Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning with Sasha Stone

• Why The Democrats Can't Keep America Safe

  Route 66 will turn 100 next year. It slithers along I-40 as a road that almost didn’t think it needed to be there. So much of roadside America vanished once they built the interstate, but you can still see signs of it here and there.While glancing over at Route 66, as I drove back from Ohio to California, I couldn’t help but see how America has become so divided between those who exist in the virtual new frontier of the internet and those who still live in the long-forgotten old America, an America Big Tech will soon leave behind. A week or so ago, while driving through Lakewood, Ohio, I saw two police officers helping a ranting and raving woman open her locked car door. They just stood there, with their heads down, doing their job as temperatures sank to 20 degrees and the snow flurries swirled around their heads. They wanted to be home with their families, but there they were, doing their jobs.Cleveland is a symbol of an America in steep decline. Emptied out factories, some areas so crippled by poverty, they look like third-world countries. The businesses have been abandoned, graffiti covers almost every block, and most people know to stay away from these neighborhoods.My daughter was commissioned to paint a mural on the side of an abandoned building near a vacantd lot in a lower-middle-class neighborhood in Cleveland to dress it up a little. It is cities like Cleveland that Trump was elected to help fix. And it is why bringing in millions from poverty-ridden countries only means these Americans are pushed to the back of the line. His methods might be crude and in some cases, reckless, but his intentions have always been the same. Not just to Make America Great Again, but to Make America Safe Again. The Democrats can’t keep America safe because they have become disconnected from real life and exist inside a self-perpetuating feedback loop that tells them only what they want to hear.They can’t keep us safe on the streets. They can’t keep businesses safe. They can’t keep us safe on the roads. They can’t keep families safe in cities ruled by gang warfare. They can’t keep women safe from violent attacks by random lunatics who should not even be roaming the streets at all. They can’t keep women and girls safe in locker rooms. They can’t keep children safe in classrooms where they insist upon rewriting America’s history and foisting an ideological cult upon the young so that they, too, grow up believing they can change their gender if the color of their skin makes them bad people. They can’t keep those strung out on fentanyl safe either, the hundreds of thousands of overdoses every year. If anything, the Democrats are fighting to protect the rights of the drug cartels, like they fight to protect the rights of illegal immigrants, and like they fight to protect the rights of criminals. The Democrats exist in a protective bubble. They never see or hear the stories that come in brief flashes: a woman was punched on the subway, a man was carjacked with his toddler watching, a store was robbed, and a family was shot at a fast-food restaurant. Protesters beat someone up for wearing a MAGA hat, and a woman is kicked out of a gym for accurately calling attention to a naked man in the locker room. They can’t really address any of these problems, so they shapeshift their message to see what works. Once they win, they can’t deliver. Trump is trying to deliver, and all they’re doing is trying to stop him. Democrats RisingTyler Robinson has never looked better. He was smiling as he strode into the courthouse on trial for the murder of Charlie Kirk. And why wouldn’t he be smiling? He knows he’s a hero on the Left, and he knows that a loud faction of the Right is defending him by blaming - wait for it - Israel.Amanda Seyfried has refused to apologize for saying Charlie Kirk was “hateful,” even if her words echoed Robinson’s, who said that Charlie deserved to be killed because he “spread too much hate.” Seyfried, who has a major movie coming out in a couple of weeks, will be celebrated for her comments and will likely earn an Oscar nomination for a different role in which she plays the presumed second coming of Christ in the Shaker movement. Oh, the irony. The Kirk assassination should have rocked America to its core, as previous political assassinations have. Maybe it would have shaken us all awake so that we could ask, How did we ever get here? But if the Trump near-assassination didn’t do it, if so many of the Real Housewives of the Democratic Party celebrated with cold glasses of Chardonnay and an Instagram post, nothing would.The Democrats have the wind at their backs with major wins in elections all over the country, including the first Democrat to win in Miami in almost 30 years. They believe they have the messaging right and are hitting on affordability, healthcare, and a living wage. So by the looks of it now, nothing can stop them from taking the House in 2026 and the presidency in 2028.They haven’t changed a thing. They haven’t tacked to the center. They haven’t confronted “gender affirming care.” In fact, they’re openly bragging about supporting it, at least if the performative meme factory of frontrunner Gavin, the Great White Male Hope for the Democrats in 2028, is any indication.Here is Ben Shapiro.To them, opposing “trans kids” is “hate.” And that is what got Charlie Kirk killed, except that his death was like lifting a fallen tree in the forest. All of the creepy crawlies came out. It isn’t just the Left. Some on the Right are making a play for the giant hole Charlie left behind. “I don’t care about the midterms,” says Candace Owens. “I hate the Republican Party,” says Tucker Carlson. Marjorie Taylor Greene is enjoying her fifteen minutes of fame by being a useful idiot for the Left, telling CNN and 60 Minutes everything they want to hear. MAGA is tearing itself apart. What separated Charlie Kirk from the parasitic vultures who have flown in to peck at the corpse is that he wasn’t in it