![[Watch] How the Left Became so Intolerant](https://is2-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Podcasts112/v4/19/f9/c4/19f9c4a2-224f-2bbd-273c-6baac3c192d2/mza_8547794741030950788.jpg/250x250bb.jpg)
Episodi
-
After the bombs dropped on Iranâs 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 Kosinskiâs Top Gun: Maverick.
His followers quickly pointed out that theyâre using fighter jets in Top Gun: Maverick, not the stealth B-2 bomber. The $2 billion plane is called the âghost of the skiesâ 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 doesnât lecture us. It doesnât try to fix us. It merely entertains us for a couple of hours by reminding us why we need heroes and why weâll always respond to the Heroâs 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 itâs 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 itâs the least we can do to make a movie celebrating them.
It turns out that Top Gun: Maverick isnât propaganda for the military. Itâs propaganda for the human race. Itâs propaganda for even having hopes or dreams at all. Itâs 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 didnât know we needed them, we only have to watch them on screen to understand why.
Tom Cruise in Top Gun is our ordinary world. Heâs brought back into the extraordinary because heâs the only pilot who can fly like that and reach Mach 10.
Whatâs so great about Top Gun: Maverick is that while it shows our hero succeeding, it also shows him pushing too far and failing. Weâre 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 didnât buy it. Maybe we can believe that extraordinary women exist just as extraordinary men do. Itâs only a movie, after all. But suspension of disbelief only goes so far.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe -
I once believed that the worst thing that could happen to this country was to have a Conservative Supreme Court. That was supposed to be the end of everything. I would scream those words into the abyss all through 2016 to anyone who didnât want to vote for Hillary Clinton, âTHE SUPREME COURT.â
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 womenâs rights.
Well, it turns out, we didnât 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 âchoiceâ and âterminateâ 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 - theyâve moved on to more pressing matters.
I donât think abortion should be illegal. But you know what should be? âGender-affirming careâ 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. Iâm so grateful to Donald Trump, who put them on the court. I am glad we lost, even if I didnât 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 âgender affirming careâ would have been upheld.
Like everyone else on my former side, I was convinced Trumpâs win in 2016 would end everything we held dear, especially the Supreme Court. Weâd been fighting with the Right for years to get control of it. We watched Merrick Garlandâs 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, thatâs when the bottom drops out, whether itâs Eugenics or âgender affirming care.â I didnât 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 itâs one thing if itâs just about cancel culture, destroying Hollywood, comedy, art, and book publishing. Itâs a whole other thing if weâre 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 â they believed it was morally wrong. Now, they are back to stop the Democrats from doing something morally wrong. Itâs the Christian Right yet again that is on the right side of history.
Iâm 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 âgender-affirming care.â 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 canât touch what madness has been manifested by the Left. Look at what theyâve done.
Christianity, we all believed, was the source of bigotry against gays and lesbians. We wanted no part of that. I still donât. 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. Heâs not only reported on the horrors of âgender-affirming careâ 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.
Itâs ironic, isnât it, that it has been left up to many Conservative Christians to state biological reality. Growing up, I was on that side, and they werenât. Now, the Left has pulled so far into madness that the Conservative Christians are the more pragmatic side.
They lock arms with independent thinkers who function as the sane middle, like Colin Wright, Andrew Doyle, Gays Against Groomers, Christina Buttons, and Peter Boghossian:
The forces that oppose them are powerful, as this statement by the American Psychological Association shows. But the resistance forces are stronger.
The Democrats are collectively too stupid to understand that this is not the hill to die on.
The Climate of Fear
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe -
Episodi mancanti?
-
[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 weâre already fighting World War III.
Now, as Trump declares âunconditional surrender, " everyone wonders, is this it? Is this our great war?
Iran doesnât 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 weâre all still wary and fearful that it might turn into âregime changeâ 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 itâs easier to see how it started and how itâs going.
Trumpâs 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, theyâve been trying to assassinate Trump. If there is a graceful way to end the threat without getting into war, thatâs 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 Trumpâs 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 âSquadâ 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 Israelâs 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 Unpaused
The 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 Court
According 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 themâit 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 administrationâs 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 didnât. Instead, they encouraged millions to flood in, many of them unvetted. Yet, because the migrants represent an oppressed group, the Democrats canât 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. Armyâs 250th Anniversary
The 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 âHands Offâ 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 Armyâs 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 Nation
The 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 âMAGA assassin.â
On the list of targets were 45 Democrats, âincluding 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,â 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 weâre living through crazy times, you would be right. Every Fourth Turning feels transformational in good and bad ways. Change is all around us. These are just a few pressure points we are currently hitting as a country.
