← Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning with Sasha Stone
Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning with Sasha Stone
Dear Democrats: This Time, You Can't Blame the Republicans
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- [00:00]
Sacha Stone
Hi, this is Free Thinking through the Fourth Turning. My name is Sacha Stone. Dear Democrats, this time you can't blame the Republicans. The fires in Los Angeles are a direct result of failed progressive policies, and to pretend otherwise will lead to more tragedies. Six years ago on Medium, I wrote the following quote. The Republicans have systematically turned climate change into a partisan issue, you know, like abortion, and have done so to manipulate their gullible electorate into believing the lie that there is no such thing as man made climate change. They spew the dumbo rhetoric anytime they can that, oh, the weather changes all the time, and I don't believe climate change is real. Even if the planet is warming, it isn't our fault. Yeah, it is. You dig up fossil fuels and you burn them. That warms the planet. They were buried for millions of years, which in turn cooled the planet, making it an ideal atmosphere for all kinds of different forms of life, including us. What's coming next is uncharted territory for humanity. We have no idea how bad it's going to get, we just know it will be bad. I was not only furious with rage, but I was quick to blame the other side for deliberately sabotaging our noble efforts to stop the warming of the planet, as though we ourselves were not contributing to it. We acted like we could buy a hybrid here, go vegan there, recycle our plastic, and be absolved from contributing to this existential crisis we all must now face. It isn't that I don't believe the planet is warming or that sea level won't rise, or that it is directly the fault of so many people on the planet. What has changed is that I no longer blame the other side and I no longer see my former side as the good guys in the fight. No, I see them as hypocrites. I was a hypocrite, too. I'd been in a bubble for much of my adult life because I lived online in virtual spaces. Yes, I was raising my daughter in public schools, but those were a bubble, too. We all belonged inside the same utopia. We read the same articles, we watched the same news. Our worries were the same worries. We spoke the same language. And all of us shared the belief that the biggest threat we faced was climate change. And the biggest obstacle we faced was the Republicans. And then my daughter moved across the country and I got a couple of dogs. Rather than fly and leave my dogs at home, I began driving across the country. Those drives changed everything for me. Not just how I saw climate change, but how I saw my fellow Americans. This was how people actually lived, not how we did. Inside our haze of paper straws and cotton diapers, I saw the trucks driving on the interstate to deliver food and goods. The many hotels that require air conditioning and heating, the slaughterhouse trucks providing food for so many in this country, and the tiny houses in the middle of the desert with one embattled air conditioner sticking out of the window. Looking at all of this, all these places and all of these businesses, it was easy to see that there was no turning this thing around. There is no way to convince every state and citizen to hop aboard. What is an existential crisis for the upper class? Life just isn't like that. Everyone wants things that work, cars that run, planes that fly. They want washing machines, DishWashers, flat screen TVs, office buildings, emergency rooms and new computers and tech support lines to buy groceries. They can afford to get fruit in the middle of winter to watch movies and doom. Scroll social media and every tweet warms the planet. As Roy Scranton once wrote, even if we could convince every single American to accept our fixes, what would we do about Russia, India or China? We seem to have gone all in on fantasy, but were disconnected from reality. What we believe on the left, or at least we used to, was that climate change was Armageddon, Doomsday, the end of everything. Therefore, what mattered to us isn't so much that we solve the problems to survive climate change, but that we convert everyone else to our way of thinking. If we could do that, we believed we could start making the big changes to our country and world. The left is still haunted by ghosts of the past, back when we really did have the power and the opportunity to make real change. And we squandered that power and then we blamed the other side. In so doing, we could wash our hands of real solutions, whether it was gun violence, poverty, failing schools, floods, fires or hurricanes. And now, in the perfect cocktail of high Santa Ana winds, no rain for months and a city caught off guard. The fires rampaged through the beaches of the Pacific Palisades, in Malibu, the mountains of Altadena, and continue to burn. There were rumors of not enough water, not enough firefighters, and no way