Sacha Stone (0:00)

Hi, this is Free Thinking through the fourth Turning. My name is Sacha Stone. Here comes the pitch for socialism. The dirtbag left is ready for their close up. And this person has given voice not only to our frustrations, but also to our vision and the promises and speaks to the best America that we can be. And that man is Senator Bernie Sanders. So come on up, Bernie, to the people. Power to the people. Power to love me. I have a soft spot for the dirtbag left now that I never used to have. Listening to them viciously destroy the Democratic Party scratches that itch. It turns out that they were ahead of the curve and the Democrats would have been better off not snubbed snuffing out the movement way back when. But snuff it out we did. Back in 2016, I was in a Facebook group devoted to doing nothing but hating on the Bernie Bros. I spent too much of my precious time trying to stop them as a movement because they threatened Hillary Clinton's win. Like every Democrat now, I was afraid of democracy. The Democrats find themselves in that place where the three characters from Jaws end up. They've tried harpoons and three barrels on him and nothing has worked. They finally decide to try Hooper's shark cage, even though Brody knows there's no chance it will work. Hooper, what exactly can you do with these things of yours? Well, I think I can pump 20cc's of strychnine nitrate into them. If I can get close enough. You get this little needle through his skin? No, I can't do that. But if I can get him close enough to this cage, I think I could get him in the mouth or that shark. Rip that cage. You got any better suggestions that Quint entertains? The idea of bringing in Hooper's cage at all was the miracle and the desperation. What do you got here? Portable shower monkey cage. Anti shark cage. Anti shark cage. You go inside the cage. Cage goes in the water. You go in the water. Shark's in the water. Our shark. Farewell and adieu to you, fair Spanish lady. The Democrats are ready for the anti shark cage. And so Bernie, Sanders and AOC are on a western tour to stop the oligarchy. They finally have the exact right enemy in Elon Musk and Bernie's billionaires. Musk represents the death of their dream that no one can get there on their wits, hard work and ambition alone. No, this is a country where no one can rise unless everyone can rise. Trump's tariffs are a potential solution to America's crippling problem of income inequality that has destroyed the middle class. That's the MAGA populism at work. Bernie's populism fixes the problem. With much bigger government, the rich pay more to redistribute the wealth. Is this finally the moment when we can make America socialist again, a major step forward from FDR's new deal and Johnson's Great Society? Do the Democratic socialists have a real shot at winning the nomination, away from the feckless, flaccid centrists? Is this finally the moment when the dirtbag left and the identity politics utopians merge to create one big movement, a green New Deal? Will Trump's radical change finally be the thing that pushes the majority in a direction they never would have gone? Recent polls show that younger generations are much more accepting and fond of socialism than older generations. It's not that hard to do the math and see what might be coming next. How it Started According to Neil Howe and William Strauss, 1997 book 2008 was the crisis that sparked our fourth turning. This pattern plays out every 80 years, with each generation being born and living a lifetime before everything radically changes to restart America in a new direction. Like the American Revolution, the Civil War, the Great Depression and World War II. We still don't know how big or how bad our fourth Turning will be. But we do know, according to Strauss and Howe, that the $700 billion bank bailout in 2008 was the moment the public woke up to the imminent disaster of income inequality and a bloated oligarchy. The bailout birthed two populist movements, Occupy Wall street and the Tea Party. Occupy Wall street became the Bernie Movement, which after Hillary's loss in 2016, was dissolved into the Democrat machine. The Tea Party became Trump and maga. The question we have to ask is which side will prevail when the Fourth Turning comes to a close, when the policies are cemented and the country is united? According to Howe's new book, the Fourth Turning is Here. He edges ever so slightly to the left side of things because the dominant generation, the millennials, are a go along to get along personality type. Thanks for tuning in. I'm Andy Shalman. This is the Generation Report. I think one major reason the Fourth Turning has had so many peaks and troughs in interest over the years is because the book's central thesis that history is in many respects the story of generational change, got carried to its logical extreme and equated history with generational change. While this made the book's concept and its insights sufficiently compelling to create a conversation, the trade off was that the conversation never really branched out or evolved, and the result has been that the book only generates interest outside its devoted niche when events seem to take a wrong turn. When the next spike of interest in the fourth turning comes, and it will, I hope there will be more recognition that conversations about how America arrived at this point have to be open ended in considering the changes that have actually happened and the people who have changed with them. I'll close with this short excerpt from a commencement speech Neil Howe gave in 2012. I think it will be apparent as to how much has changed as a generation. You millennials