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Hi, this is Free Thinking through the Fourth Turning. My name is Sacha Stone. A virtual civil war on America's birthday. Can we all just get along? I remember the exact moment when I realized I loved my country. The year was 1997. The place was Italy. The affliction was love. The guy had a Che Guevara poster on his wall. I had no idea who that was. He was talking about Israel and how terrible they were. I had no idea what he meant, so I just nodded along. But then he started trash talking America. So I said, well, you sure like our Marlboros, our Levi's in our movies, don't you? It could have been a joke, but it somehow wasn't. I wasn't mad exactly. It was defensive. And that's how I knew I loved my country and why I was an unapologetic American, like Kevin Klein in A Fish Called Wanda. Fine. It's beauty, isn't it? Where'd I leave my drink, Archie? Ah, don't you know? How do you do, Mrs. Leach? I'm Harvey Manfringenson. I'm with the CIA. CIA? That's correct, ma'. Am. I was just telling your husband here before I had to go to your beautiful bathroom, we've got a high ranking KGB defector in a safe house near here. We're debriefing him as of now, and we're just checking all the houses in the neighborhood. For what? For kgb. Is there any danger? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Not now. We. We just want to keep everyone informed. So, Archie, thanks for the drink. Sorry to trouble you folks. I'll see myself. Keep everyone informed. So there's no panic, ma'. Am. But isn't it a secret? You have no idea how secret. Why are you telling everyone? It's a smokescreen. What? Double bluff. Look, you obviously don't know anything about intelligence work, lady. It's an XK Red 27 technique. My father was in the Secret Service, Mr. Manfred Ginsengen. And I know perfectly well that you don't keep the general public informed when you are debriefing KGB defectors in a safe house. Oh, you don't, huh? Not unless you're congenitally insane or irretrievably stupid. Know. Don't call me stupid. Well, enough. Not. Oh, you English are so superior, aren't you? Well, would you like to know where you'd be without us, the old US of A to protect you? I'll tell you. The smallest fucking province in the Russian Empire. That's What? So don't call me stupid, lady. Just thank me. Well, thank you for popping in and protecting us. If it wasn't for us, you'd all be speaking German. Singing Deutschland, Deutschland. As we gather together on the 4th of July to celebrate the nation's birthday, I'm struck by just how polarized we still are. It is as bad as it was during the last Civil War, so how can we feel as if we are still one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all? They don't feel that way on the left, and they make sure everyone on the right knows it. They hiss and shriek and moan and scream at Trump and his supporters as though they are living under an oppressive emperor, rather than just having suffered a humiliating defeat in November. If only they called him an emperor. They've gone all the way to Hitler. Once you've reached Hitler, there's nowhere left to go. But maybe that's wrong. Perhaps there is still somewhere else to go, taking what is a virtual civil war and transforming it into a hot war, or at the very least, a violent uprising. If, say, a few blue states decided to secede from the Union over mass deportations or transgender ideology, what then? Zoran Mamdani has promised, if he's elected, to obstruct ice, even if it means he gets arrested by the feds. Podcast listeners A statement from Zorhan Mamdani the President of the United States just threatened to have me arrested, stripped of my citizenship, put in a detention camp and deported, not because I have broken any law, but because I refuse to let ICE terrorize our city. His statements don't just represent an attack on our democracy, but an attempt to send a message to every New Yorker who refuses to hide in the shadows. If you speak up, they will come for you. We will not accept this intimidation. That Trump included praise for Eric Adams and his authoritarian threats is unsurprising, but highlights the urgency of bringing an end to this mayor's time in City Hall. At the very moment when MAGA Republicans are attempting to destroy the social safety net, kick millions of New Yorkers off of health care and enrich their billionaire donors at the expense of working families, it is a scandal that Eric Adams echoes this president's division, distraction and hate. Voters will resoundingly reject it in November. Zorhan for New York City Gavin Newsom has already taunted Trump into arresting him for obstructing ice. Mayor Karen Bass in Los Angeles and all the wealthy donors who put her in power are making mass deportations the central Issue for the Democrats. Is it a cause worth fighting and dying for? They've taken to social media to proclaim Alligator Alcatraz, which is designed as a deterrent to discourage gang members, drug smugglers and other criminals from risking crossing the border illegally. Alligator Auschwitz. Here is a sampling of tiktokers. Alligator Alcatraz is a concentration camp for brown people. Alligator Alcatraz is a concentration camp for brown people. I've tried to record this so many times. Shaking. Look up Alligator Alcatraz. I know I look crazy. Crazy. But it's a concentration camp. And they're making it in Florida in the United States. And this is bigger than you know. You don't understand. I wish I could explain. I wish I could explain how I saw September 11th before it happened. I wish I could explain. I knew Covid was was going to happen when September 11th happened. Alligator Alcatraz. $450 million in the first year and they're modeling it after concentration camps in Nazi