Let me know if you like this format. Until next time.
[I hope to turn this into video but I ran out of time to do it today. Next time].
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe -
In the Fall of 2021, Donald Trump was selling a hardcover book about his presidency called Our Journey Together. It would be self-published because it had to be. No publisher would touch it, no author would write it, and no critic would be caught dead praising it.
January 6th was meant to be the end of the Trump story. He was to slink back to Mar-a-Lago, disgraced and a failure. They all said his book was a joke, a Putin-like rewrite of what really happened in his first term. Obviously, it had to be a lie - covering up the crimes, treason, and corruption.
But something told me I should get that book anyway and hold onto it. It might matter someday. Maybe, I thought, the Trump story wasnât 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 wasnât a Trump supporter because I was still holding on to what I thought were my principles as a lifelong Liberal. I didnât 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.
Thatâs what Trump has done for the past ten years. Heâs refused to give the mighty empire power over his story. Heâs decided to tell it himself, even if he has to self-publish a book. Heâll dress up in a tux with Melania and attend Les Miz at the Kennedy Center, even if some of them boo him. Heâll 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 âNo Kingsâ protest.
Trump insists his version is the truth, and two narratives go to war every day. But the thing is, Trumpâs is the better story. Itâs 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. Itâs used as a metaphor for religion, but it works here, too.
Trumpâs is the better story because heâs a better storyteller. For all of Trumpâs obvious gifts, that one has served him the best. Heâs 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 Trumpâs 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. Thatâs why so many of his supporters remain loyal to him and fiercely defend him, even when â especially when â 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 wasnât 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 âwhite supremacistâ? 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 partyâa glowing oasis of fun amid an endless, dark winter on the Left.
Iâll 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. Itâs 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 McDonaldâs, 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 werenât fighting the real guy; they still arenât. Their ridiculous âNo Kingsâ protest on his birthday is a fantasy about someone they invented who doesnât exist in real life.
They donât see the Trump we all seeâthe 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 â 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 thatâs 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 donât is that they canât. They want America back the way it was before Trump. But itâs 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, theyâre fooling themselves. They can throw as many tantrums as they want, but that wonât fix who they are. Thatâs why they lost the election. Itâs never been about Trump. Itâs 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. Weâre 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. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe -
âAll you have to do, I tell myself, is keep your mouth shut and look stupid. It shouldn't be that hard.â - Margaret Atwood, The Handmaidâs 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 â a pregnant pause that seemed to say, âWell, why canât it still be me?â as the audience laughed. Then, she said, âDonât be a Handmaiden for the patriarchy,â like all the women on the Right.
But sheâs wrong. Republican women arenât the Handmaids. On the contrary, theyâve put the so-called âfeministsâ to shame. They arenât 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 itâs those who call themselves âfeministsâ who have been exposed as cowards and frauds. They are the real Handmaids.
I didnât use to think so. I thought Hillary Clinton fought for the rights of women and girls. Thatâs how she sold herself, anyway, and liberal women like me bought the lie. I even downloaded an audio copy of The Handmaidâs Tale, thinking it would resonate with me as part of the âresistance.â
But as the story unfolded, a chill went down my spine. It didnât 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 Handmaidâs 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 âtrans women are women,â whether theyâre 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 Clintonâs 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 âfeministsâ 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 âsore loser.â
But imagine if Biles had to compete against biological men. Would she stand by and say nothing? Would she chant âtrans women are womenâ?
The real fight for womenâs 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.
Theyâve 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 havenât just gone along with it; theyâve 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 donât speak out. They canât. Handmaids do as theyâre told. Handmaids live in fear. Handmaids bow to their authoritarian leader. Thatâs not the women on the Right, Hillary, thatâs you.
Whatever the feminist movement used to be, itâs 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 donât matter, then mothers donât matter. If mothers donât matter, civilization collapses.