just for clicks and views or for money. He was in it because he believed in it, and he was dedicated to helping defeat the Left to save this country, especially its youth. Without him, however, the Democrats can use their powerful media machine to manipulate the message, even to deflect from their own craziness long enough to fool the public into trusting them before they once again demand that all must comply or else. That’s our potential future if the Right can’t get it together to mount a proper offense.The problem for the Democrats is that the mass delusions they push onto the American public have almost no practical application in the real America, the one I’ve just seen as I’ve driven across the country.What I saw was an America that needs politicians not just for “affordability,” but to keep things running - buses, grocery stores, schools, and most especially, to keep them and their neighborhoods safe, something the Democrats can’t and won’t do. Trump telling working-class Americans to buy fewer dolls this Christmas is the kind of thing that can sink a presidency and a legacy. True, he isn’t running for re-election, but it’s the kind of thing that will stick. The truth matters less than the perception, and for now, the Democrats control the media and thus, the message. To defeat the Democrats, Trump and MAGA will have to find a way to tell Americans to buy as many dolls as they want because now they can afford them. Sticks and StonesThe greatest crime imaginable to the Good People of the Left is a bad word. I was there when we began curating our soft language. Make the words inoffensive, and the problems will be solved. There is no homelessness; there are the “unhoused” people. There are no drug addicts, but mentally ill people. We don’t give away our pets, we “rehome” them. It isn’t catastrophic, life-altering medications and surgeries that sterilize children and wreck their bodies for life. It’s “gender affirming care.” So, of course, Trump would be their biggest enemy. He got famous for saying anything, even if — especially if — it was shocking. The Left knows this and yet, they can’t help themselves. It’s “dangerous” because bad words are “dangerous” in a Woketopia ruled by soft language.They exist in an ecosystem that turns the story of a Cinnebon employee caught on tape using the N-word into the biggest scandal of the week. That convinces them that every terrible thing they’ve said and done for ten years has been justified. This country is infested, they believe, with “racists,” and they plan to do something about it once they take back power. How will they do that? By mandating thought and speech, just as they did last time. The internet gives them that kind of control to decide who gets to stay and who has to go. They won’t only use it, they’ll expand on it. But words are nothing compared to a bullet in the neck, a punch in the face, or a knife across the throat. But even if the victims are not white, crime remains an elusive concept for them because crime presents as “systemically racist police,” or mass incarceration, or something Trump and MAGA did. They especially ignore crimes by illegal immigrants. Cleveland and other cities like it have been ravaged by crime and drugs. Trump’s answer was to send in National Guard troops to protect ICE agents and clean up the cities. Then he began bombing the cartel boats bringing drugs to the United States. Everything he does is to keep America safe, and yet, to the Democrats, that’s criminal activity. So the citizens languish, overdose, and die, and the only person to ever do anything about it is the guy they still want to impeach, destroy, or even kill. Of Thee I SingI have just spent the past few weeks driving across this big, beautiful, complicated country, and I’ve never seen a greater disconnect between the traumas foisted upon Americans by the Democrats and the reality of life on the ground. In real life, we can still see each other as fellow Americans. The guy in the elevator can pet my dog and talk to me about how much he misses his dog, who died last year. There are no identifiers that pit us against each other, unless someone is wearing a MAGA hat or a No Kings t-shirt.But that is not true online. We are tracked and traced, our likes and our friends are used to put us in a specific category. An America ruled by the Left will take that one step further, all the way to 1984, where those allowed in are only those who love Big Brother.During the last Civil War, one of the greatest concerns was holding the Union together. It mattered that America survive. Here’s hoping we honor their sacrifice, find a better way forward for all of us, and yes, hold onto the dream. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

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• Netflix and the WB Just Killed Off Movie Theaters

  The deal is done. Netflix will purchase Warner Bros. Discovery for $82 billion. Yet another corporate monopoly drives a nail through Hollywood’s coffin. It was bad enough when Disney bought Fox, Star Wars, and Marvel. Now, Netflix will be among the most powerful corporate monopolies, replacing what Hollywood used to be.America gave up on Hollywood because Hollywood gave up on America. The result is empty movie theaters all over the country—one bomb after another. Of course, Warner Bros. knew. You’d have to be an idiot not to know. Does anyone think Netflix is sweating the online memes accusing it of being too woke? No, they aren’t. They are making too much money to care. With streaming, there is no free market pressure, no quality control. You don’t have to motivate people to leave their homes. You don’t need big stars to drive box office, and best of all, you can ignore the silent majority that has tuned you out long ago. Hate the trans agenda being shoved down everyone’s throat? Too bad. Your boycotts are a drop in the bucket at Netflix. It’s the perfect solution to Hollywood’s problem. They can have everything they want — a virtue signaling paradise — and never have to worry about big budgets or low box office ever