Germany. And they're improving on it. It's going to be even worse. $450 million FEMA tax money that we paid for. We are paying to torture and kill and starve. This is worse than paying for the bombs that get dropped on people. What is this? We must stop this. These are our people. This is us. This is each other. We're going to be doing this to families. We're allowing it. We're standing by and watching it happen. Why won't we do something? You don't understand. I need to do something. We need to do something. A concentration camp, A torture camp, an internment camp on a massive scale. Look it up. Look up the CNN special report that came out today. Alligator Alcatraz. Tell everyone you know we're all responsible. If you're here in the United States, you're responsible. We're paying for it. This can't happen. Don't let it happen. We don't have to stand by and let this happen. So I tried to do a post earlier today that had a MAGA hat on it and it said that I hate hating. And I do. It makes me sick that I feel this way. But if you are still supporting the current administration's administration and the horrible things that they are doing to. To the American people. Yes, American people in addition to undocumented immigrants, then I cannot be friends anymore. Like, that's where I am. So if you follow me and you, like, scroll through that content, whatever, but like, we are not the same. We do not have the same morals. We are not the same And I cannot continue to pretend that everything is okay. For a while, we were able to do the like, just not talk about it. But if you are definitely still supporting this administration, then I can't anymore. Sorry, Alligator. Alcatraz is not a detainment center. It is a death camp. I'm a Floridian. I live in Zone B on the Gulf Coast. My house is built to withstand Category 4 hurricanes, and yet I have still been mandated to evacuate some storms. This camp was thrown up on an airstrip in no time. It is not built to withstand a severe thunderstorm. Never mind a tropical storm or a hurricane. They will lose power. They will have no access to an evacuation. And for podcast listeners, a tweet from Bill Madden. This is what fascism looks like. Trump has moved on from illegals and is now talking about any individual who opposes him. This is straight out of 1930s Nazi Germany in the year 2025. I can't believe this hasn't generated more moral outrage than it deserves. And here is what Trump said. I'd like to say, you know, a little controversial, but I couldn't care less. We have a lot of bad criminals that came into the, into the this country, and they came in stupidly. It was an unforced error. It was an incompetent president that allowed it to happen. It was an auto pen, maybe that allowed it to happen, and it did happen. But we also have a lot of bad people that have been here for a long time. People that whack people over the head with a baseball bat from behind when they're not looking and kill them. People that knife you when you're walking down the street. They're not. They're not new to our country. They're old to our country. Many of them were born in our country. I think we ought to get them the hell out of here, too. You want to know the truth? So maybe that will be the next job that we'll work on together. But I think getting them out, you know, we forget about them. We have some very bad. We had some bad accidents in New York, and they're not accidents. This illustrates perfectly how it is that the left became the crazier side. What Trump says could be seen as potentially removing American citizens, but it's not clear exactly what he means. And if you do not exist in reality, what he says can mean whatever you want it to. Podcast listeners, another tweet by Guy Felicella. This is why tourism is down. This is why FIFA should cancel playing in the usa. This is why people should avoid traveling to the us this is inhumane. They react with the same level of panic as they did with the Access Hollywood tape. Russiagate, E. Jean Carroll, Stormy Daniels. Good people on both sides, losers and suckers. Ivanka Trump Elon as a Nazi. Impeachment. Impeachment. Indictment. Indictment. They are the party that cried wolf. Their helplessness in the face of Trump's wins is then taken out on those they know for podcast listeners, a tweet from Murray Hill Guy A little real life for the timeline. One of my best friends in New York City blocked me on everything this past week. We've never argued about politics. He's very liberal, which is fine with me. I've always kept my views to myself around him out of respect. It's never once been a major issue besides normal convos. But after I went viral recently and made it clear I don't support certain New York City politicians, I found out from another friend that he's really upset with me. Not a word to me directly. I checked and saw he had quietly blocked me on everything. Even Venmo. I'm not kidding. I know some of it is coming from his girlfriend and their friend group who are also very liberal. Yet I am very reasonable and can still like them as people. I get it. People talk, they make assumptions. But it's been weirdly heartbreaking losing a 10 year friendship. Last messages I sent last week were just no response. I haven't confronted him, I've just been giving him space. But it's really messing with me. Is a difference in politics really enough to nuke a real friendship like that? Do I let it go? Do I call it out? Was it even real to begin with? End quote. Most people on the right have a story like that. I've lost many friends over the past 10 years, and much of it even before I ever decided to vote for or support Trump. It's just that I asked too many questions. I didn't follow the rules. It isn't just the betrayal of voting for Trump, although that's a big