrative, and even if that’s changing, it isn’t changing fast enough. There aren’t enough Democrats willing to stand up against any of it. Here is Pam Bondi and Benny Johnson on the arrest of a man who threatened Johnson’s life:When I found my way into Trump world, I found exactly the opposite of what I expected: hate. I found tolerance. I found decency. I found kindness. I found love. It was unusual to find people who were not eternally miserable, bearing the weight of the world on their shoulders, like most progressives. Many of them are not driven by politics but rather by a higher power, and that is what prevents them from becoming a people and a movement defined by hate. There is also a lightness in escaping totalitarian oppression that polices every word that comes out of your mouth. It feels good to speak the truth, and it feels good to feel free. The death of Charlie Kirk has shaken moderate Democrats out of their hate stupor because of how so many on the Left reacted to his death.The Democrats didn’t used to be the party of hate. But powerful people don’t like having things taken away from them. In their fury and fanaticism, almost nothing of what they built, supposedly on inclusion and tolerance, remains. All that’s left is the thing they can’t name, the thing they can’t extinguish: that all-consuming hate. I don’t know how we end this madness. I don’t have any hope that the Democrats will emerge from it any time soon. I guess that means we must move on without them to shape an America that, at the very least, understands the meaning of fundamental words like love and hate. // 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

George Floyd was born on October 14th, 1973. Charlie Kirk was born twenty years later, on October 14th, 1993. That is an odd coincidence, a cosmic joke upon us: we have two paths forward for America. How we honor these men in death will decide our country’s fate. We all remember what happened on Memorial Day weekend of 2020. We all saw the video. It was horrific to watch a man die while begging to be freed and calling out for his mother. The video showed an unconcerned Derek Chauvin calmly placing his knee on the suspect to subdue him. Then we saw the life drained from George Floyd.Overnight, he was transformed from a career criminal trying to pass a $20 counterfeit bill to score drugs into a martyr for the systemic racism of America’s police, and a “racist” America that elected Donald Trump.Millions poured into the streets, breaking lockdowns. Defund the police, they chanted. A photo circulated online of a fake Derek Chauvin with a “Make America White Again” hat. If you worried about the riots, the looting, and the violence, or sympathized with anyone who was brutalized that Summer, like Sue and her 100-year-old mattress store, you too were a “racist.”When I showed the video of Sue, my friends shouted, “How can you care more about property than people?” As buildings burned, as chaos reigned, whatever mass hysteria had taken hold four years earlier, when Donald Trump won, had now reached its pinnacle. It felt like war. But against what? Police brutality, White America, Donald Trump?In reality, it was a way to reclaim not just the White House, but what Mark Halperin calls “cultural hegemony,” where they get to decide what we can and can’t say and think. They decide what books and movies are “racist” or phobic of one kind or another. After that Summer, there would be no debate about any of it. That America was “systemically racist” was the default. Anything you said could convict you in the court of public opinion as a “racist.” All it took was one accusation against you.A massive industry of “antiracism” ballooned as wealthy whites poured millions into their desperately sought-after absolution. It was laughable and grotesque, but it set the tone for what American society would become in the future. There was a disease in America that needed to be eradicated — the disease of “whiteness.” This was and still is being taught in public schools and universities. It’s so bad that young people see transitioning or becoming non-binary as a way of being accepted. Now you start to see why Charlie Kirk was and is such a problem for them. He challenged those ideas. He challenged the mandated doctrine. He criticized Affirmative Action and DEI, not to mention trans rights and sex outside of marriage, and that abortion is murder. All of that went straight to the heart of the empire.But let’s not get it twisted. The reaction to George Floyd’s death was to transform America into a fascist-like Woketopia with nearly every major institution on board and handed more power to those at the top, who could destroy anyone for breaking the strict rules.That has meant the Left is free to dehumanize the Right in any way they want, as long as they tag their target with the mortal sin of “racism,” which they have attempted to do to Charlie to distort his message and silence his voice.In those days and weeks after Floyd’s death, no one on the Right celebrated. Trump did not do what Barack Obama did: make a public statement of condolences before launching into an attack.Trump never smeared George Floyd in death, though he did condemn the protests. The high-minded media ignored the violence almost completely in 2020, and no one would dare write an investigative piece on the life of George Floyd or look at the case critically. When Bari Weiss and James Bennett were chased out of the New York Times, it was the Left eating its own for daring to challenge the mob. Firing Donald McNeil or David Shor did not happen because they questioned the doctrine. It was because they were accused of being “racists.” That is very different from people being fired for dancing on Charlie Kirk’s grave.To pretend, in any way, that the Right has the power to re-order society, to mandate thought and speech, to implement strict doctrine in every institution, corporation, business, and social media platform is to either have amnesia about the last ten years or to willfully lie.That isn’t exactly the sentiment of Thomas Chatterton Williams in this Atlantic story, The Other Martyr - MAGA has found its George Floyd. The title is slightly misleading, but since it’s behind the paywall, I don’t have much to work with. He writes:For many on the left, Floyd’s asphyxiation turned a flawed and desperate man into a Christ figure, someone who bore the weight of the world’s failings and, in so doing, cleared a path to fix them. In the feverish weeks since Charlie Kirk’s assassination, the MAGA right is undergoing its own religious ferment, animated by a new martyr. Just as the left used Floyd’s death to justify and hasten all manner of political ends, the right is invoking Kirk’s name to advance illiberal aims and silence opponents. In death, Kirk has become a cudgel.Even if Trump has gone so far as to condemn Jimmy Kimmel and threaten to silence speech in Charlie’s name, there is no comparing that to how our society was transformed in the wake of Floyd’s death.These are not now, nor have they ever been, two equal sides. The Left is feeling a fraction of what all Americans have been forced to endure for ten long years. Jimmy Kimmel was taken off the air for five seconds. The Trump admin wants to know why PBS and NPR were so one-sided for so long and why the public airwaves only support one side. But even asking that question is fascist. That’s how much power the Left has.We see them all rising up to sign letters by the thousands, with Jane Fonda daring to pretend to care about free speech on “both sides” to mock our leaders. Yet she and all of the high-status elites in the aristocracy said not one word as cancel culture purged hundreds for thought crimes for years.I lost much of my income in 2024 for mocking “White dudes for Harris,” and Gina Carano was fired from Disney for a tweet. Tucker Carlson was thrown off the air after Chuck Schumer threatened Rupert Murdoch from the Senate floor. Every time, the Left cheered. Now they want to pretend like they care about free speech?The truth is that Charlie threatened them because he did what they could never do. He offered to discuss his views with people he disagreed with. He put the ideas to the test. He spoke with respect and kindness, but his ideas were resonating, and he was changing minds one debate at a time. So of course, they can’t afford to see his star keep rising now that their empire is in collapse. That’s why all of the big names are now coming out to make a statement about Charlie when he’s not here to defend himself. No one did this in the wake of Floyd’s death, certainly not at the New York Times. Here is Ta-Nehisi Coates echoing that sentiment:But Mark Halperin, who interviewed Charlie many times and who knew him well, was not holding back in his rebuke of the lie that Charlie “spread hate.”They don’t realize that the more they try to lie about Charlie, to bury him in the past as a “racist” who “spread hate,” the more people like Halperin and others will fight to protect his good name. Here is Emily Jashinsky breaking down a NY Times investigation on Charlie Kirk’s debating style, like he’s an insect in a jar. That is how desperate they are to hold onto the cultural hegemony and to silence Charlie.Here is Megyn Kelly going to great lengths to debunk the viral lies about Charlie.Charlie said provocative things because he wanted to shake college kids out of their indoctrination stupor and have them think critically about what they had been taught to recite by rote. That’s what teachers are supposed to do. That is what art, journalism, and comedy used to do. Yet, that is what the Left sacrificed to demand obedience to the doctrine. Which Way Forward, AmericaTwo 19-year-olds. One is Violet Affleck, the victim of every awful lesson pushed upon her by her extremely progressive schools and parents who can’t stand up to her. Here she is at the United Nations making a pitch for masks in 2025. Meanwhile, another 19-year-old, Brilyn Hollyhand, is continuing the tradition of Charlie Kirk. He’s not cowering. He’s not shrinking back. He’s fired up because one man led by example. Which way forward, America? Masks? Helplessness? Celebrating victimhood or something else, another way forward, a way out, a way to success. Perhaps Charlie was a threat because he sought to rewrite the future for everyone, regardless of their skin color. Maybe his aim was to try something new because the old way wasn’t working. The old way led to George Floyd. They don’t even want to take the chance that what Charlie was saying was resonating. They’re happy he’s not here anymore. They’re happy he was silenced. They want a sick and crippled America because then they are necessary. Unfortunately for them, Charlie wasn’t like George Floyd. He wasn’t famous only in death. He stood for more than just serving as a religious symbol. If you disagreed with him, he welcomed you in. Debate him. Change his mind.He has left his legacy everywhere - YouTube, podcasts, speeches, and interviews. Surely they must realize that every time they lie about Charlie, all it takes is one search to see the truth about who he was.Here is Charlie engaging in a respectful debate about DEI and affirmative action, where people can listen, learn, and form their own opinions. The Right didn’t need to invent a religion or make Charlie a martyr for one; they already have that religion and they already have that martyr. Charlie was bringing religion back into the minds and hearts of the young, to give them something, anything other than hating themselves for the color of their skin. And it was his faith that led so many people to see the Left differently in the wake of his death. Be careful what you wish for.That Charlie Kirk and George Floyd were born on the same day offers up two paths forward. One path leads to victimhood with no way out in a “white supremacist patriarchy.” The other path is summed up by Andrew Kolvet, who is busy trying to keep Turning Point alive: Oh, how I wish someone had taught me that lesson thirty-one years ago when Charlie was born.Choose your hero wisely, America. 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

They came out, all of them, like Lady Macbeth, crying, “Out, damn spot,” anything to distance themselves from the words of Tyler Robinson to his lover to justify the killing of Charlie Kirk. What was Charlie’s big crime? He believed in the biological reality of men and women and refused to go along with what he thought was a lie. To Tyler Robinson, that meant he was “spreading too much hate,” and it could not be “negotiated down.” He was not having a mental collapse. He was not suicidal. He was a cold-blooded assassin doing the bidding of fanatics whose fury had brought them to this deadly moment. And so Charlie had to die because that’s what happens to “fascists.” All of us who have been booted out of utopia for one reason or another know what it feels like to have our characters assassinated by people who think their moral superiority means they have the right to be Judge, Jury, and now, Executioner of those who refuse to comply and conform.One wrong word and you’re a “racist,” even trying to stand up for someone being called a racist, like Megyn Kelly or Chris Harrison did, means they’ll assassinate your character anyway, with no due process and no presumption of innocence. It was in 2020 that I could not take it anymore, this ugly, unending, bottomless dehumanizing of Trump and his supporters. Maybe it was my over-abundance of empathy, maybe it was that I’d been attacked, my character assassinated. Or maybe it was lockdowns, my dear friend and ex-boyfriend overdosing on heroin from loneliness, and my daughter moving across the country. Whatever it was, I felt the cold hand of evil every time I logged on, and I watched them unleash hell on one man, his family, his staff, and his supporters.Why are they doing this? I demanded of them. They must know what I know that dehumanizing whole groups of people is never the right side of history, no matter what. But once they cast Trump supporters as “racist white people,” “fascists,” and “Nazis,” there were no limits on what they could say or do. But someone had to be lying. Why would millions of people have voted for Trump, including my brother, if he were as bad as the media said he was? And it turns out it wasn’t just the media doing the lying. It was the Democrats, too, and all of those good soldiers on social media going along with their lies.I used to be one of them. I went along with the lies, too, because I thought we were fighting to defeat an existential threat. But by the end of it, all I could see was that we’d built an empire of lies, just like Bernie Madoff did, and that our empire would collapse just like his once people started to uncover the truth. It was always going to end up here, because that’s how dehumanization campaigns always end. Lynchings in the Deep South, concentration camps in Nazi Germany, and the hangings in Salem. Or the Manson murders in 1969, the bombing of the Capitol in the 1970s. And now, attacks on ICE officers.Here is Mark Halperin covering for Megyn Kelly.The violence has continued because it’s barely been reported accurately. They only publicize killings if they fit the already prescribed narrative, like if a “far right” white man opened fire. When it’s on their side, they never address ideology. They say nothing when the hive mind indulges in a Trump death fantasy for an entire weekend, or TikTok users begging for someone to “just do it” and become a hero. Or planning their celebrations for the day Trump dies — where else did they think this was going? It wasn’t just the assassination of Charlie Kirk; it was the response to the assassination. It was revealing because it showed just how delicious it all was for them. Why else would they have been celebrating and cheering? That’s the itch they want to scratch, and they’re just glad someone out there got the job done so they didn’t have to get their hands dirty.Oh, how good that feels when all you have are fantasies and words and cancel culture and shunning and screaming at, which then became spitting on and kicking and finally, shooting. Violence, that’s what all of this was invented for, right? How else do you think you could get people to fight and kill in war? They came out on social media like flesh-eating zombies from a 1950s horror movie. We won’t mourn a “racist” or a “fascist,” they insisted. It seemed to track alongside the decency of those whose humanity was still intact, and who knew that we don’t shoot people because they disagree with us. The more we all felt for Charlie and his family, the uglier their social media posts became. They could not absorb what just happened to America. So it had to be Charlie’s fault, Out Damn Spot:Amanda Seyfried then backed away and gaslighted like they always do, deflecting blame, bringing up other acts of violence to lessen what just happened to America. This was it, the moment people like her and the Democrats, along with their influencers, could have stood up, led by example, and said ENOUGH. Hollywood, the Left, and the Democrats have looked uglier. Try as they might to reclaim their moral superiority, their reaction to Charlie’s death said it all. Even if many of them did not go along with it, the fact that they haven’t stood up against it makes them culpable for that and everything that’s coming next. Charlie did not incite violence. He did not spread “hate.” He stated his opinions while listening to the opinions of others. It is his opinions they don’t like because they are strictly verboten inside utopia. You must believe what they believe, speak like they do, or else. They have never figured out the ugly truth, that they are the fascists, as this TikTok user explains so perfectly:Charlie’s death was a test, one they failed. They spent all of their decency cred turning Jimmy Kimmel into a martyr for free speech as the news was breaking that the Biden administration forced YouTube to censor and demonitize those who would not use preferred pronouns or dared to doubt the results of the 2020 election. Kimmel cried, so what? Kimmel got high ratings, so what? Nothing could clean them of the stench. Out, damn spot. Another TikTok user:After they destroyed and ripped up their version of Charlie, the high wore off. Hungry for more, they went after his wife, Erika. These tweets receive hundreds of thousands of likes, which is why they often appear at the top of everyone’s feed. Each time, you are given a choice: flesh-eating zombie or decency. Now, she was a woman who was acting, who didn’t shed a single tear. They dug into her past and found a bikini pic from her days as Ms. Arizona and somehow connected her to Trump. Nothing could clean them of the stench of Charlie’s blood, no matter how hard they tried to rewrite the narrative that they were the good guys fighting actual Nazis. They have to reckon with the truth about who Charlie really was and then ask themselves whether these tweets, this decade-long dehumanization, mean they had nothing to do with it, and even now, must continue to pummel Charlie’s reputation when he’s not even here to defend himself. The legacy media knew ten years ago that violence was rising on the Left in response to Trump, as a direct result of the messages they were sending. They were not telling us the truth. Not then, not now.Some of them want pats on the back for finally noticing and writing stories about what people on the Right have been talking about for years.Matt Walsh imagines what would have happened if all of this had gone the other way. The Democrats need a revival of decencyWhat if Obama or Hillary or any of them had the courage and, yes, the decency, to say enough? ENOUGH. It’s time to put our weapons down because a man was just shot in the neck for no other reason except that he didn’t agree with the Left. What if they could say that? What if they could have their own revival, a revival of decency?What if that was the message Jimmy Kimmel gave? What if the Democrats made speeches in Congress, and that was the message? What if they apologized to all of us for lying about half the country for ten years? What if they said it was wrong to call other people “Nazis” and “Fascists”? The best they can muster, because even they know how bad this looks, deep down they know, is to “both sides” it, as Hillary does here:Rather than focus on themselves and what they’ve done, they have had Trump to use as their dumping ground. They are addicted to the daily ritual. That’s the only purpose Jimmy Kimmel serves now, and John Oliver, Stephen Colbert, and the legacy media and Hollywood. But you have to ask, when is it enough?Ten years of nothing but blaming Trump, of hating and bullying people who might not agree with their increasingly cult-like doctrine, with no one in the Democratic Party to call them out or tell them to stand down. No one in the media either. If no one ever tells them that it’s wrong, why would they stop?They have lost everything. Their numbers are in the toilet because Americans can’t stand them anymore. The death of Charlie Kirk and their reaction to it have only made it worse. It has been a clarifying moment for many of us who might have been holding out hope that something this horrific might finally pierce the mass delusion that has taken us to this very dark place. The problem with what we built, our utopia oh so long ago at the dawn of social media, the iPhone, and our god and king, Barack Obama, was explained best by Milan Kundera in his book Laughter and Forgetting:Having an insulated, isolated utopia where the rest of America is locked out allows everyone to play the part they want. E. Jean Carroll gets to pretend she was defamed and walk away with almost a hundred million. Jimmy Kimmel gets to pretend he’s a good guy, never meant to smear MAGA, and receives glowing headlines in the wake of it. Kamala Harris gets to pretend she ran a successful campaign, but America was too racist and sexist to vote for her. I used to think this was our biggest problem, this two-tiered society, their castle in the sky. But after Charlie, now, it is so much worse than that. Why can’t they see what they’ve become? Why can’t they see where it has taken us? Perhaps it was the immense outpouring of love for Charlie, the overwhelming grief of so many people, and the admiration for the impressive movement he built, which helped change the country and elect a president, that made them feel a little bit jealous. They don’t have anyone like that on the Left because they can’t do what Charlie did. They can’t have conversations with people they see as “Nazis.”Sooner or later, the mass delusion will come to an end. It always does. Those who believe themselves to be better than half the country will have to face the truth about who they are. The only question is how bad it will get before they do. 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

If Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez plans to run for president in 2028, she’s just made the biggest mistake of her political career. That speech of hers will be written in ink, and it will haunt her for years to come. Why? Because she didn’t know the first thing about Charlie Kirk, and everyone who watched her give that speech knows she’s either ignorant or lying. We know that on the Left, they do not believe in any kind of presumption of innocence when it comes to words. Words are harm. Words are violence. Most of all, words define who you are. They found some words Charlie Kirk may have said one time, but they strip them of context and refuse to confront the whole human being. But that’s what they do, right? That’s why so many of us have fled. AOC’s attempt at a posthumous cancellation of Kirk made her look ridiculous. I don’t know if she realizes it yet, but she will one day. George Floyd’s death was the very thing the Left feared showing up in real life. We know what came after. But with Charlie Kirk’s assassination by a guy who didn’t like his words, it was on an entirely different level.George Floyd, like Melissa Hortman, served as a symbol of the Left’s view of a country full of bad people, “racists” and “misogynists.” Who they really were didn’t matter. Charlie Kirk was everywhere. We saw him speaking to us on YouTube, on TikTok, on X, on podcasts. He was on Bill Maher. He was on South Park. He was leading a massive movement of young people who were excited about changing the world. The algorithms didn’t know he died. Our brains and our hearts somehow had to process someone who was so close and yet no longer with us. I’m writing a longer piece about the Democratic Party and its failure to meet the moment, but in honor of the memorial for Charlie Kirk on Sunday, I thought I would put together a video montage of clips and various voices to give Ms. Ocasio-Cortez a better idea of who Charlie Kirk really was. The truth is that they’re all bitter and jealous of what Charlie Kirk was doing. No Democrat ever would or could. They don’t debate. They shut you down. They shut you out. They shut you up. I’ve never talked to a Democrat who ever wanted to listen. They start to glitch out if you try. They’ll hang up, or they’ll start hurling insults, or they’ll walk away. The idea that any of them could do what Charlie did time and time again, offering up respectful but spirited debate, is laughable. He was the voice for so many who could not articulate arguments as well as he could and who had the courage to touch untouchable topics. There is not a single Democrat who can do that. They only know how to tell you what to think.The legacy media and the Left will attempt to write Charlie’s story, and they’ll write it badly. They’ll scare people by warning of rising “Christian Nationalism.” They’ll cherry-pick things he’s said because why wouldn’t they? That’s why it’s important for those who know him to counter that argument any time they can.Let this be the beginning of making sure they don’t lie about him out of a lack of “education” or “ignorance.” I hope you enjoy the video. 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’s funny that they all suddenly care about censorship, free speech, and cancel culture, isn’t it? And the chilling effects that had on open expression? Have they looked at Hollywood lately? Ever hear of a culture of silence and a climate of fear that has all but gutted a once-thriving industry? Do they remember why Elon Musk had to buy Twitter?How many people did we watch unpersoned, disappeared, and banished from utopia? How many lives have been ruined just for daring to speak the truth about the differences between biological men and women? Remember All Lives Matter? Remember Blue Lives Matter? Remember the MAGA hat and all of the ways people were assaulted, screamed at, spit on, and shunned just for wearing them?Do the hundreds of names in the database for Cancel Culture register at all? Remember the Harper’s Letter and how so many were canceled just for signing it? Now, we’re all supposed to feel bad because those who chose to dance on Charlie Kirk’s grave are now losing their jobs? Well, my friends, turnabout is fair play. What drama queens. They get fired, and it’s the end of the world? They lost their jobs, try losing everything. Your family, your marriage, your friends, your status. The Right doesn’t have that kind of power. And besides, no one is banning them from social media for posting things like this:I know I’m supposed to care and play the game of saying that firing people is wrong. Maybe it’s wrong, but honestly, I don’t care. If we just move on and pretend all of this is on par with using the wrong pronoun or questioning masks or the results of an election, then how can we ever absorb something as serious as someone being shot and having his throat exploded in front of his wife, his kids, and a rally full of students? Here is someone who was there and witnessed it. How can we just move past this with all the usual memes and mocking, sneering posts?Look at these awful women mocking Erika Kirk. If they get fired for this, I have not an ounce left in me that cares even a little bit. Maybe that makes me a hypocrite and a bad person, but I would not want these soulless monsters working for me.I wouldn’t want a guy like this working for me either, partly because he is awash in mass hysteria and trapped inside a delusion of his own making, and partly because he seems to think it’s necessary to keep killing people he thinks are “fascists”:Cancel culture was always about power. It was wrong when it began after Trump’s win in 2016. It existed before that, mostly as a joke on Black Twitter, and in the murky, icky depths of Tumblr circa 2013. But it became frightening and chilling when institutions got involved. And when the government got involved, it was authoritarianism. Julie Kelly has a story on the crackdown after January 6th that should make anyone’s head spin about what they did to American citizens, most of whom were practicing their First Amendment rights when they were treated like terrorists. Kamala Harris herself compared that day with 9/11 and Pearl Harbor, as if to justify everything that was about to happen to them (aka internment camps and Gitmo), from the show trials to the absurd charges thrown at many of them, policing their thought and speech, convicting them in the Court of Public Opinion with “spectral” evidence. They were accused and convicted “racists.”I have stood up to cancel culture for the last five years, even longer. I stood up for those wrongly accused, whose lives were ruined over the same things, either imagined crimes of their past, or one wrong word spoken, or a joke made on Twitter, like Gina Carano, who was fired for joking about COVID and pronouns.Why is it always on MAGA to take the high road? Imagine if a prominent left-leaning influencer of Charlie Kirk’s stature (they don’t have one, but let’s say they did) was assassinated at a rally. Millions would pour into the streets all over the world. MAGA can’t. Why? Because they’d be once again demonized as dangerous extremists. Their right to protest was eliminated after January 6th.Imagine if, in 2015, the Right had done this to Democrats:Yes, January 6th was bad, but so were the protests when Trump was inaugurated. Yet, it’s always one group that is punished and one group that is either ignored or celebrated.Sure, you get the fake Patriot Front out in force in an attempt to continue the lie that Charlie Kirk was a “fascist,” but the Right doesn’t riot and rally and protest like the Left. They can’t, but also, contrary to popular belief, it’s not who they are.For the record, the side that shoots the guy in the neck because they don’t like his opinions is the fascist side. Supporting those celebrating his death is to support fascism or extremism. Do I think Stephen King’s books should have been removed? No. Do I understand why MAGA would want to use its power to pay them back? Absolutely. When the Left rampaged through the cities all through the Summer of 2020, leaving violence and mayhem in their wake, the media barely covered it. No one was punished for it. In fact, all were rewarded. Anyone who criticized the protests even a little bit was canceled for it. I remember. I was there. When January 6th unfolded, there was violence, just as there had been all Summer. Yet, only one side was demonized for it. All the American people saw for months, years after, was the January 6th footage on a loop. Even now, they bring it up as though the Summer never even happened.After Biden took power, he weaponized the DOJ to go after Trump, indicting him four times after the Democrats impeached him twice. They tried to throw him off the ballot in several states. He defeated them all and won again, impossibly, in November. When Trump’s DOJ went after John Bolton, the Left clutched pearls — how could he be using lawfare against his opponents!? When does the Left take any accountability for the bed they made? Ever?In theory, I don’t agree with Cancel Culture. But I guess I don’t care that much now, not after everything I’ve seen them do, not just what they did to me, but what they’ve done to MAGA for the past ten years, or anyone who broke their rules. They had all of the power, and they abused that power. This is their precedent. They’ve never apologized to those who have been canceled, like me, Graham Linehan, JK Rowling, and Joseph Massey, and hundreds of others, for making a joke or having an opinion. So cry me a river.But sure, if they all step forward and say, “We’re so very sorry we canceled all of you. You are now officially uncanceled,” then maybe MAGA should think about feeling bad about it. But until then, they're having to lie in the bed they made — tastes like victory.And besides, on the Left, they fail upwards. If anything, they’ll be celebrated for getting fired. Look at Stephen Colbert, who has now won an Emmy and will be getting a standing ovation tonight at the ceremony and a pat on the back for condemning political assassinations. Just not character assassinations. He’d never condemn those. He wouldn’t have a career. As they gather at the Emmys tonight to hand each other gold statues none of them really deserve, they will all pretend for one more night that they’re the good guys as a heartbroken MAGA gathers at the Kennedy Center to honor Charlie Kirk, something they will see as a desecration. They probably think it will be a Nazi rally. Instead, they might be surprised to find them honoring Charlie the best way they know how, by praying. They won’t be able to avoid thinking about Charlie Kirk at the Emmys. They’ll pretend to care about Cancel Culture because the worm has finally turned. But his death, that brutal public execution, has embedded itself in our culture, yes, even on the Left. Sooner or later, they will have to confront the truth about who Charlie Kirk really was. Because, even in the afterlife, he still knows how to encourage people to question their core beliefs with amazing grace. // 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

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 www.sashastone.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 www.sashastone.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 www.sashastone.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 www.sashastone.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 www.sashastone.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 www.sashastone.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 www.sashastone.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 www.sashastone.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 www.sashastone.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 www.sashastone.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 www.sashastone.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 www.sashastone.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 www.sashastone.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 www.sashastone.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 www.sashastone.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 www.sashastone.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. 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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 www.sashastone.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 www.sashastone.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 www.sashastone.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 www.sashastone.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 www.sashastone.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 www.sashastone.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 www.sashastone.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 www.sashastone.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 www.sashastone.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 www.sashastone.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 www.sashastone.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 www.sashastone.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 www.sashastone.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 www.sashastone.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 www.sashastone.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 www.sashastone.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 www.sashastone.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 www.sashastone.com/subscribe

As we approach the four-year anniversary of January 6th, I keep hearing Robin Williams's words from way back: “Reality, what a concept.”It is not reality but unreality that so many on the Left live by. Want to know why Joe Biden’s age was covered up for so long? Why didn’t anyone speak up against puberty blockers before? Why is box office for Hollywood films in near-total collapse and ratings for cable news shows in freefall? Look no further than Obama’s unreality machine.In that unreality, Liz Cheney is not a formerly low-level rep from Wyoming with a famous last name who was voted out in a landslide but is instead an American hero who “put country over party” when she turned what was left of her career into a vendetta against Donald Trump. For that, she was love-bombed by the propaganda press and an instant star in the Democratic Party, the “one good Republican,” as they saw it. Mitt Romney and Adam Kinzinger would be relegated to supporting players.In the unreality, it makes sense for Joe Biden to bestow upon Liz Cheney the Citizens Medal to rapturous applause by the Left.TV appearances and glowing headlines in high-minded outlets like the New York Times reminded me of that line in the Robert Redford film Quiz Show, when they ponder why Charles Van Doren would have to cheat just to win. Because “he’s not going to get on the cover of TIME Magazine as Mark Van Doren’s son.”And so Liz, with her sensible suits and the authoritative tone she got from her father, played an important role in the greatest scam ever perpetrated on the American public, or at least one of them, that Donald Trump was so evil, so dangerous, so powerful he could destroy not just the Constitution but democracy itself.And that his supporters were cult-like obedient zombies who picked up their weapons and stormed the Capitol to hang Mike Pence and overthrow the government. Oh you mean the one protected by the most powerful military force the world has ever known? That government? In the unreality, you must accept that, or you will suffer severe social consequences.The truth was never going to be enough. They needed star witnesses like Cassidy Hutchinson to toss into the media churn to keep the story on Page One every day of the Biden presidency. They needed a Soviet-style primetime show trial wherein the Trump side was not even allowed a proper defense. General Milley and Benny Thompson made guest appearances to remind everyone of what it was all really about - WHITE RAGE.They must really think the American people are that stupid. They had lived through months of violent protesting all Summer, and they were supposed to clutch pearls at a riot at the Capitol? Yes, it was violent, but so were the protests in 2020. Ah, but those protests were “mostly peaceful” and justified in the unreality.It’s the government’s job to meet the needs of its people, not the people’s job to meet the needs of the government. January 6th was a day our politicians should have recognized that their unreality machine left millions of people out. And it was those unheard voices that should have been heard that day. Yes, some of them got violent and breached the Capitol, and they should be punished fairly, but that isn’t what our government did. They went to war on their own citizens, something the Left had never done, not since the Civil War. 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 is my heart-warm and world-embracing Christmas hope and aspiration that all of us, the high, the low, the rich, the poor, the admired, the despised, the loved, the hated, the civilized, the savage, may eventually be gathered together in a heaven of everlasting rest and peace and bliss, except the inventor of the telephone.Mark Twain - Letter to the Editor, New York Evening World, 23 December 1890If you grow up on the Left, you grow up without religion. After the counterculture movement split from conventional religion in the 1960s, we’d done everything we knew how to do to fill up the eternal emptiness that had us chasing everything from sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll, cults in the 1970s, gurus, and ashrams, the self-help movement, the mental health movement, and eventually, we ended up back where we started.We “found religion,” but this time as the politics of identity, where our happiness depended on how we solved the problems of society, like racism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, and climate change. It came from needing to feel good about ourselves and our world, but it was followed by anger and resentment when we could not convert the entire country to our way of life.The truth about the Left is that they know no other way of life. This was the problem for the Southerners after the Civil War. They, too, knew no other way of life and could not evolve out of their hatred, fear, and hysteria. All they could do was preserve it by banishing those who threatened it. I wish I could say I’ve come out of these past several years with a renewed faith in humanity. The truth is exactly the opposite. What I saw was what collective hatred, fear, and tribalism can do to otherwise decent people. I saw what we’re all capable of when our power is threatened. I saw how easy it is to go along with the crowd, even when what they’re doing is wrong.I always thought the people I called my heroes were made of tougher stuff. Better stuff. Kinder stuff. I always thought my side was the side of the good guys who would be immune to group dehumanization. I also did I think we would ever be the ruling class aristocracy sneering at the middle and working class, gathering all of our culture, wealth, and institutions, and hogging them for ourselves.Now that the empire is in collapse, those with all of the power are scrambling, not just to explain it but as a way to get back some of what’s been taken. Good luck with that one. Take yet another agonizing, unbearable column by your typical Leftist elite, Jill Filipovic, writing for The Guardian:Worse than what, Jill? Indoctrinating children to choose their genders, then surgically or chemically sterilizing them? Or does it just come down to immigrants and their right to cross the border illegally by the millions, their safety, and our safety be damned? Corruption? You mean like government censorship on a laptop or covering up the mental incapacity of the Commander in Chief for four years? Weaponizing the Department of Justice? Immorality? Like what exactly? Lying to the public via the propaganda press? Calling half the country “garbage” or “White Supremacists” or “Nazis”? And what rights? The right to have an opinion without losing your job, status, or social standing? Your right to play in sports as a biological female without having to compete with biological men? Oh, of course not. She means abortion, as usual. Honey, if you want an abortion, there’s a pop-up clinic down the street. People like Jill examine half the country as insects in a jar, watching how they behave in tightly confined spaces, how they respond to being called racists, or how they are de-banked or canceled off of social media. It’s fun, right? To watch the insects get stressed and claw at the glass for a way out? The disgust drips from every word, even as she tries to make nice-nice, now that her ass has been handed to her in a historic, humiliating defeat.Trump won again, Jill. Eat that for breakfast. It isn’t you people who have to learn to tolerate Trump voters. It’s you who have to apologize to them for what you’ve done not only to them but to this country. You have destroyed every great thing you ever built, and listen to you now, pretending you still have the moral high ground. She then tries to explain why she’s writing this at all:To paraphrase a line from Carrie, “Shut up, Jill. Just shut up.”These are the kinds of people I used to call home. I knew them, mingled with them, read them, RT’d them and was Facebook friends with them. Now, they terrify me. They are the banality of evil. They are the side that would go along with segregation, even if they’ll never admit it. They’re the side that would lock arms as the Jews were carted off to camps, and no, they’ll never see themselves that way. She writes:Oh, poor deluded Jill. She has no idea what just happened, does she? It would do her a world of good to start opening her mind to reality, escape the fear bunker, and start interfacing with the truth. She should read David Samuels’ piece in Tablet, one I’ll be writing about in more depth for my next piece: “Trump’s head turn was a perfect example of an event that has no explanation outside the favor of the gods, or whatever modern equivalent involving wind factors and directional probabilities you might prefer to the word “God.” Trump was fated to win, just as Achilles was fated to overcome Hector, because the gods, or if you prefer the forces of cosmic randomness, were on his side, on that day, at that moment. That move not only saved his life by allowing him to escape an assassin’s bullet; it revitalized his chi and set in motion a series of subsequent events that generated a reordering of the entire world.”“You can’t stop what’s coming. It ain’t all waiting on you. That’s vanity.”A Christmas StoryI was always the first to wake up on Christmas morning. It was almost like a job. I’d scramble into the living room before the sun even came up to gaze upon the abundance of treasures beneath the Christmas tree. I never believed Santa was real, but those presents got there somehow. It was my grandmother who enlisted my older sister to help her wrap all of the presents after the rest of us had gone to sleep. It was a magic trick she performed every Christmas to keep the illusion of Santa alive in our imaginations.She thought she had us fooled. We let her pretend. It didn’t matter because every Christmas morning was a rare moment of pure joy. One after the other, we’d tear through the presents, not waiting for each person to finish before moving on to the next. Pure carnage but oh what fun. I never really thought much about what Christmas really means until recently. If it is only about driving the economy or buying stuff, then it isn’t worth celebrating. But if it is about something much bigger than ourselves, a way to unify us as one people under God, well, then it means something.I began thinking back on my life, on my childhood, and how religion fit into it. Most movies during the Hays Code era (before the 1960s and 1970s) were infused with Christian ideology, especially Christmas movies. And why wouldn’t they be? George Bailey prays in It’s a Wonderful Life, and an angel shows up to answer his prayers. In A Charlie Brown Christmas, they sing about the “Newborn King,” who is, of course, Jesus. We all used to share that as a country. It was a thread that united us, along with being American citizens. We all watched these movies because we understood the foundational principles of what made America. That isn’t true anymore. To even reference religion, as I’m doing now, is practically a revolutionary act. There is a new religion in town, a fundamentalist one that offers no path to redemption or forgiveness and demands total compliance or else.What does any of it mean to us now? Is it really just about the list of things we buy? Is it about the movies we all treasure every year? Is it about what unites us, not what divides us? Is it about something bigger than ourselves? Are we still even allowed to say “Merry Christmas?” I don’t have the answers; I just know that I was raised by a devout atheist who hated religion, and thus, I never thought about Christmas other than as a way to give things and get things. But now, thanks to my four years of getting to know Trump supporters, I see that and many other things differently. I wandered out of darkness and despair toward what looked like a golden light of hope and optimism, surrounded by people our ruling class deemed “dangerous” at best and “human garbage” at worst. I knew every step that brought me closer to them would be one more step that separated me from everyone and everything else.As I’ve written so often here, it was another Christmas movie, maybe the best one, that reminded me of what happened to me. It was The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. The moral of that story is that you can’t steal Christmas. It isn’t something you can buy or attain. It isn’t even something you can give. That’s why the Whos in Whoville are still celebrating and singing even after the Grinch takes away every last symbol of Christmas. He couldn’t take away the one thing that mattered most - what was in the hearts and minds of those celebrating.I can’t call myself a Christian or even a person of faith. I lean in, and that’s farther than I did before. But I also know I have learned the same lesson the Grinch did. I saw people abandoned by our political establishment, institutions, and culture - people who should have been angry and bitter. But they weren’t. They were happy. That’s how my heart grew and why I think differently about Christmas now.It wasn’t Trump supporters who demanded I pick a side—it was the Left. They have imagined an unbearable reality for most of us. Perhaps it comforts people like Jill Filipovic, but for the rest of us, we choose the better way, one that values forgiveness, redemption, and humility. And one that allows us to say, even shout, Merry Christmas. So thank you, dear readers. When I say you saved me, I really mean it. You did. There, but for the Grace of God, Go I. // 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 wished I’d edited the OG Hero’s Journey more, but I wanted to finish it as quickly as possible. I kept thinking of things to add, and a professional editor friend of mine gave me some notes. So I tinkered with it a bit, but today, I decided to edit an extended version, a “Director’s Cut,” as a thank you to the premium subscribers.I’ve spent four years now unable to figure out a way to offer extra content as a perk, but I just came up with one. Now, I can add all of those things I wanted to add - like the Trump/Biden Debate, Kamala Harris, a few extra clips like this one from Megyn Kelly:Not to mention the dismissed cases against Trump, the defamation case, etc. I added a few things here and there, and I think it is better than the first one, though it will be longer by about 20 minutes.This is for those who might be interested or enjoyed the first ones. If you sent me money a different way and are still counted as a free subscriber, let me know so I can upgrade you. It isn’t my favorite thing to put things behind a paywall, but I did want to add an additional thank you. In these tough times, I know money is hard to come by. That’s why almost everything I write here is free. But this is a way to appreciate those extra folks who have chipped in. This isn’t the last thing I’ll be posting before Christmas and New Year’s but I wanted to get out anyway.Thanks again to everyone who reads, whether you are premo or not.Sasha 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

[Introduction: I made this as a special gift for Christmas or the holidays because I wanted to do something more than just a regular podcast to say thank you for your support, your friendship, your letters (yes I read them) and just for being great people. I hope that you will get something out of it. I tried to keep it short but it’s too long. Either way, it’s a learning curve! The transcript with most of the video references is below). Every so often, I say out loud, “Trump won.” I repeat it in my head a few times because even now, I barely believe it. Eight long years of conflict, madness, division, corruption - there have been convictions, jail time, even suicides among Jan 6ers whose lives were destroyed because they were faithful enough to Trump to have his back when the chips were down.What our government, our media, and the ruling class wanted was to terrorize Trump supporters out of their loyalty to him. “It’s a cult,” they continue to insist. But even after all of that, Trump won. He won the Electoral College and the popular vote. There has never been a story like this one in all of American history, and even the Good People of the Left know that. But there have been stories like this in all the most beloved films and books. This story is one we all know. It’s called The Hero’s Journey, and any honest person knows that we just watched Trump live out his. By the end of it, he has people like me wandering around saying “Trump won.” His victory meant more than just winning an election. It meant the return of reality and normalcy somehow, I know it sounds crazy to say that but it’s true. Trump refused to stand down, no matter what they threw at him. He refused to cower in the face of an assassin’s bullet. He soldiered on, as the best heroes do, passing every test, humiliating his rivals, and even those who hated Trump can’t help but be impressed. One only needs to look at the two covers of TIME Magazine, which feature Trump as Man of the Year, to see how it started and how it’s going.Trump didn’t write this story; his enemies did, and in so doing, they sealed their fate to become but a footnote in the unforgettable story of the greatest political comeback in American history. Says Victor Davis Hanson:So, how did we get here? What is the Hero’s Journey, and how does Trump’s story fit so well? Trump’s Hero’s JourneyWe could leave it at that, but I’d like to go through the stages one by one. Part One - The Ordinary WorldTo massive ratings success, millions of Americans welcomed Trump into their ordinary world every week. He was already a star. People tuned in to hear him say “You’re fired.” But they also tuned in to hear him say what was true but couldn’t be said out loud. They knew him, and they loved him. Reality TV was about to become actual reality. In 2016, America could be divided into two groups: those who watched The Apprentice and those who did not. If you knew Trump from that ordinary world, nothing he said would shock you. But if you were like me, already insulated in a protective cocoon of extreme political correctness, a utopia where offensive language is not to be tolerated, and a class of people who would not be caught dead watching The Apprentice, his words would be paralyzing, enough to cause fits of mass hysteria that would last for years. Trump has been a fixture in American culture since the 1980s. He mocked himself and was always in on the joke. Just one year before the Left decided he was Hitler, he hosted Saturday Night Live. Despite Trump’s wealth and the Left’s attempts to portray him as an out-of-touch billionaire, he speaks the language of ordinary working-class Americans somehow. Trump is the guy who eats at McDonald’s. He’s the guy who talks to the golfer and the caddy. But to make him into Hitler, it took a village of liars who had no intention of handing over power to Trump or any of the Americans who voted for him. But Trump’s ordinary world was not politics. He was an outsider, the perfect hero to be plucked from one world and thrust into the special world, one he did not fully understand. Part Two - The Call to Adventure (refusing the call)The Hero is always reluctant to answer the call. Trump was asked again and again if he’d consider getting into politics. The answer was always no.Running for president seemed to be the last thing Trump had left to do and he knew that. He was right, in those early days, to say that America wasn’t ready for people who tell it like it is. Part Three - Accepting the CallTrump, like so many others born outside of Manhattan, maintained a chip on his shoulder that drove him to not just become one of the Manhattan elites but to earn their respect. So it stung when Obama called him out and humiliated him in a room full of people who thought they were superior to Trump in every way. Obama was hitting back after the “birther conspiracy” most on the Left deemed “racist.” But really, he was playing his most powerful card — that he was accepted by the ruling class, and Trump was not.This set up the epic battle between the two men for the next decade, one Trump would ultimately win. Obama wasn’t just accepted by the ruling class. He was their symbol of virtue. As wealth concentrated on the Left, what they, we, needed was absolution from our sins of privilege. Obama provided that. He was the closest thing we had to religion.By contrast, Trump represented our collective sins. If we could blot out the Sun, we could somehow deny those bad qualities in ourselves. That guy over there is the bad guy. We’re not like that.But by 2015, Trump was finally ready. The Hero is always unprepared for what this step actually means. They might start the journey almost as a lark. But once they accept that fateful call, there can be no turning back. Trump famously vanquished his primary opponents, picking them off one by one as a country already addicted to reality shows watched this one. That’s what it looked like, anyway. Every great reality show needs a great villain. And there was no more entertaining villain than Donald Trump.Who would dare talk to Jeb Bush like that?And who would dare talk to Hillary Clinton like that? Part Four - The Mentor and the TalismanTrump had several key mentors, including Roy Cohn and his father. But the one who matters most in Trump’s Hero’s Journey is Steve Bannon, who was busy building a populist movement that needed a tough leader like Trump. Here, Bannon talks about their first meeting.Bannon took the long view then and now. He’d read The Fourth Turning by Neil Howe and William Strauss. Ten years after the book was written, he lived through the 2008 financial crisis. Bannon made the movie Generation Zero about what was coming next. He has always had an eye on how America must land after the Fourth Turning - in the direction of populism, not globalism.On October 7, 2016, the infamous Access Hollywood tape dropped as an October surprise. As Bannon tells it, the wolves were at the door. Trump had a decision to make: a mea culpa with David Muir and ABC News or fight, fight, fight. Bannon is the Yoda to Trump’s Luke Skywalker because he helped sculpt and guide the hero toward his ultimate goal. Though Trump pushed him out in his first term, Bannon remained loyal to Trump and even spent four months in Danbury prison. For Bannon, it’s never been about Trump specifically but about guiding the ship in the right direction. He needed Trump then, and he needs him now.Part Five - Crossing the ThresholdFor Trump, the 2016 election was the threshold between the ordinary world and the special world, a win that shocked even him. Winning was supposed to mean that the American people accepted him as their president. He didn’t understand why they were protesting in the streets, as they were saying he was “illegitimate” and #notmypresident. He won, after all, so why weren’t they treating him that way?In 2016, those of us on the Left decided that this country, its culture, its government, and its institutions all belonged to us. If we proclaimed Trump a racist, Nazi, fascist and thus, rendered him ineligible to serve, we had every right to treat him and his supporters as unwanted invaders in our country.Part Six: Tests, Allies and EnemiesBeing a Trump ally is not for the faint of heart. He is no walk in the park, especially not then. He’ll insult even those closest to him and spend much of his time in office antagonizing the press and the swamp creatures. But Trump’s role was not to be liked by any of them. It was to represent the people who voted for him, as is. Nonetheless, the establishment government ate Trump alive in his first term because he wasn’t a lawyer or a politician. He had to hit the ground running, and was met with oppositional forces who sought to sabotage, discredit, and ultimately push him out of power. It was a slow-moving coup, and Trump was no match for the empire. Nancy Pelosi ripped up the State of the Union. The Democrats took the House and impeached him two years into his first term, just as Steve Bannon had predicted. Trump’s agenda to drain the swamp and close the border had to be pushed aside as he fought for his own reputation and his presidency.Part Seven - The ApproachFor Trump, The Approach was the 2020 election. Trump could see what the powerful forces that opposed him were doing to rig the election. Even I could see it as a Biden voter. It was not hard. Nothing made sense. What we would all find out much later is we didn’t imagine it. They bragged about it in TIME Magazine. 2020 was one of the hardest years for Trump. He was in over his head and no one in DC or the media wanted to help him deal with the pandemic. They wanted — needed — him to fail, just as they needed the protests over the Summer to be bad enough to threaten Trump and his family.Trump caught COVID, survived it, and then went out and did five rallies per day in hopes of making up lost ground. He knew the pandemic crashed the economy, his strongest selling point for a second term. But his campaign was starting to move the needle. Why? Because the Left had lost its mind. The problem was they weren’t playing by the rules of the game. They made up their own rules, and Trump was no match for him. All he had was his First Amendment right to have his and his supporters voices heard, which they did on January 6th as part of a mobilization effort by MAGA to protest the election. They called it “Stop the Steal.”But the riot at the Capitol was Check Mate. It was over. His court cases, his attempts to convince Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley to debate the rule changes in court, his MAGA movement — all collapsed in an instant. How convenient that was for the empire.Had they left Trump alone and allowed him to enjoy the rest of his life in Mar-a-Lago, maybe things would have ended there. Maybe they would have actually won the war. But they weren’t quite done with Trump, and he most certainly wasn’t done with them. Part Eight - The Supreme OrdealBiden’s incompetence became clear to Americans when the botched exit from Afghanistan woke everyone up to who was now the leader of the free world - someone who, despite a lifetime in government, did not listen to his military brass. 13 American soldiers dead, military equipment left behind, a humanitarian crisis left in its wake, it was a disaster.Biden’s approval numbers crashed and they never recovered. To cover up for their failures, they leaned into corruption. They raided Mar-a-Lago. They indicted Trump four times. They convicted him on a bogus felony charge. And all the while, the idiots on MSNBC and the high-status voices were cheering them on. All they wanted — needed — to see was Trump, in an orange jumpsuit, frog-marched off to prison. All that did was ignite the Hero’s Journey, making Trump the hero and, thus, instantly more popular. Everyone was rooting for him from the sidelines. He was a folk hero, a working-class hero, a hero of those mistreated by law enforcement. Only the ruling class couldn’t see it - they had lost their connection to the reality of everyday American life and, thus, the ordinary world. And then came the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13th. Just days later, a wounded Trump walked onto the stage at the GOP convention and faced a large crowd for the first time.Trump had the wind at his back with his triumphant return to Butler, PA. Even though Americans had almost seen Trump’s head blown off on live television, but for a miraculous turn of his head at just the right time, Trump brought the tragedy full circle by doing what he has always done. He turned it into a way to entertain the crowd. Trump picked up where he left off. “As I was saying…”Part Nine - The Reward What had been among the darkest days in American history, not just Trump’s four years in office, the two impeachments, COVID and the lockdowns, the Summer of 2020, January 6th, and the weaponization of the DOJ and the criminal justice system became a celebration of hope and renewal. People who were consumed by hatred of Trump because they trusted the media now humanized him and were realizing for the first time how much they’d been lied to. It was something you could feel: minds and hearts changing gears, people waking up and seeing Trump differently. They were openly endorsing him, supporting him, and ultimately voting for him.He was hitting nothing but green lights, even if the villains of this story were still paralyzed by their fear and hatred of him. America was moving on. Part Ten - The Road BackThey can keep destroying themselves, trying to destroy him, but Trump’s triumphant return was evident when he was invited to be the first president since Ronald Reagan to ring the bell at the NYSE. The city that made him now had no choice but to tip its hat.Part Eleven - Growth and AtonementWhat is so ultimately moving about this story isn’t so much Trump himself but those standing behind him, sticking by him, his ride-or-die MAGA family. Trump has changed. He knows he defeated the most powerful and perhaps corrupt administration in American history, and there has to be eternal satisfaction in that. He rescued his legacy, his family’s name, the Trump brand, and all of us Americans who were living under the dark cloud of madness and hysteria for much too long. But Trump’s true redemption has to be how he showed his gratitude to those thrown away like human garbage by the ruling class but gave Trump the kind of love and support to carry him through the darkest days. Part Twelve - The ReturnTrump was never Citizen Kane. He was never the guy who wanted to be loved. He was raised to be a fighter and a winner. Maybe that wasn’t what the country needed 20 years ago, but it is what the country needs right now, especially the young. He came along just in time to pull them out of their cocoons of fragility.Not just them, all of us. And that is why we need heroes and are so drawn in by the Hero’s Journey. We need to see David go up against Goliath and win. We need to see the powerful forces of evil vanquished. We need to believe in them so we can believe in ourselves. And so now, those of us cast out of utopia can’t stop saying those two words to remind us of what we just lived through: Trump won. Video Credits (non-youtube links):The Fighter, Jon KahnVictor Davis Hanson: Donald Trump is a Great Man of History (GBN News)The Hero's Journey, Marco Aslan34 year old Donald Trump asked if he'd ever run for President.Re-Live Donald Trump's Most Memorable TV Show and Movie CameosDonald Trump Teases a President Bid During a 1988 Oprah Show | The Oprah Winfrey Show | OWNA Portrait of Donald J. Trump, by Vic Berger & VICE NewsTrump's Road to the White House (full documentary) | FRONTLINEThe Kiffness (Eating the Dogs)If I’m missing any, let me know. 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’ll admit that this Thanksgiving road trip wasn’t exactly fun. Oh, don’t get me wrong. The minute I see my daughter, I am over the moon. Thanksgiving was as it should be: warm family, good food, and giving thanks. I never want to say goodbye and I hate that she lives all the way across the country.It was the before and the after when the trouble began. Somehow, last May’s road trip did not bring the darkness, but this one did. It was too much time spent thinking about things I’d been pushing aside for too long. I feel like I’ve been running just ahead of a tidal wave. And no, that doesn’t mean anything like depression but just the plain truth of what has become of me and my life after the past four years of moving from one side of a Civil War to the other.Was it a Civil War, or was it a revolutionary war? I can’t really tell. I just know that it was a war with two sides. You had to pick one. However, no one on the Right punishes anyone on the Left for believing what they believe, not really. They boycott companies that sell their ideology, like Budweiser. But they don’t disinvite you to Thanksgiving.I knew I could not discuss politics with my daughter’s boyfriend’s family, and I didn’t. Whatever they believed, I was willing to put it aside because we were all together for a holiday about appreciating everything we had. And in the big picture, I have much to be thankful for. I feel lucky in that way.Last May I ended up in the ER twice on my road trip, once for slicing open my palm in Lincoln, Nebraska and once while trying to outrun a screaming ambulance with my elderly dog barely able to make it across the street. I tripped and landed on my elbow, breaking my arm. But the dog was fine.Nonetheless, I wasn’t haunted last time like I have been this time. If my life was a novel, those injuries might have been warnings for something much more serious to come. Not serious like the death of a loved one or a terminal illness, but serious in a different way, a life-shattering, unavoidable way.But my life isn’t a novel. Maybe the tidal wave finally caught up with me now that I had so much time to think. At home, I am always online, reading and listening to like-minded people and not feeling so alone. But in a car driving for hours, there was no escaping it.This isn’t some nightmare I’m living through, and one day, I will wake up. I’ve bought a one-way ticket aboard the Counterculture Express, and there’s no turning back now.It wasn’t so much everything I’ve been writing about and saying for the past four years that haunted me. It was what’s just happened to me in the past few months. I’ve spent almost a decade being that one person who stands on the side of those being canceled, using whatever online clout I’d attained from a life lived mostly online to defend them.I have even stood up for those accused of being sex offenders. I’ll never forget spending much of my reputational clout standing up for a writer named Devin Faraci. Long before Hollywood blacklisted me, the worst thing they could say about me was that I was a rapist apologist. And they said it all of the time.Later, when I began drifting away from the Left and writing here on Substack, I was interviewed by Megyn Kelly. Somehow, Devin Faraci saw it. After being a patron on his Patreon, writing columns defending him, and standing up for him at great cost - he threw me under the bus. He called me out on Twitter because he had to let everyone know that he might be a sexual assaulter, but I was now on the other side of the war, and that was worse.But even as horrible as that was, it wasn’t what had occupied my thoughts for the past two weeks while doing something I usually love. Driving. No. It was how I’d wasted so much of my time working a 24/7 job, investing my whole life in an industry that would completely turn its back on me in the way they have. It has always been chilling to live through it, but somehow, I’d avoided really thinking about it, and now, as I drove nearly 3,000 miles to Ohio and back, I couldn’t think of anything else.It’s Oscar season, and I’m doing what I’ve done every year since 1999: reporting on the Oscar race. Even back in May, I had a whole staff working with me to proofread my stories, remind me of breaking news, or run a contest form. Now, it’s a ghost town, and it’s just me. But driving all day means I can’t do the job alone.I was playing with fire, I always knew, and said so many times when people asked me how I was able to get away with writing honestly here on Substack while the climate of fear and the culture of silence crippled so much of Hollywood. How had I remained untouched? 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