The first thing cults do is separate children from their mothers. Itâs easy to see why. If you break that bond, they can be more easily controlledâboth 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 fearâall 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 âdonât ask, donât tellâ strategy of dealing with a problem they canât solve, itâs 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 itâs time to end the madness of âgender-affirming care?â 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 America
The 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 âgender affirming careâ 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 arenât 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. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe -
I wasnât sure Iâd 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 Trumpâs name arising in unexpected places in nearly every state, from Arizona (âViva Trumpâ) 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 bookâs first chapter, which describes a world where the Democratic Party isnât corrupt, where they donât hand-pick candidates and then force everyone to âVote Blue No Matter Who,â where identity politics donât 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 Presidentâs Men, âOh, but itâs touching.â
Just imagine Gavin Newsom attempting to challenge Kamala Harris. She might be the worldâs 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 didnât 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 Iâd listen to, I donât 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, Iâm 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 âdirectâ 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? Weâre 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, heâs able to talk about the problems the Democrats have in a way he hasnât 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, isnât so much that there are any new revelations. But itâs 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, Iâm guessing we wonât 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 Itself
Hollywood doesnât have the guts to tell the whole story. They canât because theyâre part of it. Theyâre way too cozy with the Democrats, and if they really wanted to tell the truth, theyâd 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 OneâThe âhope and changeâ candidate lights up the world and chooses an âold white guyâ 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 âhope and changeâ guy doesnât like the âold white guyâ 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 âold white guyâ with a stutter who just lost his beloved son to brain cancer was no longer useful to the âhope and changeâ guy. No one thinks much of it as heâs kicked to the curb and embarrassed as not electable enough, not desirable enough, and past his sell-by date.
So, the âhope and changeâ guy picks the âWall Street Sweetheart,â the former First Lady and Secretary of State, to become the âfirst woman POTUS.â With the help of a grassroots populist movement and an âOld Socialistâ challenging the âWall Street Sweetheart,â 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 âold white guyâ 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 â 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 âold white guyâ waiting in the wings isnât looking so bad. An easy, lateral move. An establishment pick. One âold white guyâ 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 âwell-funded cabalâ 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 âold white guyâ wins. So finally, he gets his dream at long last, to be president of the United States.
Episode Five - The âold white guyâ is finally the savior he always dreamed heâd be. He became a blank check for Black Americans, trans Americans, and especially women of color. He would finish what the âhope and changeâ guy started. Are we topless at the White House?
But the âold white guyâ bungles the withdrawal from Afghanistan, and his approval ratings tank. Americans donât see a nice old grandpa anymore. They see George Spahn, who just moved the Manson Family into the White House, and now theyâre running the country.
Now what? He goes after Trump and MAGA, calling them fascists, extremists, and a danger to society. If the âold white guyâ canât have the presidency, then no one will.
The âold white guyâ isnât so nice anymore. Trump is indicted four times, convicted, and takes a mug shot that goes viral. Theyâve sold their soul to the Devil, after all, theyâre not going to give up power so easily.
Episode Six - The final battle. Trump teases and torments the âold white guyâ 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 âold white guyâ crashes and burns so hard it nearly sets Rob Reinerâs hair on fire. âHe just lost the election,â 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, itâs Original Sin. Itâs denial. Itâs 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.
Itâs a dystopia full of aging, frustrated aristocrats who canât keep democracy down. Weâre about to lose our democracy, they cry. Biden will lose us our democracy, they insist. How can this be happening? Get rid of the âold white guy.â GET RID OF HIM! For the sake of democracy!
âWe need a new nominee,â says George Clooney. Whoâs we? What happened to democracy? Now, the duly elected nominee, aka âthe old white guy,â 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 âwoman of colorâ because they know all points lead to Kamala Harris.
Their flock will fall in line as they always have. Push him out, push the âold white guyâ out in a palace coup worthy of a fading, useless, self-serving monarchy on the brink of collapse.
Trump wins again.
We see the âold white guyâ 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 couldnât 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, âAlex? Hi, itâs Jake. I was wondering if we might talk.â
I mean, come on. Itâs 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 canât think of anything more satisfying than that.
Original Sin proves two things: the Democrats are creeps and they got exactly what they deserved.
Somewhere in Iowa, 8pm.
//
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe -
Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson writing an exposé of the conspiracy and cover-up to hide Joe Biden's cognitive decline is like the Watergate burglars writing a book about Nixon's alleged corruption. The conspiracy and cover-up are coming from inside the house.