to control the speed of the flames as they ripped through the dry brush, burning one house after another as we watch the tragedy unfold on live television or YouTube. This time, the narrative swirled around California's governor, Gavin Newsom and the Los Angeles mayor, Karen Bass, newly elected in 2022 as the first female and second black person to serve. Bass had left the country in January, known as the last month of the Santa Ana cycle, that comes every fall from the University of California. Quote, the region sees about 10 Santa Ana wind events a year on average, typically occurring from fall into January, when conditions are dry as they are right now, these winds can become a severe fire hazard. End quote. Because she was out of the country, she could not address the city's immediate needs. The scene was pure chaos, with the firefighters risking life and limb to keep the flames away from homes and neighborhoods. Everything burned. The Humane Society was overwhelmed. Whole histories of places and families were wiped clean, flattened by a force of wind we were not prepared for. Well, why weren't we prepared? We've been warning about this very thing happening for decades. Did we really mean it? Or was it just a way to gain more donations and political power? And none of it was real. Well, just as the unsinkable ship did sink, the big fire did come, and the progressive left was exposed for ineffectual leadership yet again. And as the power went out, no one really tied it together as they screamed about climate change. Power. We need it. We need it for everything. We need so much of it. Only fossil fuels will suffice unless we go nuclear. And that, too, was a problem for the left. For podcast listeners, a tweet by James Woods. Every friend I have, Democrat or Republican, is united in the campaign to recall Karen Bass. Someone said I was being political, but I promise you, if a Republican had left that 117 million gallon reservoir tank completely empty, I swear I would feel exactly the same way. And from Mayor Karen Bass, firefighters from Mexico, Canada, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Utah, Colorado, Idaho and New Mexico are here. Our local, regional and state partners have all stepped up to help. It's all hands on deck to fight these fires. But why, Mayor Bass, why doesn't the most wealthy state not have enough firefighters? Why were we caught with our pants down? Don't politicize this tragedy. From the people who politicize not only every tragedy, but also everything else. Our culture, schools, relationships, language, food, friendships. Nothing is not political on the left. And what do we have to show for it? Nothing. We have an industry devoted to absolving the rich of their sins of wealth, DEI and hybrid SUVs. We have actors like Leonardo DiCaprio broadcasting their concerns on Instagram. We have film directors like Jim Cameron and Adam McKay saying I told you so. And we're supposed to do what? Keep listening to them as our leaders fiddle while L. A burns? Adam McKay's carbon footprint came secondary to making his climate film don't look up one of the worst movies ever made. Starring every sanctimonious, unbearable celebrity known to man. I watched that movie and thought about the energy it took to make it, screen it and stream it. The energy it took to mount the Oscar ceremony, the private jets to fly around the world. What hypocrites, I thought, even back then, as a Democrat. Here is a scene from don't look up. Incredible.
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Adam McKay
Yeah. So this has to be really exciting. So tell us what you found, this diagnosis.
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Leonardo DiCaprio
I was monitoring exploding stars to help measure the expansion of the universe. And for your PhD, right?
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Adam McKay
Yeah.
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Leonardo DiCaprio
I saw something I didn't recognize. It was a comet. A big one. It's headed directly at ours, and it really likely will hit.
- [10:27]
Adam McKay
This sounds very, very exciting. Exploding stars, like, stars actually explode. So how big is this thing? Could it, like, destroy someone's house? Is that possible?
- [10:35]
Sacha Stone
Well, Comet Dibiaski, which is what it will officially be named as someone to her.
- [10:40]
Chamath Palihapitiya
Congratulations.
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Karen Bass
What an honor.
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Adam McKay
Yeah, right. Congratulations.
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Sacha Stone
It's somewhere between 6 and 9 km across. So it's big. It would damage the entire planet.
- [10:50]
Adam McKay
Not just a house, you know, the entire planet. Okay, well, as it's damaging, will it hit this one house in particular that's right on the coast of New Jersey. It's my ex wife's house. I need it to be hit. Can we make that happen?
- [11:00]
Leonardo DiCaprio
You and Shelly have a great relationship. No, you stop.