(If you have not yet listened to Part One, that is here)Janet was dreading Thanksgiving this year. She dreaded it every year. Holidays made her feel a sense of foreboding. What was coming next, she thought, how much worse could it possibly get?It had been a rough few weeks for Janet and countless other women in the country. She barely remembered election night except that at some point, she rooted around in a closet, dug out her ex-boyfriend’s electric razor, and … shaved her head. Did she really shave her head?As she lay in bed, still too depressed to make coffee, she ran a palm over her scalp and felt the stubble. She’d actually done it. She’d shaved it all off. And how could she have forgotten? One morning, she stumbled into the market in her bathrobe and was greeted with sympathetic stares by the cashier. No, it wasn’t the election they were referring to. They all thought she had cancer.“Can I do anything for you, dear?” One of them said, touching Janet’s arm. ”You can get me a new president and a better country,” Janet had snapped back. The woman’s face melted from concern to a shared knowing of the tragedy that had just taken place. Janet could see her working it out in her mind. Janet was one of those women who shaved her head after the election.Well, so what? Janet thought as she clutched her robe tightly around her body before ducking back into her house, slamming the door behind her. The only reason she’d gone out was that she’d emptied every wine bottle in the house, and now, she needed another glass. Yes, it was the morning, no, don’t ask her about it. Janet knew that if there was any time to remain permanently drunk, this was it.What a terrible night that was. November 5th. She figured the election would be close but Rick Wilson had assured her that Trump would lose and lose badly.She’d watched the results come in until she heard the independents flipped to Trump in record numbers. That was when her heart sank. It was like watching the Needle at the New York Times flip from Hillary winning by 95% to Trump winning by 95%. Now, the needles were all pointing Trump’s way again, all of the swing states.How could this be happening? After all the ways the Democrats and the media showed the American people how evil and monstrous Trump was? Now, she had to wait months for her hair to grow out. What had she done? 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

The Democrats and the Left are still working their way through the seven stages of grief over the election. Many of them continue to be in denial as to how so many people could have voted for Trump and made the popular vote even close at all.In their defense, this wasn’t just an election loss. It was the single most humiliating defeat probably in American history. They spent eight years doing nothing but selling hatred and fear of Trump. They pulled out the stops, from Hollywood to the Justice Department. Headline after headline told the Democrats that all of the evil known to mankind was embodied in this one man, and all they had to do was stop him, and their village could live on peacefully.Trump became the monster, the volcano that required sacrifices so that it didn’t destroy the crops. He was the Devil riding into Salem. He was HITLER. Now, they’re grappling with 77 million people in America who don’t believe their hysteria anymore. It’s been punctured at long last.But those are the rational ones. There are still many of them trapped inside the fear bunker who are now trying to survive in a country they view as full of Nazis and bigots, full of hate and white supremacy. Or else toxic masculinity won the race, and now how to raise their daughters in a country full of rapists?But if they’re honest with themselves, really honest, they will have to face the truth. Sure, they abandoned the working class. Joe Biden got out of the race too late for them to mount a proper campaign. Kamala Harris was a terrible candidate (I threw that last one in there, though it’s a truth they have yet to accept or admit). Elon Musk rigged the election (yes, they are saying that).But they have yet to address one fundamental question about why they lost: Why aren’t they cool anymore? Being cool means thinking critically, but that was abandoned years ago on the Left. It means being a rebel against the system, but they are the system. It means being counterculture, but they are the culture.True, it’s hard to be cool when you are crippled by mass hysteria, and when every tweet by Trump is the end of the world, I know because I felt it too. But it started even before that, even before Trump. One might say the Left losing their cool opened the door for the rise of Trump. Why? Because Trump is and has always been cool.He was cool in the 1980s when being rich was cool, and saying whatever was on your mind that disrupted the status quo was cool. In the 90s, he became an icon in hip-hop culture. Maybe things shifted a little when he starred on a Reality-TV series, those weren’t cool, and especially once he got into politics as Obama’s rival, that most definitely was not cool. 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

There’s almost nothing worse than getting dumped. You’ve done everything right. You had all the money in the world — a billion dollars! You had all the celebrities — Harrison Ford, Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Julia Roberts, George Clooney, Meryl Streep and Barbra Streisand! Who could ask for anything more? Well, it turns out 76 million people.This wasn’t just a “don’t call me, I’ll call you” or “we can still be friends” or “maybe someday in the future we could…” No, this was a “get lost, lose my number, forget you ever knew me” kind of break-up. The Democrats aren’t handling it well, to put it mildly.They’re shaving their heads. They’re uninviting family members to Thanksgiving. They’re obsessing over everything Trump is doing and saying, refusing to go quietly. In other words, they’re turning into Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction.It isn’t enough to blame the “woke” and the crazies for the collapse of the empire. It goes much deeper than that. Yes, they’ve lost their minds, and Americans are fleeing faster than rats off a sinking ship, but the truth is the Democrats orchestrated their own demise. Even those who think they get it, don’t really.Bill Maher, for instance, is given pats on the back for kind of, sort of getting it but if you listen really close, you’ll hear the tell-tale TDS worming its way in. Trump is crazy, his voters are dumb.I hate to be the bearer of bad news, Democrats, but this isn’t 2004, as Nate Silver has proclaimed. It isn’t 1988 or 2000, either. No, you must go much further to find a period like the one we’re living through now. You have to go back to 1972.More specifically, the swing between 1968 and 1980, as Ben Shapiro has often discussed in books and on his podcast. His comment was one of the things that drew me to the Right because, finally, someone said something that made sense. He tweeted this in the Summer of 2020, though it would be four more years before 1980 actually arrived.And 1980 has arrived right on time. That makes me think it’s not about just four more years of Trump. This is the long game. This is probably 12 years of Republican rule.Navigating a moment like this depends on confronting the truth, not the preferred truth, not the denial, but the real reason why Trump won such a massive victory after the Democrats spent almost ten years trying to destroy him. The answer isn’t to double down on Trump being a “monster” or a “fascist” or a “sociopath.” All that will do is postpone the inevitable, and it will only make Trump more popular. 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 like watching SEAL Team Six spelunk into a dangerous war zone and release the hostages from inside the bunker. Millions of us wandered out. We felt as though a great weight had been lifted. The sun shined once again after one long, dark winter. We were half-celebrating, half in a state of shock. “You mean … we’re finally free?” Yes, said the soldiers. You are free.And as the author jotted out those words above, she thought to herself, can I actually write that? Will people say I am exploiting the suffering of the Jews during the Holocaust or still being held in Gaza? Will they say I don’t know real suffering, and how dare I write such a thing? Yes, they will say that. But no, it won’t matter anymore.The truth is that I was always free to write it. I just had to do it outside of the doomsday cult the Left has become. It wasn’t some orb out in the middle of the Mojave. It was every major institution in America. And they most certainly aren’t giving up without a fight. Heed the words of Peter Boghossian:Trump drove so many mad, from the Never Trumpers to the Woke Left, because they destroyed themselves trying to destroy him. Their biggest problem was that they were never fighting the real Trump. They were fighting one they invented, a supervillain whose mere presence could end democracy itself.It’s hard to imagine such smart people losing their critical thinking ability. Power will do that to you, though. No one gives it up willingly. But still, you’d think some of them might have had an inkling America was ready for change by now.It’s like that Milan Kundera quote about Totalitarianism:That’s what’s happened to America in the past four years. Our SEAL Team Six came just in time to liberate us from the tyranny of the minority.Did Rick Wilson really go into election night thinking Trump would lose that badly? How could he have been so confident to make this video the day before Election Day?How could the disconnect from reality be that profound? And when he was thoroughly and completely humiliated, along with all the other Never Trumpers, he blamed the voters. He blamed America.Meanwhile, a wellness check is needed on Jojo from Jerz, another who was so certain her daily rages on X, which earned her so many likes, represented, in any way, the majority in America:The country can’t be run by people like Jojo from Jerz. She’s just too crazy. No reality has ever once entered the chat. And there are too many just like her that control the entire Democratic Party.Even if Trump only serves one term and JD Vance is somehow beaten by a Democrat (I wouldn’t hold my breath), they can always be credited as the liberators who freed all of us, our culture, our economy, our institutions from a cult.For those living in agony for the last four years, you can come out, come out wherever you are.A Mental Health CrisisJust before the election, Mark Halperin predicted a mental health crisis in this country if Donald Trump should win the election.At first, I thought he was exaggerating, but as I watched the reaction on the Left in the wake of another shocking win, I realized he wasn’t. Isn’t it just possible there is something wrong with the messenger if these folks are shocked yet again by a Donald Trump victory? I was shocked along with them in 2016, but by 2020, I got it.The more educated people are, the more they rely on NPR, the New York Times, NBC News, CNN, the New Yorker, New York Magazine, and the Hollywood trades—the less likely they are to see things as they really are rather than how they want them to be. And while it’s true reality distortion exists on the Right, it’s nowhere near the same level.The media is turning the so-called “4B movement” into a bigger story than it actually is because that, too, is a way to sell fear. These young women are the equivalent of an adolescent who is mad at her parents and refuses to eat her vegetables. NO, I WON’T DO IT!They somehow think this will cause any man in America one second of grief. The last thing they want is to have sex with any of them. Moreover, it’s funny that they would think Conservatives would be mad that they aren’t having sex and getting pregnant because all that means is less abortions.All of them are using whatever weapon they have to exact revenge on anyone who voted for Trump. They are people who already see themselves as victims. They see Trump and his voters as victimizers. They’re living out some kind of fantasy where they can cosplay oppression. In a weird way, Trump gave them exactly what they needed.Inside Woketopia, the more marginalized you are, the more elevated you are. Black and trans people are treated like holy icons. Much is made of how to talk to them, how to make sure they feel safe around you because your white skin is so triggering. Each of them uses their marginalized status as a way to impose their will upon the rest of us. It’s blasphemy to criticize or confront them.And herein lies the problem for the Democrats. They can’t confront the crazy, let alone eradicate it. They are too afraid of the activists and the bullies on social media. They’re afraid their careers will be over, like everyone else inside the doomsday cult.A Trump win makes them all believe that they have, in one election, lost all of their power. That’s why you see so many Instagram posts about suicide hotlines but only for LGBTQIA or Queer women, or BIPOC. No white woman or man will get any sympathy for daring to use the moment to suggest they are in worse pain.But the psychosis is real. Watch this mother use her children to draw sympathy from them — yes, from them. Their hysteria and pain feed her need to feel like a victim. This bad thing just happened to HER, so everyone should have to pay, even her own kids.These kids will one day realize that they have been raised by a virulent narcissist, which is what drives this movement more than anything, and perhaps they will be among those who lead the next liberation should America once again be overtaken by a cult.The End of DaysThe women on the Left have centered their entire movement on the act of aborting a child they helped produce, as though the fetus itself, that got there through no fault of its own, is their oppressor. They worry for their daughter’s inability to get an abortion, as though that’s something every girl should want.// 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

For four years now, maybe longer, I’ve been saying like a mantra, “There is no saving the Left. There is only saving the country from them.” And so America has, definitely and decisively.But scrolling X this morning, I’m reminded of the scene in Michael Mann’s The Insider when 60 Minutes continued to remain in denial after their corruption had been laid bare:It took 60 Minutes too long to accept what they’d participated in with the Jeffrey Wigand scandal, just as it will take the Left too long to accept what they’ve done to themselves and this country. But time marches on without them.And as the line goes from Citizen Kane, they’re going to need more than one lesson and they’re going to get more than one lesson.I say the Left, but it’s really the perception of reality shaped by the legacy press, the New York Times, CBS and NBC News, the Washington Post, along with MSNBC and CNN. They’ve been lying every day to the American people and for that their reputations will pay a high price.I’ll never forget Christmas of 2020, when my nephew, who had gotten COVID and was now immune, wanted to visit. But he wasn’t vaccinated. Because of that, several members of my family became hysterical. When I shouted at them, “HE ALREADY HAD COVID,” they sent me links to NBC news articles that said it was contagious unless you were vaccinated, which was a lie.Donald Trump was not running against Kamala Harris so much as he was running against the media industrial complex which now, like so much of our culture, is inseparable from government.The New York Times headline, “Trump storms back,” is designed to pander to those who are still stuck on January 6th.They have to sell fear because that is how they feel now that they are forced to share this country with the “basket of deplorables.” They think they still speak for all of us but their ability to do that ended long ago. Now, they speak only for those still trapped in an elitist bubble that only wants Trump to go away. 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 Breaking Away, the Cutters have everything against them. Their bike barely works, their shoes are old and tattered, and only one of them can ride. But they still want to compete in the big race against the best and the brightest rich college kids. Something in us, something in me, feels an eternal ache to see the underdogs win. No one needs to tell us who they are, and we can see if we’re watching the same movie. The Cutters are the team we want to win despite the enormous odds against them. They’re riding in the race of their lives, fueled by a desire to prove they are just as good as the college kids. They’re not just as good, they’re better. Good writing can be boiled down to one simple principle: be hard on your protagonist because everyone reading or watching will be invested in that protagonist overcoming the obstacles and winning. That is the Hero’s Journey, and it is the story, at least so far, of Donald Trump and his Basket of Deplorables. And now, as we head into the last day, I find myself on the edge of my seat, just as I was when I first saw Breaking Away. Will they actually win? Can I get that lucky to taste that kind of sweet relief? Rooting for the underdog can sometimes mean rooting for the loser, too, like in Rocky when an underdog fighter dares to dream big. Even if he doesn’t win the fight, no one comes out of it thinking of Rocky as the loser. Or, as Google AI explains, “Rocky's personal victory comes from going the distance, making it through all 15 rounds of the fight. Rocky's performance demonstrates that he honors his family and friends and that you can't humiliate someone who doesn't want to be humiliated.”I can’t think of a paragraph that better describes Trump, MAGA, and the three elections that made the empire sweat and rewrote the rules of how and who can run for the presidency. Hollywood doesn’t make movies like Breaking Away or Rocky now. They don’t see white men as having any obstacles because they’re born with “white privilege,” and the only people worth focusing on are those people of color who are born into obstacles. These are the rules of equity Kamala Harris has lived by and believes. And the rules that might elect her leader of the free world. It’s surreal watching the people with all the power sweat their last battle against Trump. They are the team that wants to win so badly they’ve become corrupt, relying on a propaganda press to coddle and protect Harris, as they try to cosplay making history.But if you’re paying close attention and you’re following the plot, you’ll be able to see who the good guys are in this story and who the bad guys are. The bad guys use Harris as a shield, a symbol of virtue, to hide their own identities. They are mostly white men and women of enormous wealth who desperately need to appear virtuous lest the people rise up and challenge their power. I’m invested now. I want the right ending. I don’t want to have to sit through the ending that wouldn’t sell a single ticket. Sure, if Harris had gotten there on her own - if she’d fought hard through a tough primary and then ran for the presidency if all of that business with Joe Biden hadn’t been so down and dirty, with everyone lying about what really happened even now, if her husband hadn’t been accused of slapping a woman because of a jealous tantrum - maybe I could celebrate the first woman of color President of the United States.But the Democrats and the media have been gaslighting us for years now, though it’s never been quite as bad as it’s been this past year heading into their final battle.It’s all so fake. It reminds me of what happened in the Oscar race when the rich white elites that run Hollywood decided they needed absolution and all were in agreement to start awarding people of color nominations and wins to make it seem as though things had really changed. But they hadn’t. The same people run the show now as always. They are just wearing masks. The irony is that the real Hollywood movie is on the other side. That’s where the good writing is. There has never been a hero like Trump, especially as we watched him survive their unprecedented attacks on him, from the demoralizing raid of Mar-a-Lago, to the lurid Stormy Daniels trial, to the Fani Willis debacle, to Leticia James and her idiotic charges against him.And all the while, the media played along, pretending like it was legit in hopes of rewriting the hero as the villain. Ah, but the people aren’t that dumb. They know bad writing when they see it. I think of Steve Bannon, who helped unite people abandoned and invisible to our culture and government to give them a voice, something to fight for, to work toward, an American dream. He sought to build what he called “inclusive, participatory, nationalist populism,” and now his dream has been realized as the oligarchs bleed Black and Hispanic voters.These monsters threw Steve Bannon in jail not because of anything he did but because he said stuff they didn’t like. He inspires people they see as human garbage. And I really don’t want to watch the version of this story where all of them are rewarded for what they’ve done to working-class Americans who deserve so much better.I became a Trump supporter because I believed in this story. I believe in these people. Everyone on the Left is miserable. They’ve hollowed out their culture. They can’t laugh at jokes. They’ve become humorless scolds. Yet, the Trump voters are not. Their happiness, their carefree spirit is infectious. Who wouldn’t want to them to win?At the same time, the empire is the empire for a reason. They have built a system that is nearly impossible to defeat. This isn’t Breaking Away. It isn’t a matter of being the best bike rider on the track. This is deep corruption by people who have all the power and don’t want to lose it. For most of my life, our government has been locked in a deep state, an establishment that is impossible to penetrate. People don’t just come from the outside like Trump. They need institutional backing. A whole generation is now growing up with something I never had - a big, bold challenge to that power. Half the country doesn’t see it. They’re watching a different movie. A boring one. They have bought the lies of the media. They fear an outsider like Trump and his audacity to challenge the results of the 2020 election, with or without the riot. Ah, but that is democracy. What they represent is institutional power that they have decided doesn’t belong to any of us. That is what Trump has challenged. And that is why they seek to destroy him. It’s breathtaking to watch, at least to me. But then again, I’m a movie kid. I like this story. I want to see the underdog, the hero, prevail.We should prepare ourselves for a loss that isn’t really a loss, like Rocky, despite the hideous people on the left — the bad guys — who will want to gloat and rub it in. Yeah, they will have won the same way they won in 2020 by pushing a fourth Obama term on the people, but no intelligent person will ever see it as fair. She has the entire legacy press propping her up, and Trump has them pushing him down and showing the worst of him day in and day out. What Trump has done, what Steve Bannon has done, and what all of the MAGA deplorables have done is nothing less than a revolution, one the people of this country desperately needed. They’ve built a foundation. They aren’t going away. This is only the beginning.Why? Because they love this country. They’re patriots. They know this country belongs to them — to us — as much as it does any American citizen. It was disgusting and unacceptable watching how the powerful shut them out of culture, the economy, social media, and politics. Who do they think they are? So, let’s get this straight one last time. When you are born in America, you have rights given to you by God, not by the state. Those rights cannot be taken from you: free speech, the right to protest anything you want any time you want, and the right to equal protection under the law. I hope Trump wins in a landslide. They have it coming to them, and America would be so much better off. Hand the government back to the people because whatever they’ve built, it is no longer serving our needs.But if he doesn’t, he will finally be able to take a well-deserved rest. He most certainly earned it. His place in history is secured. There will never be another like him. And to all of you I’ve been with for the past four years I’ve been writing on Substack, you have given me so much, taught me so much, and been so kind to me when almost everyone I knew threw me away like human garbage. It bothers me that Trump supporters continue to be verbally and physically abused just for wearing a red MAGA hat. Because I know you, and they don’t. Like this man who recently beat up a Trump supporter:So here is me in my MAGA hat. My dark MAGA hat to tell you thank you and godspeed, MAGA. Godspeed. Trump2024.So let’s have it, one last dance. 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

The Democrats have been chasing the dragon for so long even they don’t know what they stand for anymore. Shaped by identity politics and social justice, Kamala Harris sure looks the part. But peel back even the surface layer, and there’s nothing - just the failed dreams of a utopia gone wrong.No one says it better than Kenneth L. Khachigian at the Wall Street Journal:Ms. Harris was unprepared to enter the rough and tumble of national politics and at the 11th hour relies on being propped up, as she has throughout her career, by patrons—Barack Obama, his operatives and a national media that is predominantly desperate to prevent Mr. Trump from re-entering office. Ms. Harris is a victim of her own success through moving up the political ladder without being fully tested by challenge and conflict.Joe Biden wasn’t supposed to defy the rules of the Ponzi Scheme. He was supposed to do what every Democrat does. Go along with the mounting deception. But even Joe Biden’s win was a deception in and of itself. We were promised a moderate. What we got instead was a George Spahn, who allowed a cult-like movement to move into the White House.They hid Joe Biden’s age even then. I know because I stood just five feet away from him at a donor brunch in May of 2019. I was plucked from the internet as an influencer because I’d been such a passionate and devoted Democrat, a good Liberal who voted blue no matter who, ever since George W. Bush narrowly defeated Al Gore.I loved Joe Biden back in 2019. He was old, I knew, but he could do the job. How else to take out a one-term president with a strong economy but to pull the country back to the last time they felt safe? Pulling the country back meant a return to the Obama era. Only later would I discover what a mistake that would turn out to be.Trump should have served a second term. He was cheated out of it, as were his supporters and all of America, who would have likely voted for him just based on the economy alone.The Democrats could have taken the loss and rebuilt a new movement with new blood and a new direction. But the Democrats were never going to let that happen. They had to preserve the empire under Obama, an empire now in collapse. They’ve held on too long and now, there is nothing left.Joe Biden was already too old by November of 2020. They hid him in the basement so none of us could see how fast he was declining. I could see it because I had seen where he was back in May of 2019. But instead of facing the problem head-on, the Democrats kept hiding Joe, lying to the public with their full-court propaganda press happily playing along.They elbowed out the brave truth-tellers like Dean Phillps and RFK, Jr., And they handed Joe Biden the primary win, corrupt though it was with their army of eager beaver lawyers meddling in our elections by removing Cornel West, Jill Stein, and anyone else who dared to challenge their authority, from the ballot. They even tried to remove Trump, which forced the Supreme Court to smack them down.Then, when Joe Biden’s age was finally exposed, and there was nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide, the Democrats instigated a coup. But Joe Biden wasn’t going along with it, shockingly. It took Obama’s yachting pal George Clooney to write an embarrassing op-ed in an attempt to push out old Joe, arguing that they should choose a candidate, speed-dating style.Well, they didn’t do that, did they, George? They hand-picked Kamala Harris without a single vote, and you went along with it, too, didn’t you? You wiped your chin and did your duty as the Good Liberal you are. Welcome to the pages of history, for better or worse.I knew the Democrats were in trouble even before the 2020 election. I tried warning them. I said Trump would win if they couldn’t find their way back to sanity. Oh, how naive I was. I didn’t know back then how much power the Left had amassed in the Trump era - an unprecedented alignment that reached from Hollywood across Silicon Valley to the universities and public schools through corporations and the Big Pharma monopolies. 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

Janet had a choice to make. Would she wear the T-shirt that said, “What’s so funny about peace, love, and understanding?” or would she put on the one that said, “Trump is a scab.” It wasn’t a hard choice. The election was in a week.Every morning, Janet took her coffee to the window, where she would watch her small California town residents walk their dogs, drive their kids to school, and get in their morning fitness regime. She kept a sharp eye out for those who didn’t clean up after their dogs. There was always that one person.This morning was no different. A woman still in her bathrobe shuffled down the street with two dogs. One looked like a collie, and the other was a tiny poodle. The bigger dog waded into a deep thicket of shrubs and did his business.Janet watched the owner start to shuffle off. “Aren’t you going to clean it up?” yelled Janet from her window across the street. Usually, the person she shouts at will apologize profusely and start digging around for a bag. But this woman didn’t do that. She looked at the window and flipped Janet the bird, shouting, “Mind your own f*cking business. I’m walking AROUND!”Janet watched the woman shuffle down the sidewalk and walk behind the bushes. That was supposed to make Janet feel shame for assuming the worst, but she didn’t. She assumed the worst because people always make bad decisions when they think no one is watching. But Janet was watching.The woman waded her way through the bushes, sticks and dried leaves clinging to the cotton fleece of her bathrobe. She pulled at the leash of the smaller dog, who refused to follow her. The dog wouldn’t budge. “Fine,” the woman said, propping the leash on a branch. The bigger dog was sniffing through the bushes as the woman angrily ripped off a green plastic bag and scooped up the pet waste.Then she looked over at the window where Janet was sitting and held the bag: “SEE!? ARE YOU HAPPY?” Then she flipped her off again, gathered up the two leashes, and shuffled back down the street.Janet thought she didn’t have to get so upset about it. Was there a better way to handle it? Was she just supposed to have waited to see if the woman would pick it up even though she didn’t look like she would? At least Janet could help keep the street clean.A Good Town Full of Good PeopleVista Butte was a town of responsible citizens who do the right thing. People followed the rules, which is why it was so safe. There was no crime, and it was quiet. They had to work to make it quiet.Like when they built a pickleball court in the middle of town, which drew so many kids to play after school. The court made so much noise that it disrupted the peaceful harmony of the town center, so the city decided to move it to the outskirts of town.But it upset the school kids because they liked having a place to go after school and release their pent-up energy instead of staring at their screens all day. Did they really believe that or did their parents tell them to say that? Either way, they went door to door to get signatures to save the Pickle Ball court.It was a waste of time because there was a perfectly good court on the East End. True, they had to pay to park, and kids would need their parents to drive them there, but they could be as loud as they wanted, and it wouldn’t disrupt the serenity of the townspeople. Janet voted against the measure because everybody in Vista Butte has to work together to keep the town quiet and clean.As Hillary Clinton said, it takes a village.Today, Janet was going to do some yard work before Halloween. The Santa Anas were coming, a wind storm. That meant fire season, and she needed to clean up the brush in her front yard. Firebugs get it in their heads to set off a blazing wildfire when the warm wind kicks up. Always men. No woman would do something like that.Janet could drive down to the corner where all the migrants waited to be picked up for a day's work. It would only cost her about 50 bucks for the whole job. One guy could handle it. It wasn’t that much work. That was much cheaper than the town gardeners, who charge you $50 an hour.Well, what the hell? She figured she might as well get in some exercise. She wasn't getting any younger, and her body wasn't getting any thinner. Yard work was a good way to get the steps in and grow her fitness circle on her Apple Watch.Janet had five Harris/Walz signs on her lawn. One of them was just an old Biden/Harris poster, which she ripped off the top where Biden was. It was a perfect metaphor for the election: Rip off the old white guy’s name and elevate the woman of color. It didn't matter that there wasn't a primary. When you have to save the country from rising fascism, you do what you must.But it made Janet happy, making history, even if it wasn’t exactly the democratic process. Old white men don't like getting out of the way to allow marginalized groups to rise—the history of America. The white male patriarchy is keeping all of us down.It’s long past time for a woman to lead, Janet thought. We need change. We need to turn the page. Harris cares about the middle class. She cares about immigrants. She cares about poor people. She’s not rude or mean or crude or nasty or abusive. She’s not a racist or a sexist or a misogynist or a bigot.Janet was ready. In fact, she'd already voted, like most women in America. Vista Butte was, Janet knew, 99% liberal. It had to be, what with all of the Harris/Walz signs everywhere.Harris/Walz - Obviously.Harris/Walz - Save Democracy.Harris/Walz - We’re not going back.Harris/Walz - Vote for freedom.Harris/Walz - Democracy or dictator.For a minute, she thought, why are we even bothering with an election? Maybe they should just do what they did for the primary: just place Kamala Harris. Trump is the one who is not qualified. He's a criminal; he's a felon.Besides, Project 2025 will become the law of the land. They’ll throw Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski in prison. Abortion will be banned, and we’ll never have an election again, so why not get ahead of it now? Why are we wasting time convincing people to vote? Why are we pretending that democracy even applies in this situation? It doesn't.We’re seriously going through all this worrying about the swing states, focusing all of our energy on undecided voters? Why is the fate of the Republic, the fate of the world's future, resting on people who are too stupid to know now who they want to vote for? That's what our elections have come down to, those people who sit in a Frank Luntz focus group. Come on.Those are the kind of people who sit in the Starbucks line for an hour deciding whether they want the Caramel Ribbon Crunch or the Pumpkin Spice Frappuccino blended. Pick something and move on! Pick something!It was Halloween. Janet wasn't going to allow herself to get upset, not today. Halloween was her favorite holiday. She remembered the old days when kids dressed up in costumes they made themselves. They weren’t brands disguised as costumes. Everything is advertising now. 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

On January 6th, I should have been huddled on my couch and glued to MSNBC. Their hysteria and fear would have validated everything I already believed about those awful extremist racists and incels waving their “white supremacist” MAGA flags, climbing the walls of the Capitol, and fighting with police officers.But that isn’t where I was on January 6th. I was scratching my head in confusion. A riot? People were trying to break into the Capitol? Why? Most of MAGA were standing before Trump as he spoke to them about the election we’d just lived through. He had convinced Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz to debate the election in the Senate when, all of a sudden, a riot erupted.That was when I knew something very bad was about to happen. No, not to our government officials. I knew they’d be fine. It was the Trump supporters who would not be. They had no power.It wouldn’t matter, I knew, that we’d seen unprecedented violence over the Summer and that those protesters weren’t treated like terrorists or insurrectionists. It was different with MAGA who were by then, already named enemies of the state.Most people I knew on the Left had no clue what Trump supporters were really like. Most of them existed inside the protective bubble of the Left. We’d built our Shining Woketopia on the Hill after Obama rose to power. And we essentially abandoned half the country and never looked back.We carefully curated our information streams, our language, our movies, our music, our fashion. We “wokeified” it piece by piece until we’d come close to reaching our ideal as a society. And then Trump won in 2016 and our whole world turned upside down.Trump supporters were, to us, everything we wanted them to be: angry white men who wanted to tie women to beds and keep them pregnant and having babies like pigs in gestational crates. They were crude and uneducated. They were racists and bigots and drove around in gas guzzlers, wrecking the planet. They were incels who hid on 4-Chan, trolls who did nothing but hurt all of the vulnerable groups, especially women.They paraded so ridiculously around with those racist red hats and those garish flags. We were traumatized just seeing them. If we saw a Trump supporter in our neighborhood or in our public spaces, we would have to alert the manager and have them removed like a dead animal the cat dragged in. 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

"The essence of propaganda consists in winning people over to an idea so sincerely, so vitally, that in the end they succumb to it utterly and can never again escape from it," —Joseph GoebbelsIt was on a Sunday that the Nazi army marched into New York City and gathered at Madison Square Garden.They came in all skin colors, white and Black and Brown, and from all different backgrounds, Asian, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, atheists, young and old, rich and poor, Left and Right, gay and straight as American citizens who desperately wanted to taste freedom again, security again, a government that cared about them again, and to Make America Great Again.What they don't know is that they're Nazis. Barbra Streisand and Hillary Clinton have said as much, so isn’t it time that they listened?How dare they gather, Hitler-like, at Madison Square Garden to worship at the altar of the fuhrer himself, Donald Trump. That’s what the New Yorker says, what the New York Times says, and what John Cusack says.I know what you’re thinking. John who? John Cusack. Remember him? Once a heartthrob of sorts back in the 80s? Yeah, that guy.We were all so in love with him. Every boyfriend we ever had was John Cusack in one form or another. But that was then. Things have changed now that fascism has arrived in America.So to protect us from it, Cusack didn’t hold up a boom box, no. This time, he woke up in his penthouse, tossed around in his high thread count sheets, gazed upon the streets of Manhattan, and remembered Donald Trump was holding a historic rally at Madison Square Garden. He fumbled for his phone and spit out his testimony:Donald Trump is Hitler, and his supporters are Nazis. How do we know that? That’s just what we’re all supposed to believe. So far, Trump has done nothing to warrant such an accusation ah, but we don’t really care about that. We care about the thing we police at all costs: speech. What Trump says IS fascism. Free speech is fascism.But if you need proof, let’s say that Trump has said he will deport the 10 million migrants who flooded through America’s weakened border under the Biden/Harris administration. This was after the Democrats spent four years declaring Trump’s border policies were RACIST and FASCIST. So when Biden won, why wouldn’t they come?It’s funny that Americans are thinking about themselves at a time like this. I mean, they should be anti-fascists, putting their own needs aside. The definition of fascism might be all power to the state against the individual, but that’s in ordinary times.Power to the state against the individual is how you stop fascism now. Because if free people choose the guy who says he’s going to fix the border problem and yes, that might include some deportations — that means we are no longer able to staff our labor force and grow a stronger coalition in the swing states.So we dumped them into towns like Springfield, Ohio, and expect everyone who lives there to share our existential angst about racism. Forget about your kids in school, your social services, and your safety. All power to the state means you say nothing, you do nothing, you suck it up.You see, the anti-fascists are the ones who demand you drop all of your friendships if you vote for the fascists. It might sound confusing, but it’s not. All you have to do is conform or else.You might have heard that “conform or else” is the very definition of fascism, but really, it’s how you get rid of it. You pressure everyone you know to do what we tell you to do, think how we want you to think, speak how we want you to speak or we will DESTROY YOU. 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 came for you, for you, I came for you, but you did not need my urgency. I came for you, for you, I came for you, but your life was one long emergency.” Bruce SpringsteenTo be on the Left in America is to live in one long emergency. It’s depressing and exhausting, and it’s time to move on. It is the misery of the upper class, the misery of a disrupted utopia, and the misery of people who have too much power and have become too comfortable with it, so much so that they do not want to let it go.I can’t really blame Barack Obama. What must it feel like to feel like a god, to have all of American culture worship you, upend what used to be great movies, great books, great rock and roll, and now, in its place, a reflection of you? That would mess with your head. It would be hard to let go. No wonder he keeps showing up. No wonder he demands that the only people allowed to run for president are lesser, duller versions of himself.Imagine what it must feel like to be George Clooney, Julia Roberts, or Tom Hanks. Yes, you are among the highest-status Americans inside utopia because you have befriended the man who would be King. But none of them have come from such a high place and fallen so hard as Bruce Springsteen, who abandoned the badlands for the mansion on the hill.Bruce Springsteen was my idol growing up in the 1980s. I wrapped my legs ‘round his velvet rims and strapped my hands cross his engines. I was just a scared and lonely rider who had to know how it feels, who had to know if love was wild, who had to know if love was real.Me and Bruce, hiding on the backstreets, going down to the river. I wore out the groove on every single album he ever produced and then could only listen to live bootlegs. Now, I can’t listen at all.What I know about Bruce is what I know about the modern-day Left. He doesn’t know America anymore. He does not even know the kinds of people who needed his music and who made him rich. He joins the list of once and former icons who helped lift up the lost and forgotten Americans, to make them feel included in something important in our culture.And now they sneer at them. Stephen King, Steven Spielberg, Barbra Streisand, JJ Abrams, Taylor Swift, and Beyonce sit on a pile of money given to them by the same Americans they now call Nazis.That’s why you see idiots like Jack White or the Foo Fighters throwing a hissy fit that Trump might use their precious music at a rally. Yeah, heaven forbid the truck drivers who deliver their food or the nurses who wash off the vomit and urine after a night of partying should be able to hear their music and forget their troubles for a night. 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

Years from now, the question will go something like this, “where were you when you first realized the media was lying to you about Trump?”Me, I was watching Trump speak at Mount Rushmore in 2020 just as the COVID lockdowns had abruptly ended to make way for the largest protests in American history. They said it was about systemic racism, but I knew it wasn’t. It was about Trump and all of the forces at play to remove him from power.Yes, even the protests.Trump was the first person of any kind of prominence to call out the madness of “cancel culture,” the burning of cities, the violence the media suppressed, and he vowed to do something about it. I didn’t agree with everything he said, but I realized then and there that he was not who I thought he was.At least half the country has been trapped in a mass delusion for ten years, maybe longer. What else can explain what has happened to so many of them, how they could be so consumed by hatred that they would go along with any punishment enacted upon Trump, or whomever the next person in line behind him will be. Elon Musk? JD Vance?We joke that it’s TDS or Trump Derangement Syndrome, but I think that’s being too kind.The good news is that more and more people are waking up to what has been done to us all in the name of preserving the American utopia built under the Obama administration. Trump had to represent racism because how else could they sell him as an “existential threat” to the country?Says Adam B. Coleman:I try to remember when it started, this idea that America was under an urgent threat of rising racism and “white supremacy.” It happened around the time of the Tea Party’s founding, the only grassroots movement I’ve ever seen coming from the Right.For most of my life, the Republicans were the establishment party. After the 2008 Wall Street crash, the Tea Party began mobilizing and forming a powerful coalition that must have worried many in our establishment government.Just arguing class or economics or dismantling the bloated administrative state would not have convinced hearts and minds to turn on them. They had to be so toxic Americans would never want to associate with them, help them, support them, or even listen to them. 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

“Once upon a time you dressed so fineThrew the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you?People call say 'beware doll, you're bound to fall'You thought they were all kidding youYou used to laugh aboutEverybody that was hanging outNow you don't talk so loudNow you don't seem so proudAbout having to be scrounging your next mealHow does it feel?” - Bob DylanI’ve listened to Bob Dylan’s anthem of alienation, Like a Rolling Stone, so many times throughout my life, but it’s never hit home quite the way it does now as I’ve been exiled by almost everyone I once knew. How does it feel, Bob Dylan asks? It feels like tumbling through space with no place to land. It feels like being trapped in a nightmare. It feels like nothing I’ve ever gone through before.But it’s too late to turn back now. It’s full steam ahead. Yes, I am a California Liberal voting for Donald J. Trump. Why am I doing it? Why was I willing to destroy my so-called “career,” end friendships overnight, and lose any status I’ve attained in the past 30 years I’ve been online, which, granted, isn’t saying much? The answer is easy. I couldn’t do the other thing.For many of us, 2020 was like Devil’s Tower in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. We all had the same idea all at once, but we didn’t understand it. We might have come from everywhere, but we all ended up in the same place.For some, it was the government’s authoritarian crackdown on masks and lockdowns. For others, it was the lies about COVID. But for me, it was suddenly seeing that unseen hands were manipulating us as a form of social control. It sounds paranoid. I’ll grant you that. I don’t know how else to explain it. I was very much inside the insular feedback loop of the Left. I genuinely believed everything they said on CNN, MSNBC, and the New York Times. They turned on a dime from COVID hysteria to “systemic racism,” which allowed millions to pour into the streets - the largest protest in American history - amid a global pandemic that had closed schools, churches, and businesses. What was going on?None of us knew. They wouldn’t tell us anything they did not think we needed to know. As I was crying out on Twitter about how crazy things were getting on the Left, Neera Tanden DM’d me. “You’ve changed,” she said. I was worried Biden would not win because the protests were too violent. By then, I was finding my news on the Right, where they weren’t as afraid to post videos about what was happening on the streets.I told Neera Tanden that Trump would benefit from the public's desire for law and order. She told me to keep quiet until after the election. I told her I couldn’t do that, but it did strike me as odd that such a high-level Democrat would care what I thought. But that’s how it is on the Left. No one is allowed to stray from the mandated narrative.Even now, most people I know on the Left have no idea how bad it got. That’s why they don’t understand the comparisons to January 6th. They only saw one violent riot but they saw it over and over again, yet more proof of social control.It wasn’t until Bari Weiss resigned from the New York Times after exposing their unwillingness to publish the truth about what was happening on the streets for fear it was racist even just to report on it, that I realized I had to separate myself from the hive mind whose sole mission was to support the Democrats. And that’s how it went for the rest of the year. It was “don’t ask, don’t tell” for a once-mighty movement that now cowered in fear.But for many of us, it was the summer when we stopped trusting our institutions and our legacy media to tell us the truth about anything. Everything that happened in 2020 was designed to push Trump out of power. I watched them all but rig the 2020 election using the same unseen hands. I walked away from that election no longer a registered Democrat for the first time in my life.But that would only be the beginning. The Democrats had the White House, and they had four years to show America they really were the better side, the side that cared about all of us. Instead, whatever fundamentalist cult had overtaken the Left now spread throughout our government. Biden took his role seriously, using equity for policy and staffing his administration mostly with women, women of color, and members of the LGBTQIA lobby.And in so doing, he neglected to address the core problem for the Democrats, one that began back in 2008, the crisis that sparked the Fourth Turning. The Wall Street meltdown and subsequent bailout of the banks to the tune of $700 billion. Two populist movements that threatened the government meant a pivot to what Vivek Ramaswamy calls “woke capitalism.” Focus on identity politics and woke ideology, and they get to do whatever they want to the people of the United States.They ignored the problem until it exploded in 2016 with Trump’s win. They failed to address the urgent needs of the people and instead went to war on Trump. Now, here we are, all of these years later, and the Democrats still can’t even see the problem, let alone address it.Instead of unity, we got division. Instead of hope, we got despair. Instead of freedom, the Biden administration and the FBI began censoring speech on social media platforms. Maybe none of that would have been bad enough to make me a Trump supporter, but it meant I could never vote blue no matter who, ever again, and worse, we now had an even bigger problem to deal with. Could we ever win an election against this unprecedented alignment of power?I never thought I would vote for Republicans, but that is exactly what I have done, largely due to the embrace of “gender-affirming care” for minor children who cannot consent and the lack of protection for female athletes to compete fairly. Even now, there are no women, no feminists, no “girl dads” in the Democratic Party. They are too afraid of the activists. So it has to be up to those of us who do have the guts to stand up to them and who are strong enough to survive their attacks.That was when I knew I had to throw whatever power I had as an American citizen and political activist online into voting for the Republicans. But still, I was not quite ready to cross the Trump line. BraveheartIt was the humiliation of a former president when they raided Mar-a-Lago, with the whole world watching, that was the last straw for me. It seemed there were no limits to what they could do to Trump, and all of the legacy press and their obedient voters would go along with it, believing any wild fantasy they manifested.Trump might be selling nuclear secrets to North Korea. Trump might pull out a machine gun and spray the FBI with bullets like Al Pacino in Scarface.It just got worse from there. The indictments, the Civil trials, the felony conviction - none of the cases were even legit. Here is Megyn Kelly running them down on the All In podcast:And that was how I transformed from a lonely, shut-in I’m-with-her Democrat into a MAGA meme on X.Now, I am left wondering why I wouldn’t vote for Trump. Why wouldn’t I do the one thing I know that could end this madness? I know that the minute he wins and he shows them all that he’s not a dictator and he’s not Hitler and the world won’t stop turning on its axis, all of this will finally end, and we can get back to some kind of normal life. In This House, We BelieveWhen I began spending time in MAGA world, watching Trump rallies and hanging out with Trump supporters, at least online, I got to know them well. When I reported back to the Left's fear bunker, I tried to explain it to them. I tried to humanize those we’d all been conditioned to hate.I remember seeing pictures of the faces contorted by hate when schools were ordered to allow Black students to attend — and no, you freaks, I’m not comparing them; I’m just saying that hate is hate, dehumanization is dehumanization, and people always feel justified doing it, and history always condemns them. Always. But they would not listen to me. They would scream at me, attack me, shun me, try to destroy my business. Even just being kind - practicing what they preached - was crossing a forbidden line. The attacks against Trump supporters began right around 2015 when Trump’s warnings about the border were interpreted as Hitler-esque racism. That is what justified punching, kicking, spitting on, and, in some cases, even killing Trump supporters. What is their solution to the “MAGA problem” anyway? Gulags? Concentration camps? Re-education camps? Just exile them to the outer regions and forbid them from participating in the thriving new economy online or in our elections? Why am I a California liberal voting for Trump? I wake up in a cold sweat every night, and panic runs through me. What have I done? But then I remember I couldn’t do the other thing. The Case for TrumpI would have voted for Trump just on the lawfare alone, but a funny thing happened in the past few months. Trump built an unprecedented alliance with RFK, Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Vivek Ramaswamy, Nicole Shanahan, and Elon Musk. It was more than I could ever imagine would be on offer in an American election. Trump’s choice of JD Vance might be the best of all. He chose a running mate who isn’t just window-dressing like poor Tim Walz but a strong leader in his own right.I’m not getting my hopes up, considering that the powerful people who now control our government have turned to corruption just to cling to power. What won’t they do to stop Trump and drag the unprepared Kamala Harris over the finish line?But it doesn’t really matter. They might win the battle. They won’t win the war. I am so proud to be an American today. I finally know why. I know that “Whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.” That’s the wild beauty, the untamed spirit of the American experiment.It really does look like a brighter future for the kind of America I want to fight for. And suddenly, I feel grateful for the founders who built this crazy people-run government. It was built for moments like this when we all must come together and prove that yes, this is a Republic, and yes, we can keep it.Trump’s gift is that he doesn’t preach from on high. He makes us all feel like we’re on the same journey, sharing the same space, all one family. How does he still manage to do that after all he’s been through? I don’t know, but I do know that’s the kind of leader, the kind of “dad energy” America needs. Donald Trump isn’t perfect, but then, neither am I. But I know he loves this country, no matter how many lies they tell about him. He’s changed everything, this “Gray Champion” of the Fourth Turning. And we’re not going back. //end 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 the New York Times asked professional women if they’d ever been sexually assaulted, I answered them, and my story appeared just before the Harvey Weinstein allegations broke. It was Trump’s Access Hollywood tape that turned our world upside down. We’d convinced ourselves that America had just elected a “racist” and a “rapist.”As a Democrat, you have to be willing to lie. Elections can be won if everyone is on board with the same lie. We lie about our candidates. We lie about the opposition. We lie about ourselves. Otherwise, we’d show weakness. We’d be thrust back into the era of disunity, feckless candidates, and elections we could not win. Oh, but the new Democratic Party knows better.I lived those lies for years, pretending inwardly that even if it wasn’t the whole truth, it was for the greater good, so it was okay.When the story broke with a credible accusation that Doug Emhoff, the “wife guy” of Kamala Harris, slapped a woman so hard she turned around, it might have become the kind of story that dominated the headlines for weeks. Only in ordinary times would the press chase a story like that. These are not ordinary times.If I were still a party loyalist, I, too, would be dismissing and debunking the serious allegation that Doug Emhoff went to a glitzy event at the Hotel du Cap, drank too much, and assaulted his girlfriend of three months because he thought she was flirting with another man.I would have cheered Jen Psaki on as she helped prop up the image of Emhoff as the shining example of men who stand behind women and support them, not as the guy who allegedly paid off the nanny he knocked up to keep her quiet.And maybe that’s why the Republicans can’t win elections. They aren’t willing to do what it takes to win. They aren’t willing to come together as one unbreakable chain that goes along with every lie.If only those who dissent at the National Review or the Wall Street Journal were fully on board with pretending Trump wasn’t who he is - a deeply flawed candidate who happens to be tough enough to go up against the machine. Ah, but the machine didn’t get there by accident. It got there because everyone agreed that lying was the better path forward. 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