âA cancer on the Presidencyâ
To most of us who arenât 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 theyâd make the bad orange man go away.
What I know after a decade of irresponsible fear-mongering is that the âoriginal sinâ was the moment the Left, with all of the power, called itself âthe resistance,â 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 Bidenâs 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 â the guy on Celebrity Apprentice, the real estate playboy we all knew from the 1980s. But in our collective fever dream, we thought heâd 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.
Thatâs all they had left because everything else had failed. So, when a crazed lunatic surfer dude believed he was âsaving democracy,â 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 âoriginal sin.â
And even after that, a freaked-out, unhinged group of people on TikTok actively call for the assassination of Trump with their âwhen it happensâ and âsomebody just do it,â memes.
So when James Comey posts a photo of a message in the sand to â86â 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 âoriginal sinâ 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.
Theyâre still out there doing it now - like Lawrence OâDonnell, Tim Miller, Rick Wilson, Rachel Maddow â All the Presidentâs 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 didnât. After ten years of it, with a new generation coming of age that wasnât 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, weâd never trust the media ever again.
Follow the Money
The reason the excerpt in the New Yorker is about George Clooney is for their target audience. Who else would care? Frontloaded with Clooneyâs journey to Sudan and subsequent charity work seems designed to signal to the reader that the fate of the Democratic Party wasnât up to some actor past his prime. No, he was important. And for a time, he was.
Nothing illustrates the disconnect of todayâs Democratic Party better than the fundraiser in LA that âshook Clooney to his coreâ because Joe Biden didnât 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 âbig movieâ 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 âsaved democracyâ in 2020 and could save it again by stepping aside.
Imagine that kind of hubris to believe Joe Biden had the power to save Democracy and that somewhere deep inside, George Clooney believed he could save it too. What they mean is to save their empire, to preserve their power.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe -
Whatever it is we did to kids that started around 2013 has led to whole generations of freaked-out, delusional cult members who can barely function now when things donât 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 didnât know so many would be so willing to conform, stay quiet, say nothing, or join the mob and pick up a stone. I donât 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, Iâll never forget how a film critic named Sean OâConnell once wrote a film review about Pixarâs 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 didnât 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 OâConnell 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 isnât that hard. Yes, you will lose almost everything, but in return, you will gain your self-respect.
If they canât 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 Dudebros
Itâs obvious to everyone that Democrats are repelling men. All men. Young men, old men, Black and Hispanic men. Theyâve decided the reason for that is the âwoke crapâ that many canât stand but will never admit out loud.
They say theyâve gotten the message. Now, they figure they donât 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, itâs 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 âwoke crapâ 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 donât want to do the right thing.
Itâs 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, weâre sucked back into the crazy.
Oh, it isnât 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 itâs possible to bring some sanity to the party so young men can âget laid and have fun.â
Perhaps it is a good strategy. Just give those who canât 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 didnât mean Pete Hegseth banned it. As with the childrenâs book by Julianne Moore, it was put in the âto be looked atâ pile, but that didnât stop the headlines.
If you see that many headlines hitting your feed and itâs spread far and wide, and people you trust and admire, why wouldnât 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 Theyâre Stuck with it
Wokeness isnât a âfad,â 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 âwhole of societyâ effort began unfolding in schools, in institutions, and online to gently introduce Critical Race Theory as a new way of seeing ourselves in the world.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe -
âThe 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 Mikhailovitch
The theme of the Met Gala this year was Black Dandyism. In case you donât know what that is, The Met explains:
Black Dandyism is cool and all as its authentic self. Iâm not sure it maintained that coolness last night with âradical chicâ 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 arenât owned by Donald Newhouse, the billionaire who owns Vogue and the New Yorker, worth around $18 billion, wouldnât 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 theyâd been kidnapped and who couldnât 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 didnât 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 didnât call it âvirtue signalingâ 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 wasnât 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 weâll celebrate in front of you. Weâll 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 donât 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 weâve been living through, a fake-pretend fix to oppression because Lulu Lemon and the Lifetime Network now center Black characters and de-center âwhiteness.â
Iâll never forget my white friends in Santa Monica, of all places, hurling themselves in front of âBlack bodiesâ because the cops were less likely to shoot them. They all believed this delusion, even in Santa Monica. But now, there is a reversal of that dynamic playing out. White people need Black people and other non-whites or LGTBQIA+ members to hide behind.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe -
Kamala Harris might have many gifts, but intelligence is not one of them. How else to explain her speech, where she compared todayâs Left to a herd of protective elephants?