again. That’s the easy way out. The truth is harder to swallow. They destroyed themselves. They wrecked their brand and alienated their audience. Hollywood built a ship of failure when it split into two divergent paths around 2003, after the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings franchises brought in ungodly profits not just here but around the world. The branding was the key, the IPs. For years, they dominated the global box office and brought people to movie theaters across the country.Meanwhile, in the other Hollywood, in the “prestige” niche lane where the Oscars live, things began to get smaller, more isolated, more aligned with politics, especially under Barack Obama. His win influenced almost everything, as he loves to put out his top-ten lists every year and even has a deal with Netflix. These two Hollywoods existed side by side like the First Class section of the airplane vs. Coach, where they “let them eat Marvel.” You can see the rise and fall in one image, from Box Office Mojo:This year might mean that, for the first time since 2020, China will dominate the Worldwide box office rather than Hollywood, unless Jim Cameron can bring Avatar: Fire and Ash over the 2 billion mark.In 2019, Hollywood put out over 900 movies. Last year, just 624, and many of them bombed. So what happened? 2020 happened. The one-two punch of COVID and the Great Awokening brought Hollywood to its knees. The Oscar race this year is loaded with unwatchable movies that swirl around things almost no one outside the bubble of Hollywood cares about, identity mainly. Mothers’ caterwauling their oppression, like Die, My Love, If I had Legs I’d Kick You, and even One Battle After Another feature women who seem to hate their children. The people who run Hollywood are still mostly rich white men, but they must always genuflect, with women or people of color as shields to protect them from accusations of sexism or racism by the mob online. The rise of female directors who get these jobs for no other reason except that they’re female has transformed a once-great industry into a DEI film school. Every couple is interracial. Every movie must have significant actors of color. The GLAAD lobby demands representation everywhere. Why would anyone want to pay money to have them shove their ideology down our throats?Success doesn’t even matter to them. That they project “goodness” is all they care about now, their status inside utopia. The EndAs I drive across this country, I sometimes see a multiplex in a mall. It looks as deserted to me as the old drive-ins once did, and I can’t help but think this really is the end for movie theaters. They’ll go the way of the record store, limited to enthusiasts in the big cities. Everyone else will numbly scroll through Netflix for whatever they can find, but it will never have the same cultural impact as a great movie when we’re all under one roof, sharing a story.It’s yet more separation, more isolation, more internet, more social media, less of what we all need as a society.“The Future is Coming, and You Aren’t In It”After COVID ended for rational Americans, we all wondered whether people would return to the movies. The paranoid mask-wearing Liberals did not. Even Peggy Noonan noticed.In 2022, a miracle arrived in the form of Tom Cruise starring in Top Gun: Maverick. It made so much money that it wiped clean the argument that Hollywood was over and movie theaters were dying. Although it was nominated for Best Picture, it lost to the woke screed, Everything Everywhere All At Once. That was a sign that Hollywood was not ready for the iceberg right ahead.The following year showed promise, with “Barbenheimer,” “Oppenheimer,” and “Barbie” becoming cultural sensations on TikTok. The Oscars did the right thing and gave their awards to Oppenheimer. Though things seem to be moving in the right direction, it’s too little, too late. Audiences don’t trust Hollywood anymore, and I can’t blame them. Of all the Warner Bros. movies that were successful this year, the Oscar will likely go to the anti-ICE, pro-ANTIFA, anti-Trump rallying cry, One Battle After Another. No film in recent memory has better captured the singular worldview of the progressive Left.As Curtis Yarvin wrote for The Spectator:Fundamentally, One Battle is a religious film. It is entirely set in the fantasy landscape of the great American religion, progressivism, the 20th-century evolution of our ancient Puritan tradition. If you are a true believer, imagine watching Battlefield Earth without being a Scientologist. For non-progressives, One Battle may be necessary viewing. It displays the interior landscape of the narcissistic narrative of our world’s dominant cult of power. We seldom get to strap a GoPro to the inside of a lib’s forehead. And he continues:So this film is out there – recruiting damaged people by presenting them as romantic heroes in a propaganda fantasy. Few will kill. But many will clap. When bad movies succeed, as One Battle will, they diagnose something bad in the audiences they entertain. Corrupt art is the pathognomonic mark of a corrupt society. Shitty people will watch this shitty film, and love it. Shitty journalists have already given it a standing ovation – the politics makes them hard, like Lockjaw. This evil is at the very heart of our culture.As Leonard Cohen noted: “I have seen the future, brother. It is murder.” Murder is as old as Cain. The anonymous internet is young. Nobody asked for the combination. But they’ll get it.So, of course, the critics have gone nuts for it. It IS religious for them. It’s already won many awards and is on track to win Best Picture. Trust me, Hollywood has no desire to save itself. One Battle After Another cost upwards of $140 million and only made $70 million in the US, with the bulk of its profits made overseas on Leonardo DiCaprio’s name, which is why it’s assumed he demanded his usual fee of $20 million. Old Hollywood understood that you don’t reward failure with film awards. New Hollywood cares less about the money and more about the message. The public used to matter