Tomorrow, on Saturday, Trump is returning to Butler, PA. Trump and Butler seem connected in ways that make for one of the greatest stories in American history. It wasn’t just the assassination attempt. Butler had come to stand for the quintessential town of the forgotten working class who turned to Trump as their last best hope.Just before the 2020 election, Tucker Carlson gave the most insightful, eloquent monologue about Trump and his supporters I’d ever heard. It went viral because no one has said it better before or since. And a myth was born. Butler, PA, was the forgotten town that came alive when Trump decided to shine a light on it.So it was already MAGA lore by the time Trump returned to Butler to campaign for his 2024 run and was very nearly assassinated. What could represent the time we’re living in better than that? The Democrats will tell themselves it’s “just the guns,” and that their gun control would have stopped this shooter from attempting to take Trump’s life.Yet we know that is not the truth. It wasn’t random gun violence this shooter sought, but fame. We don’t know everything there is to know about that day. The press has not exactly been drawn to this story, probably because they fear it will help Trump. So, we don’t know much about the shooter. As of right now, he remains a mystery, as does the strange coincidence of Trump being nearly killed in Butler, of all places.In yet another strange twist of fate, Tucker Carlson and his producer, Justin Wells, happened to be filming a documentary following Trump on the campaign trail. That meant a full camera crew was ready to capture every second as it unfolded. Most of the footage shown in this documentary has never been seen before, and it is extraordinary.Episodes 1 and 2 of The Art of the Surge are now playing on Tuckercarlson.com. Here is a clip of the assassination attempt combined with various videos from rallygoers: 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 seems to have suddenly occurred to the Democrats that they have a problem with men. Oh, we know they have a problem with men. That’s all we’ve heard about for the past ten years ever since Donald Trump committed the great crime of beating Hillary Clinton.I know because I used to be one of them — the #stillwithher type who marched with hundreds of thousands of women to protest the Trump election. And the one who said #metoo and fought every day as a brave member of the resistance? Yeah, that was me. But to quote Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven, I ain’t like that no more.And speaking of Clint Eastwood, you know what was a universal attraction for men and women? Masculine male heroes. And you want to know what Hollywood decided it didn’t need anymore? Masculine male heroes. Hollywood’s problem is now the Democrats’ problem. The box office has become a ghost town, and men are fleeing the Democratic Party in droves.This gave someone in the Harris/Walz campaign the bright idea to form “White Dudes for Harris,” one of the most ill-conceived campaign pitches of my lifetime. It’s as though an extraterrestrial came down to the planet Earth and thought, “How can we lure in the males of this species?”Apparently, the Harris campaign is spending $10 million on this mess. Do they really think they’re going to convince a single “white dude” with that ad? Maybe the self-hating ones.But it won’t work. The reasons they cite for choosing the Democrats are all of the main reasons so many are voting for Trump in the first place. To quote Robert DeNiro playing a man afflicted with “toxic masculinity” in Raging Bull, it defeats its own purpose.The only men who would proudly and publicly join that group are men who have no self-respect left because they’ve spent much of the past decade apologizing for their existence and de-centering themselves from the narrative, all the while getting a pat on the head from the women in their lives. The more wealth and power they have, the more likely they’ll put on that shirt and shake that groove thing.And they’re surprised somehow that it didn’t work, that men didn’t flock to join a group that drained their testosterone faster than walking in on James Carville’s grandma naked. How did they think this was a good idea again? What preachy millennial childless cat lady made that call?Meanwhile, Jen Paski does what many of the women of the Left do: attempt to redefine their idea of masculinity. Even Doug Emhoff isn’t buying it. He looks terrified, like he’s gotten in too deep, and he can’t find his way out of this mess.I don’t want to insult Tim Walz or Doug Emhoff. I would never want to make them feel bad about things they can’t help, like masculinity, but BRUH. They would be what one might call sensitive men. No one out there is buying that Tim Walz is the masculine male role model that will bring back male voters. He’s just not that guy.\ 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’ll never forget the moment when I realized what being a mother meant. It wasn’t the 18 hours of labor or crying out for the nurse to hand me my newborn daughter or that I held her to my chest for a full two weeks after I brought her home. No, it was the day she walked behind me, and I dipped my toe in the pool. When she copied me, she fell in. I didn’t realize it at first, but then I didn’t hear her behind me anymore. I turned around to see her in the pool starting to sink.As I dove in to save her and felt that superhero strength all mothers are born with, I knew at that moment there was nothing I would not do to keep this child safe. I wasn’t just a mother, though. I was a Mama Bear. You know, the most feared animal in nature? No one messes with a mother grizzly. They know what will happen if they do.Mama Bears are not born, they are made. It’s a pilot light that is only ignited when danger is near. Even now, with my daughter grown, just try it, pal. Just TRY IT. We are Mama Bears because we know it’s a dangerous world in many ways. No one can guarantee a life free of car accidents, mass shootings, random explosions or violent crime.We never had a man around to protect us, which would have been nice but for me, it was my boot camp. I had to keep her safe. At some point, I had to let go and allow my daughter to live her life. But I sit here, across the country, with a pilot light forever lit. Just try it, pal. JUST TRY IT.I knew I had to leave the Democratic Party in 2020 because I believed they’d lost their minds and lost their way. I could no longer align myself with people who believed all of this country, its government, its culture, its economy belonged to them - the party of the elites.It wasn’t until I started venturing out of my feedback loop of the New York Times, MSNBC, and NPR that I began to see things I’d never heard about before. Had I not been listening to Blocked and Reported, I would never have heard of “gender-affirming care” or the rising crisis of children sucked into what I now believe is a cult.I knew some kids were trans. It didn’t become a thing until my daughter was in high school. Only one of her friends said she wanted “top surgery” and to now be referred to as a boy’s name. But when she went to college, two of her roommates had swapped genders, a boy she had a crush on had fully transitioned to female. I did start to wonder, what’s going on?The more I heard about it, the more I began to panic. Young girls were showing off scars where healthy breasts used to be. Young men being castrated and all of them losing their fertility long before the age of consent because of puberty blockers? And worse, there was a growing ideology that children as young as toddlers should be able to decide their gender.But it wasn’t until I heard the stories of detransitioners that I knew we were facing a once-in-a-generation medical scandal, and everyone was too afraid to say anything about it. If you mentioned it, you would be attacked and even, at one point, banned from Twitter. 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

Hollywood used to give us the chance to sit under one roof and enjoy a universal story. The magic of the movies was always something we could share. We all remembered lines from famous movies like “I’ll be back,” “I’m going to make him an offer he can’t refuse,” “Here’s looking at you, kid,” “We’re gonna need a bigger boat,” and “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.”We got along better as a country when we could share movies. We didn’t just share the experience inside a movie theater, where we could leave our politics and our disagreements at the door. We also shared stories that became part of our shared history. We all remember the Summer of the Shark and the year Titanic won Best Picture.But now, 24 years into the new millennium it’s all gone. Or most of it anyway. Whatever is left of Hollywood is meant only for a small portion of America. They are running out of stories to tell because their sample size is no bigger than the island of Manhattan.But Hollywood doesn’t seem to have noticed just how disconnected they’ve become from ordinary life in America. It isn’t just that Americans have moved on because Hollywood took a side after 2016 and alienated them. They also seem to be living in a different time, back when the box office wasn’t a ghost town, and Julia Roberts and George Clooney could still open a movie.They seem unable to let go of the past, specifically 2008, when Barack Obama won the presidency. Hollywood has never felt so useful, so full of purpose, and so GOOD as it did when it formed a powerful alliance with the Obama coalition. 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 was one of those people who believed Rachel Maddow. I sat glued to her show every night. I even patrolled Trump’s entire Twitter feed to find the exact moment when he was “turned” by the Russians.I saw it all play out in my head. The hapless Trump in Moscow, the beauty pageant, the room with a hidden camera, the prostitutes, the embarrassing sex acts all designed as “kompromat,” a word middle-aged white women like me suddenly threw around like we were Valerie Plame.Rachel Maddow sounded so sincere, so intelligent, so concerned for the welfare of the country. She was an integral part of the Obama coalition in the early days. We couldn’t separate them. They stood for the America we helped build and the one Trump threatened.I read every book on Putin I could find. I had long conversations with my friends about the danger of having a Russian asset in the White House. I believed Adam Schiff, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, and, yes, Rachel Maddow.Yet, no one stopped to think what all of that whipped-up hysteria, that fear, that rage would do to people who might think voting isn’t enough to save the country. More would have to be done. What if it all landed in the lizard brain of a Gen-X Travis Bickle, who was prepared to lay down his life to save Ukraine?The media will attempt to paint alleged Trump assassin Ryan Routh as a madman. They might even say he was a Trump supporter or his ideology was unknown. But that isn’t exactly true. 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

Kamala Harris believes she “won” the debate. It’s hard to argue with that conclusion. But there were unintended consequences her team did not factor in. And that is sympathy for Trump, or as they would tell it on the Left, “sympathy for the Devil.”Please to meet you. Hope you guessed my name.I, too, thought Kamala Harris had won the debate. By the end, I was so demoralized, so sad, and so full of despair that I just went to bed and hoped it would be gone by morning.I knew it wasn’t just a debate. It’s much bigger than that. It’s a TIME magazine cover. It’s Frank Luntz and the Spectator declaring the debate will cost Trump the election. It’s a thousand points of light on Twitter, a once-great coalition undone by ugliness for ten long years.It’s a Stephen Colbert monologue. It’s a Taylor Swift endorsement. It’s the center of Bill Maher’s entire universe on Friday night. It will be Saturday Night Live. It’s too big. Too insurmountable. It’s everything, everywhere, all at once.Or is it?When I woke up, scrolled through TikTok, and read the post-debate polls, I found headline after headline declaring voters' choice for president unmoved. It made no difference whatsoever, and, if anything, sympathy tipped in Trump’s direction, and Harris suddenly became as unlikable or “likable enough” as Hillary Clinton.Why?Because the Trump haters have destroyed themselves and any good thing they ever stood for trying to destroy him, and at some point, the worm turned.They are so close to what they believe is the total destruction of Trump they can taste it. But I watched Trump somehow survive the debate unscathed. Something about his ability to not attack Harris adequately worked in his favor. Call it the Charlie Brown effect.Harris made the fundamental mistake of leaving her JOY™ and unity hats at the door and putting on her prosecutor’s hat. Had she shown up as a gracious, respectful, serious person ready to answer serious questions, she might have won over some voters. That wasn’t what happened. She showed up as a hybrid between Hillary Clinton and the ladies of The View.We have a brighter future ahead, she declared. But those words ring hollow since she’s been in power for almost four years. How many more false promises can the Democrats make at the people’s expense? They promised that they were the better side, the optimistic side, the unity side, the ADULTS in the room.Not only have they failed — in Afghanistan, at the border, at our grocery stores, in our schools, and on our streets — but they have lurched toward corruption unseen and unprecedented in this country’s history, up to and including hiding a cognitively impaired president — who is still in office, by the way — and pulling a fast one on us that Kamala Harris is suddenly something new. 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 have just discovered that my very long interview with the great Paul Finn of The Generation Report is finally up on YouTube. He runs a really great channel (CLICK HERE) examining the Fourth Turning. I recommend watching all of his videos. If you are interested in our interview, here it is.He takes care to edit in images along with the audio so it’s worth a watch, though I am including an MP3 for the podcast feed. Paul’s work is exceptional, and it’s always bothered me that he doesn’t have a larger following on YouTube. He should. I wish more people would watch his videos.Hope you enjoy 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

There is nothing more loathsome to the average upper-crust liberal intellectual than an American holding Donald Trump’s book in one arm and the Bible in the other. At least, that’s what the stock image on Matt Bai’s column in the Washington Post tells us.Matt Bai — political columnist and one-time screenwriter for a DOA film about Gary Hart called The Front Runner — is going to give the Left all the justification it needs to continue their ongoing hate campaign against ordinary Americans.He writes:But now? After the violent sacking of the Capitol? After Trump’s promise to behave like a dictator (well, okay, I guess if it’s only for a day)? After eight years of bigotry and baseness and flat-out lies?To say that Trump’s voters aren’t aware of these things, or don’t fully comprehend them, or are firmly in the grip of misinformation, is to say that they’re simply fools. And I’ve met way too many rural Americans to believe that. If they’re ignorant, then their ignorance, at this point, is willful.It’s a rebuttal to a column by Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times pleading with the Left to find their humanity when it comes to Trump and MAGA.It isn’t enough that Kristof writes:By all means denounce Trump, but don’t stereotype and belittle the nearly half of Americans who have sided with him.We can’t separate them, argues Bai. If they support Trump then they are the named enemy. They are not worthy of our empathy, at least not until — he hopes — Kamala Harris wins the presidency. Then, they might thaw out and treat them like they belong in the country they love. Don’t bet on it. Bai writes:These voters don’t support Trump because they labor under some illusion that he’s going to rescue their communities — not anymore. They support him because he’s willing to blow up the country if it means teaching insufferable intellectuals a lesson, and so are they. It’s the same vengeful impulse that leads to autocracy in unequal societies all over the world. It is, at its core, unpatriotic, no matter how many flags you fly, or how many ways you try to rationalize it.Are you starting to see why The Front Runner flopped?The Frontrunner is a rescue operation for Gary Hart’s legacy. It was the mean old media, you see, a media that has suddenly grown a conscience because now they don’t do their jobs of chasing stories lest they weaken a weak candidate like Gary Hart or Kamala Harris. Instead, they spread propaganda on why America should hate and fear Trump and his supporters lest they be accused of “normalizing” them.The Front Runner was bad for the same reason The Washington Post and the New York Times are unreadable: their bias suffocates any practical purpose they might have otherwise had. It’s like spending time with the kid who sits in the front of the class, always raising his hand with the right answer. After a while, you overdose on the sanctimony. 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

Harris has been tripping the light fantastic on the campaign trail only showing the side her campaign wants people to see. It reminds me of the many years I’ve spent covering the Oscars. The campaigns for Best Actress always follow the same pattern. They get a stylist. They make selective appearances. They show up on the rope line. They shake hands. They look great. The one thing they don’t do is interviews.Hollywood has its greasy fingerprints all over the Harris campaign. We know that. They see it as their mission to stop Trump. So they’ve taken things into their own hands. It seems like Harris has hired awards consultants rather than politicos.They have her projecting mostly joy and positivity. Harris has done an excellent job playing the role they’ve given her, somewhere between the blessed virgin and Eva Peron.But they’re flirting with disaster. That’s not the real Kamala Harris. They’re hiding her from the press because they know that.They’re gambling on Trump, showing up as obnoxious, abusive, and belligerent. Harris will do everything she can to poke and prod him into a reaction. She will call him too old. She will say we need change. She will call him a racist. She will call him a criminal. 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

America is being love-bombed by the Kamala Harris campaign. It’s been confusing and disorienting, but so many are going along with it because how can they not? Being love-bombed is hard to resist.Yes, love-bombed. That is what all of this looks like. And as any dimestore trauma therapist will tell you, those who are the most insecure are the ones who must love-bomb to erase any doubt or critical thinking.They know Kamala Harris is one bad interview away from losing this election. They know she’s still the same Kamala that turned off so much of the American public. They know that sooner or later, she will get triggered, and that temper will come out. They know they have nothing else but this big lie they’re all going along with.None of the past four years will mean anything, not amid a storm of love-bombing. Harris can say anything, be anything, pretend anything, and she will get nothing but eyes in the shape of hearts looking back at her.Yes, much of it is “mass formation psychosis,” coined by Mattias Desmet, as we slouch toward a technocratic totalitarian state.During 2020, while we were all on lockdown, those online became part of a mass formation. Once they came together as one group that would go along with no masks, then masks, then mostly peaceful protests, then systemic racism, then vaccines, then lockdowns, then “cancel culture,” and finally, a weaponized DOJ against Trump - they were both terrorized and compliant by the end of it.They had a volunteer army of fanatics who would punish them publicly if they said the wrong thing or stepped out of line. That kind of fear does strange things to a community, and it hasn’t gone away.The formation is so united and so full of hatred and rage that our government could erect concentration camps or gulags and start throwing Trump and MAGA away, and all of them would celebrate. Bette Midler, Barbra Streisand, Rob Reiner, and Stephen King would cheer. 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

Congratulations to all of you who supported the Democrats. You won. You should be very proud of yourselves. You won in your singular support of Joe Biden for the presidency.You won in how you attacked any primary candidate who might challenge him, you know, the one guy who told the truth about Biden’s cognitive decline? Dean Phillips? What a terrible person he was for saying the Emperor had no clothes.You did it! You won the primary for Joe Biden. You had an entire press corp - and an army of supporters - to deflect from accusations that there was anything wrong with him. Those are deep fakes, they proclaimed. When any outlet would write a column that Joe Biden should step down or that he was not fit to hold power anymore, off with their heads! You would threaten to cancel your subscription and bully those reporters on Twitter.But you did 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

The new Kamala Harris is a grand illusion. It looks more like an Oscar campaign for Best Actress than an election for President of the United States. But that happens when your political party is in bed with Hollywood. They have all the best writers and executives in the business to sell a more palatable version to the people.The real Kamala Harris has proven to be not quite ready for prime time, or as she might see it, America is not quite ready for her.We’re getting the kinder, gentler Kamala instead of the firebrand she’s been throughout her career. We’re getting the JOY™ campaign to trick us all into feeling good in a time of great anxiety and malaise.We have a media selling this falsehood to the public every day, doing the work of the Harris campaign by depicting the Trump side as “dark.”She can’t hide herself for much longer. Sooner or later, the firebrand will have to emerge. Harris probably hates how they keep telling her to talk less nasally, smile more, and soften herself for the cameras. The more they try to control her, the more likely she is to rebel against it - you know, maybe a little like Sarah Palin?The real Harris is someone who had no problem calling Joe Biden a racist in an emotional tirade on the debate stage, then turning around and cackling about it as “just a debate.” She is that competitive. But hey, no one gets into politics to lose. To quote Jack Nicholson in Terms of Endearment, “everybody uses everything they have.”Some might have been shocked when Harris casually snatched Trump’s big platform of No Tax on Tips. I certainly was. How could she do it so brazenly and without shame? That is the real Kamala Harris. And it’s only the beginning. 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

How do you solve a problem like Kamala Harris? If you criticize or attack her, you’ll be seen as a “racist” by the powerful people on the Left, which fuels their momentum and reminds them of their collective sense of purpose.Why is she ahead in the polls now? Because it feels good to vote for her, it’s as simple as that. It’s time for a woman, they proclaim, especially a woman of color.Kamala Harris has now made history four times as the first woman and first woman of color District Attorney, Attorney General, Senator, and Vice President. She only has one more win for a clean sweep, President of the United States.They tried so many different ways to recapture the magic of the 2008 Obama coalition only to realize it was there the whole time. All they needed was the “female Obama.” Everything else fell into place.Their Obama/Trump origin story of the angry white man who tried to destroy the angelic Black man is all coming back in a Proustian rush. Let’s finish the job, they all think. Let’s finally vanquish the bad orange racist man forever with our warrior, Queen Kamala.So what do you do? How to beat her? For one thing, you don’t allow her to define your campaign. MAGA is not the party of darkness. MAGA is the party of joy. The Democrats have given us one long dark winter since Biden took office. They can’t just suddenly pretend that Harris wasn’t part of that.Their propaganda machine is astonishing:Imagine how the Bidens must be feeling right about now. Are they feeling any joy™? Do they like it that George Clooney and Reid Hoffman pushed him out and selected Kamala Harris? Do you think they’re feeling joy™, watching the mania play out with happy smiles, laughter, and awkward dancing from Tim Walz? Yay we got rid of Joe, aren’t we happy?I want Trump to win not just because of the lawfare that sets a dangerous precedent going forward, especially with Harris as president. But also because I worry that the nation’s schoolchildren will be indoctrinated into the madness of the Left starting as early as preschool. Just imagine the kinds of Executive Orders Harris will sign.But beating them is not going to be easy. We now see they will do anything, say anything, tell any lie, become anybody, corrupt the system any way they want just to win.The Trump campaign has their work cut out for them.Start with this:They are not the party of JOY™What Trump did with “fake news,” he can do with the word, “Joy™” Take it back.Joy™, per the Harris/Walz campaign, translates to: “Let them eat cake.”Let them eat fentanylLet them eat high crimeLet them eat inflationLet them eat the flood of illegal immigrantsLet them eat high gas pricesExamples:Attacking Her Directly Will BackfireThe rules on the Left are different from the rules on the right, as we learned from this poll that showed white Liberals dumb down their speech when talking to minorities, and Conservatives don’t.The press won’t be hard on her for that same reason. They’re deathly afraid of being called racists. They could lose their jobs for that. Independents might feel the same way, protective of her and hostile toward Trump and Vance.Let the Trump/Vance team now be the party of hope and change, because for millions of Americans, that is exactly what it is.Barack Obama owns “hope and change,” but the only change they meant was making history. The change that’s needed now is about class, not race. But using these words will put the Harris side on defense and will probably make them angry, making it harder to take the high road.How to Campaign against Kamala HarrisThe first thing you need to know about campaigning against Harris is that she did not come to play. She has been preparing for this moment nearly all of her life.Harris is no amateur when it comes to winning elections. There is nothing she does better than what she is doing right now: making history by winning an election against a white man.She already believes this is her ultimate battle against the “evil racists” who stormed the Capitol. Someone on Twitter made a video intercutting her January 6th speech with the riots and the violence in the Summer of 2020. But listen carefully to what she says.The Good White Liberals see themselves as saviors, so even just mentioning the riots in 2020 is strictly verboten, but everyone should remember how they hid much of that from us and shamed us for caring about the people whose lives and businesses were destroyed.Harris has been making history all of her life with only wins and no losses, but she also prepared a statement, a quote from her mother, when asked about it.She said the same thing on the Oprah Show where they called her the “first African-American female District Attorney.”Her star continued to rise when she was profiled on Lifetime right around that same time:That led to her being name-checked in the New York Times even before Barack Obama won in 2008.Harris aligned with Obama early, and their relationship has been essential, not just because she had the golden light of The King upon her, which elevated her profile—she was even called the “female Obama”—but because he likely “saved” her from bombing out in the primary and was likely the main reason she was selected as the candidate (don’t buy the lie that he did not endorse her).She began her run for Attorney General right after Obama won in 2008.On her YouTube page is a practice speech from 2008, “If I were president.” She was crafting an early message that America has problems and you don’t have to love your country unconditionally.Eight years later, she gave more or less the same speech with some changes.The thing is, if you are running for president you do have to love your country unconditionally because that’s your job. Trump should call her out on that.Harris first made history when she became the first woman of color in the DA’s office in San Francisco, where she ran what Politico called a “Ruthless” campaign,” and sent out campaign ads to remind voters of the all-male, all-white history://end 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 days ago, a reporter from one of the trades asked me for an interview. I knew there could only be one reason she would want to interview me, and it wasn’t to talk about how I ran a website for 25 years on the Oscar race.It wouldn’t be that I raised a baby as a single mother and launched my site out of a guest house in Van Nuys, California, or that I’d worked as a sports photographer, a fake horoscope writer, a film reviewer, a janitor, and a teacher’s aide to raise my daughter without sending her to daycare and somehow built a successful business anyway.No. This had to be about my politics and why they changed.How did a Barack Obama devotee, an I’m With Her Hillary Clinton supporter, and a Joe Biden faithful from way back find my way into not only voting for Trump but actively trying to help the Republicans defeat the Democrats?Now that’s a story, “How Did an Oscar Blogger become a far-right radical?”The pitch wasn’t exactly about that. It was more about how I plan to navigate being a dissident heretic while also running a successful business in an industry that is now the same organism as the government.I’ve been asked this question many times by people on the Right and have given many interviews to explain “what happened to me.” But this is the first time anyone on the Left, or inside the bubble of the Left, asked me to explain it.And that’s because one, two, three, all eyes are on me. I did a boo-boo on Twitter that now has me in the crosshairs at long last. It was one thing when I stood up for JK Rowling or Ansel Elgort or when I pushed back on the hysteria that Green Book was “racist.” When Trump is involved, it’s bigger than just your average internet pile-on. This time it could mean the end of whatever it is I’ve built over at AwardsDaily.com.The story will be about how my politics changed, or more specifically, why I felt like I could get away with a satirical tweet that said “White Power” while mocking the “White Dudes for Harris.”Is it bad to mock white people? I thought they were fair game. Or is just saying those words bad? Some people decided that it meant something beyond that. I don’t check my mentions anymore, so I had no idea this wave of hysteria was even occurring. But then a friend wrote to “ask me about it.”It was as though I was secretly joining the white power movement on Twitter and was signaling to all of my friends in the KKK that, look, it’s cool to be white people celebrating our whiteness again! Of course, it’s not. It’s just that they have a habit on the left of memory-holing their insanity and moving the goalposts. We’re all supposed to keep up.Four years ago, there could have been no “white dudes for Biden” or “white dudes for Barack Obama.” It would be called any number of things, from white saviorism (which this most surely was) and even borderline racism. But not in 2024! Anything goes because they say so.I could have deleted the tweet and apologized profusely. But I know the game, brother. They once called me a “white supremacist” for saying it wasn’t only white people who committed hate crimes (fact check true). But in my world, no matter how crazy or blatant the hypocrisy gets, you should never say a word about it.Apologize and beg for forgiveness. Maybe they’ll give you a break. No, they won’t. They will screenshot the tweet and send it around and around. By the end of this madness, it will land in the lap of a reporter who wonders, “What happened to her?”How did Orwell know enough to write Children's Spies in 1984? How did he know the young would be so susceptible to fanaticism? Because, of course, he knew. That’s why capturing the youth is so important to cults and utopias and why they separate the kids from the parents, as the Democrats are trying to do now.It’s my own fault. I could have shut up, kept my head down, and complied with all of the demands—think they do, write like they do, believe what they believe, and always apologize for “mistakes made.” I could have done that. But then I think about Winston Smith and 1984. How did Orwell know?He knew that utopias must become totalitarian dystopias because how else to maintain the purity and the vision? We’re living everything from that book, even a government that has now been weaponized to punish thought crimes.They have condemned and convicted Trump and his supporters as “racists,” which means anything can be done to them, and no one will say a thing. Steve Bannon is in prison for the crucial months leading up to the election. The last time someone was in jail for that crime was Ring Lardner of the Hollywood Ten.If Orwell wanted to write a book that would call out to the future to warn us that this isn’t what we want for our country, much less our culture, then loudmouths like Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and me will have to take the hit because no one else will.Winston Smith is an obedient member of Oceana whose thoughts take him to dangerous places. Big Brother doesn’t like him remembering great books or language deemed useless. Even love is strictly forbidden. That’s how Winston finds himself being forced to admit 2+2=5.I still feel like a liberal at heart. I still care about climate change. I still believe we should all have access to good healthcare, no matter how rich we are. So many of the issues that used to be standard for Democrats have been warped and distorted beyond the point of recognition. 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

[This is the podcast version of an already posted story]It’s too late for me. I followed the feminist lie through most of my life, only to wake up much too late to have lived it a better way. You see, it takes a while to realize that it really is about the warm body next to you. It is about the laughing children and grandchildren. It is about the stories, the recipes, the memories, the picnics, the vacations.No, life is never going to be perfect. There will be problems with every family, unforgettable tragedies, broken hearts, and dreams deferred. And there are sometimes mothers who become addicted to drugs. Not everyone grows up easy. Some of us barely make it out alive.As I watched The Machine surround JD Vance like a pack of hyenas going in for the kill, I was disgusted on so many levels. I am sure if the Right had that kind of power, they’d probably abuse it, too. People are people, and power corrupts. But still, the level of depravity was shocking, even for them. The absence of empathy in a culture defined by trauma is what defines the new Left. Their trauma. Someone else’s trauma. Trauma from our past. Every kid growing up on the Left will be fed one psych med or another. When Donald Trump was shot, there was just a moment where there was a pause. Wait, they all seemed to think, are we supposed to feel something?Yes, you are supposed to feel something. It’s called humanity. Empathy. I have been cursed with too much empathy. I get a double dose from each of my parents. My dad loved his cat Freddy so much he couldn’t bear to get him “fixed,” so he let him out to produce untold amounts of wild kittens. One day, Freddy was hit by a car, and my dad never really recovered. He loved that cat. My mom had so much empathy that for a while there, she couldn’t bear to see her chickens sitting on unfertilized eggs, so she went to the pet store and bought fertilized eggs so they could hatch. But she kept producing too many roosters and didn’t know what to do with them, so she moved the roosters to another property she owned. I joked with her that it was like a male prison. Please, send over some hens. And me, well, I can barely clip the leaves off of a basil plant without feeling bad about it. I save spiders. One video of an abused dog will ruin my entire year. It’s a curse—too much empathy. But that’s what I feel when I think about JD Vance, what he’s gone through in life, and how he’s come out of it such a fine young man with a beautiful family and a promising future.It reminds me of that wonderful scene in The Shawshank Redemption, written by Stephen King before he became Trump deranged, and back when Hollywood could still make great movies. JD Vance said something, so what? You can’t grow up with a foul-mouthed Mamaw and not fire off a zinger now and again. I grew up with that kind of mother, a mouth so foul she’d make a sailor blush. I often remember her screaming at cars that drove by, “You mother f*cking c*cksucker!” That’s probably why I can’t shut up. And probably why JD can’t either. But that’s not why he’s my hero. That’s a different story entirely. It has to do with growing up like a weed. You don’t really belong any place. You grow up strong anyway because something in your DNA makes you a survivor. No hothouse flower was he, nor carefully tended garden plant, but a fast-growing, persistent, ever-present weed. I grew up not that differently than he did—the kind of family where the men leave, and the women go a little crazy. At least there were no drug addicts, but I know what it is to long for normalcy so bad it aches. I know what it is to visit “normal” families and feel envious that there were two parents, that they sat down and ate dinner, and there was lunch money.I know what it is to keep going, no matter what ghosts chase you. I know what it is to be underestimated by everyone, but never let anyone stop you. I never fought in the Iraq war like he did. I couldn’t last one day of training to be a Marine. And I’m pretty sure I couldn’t become a Senator like he did, much less a candidate for the Vice Presidency. But I know what it is to try at life anyway. JD Vance is my hero because everything he’s done so far in life has not killed his faith in himself, his family, his mother, and his country. I would say in his God, but I don’t know if he is religious, and I would feel like a phony if I said it that way. I’m not quite there yet. I guess I just mean this life can take you down. If you can somehow survive it, it’s a miracle.Donald Trump said JD Vance cares about family to explain away why he is adamant about supporting mothers with kids. You’d have to grow up the way he did and the way I did to understand why someone would be so protective of the family unit. He did not have it growing up, but it was something he longed for. I know that because I felt the same way.If the worst thing he ever did was generalize about “Childless cat ladies,” that’s not that big of an offense. The second part of it was specifically about politicians who have less of a stake in the future. Yes, it will probably alienate some voters, but honestly, is that really how you go about voting? Something someone said turns you off so you’ll vote for the totalitarians?Maybe Trump could have picked someone who would pull in a swing state, as the Democrats do. He could have picked “a woman.” But I’m glad he picked a survivor, a tough Marine who can take whatever they have to throw at him. We know that because he’s already survived the worst of it. We hope.I don’t know what will happen in this crazy election. It’s the totalitarians vs. the populists. But anyone who blames JD Vance for Trump’s loss, should he lose, is a fool. Trump and Vance aren’t running against other candidates. They’re running against an entire system. Don’t kid yourselves. They will attack and destroy anyone who threatens their power. So here’s to you, JD. Thanks for fighting the good fight.END// 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

[This was already posted as a story, here is the podcast version]Trump is under no obligation to debate Kamala Harris, who was hand-picked for the nomination without so much as a single vote. They can’t just change the rules and expect everyone else to comply. On the other hand, it might not be a bad idea. Trump can do the job the media will not. A debate might be the only time Harris will be made to answer any tough questions before the election. True, Trump runs the risk of the debate going badly for him and tipping the race to Harris - and he should listen to smarter minds than mine — but here are some things to consider. He towers over herIf it’s a standing debate people should see the height differential. Do we want a tiny woman of 5’2 facing off Putin and Xi? Even Hillary Clinton, at 5’5, is taller than Harris. Here is Harris and Biden. Trump should debate town hall-style or a standing debate for this reason. Americans are looking for strength, not weakness. Harris likes attacking powerful men, but it often backfires.Her attacks on men often seem, at least to me, like sound and fury signifying nothing. She tends to ask the same question repeatedly, and because it looks and sounds serious, we’re all supposed to see her as “tough.” But much of the time, there is no THERE there.Harris went along with pushing Al Franken out of the Senate. She was a passionate believer in Russiagate and is thought of by women on the Left as the Trump destroyer. I have my doubts. * Trump can make her look bad by coming off as a kinder, gentler version of the villain the media sells. * Trump should be the sane one, not the crazy one.* Trump should be nice when she is being mean.* Trump should always pivot away from personal attacks against him to how they should be serving the people, as in, “If you spent half as much time trying to make life better for Americans instead of trying to put me in jail maybe your approval numbers would be higher.”* “All you had to do in four years was offer people something better. You never could. That’s why they want me back. They’re desperate for anyone who will care about them instead of focusing only on identity politics.”* “The American people are disgusted by how authoritarian this administration became. Harris will only make that worse. You won’t recognize this country after she gets through with it.”* “This election shouldn’t be about making history for one person. It should be about making America great again for all people.”Question her competence since becoming VeepHarris has always been greeted with admiration and love by the media. She has failed upwards in her career, thanks to her mentorship by very powerful men, including Barack Obama.That’s not to say she isn’t a good Attorney General or Senator. But as Vice President, she failed. She was the worst Vice President in United States history.As long as Trump stays completely away from race or her sexual past and keeps it focused on her incompetence, she will flail.She Betrayed Joe BidenHarris betrayed Joe Biden not once, but twice. First, she launched an emotional accusation of racism against him:She even sold t-shirts.She then wrote it off as “just a debate.” Even sycophant Stephen Colbert was taken aback by this lame excuse.She was lying at the debate, later to Joe, or to Colbert. Either way, she was lying. She acted loyal to Joe Biden, but when it came down to it, she was happy to agree to the 25th Amendment her good friend Joe to force him out. That’s the story, anyway. Trump should call her out on that. Who else will? If Trump does not debate her, the American public will never hear any of it. The Last Person in the RoomPer Joe Biden, Harris was “the last person in the room” on his worst decisions—the last person in the room on Afghanistan, the last person in the room on the border, and the last person in the room on inflation. Harris owns all of it. She owns being that close to Joe Biden “multiple times per day” and saying nothing of his cognitive decline. Here, just after the debate, she insists Biden is capable and just had a bad night. Did she really believe that or was the plan already in the works and she was playing the part of the loyal Veep?She owns the withdrawal from Afghanistan. If Joe Biden didn’t know what he was doing, she most certainly didn’t. Is that who we want as Commander in Chief?Afghanistan:The BorderHarris must be held accountable for the rapes and murders because of the failed border policy.Here is a montage of the crisis at the border, with the rapes and murders intercut with Harris’ excuses. InflationIt goes on and on. This administration has been one failure after another. She will never be held accountable unless Trump debates her. How she loses her cool…For the entirety of Harris’ career, you can count the number of hard interviews or criticisms she’s received on one hand. When confronted, which is rare, she doesn’t handle it well. As Bob Dylan would say, “She breaks just like a little girl.” AND THAT LITTLE GIRL WAS ME!You just have to know which buttons to press. With Harris, nothing sends her into a tailspin like questioning her competence. Although she has been praised for decades for being a winner, she was a loser throughout the Biden administration and is now responsible for the state of the country.She is not just running on Joe Biden’s record but also on her record as the “last person in the room.”Lester Holt pressed her on her competency and kept pressing until she snapped. This reporter did the same thing. It didn’t go well.Her laugh, or her cackle, seems to hide the intense emotions that bubble up within her. She will lash out when she gets angry enough, and Trump should expect to see some of that in the debate. Here is an example making the rounds on social media: Trump should do everything he can to hit those pressure points where she feels weak. For her, that’s anyone questioning the job she has done. She could not handle the low approval numbers she received because, for her entire career, she’s been love-bombed by the media.Here are some suggested pressure points:* “If it weren’t for Obama, she’d never be Vice President or a presidential candidate. No other candidate who did that badly in the 2020 primary would have been made Vice President. And certainly no Vice President who did that badly would not be selected to run as President.” * “She wrecked San Francisco.”* “She’s more sympathetic to illegal migrants than the citizens of the United States.”* “She went to visit Jacob Blake’s family after Kenosha burned to the ground on the lie that Blake was unarmed and there to break up a fight. He was armed, and he was about to kidnap the children. She didn’t care about the destroyed businesses or the crime in the cities after Defund the Police. She bailed out protesters.”* “Who is the real Kamala Harris? No one knows. They’re just going to put her in office and see what happens. What could possibly go wrong?”* “She flip-flops on whatever is popular at the time. No one even knows where she stands on any issue. She pretends to be tough on crime. But she refused to seek the death penalty for a cop-killer, choosing politics over justice.”* “She believes in equity over equality of opportunity.” * She is fully on board with “gender-affirming care” on minors and is supportive of biological men playing in women’s sports. * “It’s time to turn the page. The American people want change, not the same old thing by people who don’t care about them.”None of this will get through unless Trump agrees to debate Harris, even on her terms. It might be the only chance the American people will have to hear her speak without a teleprompter. Trump should agree to debate her on ABC and still follow through with the debate on Fox. He should use that time to dismantle the Harris candidacy and potential presidency, with special guest stars JD Vance, Tulsi Gabbard, and Glenn Greenwald.If Trump skips this opportunity, the media will write the narrative, and that will help them drag her over the finish line. And that won’t be the worst thing in the world. Their empire is collapsing no matter what. Trump can go play golf and live out his life having rescued his legacy. On the other hand, Harris is exactly the kind of president who will make the Biden DOJ look like child’s play. //end 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

Just when you thought America was No Country for White Men, the Democrats have once again rewritten their own rules. White people, even white men, are in. And all to show up for the coronation of the first woman of color to win an election without ever having won a primary. It was never losing democracy. They were worried that the wrong people would have a say in this democracy. And in their minds, it was white men. Well, what a difference a Joe Biden stepping down makes. Next, on the Greatest Show on Earth will be the choice of Veep. Desperate not to fumble the ball on their way to making history, it has been decided that it must be a WHITE MALE, preferably heterosexual.After five years or more of de-centering white men and heterosexuality from movies, culture, and politics, it’s the white guy they now need. But it can’t be a white guy at the top of the ticket. The dream machine would never get away with that. He has to ride shotgun, like a driving instructor at the DMV.We’re all supposed to pretend like history is really being made when, in fact, it’s history being manufactured. Harris did nothing to earn her place except be a woman of color. I would not call that DEI, only because it’s an easy way for self-righteous people to get up on their high horses and start lecturing you about racism. No, I would talk about equity instead. If someone hands you a job you either aren’t ready for or don’t deserve, you never get the credit. The white person giving you the job gets the credit. But if you fail, you’re on your own.For white people, especially rich white people, that’s the greatest thing ever. Finally, real purpose at long last. Finally, absolution for their sins of wealth and privilege. The hunt for a white dude to fill the slot of Veep is looking like The Bachelor back when all the contestants were white, a legacy that would come back to haunt them later. So far, none of the shrill social justice warriors are demanding Harris pick someone other than a white male. They care about winning, too, so whatever.The problem for them is that the names buzzing about now are all politicians who might upstage Harris. How to pick the Tim Kaine of the bunch and still defeat Trump? We know identity matters on the Left more than anything, so this isn’t really about whether Harris can do the job. It’s whether they can prop her up to make it seem like she can. Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro, Arizona’s Mark Kelly, and Minnesota’s Tim Walz all would have done better in the primary than Harris if there had been a primary. They have twice her accomplishments and a better record. But for now, they will merely be a symbol of reassurance, like a security camera to ward off criminals. I guess “normie white guys” are good for something after all. Vote for Kamala Harris or you’re a racist!No group is more narcissistic and yet more self-hating than liberal white women. I should know. I was one. We spent so many decades on self-improvement to try to rid ourselves of the self-hate. Therapy that went nowhere except to make us focus even more on ourselves. Drugs that perhaps took the edge off like booze used to do. Fitness, meditation, and eventually Ozempic. That must be why the Harris campaign thought gathering all of those white women on a Zoom call to “show up” for Harris was a good idea. Suddenly, the Harris campaign is defined by “white power.” A white Veep to temper Harris, and now, white women to get a strict talking-to about how they have to do everything they can to ensure the woman of color wins. But just in case, they’re hitching a white man along for the ride. To sum it up in agonizing, torturous detail is Ariell Fodor, one of those terrifying millennial women who want to control everything we say, think, do, eat, and drive. They all read “white fragility,” and they’ve already de-centered themselves from the narrative. She probably has an abandoned Tumblr out there populated with cancel culture call-outs and social justice screeds. White power at long last, courtesy of the Harris campaign:Not to be outdone, the white men were ready too.The Great White Heterosexual Man ScareI didn’t need this political election to see that the Left has all but eliminated heterosexual men from the narrative. They’ve vanished from movies almost completely. If they do exist, they’re shunted to the background as the girl boss saves the day.It now seems obvious that what was threatening about Trump has been his unapologetic masculinity. It isn’t that Trump showcases it, but he is a masculine man who has a long history of womanizing. That he could win an election against a woman drove the first major mass hysteria event on the Left, and sparked the Me Too movement. All manner of sexuality is allowed in parades, in parks, and in restaurants as long as the male is gay or trans. Heterosexual men are seen as perverts and predators if they express any of their sexuality.And it’s their sexuality that the Democrats are attempting to target with this new ad depicting them as creepy and “weird.” The word of the day that the zombie robots on the Left repeated and repeated and repeated.There’s just one problem. They’re the weird side, and everyone knows it. In their minds, anything normal is bad. Having kids is bad. Having abortions is good. Getting married is bad. Casual sex is good. Serving in the military, attending college, and becoming a Senator is bad. Bouncing around on psych meds aimlessly until you decide you were born in the wrong body is good.To them, this is normal:And this:Normal to them is using the word “chestfeeding” and calling biological men mothers and biological women fathers. Normal to them is Chelsea Handler skiing down a mountain with her dog in a backpack, smoking a joint, and bragging about being childless. Methinks the lady doth protest too much. Topless transgender people at Joe Biden’s White House. Nothing weird about that.They want this to be seen as normal:And this:White men, according to them, have always been the problem — until right this very minute, and now they refuse to appoint anyone other than a white male. Does that seem normal to you? There is no such thing as a moderate Democrat.The Veepstakes will be about finding a moderate to help Harris win in the swing states. But remember, despite how they look and how the press will position them, they are just as radical as she is. They have to be. They couldn’t survive today’s Democratic Party if they weren’t. Normie White Guy #1Josh Shapiro seems like a moderate. He supports Israel in the war in Gaza. He supports school vouchers. But to really expose the extremists on the Left, they have to be able to pass the “gender-affirming care” test, which none of them can. Even Shapiro appears to be supportive. Normie White Guy #2Tim Walz of Minnesota is among those “normie white dudes” calling JD Vance “weird,” but he’s fully on board with “gender-affirming care.”So who’s the weird one?Normie White Guy #3 Senator Mark Kelly seems to be the closest thing to a moderate. He talks a good game and, from the looks of it, has no baggage. Does he pass the test? Nope. Kelly was among the Democrats who voted to strip a bill of a ban on “gender-affirming care”:A handful of Senate Democrats voted last month against legislation that would bar a military health benefit program from covering gender procedures on children that could result in sterilization — including hormone therapy and puberty blockers.All 12 Democratic members of the Senate Armed Services Committee — as well as independent Angus King of Maine — voted June 29 to strip the provision from the must-pass 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), opening the door for the Pentagon to fund so-called “gender-affirming care” for minors.Panel Chairman Jack Reed (D-RI) joined Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Gary Peters (D-Mich.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and centrist Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) in opposing the provision during the committee’s markup of the bill.The Democrats pulled a fast one on us all in 2020 when they sold America on the “normie white guy” Joe Biden. He’s not a woman, not a woman of color, not a gay man, not a socialist. He’s a moderate. And yet, when Joe Biden took power he tacked far to the Left in a way that shocked us all. And that is a cautionary tale. Her Veep choices might fool voters because they look like “normie white guys,” but in reality, they will follow Harris anywhere she wants to go. And where she wants to go is even farther to the Left than Joe Biden.As long as Republicans push out that message, they can give independents the heads up of just what kind of fanaticism they’re about to put in power.// 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