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Adam McKay
Listen, you need to stop. I will, but in all fairness, I actually paid for the house.
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Leonardo DiCaprio
I'm sorry, are we not being clear? We're trying to tell you that the entire planet is about to be destroyed. Okay, well, it's. You know, there's something we do around here. You know, we just keep the bad news light.
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Adam McKay
Right? It helps the medicine go down. And speaking of medicine, tomorrow we've got a.
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Leonardo DiCaprio
Well, maybe the destruction of the entire planet isn't supposed to be fun. Maybe it's supposed to be terrifying and unsettling.
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Michael Shellenberger
Please don't do that.
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Leonardo DiCaprio
And you should stay up all night, every night, crying when we're all 100% for sure going to die.
- [11:54]
Sacha Stone
Podcast listeners, a Tweet by Adam McKay. These fires are traumatic and confusing for everyone, but it's important for our safety and mental health to understand the context of the moment we're in. Here is a thread of easily shared info regarding the fires, climate and the news media's failure to report on climate. And he goes on. 16 of the 20 most destructive wildfires in California history have occurred in the last 10 years, and 19 of 20 since 2003 and another tweet by Adam McKay. Five times more area is now burned on average in California than in the early 70s. Nearly all of this is attributable to climate warming caused by oil, gas and coal companies. The preceding two years were the wettest such period in California history, creating tremendous plant growth. The last year is the driest in 80 years, leading to all that plant growth to die and become tender. Scientists call this climate whiplash. Right, Adam? Sure thing. Just give me an approximate estimate of the plan here. To keep making movies starring Jennifer Lawrence, to keep tweeting. Or is there some solution you have to offer? In the movie Jaws, they don't waste time shaming everyone on the boat and telling them how dangerous the shark is. They try everything, every tool they have at their disposal. Even the ineffectual shark cage.
- [13:33]
Michael Shellenberger
Take that junkie out of yourself below.
- [13:34]
Sacha Stone
And you lash it.
- [13:35]
Michael Shellenberger
Secure your action happy. Jesus H. Christ. When I was a boy, every little squirt wanted to be a harpooner or a sword fisherman. What you got here? Portable shot or a monkey cage?
- [13:53]
Sacha Stone
Anti shark cage.
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Michael Shellenberger
Anti shark cage. You go inside the cage. Cage goes in the water. You go in the water. Sharks in the water. Our shark. Farewell and adieu to you, fair Spanish ladies. Farewell and adieu, you ladies of Spain for we've received orders for to sail back to Boston and so nevermore or shall we see you again.
- [14:36]
Sacha Stone
What have the Democrats done instead of killing the shark? Well, let's look at the year that Don't look up was released. 2020. Remember that year, Adam? Remember the Great Awokening? Remember what happened after that? Suddenly climate change only mattered. If you could somehow tie it into social justice, climate change's transphobia might have worked. Do you think I'm kidding? A quick Google search and look what pops up from Greenpeace. The disproportionate impact of climate crisis on the LGBTQIA community, says Google. AI the discrimination of the LGBTQIA community is emphasized when it comes to climate disaster. By not having the same social rights as the rest of the population, LGBTQIA people face greater problems during and after climate disasters, for example, in accessing necessary medical services. But why stop there? Let's go all the way, shall we? For podcast listeners, a headline unequal the deep links between racism and climate change and masculinity's patriarchy and climate change. They've already found their pivot from the ap. The California wildfires could be leaving deeper inequality in their wake. All I've heard from the left is blaming the Republicans year after year, decade after decade. But when the Republicans try to suggest ways to manage the coming fires and storms, what do we get? More purity tests? More conversion therapy? Believe what we believe, but solutions nowhere in sight. How can we face ourselves if this has been our message for over 20 years now? And yet they're still trying to explain away the fire hydrants not having enough water or having to fly in firefighters from Mexico or Canada? And what of the young, full of hopelessness and anxiety about the future because they've been told the planet is ruined and doomsday is coming? Why bother having kids? They've been convinced to believe, and there's nothing we can do about it because those mean old climate deniers on the right won't let us. So sorry, kids, you're just going to have to learn to live with it. The buck has to stop somewhere. And in Los Angeles, this was a massive failure of leadership across the board, says Michael Shellenberger.