because the box office did. No wonder WB is selling out after watching one bomb after another this past year. Why wait for bankruptcy? Why not cash out now on a high note?This is the kind of thing Hollywood pumps out now:And therein lies the problem. They forgot it wasn’t about them. They believed their own publicity. They fell in love with their own image, like Narcissus. They began to believe they were important. We loved movies and celebrities for what they gave us, not for who they are. We don’t care. We don’t need them to fix us. Or teach us. Or lecture us. Or scold us. We just need them to entertain us. Well, now the billionaires have arrived to prove to them how little they matter when it comes to the bottom line. And if you think that’s bad, wait until the AI tsunami wipes out half the industry. The audience was always their best hope for survival. As long as we showed up, Hollywood and its stars had power. Now that audiences have vanished, well, the ship is made of iron, and it will sink.Who knows, maybe Congress or Trump can stop the merger. That still won’t fix the fundamental problem of what Hollywood has become and why the public turned away. On the upside, the giant hole Hollywood leaves behind, like the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, might open up movie theaters to a new breed of filmmaker. Maybe they can make movies Hollywood or Netflix never would - trashy comedies, cheap horror, romantic comedies, Dirty Harry movies. Who knows, maybe we can Make Hollywood Great Again. What better way to rebuild a counterculture?Altamont, Illinois, 8:42AM. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

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• Erika Kirk and The Wicked Witches of the Left

  They might look like ordinary women as they Instacart from Bristol Farms or strengthen their core at morning pilates. You might be standing behind them in line at Starbucks as they order their half-cream, half-caff, no whip, no foam, triple-pump chai latte with oat milk. They seem to be everywhere once you know how to recognize them. They’re the target demographic for Audible’s Bestsellers list. They account for the bulk of spending on sites like Amazon and Skims. Ever wonder how it is that Goop still stays in business? They live in the Hamptons, Brentwood, or Malibu. They’re married to talk show hosts like Jimmy Kimmel. Or they’re married to themselves. They’re having Thanksgiving in a gated community in Montecito. They’re cloning duplicates who parrot the talking points of the coven like abortion is healthcare and no human is illegal, and trans women are women. They’ve taught them to be strident, demanding, and intolerant with standards too high for any man, job, or country to meet. Their world before was idyllic - a utopia that kept them at the top because they ordered this new world in such a way that nothing and no one threatened their power. The future is female. It’s time for women to rule. White Dudes for Harris. They call it the Great Feminization, but really, it’s a coven of witches.Just before Charlie Kirk’s assassination, Jezebel and Etsy cast a dark spell on Charlie. Why? Because they couldn’t shut him up. In their world, they decide what people can and can’t say, think, buy, or do. They’ve taken down the “story,” but it still exists on the Wayback Machine:These days, witches cater to more than just personal grudges. And it’s not uncommon for them to channel their energy toward thwarting Republicans (there’s even a subreddit devoted to casting nightly hexes on Trump). Are you interested in punishing Kirk for the years of regressive rhetoric he’s shouted at America’s youth and anyone within earshot? Here at Jezebel, we’re about to find out if there’s a spell for that.And:After placing my first spell, “MAKE EVERYONE HATE HIM,” I was left with more questions than answers. How long would it take to kick in? Should I have splurged for a pricier spell to make it work faster? Shortly after, the witch messaged me trying to upsell me a $50 “spell booster.” When I asked what it did, she explained it would “amplify the energetic support” of the main spell, or else I could let it unfold “in its natural timing.” I decided to trust the witch’s will.And her closing paragraph:Sunday, August 24, passed. Nothing. Monday, still nothing. Tuesday rolled around, and I began to wonder if I’d been scammed. But then I reminded myself: this is witchcraft, not Amazon. The forces operate on their own schedule.Megyn Kelly reported exclusively on how this affected Erika Kirk after Charlie was assassinated, leaving behind two small children and a widespread movement that touched millions:What bothers them so much about Erika Kirk, other than that she is brave, kind, beautiful, and true, is what I once believed about the Christian Right. I’d never be able to live like that, I always thought. Then I saw what happened to the Left, to all of us, without religion. Now, we are a movement that believes it’s okay to sterilize children and mutilate their bodies without their consent. We treat abortion like it’s an act of empowerment.Erika Kirk put her faith in God and in her husband. These are mortal sins to the Wicked Witches of the Left. Thou shalt have no God before ourselves. We are the power because we are empowered. But unfortunately, it has resulted in a movement ruled by and defined by evil and hatred. Jennifer Welch, a prominent Wicked Witch of the Left who podcasts alongside a Renfield-like puppet whose name no one knows but who nods along numbly as Welch spits out her invective - “I call him Canks,” she says about Trump after her “Cankles McTaco Tits” went viral. These are the same people who pearl clutch over Trump calling a reporter “Piggy.” Bill Madden and Marco Foster are two of the feminized men dominated by the witches. They do nothing but post the ugliest things all day long on social media. They have found their perfect voice now in Jennifer Welch.Here is Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi on Jennifer Welch:After Charlie Kirk was assassinated, the witches and