Republicans have a problem: a fast-moving narrative that will dominate the news cycle for the next few months if they allow it to. This comes courtesy of some eager beaver operative who dug up this clip of JD Vance from 2021 that has now gone viral.The old me would have joined the outrage train on X, distorting what he said into an opportunity to wax sanctimonious and proclaim that it’s great to be a woman who chooses not to have children, and how dare he say such a disgusting, sexist thing?She made news. Lots and lots of news, which shows you what the GOP is up against.Team Kamala now has a great piece of propaganda to juice her already energized base.The “Childless cat ladies” echoed what James Carville said about the Democrats not too long ago, that they were dominated by “preachy women” and that it was alienating voters, especially men."Both of them are essentially saying the Left is dominated by a certain kind of woman, whether childless or not - meaning - they are up in everyone’s business all of the time.I know that kind of woman. I was that kind of woman. The kind that used to be a powerful consumer demographic back in the 90s, in the Oprah era, but no longer is. Women who have been sidelined by the social justice movement that has decided feminism is too exclusionary. So what else did we have except to ask to speak to the manager and fuss over politics?When Hillary lost our entire world collapsed. It was as though there was nothing left. We were the center of the universe one minute and invisible and powerless the next.If anything, Vance’s comments hurt women who can’t have children more, not those who have chosen not to have them. Women have struggled with infertility, even with IVF. Aniston might be one of those women; if so, my heart goes to her. I live with regret every single day of my life that I aborted babies I could have and should have had.Now, the abortionists want young women to see their babies as just a “clump of cells” and that it doesn’t matter. But guess what? It does matter, and they’re lying to women about it right now. 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 began with the nation’s first Black President, but it would become much bigger. It would become a movement that captured every major institution in this country, including public schools, universities, corporations, and nearly all of culture. This could not last only two terms. No, this had to last forever.When Donald Trump won in 2016, the power concentrated in the Obama coalition refused to step aside. Trump was the problem. His supporters were the problem. They didn’t like this new utopia that had become America and wanted change. But that change would never be allowed to take place.The coup began even before Trump took office. A group of powerful elites decided it was their choice who could and could not represent the people. If one of them offended the ruling oligarchy, he was seen as a “racist” and had to be stopped by any means necessary.They used every lever of power to stop him, to remove him, and to destroy him. They did this with the full cooperation of the nation’s press corps. They did it in full view of the Security State. And they did it with the enthusiastic support of their voters.Get him. Destroy him. Remove him.I was one of them. I wrote endless pieces about why Hillary Clinton had to win because history had to be made. I spent years pushing woke ideology into the film industry. It made me feel important. I was part of a movement, something bigger than myself. I had the admiration of my friends and pats on the back by powerful people. Why would I ever give that up?I believed Donald Trump was a racist because the Democrats told me so. I believed he was a Russian spy because I watched Rachel Maddow. I believed he was a danger to our country because I read the New York Times, and I believed that the only thing that mattered in our lives was that those of us who were among the white majority did everything we could to elevate the oppressed minorities.I 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

"Courage is not having the strength to go on; it is going on when you don't have the strength."— Theodore RooseveltIn 1912, Teddy Roosevelt was on his way to deliver a speech when he was shot in the chest with an assassin’s bullet. James Strock writes:The history of 1912 leaves breadcrumbs if we summon the humility to look.In the moment Roosevelt was, to put it mildly, controversial. Seeking a third term as president, he split his political party. Longtime accusations of “Caesarism” were given new life.Nonetheless, Roosevelt’s undoubted courage under fire was acknowledged, including by political adversaries in the closing weeks of a hard-fought campaign.Trump was shot in Pennsylvania, but he gave his speech in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the same city where Roosevelt gave his 112 years ago.Politically, and in a variety of ways, TR and Trump are worlds apart. But they have one thing in common. They’re the Man in the Arena.As I watched Twitter watch the last night of the Republican National Convention, I felt something shifting inside of me. I don’t know if it was the vulnerability on Trump’s face, his sadness after his brush with death, or his courage to give his speech anyway and do it for 90+ minutes that elevated me beyond our usual politics and forced me to look at who we are.Strock does much of this in his excellent column on the failed assassination and how ugly things have gotten in the press to bring us to this point. That was only half of the story. The other half is how so many gathered around to “judge” how well Trump did and whether or not this means he will win in a landslide or whether it’s now a toss-up.They want Biden’s debate and Trump’s speech to level the playing field. There’s just one problem. They’re not the same things, and everyone knows it. Trump was polling ahead of Biden even before the debate. He’s still polling ahead because there is no fixing what the Democrats have done to this country. For now, Trump has the wind at his back, whether or not he gave a great speech. 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

“President Trump represents America’s last best hope to restore what — if lost — may never be found again. A country where a working-class boy born far from the halls of power can stand on this stage as the next vice president of the United States of America.” - JD VanceTulsi Gabbard’s voice is greatly missed from the Republican National Convention. However, it still resonates profoundly in our culture, especially after Vice President Kamala Harris insulted JD Vance’s love of country and called her out as only Tulsi Gabbard can.So many of us, especially on the Left, don’t think much about the people who put their lives on the line every day in service of this country. However, in JD Vance, Trump found someone who can offer more than just empty words.According to Military.com:Vance, 39, is the first post-9/11 veteran to find a spot on a major party ticket and, if elected, would likely be the first Marine veteran to serve as the second-in-command… He is the first veteran on a major party ticket since John McCain in 2008.”That mattered when the Gold Star families took to the stage to “say their names,” a chant heard over and over again since the catastrophic exit from Afghanistan, the first real sign to the American people and to the world that the leader of the United States did not know what he was doing.What a difference eight years makes. When he was still green as a politician and not yet the leader he is today, Trump famously made fun of a Gold Star dad after he read out loud the Constitution at the Democratic National Convention in 2016. The press made much of it at the time, but they’ve said nothing about how our government memory-holed the deaths of 13 American soldiers.Say their names.Democrats and the media have repeatedly excused the disastrous military operation that would ultimately destabilize the global order — nothing to see here; move along, move along. It wrecked Biden’s approval ratings, and they’ve never recovered.Say their names.Up until Night 3 of the Republican National Convention—Make America Strong Again—there had never been any major ceremony or remembrance of the fallen. We saw their military funerals. There was a hearing in Congress.But their names, faces, and personal stories had never been properly memorialized in any major way, not in the State of the Union, and wholly forgotten during the first presidential debate of 2024.Say their names.The general public has never called them heroes. That changed last night.Before their appearance at the RNC, a short documentary played with interviews from the Gold Star families, all of them angry that the Biden administration had mostly ignored them while Trump hadn’t. He’d given them his time. He knew their children, they said. That matters if you’re the Commander in Chief, a job neither Joe Biden nor Kamala Harris are suited for.When the families finally appeared on stage, tears were already streaming down the faces of almost everyone in the hall, as they often are when we come together to talk about military deaths. We know they died serving their country. Some grown men could be seen openly weeping at the unimaginable loss of an avoidable tragedy./// 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

Beautiful, elegant, strong—when Sarah Huckabee Sanders glided out on stage on Night 2 of the Republican National Convention, I could not help but think of the film Carrie. In it, the shy wallflower emerges as the beautiful prom queen moments before she’s sabotaged by two mean and bitter people who want nothing but her total humiliation.But of course, they don’t realize what they just stepped in as Carrie turns to them, flips the switch that turns on her supernatural powers, and enacts her revenge.It’s one of the best scenes in film history made when Hollywood could still make great movies, and Stephen King wrote great books rather than endless anti-Trump tweets.Sarah Huckabee Sanders didn’t need to set the place on fire. Her success is her best revenge, as she’s now the Governor of Arkansas, the first woman to hold that position. Take that, bitter leftists.What a moment that was. They did everything in their power to crush her, to humiliate her, to shame her, to destroy her. And guess what? It failed spectacularly, just as it has with Trump.I remember back in 2018 when Michelle Wolf told unfunny jokes, selling a version of Sanders that doesn’t, in fact, exist. Her words stung, and Sanders’ reactions reflected that. Even though I was a loyal Democrat back then, I loudly criticized Wolf and my Democrat friends for defending her.And when she was refused service at the Red Hen, a thing that happened in the Jim Crow South or Nazi Germany, Stephen Colbert did his usual sociopathic ranting disguised as humor.I always thought we were the guys, I said. Are we the side that now mocks the way women look? Oh, she’s supporting Trump; they told me back then. She is normalizing a fascist. She deserves what she gets.It was blatant hypocrisy from the side that proclaims tolerance and love. But there they were, as mean as Nancy Allen in Carrie.That’s who you are now, I told them. You’re the mean girls. It was verbal abuse disguised as comedy, but it still wasn’t enough. Look at how far they had to go in an attempt to destroy her, destroy Trump, and defeat the grassroots movement known as MAGA.Maybe that assassin wasn’t killing Trump because he thought he was Hitler. But did it matter that much? It seemed to manifest their collective hatred, with nowhere to go except pulling the trigger. Too bad you missed means two different things, depending on which side you’re on.If you can imagine, we’re at the moment where people on Twitter are arguing over whether it’s cancel culture to fire someone who said they were upset that Trump was almost assassinated but happy that one of his supporters died.For the record, no, I don’t support firing some dumb woman who works at Home Depot because she wrote a disgusting Facebook post. But I also would not want someone with a dark heart like that working for me.We should never let them off the hook for who they were and what they did, especially to people like Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who did nothing to deserve it except work for Donald Trump.I heard her tell the same story about Trump she recounted at the RNC on a podcast a few years ago—I don’t remember which one—and it humanized Trump in my eyes. It made me think differently about him, and I understood their relationship better. For Sanders, Trump is a ride-or-die, as she explains here.That wasn’t the only bright spot of the night, but it was the most remarkable. Nothing has ever felt as satisfying as watching her living her hot girl summer phase - an invisible EFF YOU to the haters.It was a night for powerhouse mama bears who have lost their loved ones either to high crime or the fentanyl epidemic, something the Democrats seem to care nothing about. Oh, those people in the red states, they don’t matter, the racists.Like Madeline Brame, who blew the roof off the joint and earned the rare standing ovation from Trump.And Sara Workman:And Anne Funder:Real people, real problems. Your move, Democrats.// 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

“Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” ―George Bernard ShawLast night, at the RNC Convention, Make America Wealthy Once Again, Donald J. Trump walked into the room like the Gray Champion he is, battle-scarred but standing tall. Teddy Roosevelt would be proud. His supporters gave him the hero’s welcome he deserved. There was not a dry eye in the house.It was apparent to anyone watching that this wasn’t your grandfather’s Republican Party anymore. The head of the Teamsters Union, Sean O’Brien? Big Tech whiz kid David Sacks and a former model named Amber Rose? Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.It’s Donald Trump’s party now, and he’ll build it the way he wants with what Steve Bannon calls “inclusive, participatory, nationalist populism.”If the party could leave it to Trump, he’s got this. He’s got this so hard.A clip with Pastor James Roemke doing a great Trump impression before the blessing.And a powerful new Trump campaign ad:Unfortunately, we know the Republican Party, right? We know they can’t just take the W. They will mess it up somehow, as James Lindsay says:There’s an old joke that used to cycle around Hollywood. A filmmaking crew walks through the desert and comes upon a beautiful oasis. The writer can’t stop talking about how beautiful it is. The director envisions ways to bring it to the big screen. The producer? He whips it out and starts taking a leak. “What are you doing?!!” the others cry out. “Don’t worry,” the producer says, “I’m making it better.”And so it goes with some of the old-guard Conservatives who are now grumbling about the MAGA takeover of the GOP. They want the party to be what it once was. But those days are gone, brother, and they ain’t coming back. It’s millennials and Zoomers from now on.Welcome to the Fourth Turning. Once the dust settles and it’s all over, we’ll hopefully have a freer country that feels brand new. We’ll have rescued the country from the grips of the bloated leviathan that now rules over it with an authoritarian fist. It will be a country for the people, by the people, and of the people, and oh, how sweet it will be. If only the GOP could get out of their own way.The Changing of the MindsThere is no chance I would have ever been accepted or invited into the old GOP. I lived my life exactly the wrong way, according to them. I followed the feminist lie and believed that the only thing I needed to do in life was serve myself. I had casual sex, I never got married, I had a child out of wedlock, and I had abortions. I’m not proud of it. I would take it all back if I could. I promise not a day will go by that I don’t mourn the loss of what could have been.I did not see my life differently because I found religion or because I’m now a Conservative (I am in some ways but not in others). I see my life differently because I changed my mind.There is nothing wrong with changing your mind. It’s healthy. And it’s brave. It took guts for the beautiful Amber Rose to take to the stage at the RNC and explain how and why she changed her mind. Her father, who served in the military, loved Donald Trump. She told him he was a racist, and her father said, prove it. But don’t listen to me, let her tell 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

When I found my way to Trump’s rallies in the Summer of 2020, I felt like I had crawled out of a desert searching for signs of life. No one could know my discovery. I had to keep it a secret. If anyone found me out, I would be MAGA. I would be a Trump supporter, and that would be the end of my career and most of my relationships.Despite how often I’d become the target of the fanatical mobs that rule over social media and the Left writ large, I’d knew not to cross the Trump Line. That would be the last straw. I would be shunned, I knew.Yet, every time I got that notification from Right Side Broadcasting’s YouTube channel that Trump was about to take the stage, even now, four years after I first began watching them, my mood was immediately lifted.I love those people, I would always think. I didn’t belong anywhere but I somehow belonged there. They still had their senses of humor well intact. They loved this country and were proud of their heritage and patriotism. They were every skin color, every gender, even gay and trans - all under the same tent, an Island of Misfit Toys - all MAGA.Once I figured out what great people they were, how their time with Trump was precious, I began to worry. What was going to happen them, I wondered. My side had all of the power. They were the Empire and they wanted nothing but the total obliteration of MAGA and especially Trump.I thought, if only they could thaw out their systematic dehumanization campaign, if I could somehow break the spell cast upon them by the media and their social media feedback loops, then they could just shrug and move on with their lives.But that isn’t what happened. We summoned a hungry beast that needed to be fed. It was anger at having a political enemy, but there was more to it than that. It was a sadistic, indulgent bacchanalia of hatred that united the Left and became its main form of entertainment.Who are Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert if they aren’t sucking on the bones of Trump night after night? Whatever audience now remains to watch their terrible shows or the MSNBC power lineup is there for one reason and one reason only. The beast is hungry, and the beast must be fed.I too once felt the hate within me. It connected me to my community online. It seemed like nothing else mattered all of a sudden except this rising hysteria none of us could manage. We began purging anyone accused of assault or racism. There was no due process. It was simply a matter of tossing them out of utopia.We’d be fine after that, at least for a little while. But the beast always got hungry again; sooner or later, it would return to Trump.We were winners when it was just us, Obama, and our online paradise. Now, we were holding back the inevitable pendulum swing, desperate to cling to the past, unable to relinquish our war on Trump. If only we could stop him for good and destroy him forever, things would return to normal.But they never did. For me, the hatred began to feel like toxic sludge in my veins. I couldn’t take it, not for one more minute. I knew enough about history to know what we were doing was wrong. Yet, how do you convince the New York Times, MSNBC, CNN, Hollywood, and the entire Democratic Establishment that what they’re engaging was not just bad for our country but dangerous?It didn’t occur to me until much later, long after I escaped the bubble of the Left, that they needed to hate Trump because it was the only way they could feel something, anything.Their addiction meant they needed a stronger and stronger hit. It wasn’t enough to call him a rapist or racist. It had to get all the way to dictator, all the way to a threat to end American democracy as we once knew it.Arthur C. Clarke wrote in 2001 that “newspapers of Utopia … would be terribly dull.” And that’s what’s happened to culture on the Left. It’s boring without Trump. They kept dragging him back to their cable news shows daily, dragging him back to the headlines in the New York Times. On X, Trump humiliation was the only fun they seemed allowed to have.Trump, then, was their release valve. They were dancing with the Devil and they liked it, they liked it. It became an abusive relationship for them, with Trump’s defiance keeping them engaged in the fight. The more he fought back, the more satisfying it was to see him crushed.Here is Megyn Kelly: 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 New York Times Editorial Board,In your haste to make nice with your paying subscribers—I am one, too, by the way—you decided to swap out journalistic ethics for fear and hyperbole once again. Trump, you declare, is “dangerous” and unfit to lead.Now, I know it’s been hard on you folks lately, with your otherwise reliable audience turning on you once you spoke the truth about Joe Biden. You had to show them that you’re still on their side. But in so doing, you fail to make the case for why Trump is unfit and end up looking like Goldilocks, who can’t decide which bowl of porridge is just right.The one thing we know for sure is that your commitment to destroy Trump remains unshakable. Even a president with dementia or possibly Parkinson’s isn’t as big of a threat.With a desaturated, billowing United States flag bathed in a sea of darkness, we get three definitive statements:How so? Are you referring to when he said, “march peacefully and patriotically to the Capitol to have your voices heard”? Or the time he and his supporters chanted “Lock her up” but then didn’t? Or is it his threats to deport immigrants who flooded the border by the millions under Biden’s watch? 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

“Schadenfreude can’t get much better than watching the Republican Party self-humiliate with an abject inability to win while controlling the House, Senate and White House.” - Daniel Henninger, WSJOh, I beg to differ, Mr. Henninger. It most certainly can get better. How about a political party that rigged the game in its favor and had nearly all of the legacy press in its pocket suddenly in the spotlight for the biggest political cover-up in modern American history?The puppet masters are mad that the puppet has gone rogue! If that isn’t sweet, sweet Shaudenfreude, I don’t know what is.Democracy keeps getting in the way of saving democracy!The New York Times has now published not one but two op-eds to force Old Joe out of power. According to the Times, “Donald Trump’s candidacy for a second term poses a grave threat to American democracy.”What exactly is Trump's threat to democracy? They never really say. Maybe it’s something different for everyone. For Black voters, the mean old Republicans want to strip away their voting rights. For women, it’s abortion. For people like Molly Jong-Fast, it’s ideological. They can’t get Trump to accept the rigged election of 2020. Say it! Say it! Confess, witch!For those who don’t know anything, it’s Project 2025, the biggest “threat to democracy” of all, even though they have no idea what’s in 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

Team Joe wasn’t a popular place to be back in May of 2019 when I was invited to a fundraiser in Hancock Park at the home of wealthy donor Cynthia Telles. The Democratic Primary had only just begun, but it was wide open then and almost no one wanted Joe, an old white guy.For four years, the party had lost its mind and lost its way over Trump. They seemed to believe he was such a bad president they could reach for the sky. Big structural change! A democratic socialist! The first gay president! But I knew that a one-term president with a strong economy doesn’t get voted out.Maybe they’d swap out for someone like Joe Biden, some of us believed. What harm could he do? He could be a one-term stop-gap measure to bring down Trump without rocking the boat too much. Calm from chaos, the adults back in the room, rolling the country back to the last time they felt safe under Barack Obama.Indeed, Joe Biden was old, white, and male—not the future the Democratic Party wanted—but Joe could win. The Vice President would be where we’d find our dynamic candidate to step up once Biden’s first term was over.Even Biden seemed to understand his role in the coup. He wouldn’t have to do much, and he wouldn’t even have to campaign at all. There was a massive, unprecedented alignment of power ready and willing to win the election for him.I sensed he knew this after he emerged from the mansion with the donors who paid more to sit down with him. He reminded me of so many celebrities I’d seen in the past who knew they would be getting nothing but favorable coverage. They aren’t worried. They’re confident. 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’s hard to believe I’ve become a completely different person than I was four years ago. Not only am I a Trump supporter now, which in and of itself is hard to grasp. But I’m also a Swiftie. Who would have ever thought it? Not me.In March of 2020, my one and only daughter was sent home to live out the last few months of her senior year at college. She would end up having her graduation on my balcony in Burbank. Everything shut down. Half of the restaurants would eventually go out of business.No parties, funerals, church, movies, or school. The clouds rolled in, and the darkness came, which never lifted because, for the Democrats in power, they liked it dark. How else to justify their endless manufactured crisis, their “existential threat” of a man who doesn’t exist?After the Summer of protests and riots literally unmasked the lockdowns for what they were—social justice was more important than a global pandemic, said the experts—I followed the yellow brick road into the belly of the beast. When the curtain was pulled back for me, I could finally see the deception, the delusion, the lies.But that’s only part of the story. That’s how I found my way to Trump and MAGA. I did it because I needed to know if it was true. Was Trump the next Hitler? Were his supporters “Brown Shirts” and frothing, angry “white supremacists.” By then, I’d already been swarmed online and called a “white supremacist” myself by my colleagues for reasons that are too absurd to recount.It would be easy to say that “what happened to me” was that I was isolated for too long and gravitated toward the wrong kind of people. That’s probably how my friends and family explain it. Or maybe they think I had some kind of mental breakdown, that the trauma of lockdowns broke my brain. 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 Barack Obama gently took Joe Biden’s hand and led him offstage at a $30 million fundraiser in Los Angeles, it was hard not to see the whole thing as over. Like over over. Like the Fonz jumping the shark over.Fonzie wasn’t the guy who jumped sharks. He was the King of Cool. There was nothing cool about jumping sharks, just as there was nothing cool about being on a stage with Julia Roberts, George Clooney, Jack Black, and Jimmy Kimmel.It was all so yesterday. Oh sure, no one in the bubble of the Left would ever admit just how over it all was, but take it from me, someone who has been covering Hollywood for over 25 years. These celebrities can barely get people to watch their films because they no longer fill the necessary role of entertainers. They have elevated themselves to high positions of power and still think they can use their celebrity to influence voters. Maybe a long time ago, that was true. It isn’t true anymore.In 2001, Julia Roberts and George Clooney paired up for Oceans Eleven, which made nearly $200 million at the box office. Last year they starred in a romantic comedy called Ticket to Paradise, which made only $68 million.If the Democrats are counting on Hollywood to save them, they might be in for a shock. Hollywood is barely surviving. Everyone is terrified. No one is working. With layoffs, buyouts, and studios collapsing, the once-mighty empire has become a shell of its former self.We’ve passed through some kind of gate of history where even celebrities don’t rank. No one watches them on awards shows, nightly talk shows, or SNL. Anyone can be a star on TikTok or YouTube, so it’s harder for celebrities to stand out. 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

“Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.” - George Orwell, 1984Rick Wilson thinks he’s won - throw Steve Bannon in Federal Prison on July 1st; that’s one less mover and shaker in MAGA world. A party, a celebration, as yet another scalp is claimed to lay at the feet of the wealthy libs who pay him the big bucks to go Trump hunting.Four months is a long time to take out one of the most important voices in the MAGA movement. That people like Rick Wilson are celebrating tells you everything you need to know about the opposition, not to mention the people running this country.They don’t believe in democracy, not really. They believe in rigging elections, jailing their opponents, silencing dissent, and forcing voters to be represented by people who are nowhere near up to the job.We saw the Lincoln Project as knights in shining armor riding in to protect my demographic of unmarried career women from Trump. Save us, we cried, as we paypal-ed fat donations to ease our fragile nerves. We spared no expense to rid our otherwise pristine village of that toxic masculinity and virulent racism.I began my journey toward Conservatives by listening to guys like Rick Wilson. I read his book, Running Against the Devil. I wrote about and praised him for being smarter than the Democrats. I listened to Charlie Sykes at the Bulwark and made friends with Joe Walsh on Twitter. Even just that, I had my friends screaming at me: how could I be friends with racists? 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

Don’t let Joe Biden’s creepy grin fool you. He’s not confident. He’s terrified. They all are. Imagine being them right now. Imagine having all of the power, all of the culture, all of the institutions, and most of the administrative and security state; imagine the impeachments, the indictments, the endless attacks against Trump for eight years, and he’s still the frontrunner to be President of the United States in 2024.Biden knows the system might help him win in 2024 just as it did in 2020. He has to keep the threat of Trump alive, and he may convince low-information voters to pull the lever for Joe. Nothing makes that easier than calling Trump a convicted felon. Yes, they finally got there. 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 Trump wows the public at rallies, Biden seethes behind the castle walls, demanding that his nemesis be convicted and jailed.The next big news day for the regime will be Verdict Day! Oh, how they will celebrate.And lest you get carried away with the fantasy that maybe they’ll acquit Trump in the city that made him, think again. There is little chance that the jury will go home to their friends and family and confess they passed on the chance to save Democracy because they had a sudden case of reasonable doubt.Corrupt president, corrupt prosecutor, corrupt judge, corrupt jury. And Rachel Maddow will declare justice was served and Joe Biden will pretend that a bookeeping error was a big enough crime to warrant indicting a former president.Reasonable Doubt? It’s been eliminated, along with due process and the presumption of innocence. The only thing that matters is whether or not Bette Midler and Stephen King can sleep at night and that Joe Biden gets to sit in the Big Boy chair at the White House and stare back at us with his tiny, angry, squinty eyes and bark about bloodbaths, dictators and “good people on both sides.”But nothing Biden has done to Trump has helped move the needle in the polls.The Democrats and Never Trumpers probably wonder how it is that Donald Trump can still be this popular after everything they’ve thrown at him. They keep doubling down on the hyperbole and overblown attacks against him, resorting to lying outright to win over a handful of low-information voters. 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 2024, the most radical act imaginable is telling the truth. Nellie Bowles has done just that with her new book, Morning After the Revolution. She lays out in painful but funny detail the madness we’ve all just lived through that almost no one will talk about. Bowles is too nice to humiliate the New York Times outright; she was their “golden girl,” after all, once upon a time. But her book humiliates them all the same, just by doing good reporting and telling the stories they refused to tell. In one riveting, tragic, hilarious passage, Bowles describes what happened at the Wi Spa in Los Angeles:“Wi Spa billed itself as “a convenient and affordable place to de-stress and be pampered,” but one summer week in 2021 it became a site of great stress because of one (allegedly, partially) erect penis that had manifested in the women’s room.”She continues: “The spa, in Los Angeles’s Koreatown, has separate men’s and women’s areas where people go naked. The penis went bobbing through the women’s space. The penis had been seen soaking in the women’s communal soak pools. Women enjoying their spa time were upset. One went to the front desk asking for help, saying there were children present and that there was a man in the bathroom. The front desk could not help. The person with the penis had a California driver’s license that listed their gender as “female.” The penis was white, and some of the women who didn’t want to see it were black Hispanic, which in the summer of 2021 might have helped draw knee-jerk public sympathy, but apparently did not.”For a movement afraid of harm being done by mere words, they seemed to be perfectly comfortable with real harm being done to young girls, to women in sports, and pre-teens sucked into “gender-affirming care.” Bowles doesn’t just describe what happened at the spa; she tracks down the sex offender himself and discovers that, yes, he’d done it deliberately, and, yes, he was erect while doing so. But was there ever any major reckoning in the press? No.I quickly searched the New York Times for “Wi Spa,” and of course, there was nothing about this scandal, even though it was such an interesting story. Why didn’t they want to touch it? Because it called into question their absolutism about “trans women” being women. The Times should be as thoroughly humiliated by Morning After the Revolution as NPR should be after Uri Berliner’s essay. They no longer care about chasing the story at all costs. They only care about serving the ideology at all costs. It shouldn’t be surprising that the Times and other “prestige” outlets would pan Bowles’ book and attempt character assassination on her. What else are they going to do? Admit that they gaslighted Americans and allowed themselves to be manipulated by a “Lord of the Flies” contingent of crybaby brats who felt unsafe around reporters like Donald McNeil? Will they come clean and admit they essentially work for the Biden administration as a slightly more sophisticated version of Joe and Mika? Not a chance. The publisher isn’t taking their criticisms seriously, nor should they. Instead, they celebrated their takes:The negative reviews read like a chapter in Bowles's book. The Washington Post’s Becca Rothfield disguises her resentment and embarrassment by casting Bowles as the condescending elite. The lady doth protest too much, methinks:She writes:The real question is not about whether there are “Narrative Enforcers” at the New York Times, as Bowles alleges, but why there is a market for so many books like this, even though they are all so predictably indistinguishable from one another. Bowles’s book appeals for the same reason that other conservative memoirs of political “growth” do: because they reassure their readers that progressivism is not a genuine political philosophy but an almost biological byproduct of youth, like acne. Bowles and her ilk are thereby absolved from contending with the principles of those who oppose them, or from seeing their political nemeses as rational moral agents.Then there is Laura Kipnis at the New York Times, whose CV reads exactly like Rothfield’s: academia, awards, universities, citations, more awards, more citations. They could be the same person. She writes, “By fringe, she means trans. She’s peeved that some trans women are trying to redefine feminism in ways that seem to her to be anti-woman, resents that lesbians risk being erased by trendy all-purpose queerness and fears that as a married lesbian mother she will have her own rights swept away by anti-trans backlash. Given the Dobbs decision, all precedents are possibly imperiled, but the culprit isn’t transgender-rights activists. It’s the religious right and the Supreme Court, both of which get a pass from Bowles, as do Donald Trump and every elected Republican.”And there it is, the message loud and clear: those bad people on the Right are the problem, not us, not the crazies who have destroyed nearly every great thing about American culture, and have destroyed feminism. Not will. Have. It’s been gutted. It no longer exists. And then we get Mollie Fischer, yet another carbon copy of the same kind of writer/thinker/activist at The New Yorker:What can we expect from someone whose last article was “Why We Choose Not to Eat, Can the decision to forgo food be removed from the gendered realm of weight-loss culture?” This is the sad, silly fact of what the Left has become once it aligned with power, wealth, and politics: boring. Insular. Naval gazing. Michelle Goldberg decided the review in the Times wasn’t enough and wrote an entire op-ed about Bowles:“There are aspects of the New Progressivism — its clunky neologisms and disdain for free speech — that I’ll be glad to see go. But however overwrought the politics of 2020 were, they also represented a rare moment when there was suddenly enormous societal energy to tackle long-festering inequalities. That energy has largely dissipated, right when we need it most, heading into another election with Trump on the ballot.Trump Trump Trump. The closer anyone gets to Trump, the farther away they get from the MISSION. It’s one or the other. You’ve read 1984. You know the deal. Love Big Brother or you’ll be another enemy of the state. You’ll be Goldstein. You’ll be unpersoned. The reckoning I waited for is never coming. I know that. Just as I know many of my friends will never apologize or ever have any awareness of what they went along with. I knew that back in 2020 when a local news station told the story of Sue and her 100 year-old mattress store. I was screamed at by my friends for even mentioning it.Now, many of them must feel a combination of fear and shame but would not dare risk their place in utopia to talk about it, even if more and more people seem to feel comfortable doing so. So down the memory hole it will go.As Bowles said in her appearance on Bill Maher, there has never been any apology or acknowledgment of what we’ve just lived through. We’re owed at least that much, not just for how they treated their own reporters, editors, or researchers at the hands of fanatics but also for the stories they refused to tell that the American public deserved to know.In their podcast, America This Week, Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi discuss the short story Christmas Not Just Once a Year, by Heinrich Böll. The story is about mass delusion and why almost no one can or will put a stop to it because it’s just too hard.When I think about what’s happened to this country and I try to find something that is horrifying enough to warrant a comparison to what happened in Germany, I land on “trans kids,” this bizarre new idea that has been normalized in our culture to the point where all schools, all institutions and all politics on the Left are going along with it, even though it sends children down a dangerous path they can’t come back from.I’m not saying it’s as bad as the Holocaust, but I am saying the madness is on par with what people have gone along with at the worst moments in our history. That’s why Sweden, the UK, and other countries have backed way off of “gender-affirming care.” It’s almost Pride month. They will fly the flag at elementary schools right next to the US flag. What chance do any of these kids have? With so many parents so afraid to stand up to the activists lest they be called a “bigot,” we’re left with few choices when it comes to November 2024. If you want this stopped, you can’t vote for Democrats. Yet, Nellie Bowles probably will. She is a lesbian married to Bari Weiss, and pregnant with their second child. But at least she is a voice the New York Times can’t ignore. How did a book like this even get published anyway? We all know the rules. Sensitivity readers and activists posing as staffers are constantly breathing down the neck of the editors to ensure full compliance.Enter Thesis, an adjunct of the Penguin Group that launched in 2023, that was “committed to publishing bold ideas that shape tomorrow’s discourse.” You might call them the first major “heterodox” publishing house that hovers in that sweet spot outside the clutches of the “woke” Left but still enough inside as not to cross the Trump line.They are ahead of the game, joining a growing group of voices just before the inevitable counterculture revolution hits. Expect to see more like them and more voices like Nellie Bowles.At the end of the book, Bowles mentions how someone she knew ended their friendship because she refused to cancel a colleague. Now that story is in print for all time. That woman will have to live with being one of the bad guys, even if it will be years before she realizes it. // This is a public episode. 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Bill Clinton once said, “Democrats fall in love, and Republicans fall in line.” We had to fall in love with him, that’s for sure, because by 1992, baby, we’d kissed a lot of frogs. Falling in love with him meant overlooking his blatant, unending womanizing. We believed, or we convinced ourselves to believe, that his personal life should be private.Our gold standard had been JFK, after all. His womanizing was seen not as a character flaw but as evidence of his superiority among men. He was so handsome, so charismatic, and such a great leader, why wouldn’t Bill Clinton want to follow in his footsteps?And he did. If Hillary Clinton didn’t care, why should we? The stoic, ever-stalwart wife took her place alongside other tolerant First Ladies like Eleanor Roosevelt and Jackie Kennedy.The two parties have switched places. The Republicans fall in love or have with their once-in-a-generation star, Donald Trump, and it’s the Democrats who fall in line. Unfortunately for them, they’ve spent the last four years consumed with hatred over one man who threatens their power.They readied their army for war once they realized America was on the precipice of dramatic change. That would mean blunting Trump’s win in 2016 - and failing. It would mean destroying his one-term presidency - and failing. It would mean raiding Mar-a-Lago, indicting him four times, impeaching him twice, and attempting to throw him off the ballots in several states, and now, a criminal trial in New York, that will very likely fail. Even if they squeeze out a conviction, most voters aren’t going to care.For the Democrats, it’s all come full circle. They are now trying to convict a former president on nothing more than a sex scandal. The thing they most feared once upon a time is now their most powerful weapon. 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 college protests sprouted like mushrooms in Joe Biden’s America, the fanaticism of the Left seemed to catch many by surprise. How could it have gotten this bad? How could they seem so crazy, these educated college students? And why isn’t Joe Biden doing anything about it?It isn’t that it’s gotten this bad. It’s been this bad for a while. It was just covered up by the mainstream media on the Left, who were invested in only one narrative: MAGA supporters are the violent ones, the dangerous ones.Well, what a difference four years makes. Now that we’ve seen protests so violent not even NBC could ignore them, Democrats are scrambling, doing damage control for what looks like a big headache for Joe Biden’s embattled re-election bid. 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

Joe Biden has been a failure as the leader of the United States. There has never been one moment in the past four years when he has thought of us, the American people. He has only thought of himself and how badly he does not want to lose to Donald Trump, so he stands before the press at the White House Correspondents Dinner, and he lies.He lies about January 6th. He lies that Trump said there would be a “bloodbath” if he lost, a false media narrative that should have shamed every so-called “journalist” sitting in that room, and most of all, he lies about what threatens the American people. It is not Trump. This country is facing far more serious problems, and yet no one has apparently told Joe Biden.The past couple of weeks have been an unmitigated disaster for the Biden presidency, even if the press, the obedient sycophants that they are, won't admit it. Someone thought it was a good idea to free Biden from his gilded cage and set him loose on regular folks - to let Joe be Joe.In March, the New York Times laid it out:What could possibly go wrong? Well, everything.Everything that could go wrong did go wrong. Biden did not just have a major brain freeze while reading off the teleprompter, it also wasn’t hard to see that most of the “Joe being Joe” events were staged.When Biden read the instructions—that he was supposed to pause so the crowd could erupt in rehearsed chants of Four More Years—his face froze, and for a minute, he looked lost and confused. Yes, that’s the President of the United States, in case you were wondering.Biden seems increasingly like a fake president, not a real one. And that’s just fine for the people at the top. What does Howard Stern care about real life? They’ve been detached for so long, they can’t see beyond the safety of their own bubble.That’s not true for much of America, which is so desperate for real leadership that they’re willing to disregard Trump’s failings as a luxury they can’t afford. 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 Hillary,In 1996, you wrote:“The African proverb “It takes a village to raise a child” summed up for me the commonsense conclusion that, like it or not, we are living in an interdependent world where what our children hear, see, feel, and learn will affect how they grow up and who they turn out to be.”That’s still true, Hillary. But now, you are no longer protecting children. You no longer seem to care what is happening to them at the hands of the Left and the Democratic Party. The release of the Cass Report, on the heels of the WPATH Files, leaves little doubt of what amounts to medical experiments on children with irreversible, long-term damage to their bodies.Here is Helen Joyce laying out the ugly truth:But what I want to know is this — what happened to you, Hillary? Why don’t you care? Why doesn’t it motivate you and other feminists like Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi, and Amy Klobuchar? You’ve not only scurried off into the shadows, but all of you have been complicit in it.To give you the benefit of the doubt, Hillary, maybe you are just ignorant. Maybe you’ve been so cut off from normal life that you no longer know what is happening in America. This isn’t likely to land on MSNBC any time soon. Like you, they are obsessed with only one person, Donald Trump.But what the Democrats have been doing is far worse than anything Trump could ever do. History will not be kind, Hillary. You might not realize this but all of you will be to blame when the hammer comes down. You might want to know a little more about it. I would like to help you.Imagine yourself back in the 1970s when you first graduated college. Remember that? Remember the young, famous feminist Hillary Rodham? Now imagine she lands in the modern day, and sees this video on TikTok.A mother celebrating her daughter’s first day of “T.” In case you don’t know, “T” stands for testosterone. Why is the mother crying, you ask? Is her child sick? No. Her child believes she was born in the wrong body and “T” is going to make her feel like herself, like a boy.Her mother is very into this identity as the mother of a “trans kid.” She has a platform on TikTok which shows her child injecting herself with hormones. She wrote this on the celebratory day of her child’s journey toward irreversible harm. 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

Six years ago, I stood a few feet away from Joe Biden at a fundraiser and was certain he was the only person who could save this country from Donald Trump in 2020.However, by the end of the election, I would leave the Democratic Party for good. I saw them as corrupt, too powerful, and dangerous to the very democracy they now claim they want to protect.Now, I wake up every morning in a panic that our last best hope of ending the monopoly of power on the Left rests on the imperfect shoulders of Donald Trump.So I guess that finally makes me a Trump supporter.It was a long, slow slide that started with simply humanizing Trump and the MAGA movement and believe me, just that alone upset my friends and family. They’re evil, they believe, because that’s what the media tells them every second of every day.If you want to know how batshit crazy they are, those Good People of the Left, educated and seemingly intelligent, look no further than Heather Cox Richardson as she attempts to explain the MAGA movement.Meanwhile, Trump humiliates all of them by showing the people who he really is, as he casually strolled into a Chick-fil-A in Georgia. 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’ve been wanting to interview John Nolte about his sublime and brilliant book, Borrowed Time ever since I read it. Well, the day has finally arrived. We chatted for about an hour about his book, his life, how he got into writing, what gave him the idea for his book, and why he may never write another one, and of course, our favorite topic, what happened to culture on the Left.Hope you enjoy the inaugural interview for this Substack. Some useful links:My review of the book—Here is a link to the audiobook:And here is the paperback. 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

There could be an Election Denier right next door. They could deliver your mail, serve you a cocktail at the airport, sit next to you on the subway, or empty your garbage. They might be a grandma, a wife, or a son. They could be anyone. They could even be me.Yes, I am an Election Denier. I am someone you’ve been told to fear, someone you probably think has been captured by extremist ideology and THE BIG LIE. You might say that also makes me an “insurrectionist” and “domestic extremist.”I would say you’ve been watching too much MSNBC. The thing is, I grew up as an Election Denier because I grew up as a Democrat, and we never met an election we didn’t deny. That is, unless we won. 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 chill went down my spine in 2020 when I realized what I’d been participating in for the four years Trump was in power. I didn’t go along with all of it. I defended Melania Trump when Twitter slut-shamed her. I defended Sarah Huckabee Sanders when the Good People of the Left mocked her makeup. But I went along with enough that, at some point, I overdosed on hate.I always thought we were the good guys and that we didn’t engage in bullying, harassment, abuse, and dehumanizing. Don’t the lawn signs count for anything? Hate has no harbor here? No human being is illegal? Practice kindness?I was the kind of person who woke up with NPR and spent the afternoon with Terry Gross and Fresh Air, then All Things Considered in the afternoon. I read the New York Times at least once a day. It made me feel smart and well-informed.I hadn’t been involved in politics much before the 2016 election. That was when I started watching MSNBC. Rachel Maddow was the North Star for the Democratic base, older unmarried women like me, the Oprah generation, who had been living our best lives for decades. All that was missing was our first female president, which we were supposed to get in 2016. 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

Unlike most people in the media, Frank Luntz spends a lot of time talking to regular folks. He and can see the objective reality of where we are now, yet they have difficulty explaining that to people on the Left.To most of them, they’ve been fighting a war against Trump and MAGA since 2016. It’s unthinkable that anyone in America, let alone a majority, would not feel the same way.Here is how the polls are lining up right now on Real Clear Politics:Why is Trump polling ahead? Let’s get into it.The people in power now can’t solve the problem; they ARE the problem. No one lays it out better than RFK, Jr., who has also been demonized and discredited by them for daring to run against Biden. He articulates what so many Americans have felt for a long time now. It’s 9 minutes but it’s worth a listen.In 2016, half of America sent a clear message to the people at the top. They were unhappy enough to send an outsider, a Reality star and real estate mogul, to the White House. That should have been the moment the ruling class had enough self-awareness to address the problem.Instead, they went to war on Trump and MAGA, demonizing them as racists and white supremacists, treating them like enemy combatants at best and human garbage at worst. That was the first clue that the Democrats and the Left had become completely disconnected from reality.Do people in the bubble see it that way? No, they don’t. Trust me. I used to live in the bubble. Their only problem is that Trump and MAGA even exist. If they can get rid of them, One Last Cancel, they can have their Woketopia 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

It took us decades, but we finally found religion on the Left. The counterculture initially seemed great: a big bang of movies, civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, comedy, art, and investigative journalism, all in the pursuit of free expression and objective truth.My generation was raised on atheism, with the idea that if you pursue happiness, you will be fulfilled. But it doesn’t work like that. Making happiness the goal in life ultimately leads to dissatisfaction because nothing and no one will ever be enough.After the 2000 election that the Supreme Court ultimately decided, we started building our own private paradise on the Left, one that effectively shut out half the country.However, we didn’t come together as a movement until Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton faced off in 2008. What started out as a contentious battle for the first female president vs. the first Black president would result in a powerful coalition rooted in identity politics.We had in Barack Obama not just a political leader, the first US president to build his coalition via Twitter, but a spiritual leader too. Obama became not just sacred to us but Too Black to Fail. 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 the new podcast series, Finding Matt Drudge, Chris Moody wants to know two things: why Matt Drudge dropped out of sight and why he turned on Donald Trump.If it is still really Drudge running the DrudgeReport now, and not some paid lackey to push links, then it would not be unreasonable to think he’s hanging on for one last job, to do what Joe Biden, the Lincoln Project, Liz and Dick Cheney, Mike Pence and every other Never Trumper has been trying to do for the last eight years: stop Trump for good.I got online right around the same time Drudge did. For early internet pioneers, Drudge was our hero who forged a path to success by removing the middleman. Just start a website, and people will come. I was living in a guest house in Van Nuys, California, with a baby on my hip, a 1200 baud modem, and a really good idea.I launched my site, Oscarwatch.com in 1999, two years after the DrudgeReport launched. The Academy sued me in 2006, and I had to change it to AwardsDaily.com. But that was a sign I’d found success, five years after I started. For Drudge it happened instantly and almost overnight. He broke the story of the century: Bill Clinton was having a sexual affair with his intern, Monica Lewinsky.We all wanted to be Drudge. His success told us we could follow in his footsteps and maybe get that big overnight. It didn’t quite work out that way for most of us. There was only ever going to be one Matt Drudge. But everyone who came after him bit off a little piece of the Drudge legacy.We would crash the party and upstage traditional media, which was still scrambling to keep up with the fast-moving internet. Drudge was suddenly a reliable source for news. People like me pretended to be journalists, but because we had websites that reported the news, we became reliable sources, 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

Kara Swisher has a good strategy for Joe Biden to beat Donald Trump, which she shared on CNN. Just call Trump three things: Racist, Rapist, Fascist.There was a time when that would have worked. That time has come and gone. At best, Swisher will be ruthlessly mocked online and, at worst, completely ignored. For someone who studied propaganda, she sure has become good at peddling it. Maybe it will cycle through the Facebook feeds of whatever is left of the #resistance, a relic of the old days when CNN still influenced public opinion.This is the death rattle of legacy media and probably the Democratic Party as we once knew it. Or, as Steve Bannon says every time he begins a new episode of The War Room, “This is the primal scream of a dying regime.”By now, the CIA, the FBI, and the Democrats are waking up to the reality of life without their precious blue-checks on Twitter. They can’t control the media narrative to boost Biden and sink Trump as they did in 2020. There’s no COVID. Biden has no choice but to get out there and campaign.The Biden administration has been using TikTok throughout Biden’s first term. It was their strategy to mobilize young voters. That’s why they invited the transgender influencers to the White House. Remember that?// 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 Mr. De Niro,I trust you had a wonderful evening at the Oscars. Watching you bask in the comforting embrace of the special people was a reminder of who you really are—a movie star.By the looks of it, the Oscars are back. They have a host now and they gave their top prize to a movie people actually saw. It won a whopping 7 Oscars. There were dance numbers and jokes, beautiful people in their finery—a grand celebration to revive the lifeless body of Hollywood.I was shocked that they kept politics mostly out of it—well, until near the end when Jimmy Kimmel just had to bring in Trump—not just to mock him but to show the country which side all of you are on and to let them know, in no uncertain terms, that they are not invited to this party.Turns out, Trump really did write that:But might I say, Mr. De Niro, none of you seem able to figure out if Trump is such a criminal/fascist/dictator/rapist/racist, why he’s kicking Biden’s ass in the polls six ways from Sunday? Funny, isn’t it, Mr. De Niro? Didn’t Bill Maher ask you this same question on Real Time? You didn’t have an answer except to say that Trump is a “monster,” a “mean, nasty, and hateful person.”And that if “We want to live in a world that we want to live and enjoy living in, or live in a nightmare. Vote for Trump, and you'll get the nightmare.”Let me get this straight. You said that you would never play Trump because there is “Nothing redeemable in him.”So, Max Cady in Cape Fear, Al Capone in The Untouchables, and William Hale in Killers of the Flower Moon had redeemable traits? They were all mass murderers, Mr. De Niro, yet you not only delighted in playing those roles but also earned Oscar nominations for two of them. And I’m betting a nice fat paycheck at the end of the day.Al Capone was connected to hundreds of murders, William Hale committed a near-genocide of the Osage people, and Max Cady, well, need we be reminded?Trump is not nice to you, Mr. De Niro. That is true. He isn’t very nice to Hollywood or Jimmy Kimmel, or to the establishment. But did it ever occur to you that so many people love him because he isn’t one of you? And that your crazy ramblings about him only make his supporters love him even more?You, like Hollywood, like the Democrats, like Bill Maher, have become so disconnected from the lives of Americans that you can’t possibly understand why Trump is by far preferable. You seem to think you have the right to tell them what they should want, what they should care about, and that your own personal happiness should be a factor they consider.Have you driven through any of our cities lately? Have you driven down to the border? Have you gone to a grocery store? Have you gone into Walmart only to see everything locked up, from baby formula to batteries to deodorant? Have you driven across America to see what this country is really like?I’m guessing not. Why would you? You go from the film set to your multi-million dollar property, and you turn on MSNBC and CNN and you RAGE RAGE against the man they keep telling you is a dictator and fascist who will never leave office, take Bill Maher off the air, and then hunt you down like you’re Robert Redford in Three Days of the Condor. 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

