Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning with Sasha Stone

• How Far is Too Far for DOGE?

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

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  26:25
• Please, Democrats, Keep Losing Elections

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

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  37:33
• So Begins the Un-Coddling of the American Mind

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

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  30:20
• The Democrats Try to Un-Crazy Themselves

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

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  27:47
• A Survival Guide in the Time of The Intolerant Liberal

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

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  37:39

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