their compliant male counterparts decided it was more than justified to celebrate his death, to splash around in his blood like the Manson family after they hit the home of Sharon Tate. It didn’t matter to them even a little bit, just as the near-assassination of Trump didn’t matter. Even death didn’t satiate the beast. Charlie’s brutal assassination wasn’t enough. They wanted — NEEDED — more. And so the witches convened once again, with Joy Reid, Jennifer Welch, and her sidekick, whose name no one will ever know or remember, to word-vomit about their perceived enemies. Megyn Kelly was having none of it:Even the Real Clear Politics gang had words (full video here):And here is Erika’s response, the one Tom Bevan references:If the spell on Charlie Kirk was to “make everyone hate him,” then it failed. If it was to shut him up, it also failed. His message will carry on. He is more beloved today than he ever was in life. It turns out that love is harder to kill than even people. Love lives on in the hearts of all of us. It spreads. It unites us. It redeems us. Love was what hundreds of thousands expressed in the wake of Charlie’s death and even now. Charlie’s memory lives on in clips of his tiny daughter running into his arms. In how he told the story of meeting Erika:And how he explained Newton’s laws to his baby.Or money matters:They believe those who do not agree with them must be gotten rid of, and nothing else will satisfy. They will use emotional blackmail, uniform caterwauling, non-stop whining and complaining, and all of the other ways women have learned over the millennia to drive society to the brink of madness, and none of it will work.Unfortunately for the Wicked Witches of the Left, their power is about as useful as their policies and their candidates. Limp, dull, flaccid.Women like I used to be and witches like they are tend to our needs and our fragility. For years, we treated ourselves to therapy, yoga, meditation, Oprah, de-aging, antidepressants, and keto.Eventually, when we fixed ourselves and attempted to raise our perfect children, we overprotected them. In the wake of Columbine and 911, everywhere we looked, we saw danger. We thought every man was a potential child molester. We worried about school shootings, we worried about microplastics and pollution. We thought we could protect our kids to raise them with high self-esteem, but we forgot about strength and resiliency.We abandoned that in ourselves, and we never taught it to our children.What I’ve learned coming out of this era is that you can’t control the world. Even if, as women, as mothers, as wives, as business owners, we’d like to have complete control over everything because we believe we could create a perfect world, I eventually realized you can’t. It’s not possible. Trump came along because we needed to be reminded of what it is to survive things, events, tragedies, wars, and words. The answer is not to control everything and everyone. The answer is to be strong and just to survive.And that’s why these women are now witches, huddled over their cauldron, chanting out that their spells will never succeed and never hold power. Because they can’t survive. If they can’t survive words, and they can’t survive Trump, and they can’t survive open debate and Charlie Kirk, then they most certainly can’t be in charge of this country. All anyone had to do was listen to Charlie and hear what he had to say. If you disagreed, debate him. Yet, you can hear in their messaging who they thought he was, and this was the worst they could say about him, from Jezebel:A cornerstone of Kirk’s nightmare ideology is his insistence that, since gaining more independence, Western women are more miserable than ever. He tells auditoriums full of young women that our freedom is a flaw, not an achievement. He’s obsessed with declining birth rates and idealizes the 1950s, when women’s only “job” was tending to children and husbands. If we all abandoned our careers and returned to motherhood, we’d be happier, according to Kirk. Indeed, he fails to realize that I would be happiest if he would just shut up.She could not offer up a stronger argument to the contrary because look at her. She is proof that he was right. She’s miserable. Jennifer Welch is miserable. All of the witches are miserable. I was miserable too. I know what it is to live the feminist lie, and I know what it is to look back at my life with regret. How can they sell that to young women? The Jezebel writer consoled herself with a petition that was launched on the Utah campus that would become the site of Charlie’s murder. The petition was launched on Friday, August 22, and had already been signed over 3,800 times. Could this be the “MAKE EVERYONE HATE HIM” at work?”But the petition grew to 6,829, all of them in agreement that the university should prevent Charlie from speaking:Sign this petition to send a clear message that we stand united for a university that upholds the tenets of inclusivity, respect, and enlightenment. Let us work together to ensure that Utah State University remains a campus where all students feel safe, valued, and respected.Yeah, shutting him up by any means necessary sure sounds like “inclusivity, respect, and enlightenment” to me. Sounds more like the very definition of fascism, “conform or else.”These wicked witches and so much of the Left’s once-mighty empire invented a version of Charlie Kirk that never existed and transformed him into a monster of their own making. They wanted to send a message to anyone who might think about disagreeing with them, on a college campus, no less. What are they teaching these kids? Not free speech or open debate.They invent monsters, chase those monsters, and then act shocked when loser nobodies pick up a gun and become their heroes. No, they aren’t shocked. They are grateful. They should heed the wise words of Friedrich Nietzsche:Welcome to the abyss, Wicked Witches of the Left.//Tip JarMusic… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

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• How Dare We Speak Happy Thanksgiving!