Guess what I’m doing on Super Tuesday? I’m registering as a Republican to vote for Donald Trump in the primary in California. They won’t allow me to vote as an independent for President of the United States, so for the first time in my life, I will be one of the people I used to judge and hate.I also plan to vote red straight down the line. Oh, I realize this is like spitting in the Pacific Ocean in my state. Still, if other residents in California are starting to see what anyone driving through Los Angeles or San Francisco can see, there’s a small chance the dark blue state might start to purple.I know I’m not the only American sick of the whining, the caterwauling, the temper tantrums because the ruling class isn’t getting what they want. WAAAAA the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case on presidential immunity. WAAAAA Trump said something in one of his speeches. WAAAAA the New York Times wrote a negative column on Joe Biden.The only thing they haven’t done is prove to the American people that they’re the better option than the guy who promises to close the border, clean up the streets, crack down on crime, and get our economy back on track in a way Americans can feel, not just because Paul Krugman delivers yet another sanctimonious op-ed of Biden talking points.There are plenty of candidates for the most flattering magic mirror/propagandist for the Biden administration - Rachel Maddow, Stephen Colbert, Pod Save America, Lawrence O’Donnell but really, it’s Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski who has now decided to yet again beclown themselves by platforming a stupid book that looks a lot more like Mein Kampf than any revelation about Trump supporters. All so they can keep eating dinner with Joe and Jill. 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

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.sashastone.comIt took me some time to consider an “extra” for paid subscribers, and I came up with a free-form podcast, not written as an essay but just an improvisational ramble. It’s meant to be casual so, of course, it is not perfect. I hope to get better over time. The first 20 minutes will be a free preview, and the rest will be behind the paywall. I hope you …

Fear is trickling down the walls at the White House like blood from a crime scene. They try to wipe it away with a Lawrence O’Donnell monologue here, a Stephen Colbert freak out there.Any other president at any other time in American history would be sweating. But Joe Biden isn’t.It reminds me of this scene from the movie Quiz Show where the investigator, played by Rob Morrow, corners the President of NBC, played by Allan Rich, in an elevator. We have finally got you, Morrow says. Oh yeah? Rich says. Then why are you the one that’s sweating?And so it goes with the Biden administration.But there is no hiding it. Nate Silver is worried. The New York Times is worried. Politico is worried. Rolling Stone is worried. It’s so bad that they’ve given up towing the party line and are actually speaking out for the first time since Biden took office. They’re desperate for Biden to step aside and give the job to someone, anyone who will stop Trump./// 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

Donald Trump isn’t Alexei Navalny. He wasn’t poisoned or beaten or tortured, then left to die in a Siberian gulag. We aren’t under the control of a dictator like Putin. But there is no getting around the ugly truth that none of this would happen if Biden weren’t trailing Trump in the polls.News of Navalny’s death sent shockwaves through both sides of the political aisle, as each tried to grapple with the many conflicts we’re now facing, the war in Ukraine and the war on Donald Trump, but it’s the Democrats whose actions of late were put into the spotlight.Only one political party is actively trying to jail its primary political opponent, has thrown political protesters in solitary confinement, and violated the First Amendment by censoring speech on social media.How would they shapeshift their way out of this problem? It’s easy. They don’t even respect the people enough to be honest with them. Instead, they rationalize it, “Trump committed actual crimes,” they said. “Trump’s the one who chanted Lock Her Up,” they insist, as if chanting is the same as doing.Similarly, most Russians believe Navalny committed “actual crimes” because that’s the power of taking complete control of the media narrative. Putin charged him as an extremist and with “fraud,” just as our government has done to Trump. 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 source tells Free Thinking what’s really going on.What old man in the White House? I didn’t see any old man in the White House. The President, you mean? Oh, that’s just Joe Biden. He’s fine. With age comes wisdom.Joe did nothing wrong, and even if he did, it was decided he could not stand trial. Hur is not a neurologist. He doesn’t know what’s going on in Joe’s brain. It was a stressful day. The attacks on October 7th were distracting. You can’t expect the President of the United States to handle that kind of pressure.Look at him now. He’s fine. He’s better than fine. He’s the Most Qualified Person to Serve.So what if he didn’t remember when he was Vice President. Who remembers stuff like that? He’s been in government since the 1970s. How is he to know what position he served and when. It’s confusing.Here he is eating fried chicken with Black people. Fried chicken. If Trump tried that the media would turn it into a National Security Crisis.This video alone has 26K views. People are ENGAGED. Do you think Trump’s videos get that many views? No decent person could ever support Trump. That’s why we offer them Joe. Joe. Nothing but Joe. Oh, and Kamala too.And anyway, we all know “Dark Brandon” is Obama, and Biden is basically serving his third term. I mean, why did we get rid of term limits anyway? Obama hasn’t ever left. He’s constantly influencing American culture - with his $30 million Netflix deal and his omnipresence on Twitter. If you have an entire country treating you like an actual God, and you have that big of an ego, how many people do you think would walk away from that? 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 don’t know what’s going to happen. All I can say is this: The man we saw speaking from the White House tonight, on February 8—that man will not be reelected president. Maybe Biden can become a new man. Maybe he’s had an off week. Maybe they can adjust his meds. Maybe. But probably not. Right? Probably not. —John Podhoretz, CommentaryThey’ve been lying about Joe Biden’s cognitive abilities since at least 2020. COVID allowed them to hide both Biden and Harris far from the prying eyes of the press and the public while the system won the election for them. They just needed to exist as more of an idea rather than a reality. Voters would choose them as the more moderate option. And, more importantly, take Trump out of power.But I’d stood a few feet away from Joe Biden in May of 2019. The man I saw give a speech that day and mingle in the crowd was not the man who emerged more than a year later to make minimal appearances during campaign season. He’d gotten through the primaries okay. He was old but hanging on.Heading into the election, however, it was clear something was not quite right. Now, he looked lost, with eyes that appeared vacant and unless someone was guiding him, he wandered around in a dream state.I told my friends I was worried that Biden was in the early stages of dementia, like my dad, who was consumed by it in 2018. They snapped back that Trump was a fascist, and it didn’t matter how incapacitated Biden was. They’d still vote for him.What did they know, and when did they know it?Besides ushering in a fanatical cult, the first real sign of trouble was the exit from Afghanistan in August of 2021. Word had it Biden had ignored his top brass and was arrogantly aiming for a 9/11 photo op.But with bodies falling off airplanes, 13 American soldiers dead, there was no way even the most skilled operators in the media could spin a visibly botched job. Even if it was barely a news story, the public took notice, and no doubt, world leaders did too.That “x” is Afghanistan. His numbers have never recovered.[source: Real Clear Politics] 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

“So you’re voting for Du-taxus?” a woman said to me in 1988. I was a lowly receptionist at a gym called “Women Only,” which was probably later sued out of business. I had to answer the phone with, “We have the way, Women Only, this is Sasha, may I help you?”I was undoubtedly blurting out this mouthful when the client noticed my Dukakis pin, because why wouldn’t she? I told her yes, I was, though I wasn’t “political” back then, and I had no idea why I was voting for Dukakis. He was a Democrat. Being a Democrat wasn’t something I chose. It was something I was. Some guy I was dating probably handed me the pin and told me to wear it, so I complied.Understandably annoyed, the woman said, “Figures. You probably never even went to college.” I remember this story all of these years later because it’s still surprising to me that a Republican would insult a Democrat’s lack of education. But it tells you everything you need to know about who had the power back then and who didn’t.After that, I was determined to cobble together my many city college credits and attend UCLA. I would graduate as a transfer student at the age of 29. I was older than everyone else, but I was the first person in my family to graduate. Now, I was prepared for any sudden encounter with an elitist Republican. 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

Joanna Parker paces in her office. The media narrative successfully sank the Republicans and their efforts to steal some of the Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce energy. Amateurs.After all this time, they still haven’t learned that WE control everything. Making them look like fools, waking up a whole generation to how stupid the Republicans are, was worth all of the trouble it took to hire well-paid and well-placed social media actors to whip them up into a frenzy.The Pentagon? Please. Like they care about Taylor Swift’s fan base. She played to packed stadiums all over the world with adoring fans chanting her lyrics, every single word to every single song, now that is power.She was already on our side. We just needed a viral moment to wake up her fans so they would learn early who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. Joanna thought they mostly did a good job. The Daily Beast, Rolling Stone and even CNN did their part in mocking the Republicans over the whole episode.James Carville never passes up the chance to call Trump supporters stupid. It’s practically his full-time job by now. And why shouldn’t he? What else has he got to do? We won the media narrative and maintained the moral high ground. 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

This election year promises to be one long “October Surprise” as the newly weaponized legal system, and Department of Justice go to unprecedented and extraordinary lengths not to stop Trump but to damage him enough that one of the least popular presidents in history can be once again dragged over the finish line in November.It’s so blatantly corrupt it’s hard to believe it’s actually happening. Whether you like Trump as a person or plan to vote for him or not, there should be no question that the damage done to this country and its institutions in the effort to bring down Trump has been far more destructive, divisive, and harmful than a second Trump term ever could ever be.Some have suggested that the Regime might take the inevitable last step to remove Trump from public life permanently. I don’t think they’ll go that far. Trump is worth more alive than dead.The Democrats have more power now than they’ve had since before the Civil War. Since then, they haven’t had the opportunity to build the kind of empire they wanted. Thanks to the threat of Trump and the rise of extreme wealth on the Left, that dream is now a reality. They control almost everything. Almost./ 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 am not supposed to be rooting for Trump and MAGA. I’m supposed to be one of the million and change who huddles on my couch in terror, watching MSNBC as the results from Iowa trickle in. I’m supposed to somberly nod when Rachel Maddow tells her viewers they won’t show Trump’s speech.Shut down the speech! I am supposed to say, as if any of this is normal. I will not watch it. I will not listen for myself and think for myself and judge for myself. I will instead fill my head with what Lawrence O’Donnell, Joy Reid, and the Queen of media, the Multi-Million Dollar Baby, Maddow herself tells me!“Yes, turn it off,” Bette Midler says. “Yes please!” moans Barbra Streisand. “It’s the right thing to do,” says Rob Reiner, “to save democracy.”“This is a difficult decision,” Maddow told her viewers to justify censoring Trump’s speech. Somewhere deep inside, this must humiliate the journalist she once was. On some level, she knows this is as bad as what Vladimir Putin does in Russia to protect his people from bad news.Saving Democracy includes censorship, in case you didn’t know, along with throwing your political opponents in jail and removing them from the ballot, not to mention persecuting political protesters for thought crimes and using the legacy media as your own personal propaganda delivery device. Are we sure this isn’t Putin’s Russia?Is this really where we’ve arrived as a country, as a people, as the once-mighty Left? Yes, there is no point in pretending otherwise.We’ve watched the whole game play out this past week as they twisted what Trump said — yet again — about “poisoning the blood of our nation.” They decide what his words mean; replacing “illegal immigrants” with “immigrants” makes it racist. So here is yet more proof of the person you need to fear.Oh, the lies they tell. 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

On January 6th, Trump will give a rally in Iowa. He’ll do what he’s done for seven years as a hunted man - reassure his supporters that there is nothing to fear but fear itself.Joe Biden, the President of the United States, will also give a speech that day and do what he has been doing since taking office: offer the people nothing but fear itself.Biden’s message? Be afraid. Be very, very afraid of your fellow citizens. The guy who works at the gas station, the waitress, the bus driver, the construction worker, the teacher, the pilot — all of them, and any of them could be a Trump supporter. Fear them, shun them, and help us remove them from our country. You are with us, or you are against us.They see their fight against Trump as something along the lines of the Civil War, World War II, and 9/11 all rolled into one. It would be funny if it wasn’t so terrifyingly real.It’s no wonder his approval ratings are in the toilet and that Trump is polling ahead, even after everything they’ve thrown at him. The Democrats have lost touch with reality and no longer know the country they lead.None of this would be happening, of course, if we had a legacy media that served any purpose other than to be what Devin Nunes called part of a “state-owned leftist enterprise” that also controls “everything—universities, nonprofits, bureaucracies, and the Beltway corridor.”Since Trump was elected, the stories in the mainstream press have been nothing but an advent calendar of lies.// 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

“Are you a Trump supporter now?” is the question my friends, acquaintances, and colleagues sometimes ask me. I know the answer to that question could end our relationship. So do they. Most of the time, they just don’t ask. They quietly assume that I might be, but what they don’t know can’t hurt them.Since 2016, being labeled “Trump supporter,” has given most people the green light to cut ties, publicly humiliate, attack, and dehumanize at will. What you will rarely see on the Left is empathy. What has become all too common is unfiltered, bottomless hatred. In too many cases, physical violence, and destructive protests, all justified and encouraged by the ruling class.2020 was the breaking point for me. I could no longer go along with it, especially after getting to know Trump supporters, and watching enough rallies to know the truth about who Trump really is. 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

Rob Reiner was jolted awake. Just minutes ago, he could have sworn he was holding his wife and sleeping soundly. Now, he could barely move.What was wrong with his feet?“Michele!” Reiner calls out for his wife. Silence. He glances around the room he is somehow trapped in. A small bed. Trinkets on shelves. A snowstorm outside. Where is he?Suddenly, the door bursts open, and none other than Annie Wilkes from Misery greets him, with her pig oinking behind her.Reiner stares in disbelief. He was now trapped inside one of his own movies.“Well, I see the patient is awake!” says Annie. “How are we feeling?”“Get me out of here. I directed this movie. I know what happens!”“Oh, don’t be such a fussy widget,” says Annie. “We’re just getting to know each other! I’m your number-one fan! I’ve seen every one of your movies like 100 times.”Reiner shifts uncomfortably in his bed. “What do you want with me?”“I’m the Ghost of Things to Come! Or the Ghost of Christmas future, I get confused.”“What’s wrong with my legs?”“It’s called hobbling,” she says.“Don’t worry, it won’t last long. Just long enough for me to explain how I happened to find myself in Washington DC on January 6th, 2021.”“No, come on, Annie Wilkes, is MAGA?”“Well, that’s the funny thing. I didn’t used to be. You see, I used to be Hillary Clinton’s number one fan too, bet you could never guess that. And Joe Biden’s. But the Summer of 2020 changed me. Should I hit your feet again just for fun?”“NOOOO,” Reiner screams. 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 - Here]Rob Reiner wanted to sleep. But his thoughts swirled around in his brain like a cage full of butterflies. Make it stop, make it stop.Haunted by Archie Bunker just hours ago, something about how January 6th was like the JFK assassination made Reiner’s Christmas Eve a nightmare. Maybe it all finally got to him, all those months of research looking into the history of the CIA, rogue agents, false flag operations, gaining public support for a cause, or a war, a president who was at odds with the war machine.James Carville accused him of being a crazy conspiracy theorist, like people who thought January 6th was an inside job. He wasn’t one of those guys. He followed the facts. Facts our government covered up. Most Americans would be shocked to learn about the psychological warfare, meddling in elections in foreign countries, and, of course, the CIA assassinations of world leaders.The last episode of his podcast, Who Killed JFK, discussed just that:Back when Kennedy was shot, the public had no idea that there were secret operations planned to gain public support through things like plane crashes that killed American citizens. No wonder so many tin foil hat types thought 9/11 was one of those to get us into a war with Iraq.But January 6th wasn’t anything like that. It was just proof of what we’ve all been saying about Trump and MAGA for years. This is what we warned against. A coup, an armed insurrection of violent terrorists, white supremacists attempting to overthrow the government and overturn the results of the election.But something wasn’t coming together. 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

Rob Reiner holds his phone in front of his face, and doom-scrolls Twitter. One after the other, all about the coming apocalypse, Donald Trump's potential win.The monster. The fascist. The BEAST is outpolling Uncle Joe - how is this happening? He’s indicted for felonies, a twice impeached crook, conman, and dictator. He waged an armed insurrection to attack the Capitol to overturn the election; he’s worse than Hitler, worse than Mussolini. Who are these people that support him? Why do we have to share a country with them?Reiner was getting triggered by those he trusted and followed on Twitter, like the Lincoln Project, Liz Cheney, Marc Elias, Occupy Democrats. And Call to Activism:They ARE insane, Reiner thought, those who voted for Trump. We still don’t know what to do with them, or where to put them. Hillary is right. A deprogramming facility to help ease them out of their love for that monster is the only way we can have a Democracy.You know who protects all of us, he thought. Prosecutors like Jack Smith and attorney generals like Merrick Garland. Our great president. Sure, he’s old, but so what? He does what a president is supposed to do, like spend his whole life in government. 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

[Profanity warning…..]There is a scene in David Fincher’s The Social Network where Sean Parker (played by Justin Timberlake) has Mark Zuckerberg (played by Jesse Eisenberg) set up a meeting to have the most sought-after genius in tech, deliver an important message: “Sean Parker says f*ck you.”That’s what you do when you have the money Mark Zuckerberg was about to have, or if you’re the richest man in the world, like Elon Musk.Our government, in complete alignment with the most powerful entities in the country and maybe the world, has been trying to destroy Elon Musk since he bought Twitter and turned it into X. Every decision he makes is proof, they insist, that the app is about to collapse and Musk will be humiliated, ruined, and destroyed.You might recognize the pattern. They’ve done the same thing, for seven years, to Trump. They’ve had no problem weaponizing the DOJ, raiding Mar-a-Lago, and indicting him on phony placeholder charges as the media runs with the lie that it’s for “inciting an insurrection.” They’ve even tried to remove his name from the ballot in several states for something he’s not even charged with. 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

You wouldn’t know me if you met me in May of 2019, as I drove to a luncheon for Joe Biden sponsored by a big donor at one of the mansions in a wealthy pocket of Los Angeles. I’d been hand-picked as an influencer after rising in the ranks of Team Hillary on social media. I’d thrown myself into politics in 2015, panicking about climate change. “We have to win,” I thought.By the end of 2020, just one year later, I’d have left the Democratic Party for good, been yelled at by Neera Tanden on Twitter, and lost a good many of my friends and very nearly everything else, and now, by 2023, all I can think is that the Democrats have to lose. They have to be voted out.I’ve been trying to tell my story in a way that matters for three years. I have failed to convince or persuade anyone from my side. They still treat me like someone who has been radicalized online or is somehow mentally incapacitated. They still see Trump as an existential threat to “democracy” and the grassroots movement known as MAGA as domestic extremists, white supremacists and a threat to their way of life. 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 you’ve heard is true. The Republicans are losing on abortion. They are not motivated to turn out the same way the Democrats are unless Trump is on the ballot, and even then, the GOP is losing at a time when they should be blowing the Democrats out of power for a generation.The war is over, and the GOP lost, at least for now. Just as they are on the right side of history with “gender-affirming care,” there is a chance that their desire to preserve life now might be well-regarded in 50 years or so, as fertility, sperm count, and population decline. Suddenly, future generations might think about how casually mothers aborted the pregnancies that are in such short supply.Maybe getting pregnant will be difficult, or carrying a baby to term, or male sperm will be ineffective, and everyone will have to turn to labs. Who knows where all of this is going, but convincing young women not to have babies when they are in their prime, fertility-wise, might backfire someday. 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

Ron DeSantis has every quality a presidential candidate needs - good looks, youth, a nice family, and a strong governance track record in Florida. What he doesn’t have, however, is more charisma than his chief rival, Donald Trump.To be fair, not many candidates, or people for that matter, have as much charisma as Trump does. It’s a once-in-a-generation thing that defies explanation. It’s just there. Even those who hate him can’t stop watching him. It’s not his looks, particularly, or his speeches — it’s the X-factor you can’t buy or attain. You have to be born with 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

Our country, at the hands of the Left, is falling apart. There is no center. It is as though termites have eaten away the foundation as we allowed so many activists to dismantle their “systems of oppression,” otherwise known as our heroes, our history, our movies, our achievements, our books, our poetry, our art. If America built it, it is corrupt, say the Woketopians.We’ve seen them edging ever so close to violence as a means to an end. We’ve ignored the warning signs because it was so much easier to demonize and dehumanize Trump and MAGA, and now, I fear, we’re heading into the danger zone.We’ve been here before. Right around the time of the Manson murders in 1969, the silent majority was waking up to what the Left had become, something not unlike today’s Left.In March of 1970, as the Manson trials were getting underway, the New York Times wrote an expose of the radical Left’s Weather Underground:The outbreak of explosions at a variety of establishment targets— corporate offices, police stations, draft and induction centers and the like—underscores a new mood among frustrated radicals. It appears to have been intensified by the outcome of the trial of the Chicago Seven as well as the various pending Black Panther trials.One letter by the Weather Underground reads as follows:“To work for the industries of death is to murder. To know the torments Amerika inflicts on the Third World, but not to sympathize and identify, is to deny our own humanity. It is to deny our right to love—and not to love is to die. We refuse. In death‐directed Amerika there is only one way to a life of love and freedom: to attack and destroy the forces of death and exploitation and to build a just society—revolution.”Charles Manson parroted these talking points to brainwash his cult. His words are indistinguishable from theirs, though noticeably less articulate. When Manson had his followers scrawl the words “death to pigs” in the blood of their victims, it was meant to throw law enforcement off track and blame Black radicals.As horrific as that sounds, we’re seeing echoes of that kind of mindset in today’s young, whipped up into a frenzy they can’t quite control. 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 tweet about the Holocaust? Sorry, Gina Carano, you’re finished with Disney. A tweet about how violent protests lose elections got you fired? Sorry, David Shor, those are the consequences of your actions. You have to be held accountable.It’s not “cancel culture,” they insisted. It’s “consequence culture.” Intent doesn’t matter. Only impact does. Not even Thomas Jefferson was safe from the “Eye of Sauron” that sought to root out the thought criminals wherever they may have been hiding.If you wrote a headline that said “Buildings Matter Too” and lost your job? Too bad, your words caused harm. Said the “N-word” as clarification on a field trip, and your entire legacy at the New York Times goes up in smoke? Those are necessary consequences for your actions.Liked the wrong tweet, voted for the wrong candidate, praised the wrong movie, had the wrong opinion about Black Lives Matter, had a bad date, wore the wrong Halloween costume, and that was it. If you defended someone who wore “blackface” on Halloween once, you are a convicted racist, and you must apologize profusely or lose your job, sometimes both.Who gets to stay and who has to go has been the sick little game we’ve all been playing, like we’re trapped in an episode of the Twilight Zone and are one wrong opinion away from being wished into the cornfield. 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

“And so shines a good deed in a weary world,” that’s the line that ran through my head as I finished John Nolte’s first novel, Borrowed Time. The truth is that I didn’t want it to end. I didn’t want to leave that imaginative world and have to face the reality of ours.I had already started it over just before the last few chapters to stave off the inevitable. Was it the book’s protagonist I liked so much? A man blessed (or cursed) with immortality who falls in love for the first time in thousands of years with someone who does get old and die, like the rest of us?Or was it something else: A distant call from the past, back to the days when stories were meant for everyone when we would all share the plight of characters so real we could almost reach out and touch them?I read, or listen to, dozens — hundreds — of audiobooks. It’s how I pass the time on long road trips, enduring agonizingly boring chores I can’t bear to face, or when I need to turn my mind off from the day's news. I read almost exclusively mysteries, thrillers, pulpy stuff, with the occasional non-fiction book thrown in here or there about the Salem Witch Trials or Lizzie Borden.I usually don’t touch literary fiction anymore. I can’t bear to. I know what to expect because I know that world all too well by now. There will be a “lesson” in there, one I can already see coming from a mile away. 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

Once upon a time, there was a Paper of Record. They proudly claimed that moniker because they valued journalism. They valued getting the facts before broadcasting the headline. For decades, they built the most trusted newspaper in the land. And that newspaper was called the New York Times.Then came the internet. A gaggle of hoodie-wearing flip-flop dudebros moving fast and breaking things nearly put the Times and other outlets out of business. Now, anyone could have a website and report the news they wanted, like Matt Drudge, whose news shaped opinion rather than informed the public.The Times rallied and evolved, becoming the most-read newspaper online, where they have remained since the turn of the millennium. But clickbait changed the way news was delivered. Now, the headlines had to bring eyeballs to websites. The more outrageous the headline, the more likely the clicks, and the more ad revenue from Google and other traffic-based ad servers. 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 we watch the horrific images of Hamas's brutal attack on Israeli citizens, there is no mistaking the face of evil.This is brutality on a scale most of us here in America have never witnessed - the rapes of women who are dragged through the streets to cheers. Babies murdered in their cribs — beheaded — fathers shot while trying to help their families escape—charred remains of still-smoking corpses in gardens, doorways, and cars.For the past three years, our government has lied to us about what happened on January 6th. The Vice President stood before us and compared a riot at the Capitol to 9/11 and Pearl Harbor. 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 was part of a movement on the Left that endlessly softened language to avoid offending a single person we deemed marginalized. What we couldn’t say, what we had to say … The list just kept getting longer. The judgments more severe.That Trump is an existential threat not for anything he’s ever done, but what he says is proof enough that this war we’re fighting is a war of words.I’m not allowed to use the word “sterilize,” just like I’m not allowed to use the word “mutilate” to describe what’s happening to thousands of young people all across this country. As though the words themselves are anywhere near as bad as the deeds they describe. I’ve realized lately that soft language often masks monstrosities we could not face otherwise. 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

“If they want a monster so badly, they ought to be provided by one.” ― Margaret AtwoodTheir monster is Trump. He is the entire economy of the media machine. Without him, whole news networks would die, social media would become stagnant, and, more importantly, there would be no named evil for the New Puritans to unite in fear and hatred against.Their God is Barack Obama. Yes, that’s right. We're caught in a clash of the titans that involves two movements, largely built and cultivated online, that now define two paths forward for America. Obama’s 1984-like dystopia or Trump’s populist revolt against monopolistic power at the top, not unlike Teddy Roosevelt driving a spike through the Gilded Age.Trump is, without a doubt, and these trials prove it, the man in the arena. 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

Joe Biden lied about who he was when he ran for president. He said he was a moderate. He isn’t. He said he would unite the country. He hasn’t. He said he would revive the economy. He didn’t.Lying is nothing new to the Democratic Party. The lies are big - The exit from Afghanistan was fine, January 6th was a violent insurrection, lockdowns were successful, the vaccine was not risky, the economy is strong, gender is a construct. And their lies are small, Stephen Colbert is funny.One of the biggest lies was that Kamala Harris was the right choice for Vice President. They lied because they had to. They lied because it was easy. They lied because no one in the media would call them out on 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

“We create the illusion that being informed is a kind of action in itself. So to wash that guilt out—to eliminate the shame and discomfort you feel over doing nothing as the world goes mad—you'll keep tuning in.” - Matt Taibbi, Hate, Inc.The other night on MSNBC, Nicolle Wallace reached her breaking point. Something must be done, or we will all live to regret it.“Something bad is going to happen,” she said. “What will we tell our children and grandchildren when it does”? Then she looked directly into the camera and said, “You good with NOTHING”?Her face flushed. Her expression, resolute.What “something” must be done? She didn’t say. Her guests couldn’t come up with a final solution either.But it’s worth asking Nicolle herself what will finally end her nightmare. Detainment camps for the “cesspool of the MAGA base"? Gulags? How do we dump the dissidents and non-compliant citizens far enough away that they can’t touch the America they once called home?//end 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

Yes, Trump can win.Many Conservatives worry that Trump can’t win. Democrats, they believe, have rigged the system in their favor, and there is no defeating them now so why even bother voting? Yes, that’s exactly where they want you to be. They want the grassroots movement that is MAGA to shut up and sit down and fade into obscurity.But here’s the truth. Trump can win on the economy alone. He can win on his own record on the economy, which ordinarily would have meant winning a decisive second term.But guess what? The Democrats face-planted, hard, on the economy. Now, Trump gets to come back and say I told you so.His entire campaign can be I told you so. 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

The 50th Annual Telluride Film Festival went off mostly without a hitch. It was the same beautiful town in the mountains of Colorado I’d been visiting for at least ten years. There were movies earmarked for the Oscar race, critics and bloggers, and film industry professionals scurrying from place to place. But something felt different.It wasn’t just the lack of celebrities that are usually the draw for such an exclusive, expensive fest. The actors’ strike meant they could not show up, even if a few did sneak in for a party or two. Usually, they’re everywhere. Nicole Kidman getting coffee somewhere. I once rode the gondola with Jennifer Garner.It wasn’t even so many people I used to know barely talk to me now. They used to love me, now they hate me. They have no other choice, of course. They can’t be seen fraternizing with the enemy. Those who still have the courage to say hello are few and far between. 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

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,Here once the embattled farmers stood,And fired the shot heard round the world. -Ralph Waldo EmersonYou maniacs. You finally did it. You finally made people like me actually want to vote for Trump — not just vote for him because he’s a Republican, and he’ll do the dirty job of putting the brakes on “gender-affirming care.” I was already there. But actually wanting to vote for Trump specifically, to believe that only Trump can finally end this ongoing insanity in our government, culture, and country? Well, that seemed impossible. I know the cost of crossing into enemy territory. I know that it means— into the garbage can with me. I know that it is social and career suicide. But I can’t watch them go after him like this, busting through norm after norm, relishing his humiliation, and not want to, at the very least, use my vote to protest what they’ve done. Here is Tulsi Gabbard:The first thing people will say to me is “stop lying, you were always a Trump supporter. You’ve just finally unmasked yourself.” They probably believe that’s true - it certainly makes it easier for them to sleep at night knowing their monstrous, unforgivable behavior was justified in their minds. I was with them when they protested Trump’s win in 2016. I was with them when we marched in protest throughout Trump’s presidency. I was with them all the way up until the election of 2020, when I saw for the first time the threat the new left posed to our formerly free country. I live in California, so my vote hardly matters. It’s more symbolic to say that I do not consent to my government or my tax dollars being used this way. I do not consent to a partisan, weaponized DOJ. I do not consent to show trials, performative indictments, or a two-tiered justice system. And I certainly don’t consent to mugshots of former presidents. It weakens our standing in the world. It makes us look small. It makes us look insane. It makes us look corrupt. Here are Glenn Greenwald and Patrick Bet-David:Trump must prevail because otherwise, they’ve shown us there will be no end to any of it. Once they’re done with Trump, they’ll move on to the next threat. More power for them means less freedom for us - in our lives, online, and in our culture. They will never stop on their own. They have to be stopped. #resistance cosplayLike the raid on Mar-a-Lago, the mugshot was totally unnecessary. It was petty and vindictive, yet another episode in their ongoing melodrama that casts themselves as the oppressed victims beating back centuries of White Supremacy and racism that they somehow see embodied in Trump. The Netflix series Black Mirror has two great episodes, and both offer up criticisms of what life on the Left has become. One is Nose Dive wherein people are given credit scores and worry about being judged by others. By the end, the only way out is to abandon all of it and learn how to live with people who say things that might offend. The other is Hated in the Nation, where social media users attack people using a hashtag. A hacker programs armies of robotic bees to attack those who engage in dehumanizing swarms against others.The Left believes this is Trump’s episode of Black Mirror. He is their crazed fascist racist white supremacist traitor insurrectionist seditionist rapist supervillain at the mercy of an extreme partisan Democrat DA who forced him into the worst jail in Georgia and made him take a mugshot. MAKE HIM SUFFER. Make him PAY. But maybe this is really their episode of Black Mirror. No matter what they do, they can’t kill the love the people have for Trump. Everything they do backfires on them, and his popularity only grows. This was especially true for Black voters on Tik Tok:In all of the Left’s hysteria and mania over the past seven years, they’ve done nothing to address those who have felt abandoned by what our government has become. Why? It is much easier for them to kill the messenger. Money drives politics; everyone knows that. But when Trump’s small money donors chipped in and raised $7 million almost overnight for Trump’s defense, it was proof enough of the widespread affection so many people have for Trump, and it was threatening for people who have all the money and believe that entitles them to all of the power. Well guess what? It doesn’t.Un-electable?I feel Ben Shapiro’s pain when he points out, as he does every day, that this is the grand plan for the Left, just as they did in 2022 to great effect - boost Trump and MAGA in the primary, destroy them in the general. The Daily Wire has laid out the trial dates, set conveniently to line up with the election year — they aren’t even bothering to hide it anymore and the media will never call them out on it — and this is meant to tie Trump up with court cases, win or lose, that will keep him from campaigning or make his entire campaign about his legal troubles, and not, say, the failings of the Biden administration and the cult that has overtaken the party.While it’s true DeSantis won’t have legal troubles to contend with, he, like most of them, never found a way to appeal to the energized wing of the GOP, aka MAGA.It’s more likely than not that any GOP candidate could defeat Biden - probably even Mike Pence. But for any of them not to harness the grassroots energy embodied not just in MAGA but in the rising counter-culture movement, is leaving too much money on the table. They would be fools to ignore what turned Oliver Anthony into a superstar overnight and landed Sound of Freedom higher than Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning on the annual box office chart. Besides, I actually think Trump could win. While it’s true his presence in the race will allow the Democrats to do what they did in 2020 - use their deep pockets to drive around operatives to collect ballots, Republicans can do that too. Trump still won Iowa, Florida, and Ohio - that tells us he was very close to winning, even with the war against him during his presidency.Trump has one secret weapon. That would be Vivek Ramaswamy’s mission should he choose to accept it. Ramaswamy has said he does not want to be anyone’s Veep. But if Trump asks him and he accepts, he could be helping to take America through a 1980s-Reagan-like moment where the entire ship turns around. He can serve not just four years as Trump’s Veep, but he could theoretically do eight years after that as president. Vivek Ramaswamy has what Trump has - the ability to instantly go on offense when attacked. He can do this anywhere, in any setting, facing down any opponent - the wokest of the woke, traditional Conservatives, the media. He can help grow the multi-ethnic, multi-generational movement Trump already started and finally, America can be rid of the monopolies controlling it at the top. The Left has all of the power, wealth, status, culture, and institutions. But they can’t offer the people what Trump can, the essentials for winning a presidential election: Hope. Optimism. American exceptionalism. We’re in trouble as a country if the current regime gets away with what they’ve done to Trump. Every American must stand up against it and send a message to DC that we don’t go along with this grotesque overreach and abuse of power. No, we do not believe in that kind of America, and no, we do not want that kind of America.For the last three years, I’ve been accused of so many things online that, shockingly, many friends went along with: I was a “white supremacist,” a “rape apologist,” a “TERF.” As a Hillary supporter, I was accused of being a “rich, white feminist,” a “neocon,” a “Wall Street shill” and a “cat lady.” If you’ve been online as long as I have, you know how to handle online bullying. You must remind yourself that they don’t know you. They are targeting a version of you they see in their heads, one that gives them free rein to dehumanize and attack at will. But the worst thing I could have been called, and I always knew this was true, was a “Trump supporter” or MAGA. And yes, not only have I been called that, but people have written things about me online that I’d gone to the dark side. One guy thought I’d had a brain tumor. Another thought I was having a mental collapse. In all of that time, I was able to say, “I voted for Biden,” or “I’m not a Trump supporter,” or “I’m not a Trump voter,” or “I would never vote for Trump.” But then they took the mugshot. // 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

Memes sprouted up online as the rare, once-in-a-generation Hurricane Hilary threatened Los Angeles. “She’s back,” they all said. No one could mistake the namesake, with or without the extra “l.”Just before the hurricane was downgraded to a tropical storm and made its way toward me, I was revisiting Disney’s Snow White in the wake of comments made by Rachel Zegler, the young star chosen to revive and rebrand the Disney princess as non-white, feminist, and woke.Gone were the seven dwarfs. Gone was the “skin as white as snow,” and there was talk of the infamous kiss that awakens Snow White to be surgically removed like the cancer it supposedly was.//end 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

“Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” - ShakespeareDespite the shock and awe of the four indictments against former president Donald Trump, the Democrats are more vulnerable than they’ve been in decades. It isn’t just the Afghanistan exit, the economy, or the cancer growing inside the presidency, it’s also the radical policies the Democrats have embraced since Biden took office in 2021.They are hemorrhaging working-class voters, especially among groups they believe belong to them, like those in the Black and Hispanic communities. They refuse to face their own failings, and why should they? With no legacy media to hold them to account, they can pretend nothing to see here, move along, move along. 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 Mr. Brooks,Your column might be the best thing written in the New York Times in the past seven years. You’ve undoubtedly been subjected to a fair amount of abuse for it. You should probably never have written it if the comments are any indication. But those are people in the bubble. They don’t represent either the majority or the future. They think they do, but they don’t. Your question, “Are we the bad guys”? The answer is yes. You are the bad guys. You have systematically dehumanized half the country because they dared to want to be represented by someone you don’t like. You have gone along with a warped distortion of who Donald Trump actually is, and you have perpetuated that lie to your own detriment. Oh, it’s much worse than that, Mr. Brooks. Are you sitting down? This is the moment just before the aristocracy you write so eloquently about comes crashing down around you. You might say you have just spotted the iceberg on the horizon. The water is too still. The ship is moving too fast. It can’t be turned around in time. The ship is made of iron, and it will sink.Like so many times before, an aristocratic minority can only stave off its ultimate collapse at the hands of the discontented majority for so long. Just look around at the abandoned mansions of the Gilded Age, a world that once was. Or take a trip to France and look at the chateaus in the countryside, or you might even look around in the American South at the plantations and high society before it was all Gone with the Wind. I’m not necessarily saying the red states are going to drag America back in time - that’s your narrative and the false opinion of the ruling class. This is about a new America waiting to be born once the establishment elite gets out of the way. You do get points for noticing, Mr. Brooks, even if it is too little, too late. You write:Are Trump supporters right that the indictments are just a political witch hunt? Of course not. As a card-carrying member of my class, I still basically trust the legal system and the neutral arbiters of justice. Trump is a monster in the way we’ve all been saying for years and deserves to go to prison.Neutral arbiters of justice? Did you really just write that with a straight face, Mr. Brooks? Do you really believe that? Yet here we have proof enough that you can’t be the good guys if you can’t even see that these investigations and indictments are designed only to stop Trump. Biden has said as much.No news on Joe Biden’s blatant corruption with his son, potentially protecting oligarchs from sanctions, influence peddling? And a DOJ that pivots to another Trump indictment every time there is bad news for Biden? Neutral? I don’t think so. Surely you’re not suggesting that, because you believe Trump is a “monster” that he deserves to “go to prison” without any trial? Is that what we call innocent until proven guilty, Mr. Brooks? Or is that what we call trial by mob? Tell me, what books have you read that paint yourselves as the good guys? Trump was never revealed to be the “monster” you promised. In fact, quite the opposite.He could have, as a fascist, shot protesters on the street in the Summer of 2020 oh wait, Biden did that when the Capitol police shot Ashli Babbitt. He could have jailed protesters, throwing them in solitary without a trial, convicting them in the court of public opinion as “white supremacists,” oh wait, Biden did that too. Censor social media outlets (oh, oops, Biden too), weaponize the DOJ (oh, darn it, Biden again), edge us closer to Nuclear war (D’OH also Biden), and attempt to jail his political opponents to hold onto power for the foreseeable future (YA, that’s actually Biden). Darnit. Will the real fascist please stand up?Trump might aspire to be an authoritarian but never had the necessary institutional support. He had just the opposite - every institution was at war with Trump every day of his presidency. I expect you’re educated enough to know that fascists require an alignment of power across all corporate, cultural, and political life — kind of like the Democrats, Mr. Brooks. Are you sure you have the right fascist? Or Tyrant or authoritarian or monster?For those who now say, “he led an armed insurrection to overthrow the US Government and install a white supremacist army to kill all the Black and Brown people,” or anything related to January 6th, I call b******t. The Trump emergency happened long before 2020, as any honest person knows.Steve Bannon accurately predicted in 2017 that the Democrats would take the House in 2018 and immediately impeach Trump. It didn’t even matter what it was for. Everything our FBI and the Democrats, along with you Never Trump Republicans, did to reject the duly elected President of the United States was unprecedented and evidence of an elite ruling class that does not want to give up its power to the people. I could spend a few paragraphs on January 6th, as I bore witness to a fake media narrative blooming out of the events that day, just as I could spend an equal amount of time talking about the violent protests in the Summer of 2020 that the media all but ignored, but instead, let’s stay focused on the task at hand - are you the good guys or are you the bad guys? I know you are a Never Trumper, who has counted on the ratf*ckers like Rick Wilson and the Lincoln Project, or the high-minded intellectuals at the Bulwark, or the pretentious ramblings of a Joe Scarborough — it feels so good, doesn’t it, to have the affections of high society finally? To be let into the club and on the A-list now? Yeah, I bet it does. To quote Bob Dylan, I used to be among the crowd you’re in with. I’ve only recently gotten to know the Conservatives such as yourself. I am a lifelong Democrat who voted for every Democrat that ever ran for president starting in the 1980s. I was a prominent Hillary Clinton supporter. I marched, I protested, and I wrote op-eds. I said Me Too. I supported and voted for Joe Biden. And yes, I wrote about race and gender for years on my website. Yeah, I was that guy (girl). It would take me a while to realize you were all wrong about Trump. First, I had to find out all of these years later that your paper of record was not telling me the truth, which I did in June of 2020 when the New York Times upended itself over the Tom Cotton essay, then threw two of its editors under the bus.That moment was, for me, like the lantern dropping out of the sky in The Truman Show. My whole world changed. But it was hard to explain it to my friends and family. I would say things to them like, “I can’t explain it to you because you’re in the bubble.” And they would look at me like I was insane. All that really meant is that they still trusted the New York Times. They still trusted you, Mr. Brooks. But little by little, people like me are escaping the bubble and discovering a whole wide world of freedom outside of it - freedom of the mind, most especially. Imagine, not having to fret every word that comes out of your mouth. Imagine people seeing each other as people and not as partisans in an imaginary war, not as “white supremacists” or divided by race or gender. If the Tom Cotton debacle wasn’t bad enough, the Times sunk itself even further into the morass when it demonized and chased out respectable COVID reporter Donald McNeil after some entitled brat tattled on him that he’d used the “n-word” on a field trip. Oh, he must be a RACIST, concluded the gaggle of gossips and pearl-clutching wokesters in the newsroom.Are you the good guys, or are you the bad guys for allowing lunatics to take over the asylum? For bringing on board uptight thought police to bully your journalists for trying to tell the truth. Most of that is not your fault, but since you stay at the paper and say nothing, you are complicit. You’re building a rat ship, as Al Pacino once opined in Scent of a Woman. I like to think I would have resigned in protest and in support of James Bennett, Bari Weiss, and Donald McNeil. But I know it’s hard out there for a propaganda pusher, I mean a journalist, so I don’t blame you for keeping your job and staying quiet. That intense focus on race and racism pushed and adopted by the Times, has had a catastrophic effect on the news business and American culture writ large, but especially so in the Trump era. A revolution of devout woketopians crashing up against Trump, a guy who will say anything he feels like saying, did this to the NY Times: This is the ticket to ride at the Times now, Mr. Brooks. You are trapped in a hell of your own making by now. Look at the “Reader’s Picks” comments. It is hard to resist a comment that has 7,000 plus upvotes telling you to abandon your humanity and continue the ongoing dehumanization of half the country. Why can’t they, or you, trust the voters? Why can’t you find better candidates and better policies? Why can’t you allow an outsider to shake things up in a people-run government? Moreover, who gave you permission to claim this country for yourselves and decide for American voters what they should want? That is not how things are supposed to work in this country. You’ve all been treating Trump like an elusive mob boss who engaged in dirty dealings, drug smuggling, prostitution, bribery, and even murder, which justified taking extraordinary measures against him to put him in prison finally. But the evidence at hand does not bear this out. He’s a rule-breaker by nature, he always has been. He likes to upset people. He likes to antagonize, tease, and sometimes bully, but we can’t even get to Turmp’s real problems because of your tsunami of hyperbole. The so-called charges against Trump will look ridiculous in time, just like the perjury charge against Bill Clinton does. By now, you all should be sued for wasting our time and money policing a president who had the nerve to win an election and offend the ruling elite. And then had the nerve to protest the most corrupt election in my lifetime. But again, we won’t go into that. These charges show pencil-pusher detailing that doesn’t amount to anything serious enough to meddle in yet another election, and nothing more serious than what Joe Biden is alleged to have done — no one at your paper would put together the billions being sent to Ukraine with Joe Biden and Hunter Biden’s payoffs, just like you’ll never tell the truth about the FBI’s involvement in January 6th, but sooner or later, someone will. I know you probably don’t really care what the majority of Republicans think of you. But still, it has to be a bit of a drag that the “paper of record” is now on par with MSNBC in the minds of the public, per this poll:When I headed over to Trump World and watched his rallies, I did not see a racist or a bigot. I didn’t see a frothing-at-the-mouth Hitler-esque tyrant. And I couldn’t lie about that anymore. This isn’t about telling you to support Trump or that I will even vote for him. It’s hard to talk about anything else because of YOUR obsession, not ours. He has to dominate the news because it drives traffic on your site and ratings on cable news and because God forbid any of you will actually report on the Biden administration’s obvious failings.Some people got it long before I ever did, like David Horowitz, a former lefty, who wrote a brilliant book on the 2020 election and January 6th called Final Battle. His introduction goes like this:“Trump’s final seventeen hours of campaigning had included more than 3,000 miles of flights and motorcades, 367 minutes of rallies, and—in the words of one Wall Street Journal reporter, “five awkward and hilarious stage dances to [the popular song] ‘YMCA.’”A Trump rally was always an entertainment.”At one point in the evening, the crowd became so ardent—as similar rallies had before—that it began to chant “We love you!” and did so over and over, until Trump responded: “Thank you. Don’t say that. I’ll start to cry and that wouldn’t be good for my image.” It was an uncharacteristically emotional moment, displaying a self-awareness and even self-deprecation, that went generally unacknowledged by Trump’s legion of haters.”The same rally was referenced by Tucker Carlson, who has now been fired by Fox News to protect the delicate ruling elites from hard truths they studiously avoid. Carlson wrote this before the 2020 election. And that was really it for me. The journalists, so many people I knew and in the highest reaches of culture and power, had the story completely wrong. They didn’t know Trump at all and had no clue why so many people supported him. All they could do was spin around, wondering how could anyone like and vote for a MONSTER like Trump? Calling them all racists led to real-world violence, as in this rarely covered event from back in 2015: But Trump makes them feel seen, in the parlance of the Left. The people most of you through away like human garbage had one guy with balls of steel taking on the entire machine. If you don’t think most people are rooting for Trump to skate these charges, then you aren’t paying attention. Oh sure, the Beckys and the Karens are waiting for their money shot, but most people can’t help but root for the underdog. Sorry, folks. You’ll have to confront the lies you’ve been selling for years because the people are way ahead of you. Lastly, you write:But there’s a larger context here. As the sociologist E. Digby Baltzell wrote decades ago, “History is a graveyard of classes which have preferred caste privileges to leadership.” That is the destiny our class is now flirting with. We can condemn the Trumpian populists until the cows come home, but the real question is: When will we stop behaving in ways that make Trumpism inevitable?The answer, Mr. Brooks, is never. As with most aristocracies, power must be taken from you. No, not with a violent revolution, but when the American people realize what I finally did — that they can no longer trust the media, and that the media have become the bad guys. When that happens, it’s all over but the shouting. 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 1 - America at the Hands of a Cult | Part 2 - A Religious WarAs yet another indictment of Trump rolls out, they can barely contain their excitement. Is this finally it? Will that long-awaited termination of their tormenter give the ruling class the peace they demand?They’ve been patiently waiting, spending too much of their precious time hunched over a keyboard, saliva pooling at the edges of their mouths, tongues flicking with the promise of release - will anyone put them out of their misery?The election of Trump was never allowed in their country. They would have done anything to keep him out of power. They protested violently, they negotiated with electors, they blamed Putin for Russian interference then they set about removing Trump from power from Day One. 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

“Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.” ― John SteinbeckI not only believed in the myth of Joe Biden, I helped sell it. My father had just died and it was easy for me to transpose my grief onto Joe as I tried to convince my fellow Hillary supporters that he was the only candidate to beat Trump. Yes, the “old white guy” whose moment had finally arrived. He would save us, we all thought. He was empathetic and kind. He was, I insisted, a good man.He’d once crossed the street in DC as the then Vice President to talk to my daughter’s 5th-grade class. My daughter stood just inches away from him. Who didn’t love Joe? Scranton Joe is the good man, the good father, who rode the Amtrak train home from DC every day to be with his family. He’s the forward-thinking progressive who fought for the Black community, for victims of sexual assault, and for gay rights before even Obama did.He was famously almost too young to serve when elected to the Senate in 1972. Here he is alongside his family, celebrating his birthday just one month before his wife and baby daughter would be killed in a car crash.How could so much good fortune be cut short by a tragedy that would leave his two boys without a mother? His young son Hunter suffered from a head injury while his other son Beau survived with broken bones.Joe Biden was sworn in at the hospital as his two young sons looked on with confusion. He pledged to put them first, and abandon his political career if it ever came to that.But there is another Joe Biden. It’s the one who has shunned his granddaughter he pretends does not exist. At least with the Biden name she could make something of herself. But no, says Joe. She isn’t one of us. It’s the Joe Biden who would exploit a family tragedy to hold a press conference and photo-op that was good for his image while being sworn in in1972. It’s the Joe Biden who claimed the death of his son Beau kept him from running as Obama’s successor in 2016, when the truth was that Obama didn’t want him to run. He wanted Hillary instead. "The incredible bond I have with my children is the gift I'm not sure I would have had, had I not been through what I went through [after the fatal crash]. But by focusing on my sons, I found my redemption." - Joe Biden, Yale Commencement Address, 2015As a Senator in 1972, Joe Biden would bear witness to the downfall of Richard Nixon, just two years away from resignation. He could not know all of those decades ago that he would face something far more serious than being caught on tape offering to pay off a blackmailer. No, this isn’t obstruction of justice Biden is accused of participating in. It’s out-and-out corruption, the worst kind, being a politician who traded power and influence for profit.Comparing what Biden is alleged to have done with even the most serious charges against Trump is laughable. The more of Biden’s story that is revealed, the worse the Trump hunters will look. As always, the legacy media is the only thing standing in the way of a Nixon-like downfall for Joe. They’re in way too deep now. If Biden goes down, so do they. After all, they were responsible for helping put Joe in power in 2020, to absolve themselves of the sins of Trump. Now, they will pay a price for ignoring the Biden scandal. All the President’s SonsIt’s hard to look at Joe Biden’s life and not think about East of Eden, the Steinbeck novel turned into a movie in 1955, based on the story of Cain and Abel. It’s not the same story, but it’s similar enough. The golden child, Beau, was meant to carry on the family name and was preparing to run for governor when he died tragically in 2015.The other son, Hunter, the wayward Cain, or Cal, was nothing but trouble for his father, acting out in obvious ways to get his approval and attention, but never quite getting it, engaging in corruption to enrich the Biden family. Hunter didn’t just engage in high risk behavior with cocaine and hookers, he did it on camera, uploaded it to porn sites, and left it all on his laptops, which he then abandon at a computer repair shop.He wasn’t exactly hiding it - if anything, he seemed like he was begging to get caught, to finally experience some of the much-needed consequences that might have changed his life. But they never came then and they won’t be coming now. But what about Joe? Did he have anything to do with the pay-offs by foreign leaders to buy influence? If he skimmed off the top and feigned ignorance, it would be one thing. But it’s far more sinister than that. If the allegations against him are true, Biden used the son with the dirty reputation as a go-between, knowing if they ever got caught, Hunter would take the fall. Biden would make sure he didn’t go to jail.Even as his son was spiraling into drugs and alcohol and his other son was dying of brain cancer, Joe Biden still managed to push forward to cash in on the Biden name and his position in the Obama administration.In 2013, Hunter Biden started a fund with the Chinese government, with Joe bringing Hunter there to meet with the CEO, the Chinese then greenlighted the fund, and Beau Biden was diagnosed with brain cancerIn 2014, Burisma appointed Hunter Biden to their Board of Directors, paying him $83K monthly, and while he and Devon Archer formed Rosemont Seneca as Joe Biden flew to Ukraine to speak against corruption, a “Kazakhstani oil company and Burisma joined with the Chinese company to announce a transnational financial arrangement.” [dw]In 2015, Hunter Biden organized a dinner at Cafe Milano where Joe Biden dropped by to meet a high-level Burisma official, Vadym Pozharskyi, Beau Biden’s cancer has returned, and he died in May of 2015.Also, in 2015, a Burisma source said, “It costs 5 million to pay one Biden and 5 million to pay another Biden.” [dw]In April of 2019, Hunter Biden dropped off three damaged laptops at a computer repair shop. By October 14, 2020, the New York Post would break the story that was then silenced by Twitter and Facebook and dismissed as “Russian Disinformation.” In October 2020, Tucker Carlson broke the Tony Bobulinski story, which the legacy media and late-night comedy hosts roundly mock. In 2021, NPR’s story on Hunter Biden: “Biden writes that his addictions entered a particularly dark phase after Beau died of brain cancer in 2015. It got to the point where in an intervention in early 2019, his father held him in a bear hug, saying, "I don't know what to do."In 2022, Elon Musk bought Twitter, and the Twitter Files exposed corruption at the FBI, pushing Facebook and Twitter to bury the laptop story and protect Joe Biden in the run-up to the election.Follow the MoneyThe legacy press have become zombie-like in their ongoing Trump trance, refusing to chase what has to be the biggest political story of the decade, maybe of the century. With Nixon, the cover-up was far worse than the crime itself, but in Biden’s case, both the crime and the cover-up are equally bad. Dozens of government officials, experts, activists, and journalists have had Biden’s back and covered for him. Now, as the house of cards they’ve built, the Madoff-like empire of lies finally collapses, all of them will be dragged down with it. When will the reporters figure this out and start aggressively chasing the story? It’s hard to know. They’ve all been mandated to track the Trump indictments, which seem like child’s play by comparison, and Jack Smith is just a few headlines away from looking like a fool. Peter Baker of the New York Times tweeted something that indicates he’s at least asking the right questions:As long as the Justice Department and the propaganda media keep the focus on Trump, they can deflect from high crimes by the Biden family. Yet, this story goes all the way back to the “perfect phone call” that led to the first impeachment. Imagine that. Trump getting impeached for daring to ask about the Bidens’ involvement in Ukraine. We’re witnessing unprecedented corruption at the top, yet, here we are, with only a slim GOP majority in the House aggressively chasing the scandal and a handful of outsider reporters who give a damn.Everyone else shrugs and moves on. But that was exactly how Watergate went down too. It wasn’t a story until it was a story. From The Spectator:We’re in the middle of corruption bigger than our own democracy. We, the people, are not equipped to manage something that involves an actual hot war. Yet, we deserve to know just how deep Biden’s involvement goes with the Ukraine government. Since they tied Trump to Russia, and many Americans side with Ukraine the same way they side with Democrats, no wonder the scales of justice have been so lopsided lately. They have conflated Putin and Trump, yet it’s really Biden and Ukraine that deserves closer scrutiny. Explained here by Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn on America This Week: I left the Democratic Party in 2020 after I watched them rig the election with dark money and well-educated lawyers who could simply rewrite any law that got in their way, not to mention a permanent propaganda press to do their bidding. I already knew they were corrupt and that they were lying to the public about almost everything, from COVID to lockdowns to voting to the protests in the Summer and January 6th, and that meant all of the experts they dragged out to back them up were lying too.Health experts say racism is more important than COVID.Military experts tell Trump not to send in the military during the protests over the Summer.And yes, from Politico:It just tugs at your heart, doesn’t it? That they could lie so brazenly, thinking themselves on the right side of history because they were stopping a once-in-a-generation threat to “Democracy”? But at what cost to the rest of us?How long will they be able to keep the balls spinning? How long can they fool the public? How long will the legacy press turn a blind eye? And worse, how will we ever trust our government, our FBI, our experts ever again?We used to have journalists in the mainstream who cared more about the public’s trust more than they cared about their own image on social media. What hope do we have now except our faith a few good Republicans with a slim majority in the House to bring forth witnesses who will risk everything just to tell the truth. 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

This is a supplement to the piece I posted yesterday that needs clarification. It is all too easy to see both Barbie and Oppenheimer as two sides of the same coin - Barbie as the ultimate “woke” movie and Oppenheimer as a movie that attempts to vindicate or sympathize with Communism.But that would be a mistake. Barbie reflects our society now, a society not unlike what the Communist hunters most feared: ideological capture of our major institutions, our culture, our schools, and our government. I enjoyed Barbie because laughing at a silly movie was fun, but it is important to put it in context of what we’re living through now.As Critical Drinker explains: Barbie is light-hearted and not intended as propaganda, but it makes assumptions about our shared reality that really only has meaning for those on the Left who go along with it. Men are bad, women are good, but gender is not a binary, etc.Oppenheimer is about the America before the war and the America after the war. Everything changed dramatically in the wake of Hitler, Stalin, and the bombs dropping on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which would eventually take us to the Cold War. Oppenheimer was never a Communist. The film Oppenheimer is not about Communism. It isn’t even really a Left vs. Right film. There isn’t much politics involved at all. Some might react to the movie without seeing it, falsely believing it’s Communist propaganda — understandably, because of Hollywood’s reputation of late. But that would be unfair and a misread of what Oppenheimer is about. In the 1930s, amid the Great Depression, Hooverville, and the New Deal, it was a “Great Awokoning” of a kind. Those on the Left who cared about social justice started organizations to help those left behind. FDR’s New Deal, for instance, left behind Black Americans. In the book about Oppenheimer, he was so well-read, compassionate, and worldly that he understood it was an unequal society, just like Orwell or any decent person who lived back then would. That is what drew him, and Orwell, at one point, to Communism. And both would eventually abandon it once they saw where it led.Oppenheimer and Orwell were free thinkers. They valued freedom of the mind more than anything, just as I do. That is why Orwell wrote 1984, and it’s why Oppenheimer’s quote about science is such a good one:Does anyone think today’s Left still believes that? They do not. They don’t believe in freedom of the mind at all. They believe in forced conformity and ideological compliance in art, science, education, and even relationships between people, language, comedy, and everything else they control, which is almost everything.Oppenheimer’s first girlfriend, Jean Tatlock, was a card-carrying member of the Communist Party. Many of Oppenheimer’s friends were also Communists. They continued to try to recruit him, but he always refused to join — he was a singular thinker and did not want to belong to any group or have any allegiances. He also, and I want to be clear here, BUILT THE ATOM BOMB THAT ENDED THE WAR. Anyone who wants to dump on Oppenheimer has to understand his place in history, and if you are applying his suspected ties to Communism as being more important than BUILDING THE ATOM BOMB THAT ENDED THE WAR, then you are no different from the screeching fanatics on the Left.Whether you think he should have built the bomb is beside the point. He helped end World War II, full stop. He was hailed as a hero for doing so. Our government wanted to build what President Ike warned against in his farewell address, the Military Industrial Complex: Oppenheimer did everything he could to prevent the arms race, which put him at odds with the government and the military. Oppenheimer was Jewish, which meant he was already an outsider and felt like one his entire life. But playing such an important part in history — with the caveat that they dropped the bomb on Japan and killed hundreds of thousands of people, of course — mattered to him. He believed he was building the bomb for Hitler, not Japan. The paranoia in our country was understandable. Communist spies were working in our government. There was a united effort to indoctrinate our citizens to their ideology. There was Communist ideology injected into Hollywood screenplays. There was a Communist movement here. Their fear was not unfounded. Many of those involved in the Communist movement in the 1930s would ultimately abandon it once they saw Stalin’s murder of millions and his extreme totalitarian ideology. Most people on the Left did not know the extent of it because then, like now, only useful information filtered through.I grew up thinking Communism was “good,” and would only later understand how that ideology had manifested in the former Soviet Union, in China, in North Korea. Has it ever worked out without becoming a dystopian nightmare? No. That’s why Winston Churchill concluded this about Democracy:Yet, with the mass hysteria after the Rosenbergs were caught and executed, and the shooting in the Capitol, our government wanted to purge not just actual Communists but anyone who ever knew Communists or read a book that might be thought of as having Communist leanings. This is why Arthur Miller wrote the play The Crucible to bring back the Salem Witch trials to illustrate another era when mass hysteria caused us all to look at one another suspiciously, and terrible things followed in its wake. And why Rod Serling wrote such profound dissenting viewpoints in so many of the Twilight Zones epsiodes, like the Monsters are Due on Maple Street:Now, we’re seeing our country overtaken by something similar to Communist ideology AND the persecution of those trying to fight back. It’s a hard pretzel to wrap one’s mind around. It’s easy if you separate the mass hysteria from the ideology. Now, the hysteria is (and I’m writing a longer piece about this for next time in Part Three of America at the Hands of a Cult) rooted in the idea that it’s the “Communist” ideology that must be preserved and anyone trying to dismantle it is a racist, sexist, bigot, transphobe, etc. The two sides have completely reversed themselves. The Left is now where the Right was then. But if you stand on the side of freedom, you will always be on the right side, no matter your ideology. America is founded on freedom, and it’s freedom we must always reach for.What will frustrate me the most about the Left’s reaction to Oppenheimer is that they will see themselves as still on the right side of history because the Republicans were persecuting him and ultimately removed his security clearance. Maybe that means they still see themselves as the good guys still fighting the good fight. But they would be wrong.Even those who are against “cancel culture” and understand fanaticism and dogma have captured all of our major institutions, from culture to education to science to government, will never be able to take one step further to understand that the source of the hysteria is the person that disrupted the utopia: Donald Trump.It’s a little like saying witchcraft is real and there are real witches, just not those you accused of witchcraft. To understand the source of the hysteria — Donald Trump is a racist and a rapist — is to understand the purges and persecutions. This is why I no longer draw that line, why I write so much about Trump and MAGA even at the cost of my own reputation, and why I live my life publicly defying that direct order to divide myself from half the country. I do not buy into it, and that, I think, is our only way out.Until they can do that and humanize Trump and his supporters, they will never fully grasp the moment we’re living through and will still kick the can down the road for years before it all comes home to roost. And it will. It always does. All one has to do is look at their behavior, and our behavior, since Trump was elected to understand what they’re doing now, to Trump, to anyone who isn’t fully on board with their “Woketupia” is still mass hysteria. It’s still a mass delusion. It will still be regarded with the same disdain we now regard the witch hunts in the 1950s. At least in the 1950s, they had the excuse of WWII — Hitler and Stalin. Now, all we have is Trump, MAGA, and the Tea Party as their greatest threat. They believe it’s the “white male patriarchy” and the “white supremacists” trying to remove the “Black and Brown and the LGBTQIA people from power.” And this is because Obama did remake this country into a “woke utopia.” The film Barbie is a great example of just how accepted this ideology is - that regardless of its dramatic changes over the past few years - they can still point to “The Patriarchy” as the ultimate evil. We’ve now become almost numb to watching our fellow Americans, millions of them, treated as enemies of the state, not to mention the unprecedented persecution of Trump — Jack Smith’s indictment as the most recent example, but the raid on mar-a-logo, Russiagate, the two impeachments, and a propaganda media that refuses to report the truth, the casual dehumanization we see against them on social media when the Left holds all of the power is a terrifying moment in history to be living through.It isn’t hard to stand on the right side of history. You just have to recognize what fear and delusion can do to people when they don’t have strong leaders like Eisenhower to guide them through the storm. I hope that clarifies my intent with the piece. 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’s beginning to look a lot like the 1950s. No two films recall that era more than Barbie and Oppenheimer, both opening this weekend. Despite these films being completely different in every way imaginable, they have captivated the internet as a reach back in time to a forgotten world, just as the sci-fi movies of the 1950s reached forward to a world they could never know.There is something about the two of them as Romeo and Juliet on the eve of the apocalypse that has inspired the internet to reimagine a whole different movie called Barbenheimer: 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

Sound of Freedom is sailing toward $100 mil without breaking a sweat. It topped all Hollywood blockbusters, from Disney’s catastrophe, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, to Insidious, to Jennifer Lawrence’s middling sex comedy, No Hard Feelings. Only Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning could top it.For a film that cost just $14.5 million, Sound of Freedom is rounding the bases and humiliating Hollywood by the minute, as if to say - what, like it’s hard?They have one job in Hollywood: tell a great story. Why would they expect people to turn out if they can't even do that? 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

“The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.” ― Thomas JeffersonNovember 8th, 2016. That was the day journalism, as we once knew it died. Gone was objectivity. Gone was a search for the truth, no matter where it led. Gone was holding the powerful to account. Gone was the desire to serve the public’s best interest.It’s been seven years now, and most of us are still in mourning. We can’t forget what journalism used to be. We sit glumly in front of yet another viewing of All the President’s Men, Broadcast News, or The Insider where reporters still cared about the truth, and all we can do is take another drink and cry. 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

Houston, we have a problem.Now that COVID is long gone, and studios are putting out blockbusters again, it almost seems like things are back to “normal.” Yet, movie after movie keeps underperforming, which is a polite way of saying Hollywood movies are bombing at the box office.Why? Well, I don’t have to tell you why. You know why. Everyone knows why except the people tasked with covering Hollywood who are too afraid to say why. You can’t fix a problem you can’t name.In a recent poll, 42% cite movies getting worse as the main reason they no longer pay to see them. Why have they gotten worse? Because Hollywood swapped great storytelling for franchise movies long ago, then they transformed those franchise movies into agenda-delivery devices. Get full access to Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning with Sasha Stone at sashastone.substack.com/subscribe 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 first time I realized I was a proud American was the month I spent in Italy in 1997 with a man who would become the father of my child that month, unbeknownst to either of us. The news was earth-shattering to him because we were worlds apart. We fought and then broke up over the best decision I ever made, to keep my child.He complained about America a lot, and I tolerated it, but then I found myself protective and defensive of my country.“Yeah, well, you sure like our Levis and our Marlboros,” I said. “Not to mention our movies.” I had him there. I knew in that moment that I was a patriot. 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

Part One: The Timeline is here.Are we living through a culture war or a religious war? Can we even tell the difference by now?The Left demonized the religious for nearly all of my life, yet here we are, a country at the hands of a cult, and the intellectuals can’t get us out of it — No proper boundaries to protect children, no guiding principles beyond categorizing us by skin color or gender identity, a godlessness that has left us awash in narcissism and hollowed out morality.Progressivism is an invasive species. It can’t stop on its own. It has to blow through everything.The #MeToo and Times Up movements collapsed. The funds dried up for Black Lives Matter. The box office in Hollywood is like a ghost town. All they have left now is to invade the minds and hearts of children to indoctrinate them into this bizarre new cult that seemingly came out of nowhere (aka Tumblr, Circa 2012). 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 Summer of 2020 was both a revolution and a coup, ultimately resulting in an unshakable pact between the Woke and all major corporate and cultural institutions in this country, up to and including the President of the United States.It isn’t a cult of one personality but of many. It’s a tawdry tale of influencers and algorithms, fast-moving technology and helicopter parents, social media, and Critical Theory. But Joe Biden is no cult leader. He’s more like a George Spahn figure, presenting a more acceptable front while the Manson family did as they pleased behind the scenes.\ 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

My Dad called me “happy Sash,” which was ironic because I was never a happy kid. I was a worried kid, just like I’m a worried adult. My dad would say it often, “she’s a Happy Sash.” I think he wanted me to be happy because then maybe he wouldn’t worry. He was a worrier too.There aren’t many pictures of me as a baby, but here’s one. That’s me in the middle. As you can see, not exactly smiling. 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

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men – not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular” - Edward R. MurrowAny honest person knows that the Federal indictment of Trump is “shockingly weak.” Worse than that, it’s yet another lie pushed on Americans about Trump.Trust me, I know. I used to be one of them. We started lying around 2012, once we realized how powerful Twitter was when it came to manufacturing the narrative we wanted. We rescued Obama’s second term by turning Mitt Romney into something he wasn’t.That was a newfound superpower. We could manufacture the reality we wanted, but the price we would pay over time was to slowly but surely become disconnected from the truth.Lying became like heroin. We needed higher and stronger doses for it to be effective. It couldn’t just be “Dick Cheney is a war criminal” or “W. Bush was the President Select.” It must be Trump is not just an “existential crisis” but an invasion of OUR country. And that meant they would have to go to war. And in the fog of war, anything goes. 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

What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff — I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye. - JD SalingerTaylor Swift’s concerts have become cultural phenomenons, religious-like experiences for so many people worldwide, especially little girls. Happy moms post videos of their flushed, excited faces and near-hysteria at the first sight of their idol.It’s girl world, to be sure. But it’s also become, like so many other things in American culture, LGBTQIA world too, like the upcoming Barbie movie is sure to be. There doesn’t seem to be anywhere left that belongs only to girls. From locker rooms to sports to clothes and makeup, girls are vanishing. Recently, Taylor Swift “got political,” and was no doubt backed into a corner by activists demanding she take a loud public side against what they believe are “harmful” laws hurting their community. Which laws? They don’t say, and you aren’t allowed to ask. They’re all bad, they insist. You’re with us, or you’re against us. There is one law growing in prominence not just here but in other countries too, and that’s to put the breaks on “gender-affirming care” for minors. But if you support gay marriage or you want to be a good ally, you have to go along with that too, you have to be part of a movement that is sterilizing children legally, in the United States in 2023. Most people, including Taylor Swift, have no idea just how bad things have gotten. I too was mostly unaware of what “gender-affirming care” actually means. I also didn’t know how bad things had gotten for women in sports. Denying biological reality seems to be something fundamentalist religions do, not educated liberal societies, yet here we are, insisting trans women are women. They can believe that if they want to but it doesn’t make it true. The media does such an expert job of pandering to activists, pretending like it’s a small percentage of athletes. But the truth is that there is widespread suppression of dissent and a climate of fear that keeps so many from speaking out about how this is not just a tiny movement anymore. It’s the core identity and belief of the Democratic Party. They can’t see this as a social contagion because that news never enters their feedback loop. All they hear, over and over again, is “protect trans kids.” Does protecting them include making them infertile? Does it include surgery that creates a false opening that must be dilated several times a day, or it closes up? Does it mean eliminating their sexual function? For life?Standing up to any of it is hard. We all saw what happened to JK Rowling. The activists are out in force, patrolling reading lists, science labs, school libraries, and all media outlets. Just in writing this, I run the risk of losing everything. But so what? I’ll take my talking points from exiled scientists - the new heretics of our time, like evolutionary biologists Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein:As long as we still have a First Amendment, there is no justifiable reason to stay silent on something so urgent. Controlling speech has been the only reason this madness has gone as far as it has. But thankfully, the voices of dissent are getting louder, and there is strength in numbers. When Twitter, under Elon Musk’s ownership, struck a deal with the Daily Wire to stream What is a Woman on the first day of Pride, they got spooked enough to pull the deal unless they removed two scenes they labeled “hate speech.” One of those scenes included a desperate father who had been charged with child abuse for misgendering his own daughter, as he fought to stop her from life-altering medical intervention.Thankfully, Musk stepped in and put the kibosh on Twitter censorship, even tweeting out the film to his followers. By the end of the weekend, it had been viewed close to 200 million times. Because of Matt Walsh standing up and speaking out, and because Elon Musk bought Twitter, more people know about what goes on behind closed doors at gender clinics, at universities, and in the minds of so many well-meaning politicians. How is it we have arrived in 2023 and the people sticking up for truth, science, and reason are the Conservative Christians?Here are some of the film’s best scenes:The activists have pushed the American public too far. While most everyone was accepting of gay rights and gay marriage, they kept moving the line. Now, elementary schools are making Pride somehow part of their curriculum. But Pride isn’t what it used to be. It’s not the many gay parents I got to know while I was raising my daughter. It’s now expanded like a mushroom cloud to include this unforgivable abuse of minor children under the Orwellian term “medical care.” At this point, I know beyond any doubt that there is no fixing the Left. There is only leaving - leave the schools, leave the therapists, leave the online bubbles, vote them out. Here is Ben Shapiro on the growing backlash:Too many moms now are finding their march toward progress nothing but feet getting stuck in the mud, unable to move, trapped in a movement that seeks to erase them and minimize their power as mothers. Some moms found out all too well, and all too late. “America is Wrong” but Heather was RightDooce, aka Heather Armstrong, came up alongside Ree Drummond, the Pioneer Woman as mommy bloggers with great cameras who recorded their daily struggles raising their kids. But Dooce would never get a cooking show on the Food Network nor sell merch like an air fryer with her personal design on it. But she was a great writer who was funny and brilliant, and there is no doubt she loved her kids. Much to the shock of her longtime readers like me, she killed herself last month after a long battle with depression and a relapse into alcoholism.Dooce had two daughters. The younger daughter was Marlo (pictured above), the absolute girly girl. Dooce described this aspect of Marlo’s personality often. She loved tea parties, pink dresses, makeup, and princess costumes but had emerged in our post-2020 dystopia as a “non-binary they.” When I saw this on Dooce’s Instagram, I immediately thought, oh, there she goes again. Surfing the latest trend, so of course, one of her kids would be trans. She’ll get much mileage out of this online with all of those Good Liberal White Women clucking about, using the correct pronouns, and settling into the only activism they have left. But something wasn’t adding up in my mind. I wasn’t sure why. Something made me think more deeply about Dooce, her kids, and her suicide. Was there a story there? Then I saw this from NBC news:Armstrong’s impulse to put her most private feelings on display occasionally forced her readers to reckon with sentiments they might have found troubling. In a lengthy blog post published in August 2022, most notably, she expressed views some deemed transphobic.The post in which she wrote "Biological gender is scientific" and "we are tossing around these pronouns like goddamn candy" was later removed. But some fans remained disappointed; some said they stopped reading her blog.And even after her suicide, a tweet by Nicole Rosenleaf Ritter (she/her/hers) says: “After almost 20 years, I stopped reading @dooce after her terrible TERF moment last year, but I always hoped she would come out of that so I could delight in her singular voice again. I hope she has found peace, and I ache for her loved ones.”No matter what else Dooce was, no matter how “delightful” her voice, women like Rosenleaf Ritter drew the line at her opinion on trans issues, even when trying to save her daughter’s future. That is why there is no saving the Left. Fanaticism has obliterated objective truth and humanity itself. Heather was, more than anything else, a good mother. She knew both of her daughters well, and had tracked their lives for years on her blog, with loving, hilarious, tender detail. What came flooding back when I unlocked my memories of reading Dooce all of these years — her daughter Marlo was a girly girl!Does the above photo, Princess in the Garden, look like gender dysphoria in any way, shape or form? Or does that look like an adorable girly girl? If there was a textbook definition of what the Gender Cult thinks defines a girl early on, Marlo would be it. I don’t go along with the idea that there are such well-defined gender stereotypes. I know this isn’t true from my own experience and watching my daughter grow up. Neither of us fit what they would call upon to decide what gender we were. But never in that time did any of us even consider, for one second, whether we were girls or not. So what exactly was so offensive as to make so many of Dooce’s readers turn on her? While her post, America is Wrong, has been deleted, it’s still available on the Wayback Machine. It is a long, rambling, desperately sad depression spiral that was a clear sign she was in trouble mentally, emotionally, and physically. In it, she already confesses to having attempted suicide. But just as she heads for the edge of the cliff, with nothing to lose, she lays it out, all of it, the whole ugly truth of what she and every honest mother knows, otherwise known as “Her Terrible TERF moment.” She wrote:For the kids who are still with me — and you’re still with me, right? You can trust me, and I need you to believe that. It will become very clear why. I may be a little scary because no one in your life is allowed to talk to you about gender dysphoria.Those words are super loud and clarion clear to all of you, aren’t they.Gender dysphoria. There. I said it again.Every adult in your life has been told by the government to AFFIRM AFFIRM AFFIRM your gender dysphoria because you are out there co-opting suicidal ideation. You are throwing that phrase around as if you own it, as if you have any f*****g idea what it means.Yes. I am calling you out, too. All of you. And I will calm down a little bit, maybe, because you need to be able to trust someone who loves you. And I love you more than you will ever comprehend because I am you.And she continued:White progressive moms, I am talking to you now. And I have no f*cks to give should any of this hurt your feelings. I feel your pain, too, because when my they/them told me they wanted to change their pronouns I believed they were riding this massive cultural shift in acceptance and inclusion.But I was wrong. America is f*cking wrong.During my recovery process I began to realize that I was not asking the right questions about what we think is a radical new way of celebrating diversity.White progressive moms, are you asking yourselves the right questions? Maybe you should so that I don’t have to do the work for you. But since none of you are doing the work, lean in close and let me give you the answers to the questions you won’t ask.Gender dysphoria is social contagion.Should your theys and thems be afraid to read this or disinterested in the manic rambling spiral of some looney white anorexic on the internet, this part is for you and your kids together. Read this part together calling upon the pain of your childhood that in hindsight might have made you realize that your girls are experiencing normal human sadness. They are teenagers. They were once your precious baby girls.They are experiencing the same sadness you experienced when you were their age.Your children are perfect. They were born perfect. And you love them just the way they are.Let me say it again, and you need to repeat this over and over again to your girls. Every single day for the rest of their lives because WHO KNOWS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE DIE:Your children are perfect. They were born perfect. And you love them just the way they are.This was her Marlo - the textbook “girl” by their own definition of what defines a girl. How does a gender clinician talk their way around this?Heather posted this photo of her own withering body, to emphasize the damage caused by a lifetime of body dysmorphia. You’d think, given that, a little bit of sympathy would be on offer for all of her pain. But no. She has broken the sacred trust of the Ordnung and for that, she must pay.And a Tweet from Fatemeh Khatibloo that says:So. Heather Armstrong (aka as Dooce) has, in one utterly unhinged post:1) Outed herself as a TERF parent to a non-binary child2) Demeaned neurodiverse adults everywhere3) Co-opted the pain and lives of Black women4) Disappeared Black trans women entirelyThis poem on Heather’s Instagram, and the accompanying photo, reveals how hard it was for her and what it would mean to abandon everything she knew about her child. She might have seen Marlo’s transition as her mental health issues visited upon her youngest, despite the therapy, despite the self-help, despite being a “good liberal” and doing everything right. But that isn’t true. Like so many young girls, Marlo has been taken in by a movement that looks a lot like a cult that gives her the acceptance every adolescent needs. Does any of this mean her daughter, the gender clinics, the internet or any external forces are responsible for Heather’s suicide? Absolutely not. That was her decision to end her life, just as it was her decision as one of the mommy bloggers to put that life, and the lives of her children, online. But Heather left her daughter, and countless other girls a precious gift: a trail of breadcrumbs back to the real Marlo. It’s all there. The photos, the smiles, the stories, years and years of history - once a mommy blog, now an archaeological dig, a historical record of what really happened in the life of a young girly girl with curls, dimples, and a lisp. I can’t know what happened with Marlo, whether she was in the process of taking “T” or not, but Dooce’s desperation in America is Wrong is a warning. And that tells me that she was likely worried this was her daughter’s future, defined only by the drugs she would have to take for the rest of her life.Heather was not a TERF, which is a hateful slur to punish and control women to shut them up. She was a worried mother like so many worried mothers going up against such insurmountable forces, from Taylor Swift to the President of the United States.It shouldn’t be surprising that to gain control of our youth, they must first gain control of women by driving a wedge between them and their kids or co-opting them as happy cult members sending their kids into the lion’s den. But if there is one thing everyone knows to fear in the wild, it’s the Mama Bear. We are ferocious when it comes to protecting our young.One such Mama Bear is Megyn Kelly, who has taken on the fight too. Her explanation of why she will no longer use pronouns has recently earned almost 1 million views. It should go without saying that standing up for women and girls doesn’t mean being abusive or cruel to trans people. What they do as adults, how they choose to live, is their business, as long as it doesn’t mean trampling the rights of others to live the way they choose to live, to have fair competition in sports, to feel safe in locker rooms, and to mature fully as biological women, or men, before they decide to alter their bodies permanently. And don’t force us to go along with your version of reality. Don’t force us to say something that isn’t true or force us to use pronouns because no one should be forced to believe anything. That’s fascism. Despite Dooce’s declining mental state and her withering physical form, she had enough Mama Bear to risk even her carefully cultivated reputation to go up against her own audience and perhaps lose everything. That, right there, is true grit. Dooce.com is Heather Armstrong’s legacy. They can call her whatever they want. Her beautiful words will remain.She wrote:Dooce wrote: July 17, 2014 - My Little MermaidMarlo is currently obsessed with mermaids and not because of Disney, no. Leta has been watching an Australian show on Netflix called H2O: Just Add Water with Marlo tucked in on the couch beside her. She got several mermaid Barbies for her birthday and has been requesting that I leave her hair down “like a mermaid” before I send her to camp. Before I left for Southeast Asia I bought a passport cover in faux pink crocodile that she calls my mermaid wallet, and when I returned she claimed it as her own. This is one of those adorable yet at times annoying phases (if I let her she would swim in the bathtub “like a mermaid” for hours and hours) that I’m glad I’m documenting so that I can remember it years from now. And remind her that she used to sleep with my passport cover.Rest in Peace, Heather BArmstrong, AKA Dooce. You were right. America is wrong. But don’t worry, I got you. They’ve awakened the Mama Bears now, and they better run. 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 used to be a true blue loyalist. My grandmother, an FDR Democrat, and lifelong social worker, kept a signed picture of Bill Clinton on her kitchen wall until the day she died. My earliest memory kicks it all the way back to 1988 when I wore a Dukakis button to work and was mocked for it. “Who would vote for du-Taxus,” one woman 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

As I began my drive across this big, beautiful country of ours, I saw real life going on. RVs filled with families hitched to trucks making their way somewhere. Lights turning on at grocery stores. Workers high atop utility poles fixing electrical lines. I drove through cities and pastures, across state lines, and on an interstate conceived and built by President Eisenhower. 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 same network that called Tucker Carlson a “Right-wing extremist” has decided to put Donald Trump back on prime time. As their hypocrisy comes full circle, a pathetic #boycottcnn hashtag bloomed on Twitter. As if.CNN’s ratings were in near-total collapse when Trump threw them a lifeline. By contrast, the Murdochs dumped their best ratings-getter for speaking too many uncomfortable truths.To many on the Left, reality and truth are negotiable. They can fool themselves into believing Carlson was dumped for being a “racist” and “inciting violence.” But Fox News clearly had no idea what they had with Tucker Carlson and now they’ve taken one step closer to their own demise. 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

“Fear not the path of Truth for the lack of People walking on it.” ― Robert F. KennedyA new poll by ABC News/Washington Post shows both Trump and DeSantis beating Biden by 6 points.According to this poll, the public does not believe Biden is fit to serve mentally or physically.@Politics_Polls Has the mental sharpness it takes to serve effectively as president: Joe Biden: Yes 32% No 63% Donald Trump: Yes 54% No 43% .Is in good enough physical health to serve effectively as president: Joe Biden: Yes 33% No 62% Donald Trump: Yes 64% No 28%None of this matters much when you have abandoned the truth and depend on a manufactured reality curated by a partisan public relations department disguised as legacy media. And no one is all that worried. They know the fix is in. 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

“Free societies...are societies in motion, and with motion comes tension, dissent, friction. Free people strike sparks, and those sparks are the best evidence of freedom's existence.” ― Salman RushdieLast week, Democrats Chuck Schumer and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez locked arms with Conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch to silence Tucker Carlson off Fox News.Yes, the same side that once fought against the Black List and for cultural icons like Lenny Bruce and the Red Hot Chili Peppers was now cheering on defacto censorship by an oligarch. What a change from the old Left. 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

[Imaginary Tucker Carlson Monologue for Monday, April 24th, 2023]TUCKER CARLSON: “Good Evening, and welcome to Tucker Carlson Tonight. No doubt you’ve heard of the name Ray Epps. You have heard his name many times on this broadcast in connection with the events of January 6th. You’ve heard me tell you that our government was lying about what happened that day and that they haven’t stopped lying, and that they have an entire media empire helping them lie to you every day.But those compliant patsies are never going to be threatened with legal action, like a defamation case, to shut them up, just like all of the talk about hacked voting machines after 2016 by Jill Stein and many in the media never led to defamation cases like the one Fox just settled with Dominion for $800 million.Oh no. 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

“When you're at the end of your rope, tie a knot and hold on.” ― Theodore RooseveltJoe Biden and the Democrats could learn something from what just happened on Twitter, where a populist revolt is currently underway. The blue check scam was powerful - a minority of elites who have granted themselves outsized influence on the media narrative, the Democratic Party and reality itself.Elon Musk played a game of cat and mouse with the blue checks first by taking them away, then giving them back after they launched a dumb hashtag campaign because the “unwashed masses” could now have access to status on Twitter. It was obscene but telling. 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

beware those who are quick to censorthey are afraid of what they do not knowbeware those who seek constant crowds forthey are nothing alone - Charles BukowskiAn old friend texted me recently to ask how I was handling the “new Twitter.” I had to think for a minute, and then I realized that in the language of the Left, he meant that Elon Musk had bought the site, and now it’s overrun by hate speech and neo-Nazis. Do I still feel safe using it? “Oh,” I texted back. “I’m not in the bubble of the Left anymore, so it doesn’t bother me. I like it. I am a fan of free speech.” There was a long pause, something I’ve become accustomed to when conversing with someone on the Left. They don’t want to argue. They don’t want to go any further. They just want to slowly back away. The idea that Twitter was now overrun by “hate speech” was just an accepted reality because that is how much power the blue-checks on Twitter have to influence the mainstream media narrative, which trickles down everywhere.But when a viral video circulated with a BBC reporter who could not name even one example of hate speech, that didn’t make news in the mainstream because it contradicted the narrative.The story will make the rounds on the Right, but the mainstream narrative has more power, and if a story contradicts the government’s official narrative, it will never make the news. That’s still true with Musk as the new owner, but it’s a step up from the government using Twitter as a filter to silence dissent. That Twitter users had enough power and status to decide reality is what made Twitter dangerous. This has been true since the beginning, as it slowly became the most powerful propaganda tool the Democrats had. Once Musk took over Twitter and decided the blue checks were granting status to people deemed “special” but not to others, he set about messing with their own self-importance by taking away their privilege of the verification badge, giving users who pay a monthly fee the opportunity to have a blue check instead.What is brilliant about this, and maybe most people don’t get it, is that Musk understood the collective power of the blue-check army and now he’s punctured it, dismantled it, like stealing all of their horses in the middle of the night, leaving them nowhere to go to fight the next battle. But they aren’t used to anyone challenging their power. Musk has been feeling the impact of their collective wrath ever since. HOW DARE YOU! “I’m not paying for that,” they proclaimed. But oh, how delicious it will be to see some of these once-mighty prominent legacy blue-checks naked without that little verification symbol. Supposedly that’s somehow ruined Twitter. What it’s done is democratize it. It might be more chaotic now, maybe even slightly more unpredictable, but that makes it more thrilling, not less. What “ruined” Twitter was the #resistance, transforming the platform into one massive propaganda outlet for The Democrats in an imaginary battle with Donald Trump that began in 2017, when the company tweaked its algorithm to push more engaged tweets to the top of everyone’s feed.Even if they have the choice to see “latest Tweets,” most prefer to see what tweets are driving the narratives in a given day so they can ride the wave of outrage, whatever is trending, whatever person is “it,” who can be dunked on, humiliated or bullied into an apology or chased off the platform entirely.The bullying on Twitter had become a problem, not just for users, but corporations and institutions that were suddenly worried about being hurled into the public arena for shaming. That is Twitter’s curse and power, which is why Musk never needed to sweat competition like Substack Notes. As someone who has been swarmed and bullied more times than I can count, I already feel a little more free using Twitter now. They’re right that it has changed. But Musk didn’t ruin it. He rescued it.Elon’s StumbleElon Musk has made, by my calculations, only one major mistake since he took over Twitter, and that was assuming journalist Matt Taibbi owed him something after the two broke the all-important Twitter Files story. He thought Taibbi should move his Substack over to Twitter to help Twitter profit. But this vindicated the hysterical rantings by people like Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Mehdi Hasan. They accused Taibbi and others of being bought and paid for by “the Richest Man in the World.” Now they had proof that was the intention all along.Taibbi, however, was never working for Musk, and if he has any loyalty, it’s to Substack, where he’s built his substantial following of readers like me who rely on him to tell us the truth. It’s also his main source of income. Musk isn’t paying him. It wasn’t so much what he did to Taibbi that was the mistake. It was more about giving up a powerful Chess piece he had with the alliance of journalists investigating the Twitter files. Despite how the legacy media has been trying to downplay it, it is the story of the year, maybe of the decade. This was not a fight worthy of Musk and the power he now holds with Twitter.And frankly, Taibbi didn’t deserve it. He put his reputation on the line, and was interrogated by Democrats in Congress who treated him like a traitor to his own country. He had to sit there as Mehdi Hasan performed some odd “gotcha” theater just so he could send out Tweets, anticipating the pats on the heads from the smug and self-righteous brigade. GET HIM, they collectively hissed. How dare he try to embarrass the Security State! To hold the powerful to account! How dare he do journalism!Taibbi and Musk were on the same side, and fracturing that relationship, and devaluing the Twitter files, is too big of a win for the blue-checks. Substack Notes was never going to be a threat to Twitter. No other social media site has the power to humiliate influential, high-status people. It is the designated arena for public shaming, and it’s the only one. Unfortunately for the left, they don’t realize they were largely responsible for making Twitter that powerful. And now it’s backfiring on them. Musk should have Taibbi back to work on the Twitter Files to keep up the pressure and drive heat from Substack back to Twitter to form a powerful resistance against the dominant groupthink.Musk is under enormous pressure now, with the legacy media attacking him daily, not to mention our government seeking his destruction. To the Biden administration, he barely exists except as a threat, not with his SpaceX program or Tesla. That does illustrate perfectly what the modern Democrats value, and it’s not success or hard work or innovation. Regardless, Musk’s power in working with Taibbi and others on the Twitter files, whether they continued or not, was making them sweat. Otherwise, there would not have been such a massive effort to pretend they were meaningless.What a sad state of affairs when people like David Frum, your classic blue-check, marinate in their own smug satisfaction. Their fame, such as it is, being a big fish in a tiny pond, hopelessly addicted to the hearts and the RTs. Imagine being a guy who did matter once, now having to turn to a flattering reflecting pool to feel a tiny flicker of importance.Their job was supposed to be to chase the story as Taibbi did. Instead, their jobs became chasing the reporters. Elon’s Warning 2016 was the first time Mark Zuckerberg put his powerful new toy, Facebook, to the test, and it helped Trump win. But by 2020, Zuckerberg, probably because he wanted to absolve himself of the guilt of 2016, “helped” the Democrats with not just a $400 million cash infusion but also that same technology to “find” the right voters not to suppress their vote but to collect their ballots.If Zuckerberg has data on almost 300 million Americans, imagine how easy it would be to find those exact voters to pull in wins in key swing states where the “enthusiasm gap” would have led to a second term for Trump. While no one can ever prove this is what they did, Mollie Hemingway’s book on the 2020 election details just how deep Zuckerberg’s involvement went. Now, factor in the power of AI. Democrats are ready to use influencers already whoring themselves out to big brands to convince a generation raised on brands to imprint on the Democratic Party. It won’t be that hard to use AI to ensure the right news gets to the right people, and the bad news stays out. They don’t even need the blue-check army anymore with AIs shaping the media narrative. The Democrats seem to only want power now. They’ve sacrificed everything they used to value, from objecting to dark money and Citizens United, to aligning themselves with the Deep State, defending the FBI and the CIA. They’re certainly not the Democratic Party I grew up supporting.The War of the WordsSo much of the reaction to Trump had to do with what the Left had become before 2016. If political correctness was already a problem in the 90s, by 2015 it had become almost a crisis in America. Everyone noticed it.From 2015:Even before that, back in 2011, this video talked about the rise of political correctness, tying it to the Frankfurt School and its influence on colleges with Critical Theory. Watching this video is shocking because it could have been made today. What was confined to college campuses has now become our entire country at the hands of the Democrats and their powerful alliance with cultural and corporate America.The Left colonized the internet first, and especially the social media empires. Twitter was co-opted by Barack Obama’s campaign back in 2008 as a revolutionary way to mobilize young people. From then on, the Democrats, or left-leaning, college-educated eggheads, dominated Twitter. Trump was the first major threat to that power as Trump used Twitter in a way no other Republican or even any politician had. He used it to go over the heads of the media and get his message to the people directly. The more he tweeted, the bigger his follower count grew.Trump was the existential crisis to the Left not because of anything he did but because of what he said. That he was overtly offensive at a time of extreme word policing was his superpower, and the thing about him that sent much of the Left cascading into waves of hysteria for the four years he was in power.But that was always what Trump represented. He was the guy who shocked people with what he said because it was brutally honest. That was true in the 80s and true on his show. Anyone who was a fan of The Apprentice often took what Trump said with a grain of salt. But the eggheads on Twitter, the intellectuals, weren’t watching The Apprentice so they took what he said literally. Here is a clip from The Apprentice and 1980s Trump.So much of the battle for Twitter is simply about words. Words control ideology, which ultimately controls the people. Musk’s objection to how Twitter was being managed was that they had the power to decide what words were allowed, what jokes were allowed, and what news stories were allowed, and that, he rightly believed, was not only destroying Twitter but it was destroying our country too and everything we value.I’ve heard people say that Elon Musk cares what people think of him, as though they’ve cast him as a supervillain with no feelings or compassion. Why wouldn’t he care? Not many people can take that level of incoming and wipe the slate clean the next day. But we need him. We need more people like him to thrust a bold middle finger at the information monopoly the Left controls. We need more people with courage to carve a path out of this crippling sea of misery we’ve created. We need role models who are resilient and who send the message to the young that words are just words. We can survive them. Musk is still a superhero for the modern age, smart enough to notice what threatens our civilization, brave enough to speak up about it, and rich enough to buy Twitter for 44 billion. The tweets by the blue-checks that they seem to think matter are just cyber dust - a layer of data to trap them in time as people who were caught up in their own unearned importance before the whole thing came collapsing down, before Twitter and this country were wrestled free from their grasp. 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 a country that doesn't discriminate between fame and infamy, the latter presents itself as plainly more achievable.” ― Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About KevinAudrey/Aiden and Riley GainesIf we had strong leaders in the White House, which we do not, they would have stepped up to a podium somewhere after the mass shooting at Christian Covenant and the attack on champion swimmer, Riley Gaines by trans activists and tried to lower the temperature.Instead, just days after the shooting, the President took the opportunity to blame Republicans, especially those in Tennessee still reeling from a shocking massacre at a Christian school. 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

“Weimar Germany conjures up fears of what can happen when there is simply no societal consensus on how to move forward and every minor difference becomes a cause of existential political battles,” ― Eric D. Weitz, Weimar Germany: Promise and TragedyJust two years into the Joe Biden presidency, it has become abundantly clear that the only people actively trying to destroy this country are the Democrats and the cult that has overtaken them.How much worse could it possibly get than a former President of the United States indicted in the city that made him on a case that no one believes in good faith was legitimate? No government that believes in America would ever do such a thing to rip this country apart, especially after COVID, after the Summer of 2020, and after January 6th. 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

“Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-DickIn 2016, Donald Trump became the 45th President of the United States. Like all presidents, he was elected to do the best job he could in service of the American people. Our elections are meant to tell our government what we want. But somewhere along the way, we’ve lost touch with what this country was designed to be - a Constitutional Republic.We don’t go through the trouble of elections to have them systematically undermined because the administrative state, and an elite ruling class, don’t like dealing with someone they can’t control. We don’t spend four years throwing everything at our elected leaders to see what sticks. We don’t send our Department of Justice to raid the home of a former president to “find something.” We don’t punish our elected leaders just for the crime of winning.We don’t indict them on ticky-tack procedural matters because the person now in the White House is too weak and too unpopular to win a second term. In this country, it’s supposed to be a fair contest between those who win the primary elections. Putting that heavy of a thumb on the scale is corruption on a level we’ve never seen, at least not in my lifetime. 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

Because the truth is, it was never really about Trump. It was about us. What we were before Trump, what we did while Trump was in office, and what we’re doing now. Sooner or later, the clock is going to run out on this madness. Democrats can’t live with or without Trump. 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 kind of amazing that there was ever a time in American life when we pledged ourselves one Nation under God, isn’t it? It seems we are no longer that and have become fractured into many different nations, not even just two. But it does seem very clear that a new religion is upon us. 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

Utopias by their nature have only two options if they’re to survive. They must lean into totalitarianism or collapse. We’re now at the moment when the Democrats, with complete control of the legacy media, nearly all major institutions of power — including those run by the government — are slowly adopting totalitarian practices to shut out speech they don’t like. 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

How is it possible that the highest-grossing, best-reviewed film of the year - by critics and audiences - that was credited with saving the film industry amid near-total collapse would not be winning Best Picture at the Oscars on Sunday, March 12th? 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

President Biden is anxious to take his rightful place in history as a real president, not an establishment stooge who kicked around congress for decades, or a guy who has to be told where to stand, what to say, where to 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