part of is the mandated directive from inside their doomsday cult. They must purge those who do not align with their views. And even those who know or our friends with Trump supporters are also banished, swarmed and attacked. So how can we celebrate as one country if so many of those who rule our culture and dominate so much of our society are this intolerant? Podcast listeners a TikTok no fireworks, no barbecues, no celebrations, no freedom fests. We aren't free. A New America Online I've lived online for 30 years. I helped build what would become a vast utopia of a new America. Our superpower was creating our own reality and then presenting it to the media, who then transformed it into the status quo. Much of the early Internet took shape in the George W. Bush era. Not many people realized the power of social media back then, but Obama did. It's not likely Bush would have even been elected if social media had been around. The Republicans were slow to catch on. Obama had an energized army of college educated tech junkies who loved nothing more than going to war for him every day. I was one of them. Presidential politics would never be the same. And out of that era came the cool, yet morally superior alpha voices like Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes, and Jon Stewart. We had all the power because every major institution, university, corporation, every person, famous or otherwise, had to have an online presence. We'd taken control of the port of entry and thus could decide the rules that everyone must follow. So what happened? Trump happen? Unlike most Republicans, Trump took to Twitter like an early adopter, using it to build his own movement. With Obama leading one tribe and Trump leading the other, we became two warring sides. Call them the Virtue Signalers versus the trolls. For podcast listeners, two lawn signs. One says, love your neighbor, your black, brown, immigrant, disabled, religiously different, lgbtq, fully human neighborhood. And another one, hate your neighbor. Republicans, maga, non compliant, non conformist, traditional, normal neighbor. Trump antagonized the left. He refused to play by our rules. He loved saying things that shouldn't be said, and he loved that with every tweet he made the news. If the Democrats had shrugged and moved on, they probably wouldn't be where they are today. A collapsed and failed utopia. Instead, we began fighting our virtual civil war with my side calling itself the resistance, which it never was. It was always the empire. Trump was only the second Twitter president to be elected, and the shock of our side losing was too much to bear. Thus began our ritual of purging, destroying, attacking, demonizing, and dehumanizing those we deemed a threat. The MeToo movement took down hundreds of would be assaulters, rapists and harassers that had cycled through the wheel of oppression, with each group taking center stage. The future is female Muslims, Black lives matter, trans women or women. No human being is illegal on stolen land. Trump was someone who could not be destroyed, banished, or canceled until January 6, which provided the necessary video footage to prove the hypothesis that it was all justified. Those bad people got what they deserved and did not belong in our government or Our country. Banning Trump and other conservatives from social media sites we thought belonged to us would set up a series of events that would flip the power balance online and eventually in government. And when conservatives finally had a voice, they also had a superpower. They could speak the truth that no one on the left could. Speaking the truth was the left's biggest threat. In an online world built on words, if it's just words, they can be altered, softened, transformed to mean something other than the truth. We manufactured our own reality for so long that eventually there was no such thing as the truth anymore. We had to go along with the lies to say men were women and women were men. Bad movies were good movies and children could be born in the wrong bodies and America was corrupted by the white supremacist patriarchy. Oh, yeah, and Trump was Hitler. That is the truth of the last 10 years, but it's not the story the left would tell. They can't handle the emotions that bubble up inside them when confronted, and they have to flee the conversation by either hanging up the phone or walking away. Here is a tiktoker. I'm a black American who voted for Trump. I'm sorry about that. Why? I'm getting what I voted for. No. I'm sorry. No. Are you. You. You are? Yeah. Wow. Well, what do you mean by that? Well, they're deporting criminals, people who shouldn't be in the country. Criminals? Honey, if you come here illegally, you're a criminal. I think you're just trying to be divisive right now, and I don't think that's really how. You just asked my opinion. I know, I understand that, but I don't think that's really. I think that I've actually seen you. Were you the girl that lady that was, like, hit in the face by somebody else? Yeah. I'm so sorry about that, by the way. I think that was terrible and disgusting, but I think that you are just doing this to sort of like, ignite excitement, and I can't imagine that you would, that you would vote for that person who literally doesn't care about you. He does. He doesn't. He doesn't. His actions say different. If you are you a white multi millionaire male, then. Then you're not. So. So he doesn't really care about you at the end of the day because. You mean some of the biggest tax cuts during his first term. He's going to roll those out again. I, I want to have children very soon. So he's doing this thing where you can have a baby bonus. Encourage people to have more. That's also not true. That's not true, honey. That's not real. All