Here is the clip:
As with most of Kamala Harrisâ 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 doesnât belong to those in the White House but to âwe the people.â Yeah, uh, what part of winning the popular vote is not âwe the people,â 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? âSorry, we tried to make Kamala Harris happen again. We already knew she was a tragically weak candidate who couldnât even win in her home state of California, and is mostly known for her extreme cringe and her viral word salad clips. But sheâs a woman of color, and white women will never vote for a normie white dude, so letâs make Kamala Harris great again?â
Granted, most people on the Left have become so disconnected from reality that they canât 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 isnât 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 doesnât 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 donât like the part where the most important thing to them is ensuring reproduction and survival.
Thatâs last thing they do on the Left now. They seem to be actively trying to extinct themselves, whether itâs 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 canât protect them because they are cowards, not like mother elephants, thatâs for sure. Fathers, too. Theyâve been castrated metaphorically and literally.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe -
âThe Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.ââGeorge Orwell,1984
It isnât that one crazy, alleged animal-abusing Democrat who just introduced articles of impeachment against Trump who will define Resistance 2.0.
Itâs 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 heâs predicting it now.
Heâs right. They have no other plan for America, not in the four years Trump was in power the first time, not for Bidenâs four years, and not now. They have one directive: to purge Trump and MAGA from utopia.
Itâs beginning to look a lot like 2016, only this time Iâm 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 Maddowâs 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.
Itâs 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 theyâre 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 relief
I was part of it. I was a âwokeâ blogger, though we did not use that word then, and many donât 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 Iâd never felt before.
But to be âwokeâ as translated for white people means believing you share your country and your culture with racists afflicted with âwhite fragility.â 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 didnât 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 donât deserve representation. No, it wasnât we who failed. It was Trump who invaded us and is now oppressing us.
We couldnât see things any other way. Because we were the âgoodâ side and those people over there had to be the âbad side.â The nationâs 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 Orwellâs 1984. What is âcancel cultureâ anyway, but virtual gulags?
Anyone who didnât agree with the reversed hierarchy was out. You couldnât 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, âHe was in the public dock, confessing everything, implicating everybody.â
I could feel it, the mass dehumanization. It didnât sit right with me. I was disgusted by how my side was behaving, but it wasnât 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. Iâve 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 âgoodâ side, they must continue to find victims of oppression based on skin color or gender identity. They donât seem to care that much about the hollowed-out, torn-down neighborhoods in the middle of the country, where people of all skin colors are suffering. No, it has to be those who come from other countries, helpless and faceless, defined only by one thing: the color of their skin.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe -
The rage and hysteria are escalating. Theyâre openly calling for Trumpâs assassination.
Theyâre marching, theyâre protesting, theyâre screaming into the void for what, they donât know. Something has been taken from them, something they desperately want back. Itâs been ten long years of fighting, but nothing has worked. There is no way out for them. Theyâre trapped.
If you talk to one of them, they will tell you they believe things that arenât true. Trump is taking away Social Security and Medicaid. Theyâve eliminated the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Theyâve eliminated the Department of Education. Theyâre âdisappearingâ people from the streets and sending them to concentration camps.
The truth doesnât seem to matter and hasnât for a long time now. Hyperbole is all because they have nothing left to sell, no vision for Americaâs future. Who would they be if they werenât the people hunting Donald Trump? They do not know. Theyâve 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. Itâs all coming true. Doomsday is here.
They donât like the word âhysteriaâ because it hearkens back to the dark ages when womenâs mental health issues were mislabeled that way. Itâs the word. Itâs 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.
Itâs the word âhysteria,â like the word âwoke,â like the word âillegal,â like the word woman like the word âhomeless,â like the word âfat.â Change the word, change reality.