“The modus operandi of every cult is to convince you there's something wrong with you and only they can fix it.” ― Marty RubinI grew up in the era of cults. My siblings and I attended a small elementary school in Topanga Canyon back in the 1970s, when it was still a wilderness of hippies and health food stores - not a safe haven for the 1%.We were heathens, without a doubt, raised like weeds by a former beauty queen who had dropped out of high school at 16 to have my older brother. She met my father at a nightclub called Pandora’s Box in Hollywood. If you look carefully you can see it in the background of Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. 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 the podcast version. If you’d like to read the text version, that is here. I usually post them together but this time I didn’t. Which do you prefer? 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 gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. It is a tedious job to build them up again; they never quite shine. And the child's world is never quite whole again. It is an aching kind of growing.” John Steinbeck, East of EdenA few days ago, the most powerful, high-profile news media in this country were thoroughly humiliated by Jeff Gerth at the Columbia Journalism Review with a four-part series called The Press Versus The President.Fair-minded and stubbornly objective, this awards-worthy piece of investigative journalism, begins the hard work of sifting through the past seven years to try to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. 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 hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccesful rebellions indeed generally establish the incroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions, as not to discourage them too much. It is a medecine necessary for the sound health of government.” ― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas JeffersonThe Great UprisingI grew up as a child of the 1970s where I watched the rise and fall of the counterculture protest movements that included everything from Kent State to Patti Hearst, the bombing of the Capitol, the Black Panthers, Gloria Steinem, and eventually, the Manson murders would douse the flames and drive the silent majority far, far away from the Left. I also remember Nixon’s landslide win in 1972 and how hopeless that made everyone on the Left feel, like all of it had been for nothing. 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

2016 was meant to be the crowning achievement for the Hillary Democrat. Those who stuck by her in her in 2008, during the Benghazi hearings, the Monica Lewinsky scandal, the non-stop criticisms of her during Bill Clinton’s presidency, and the early feminists who followed her leadership out of college and into politics that would eventually make the impossible possible: The first woman President of the United States.I was one of them. The more research I did on the life and career of Hillary Rodham Clinton the more I came to respect and admire her. I made videos, I fought hard on Twitter with Trump supporters and “Bernie bros.” I wrote essay after essay on Medium to boost enthusiasm. 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

Do you remember good movies? I mean, really good movies you had to see in the movie theater the second they came out? Movies so good you would sacrifice your grocery money to see? Do you remember lining up for hours on opening day?I do. I didn’t just watch movies, I lived in them. I grew up on top of a mountain in Topanga Canyon, back when it wasn’t a gated community for the 1% but was instead the land of the hippies - the Manson Family and the Rolling Stones. 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

Two years ago, I started this Substack to find a path out of the madness that had overtaken the Left. The madness was everywhere. People were getting fired right and left, mostly left, for saying words they weren’t supposed to say. There was a sudden climate of fear that was crippling nearly every institution of power, most especially the one I work in: Hollywood.The fear was that there were racists and rapists everywhere and in everything. Sex and race became two major mass hysteria events in this country after the election of Donald Trump in 2016. To Trump supporters, his win was nothing less than a miracle. A smart strategy involving a few key swing states to bring in a slim Electoral College victory, mainly with the help of Facebook’s micro-targeting. 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

“And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” ― George Orwell, 1984Jamie Raskin wants to tell you a story. It’s one that has tumbled around in his brain for years now. It’s also one he hopes to make his name on. Jamie Raskin: hero at long last.All he had to do was stand before the American people and pretend that President Trump planned an “insurrection,” an overthrow of the United States government. How hard could that be? He’d already tried to impeach him twice, along with Democrats and a handful of Never-Trumpers. All of this worked so beautifully in the midterms to scare voters away from MAGA. Let’s keep it going, they think. 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 the new owner of Twitter, Elon Musk is, to quote, Ben Shapiro, moving fast and breaking things. He could see a big problem, as anyone outside the media feedback loop can. Twitter had become not just the propaganda arm of the State, but was being used as a filter to dodge the First Amendment, to police thought and speech.They didn’t do it directly or overtly. They did it alongside enthusiastic “good soldiers” for the State. The users - the blue-checks - and the employees saw themselves as the #resistance. To them, banning Trump was spiking their flag at Iwo Jima. They won, or so they thought. 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

Old Journalism Ethics | Rivers“We're under a lot of pressure, you know, and you put us there. Nothing's riding on this except the, uh, first amendment to the Constitution, freedom of the press, and maybe the future of the country.” - Ben Bradlee, All the President’s MenThe break-in at the Democratic National Committee was small-time, ticky-tacky surveillance to get dirt on Nixon’s opponents for his upcoming re-election bid. When the burglars were caught, but for the efforts of the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, Nixon would have served his second term after his landslide win in 1972. But that was back when we had the kind of journalists who were not afraid to hold the powerful to account. How the mighty have fallen. 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

When Jack Dorsey invented a chat-like social media platform with character limitations, he probably had no idea it would one day become the most powerful propaganda tool this country, this world, has ever known.The danger was always that any Big Tech platform, let alone three of the biggest, would one day be under the control of one political party. In 2020, the combination of lockdowns and violent protests of the Summer and January 6th led to the mass formation of hundreds of millions of Americans under the thumb of what Mattias Desmet calls technocratic totalitarianism.Why is Twitter so important? To quote the movie Jaws, when Quint tells Brody to toss more chum in the water to attract the shark, Brody says, “Let Hooper take a turn.” Quint says back, “Hooper drives the boat, Chief.”Twitter drives the boat, Chief. 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

“A Native American elder once described his own inner struggles in this manner: Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time. When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, The one I feed the most.” ― George Bernard Shaw28 years ago, I escaped real life for life online.I was desperate, you see, to find an escape. I had made such a mess of things when I found the internet in 1994. It was, for me, a huge relief. So much of what I struggled with in real life vanished online. You could be anyone, but more importantly, you could say anything you wanted to say.This turned out to be a lifesaver for me. I just wanted to write and write and write without my physical self being part of the equation. All people knew about me was the words I chose to type on a screen. It was such a thrill at first. “You’ve got mail!” AOL said. How to put into words what that felt like. Now I figure it must have been good old-fashioned dopamine hitting my brain. 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

Trump was nearing the end of a campaign speech for Marco Rubio in Miami, days before the midterms when it started to rain. The MAGA faithful used their Trump signs as makeshift umbrellas. Trump’s mic cut in and out. He could barely read the teleprompter.“Is everybody having a good time?” he shouted to the crowd. The answer came roaring back. They were having the time of their lives, even as thunder cracked in the sky and the rain came down in sheets. Covering Trump’s head was the red MAGA cap. Trump did something he doesn’t often do. He took it off, smiled at the excited crowd, wiped his brow, put the hat back on, and continued his speech.“I’m not leaving,” he said—the crowd roared. Maybe it was the rain, thunder, or something else but I couldn’t help but think I’d never seen anything like this. The music he’d chosen to close out his speeches might not always work, but this time, it not only worked, it was some kind of crazy magic. Is anyone else seeing this, I wondered? I have watched all of Trump’s speeches since 2020 because I want to know what is true about what’s said about him. Most of the time it isn’t true. It’s the usual delusion meant to drive fear and panic. The music served to raise the drama of the moment. His face soaking wet, his voice strong, I just kept thinking, how is it possible anyone who has gone through what he’s gone through still has the energy in him, the fight in him, to stand there, rain be damned. No one there had any idea it was about to come crashing down. They didn’t know that the midterms would bring disappointment. They didn’t know MAGA wouldn’t be delivering that red wave as promised.They didn’t know the GOP, Rupert Murdoch, Ben Shapiro, and other high-profile Conservatives would turn on Trump and MAGA or that Mitch McConnell would close the loop by saying “bad quality” candidates frightened Americans.They knew none of this as the music played, the rain came down, and Trump moved them in ways no other politician ever had, at least not in decades. It was captured in time by the only streaming channel that plays all of Trump’s speeches, Right Side Broadcasting, and maybe a personal cell phone video. One thing I knew for sure while listening to it, the mainstream media would never report on it. They would never tell the story of that moment in Miami when the rain came down, and Trump stayed.Guess Who’s Back?Last night Elon Musk reinstated Trump’s account after two years without Trump’s tweets. As you can imagine, chaos ensued. Powerful people don’t like things taken away from them, and there has never been a more powerful propaganda tool for the establishment Left than Twitter. It belongs to them, they believed, just like they believe America belongs to them. But more than that, they count on Twitter to be the official story of the Biden Administration. A hive mind of Press Secretaries to make sure everyone is on point. They can’t afford dissent. They don’t mind that there are alternative sites like Substack or Rumble. They know the media only validates Twitter. Musk has taken the place of Trump because nature abhors a vacuum. There is a fundamental need for people to tell the whole truth and to hear the whole truth, no matter how inconvenient it is. Musk’s takeover of Twitter has The Machine quaking in its boots. How long before they go after him the way they went after Trump? Probably not long. Matt Taibbi has a great piece on this about witch burnings. Yeonmi Park escaped the fascist regime of North Korea only to come to America and find censorship and suppression of free speech. She is cheering Musk’s action to reinstate Trump:Trump’s Twitter is important for history. He was our president for four years and used Twitter as his main communication outlet for much of that time. That is also our history. It belongs to the people, even if Twitter is a “private” company. The government co-opted it, creating a filter to violate the First Amendment. Now, they have to contend with Trump’s last tweets, which might be tough to help them prove he incited violence on January 6th:Elon Musk is just getting a taste of the Washington machine, the same machine that has been trying to crush Trump and the MAGA movement for six long years. For a minute there it looked like they were going to lose. The scrappy Davids were going to take on the Goliath and win. They were going to win without the big money donors, without the mainstream media but just by hot-footing it door to door, talking to people the establishment government has long since abandoned. The Long ConRegardless of what you think of Trump, there is no good explanation for the ongoing persecution to “find something” to remove him from power, discredit and destroy his presidency because the Administrative State wanted him gone. Trump, or Elon Musk, isn’t as pure and innocent as Jefferson Smith in Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. But this film, more than just about anything ever written, goes right to heart of the matter. Released in 1939, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington was loosely based on the Teapot Dome scandal of the Warren G. Harding administration, which held its place in history as the biggest scandal in Washington before Watergate.Jefferson Smith is appointed to the Senate after the sudden death of one of their cronies. When he first comes to DC, he gasps at the Capitol Dome, the Lincoln Memorial, and the weight of our Nation’s founding. He believes in all of it. He’s a patriot and an idealist.When the press mocks him for being nothing but a superficial “yes” vote and a puppet of the Senate, he tells Senator Paine, his mentor, that he’d like to write a bill for a Boys’ Camp in the wilderness, so kids from all different backgrounds can experience the wonders of the natural world, to spend their lives “like they just came out of a tunnel.”But when his bill threatens a network of corrupt politicians doing the bidding of a powerful oligarch named Jim Taylor, he’s warned to step away, say nothing, and become just as corrupt as the Paynes and the Taylors. But Smith, like Trump, is an outsider. He can look at the game with fresh eyes. He defies their demands and tries to expose the graft on the Senate floor. Senator Paine then accuses him of trying to push through a financial scheme for his own profit. None of it is true, of course, but the mechanisms in place are almost exactly what happened to Trump in his four years in power and even the two years after.They hold a Senate hearing to expel Smith from Congress with fake witnesses, fake handwriting experts, and a massive media machine to back it all up. In other words, a show trial like the January 6th show trial. They work a massive PR campaign to demonize and discredit Smith, whose only crime was threatening their hold on power.When Saunders sees that Smith has packed his bags and is leaving town with a broken heart, she encourages him to fight back. And with that, we have the now infamous all-night filibuster where Jefferson Smith, against all odds, attempts to clear his name.But the “Taylor Machine” has the media and corrupt politicians in his pocket, and Smith is no match for any of it. Saunders even tries to enlist a youth army to print their version of what Smith is saying, but Taylor sends out his goons to silence them by destroying their bicycles, hosing down their parades, and derailing their efforts to get the word out.The result is a wrecked Jefferson Smith, who can barely stand by the end of it. But it’s when Senator Paine brings in boxes of telegrams from his hometown, proving even those who know him now despise him, that he reminds Senator Payne he once believed lost causes were the only causes worth fighting for. And with that, he finally exhausts himself and collapses on the Senate floor. Wracked with guilt, Paine attempts suicide before hurling himself into the chamber and confessing everything, vindicating Smith.But this isn’t a Frank Capra movie. No one is going to confess to what they’ve done. They’re going to play out the long con to the bitter end until Trump is destroyed and the grassroots movement of working-class voters is dead. That’s what they want for this country to be like Twitter used to be. All theirs.Trump and MAGA were no match for The Machine. Trump thought he could beat them, that he could give a press conference every day during COVID, and they would appreciate someone who devoted that much time to getting us through a crisis. Instead, they mocked him, cherry-picked everything he said, and painted him as an existential threat. We needed our president during that time of crisis. We needed a country to come together. But to The Machine, their power was more important than anything else, even managing a global pandemic.Nothing would compare to what they did in 2020 and with January 6th. We’re not just talking about Trump being a target. His MAGA faithful are now being called “domestic extremists” and treated like enemies of the state. The bogus “seditious conspiracy” charges were like a slap in the face to people who carry around pocket Constitutions and stand in awe of the flag.Now we know January 6th was an FBI operation because of course, it was. How could it not be? From Crossfire Hurricane to the Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping, it was clear they had an objective to bring down Trump by any means necessary. They were willing, and are still willing, to weaponize the DOJ or any major government institution to stop Trump and MAGA. None of this means that Trump can win in 2024. And even if he could, he would only have four years, and they would sabotage him every step of the way during that time. If you want to blow them out of power, pick someone like Ron DeSantis, he will at least have the backing of the establishment Right and all of their deep-pocketed power players that Trump didn’t have. Their long con worked. They did well in the midterms. Biden’s ugly speeches made him the first president in my lifetime to demonize his own citizens. If you’re looking for fascism, look no further than that. Far from being punished for it, he was rewarded for it, so too were the Democrats for their immoral double standard of funding the same candidates they called enemies of the Republic.The truth doesn’t matter. That’s why they must keep control of Twitter. They want their negotiated truth to be the official story. They want to tell the history of Trump and the movement he inspired to make themselves the good guys. There might have been a moment way back when they actually were the good guys. Their corruption, however, now overshadows any good they ever did. Trump took his place behind the podium at Mar-a-Lago and did the only thing he could do by now to clear his name. He can either let them write his legacy or fight to take it back. He announced he was running for the third time. Of course, they laughed at him. Of course, their machine whirred to life as Merrick Garland announced a Special Prosecutor. Now they have to decide if they will finish the job, their long con, or if they will allow Trump to run again knowing that their machine can beat him.I spent time in Trump World because I knew I wasn’t getting the truth about him or his supporters anymore. I know what is true and what isn’t. I have been moved by this scrappy group of outsiders who keep fighting no matter the cost. I don’t know how they endure, considering they’re treated like human garbage, shut out of American culture, mocked, and ridiculed by comedians. I would be lying if I said my heart didn’t sink when they lost as badly as they did in the midterms. It wasn’t just that I felt bad for them; it’s that I’ve seen Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Frank Capra believed in the America I believe in. The storytellers in Hollywood used to believe it too. They don’t anymore. Emily Dickinson said hope is the thing with feathers. It’s so fragile that it can take flight anytime, leaving you with nothing. I don’t want to live in an America where the Paynes and the Taylors win. I want hope to be alive, for Smith to win. I wanted to see all of MAGA’s efforts were not for nothing. I don’t want to see them to lose hope. What can I say, I guess I believe that lost causes are the only causes worth fighting for. 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

“Heroes may not be braver than anyone else. They're just braver 5 minutes longer.” ― Ronald ReaganThe 2022 midterms have emerged as a Rorschach test—anger, disappointment, finger-pointing on the Right, and typical self-satisfied smugness on the Left. There are lessons to learn on both sides.Lingering in the back of everyone’s mind is how a president with such low approval ratings, high inflation, discontent among the electorate, high crime, and failures across the board escaped a midterm wipeout.The answer is easy. Biden wasn’t blamed because Biden wasn’t really there. 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 had a smile on his face the morning after the midterms. That’s the look of someone who just escaped total disaster. At least for now.The lesson they were all supposed to get with one decisive red wave never arrived. That is bad news for them. Or maybe it’s bad news for all of us who are much more worried about America at the hands of the Democrats.For weeks, they parroted the mantra, again and again, politicians and media pundits, not to mention the blue-check army on Twitter, “Election Deniers,” were coming for your Democracy. We would never have a fair election again. President Obama heralded a new Gestapo who would kill people on the streets, jail journalists, and turn America into an authoritarian state.All I could think was, we’re already halfway there, pal. It isn’t the Republicans we have to fear. They are traditionalists. It’s the Democrats who have amassed such an extraordinary amount of power by now and want to tear the country down to the studs and reimagine it as a woke utopia; even “Election Deniers” sounds like a better plan than keeping them in office. 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

[Apologies for the audio - it was raining pretty hard here and the power kept cutting off]“We had to do something [in Bush v. Gore], because countries were laughing at us. France was laughing at us.” ― Antonin Scalia, The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme CourtI grew up in the 1980s thinking my vote didn’t matter. I became an “election denier” because that is what the Democrats have always been. I grew up with cynicism and mild hatred of the government. My childhood was spent living through the last time the Democrats took a major fall, from Richard Nixon to Ronald Reagan with Watergate and Carter in between. Democrats felt hopeless until Bill Clinton came along in 1992. He was the first Democrat to serve two full terms since FDR. But by 1999, the cynicism was back because Bill Clinton had been impeached, the party humiliated, and our last best hope hung on the Vice President, Al Gore, the man with no charisma to speak of. I was one of those angry Democrats in 2000 who watched the Supreme Court stop counting ballots that handed the presidency to George W. Bush. We weren’t thinking about the reasons Gore might have lost, like gun control. We blamed the Court, and we blamed Florida. We blamed Ralph Nader. We blamed everyone but ourselves. The Supreme Court was corrupt, we believed. So were all of those operatives in the GOP that rigged the election for Bush. A rigged election would result in two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. If only the Supreme Court hadn’t “selected” Bush. I remember Oliver Stone’s film Nixon, his best, which suggested that Nixon had JFK assassinated so he could one day rise. And rise he did. To Stone, though, that caused the Vietnam war and all the ravages that followed. That is some election-denying. Nixon himself had believed that the 1960 election had been rigged. After all, he and Trump are still the only two people to have won Florida, Iowa, and Ohio and lost the presidency. Nixon chose not to object to any of it. Trump chose to fight. Back then, the Left felt Nixon’s win was so destructive that it ended everything for them: their optimism and their counter-culture revolution. Warren Beatty made the film Shampoo to suggest that they were all involved in silly narcissistic games before Nixon won and the world ended. They all blamed Nixon for Vietnam. But they also resented him for ending the 1960s for good. Coming out of the 2000 election, our main complaint was that Gore gave in too easily and quickly. Many of us thought he should have dug his heels in and fought harder and that we all should have been more insistent in objecting. That’s another word for protests. We didn’t because we were still burned from the landslide loss in 1972, blamed on the the Left’s anti-war protests.Some protests started around that time, like against the World Trade Organization. But it wouldn’t be until the $700 billion bailout that a whole protest movement would rise, Occupy Wall Street on the Left, and eventually, the Tea Party would form on the Right. Something was happening that would only grow as more people got online and were more connected than ever before. By 2016, we were again in a protesting state of mind, and we believed America belonged not to Trump, not to his supporters. But to us. Anyone who pretends like we accepted Trump’s win is lying. There has never been an elected president with that many forces working together to take him out of office. Never. There have never been worldwide protests against the election of a US president. There have never been the kinds of violent protests we had in this country over an elected president. We didn’t hold “not my president” rallies and pay investigators to see if Russians had hacked voting machines. We never had nervous breakdowns, we never had so many marches. Clearly, we all viewed Trump’s win as an invasion of a foreign entity, or a virus, that had to be immediately purged. We did not accept him as the legitimate president. We were ELECTION DENIERS. From The Hill:“According to data from the latest Harvard-Harris poll provided exclusively to The Hill, 68 percent of voters said Democrats have not accepted that Trump won fairly and is a legitimate president.That figure includes 69 percent of Republicans, 69 percent of independents and 65 percent of Democrats.”One of the reasons Kari Lake is such a strong candidate is that she comes from the media and has no problem calling them out on their hypocrisy and their double standard:It was much bigger than a violent riot at the Capitol and lawsuits by Trump and his supporters who insisted there was “widespread fraud.” No, the FBI was involved when the establishment got in on it. The media was on board. And by 2020, they were willing to crash the economy to ensure Trump was brought down.We were now not only of a protesting state of mind, but of a revolutionary state of mind. We called Trump an “existential threat” because waves of mass hysteria consumed us for the four years he was in office. The Me Too movement and, eventually, the Black Lives Matter movement would lead to witch hunts, and mass firings, and a climate of fear. We all believed that all we had to do was get rid of Trump, and everything would return to normal. If you take the largest protests in American history under the four years Trump was in power and then think about the Summer of 2020, you can see how the Left of this country was ready for Civil War just to take Trump out of power.The weird thing was that they could not paint the Trump supporters as equally violent. The Proud Boys showed up; there were sometimes brawls. They would be armed and forming a kind of citizen army to protect property, like Kyle Rittenhouse. But they weren’t violent the same way the Left had become. They weren’t burning buildings or assaulting police officers.In fact, if anything, they prided themselves on being non-violent. That is why January 6th was so out of character for them. Even a large protest in DC that day was out of character for them. It meant a lot to have their collective voices heard.I’d been, out of curiosity, following the Stop the Steal movement on The War Room podcast. I knew what they were planning to do. They wanted to have Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz debate how the election laws had been suddenly altered, using COVID as the pretext. Trump supporters were watching his speech, not planning to bust into the Capitol and stop the count, certainly not to overthrow the government. That is its own “big lie,” and it’s ugly. These are patriots who love their country. The last thing they would want to do is overthrow or destroy it. Whatever was going on with the Oathkeepers, and the breach had nothing directly to do with Trump and seemed to be driven by someone else’s plan. The only explanation was that the FBI had to have been involved. When you read up on the Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping story in Esquire, where there were more informants than kidnappers, it’s clear that this FBI was prepared to go the distance to do what they could to meddle in the 2020 election. That story will not be told for a while, but if the GOP takes the House, maybe it will. For four years, Trump supporters watched their president attacked every day, with everything he said cherry-picked and thrown into the media churn to drive the news cycle. They watched them mock Kellyanne Conway’s age and Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ makeup, the size of Trump’s hands, his hair, his family. Since Trump was never accepted as the legitimate president, no fashion magazine would have Melania Trump on the cover. To do so was to met with vicious attacks on Twitter. The idea that the President deserved respect from the country was abandoned. Democracy? What Democracy? We’re in charge. Get out of our country. Get out of our White House. The one thing they couldn’t do, though, was defeat Trump. They still can’t. It took $400 million to fund private companies to collect ballots, change election laws in the swing states, and a completely biased propaganda news media to twist the narrative and gaslight the public to make sure everyone knew what to do on Election day. And even then, Biden barely won.Democracy says that if someone campaigns to win the vote of the people, then that vote should be respected. Democrats don’t believe that, unless a Democrat is in power. Now, they’re trying everything they can to subvert Democracy to block Trump from even making a run for office. Does that sound like people who have faith in American elections? But good luck trying to have this conversation with anyone on the Left. They will shut you down. Their game is that they get to say what happened, how it happened and why it happened. They are fed a narrative that they believe. Few will question any of it for fear of being called a “conspiracy theorist.” If you bring up the hypocrisy of 2016 and 2020, Democrats will always say, “but we didn’t breach the Capitol.” They might not have breached the Capitol on Inauguration Day, but they breached the Capitol in Michigan and Wisconsin in years prior: Then they say, well we weren’t trying to stop the peaceful transfer of power. Okay, but what do you call what happened with Justice Kavanaugh? What do you call pressuring Senators to vote your way?When you watch the Kavanaugh hearing back, it’s easy to see just how unhinged the Left already was. Then they will next say that they aren’t politically violent. But we know they are:The assassin who wanted to kill Kavanaugh had zip ties. So did the man who broke into the Pelosi home. Do you think the media treated these two incidents similarly? I know the people whose power might be challenged tonight will not take it well. Just look at recent history. They’ve successfully flipped the script to make MAGA the violent side, the “election-denying” side. But in the next few years, we’ll see protests that make 2020 look like child’s play. When laws start to change, and the Conservatives start pulling our country Right, those who are used to having control of everything aren’t going to go along with a “peaceful transfer of power.” For years after Reagan won in 1980, the Left was powerless. By the time Barack Obama won in 2008, they could take control of nearly every corner of American life, culturally and politically. They influenced and redefined almost everything. They built an empire - a new “shining city on the hill.” To hold onto that, they have been willing to take political protests to the extreme, exploit our formerly objective media, and outright lie about the people they share this country with. But worst of all, they have been consumed by fear. They have become so panicked they imagine all sorts of terrible things. They see it in their mind’s eye, and to them, it’s real, just like witches flying around Salem and “spectral evidence,” which is evidence you can’t see but can only imagine. They never had a utopia to lose so they don’t know how to handle it. They just want to be what they used to be. They want to be admired as the best and the brightest, living their best lives, showcasing those lives on social media, tinkering with their re-imagined America, with a president they like and admire watching over them. Now, their utopia is crumbling. The Hillary feminist that represents the base of the Democratic Party is now being asked to step aside for transgender rights. That’s why Gretchen Whitmer has to say, “People with periods.” The Hillary feminist that marched with the pink hats and screamed at Kavanaugh is fading. That, probably more than anything else, marks a major pendulum shift they never saw coming.So who are they now? How do they define themselves? They can only see Trump. The thing they fear. It’s all Trump all the time. Their unprecedented prime-time show trial did the exact opposite of what they thought it would do. They expected it would look important, which would scare his supporters away. But all it did was make him look more powerful. Worse, it made our country look ridiculous, weak, and terrified. Whatever you might think of Trump, the fact that he looms as large as he does proves that there is no leadership on the Left. As of writing this, I do not know how the midterm elections will turn out. But I know that the people who control the Democrats now, the loudest voices on Twitter, and the massive media machine that does their bidding are fueled by an ongoing hysteria based on ongoing delusions.They have gone all the way to the most extreme every time. They’ve been this afraid for six years since Trump won. They are strung out, desperate. How much longer before they upend American Democracy completely to make sure nobody like Trump ever has a shot at running for president? Their fear will get worse until they understand that this country, its culture, and its government, economy, and history don’t just belong to them. It belongs to all of us. The grassroots movement on the Right challenging them today is not going anywhere any time 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

“I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions.” ― George CarlinJoe Biden and the Democrats have a big problem. It isn’t just that they stand to lose in the midterm elections and maybe the Presidency in 2024. They stand to lose much more than that. They stand to lose everything.The American people, by now, have had enough. They’re sick of cowards who cannot stand up to the activists who control them. They’re not just sick of them in Washington. They’re sick of them everywhere. They’re sick of being told what they can and can’t say, what they can and can’t think. 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 we head into the midterm elections, our virtual civil war all too often is fought on social media, as each side battles daily to capture the media narrative. Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter felt like a major win for the real “resistance.” He is our Luke Skywalker, one of our last best hopes for freedom against the Empire. 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 look on Joy Behar’s face said it all. Confusion, befuddlement, and an ever so slight hint of anger. She was reacting to a recent poll from the New York Times that showed only 8% of Americans were worried about the “The State of democracy” heading into the midterms.She understood people were worried about putting food on the table, she said, but expecting the Republicans to clean up the mess was crazy. They weren’t going to fix the economy. Her pivot said it all. It was never about the threat to Democracy and always about the fear of the GOP taking back 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

“Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else.” ― Theodore RooseveltWhat did Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill all have in common? They could see the threat and had the courage to confront it.Tulsi Gabbard is the one Democrat who could not only recognize the threat of the modern-day Democratic Party but also dares to lead a movement to help take them out of power. And they must be taken out of power until they can get a grip and restore some sanity to the party and the country.You see the “Temporary Republicans” mostly on Twitter anonymously or in comment sections. But don’t be surprised if you see them turn out in November. 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

“Everybody can be great...because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.” ― Martin Luther King Jr.It turns out that the “antiracists” never meant a single word of any of it. They were trying to preserve their status. That Herschel Walker is a Black man raised in the same “systemically racist” country as George Floyd doesn’t cross their minds, or if it did, they would quickly suppress it. It turns out it was never about systemic racism or oppression at all. It was only about ideological compliance. 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

Andrew Dominik’s new Netflix movie Blonde has offended just about everyone. Based on the Joyce Carol Oates novel of the same name, it is a fictional account of the life of Marilyn Monroe. Almost immediately, the robot-army of the Left in the media rallied the troops to broadcast a single message about the movie: it is “anti-abortion,” and “misinformation about abortion.” 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