right, well, that's really sad. Please. I'm sorry. I'm glad I gave you all my information, but, like, I should have understood who you are anyway. I'm sorry. And I'm sorry for you and I. And again, the story of America didn't include a new America born within it. And how would we navigate that world if so much power were concentrated on one side? So much so that they would reject the results of an election and use all of their power to bring down a duly elected president and then try to put him in jail because they could not beat him. That was a kind of tyranny America had not seen since its founding. Are you not entertained? The left's unsustainable fragility is matched only by Trump's equal and opposite lack of fragility. He seems to delight in always pushing farther to see just how much he can upset the left, whether it's Alligator Alcatraz or the newly announced gladiator style fight at the White house for America's 250th. For podcast listeners, President Donald Trump announces there will be a UFC fight on the grounds of the White House as part of America250. Coming soon to a TikTok near you. The claim that Trump will be throwing prisoners from Alligator Alcatraz into the gladiators ring at the White House. The artist in me is grateful for the electrified chaos Trump brings, because I know that someday all of this madness will translate into some truly great art. The patriot in me knows Trump is a president who loves this country, and that's something we haven't seen in the White House for a while. But it is essential to keep the dream of America alive. Posted to the official White House YouTube channel, the Story of the Declaration of Independence. Hello, my name is Larry Arne. I'm the president of Hillsdale College, which is honored to be working with the White House to produce these videos in honor of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the greatest political document in human history. Our college was founded in honor of that document. We encourage you to love it and to celebrate it. And to celebrate it, you should learn about it. We're going to talk about two things, the meaning and the structure of the Declaration of Independence. First question is, what does it mean? Things have causes. There's a classical account of the causes of things that include four the efficient cause means whoever made it. The Material cause means whatever it's made out of. The formal cause means what does it look like and how does it operate? And the final cause is what is it for? What love produces it. Declaration of Independence contains a lot of information about the formal cause of America in the middle, but its chief function is to provide the final cause of the country. What is the country for? And it begins very beautifully by explaining that it says that anytime in history, any people in history have a right under the laws of nature and of nature's God to form a nation according to purposes that they adopt. What are these laws of nature and nature's God? What does that mean? The Christian view is that God made nature. The classical view is that each being has a good, and the good and the being are the same thing. Nature is full of things that are good, and it's wrong to violate the good of anything. What do these laws say about people? They say that they're all created equal. Think what a remarkable thing it is for a people to adopt a standard like that as their purpose, as their governing purpose. And we did that in opposition to a king who claimed that he was born to be our ruler because he was better born than we are. He was denying the proposition that all men are created equal. If you recognize this principle, my very liberal town has prepared for the 4th of July parade by lining lawn chairs up and down the main road. They might be oppressed doomsday bunker dwellers online, but in real life they'll be waving an American flag, having a picnic, watching a parade, and then the fireworks. I remember all of the fourth of July holidays throughout my life. I remember the sand in my toes as the sun went down. And I remember the fireworks bursting through the twilight. Maybe I didn't know what any of it meant, maybe I couldn't understand the past. But I will always feel a pang of sentimental nostalgia when this day rolls around every year. And that's how we celebrate as one country, by ignoring our virtual civil war that is tearing us apart heart and remembering a day we all used to love before someone invented social media. We don't have to watch this show. We can shut it off. We can find a way outside, not just to leave the Internet, but to touch grass, look at the sky, smile at each other and be grateful to be here at all. Happy 4th of July, dear readers, and thank you for being such great listeners and for all your nice letters and for your contributions and hope you have a great weekend and remember to thine own self be true. Far we've been traveling far without a home but not without a star Free Only one will be free we huddle close and hang on to a dream on the boats and on the planes they come and come to America Never looking back again they coming to America don't it seems so far away but we're traveling light today in the eye of a storm in the ius dawn Home to a new and a shining place make our bed and we'll say our grace Freedom's life burning warm Freedom's life burning warm Everywhere around the world they come into America Every time that flag's unfurled they come into America Got a dream to take them there they come into America America got a dream they got to share they coming to America they coming to America they coming to America they coming to America they coming to America Today Today Today Today Today My country Tis a thee Sweet land of liberty of the I sing of the I sing Today It.