  I remember when Generation Woke decided to take Thanksgiving. The narrative fit right into the oppressed/oppressor mindset. America was a rotten, fetid empire of colonizers who marauded through the pristine countryside and then forced the Native Americans to eat with them for Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving was now “problematic.” Celebrating it, even more so. High-status influencers who made a great living off of our Capitalist system pronounced their objections to this once-great American holiday, to take a brave stand against it, because, especially in 2020, every white person was expected to atone for their sins of the past and their white privilege now. “We’re not celebrating Thanksgiving,” so went the lengthy, agonizing, virtue-signaling posts on Instagram. Maybe they’d be out feeding the poor, though still celebrating Thanksgiving, just not for themselves. Charity could wipe clean the shame.Once Trump was pushed out and Biden put in power, the waters calmed, the screaming stopped, and Thanksgiving was no longer a curse upon all of us.Now, here we are, Trump is in power again, and Thanksgiving has now become yet another crisis that must not go to waste. We are to enter the holidays thinking of the president committing illegal acts and whether or not members of the military will take a stand against him and start a hot Civil War. Thanksgiving must be a reminder of the Nazi occupation that is starving the poor, especially the Black and Brown people, who are being hunted down and thrown into concentration camps. The order has come down that all must be miserable. Four long years to make Americans suffer for the crime of the Democrats losing an election to Trump again.Says Senator Patty Murray. How dare we speak Happy Thanksgiving! How dare we speak Merry Christmas! With all due respect to those trapped inside the Doomsday Cult, no. Just no. This is one day you can’t take from us. You can’t shame us out of it. You can’t tell us not to gather with our loved ones around a table and enjoy a meal. Thanksgiving is not yours to take. It never was. You can be miserable if you’d like, but those of us who are grateful just to wake up another day, let alone to cook a meal or get invited to a meal, are grateful for the bounty. Grateful for life at all. Grateful for each other. And, for many, grateful to God. Yes, we dare speak Happy Thanksgiving. Fond MemoriesI always thought Thanksgiving was the great unifier. It wasn’t like Christmas, where only some people celebrated. It was an everybody thing. That was how we saw it and how we were taught to understand it. Thanksgiving for most of my life was held at my grandmother’s house in the San Fernando Valley. With her tattered framed letter from Bill Clinton hanging on the wall, her ceramic Siamese cats frozen in place on her glass coffee table, the plastic lining that covered her good sofa, the piano in the corner nobody played, her gold-plated flatware, the good dishes, and the nice tablecloth, freshly laundered and ironed, her Thanksgiving was one of my fondest memories. She spent all day cooking the turkey, and when it was finally done, it would be presented as the greatest thing any of us had ever seen. And so it was. I’m not saying it was straight out of Norman Rockwell or anything. It was pure chaos most of the time, and often a powder keg, but somehow on that day, we all knew how to behave.My grandma’s turkey was one thing. Her pies were legendary. She would put too much cinnamon in the pumpkin pie, but that’s what made it good. It was the warm house on a cold winter day, even in California, that I remember most, and the way we could smell the food cooking even outdoors. We did not eat all day, preparing to fill our bellies until we could not breathe.We were poor in the early days, and on welfare, so Thanksgiving at my grandma’s house was one way we felt normal, doing what every other family did. Even those at rock bottom need a day to say thank you and give grace, no matter their circumstances in life. That’s what it’s for. It elevates us out of our misery, or at least it can. We didn’t say thanks or grace back then because in my family, that could spell trouble. It was all about the meal, about my grandma’s infamous cooking, and all of us seated together in a cramped suburban home, talking to each other, spending time together, time we’d never get back.Over the years, Thanksgiving moved from house to house. When my grandmother was too old to host, she’d offer to bring up the Turkey to my brother’s house in Ojai, California. Once, we waited three hours for her to arrive with the Turkey, now cold, sitting in her trunk. Once, she accidentally used salt instead of sugar when baking her apple pie. Before long, she couldn’t make the drive, and Thanksgiving, for her, was over. I still can’t think of it without thinking of her. I think of her every time I roll out homemade pie crust, using the glass of ice water she taught me to use, or the way she taught me to cut the green apples, throwing away the peels and dropping the flesh into a bowl of lemon water to keep it from browning.I think of her whenever I see a turkey coming out of the oven, and I remember how she liked her stuffing inside the bird rather than the modern way of cooking it separately in a casserole. I think of how much she loved America and its traditions and how faithful she was to all of them. My grandmother taught us what it meant to be grateful for all we had, even if it wasn’t much. Thanksgiving isn’t about the cost. It can be celebrated on a paper plate in a food kitchen or in the park, just as easily as it can be in my grandmother’s dining room or at a restaurant. It’s the idea of it, one of the few rituals we have left that we can share, at least among those of us still holding onto the fragile idea of an America at all. On their live version of America This Week, Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi reported on how so many high-minded outlets see it as their duty to treat Thanksgiving like a