These white women canât be feminists anymore because that makes them âwhite feministsâ or âKarens.â They hate those words too. They must always defer, apologize, step back, de-center themselves, and elevate women of color who matter more.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe -
I have known Joseph Massey For quite some time now, we have always wanted to do an interview, but we never made it happen for one reason or another. Now, after we collaborated on a video (see below) and heâs written a brand new book that has shot to the top of the charts at Amazon, thanks to an appearance on Megyn Kellyâs 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 youâd 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:
Josephâs appearance on Megyn Kellyâs show:
A sampling of photos of Masseyâs work, but you can find more at his Instagram.
For more or to subscribe to Josephâs Substack, click here: Joseph Massey
Hope you enjoy our conversation, and let me know if youâd like to hear more interviews from me.
I hope to post one more thing for Easter Weekend, but otherwise, please enjoy the holiday, and for those celebrating Passover too.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe -
The Wall Street Journal has dropped a hit piece on Elon Musk. Their headline suggests Elon Musk is farming out his seed and growing crops for a super-intelligent generation to colonize Mars in the near future. Thatâs the story they wish to tell, and itâs 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 ânot a secret.â
The story is behind the paywall and I am not that invested to pay for this and other hysterical bleating from Rupert Murdochâs high-minded Conservative outlet. I was a subscriber for many years but lately, Iâm not finding much difference there from everywhere else â itâs an endless war on Trump. We get it. You donât like him. We get it. You donât like Elon, either.
Instead, Iâll 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 Heardâs 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 wouldnât 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. Thatâs 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 didnât 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, didnât you know?
As yet another single mother with a mystery baby, she is a nobody. As one of Elonâs baby mamas, however, she can now become a somebody, a superstar of her wildest dreams. Maybe thatâs right, maybe it isnât, but money is nothing compared to fame, unless youâre 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. âI donât want my son to feel like heâs a secret,â St Clair reportedly told Muskâs fixer Jared Birchall, who runs Muskâs 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 Muskâs âparanoidâ way of thinking when they dated in 2023 after meeting in the spring of that year. Their romance began on Muskâs social media platform X after he began to interact with her posts.
She was invited by Musk to visit Xâs 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. âThe first time they had sex, Musk joked that they should âpick a nameâ for their future child,â the outlet reports.
On the trip to St. Barts, she told Musk that she was ovulating. âWhat are we waiting for?â he reportedly replied, and their son was conceived, according to St Clair.
Iâm 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 âmaster race.â 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 sheâd 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 theyâre âworth it.â
Well, you canât 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.â But no, Iâm 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 donât 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 hereâs Ashley whining, WAAAA, pay attention to ME!!
Thatâs 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.
Thatâs Amore
I 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 âhave a baby with me, and Iâll pay you $15 million to keep it under wraps.â The used part is, âLetâs have fun, and if you get pregnant, youâll abort the baby, right?â
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, âImpregnate me Elon!!â And weâre 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 didnât 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 Callerâs Editor At Large, Geoffrey Ingersoll:
Itâs 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 fineâa âwoman-ownedâ business everyone on the Left approved of until they found out I voted for Trump.
But I donât regret that decision, just as I donât 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 donât have a father around, and is that good role modeling for men? Sure, I feel bad for them. No, itâs not good role modeling for men. Like my daughter, every kid deserves that.
Iâll 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.
Sheâs the one who paid the price for MY DECISIONS, just like Ashleyâs 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, thatâs for sure. But it didnât matter how broke we were. Thatâs the thing about parenting: you make it work. You arenât 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 heâs so famous now.
//
end
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe -
I listened with an open mind to this illuminating interview between Bari Weiss at the Free Press and Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen, two of the founders of Axios, about how the public lost trust in the media.
As we watch them scramble to explain why they covered up Joe Bidenâs 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 publicâs 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 werenât they chasing the story, but they werenât 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 didnât 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 Started
How itâs 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 Bidenâs potential mental decline than on alleging that Democrats and the mainstream press colluded to hide it.
Thatâs 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 couldnât see what was right in front of them for four years. Pick one.
Itâs 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, âBuildings Matter Too.â 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, didnât they?
What Happened to Me
The mania around race and racism was on a low simmer after Trump won the first time. Cancel culture was in full swing. Weâd 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 âMake America White Againâ MAGA hat also made the rounds, driving up the rage meter just before the largest protest in American history erupted on the streets, breaking lockdowns and forcing the Left to pivot from social distancing to masks.