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Gavin Newsom
Now, I'm not suggesting that Democrats consciously sought to destroy Los Angeles. The entertainment industry professionals who lived in places like Malibu, Topanga Canyon and Pacific Palisades, who voted overwhelmingly for California's progressive governor, Gavin Newsom, and for LA's radical left mayor Karen Bass, thought they were voting for social justice and sustainability. They didn't imagine that their vote would result in their homes burning down. And yet that's exactly what their votes resulted in. Over the last 24 hours, the evidence of gross mismanagement and incompetence by both Newsom and Bass has only grown more overwhelming. On January 2, a full eight days ago, the National Weather Service urgently warned of extreme fire conditions. To drive home the point, the National Weather Service's Los Angeles office held a briefing warning of impending catastrophe. On that day, Newsom and Bass should have called out the National Guard. They should have had planes and helicopters circling over Los Angeles, spotting fires and putting them out immediately upon detecting them. They should have issued emergency warnings to residents, particularly those in vulnerable areas. And they should have used various methods to spray water, including mobile sprinkler units alongside normal firefighting to wet down the vulnerable areas. Instead, the following day, Karen Bass flew to Ghana on a frivolous junket, and Gavin Newsom only called out the National Guard yesterday, seven days later than he should have. And truth, that's just the tip of the iceberg. Newsom and Bass should have constructed two to three times more water reservoirs than Los Angeles has in order to deal with fires of that magnitude. Newsom and Bass should have not only built water recycling and desalination plants like they have in Israel. They should have built them with excess capacity so that in an emergency, those plants could have pumped significantly more fresh water to supplement the water in the reservoirs. All civilizations require a story. The story that built Los Angeles and California was one of human progress. The story that's destroyed it is one of human sin. For decades, progressives, Democrats, the news and entertainment media preached that civilization was evil and doomed. Slavery, indigenous genocide, and climate change were proof. And now, as the City of Angels smolders, it's clear that progressives have reaped what they sowed.
- [19:39]
Sacha Stone
And chamath palihapitiya.
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Chamath Palihapitiya
This is the ultimate expression of negligence and incompetence. How did these fires start?
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Sacha Stone
Yeah.
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Chamath Palihapitiya
How did they grow out of control? And again, I think that these wins didn't come out of nowhere in the sense that they caught everybody off guard. This has happened before. That area has gone through this exact moment.
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Sacha Stone
Yes.
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Chamath Palihapitiya
There were laws that were proposed. They were vetoed. Okay. So that even if you could have controlled it, then you see certain developers like Rick Caruso, who were able to protect the buildings that he was responsible for because he took proactive and protective measures.
- [20:22]
Sacha Stone
I'm guessing nothing much will change in California, because what would happen if they decided to stop blaming Republicans and start listening to them? What would happen if they started doing the controlled burns they don't want to do? Or following Trump's warnings and advice about dealing with the hard realities of actually preventing wildfires in 2024, Trump talked about.
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Donald Trump
This issue with Joe Rogan.
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Joe Rogan
You know, your forests are dry as a bone.
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Sacha Stone
Yeah.
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Joe Rogan
Okay.
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Donald Trump
Dangerous.
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Joe Rogan
Billions of dollars a year they spend on forest fires. And, you know, there's a case with the environment. They're not allowed to rake their forest because you're not allowed to touch it. When a tree falls down after 18 months, it becomes very dry. It's like, you know, like real firewood. It's bad when they fall.
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Adam McKay
Right.
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Joe Rogan
They're like, you know, it's like lighting a match.
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Donald Trump
Yeah.
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Joe Rogan
And you got to be able to clean. They call, maintain your forest. So I was with the head of Austria. He said, you know, it's a shame. I see all those forest fires in California, and all they have to do is clean their forest, meaning rake it up, get rid of the leaves. Get rid of, you know, leaves that are sitting there for five years, and.