funeral for America, but here is what Thanksgiving is really about. I guess that’s why I drive six days across the country every year to see my daughter on Thanksgiving. It turns out that it means a lot to me, too, and I always want to make sure I don’t miss even one. I have cooked more than my share of Thanksgiving dinners, and I hope I’ve created memories for my daughter. Maybe someday I’ll be the grandmother to her children, and the ritual will begin anew. It isn’t just a day to cook or eat but a day to say thank you for the blessings in my life, for the luck I’ve had, for the love I’ve experienced, for the beauty I can still see in this country and its people, from state to state. If we can do this on this one day, maybe we will be okay.That is why I’d like to thank all of you. It’s been a hell of a ride these past five years. Thank you for the warmth and kindness you’ve given me, the support, the praise, the criticism, the subscriptions, the donations, and the encouragement. I don’t know where I’d be without you. I hope you have a Happy, yes Happy Thanksgiving. All the best to you.//_______________ TIP JAR This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

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• Barack Obama and the "Bitter Clingers"

  When I look around at the crumbling empire I helped build, I wonder how it all went so wrong. How did so many people lose their minds, the legacy media lose its objectivity, and so many so-called “educated” people lose their grip on reality?What is Trump Derangement Syndrome anyway? I think, as someone who lived it and has been online for the last 30 years, that the people with all of the power could not let go of that power, just like the South during the last Civil War. The South had built for itself a utopian version of America, one not rooted in reality, but one they deeply believed in. The same is true for the Left today. I know, I helped build it. I believed in it too and thought it would last forever. Trump’s win in 2016 was a sign that half of the country was not happy with how things were going and wanted change, just as much of America understood that a country that proclaimed all men are created equal could not keep slaves.And just as the freeing of the slaves sent the South into mass psychosis that would lead to Jim Crow laws and the oppression of Black Americans, after eight years of deeply rooted propaganda that said Trump was a racist and for him to win would be an existential threat to our way of life, one our country could not survive, sent those of us inside utopia cascading into madness.And so we began fighting a Civil War. Not at Gettysburg or Shiloh, but on Facebook, Twitter/X, YouTube, and TikTok. But only one side is cutting off friends and family. Only one side has no plan for the rest of America on the outside. Only one side seems prepared to become violent to preserve their utopia. I thought November of 2024 was like the burning of Atlanta. Not quite the end of the war, but almost. Now, after Charlie Kirk’s assassination and the fracturing of the Right, I’m not so sure.What I do know is that so much of what defines our Civil War, so much of what explains the Left’s mass psychosis, took root in 2008.What is an American?2008 was the crisis that sparked the Fourth Turning, according to Neil Howe, who co-wrote the book with William H. Strauss. It wasn’t just the election of the first Black president, or the launch of the iPhone, the rise of social media, or the $800 billion bailout of Wall Street that birthed two populist movements on the Left with Occupy and on the Right with the Tea Party. It was also the year an idea contagion began to spread.In April of 2008, Obama was recorded writing off half the country as people who were “bitter” and clinging to “guns and religion.”“Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton activated her entire campaign apparatus to portray Mr. Obama’s remarks as reflective of an elitist view of faith and community. His comments, she said, were “not reflective of the values and beliefs of Americans.”Those comments were not seen as racist, yet months later, in October, when Sarah Palin said more or less the same thing, she was called an “Islamaphobe.” Seven years after 9/11, that is what the Left was worried about, not “Radical Islamic terrorism.”From the Washington Post, “Palin’s words avoid repulsing voters with overt racism. But is there another subtext for creating the false image of a black presidential nominee “palling around” with terrorists while assuring a predominantly white audience that he doesn’t see their America?”Race and racism became the dividing line after that. By 2010, the idea that the Tea Party was racist became a big story. ABC News still had some objectivity and attempted to tell both sides.Reason’s Michael Moynihan made a video montage showing how widely accepted it was to call the Tea Party racist. Two years later, in 2012, amid Obama’s re-election, Mitt Romney and the Republicans had no idea what they were up against. I was among those fighting Obama’s media wars on Twitter, having followed him since the beginning. We were his loyal flock, building the narratives, correcting the bad news, reshaping, retooling, deconstructing, and reconstructing reality to push pure propaganda and keep our side in power.As wealth shifted leftward, thanks to the rise of Silicon Valley, Big Tech also leaned Left. Google, YouTube, Facebook, Amazon, Audible, and book publishing. It was in every university and every institution as society began migrating online. We were in control of all of it.To combat the idea of the racists and the “bitter clingers,” public schools and universities began teaching Critical Race and Gender Theory. It was the beginning of the Great Feminization and the Great Awokening. This contagion was seeded on sites like Tumblr with the oppressor/oppressed mindset, free Palestine, open borders, and a choose-your-gender worldview. It wasn’t just Twitter by then. It was all of Hollywood, too, and most of our