It would be days before the story of the fake photo was corrected. Probably even now, many still believe it was real.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe -
The worst thing thatâs 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 isnât 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 isnât 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 isnât the Trump side that was the empire.
Their war-torn resistance fighters were so disgusted that none of the Democrats had done enough to âstop Hitler Trump and his Nazi leader, Elon Musk,â 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: Itâs not Left or Right but right or WRONG.
Itâs a far cry from Obamaâs ânot red states or blue states, but the United States.â The Democrats no longer believe that. They went from âdonât normalize Trump and his supportersâ to itâs more than justified to demonize, dehumanize, even terrorize them. They are âbad people.â Theyâre 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 canât 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 theyâre the drama club, and none of it was ever real.
Splendor in the Grass
I wasnât 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 âno-show Stone,â 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 youâve 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, weâd all be living in a Salem of our own making, and Iâd 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 didnât know the word âgroomingâ back then, but looking back on it, I see thatâs probably what he was doingâa 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 wasnât 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.
Thatâs all we had. We werenât the popular kids, the cheerleaders, the jocks, the science nerds. We were people who didnât 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 heâd 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, tooâbetter 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 werenât 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 Guestâs hilarious Waiting for Guffman, which is about a self-important director of a small town theater group and their delusions of grandeur.
And thatâs 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.
Itâs 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 thereâs a darkness too, a rising violence. What they all mean when they say âHands offâ is not just âhands offâ our government, but âhands offâ everything else too.
Along with keying Teslas and violent outbursts against Trump supporters, there is a hashtag making the rounds on TikTok called âwhen it happens,â where users fantasize about Trumpâs 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, itâs 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. Itâs all performative. But to be included, you must follow the rules. If you donât, out you go.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe -
Like everyone else on the Left, I grew up wanting to exist in the rarified air of NPR. It was, to me, like the green light at the end of Daisyâs dock in The Great Gatsby: the place you donât 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 lotâanything with NPR on it.
Iâd finally made it, maâtop 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 âtransgender migrant crossing the border for an abortion in Texas.â
Maherâs testimony at the âAnti-American Airwaves: Accountability for the Heads of NPR and PBSâ 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. Sheâs probably not used to being dragged before a tribunal and made to answer for how NPR has abused the publicâs trust. But abuse it, they have.
She might not also be aware that this is a revolution. No, heads didnât roll, but the 2024 election was a triumph of the people, by the people, and for the peopleâa 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. Theyâre the #resistance like back when German tanks rolled into Paris. But theyâre 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 isnât a country that likes to be ruled over by an elite, out of touch aristocracy and never has.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe -
Many of you have asked me to post the New York Times profile because you donât have access to it, but I think that might violate copyright laws. So, I thought Iâd read it aloud instead, with some added commentary. If youâre interested, have a listen.
Here is a link to bypass the paywall.
The first part is just me talking free-form and unscripted, so donât be alarmed that it doesnât sound like the usual. If you like the free-form style, let me know, and Iâll do more of them.
Song used at the end:
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe -
I 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 âBernie bros.â I spent too much of my precious time trying to stop them as a movement because they threatened Hillary Clintonâs 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. Theyâve tried harpoons and three barrels on him, and nothing has worked. They finally decide to try Hooperâs shark cage, even though Brody knows thereâs no chance it will work. âYou got any better suggestions?â barks Hooper.
That Quint entertains the idea of bringing in Hooperâs 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 âstop the oligarchy.â They finally have the exact right enemy in Elon Musk and Bernieâs âbillionaires.â 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.
Trumpâs tariffs are a potential solution to Americaâs crippling problem of income inequality that has destroyed the middle class. Thatâs 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 FDRâs New Deal and Johnsonâs 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 Trumpâs 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 Started
According 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 donât 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 Hillaryâs 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 Howeâs new book, The Fourth Turning is Here, he edges ever so slightly to the Leftâs side of things because the dominant generation, the Millennials, are a âgo along to get alongâ 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 Trumpâs economy begins to fail, the power that will rise is the equal and opposite reaction to Trumpâs populism: a lurch to the hard left.
Bernie and AOC are ready to bring the movement back.
Is this finally the moment where both Bernie and AOC have the right kind of anger and the right enemy they need to tap into the collective outrage of all of those crazy people out there losing their minds? People like this:
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe - Mostra di più