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Donald Trump
They'Ll certainly get rid of the dead fall. I don't think you could rake the whole forest. I think you get rid of the dead fall. But raking all the leaves, you could.
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Joe Rogan
Certainly get rid of the dead. Okay.
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Donald Trump
Yeah, that's the real issue.
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Joe Rogan
You know, environmentally, they don't want to do that. They, they said, you know, it's got to be nature and all this stuff.
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Donald Trump
The guy that Los Angeles voted not to be mayor, who was defeated by the current mayor in Ghana, explained that the problems go even deeper.
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Karen Bass
Our first responders and our firefighters who are trying to battle this, there's no water in the Palisade, there's no water coming out of the fire hydrants. This is an absolute mismanagement by the city. Not the firefighters fault, but it's by the city. And I'm going to be very honest. We've got a mayor that's out of the country and we've got a city that's burning and there's no resources to put out fires. So if you look at your pictures, you don't see the firefighters there because there's nothing they can do. And it looks like we're in a third world country here. The brush up in these hills that are controlled by the city and the county. I would bet you that if they haven't been handled, mitigated, pruned, removed for probably 30 or 40 years, this was a disaster waiting to happen.
- [22:39]
Sacha Stone
And just as in the movie Jaws, when Quint's harpoons don't work and Hooper's shark cage doesn't work, they had to just bring in the city cop to get the job done. And that is why God invented Republicans. We're finished with excuses by now. We're done with the blame game and the sanctimonious lectures. It's too late to turn things around in ways the utopian left dreams about. Now is the time to find ways for all of us to survive the coming storms and wildfires. We need to face the hard realities of this being our new normal, says Nicole Shanahan. For all of you climate change doomsayers, California has been out of a drought since 2022. We've seen record rainfall. Yet the California Department of Water Resources, big city mayors and the governor have failed to use that water to increase ground hydration and strengthen emergency fire services. They looked the other way. Despite warnings from universities, fire departments, farmers and consultants offering actionable plans. It's mind boggling negligence. The government in California has been taking orders from the wrong people for too long. It's time they wake up, grow a pair and get to work for the people. End quote. To those who have fled the left to join maga, understand this, which is why so many of us voted for them. We know only one side has the right tools to get the dirty job done and kill the shark. Whether you believe climate change is real or you don't, something is happening and we need people prepared to stop blaming the other side and start rolling up their sleeves. So yes, do politicize this tragedy because there is no excuse for the most progressive government in the country to have gotten it so wrong. I love my state. I grew up here. I may never leave. We will rebuild. When I grew up, California was a red state. Something tells me that with all the red pills flying off shelves, that might be just how this story ends. Thank you for listening to my podcast sashastone.substack.com and if you are listening on itunes, you can leave a review that helps spread the word. Find me on other podcast apps like Spotify and Google Play and if you become a paying subscriber, I promise there will be more perks. It definitely helps keep my substack going even though I know times are tough. But thank you and thank you for listening. And remember to thine own self be true.
- [26:24]
Unknown Singer
Sunshine blue skies please go away A girl has found another and gone away with her went my future My life is filled with gloom so day after day I stay locked up in my room I know to you it might sound strange But I wish it would rain oh yeah yeah yeah yeah Go so badly I wanna go outside but everyone knows that a man ain't supposed to cry Listen I gotta cry Cause crying oh yeah people this hurt I feel inside Words could never explain I just wish it would rain I let it rain rain rain rain.
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Michael Shellenberger
Let it.
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Unknown Singer
Rain oh yeah let it rain Day in, day out My tear stained face pressed against the window pane My eyes search the skies desperate on rain cause rain dots behind my teardrop and no one will ever know that I'm crying Crying when I go outside to the world outside my tears I refuse to explain oh I wish it would rain Let it rain I need a rain to disguise the tears in my eyes Let it rain oh yeah yeah Listen I'm a man and a battle of pride Till it rains I'm gonna stay inside Let it rain.