culture. That’s why, in February of 2012, HBO released the movie Game Change, a retelling and repurposing of the 2008 election.Where Palin had been portrayed as a ditsy know-nothing we all laughed at on SNL…Now, Julianne Moore’s version was darker and more sinister. A Never Trump narrative was just beginning as Steve Schmidt of the Lincoln Project and Nicolle Wallace were portrayed as the heroes, not to mention the only “good Republican,” John McCain, who stood up to the “racists” and “bitter clingers.” Our superpower in the Obama years was manipulating the flexible nature of words to make them mean anything we wanted them to mean, like “binders full of women.” That would become “Good people on both sides.” Or “Fight like hell.” “When you’re famous, they let you do it.”The reality we shaped was everywhere - at gas stations, airports, and magazine covers in the check-out line. Having control of that - the background noise - is what the Left has been fighting to preserve. It is a fight they are losing thanks to the rising voices on the Right, and Trump himself, who are exposing them.But it was accusations of racism and Islamaphobia that would become Obama’s most powerful weapon to win. It is the cryptonite of the Ruling Class and what has divided this country for ten years. What a difference 17 years makesBack in 2008, Obama was accused of being a Muslim Socialist, not born in America, who “palled around with terrorists.” Now, one of the new leaders of the Democratic Party is a Muslim socialist, not born in America, who pals around with terrorists. Zohran Mamdani not only feels no shame in admitting this, but he also won because of it. Identity is everything now, so why not scream it from the rooftops? Anyone who complains can easily be dismissed as a racist or an Islamaphobe. In Mamdani’s New York, there is an oppressive ruling class keeping the Black and Brown workers poor, instead of the reality, an enclave for the guilty white liberals who fund their movement. But for those checks to keep flowing in, they have to give those guilty whites what they so desperately crave, confirmation that they are the Good White People Doing Good Things, and those “bitter clingers” over there are the “racists” who want to oppress the Black and Brown people they protect. Just give us absolution from our sins of wealth and privilege.Guys like Ken Burns live comfortably away from the harder realities of everyday life in America. Trust me, I know. I used to see him every year at the Telluride Film Festival. His telling of the American story must lead with race and must be yet another lecture to those with less wealth, less power, and less representation in culture - hated people in their own country, forced to accept that America is a corrupt, rotten, imperialist, and white supremacist empire. Making everything about race justifies the ruling class’s place atop the wealth hierarchy. Nothing in that hierarchy can be disrupted, so the oppressed must remain oppressed. And for now, there is no way out except to do what I did, escape. Find the truth. Get to know the people they’ve been told to dehumanize. The Left’s idea of utopia erases the value of being an American citizen. It seeks to align with a global world order of like-minded people. Yet, for so many in MAGA, being born American is hitting the jackpot. Nothing is more valuable than the rights all of us have as citizens, no matter our skin color. And yet, the ruling class in America for the past 17 years has decided none of that should matter because our identity is not where we were born. Our identity is whether we are white or not. If you oppose illegal immigration and support mass deportations, you are a racist, according to them, and your citizenship matters less than your white privilege. And that is how illegal immigrants became the oppressed group that governors like Gavin Newsom and JB Pritzker are willing to fight to protect. And ordinary American citizens can be thrown away like human garbage. The New York Times’ Peter Baker loved reporting how bad the ticket sales are at the Kennedy Center, never once acknowledging how Trump tried to open it up to the underclass who’d been shut out for years. They see Trump’s inclusion of the wrong half of America as taking something away from them, their glory days of utopia. The ballroom will be something lasting, a monument to the half of the country that fought for representation and a permanent structure to remind them of that fight. Here are Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi from America This Week.The Bitter ClingersNow, it’s the Left who are the bitter clingers. They can’t accept defeat, and they won’t let go of the past, of utopia. Hillary Clinton is a bitter clinger who can’t get over the 2016 election. Barack Obama is a bitter clinger who had to call Charlie Kirk a racist when he felt his own legacy dimming. Nancy Pelosi is a bitter clinger who helped manufacture a delusion about January 6th just to obtain absolute power. Barbra Streisand, Rosie O’Donnell, Katie Couric, Richard Gere, Rob Reiner, Bruce Springsteen, Martin Sheen, Robert De Niro, and Jane Fonda are all bitter clingers who have never even seen the other half of the country, much less understood it.Those of us on the other side see the danger of utopia, what 17 years of it has done to the minds and bodies of children, what it’s done to women and girls, and boys and men. What infusing propaganda into culture has done to truth and art. It is a manufactured reality that reflects an American utopia that doesn’t exist and never did, just like the antebellum South. As the Southerners back then were the “bitter clingers,” so too are today’s Woketopians, the virtue signaling army at war with the trolls. They are the ones who can’t stand people who are not like them and the ones who can’t move on from the past. So they fight on, hoping that this time it’s not gone with the wind. end// This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

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