No matter how justified you think it is, prosecuting someone for what lives inside their minds and hearts is a road to ruin. It’s even worse than that. It’s a road to moral panics that lead to systematic dehumanization that wrecks whole societies. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg might have been selling secrets to the Soviets but that didn’t mean everyone in America who ever supported Marxist ideology was a traitor. Fear of what you can’t see leaves it up to your imagination, and when it comes to human beings, that is an unreliable source. Systematic dehumanization meant that newly freed slaves had to be turned into existential threats to an otherwise pristine uoptia in the South. They were thieves, murderers and rapists. In Nazi Germany, Jews were parasites, draft dodgers, and uniquely evil. It’s been decided that Trump supporters, or MAGA, are all angry white men. They are an existential threat because inside their minds and hearts is the unique evil of racism. This has never been questioned. It is a fear that has become a certainty across all institutions, culturally and politically, not just on the Left but on the Establishment Right. That is the kind of rot that must live inside the mind and heart of Hillary Clinton so that she could casually compare working class people to Nazi Germany. She saw them raising their hands to Trump without looking a little more closely to see that wasn’t the Nazi salute but cell phones.Trump supporters have no status. They don’t have a net worth of $120 million, or an Apple-TV show, or a house in Chappaqua, New York. They’ve been beaten, spit on, screamed at, demonized, and called every name imaginable from Nazi to Fascist to Racist, and now to “domestic extremist,” “insurrectionist,” “election deniers.” Even before Trump won, the Left believed their violence against Trump supporters was justified: We can survive political differences. We can’t survive this. What I realized over the past few years as I’ve gotten to know the world of MAGA it’s that we have a choice: assume the worst about people or give them the benefit of the doubt.I would like to say I would give Hillary the benefit of the doubt. After all, I was the person who made this sign and marched along with millions for the Women’s March:But with a teenager possibly run down and smeared as a “Republican extremist,” with Biden’s militant fascist speech, with a death threat on Justice Kavanaugh’s life, all running parallel to a dangerously politicized Department of Justice, I’m much too concerned with the fate of the country to worry about protecting Hillary one more time.White men and women are the new existential threat to the Left. But it is existential, not based on skin color. Black men can be “white supremacists in BlackFace,” like Larry Elder. Non-white women can be “Far Right Latinas” like Mayra Flores. Black women can be viciously attacked and trend for days on Twitter, like Candace Owens, receiving none of the protection she would get from the “antiracists.” Steve Bannon’s secret weapon is that he knows MAGA isn’t driven by “white rage.” He’s been actively engaged in building a coalition of working-class Black and Hispanic voters, or what he calls “inclusive, participatory, nationalist populism” for at least five years. Anyone who dips a toe into MAGA Land quickly sees it’s not about racism at all. It’s driven more by class and yes, by Judeo-Christianity. From a story on Breitbart:“We’ve got to start having access to capital to black and Hispanic entrepreneurs,” Bannon said.During the financial crisis, Bannon said that the Wall Street class were taken care of by the government but that the smaller banks got crushed since many of them loaned money to working-class people who didn’t get rescued by the government.“The elites took care of themselves,” he said.Bannon said that he was putting together a “task force” of black and Hispanic entrepreneurs to help them build their communities.That, he explained, was the way to evolve the Republican party into a working-class party for all Americans.“That’s why the media and that’s why the Democrats are freaked out about that,” he said.Up until recently, Christianity was the beating heart of this country that united most Americans by roughly 80%. I was never raised with any kind of religion because I am a child of the Left. Most Conservatives, though, don’t look to politics for their collective sense of purpose. They look to God. This might explain why all of a sudden a new term has been dropped into the mix to demonize the MAGA movement: White Christian Nationalism:Only recently has the idea of someone being a Christian become a clear and present threat to the newfound religion of the Left. Says a story in Politico by Stella Rouse and Shibley Telhami:Christian nationalism, a belief that the United States was founded as a white, Christian nation and that there is no separation between church and state, is gaining steam on the right.Prominent Republican politicians have made the themes critical to their message to voters in the run up to the 2022 midterm elections. Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor in Pennsylvania, has argued that America is a Christian nation and that the separation of church and state is a “myth.” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia hard-liner, declared: “We need to be the party of nationalism and I’m a Christian, and I say it proudly, we should be Christian Nationalists.” Amid a backlash, she doubled down and announced she would start selling “Christian Nationalist” shirts. Now Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis seems to be flirting with Christian nationalist rhetoric, as well.Always pivoting to racism is a convenient out for the Biden administration, which is disgraceful. But it’s also a great way to sabotage this country, to keep us weak and divided. Although they don’t yet realize it, the Left is gambling with its own existence. They’re hoping to solve our population decline with the migrants flooding in from mostly Latin American countries. Most of the countries are rooted not in Wokeness but in Catholicism. Democrats believe they will be so grateful they’ll vote Blue no matter who, but are they so sure about that?By hanging their entire platform on urging women to see abortions as no big deal, or even an act of empowerment, they’re flirting with disaster if America begins to rise once again as a Christian nation, thanks to the influx of millions of new migrants. Not to mention most of them are likely to be socially conservative, which will run counter to the platform of the new Left.With declining sperm counts and fertility rates, not to mention population decline our future will not be siding with those who have the most abortions, but with those who have the most babies. It’s simple math. Awaiting the RaptureUnless you were part of it, it’s hard to explain the rapture most of us experienced when Obama rose to power. It was not just pure love for him, or that he had so much charisma, no scandals or baggage, a perfect family, or that he’d graduated from Harvard and had such sophisticated tastes, it was the idea that America had its first Black president. A new religion was born. For my generation and the one that came before, growing up without religion was cool. Only Republicans were church goers. Boomers traded their Christian upbringings in the 1950s for a cultural renaissance in the 1960s, Black Power, the Feminist movement, Civil Rights - it all exploded outward, away from traditional religion.As children of the “me” generation, we helicopter parents were spiritually adrift, aimless, and emotionally destroyed. We sought fulfillment in self-help therapy, where we talked about the abuse we suffered at the hands of narcissistic parents. We had Oprah every day at 3 pm where we worked out all of our problems as a society. Then came the McMartin preschool scare, Columbine, and 9/11. By the turn of the millennium, we were dealing with one threat after another. A 24-hour news cycle thanks to the OJ Trial, and now, the internet would provide us with second-to-second input of all the threats everywhere. We were primed and ready for one person to rise and give us all a collective sense of purpose. That person was President Barack Obama and the Obama coalition he built mostly online, Twitter specifically. As our kids took to the internet to escape our nonstop attentive coddling, an entire generation came of age as social media natives. They were forging new virtual identities, with new rules and new ways of seeing and identifying themselves with one another. What better way to do that than by skin color, gender, or victim status? If you were marginalized, you were protected. If you weren’t, you were an oppressor; therefore, it was open season. For white kids without any cultural identity, gender became their way of distinguishing themselves from “cis-gendered, hetero-normative, colonizing white supremacists.”To them, identity was and is everything. They absorbed our growing fear about the rise of racism in America, which took root in 2008, with Conservatives like Steve Schmidt and John McCain concluding Sarah Palin was a xenophobic warrior for the White Race. We see this epiphany play out in the HBO movie Game Change. And just like that, the birth of the Never Trump movement and the idea that there were “good” Republicans and “bad” Republicans, and all of it was based on racism, was born. It just so happened that The Tea Party was challenging the whole system, Democrats and Republicans alike, who had sold out the country with a $700 billion bank bailout and bad trade policies. How convenient, then, to target them as racists: And when Trump questioned Obama’s birth certificate, what else could that be, we all thought, except blatant racism? Obama graciously supplied a copy of his birth certificate but then mocked Trump publicly at the White House Correspondents Dinner. The two locked horns in 2011, and we’re still watching a battle between Obama’s America and Trump’s. It also has morphed into a war between the Great Awokening and the Judao-Christian ethic. Many of the Zoomers, children of the newly Woke religious Left, grew up with the certainty that America was not only a systemically racist country, but they were living among millions of their fellow Americans who were racists. The social justice movement that now dominates the Left began in virtual hives on social media. Those kids went to the indoctrination factories our universities have become, grew up, joined the workforce and essentially did to America in 2020 what a group of activists did to Evergreen University. The Democrats, like the administration at Evergreen, the people who run the Motion Picture Academy, and all other members of the 1% buckled under the pressure. The New “Red” ScareIf history had gone differently, a moral panic in America in 2022 might have looked like another Red Scare. A discovery of Harvard professors selling information to the Chinese Communist Party, colliding with the virus from Wuhan, not to mention a near-complete takeover of our manufacturing jobs, might have set Americans on edge that Communists were once again at the gates. But look at the date. January 28, 2020. The focus wasn’t on China, Chinese spies, or even the COVID pandemic, which was just starting to make its way into the United States. Americans were in the grips of a different kind of moral panic.This moral panic is destroying us in all ways, turning us against ourselves and making us much more vulnerable and weak to our adversaries. Russia, China, North Korea or any major enemy of the United States would no doubt have figured out that there was one surefire way to bring the most powerful country in the world to its knees: accusations of racism. The Chinese have our number. They even have a special name for it:Sooner rather than later, we’ll need leadership that can’t be so easily undone, that isn’t given to nonstop fits of mass hysteria. We need a steady hand to guide this ship at such a dangerous time. MAGA LandAt some point in 2020, I found myself staring at my Twitter feed and had what I can only describe as blood poisoning. There was so much hate - it was in my heart, it was in my veins. I just could not live with it anymore. I decided I had to find out - was it true, were they really racists?I’d already experienced what it was like to be called a racist. When I pointed out on Twitter that not all Asian hate crimes were “white supremacy,” members of my own community targeted me as a white supremacist. It didn’t matter that I’d spent at least ten years advocating for Black artists to win Oscars on my website. It made no difference. I was seen only by my identity as a white woman online. I then decided to take a trip to MAGA Land. I began following a youtube site called Right Side Broadcasting. They are Christian-based and staunchly pro-life. Each video begins with an image of a fetus in the womb. They hold weekly prayer meetings and live stream all of Trump’s rallies. They usually set up early in the day and begin recording as the crowd begins to form. Hours later, the music plays - the same song introducing Trump to the crowd. … And I'm proud to be an AmericanWhere at least I know I'm freeAnd I won't forget the men who diedWho gave that right to meAnd I'd gladly stand up next to youAnd defend Her still today'Cause there ain't no doubtI love this landGod Bless the U.S.A.Then Trump finally shows. He often has a handful of red hats that he tosses out into the crowd. Trump’s speeches are almost always the same. They’re funny. He tells jokes, a lot of the time, at his own expense. In the old days, back in 2016, his speeches were much darker and angrier. Now, they aren’t. Being banned from Twitter seems to have changed Trump for the better. This is a cautionary tale of the evils of a social media algorithm that feeds off of outrage and hysteria.You can’t dip a toe in MAGA land and come away seeing it as a movement driven by racism, not if you’re being honest. That tells you a lot already about what kind of media class we have in this country, that they were leading the charge for what has become shameful, systematic dehumanization of a whole group of people with no benefit of the doubt, no due process, no path to redemption. But the truth still matters, even if it’s met with a tsunami of mass hysteria and moral panic. I have watched every Trump rally since he began holding them in 2020 - every single one — and not only is the MAGA movement not driven by “white rage,” but they are far more diverse and multicultural than the media or the Democrats seem to believe. And these Trump supporters I follow on TikTok:And if you want to know why so many Latinos are flipping red? So if it’s not about racism, what’s it about? Well, Ungar-Sargon has an idea: She has been fearless in her efforts to bridge the divide between the mass hysteria on the Left and the working class on the Right. She and Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald, Megyn Kelly, Walter Kirn, and Tulsi Gabbard have maintained their objectivity, humanity, empathy, and willingness to see the bigger picture.As Matt Taibbi often points out, we seem to be missing the old-school lefties like William Kunstler, who would defend Civil Liberties at all costs. Now, only one remains—Alan Dershowitz, who has taken on the lost cause of Mike Lindell. Lindell is a hero in MAGA land and a joke to high-status folks like Jimmy Kimmel and Jon Stewart. A man whose life was nearly ruined by addiction found God and started not just a charity, but a business called My Pillow. When you see how beloved Lindell is with MAGA, much of it is to do with their shared faith, that cross that hangs around his neck. He, like Trump, gives them hope. These are people not driven by hate or rage, but by love. For people who had been shut out of every part of American culture, demonized for six long years, called the worst names imaginable, not welcomed in many places, lost friends and family, they somehow haven’t lost their hope and their optimism. A lot of that has to do with Trump, believe it or not. He’s one thing they haven’t been able to take away from them. As enemies of the state - they have plenty of reasons to be angry. We saw some of that on January 6th. But 2020 was a year that broke people. Only one group was ever held accountable for losing it, even though Trump supporters pride themselves on being non-violent. Now, the state has managed to intimidate them to prevent them from using their Constitutional right to protest. But to take love of country away from people whose entire identity is wrapped up in patriotism seems to me an act of unimaginable cruelty. However, they still have a vote, and if they turn out in large enough numbers, they can have more of a voice in DC.MAGA voters have every reason to be mean and bitter. But you know what? It’s people like Hillary Clinton, the Never Trump Republicans, and most in the media and on blue-check Twitter who have become the mean and bitter ones, abandoning basic human decency in their desire to eliminate a group of people they see as an existential threat to their otherwise pristine utopia. But, as with the Grinch Who Stole Christmas, they will soon learn that what MAGA voters care about most is not something they can’t take away. I don’t know what Hillary saw. My guess is that she was looking for what she wanted to see, not what was really there. If she watched a MAGA rally, really watched it, she would not see miserable people, upset that they aren’t allowed into the country club, or mouth-frothing Nazis. Instead, she’d see mostly happy people, like the Whos in Whoville. That is happiness that only comes when your mind and your heart are free.So if you want to understand MAGA start there. Plenty of people gravitate to Trump for different reasons - a rebellious spirit, their religious faith, but what unites them as a movement is love of country. Nationalism is not itself fascism or even racism. James Strock’s Substack focuses on the need for an invigorated new nationalism, writing:What a calling is to an individual, nationalism can be to a commonwealth. It can be a source of solidarity. It’s expressed over space and time through a unifying narrative. From history it derives values and experiences that can inform our navigation of the present. These elements yield a vision for conjuring and creating a future.Our moral panic that there are racists, racists everywhere is nowhere near finished. At the very least, however, we must vote out those politicians who are primed and ready to convict people on what they think exists inside their minds and hearts. Liz Cheney and the January 6th Committee will continue Joe Biden’s ignorant campaign to use racism as the justification for their authoritarian show trial, and politicization of the DOJ. History will shame them for it.Ultimately, though, the way I figure it, hate eventually exhausts itself. Love wins. 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 told a bedtime story about the border. It was secure, he said. But more importantly, those in charge were now humane, not like the previous administration’s barbaric practices. It was a good story. His supporters believed it. Then he closed the storybook, turned off the lights, and they all went to sleep. When they awoke, Governor Ron DeSantis had sent 50 migrants from Venezuela to Martha’s Vinyard, the home of his former boss, Barack Obama. They were refugees fleeing socialism for a paradise only Capitalism could have built. 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 emerged from his speech last week “on the continued battle for the soul of our nation” like a squalling infant birthed from the loins of blue-check Twitter, bathed in the blood-red light of militant fascism. That was just the beginning. I used to be a faithful Democrat but they've lost me. 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 liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerated the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.” ― Franklin D. RooseveltThe same week Mark Zuckerberg admitted the FBI pressured him to deep-six the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop, Joe Biden called the populists on the Right “semi-fascists.” From the FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago, to the use of social media to police the Biden administration’s idea of “misinformation” to the surveillance of political enemies of the state by an all-volunteer army of social media users — “semi-fascism” is all around us. Naturally, this gave many hyperbolic Twitter users a jumping-off point to get those juicy, juicy likes, as they continue to cheerlead Biden in all the wrong direction. So let’s get a few basics out of the way, shall we? The side policing speech are the “semi-fascists.” The side demanding ideological compliance? Also, the “semi-fascists.” The side throwing political prisoners in solitary for upwards of a year with no charges? “Semi-fascists.” The side that dehumanizes and scapegoats whole groups of people and encourages cutting them off from the economic system? “Semi-fascists.”The side with the FBI pressuring Big Tech to suppress negative information about a political candidate? You guessed it. The “Semi-fascists.” The power of the Democratic Party is shrinking and focusing on the most elite in our society. Their attention has narrowed significantly to the point where they are alienating more voters than they are attracting. From the Wall Street Journal’s interview with Ruy Teixeira:We’re living in a country where most institutions are dominated by graduates of colleges and universities that have made it their mission to proselytize on behalf of crazy ideas. That includes the Democratic Party to a vastly greater extent than the GOP, especially the post-Trump GOP.Mr. Teixeira acknowledges that this is a development “The Emerging Democratic Majority” failed to foresee: “We didn’t anticipate the extent to which cultural liberalism might segue into cultural radicalism and the extent to which that view, particularly as driven by younger cohorts, would wind up imprinting itself on the entire infrastructure in and around the Democratic Party—the advocacy groups, the foundations, academia of course, certainly the lower and middle levels of the Democratic Party infrastructure itself.”Voters chose Biden partly because they believed he was a moderate. Instead, he’s become a kind of George Spahn figure who passively allowed the Manson family to overtake Spahn Ranch. No, I’m not comparing the “woke” fanatics to the Manson family, but it is important to understand what we’re dealing with here.Biden’s ongoing dehumanization of Trump supporters is dangerous because of how people on the right, or those who push back against the newfound religious zealotry on the New Left, is reaching dangerous levels not seen since 1930s Germany.This example of the reaction to Ben Shapiro appearing at a podcast event is funny but also downright chilling. They don’t fear Shapiro because he’s an Orthodox Jew. They fear him because of his political views. Can you remember any other time in American history where opinions held contrary to one’s own made people feel “unsafe”? You can just feel that one, can’t you? Like a punch in the gut. You don’t just dismiss something like that. At least The Babylon Bee, still banned from Twitter, mocks the whole concept:You can see why so many still turn to Trump out of desperation because Trump is not scared of them, even with everything they’ve thrown at him. Even facing an inevitable indictment, Trump just mocks them. How does the American system survive someone they can’t control? They’ve never had to deal with a Donald Trump, that’s for sure. Trump is testing the Constitution every day, proving why it is such an important document. The Constitution is the only thing preventing our current government from graduating from “semi-fascists” to full-blown fascists. Or how they used to refer to Stalin’s regime “red fascism.” They use their systems of power to subvert Democracy, violate the Constitution, and weaponize the Department of Justice. As long as the media backs them up and the polls work in their favor, they won’t stop. One of the great things about social media is that supposedly everyone has a voice online. But now, under Biden and in our post-2020 environment, our government is using Big Tech as a filter to violate the First Amendment, using “misinformation” or “disinformation” as a catch-all for speech they don’t like. I posted a Tik Tok video of a high school coach ruminating on the Mar-A-Lago raid. He said he didn’t believe the claims of a rigged election until he saw just how far the Democrats were willing to go to get Trump. His video was honest, heartfelt, and, more than anything, his right as an American to speak his mind. Youtube removed the video citing “misinformation.” When I appealed, telling them they had become authoritarians, I got this response:You can watch that video for yourself on Rumble. Sites like Rumble, Substack, Gettr, Truth Social and other alternative platforms give the illusion that there is equal access to all, but if you’ve been online a while, you know what it means to be dumped from the major organs of the new economy online. These big sites got there first. We trusted them by handing over our attention, information, relationships, shopping behavior, and history. Now, they have betrayed that trust. Will the Real Fascists Please Stand Up?So many people don’t understand the word “fascism.” They throw it around because it plays well on Twitter and cable TV. It seems so unequivocal. Trump is bad. Fascists are bad. So Trump must be a fascist. Here is how Yuval Noah Harari defines Fascism in Lessons for the 21st Century:“The word “fascism” comes from the Latin fascis, meaning “a bundle of rods.” That sounds like a rather unglamorous symbol for one of the most ferocious and deadly ideologies in world history, but it has a deep and sinister meaning. A single rod is very weak, and you can easily snap it in two. However, once you bundle many rods together into a fascis, it becomes almost impossible to break them. This implies that the individual is a thing of no consequence, but as long as the collective sticks together, it is very powerful. Fascists therefore believe in privileging the interests of the collective over those of any individual, and demand that no single rod ever dare break the unity of the bundle.”If Trump had been a fascist, there would not have been any protests in 2020. Protesters would have simply been shot on the spot or thrown in jail. There would have been no CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times or any newspaper criticizing him or even existing at all. Do you think the speaker of the House would have ripped up a speech if standing behind a fascist? Do you think a fascist would have allowed nonstop dehumanization and bullying on Twitter every second, not to mention on late-night comedy shows and awards shows? Stephen Colbert? Arrested and convicted without a trial. Bill Maher? Solitary confinement. Hillary Clinton would have been locked up. AOC along with her.With fascism, you don’t have to worry about bothersome things like due process, presumption of innocence, freedom of speech, or Democracy. You have absolute power and control over the state, which has absolute power over the citizenry. You can’t tell me the zealots on the Left wouldn’t want that. Sure, you might say, Trump, denied the results of the 2020 election, making him a fascist. But that makes him someone who has an unpopular opinion of something. Perhaps you find that bad or scary or an abuse of power and bad for the country but calling it “semi-fascist” is a reach. MSNBC, CNN, and many of the legacy media outlets painted January 6th as a “fascist coup” and did a very good job using video footage of a riot as a powerful piece of propaganda. But a violent protest against the government is not “fascist.” The crackdown of that riot is fascist, especially when they used powers put in place after 9/11 against their own citizens.None other than Vladimir Putin called this out, which is yet another example of how the Biden presidency and the insanity over Trump is weakening America’s standing in the world. We look like a broken, fragile nation in our non-stop attacks against a former president and his supporters. Because of the Democrats’ dominance of Twitter, media, government, Hollywood and all other major institutions, as they’ve become more uniform in their ideology and more militant in their demands that you go along with them, we are beginning to see the darker side of “collectivism” at work. After William H. Strauss and Neil Howe wrote The Fourth Turning in 2007, Roy H. Williams and Michael R. Drew took on the theory of the generations and tweaked it slightly in their book, Pendulum: How Past Generations Shape Our Present and Predict Our Future. They transformed Howe and Strauss’ 80-year generational cycle into two 40-year cycles. One is the “me” cyle (individualism), and the other a “we” cycle (collectivism). Looking over the patterns of history, they have noticed that the pendulum shifts in one direction until it wears out its welcome, then it swings back in the other direction. Their overall hypothesis is that humans always take a good thing too far. When that happens, the pendulum spits and grinds and eventually swings back. We’re now at the worst part of the “we” phase, the witch hunts, reaching its peak in 2023. Here it is right on schedule. The only question is how bad it will get in the coming year. They write:The second half of the Upswing of “We” and the first half of the Downswing from it (2013–2023) bring an ideological “righteousness” that seems to spring from any group gathered around a cause. The inevitable result is judgmental legalism and witch hunts. The origin of the term witch hunt was the Salem witch trials, a series of hearings before county court officials to prosecute people accused of witchcraft in the counties of Essex, Suffolk, and Middlesex in colonial Massachusetts, between February 1692 and May 1693, exactly at the beginning of the second half of the Upswing toward the “We” Zenith of 1703.Senator Joseph McCarthy was an American promoter of this witch-hunt attitude at America’s most recent “We” Zenith of 1943 (see the “House Un-American Activities Committee,” 1937–1953); Adolf Hitler was the German promoter (see the Holocaust, 1933–1945); and Joseph Stalin was the Soviet promoter (see the Great Purge, 1936–1938). Our hope is that we might collectively choose to skip this development as we approach the “We” Zenith of 2023. If enough of us are aware of this trend toward judgmental self-righteousness, perhaps we can resist demonizing those who disagree with us and avoid the societal polarization that results from it. A truly great society is one in which being unpopular can be safe.In a free market Capitalist country like this one, consumers ideally have the power. We tell the corporations what to do, not the other way around. The more we migrate to online spaces, the less power we will have as consumers. Neil Howe marks 2008 as the year that sparked the Fourth Turning. The Wall Street meltdown and subsequent crisis supposedly kick into gear events that will eventually take us to a major shift, a war, or some kind of revolution. We can feel the battle underfoot right now with the complete takeover of all institutions of power and government vs. the populist uprising of the working class. The ultimate outcome remains uncertain. But 2008 is also the year Vivek Ramaswamy targets as the moment the corporations swapped “woke” ideology for any sort of concrete solutions to the problem of rising monopolies. He says that marriage was one of convenience. It meant the activists felt heard and catered to while the corporations had the freedom to do whatever they wanted without the activists breathing down their necks:And the net result was the birth of this new woke industrial complex, a new force a new Leviathan. In modern American life that was far more powerful than what Thomas Hobbes envisioned 400 years ago, far more powerful than what our founding fathers envisioned 250 years ago when they put into motion, a three part system of government with checks and balances not envisioning a fourth branch of government in the private sector itself. That would suck the lifeblood out of the constitutional government that we put into motion. And it is a new monster that actually duped both sides into submission. The old left that used to be skeptical about the aggregation and misuse of corporate power was defined and deflected by the fact that actually, they were distracted by the fact that these new guys are going to advance the causes the progressive causes that we love so much that they forgot about their principled opposition to settling political questions through corporate power.Conservatives were duped into submission by memorizing and reciting slogans that we all memorized back in the 1980s, saying that the free market can do no wrong without recognizing that that free market does not exist today. And that's the story of how both sides actually contributed to the creation of possibly the most powerful force in modern American life, this merger of state power and corporate power. “Woke capitalism,” as Ramaswamy calls it, is still not “semi-fascism.” Once Biden took power in 2020, however, he then took the iron throne at the top of all of it. It’s more than just the activists and the corporations. Now, it’s the administration executing top-down activism for much of the same reasons the corporations did it - so that we would all look the other way as they abused their power against ordinary citizens.In other words, how convenient to have a scapegoat like MAGA where suddenly their Constitutional rights no longer matter because they’ve been so dehumanized by the media, the blue-checks and now, Joe Biden. But if their Constitutional rights no longer matter, neither do ours. Now is the time to push for a new amendment to the Constitution, an “Internet Bill of Rights” of sorts to protect ordinary Americans against the “semi-fascist” forces that seem to be all around us in just a few short years. At the very least, all Americans should have access to the new “town square” and hub of most of our growing economic systems online. We still live in a Democracy, but it is something we will have to fight for. The Democrats won’t. It will have to be up to the Republicans, should they take back Congress, to stand up to the powerful monopolies that now threaten the very foundations of our free country. The six-year-long hunt to get Trump, the FBI’s involvement in suppressing potentially damaging information, the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, and the inevitable indictment of Trump we know is coming are all much bigger threats to our Democracy than Trump will ever be. 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 don't like that man. I must get to know him better.” - Abraham LincolnWe live in a time where there are more people connected than ever before, and there are more people alive than ever before. Every day, each side of this Cold Civil War broadcasts nonstop agitprop against the other side. It’s Orwell’s two minutes of hate, except it’s 24/7. The problem is that these are not two equal sides. 65% of Twitter users are Democrats. The platform increased by 21% after Trump was banned. The media listens to Twitter; the Democrats listen to the media. Together, they have built an insular feedback loop that is increasingly out of touch with most Americans outside of it. Because so many people are connected, we’ve seen a steady stream of uprisings against the government in recent years, not just in the United States but worldwide. Here in America, it began after the crash of 2008 with Occupy Wall Street. Then came the Tea Party. Then came the Capitol breaches in Wisconsin and Michigan. Then came Black Lives Matter. Then came the Democratic Primary protests against Hillary Clinton. Then came the largest protests in American history against a sitting president. Then came the Summer of 2020. Then came January 6th.Only one of these uprisings was treated as a dangerous threat against the government. It wouldn’t be the first time an act of protest against a government handed absolute power to that government. Reichstag fire, burning of the Reichstag (parliament) building in Berlin on the night of February 27, 1933, a key event in the establishment of the Nazi dictatorship and widely believed to have been contrived by the newly formed Nazi government itself to turn public opinion against its opponents and to assume emergency powers.In the wake of January 6th, our government has gone to war against its own citizens, behaving as though they are the ones waging war. They seem to genuinely believe that the Trump movement is the second Confederacy and that they’re trying to overthrow the government to turn it into a White Nationalist empire that brings back slavery. Liz Cheney compared this moment to the Civil War. They might want to dust off their history books and look at what happens when an insulated aristocracy fends off uprisings by the peasants. It doesn’t go so well.They’ve called worried parents “domestic extremists.” They smeared anyone who showed up in DC on that day as “white supremacists.” They built a Green Zone-like fence around the Capitol and kept it there for months as an act of intimidation. Just a decade before, Democratic activists were pounding on the doors of their state Capitol in Wisconsin, shouting, “Whose house? Our house!” Those who control our government, mainstream media, and the big tech companies see those who would voted for or support Trump as a clear and present danger to their power. They seem to believe they at the very top can go to war with the majority, and it’s somehow going to work out well for them. They seem unwilling to do the one thing they would need to do to stop Trump: offer the working class something better. It’s odd to be living through something that has happened so many times before. Three little words keep otherwise reasonable people from all political spectrums from accurately reading this moment: Trump Derangement Syndrome. TDS mainly affects the ruling class. They just can’t believe they swapped a classy, sophisticated Harvard Law graduate like Obama for a guy like Trump who is crass and offensive, has a toilet made out of gold, eats at McDonald’s, and says whatever he wants to say. Trump is the living embodiment of everything the progressive aristocracy hates about America — a rich white man who doesn't follow the rules. What drives TDS is that Trump is mostly indestructible. He has no shame. After non-stop attacks by the media, two impeachments, the Mueller investigation, the Access Hollywood tape - who but Trump could have gotten COVID in his 70s, survived it without a vaccine, then went on to hold five rallies a day in the run-up to the 2020 election? No wonder they see him as an omnipotent force they have to rally the troops to defeat.But that indestructibility makes him the hero of the working class our government has all but abandoned. Trump is their battering ram. He’s what Victor Davis Hanson called necessary “chemotherapy.” It gets the dirty job done because his support hasn’t diminished, even after he’s been kicked off Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube. If anything, he’s become more popular.Why? Because the Left has become crazier. Surely this would have dawned on one of them by now, but it hasn’t. Those who write brilliantly here on Substack to mount some kind of offense against the Neo-Marxist takeover of our government almost always stop at the Trump line. They just won’t cross it, like the baseball players in Field of Dreams. They know if they cross that line their careers are over. They have even written pieces urging desperate Americans not to flee to Trump just because they hate the “woke.” As if the many out there struggling to get through the day are going to find their substacks, read them, and conclude - yeah, you’re right. I guess I’ll just suffer through the rest of my life because Orange Man Bad.For many Americans, Trump is their last best hope to fight for the fundamental principles of this country: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, not to mention the basics - law and order, freedom of speech, and love of country. These Americans can’t afford Trump Derangement Syndrome. That is why Liz Cheney lost by 30 points in Wyoming. Any politician who takes on the Left will do very well with the American public. The problem is, most won’t, not Liz Cheney or any of the Never Trump Republicans. And certainly, no Democrat.Instead, to defeat Trump, they have become a kind of Doomsday Cult. Every single day it’s the end of the world. At least on Twitter, which fills up the mainstream media’s gas tank for an all-day joyride of apocalyptic fear porn. No person with TDS can be trusted to truly assess the moment we’re living through. Unless they take the broad view, their essays about this moment will fall short. TDS creates a blind spot for journalists, comedians, filmmakers, and everyone else. Says Barton Swaim writing in the Wall Street Journal:On the subject of Donald Trump, we each lament the inability of some otherwise serious people, on the left and the right, to talk about the 45th president in anything but the language of civilizational catastrophe. Why is Mr. Hankins, the author of a 700-page book on virtuous political leadership, not similarly undone by Mr. Trump? Because his profession has prepared him to take the long view.“I think of it as an historian,” he says. “Many people don’t think deeply about what it would be like to live in a different time. They have no sense of comparison. Thinking long about history, you get a much broader view of human life. History is a road to sanity.”It’s not good enough for Bill Maher to broadcast his hysteria over Trump while also criticizing what has become of the Left. He offers no solution, just leaves powerless Americans twisting in the wind. Sam Harris’ recent appearance on Triggernomitry is an example of someone whose hysteria around Trump proves that there was nothing they would not do to keep Trump out of power. For all of their talk about Democracy Itself, they seem perfectly willing to subvert it where Trump is concerned. Ben Shapiro was quick to point out how Harris is the smoking gun that proves that our government, our media, and our DOJ will blur the ethical lines of a supposedly blind justice system, a supposedly objective media, and a supposedly democratic country. Harris attempted to explain himself but he only dug himself in deeper. That’s because if you have TDS, it is impossible to escape the affliction unless you do the one thing required to end the madness: humanize Trump. It seemed funny at first, but with Trump polling so high and directly influencing so many wins in primaries, not to mention the unequivocal beat-down of Liz Cheney, they’re getting ready for war. Against their own citizens. Who knew even the former director of the CIA was this fragile? Perhaps he ought to stop watching so much MSNBC and CNN until such time as he can get a grip on reality, not to mention what other countries must think of an administration that afraid of its own citizens. Rick Wilson and James Carville are supposed to be sharp political strategists, yet they continue to insist all Trump supporters are stupid or racist. From a political standpoint, that’s just pure lunacy. They might be able to convince Zoomers and wealthy white women who spend too much time on social media that this is the biggest problem facing Americans, but the reality is that Americans have practical problems that must be addressed and not many people willing address them.Hysteria by Any Other Name Can those afflicted with TDS not see that most Americans have more pressing matters on their mind than existential angst? And not all those who vote for Trump do so because they have no other option now?Imagine, for instance, you are a young white male graduating high school in Ohio or Colorado. What kind of future will the Democrats offer you? Is there even a place for you in the Left’s America? You’ve been told you are an oppressor and that you must not even try to succeed because that means you benefit from white supremacy. How does an 18-year-old process that?Conversely, if you are a young Black student graduating in Portland, Oregon, you’ll be told your skin color oppresses you from birth. The only success you’ll ever achieve is at the hands of programs designed around equity. You’ll never get there on merit. The system is stacked against you.Imagine Coleman Hughes, one of the smartest thinkers out there, now being judged solely by the color of his skin rather than the content of his character. What do you imagine that does to his soul? He can wrestle with it, to contemplate why this happening and not allow it to impact him, but what about those who can’t? What is the long game here anyway? To re-introduce oppression to keep the traditional hierarchies intact? Or imagine you are an immigrant family that escaped a caste system in India to pursue the American dream with your children that you’ve pushed towards accelerated programs so they can be doctors or rocket scientists and escape the fate of their birth. Now imagine they’re being told that none of that matters anymore. Everyone must arrive at the same place because that is how equity works. So forget all about that “land of opportunity” thing. Now it’s about the “land of equality of outcome,” or Marxism. Imagine you’re a parent of five kids in a rural state or a big city. Imagine having to keep them home during lockdowns and school all five of them for over a year. Imagine how hard it was for just one of your kids to concentrate and learn, let alone all five. They can’t catch up now. They fell too far behind.Or you’re a truck driver or a dishwasher or a waitress, and the price of gas is eating a hole in your budget. You’re drowning in credit card debt, with no real prospects to rise in your hometown because manufacturing has vanished. Then the government wants a big pat on the back for passing a bill called the “inflation reduction act” which has no hope of reducing inflation and is really a climate bill in disguise. Tax credits for electric cars? That’s the answer?Or you’re a white farmer who didn’t see a dime of money from the government during COVID as your family’s business swirled down the drain. The money was promised to Black farmers to make up for past injustices. But now even that money isn’t coming.” What if you’re a family in Chicago, and every weekend, gunfire whizzes past your window, with one murder after another, mere blocks from your home? What if you are too nervous about letting your kids out to play? What if you live in a border town and migrants are flooding in, and you’re worried about your own family’s limited resources? The high-minded journalists and Twitter users look down their noses at Trump’s America First candidates, but they’re missing the story. They should be asking why Democrats don’t have such a motivated grassroots movement that is attracting voters rather than alienating them. Most people don’t care if Trump says offensive things or he sends the government into paroxysms of hysteria. They care that he is fighting against the people they fear, and that he is fighting for the America they want. Four Words on a Red HatAny Democrat or establishment Republican will have to find a message better than Make America Great Again. You won’t find many Americans out there right now who can argue that America has never been greater. We’re missing the fundamentals we need to keep our experiment intact. At the top of that list is American exceptionalism. Even if it is a grand illusion, it is a necessary one. It might be the invisible thread, fragile though it may be, that ties each of us to the other. This country can’t survive without it. We are the world’s dreamers, an experiment in a people-run government. So why get in the people’s way?They should be asking why can’t they do what Trump does? Name one person in Washington who can stand there for upwards of two hours talking to Americans? Anyone? The pitch to the American people is going to have to be better than how Trump closes every single one of his speeches:And it will only get stronger with each passing day. And with the help of all of you here tonight and the millions of Patriots all across our land, we will make America powerful again. We will make America wealthy again. We will make America strong again. We will make America proud again. We will make America safe again. And we will make America great again. Please tell me, all of those who are committed to the idea that Trump is the greatest threat to Democracy the world has ever known, how you’re going to top that. What can you offer Americans that can lift them up from their despair, that can promise them a better life, that can give them hope to face a new day? Because if all you’ve got is “Trump is bad” you’re going to lose. Pushing an apocalyptic doomsday scenario every day will not solve the fundamental problem. The threat level rises daily because those in power are failing. Do they think Americans are too stupid to notice? As Victor Davis Hansen writes: The war between blue and red and mass versus elite is really grounded in the reality that those who feel they were the deserved winners of globalization and who are the sole enlightened on matters of social, economic, political, and military policy have no record of recent success, but a long litany of utter failure. They have become furious that the rest of the country sees through these naked emperors. Note Merrick Garland’s sanctimonious defense of the supposed professionalism of the Justice Department and FBI hierarchies—while even as he pontificated, they were in the very process of leaking and planting sensational “nuclear secrets” narratives to an obsequious media to justify the indefensible political fishing expedition at a former president’s home and current electoral rival to Merrick Garland’s boss. The masses increasingly view the elites’ money, their ZIP codes, their degrees and certificates, and their titles not just with indifference, but with the disdain they now have earned on their own merits. And that pushback has made millions of our worst and stupidest quite mad. Those who have abused their power against the people of this country by becoming authoritarians, waging war against our citizens, or allowing social media oligarchs to police thought and speech might want to remember that America is a country of the people, by the people and for the people. As Eisenhower once said, “I like to believe that people, in the long run, are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it."Since we don’t have leaders like Eisenhower, this one will have to be up to us. 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 Democrats, the media, and the blue-checks on Twitter have no idea how many people have been red-pilled over the past three years. No one who watches Joe and Mika or Rachel Maddow or reads the New York Times will ever be red-pilled. They simply believe that is the only reality. How could it not be if every high-status person in America is going along with it? If your friends and family go along with it, if your social media feed confirms it every day with links. If it’s in the media, it must be true, right? How do you not trust it if it’s on NBC News or the Washington Post?Waking up to the media’s near-total collapse during the Trump years is a big part of being red-pilled. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. The only way to escape the media’s hold on the narrative is to cut it out completely, at least until you can see that there is another reality, and very often, the actual truth.If they hadn’t already given up on the “establishment” watching them crush Bernie Sanders like a bug in 2016, 2020 would do it. The response to COVID was a big one. Dividing the country the way it did into the compliant and the non-compliant. What it did to businesses, to the minds of children, to everyone who was locked down and locked in - unable to attend funerals, weddings, and death beds. But the raid on Mar-a-Lago very likely has red-pilled Americans even more, especially when you put it together with the authoritarianism during COVID, the suppression of speech, the silencing of dissent, and the dehumanization we all live with every day. To watch our Department of Justice raid a former president’s home months before the midterms, where the Democrats were expected to do very badly, looks suspect to anyone. If they were trying to create distrust in our institutions, they succeeded. Most Americans have seen, maybe for the first time, that our government has become too powerful, too punitive, and too authoritarian in crushing dissenting voices and outsiders who challenge that authority. We call that being red-pilled.More worrisome is the ongoing mass hysteria that started on Twitter, spread into our institutions of power, and now has spread to our government. To have such a complicit and compliant media is even more terrifying. What wouldn’t they go along with by now? Gulags? We all thought “cancel culture” would be confined to social media but clearly it has become the modus operandi for our establishment government. It’s hard not see this as yet another extension of the insanity and hysteria over Trump. As the Wall Street Journal’s Kimberly Strassel writes:Trump derangement syndrome has a curious way of scrambling coherent thought. Witness the Democratic-media complex’s blind insistence the Justice Department raid on Donald Trump’s home is just and necessary—rather than a dangerous move for their party and the republic.In descending on Mar-a-Lago, the department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation shifted the U.S. into the category of countries whose ruling parties use government power to investigate political rivals. No attorney general has ever signed off on a raid on a former president’s home, in what could be the groundwork for criminal charges.The Mar-a-Lago raid on its own would have one thing. But it comes right after Merrick Garland announced the “largest investigation in American history” against a former president. That came on the heels of prime-time hearings that aired on every news network except Fox, led by Liz Cheney, where they compared January 6th to the end of slavery and the Jim Crow South. This, after Kamala Harris, compared January 6th to Pearl Harbor and 9/11. A red-pilled America is probably starting to think the reaction to Trump, rather than Trump himself, might be the even bigger threat. They were already losing voters by the millions. Hispanic voters, Asian voters, even Black voters were being red-pilled and drifting rightward. That meant there was likely a red wave in the November midterms. Biden’s catastrophic poll numbers meant Democrats could lose and lose big. That was unacceptable. It shouldn’t be too surprising that they used that moment to hold their primetime extravaganza of Janaury 6th. If they can’t win over voters with better candidates or policies, they will scare the living daylights out of them. Donald Trump hadn’t even announced he was running for office, but the failure of Biden and the Democrats alone was enough to launch an all-out war on Trump, his henchmen, and his supporters.Instead of bringing more voters in, the administrative state has now red-pilled even more Americans. That’s certainly true of Hispanic voters, as a recent Spectator article outlines: It’s likely that many of these voters agree with Rep. Mayra Flores (R-Texas) who responded to the Mar-a-Lago search thus: “The FBI raid on the residence of the former POTUS is unprecedented. We do not live in a third world country.” This point will certainly resonate with many first and second generation Hispanic immigrants, many of whom came to the United States to escape countries where such secret police raids are all too common. It’s doubtful that Flores or her constituents were satisfied by Attorney General Garland’s dilatory and defensive acknowledgment that he approved the decision to seek the search warrant.Whether the newly red-pilled Americans will become GOP voters or whether they will support Trump at all remains an open question. But many of them will be coming out of August 8th with a high distrust for a government that would use the Department of Justice to sabotage its political enemies. The Spectator’s Gary Anderson wonders if Biden has crossed the point of no return:Rome’s republic collapsed when its politicians started using the law to eliminate opponents, a custom that began with the Marius–Sulla civil war. The guy in power used the judiciary authority of the Roman Senate to eliminate his adversaries. The intended victim would raise legions and fleets in self-defense; this took money. The contender who could raise the most troops or who was the better tactician got to be in charge. Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon because he knew that his opponents in the Senate had decided to have him executed if he returned to Rome without the protection of his legions. He had violated several Roman Republic laws during his invasion of Gaul, but there would be no fair public trial. The concept of Roman justice was dead. From that point on, might made right.Is this the beginning of the great war that will define the Fourth Turning? Writes Neil Howe and William Strauss:“Decisive events will occur—events so vast, powerful, and unique that they lie beyond today's wildest hypotheses. These events will inspire great documents and speeches, visions of a new political order being framed. People will discover a hitherto unimagined capacity to fight and die, and to let their children fight and die, for a communal cause. The Spirit of America will return, because there will be no other choice.Thus will Americans reenact the great ancient myth of the ekpyrosis. Thus will we achieve our next rendezvous with destiny.”Here we are, almost two years into the Biden presidency, and Biden has proven himself to be beyond incompetent, despite being continually propped up by the media. It isn’t a coincidence that they are coming for Trump the same week they are desperately trying to boost Biden’s poll numbers. They might be able to keep the people afraid enough to be distracted. Still, there is no getting around what happened a year ago when Biden’s sloppy exit from Afghanistan led to the deaths of a dozen American soldiers and sent his poll numbers crashing down:A 20-year-old man who was the brother of one of the dead soldiers recently killed himself near the memorial for his brother. Except for the Daily Beast, only Conservative sites covered the story. It would be shocking at any other time except the one we live in now. The media and our government willfully ignore the carnage left in the wake of Biden’s bad policies, whether it’s Afghanistan which likely caused Putin to invade Ukraine, China to flirt with invading Taiwan, the rising murder rate in cities with “defund the police,” or the two January 6th rioters who have committed suicide, or Ashli Babbitt shot point blank by a member of the Capitol Police - these Americans just don’t matter because they don’t serve the narrative.What is most frightening about watching the media spin on a story like the unprecedented raid on a former president’s home, or any story on any day, is how they always offload the bad stuff onto Trump and MAGA. Now, they’ve pivoted away from the naked abuse of power displayed by a politicized DOJ and towards the reaction by the GOP against the FBI. While it’s true that a man showed up at FBI headquarters with a nail gun, it’s not like that’s the only act of political violence we’ve seen lately. They control the media, however, and can drive fear and hysteria however they want. That’s just pure gaslighting. Why shouldn’t there be a volcanic response? Do they want everyone to lie down and pretend to like it? They can protest as loudly, and as violently as they want over every single thing Trump said or did for the four years he was in power, but the GOP is not allowed to be angry about this?The media has long since lost touch with reality. They listen to Twitter, not the American public. For too long now, the Biden administration has been taking its cues from the wrong people. They think if it makes Joy Behar happy, it’s worth doing. They think it's the right move if Rob Reiner approves on Twitter. Twitter is a small pond with way too many big fish driving ongoing hysteria and preventing the Democrats from focusing on the problems of average Americans. Chasing Trump for six years based on one mass hysteria event after another has destroyed the Democratic Party and possibly our Department of Justice. Just because they can indict Trump on some procedural error doesn’t mean they should. The problem with mass hysteria is that it often leads to the dehumanization of whole groups of people. While most see it as more of a physical affliction, like coughing fits or laughing disease, it can also work when a threat spreads quickly in a tight-knit community. Think about a snake slithering into a tent. The more who are connected, the faster the hysteria spreads. That can be helpful in life or death situations, but when it comes to what is mostly an existential threat, like witches or Communists, or even Jews, or newly freed Black Americans after the Civil War, that fear eventually morphs into dehumanization. That often leads to the worst crimes against humanity. Once people are dehumanized, as Trump and his supporters have been, there are no limits to what can be done to them. That’s not to compare Trump supporters with Jews during the Holocaust or the Jim Crow South; it’s just to say that the mechanisms are the same. The “good Germans” had been conditioned to dehumanize Jews, which meant they could be carted off to concentration camps long before anyone knew anything about gas chambers. The Germans believed Hitler was making Germany safer and more prosperous now that the “parasites” had been purged.The hysteria only ends when they’ve gotten rid of the bad thing. That is why we watched person after person purged and persecuted from their jobs, Hollywood, and social media all through the Trump years, a practice that continues to this day. In 2016 there are more people online and connected than ever before. In 2020, even more people were online and connected. Dehumanization is the red line we should never cross, not necessarily because of what it does to other people, but because of what it does to ourselves, nothing less than the total destruction of the human soul.In Salem, over 200 people were accused of witchcraft, all because a few adolescent girls began faking symptoms. With limited education - they only had the Bible, and only men were allowed to study it - and an isolated new utopia, the Puritans were constantly under siege by direct threats. It was freezing cold. Native Americans were attacking them without warning. And then came the Devil Himself, their greatest fear.Witches had no way out of the accusation, just as someone today is always guilty once accused. They could confess as a witch and live or refuse to confess and be hanged among members of their community who cheered on their deaths. But not everyone was compliant, just like now. Giles Corey was a terrible person by all accounts. He beat his wife regularly. But he refused to confess to being a witch. They tortured him with heavy stones placed on his chest until his tongue fell out of his mouth, and he died. Then there was Thomas Maule, a Quaker, who spent a year in jail to make sure the story of Salem was told and remembered. Maule understood persecution because in Salem, they didn’t only jail accused witches. They didn’t much like anyone who wasn’t a Puritan. They jailed Quakers all of the time and treated them like outsiders, much like our Left now does to non-compliant Trump supporters. Maule is credited with leading the way toward the First Amendment and as the founder of objective journalism that held the powerful to account. There were no real witches in Salem, America is not corrupt to its core with “white supremacy,” and Trump is not an omnipotent Super Villain. We’re all just human beings, flaws and all. Trump is still the same gadfly from the 1980s whose fame revolved around his opulent lifestyle. He’s the same guy who starred in Celebrity Apprentice. Trump is not secretive - if anything, he’s an over-sharer. He doesn’t hide things or tries to grab power behind the scenes. Everything is right on the page, warts and all. He perplexes the Left because he still believes in an America where everyone has a right to say what they want, lives how they want, thinks what they want regardless of the fast-changing rules of behavior mandated by the new Left. Trump’s rise is no coincidence. He is overtly and deliberately offensive. He mocked a disabled reporter. He made fun of John McCain. He called Marco Rubio “Little Marco.” He often seems like a bully. But there is a side to Trump people don’t know and don’t see. The human side of Trump. When you take the time to see that, dehumanization evaporates. This doesn’t mean I’m suggesting you “like” Trump, see him as a good person or even support him. It just means we should get a grip before things go too far to turn back around. We’re already there. There is nothing left of the Trump hunters. They have been destroyed by their addiction. It defines who they are now and defines what they are. For people who have everything - money, culture, art museums, every major corporation in the country, all Big Tech platforms were undone by their need to destroy one man. Americans are looking at the January 6th committee hearings, and now, with the raid on Mar-a-Lago and thinking, do they not trust their own candidates or policies to win in November? Why are they so worried the people will vote for Trump instead? Shouldn’t they be fixing themselves rather than trying to take out their opponent before he’s even announced he’s running?They can’t quit Trump because he went at the Kings and the Queens - Obama, Bill Clinton, the Bush’s, the Cheneys. The Squad. Nancy Pelosi. He mocked all of them. He got his MAGA fingerprints all over the furniture in the White House. Now, they’re done dancing around it. With a fully compliant media and a rabid blue-check army on Twitter they are ready for their authoritarian closeup. To quote Paddy Chayefsky’s brilliant screenplay for Network, Trump has meddled with the primal forces of nature, and for that, he must ATONE. While discussing Network, Chayefsky warned against what he called “the destructiveness of absolute beliefs.” He then added, “That the only total commitment any of us can have is to other human beings.”Our government leaders should spend less time with their ruthless, grotesque power grabs and more time trying to make us see each other as human beings again. Or as Jefferson Smith, an outsider who came to Washington only to see his character smeared, once said, “love thy neighbor.”Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is a film about government corruption and the one man who went into the machine thinking he could make a difference. I do not doubt that the intentions of Adam Schiff, Liz Cheney, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden aren’t good. But in their unending hunt to destroy Trump, they’ve destroyed themselves.I never thought anything could shake my faith and loyalty to the Democratic Party. I trusted them. I believed in them. That doesn’t mean I think the Republican Party is any better, but they don’t control everything as the Democrats do. They will probably indict Trump. That will mark the last gasp of their collapsing empire. The red pills will be eaten like candy. No American will ever see them the same way again. I am not MAGA. I am not a Conservative. My friends and family do not understand why I care about Trump and his supporters. They want me to join them in their hatred. They want me to be inside the same group hysteria as they are. I know where they’re coming from. I used to be among them. I did everything they’re doing now. But the red pill is a powerful one. Once you find your way out of the bubble of hysteria on the Left, it feels more like normal life. People are people again. And that, my friends, is worth waking up for. 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 2020, an unprecedented alliance of the richest and most powerful entities in the country came together to rig an election. Now I’m not saying they did anything illegal. Or that there was widespread fraud. But really, does that matter? By now, after they spent four years trying to remove Trump from power, impeached him twice, and now Merrick Garland has launched the “largest investigation in American history,” all to boost the Democrats chances in the midterms and try to knock Trump out to keep him from running in 2024, you gotta wonder. What are they so afraid of?The election was rigged because they were afraid Trump would win in 2020. Indeed, a one-term president with a strong economy is unbeatable. To bring him down they would have to take control of the media narrative, deliberately crash the economy, and discredit everything Trump ever did to manage the COVID pandemic. All that because they couldn’t beat him with just Joe Biden. I know it was more than that. I know they were pressuring the media to “fix” their obsession with Hillary’s emails in 2016. They were pressuring Mark Zuckerberg to “help” them win this time, since he “helped” Trump win last time. Facebook offered the same “help” to the Clinton campaign, but she turned him down.They were worried about a scandal erupting as the “October surprise.” You know, like the Access Hollywood tape in 2016? It’s okay when they do it. Trump tried to do it with the Hunter Biden story, and you’ll never believe what happened next.“Hey ya, Mr. Dorsey? Yes, this is a shadowy figure who works for the apparatus, and we think you need to bury that Hunter Biden story. Why? Well, it looks bad for Joe. Also, it’s Russian disinformation. Also, if you post it, you will be complicit in spreading Russian disinformation. Also, you will be helping a racist/fascist win the presidency. We good?”All of the other major Silicon Valley dude-bros complied. What did they have to lose? Nothing. They know which side butters their bread.What we saw in 2020 was the richest and most powerful people essentially subverting American Democracy.In their efforts to remove one president they didn’t like and install another, we lived through probably the most corrupt election in American history by a group of people who really do believe they have the right to manipulate an election. With enough money and lawyers you can do anything. Normally, you’d have reporters at the Washington Post and the New York Times doing detailed reports of how corrupt our government had become. They’re not above the American people. They’re not above American Democracy. But that isn’t what you see. Even now, you still see them taking one side. The Twitter blue-check side. Who are they, you might ask? You know who the ULTRA MAGA is thanks to Joe Biden’s decision to dehumanize half the country. Now meet the ULTRA ELITE. The ULTRA ELITE is the blue-check army on Twitter of the most revered, famous, wealthy, and powerful high-status people in the country - Stephen King, Bette Midler, Patricia Arquette, Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Obama, Michael Beschloss, John Dean, Howard Dean, and then, of course, the Never Trumpers like Rick Wilson and Steve Schmidt - they called themselves “The Resistance.” But really, they were the ULTRA ELITE.They’re the Obama coalition. They’re Netflix and HBO Max. They’re Nike and Microsoft. They’re the Grammys and the Oscars. They’re Audible and Home Depot. They sit atop the food chain, making the most money. Almost every major corporation in America, almost every university, research lab, opera house, art museum are all in alignment with the ULTRA ELITE.They listen to NPR, they read the New York Times. They think the Washington Post is still a legit newspaper and they are all in agreement that Trump incited a “violent insurrection” on January 6th and that his supporters were a “white supremacist” army about to overthrow the mighty United States of America. Imagine our country is that vulnerable it was threatened by an unarmed mob of protesters.But the ULTRA ELITE lives in fear. They hide in their bunker and want the bad people to disappear. They send out scouts to see if they’re gone. If they see one ULTRA MAGA you know, walking around without a mask or wearing a red cap - that means it’s not over yet. They just want their utopia back. Their perfect little world before Trump wrecked it. The truth still matters though it is in limited supply. Watching the entire media take a side on the January 6th show trial is frightening. There isn’t even a question of due process or presumption of innocence. They’ve been convicted in the court of public opinion, and that’s all that matters. Over the past six years, we’ve just become numb to living in a country that disappears perceived wrongdoers. Cancel culture replaced the presumption of innocence and due process with trial-by-mob. Why wouldn’t that hysteria swallow up the government too? Joe Biden has been targeting Trump voters ever since, smearing them as “racists” and “insurrectionists” and “election deniers,” “anti-vaxxers,” and “white supremacists”. On the Left they believe you should be as forceful and aggressive as possible to fight for your rights. When Trump supporters do it, they’re the wrong class of people. They’re not the ULTRA ELITE. They’re ULTRA MAGA. That’s bad. So they should never try to fight against a government they feel has betrayed them. Not this government. It’s ESG-infused fashionable fascism. One day the whole story will be told, and history will not be kind. No group of people who dehumanizes another fares well in retrospect. How will you explain the treatment of people who breached the Capitol after so many on the Left have done the same thing? “Oh, they were racists” - is that the plan?This was the Capitol breach of Wisconsin:The media is part of the ULTRA ELITE that runs this country by controlling the chosen narrative and micromanaging a manufactured consensus on Twitter. They are the ones who get to say if it’s right or wrong, fair or corrupt. It’s like the end of Chinatown when Evelyn has nowhere to turn because Noah Cross owns the police. The ULTRA ELITE can’t check the media because they are the media. But it’s one thing if they’re just winning an election, bending the rules with a nudge wink wink, which did more damage to Americans’ faith in “Democracy Itself” than January 6th. It’s entirely different from waging a 9/11-style “war on terror” against anyone who might think about voting for Trump. It is an abuse of power that I believe they will regret one day. For the President to use such definitive language for people who have not yet been convicted of these crimes would be shocking if we weren’t already used to the idea that the ULTRA ELITE do whatever they want and there are no checks or balances on that power. There is enough exculpatory evidence to contradict many of the findings revealed in the Primetime hearings, including the Oathkeepers helping Capitol police at least three times to calm down the crowd, hundreds of hours of footage that has never been released. There is video of Trump supporters attempting to stop windows from being smashed, including one of Ashli Babbit punching an unidentified rioter who broke the window just before she was shot. At best, you have “disrupting an official proceeding” or the “disrupting a peaceful transfer of power.” That was never good enough for the ULTRA ELITE. They had to dig out something that looked more “insurrectiony,” so they came up with “seditious conspiracy.” That was the first sign our government, at least to me, had become corrupt, that they were now distorting reality to suit the narrative, which is what the media and our politicians did all through 2020. There aren’t many people brave enough to get the story — the whole story — of January 6th, but a few have. Julie Kelly’s book is a must-read. And over at the Conservative site Epochtimes, they’ve assembled some of the footage never shown to the American public. It’s worth a watch. For all of their sneering at sites like Epoch Times, none of the mainstream journalists have looked at January 6th, or anything else since 2020, with a critical, objective eye.Two rioters have since committed suicide, probably because our government took away what they valued the most, love of country. If you take that away, you take everything. It isn’t enough that so many of them come from places that have been emptied out and turned into ghost towns all across America. Mom and pop stores were replaced with the same familiar franchises. Anytown, USA became Anybrand, USA. There is no answer from the Biden administration for that.If you drive across this country, you’ll see much love for Trump everywhere. Tractor trailers festooned with his name across them. The Trump flag is planted on lawns, front yards, and fields. There is no doubt that much of America is Trump country. Not the ULTRA ELITE but the people who help keep this country running, farmers and truckers, waitresses and gas station attendants. The Biden administration has no way to reach them. After all, he has now demonized them, wrongly, by calling them racists and “white supremacists” and “insurrectionists” - blaming them for COVID deaths because they didn’t wear masks or get vaccines. Now we know masks barely stopped the spread, if at all, and vaccines never did. So what’s the plan? Just keep scaring the ULTRA ELITE with the ULTRA MAGA? Will that distract people away from their real problems? What happened to the minds of the young during lockdown, what about gas prices, rising rent, inflation? To the ULTRA ELITE, what matters is what they put in their bios on Twitter? The war in Ukraine, their pronouns, BLM. Yuval Noah Harari wrote in his book, Lessons for the 21st Century, the following:“Democracy is based on Abraham Lincoln's principal than you 'can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time. If a government is corrupt and fails to improve people's lives, enough citizens will eventually realise this and replace the government. But government control of the media undermines Lincoln's logic, because it prevents citizens from realising the truth. Through its monopoly over the media, the ruling oligarchy can repeatedly blame all its failures on others, and divert attention to external threats - either real or imaginary.When you live under such an oligarchy, there is always some crisis or other that takes priority over boring stuff such as healthcare and pollution. If the nation is facing external invasion or diabolical subversion, who has time to worry about overcrowded hospitals and polluted rivers? By manufacturing a never-ending stream of crises, a corrupt oligarchy can prolong its rule indefinitely.”Harari was referring to the first war on terror, but his words apply to Biden’s abuse of power to distract from his failed Afghanistan exit, his inability to stand up to the insane Left, and a crashing economy. Like it or not, Joe Biden is Ashli Babbitt’s president too. He’s the President of every desperate Trump supporter who showed up on that day fighting for Trump. He owes them the same protections as he would give the protesters over the Summer in 2020. Pride goeth before the fallIf history is any indicator, we’re witnessing the collapse of the once-mighty empire of the counter-culture Left. They took back power using resources most Americans don’t have access to. They showed us what an America under their rule would look like. They might clean it up nicely on cable news and on their Twitter feeds but the reality is dystopian. The media simply ignored all of the warning signs heading into 2020. We had good reason to be worried about what might happen if the rising madness on the Left got into government. So many victims of that Summer that were never even mentioned by the Democrats at their convention or even now. They just don’t care, just like the dead soldiers in Afghanistan. Like the abuse suffered by police officers in Portland. Like Two women were arrested and charged with beating a US Senator in August. Publishers, editors, and professors were all being fired. The hysteria was whipped up every day online. This was starting to scare Americans away from the Left. That, more than anything, is why Trump won as many millions of votes as he did and won Iowa, Ohio, and Florida, and would have won the election if not for the banked votes the Zuckerberg army had amassed. By August, Trump had something new to campaign on, which is what he’s campaigning on even now. It was handed to him by the insane cultural revolution that took hold over the Summer of 2020, and how so many corporations caved to pressure. Trump has a good instinct for what people care about but isn’t being covered by the mainstream media. That is probably one of the reasons why he’s resonating even now. The reality the ULTRA ELITE give Americans daily doesn’t match their reality. But if they hear Trump talk about it, they think - wow, someone has the guts to say what everyone thinks.He gave a speech at Mt. Rushmore that was the first time any major public figure had talked about what was happening in a critical way :1776 represented the culmination of thousands of years of Western civilization and the triumph of not only spirit, but of wisdom, philosophy, and reason. And yet, as we meet here tonight, there is a growing danger that threatens every blessing our ancestors fought so hard for, struggled, they bled to secure. Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children. Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our founders, deface our most sacred memorials, and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities. Many of these people have no idea why they’re doing this, but some know what they are doing. They think the American people are weak and soft and submissive, but no, the American people are strong and proud and they will not allow our country and all of its values, history, and culture to be taken from them.Enough people were noticing to drive votes towards Trump, particularly as we headed out of the Summer. In many states, early mail-in voting had started in late September. And in the swing states, very early as well.There wasn’t time to overcome the massive lead of early, mail-in voting. They had stockpiled enough that they knew they already won even before the count started. But in the end, Trump's strength showed a shift was happening. That is why elections should be held close to Election Day, so candidates can make a strong case for Americans to choose which direction they want to take the country. That didn’t happen in 2020. They were given a government they never asked for.The Left has become so insane they are making the case for any Republicans to vote them out. The Democrats think selling fear, panic and hysteria is the way to drive their movement forward. It isn’t. Americans need optimism, hope, patriotism, law and order and every other tried and true campaign pitch. The media have never been held accountable for their ongoing distortions in 2020. Sharyl Attkisson has collected the definitive list of the media “mistakes” during the Trump years. I think it’s safe to say that journalism has collapsed. That’s a big part of the empire of the Ultra Elites. Eventually, it will all be coming down. There is no surviving if they’ve lost access to the truth, and they have. There are many examples of this, but let’s just pick one. When the story broke that Trump had used teargas to clear the area for a photo op, it took A YEAR for that story to be corrected. This story was a lie that the media ran. The weird part was, that no one among the ULTRA ELITE cared. They wanted Trump out. Everything else came secondary.But they paid too high a price for their collusion. The media has lost all credibility now among the public. Or anyone who isn’t a member of the ULTRA ELITE.Have you No Decency?In 1954 Joseph McCarthy went too far with the McCarthy hearings. He decided to showcase them on Primetime television, just like the January 6th committee. Even though much of his work had been valid - there WERE spies in government and Marxist zealots in Hollywood - by 1954, he had become paranoid. He was drinking too much and he went too far. That was when Eisenhower stepped in. He helped discredit McCarthy, a fellow Republican because he could see it was destroying unity and American morale. Americans were starting to turn on each other. This was explored so beautifully in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and in The Monsters are Due on Maple Street.Without access to the truth, there would never have been a Twilight Zone. We live in a time that would produce the most interesting books and screenplays, but the ULTRA ELITE will prevent those stories from being told. If you are a white male, you mostly can’t get a writing gig or a directing job unless you’re a big name. And since white people are still the majority, that makes for a very odd hiring pool. But even if they could get work, the strident limits on storytelling is oppressive and strange. We get these rigid self-conscious movies depicting the ULTRA ELITE's ideal utopia. Their casting is always multiracial because that helps them look like they’re doing the work of “antiracists.” But it often sets storytelling off in strange and unpredictable ways. They tell us to think about nothing but the racial dynamics between white and Black people; then they cast them in a way that tells us we should not even see color. The microaggressions we’re supposed to be aware of suddenly disappear when watching a movie, television ad, or TV show. They want us to always think about race or never think about race. Which is it?Access to the truth is Edward R. Murrow speaking out against McCarthy - this speech could apply today to Merrick Garland, Joe Biden, Liz Cheney, Jamie Raskin, and all media that have sold out their profession by their failure to look at this story with any objectivity. We don’t have any leaders in Washington like Eisenhower, that’s for sure, and we certainly don’t have members of the media like Murrow. One of the reasons so many people watch Tucker Carlson, and listen to Ben Shapiro and Joe Rogan is that they are looking for people who will tell them what they think instead of speaking in the measured, guarded tone of the forever frightened ULTRA ELITE. How refreshing to hear someone just rip through the hypocrisy of the most uptight puritanical oligarchy this country has known since its bloody revolution from King George. Carlson is not on Twitter. He says his main touchstone is a waitress in Yosemite who tells him what she’s going through as an ordinary American citizen. That makes him more able to relate to Americans than the cable news hosts who live online in the cocoon of the ULTRA ELITE.Trump supporters don’t have many people who will stand up for them. They definitely have one strong fighter in Carlson. He shows no signs of fear toward any of the ULTRA ELITE. He ruthlessly mocks high-status media, and both political parties, and seems to have a soft spot for the people with the least power. He is most definitely Public Enemy Number One for the ULTRA ELITE.I bring him up because he is among the very few voices on cable news who, to quote Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman, takes a flameflower to this place. You get called a racist and a bigot if you watch Carlson, but I’m still waiting to see this kind of fearlessness anywhere else. The Way OutBiden and the ULTRA ELITE can continue to ratchet up their authoritarian control, then turn around and warn Americans against the authoritarianism on the Right. There is no question about who is the bigger threat. 2020 gave us a glimpse into our potential future. It looks a lot like 1984. It is heartbreaking to see the once formidable movement of the late 60s become the sellouts they used to hate. What happened to the protest songs? What happened to sticking it to The Man? They became the Lotus Eaters. They found their Lotus Plant on Twitter, which felt too good. How powerful they are to control the media narrative and the Democratic politicians. How else is a guy like Adam Kinzinger going to get so much instant feedback? The likes! The sweet, juicy likes! None of them have emerged from that Lotus Plant looking very good. The only way out of this mess is for the hysteria around Trump to dissipate. When that happens, we will likely have found our way through our darkest days. Those who think they can do battle with the “woke left” but still draw the line at Trump saying things like “but the far right is worse,” haven’t yet understood that it’s all the same thing. If Joe Biden was a great leader, he would understand what Trump experienced for the four years he was in power, and how undemocratic it was for our media, government, and the blue-checks to treat him the way they did. Biden could bring the country together that way. But you know he isn’t a great leader and doesn’t want to unite the country. The ULTRA ELITE only seeks to purge or reform the non-compliant ULTRA MAGA. Same old story, eh? Either way, I figure the Democrats are seeing their last desperate days, particularly if they go through with an indictment for Trump. They would have served the blood thirsty blue-checks what they most wanted but it will come at a great cost for the country. America will turn on the Democrats. And after what they’ve done with January 6th, they have it coming. We need a leader who can bring the country together. We have tough fights ahead with other countries, future pandemics, and who knows what else. The ULTRA ELITE have overstayed their welcome. It’s time for them to shrink back into the shadows. Power to the people. 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