have a surprisingly conventional outlook on life. Surveys show that as you grow older you wish to become good citizens, good neighbors, well rounded people who start families. Violent youth crime, teen pregnancy and teen smoking have recently experienced dramatic declines and for that we congratulate you. Most startling of all, the values gap separating youth from their parents has virtually disappeared. So all of you parents out there, be proud of this new generation. They aren't like you, but they are what America now needs. They don't complain about the storm clouds looming over their fiscal, economic and geopolitical future. They try to stay positive. They don't want to bring the system down. They're doing what they can to make it work again. And they want to come together and build something big and lasting, something that will win your praise. Beneath their tolerant, optimistic networking and risk averse exterior lies attitudes and habits that that may prove vital for our country's healing and for our country's future. No one knows what challenges the millennial generation may eventually be asked to bear. Hardly anyone expects them to become America's next greatest generation. But someday you can say, you heard it from me. That is their destiny. To rescue this country from the mess to which we, the older generations, have contributed and in so doing, to become a great generation indeed. Thank you. At the moment, at least to me, the MAGA side offers more. For ambitious millennials, especially young men, MAGA is now the site of innovation and economic growth. If they succeed, there will be no need for a rescue mission. But if they fail? Ben Shapiro has been dropping the prediction for a few weeks now that if Trump's economy begins to fail, the power that will rise is the equal and opposite reaction to Trump's populism. A lurch to the hard left. Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders is noting that amidst all the chaos among Democrats, there is no grassroots support for the Democratic Party. And again, Bernie is not wrong about all this. In the Democratic Party, you've got a party that is heavily dominated by the billionaire class, run by consultants who are way out of touch with reality. It has. The Democratic Party has virtually no grassroots support. So what we are trying to do is, in one way or another, maybe create a party within the party of bringing millions of young people, working class people, people of color, to demand that the Democratic Party start standing with the working class. I'm just gonna note here that Bernie's pitch here is actually better than the pitch of many other people in the Democratic Party, which is why the economy needs to stay on good footing. Because if it does not, it's going to be the Bernie Bros who actually rise. Bernie and AOC are ready to bring the movement back. And this person has given voice not only to our frustrations, but also to our vision and the promises and speaks to the best America that we can be. And that man is Senator Bernie Sanders. So come on up, Bernie. To the people. Power to the people. Power to the people. People on top are doing extraordinarily well today. We have more income and wealth inequality in our country than we have ever had. The three wealthiest people in America, Mr. Musk, Mr. Bezos, Mr. Zuckerberg, you know those guys. Those three people alone own more wealth than the bottom half of American society. 170 million people. Is this finally the moment where both Bernie and AOC have the right kind of anger and the right enemy? They need to tap into the collective outra of all those crazy people out there losing their minds, people like this. So we have reached the point where it is genuinely becoming very, very unsafe to speak out against this administration, either privately, through text messages or otherwise. But those of us who sit in a place of privilege, such as me, we have to do it anyway. Those of you who are at most risk, please keep yourself safe above everything else. But those of us who sit in a place of privilege, we have to fight now more than ever to make sure that the world knows that we are not okay with this. We did not vote for this. We are not represented by this. And this will harm everyone. And it is our responsibility to speak up. And people like this, I just need to know from all the magas out there, do you. You guys, like, you don't care about federal aid for students. You don't care about college. Like, you really don't care if the kids can apply to go to college. Like, if, if student aid is being taken, if the Department of Education is being shut down, then what happens to fafsa? If only they would listen to Megyn Kelly, one of the few Reliable voices who can give them necessary facts on the daily outrage. Good morning, everyone. I'm Megyn Kelly. It's March 21, 2025, and this is your AM update on Thursday afternoon, President Trump announcing the beginning of the end for the Department of Education. Today we take a very historic action that was 45 years in the making. In a few moments, I will sign an executive order to begin eliminating the federal Department of Education once and for all. My administration will take all lawful steps to shut down the department. We're going to shut it down and shut it down as quickly as possible. It's doing us no good. Completely abolishing the Department of Ed will require an act of Congress, not likely to happen under the current slim Republican majorities. The order will instead, quote, begin to eliminate the department. Last week, education secretary Linda McMahon announcing a reduction in workforce amounting to half of the department's employees. Prior to the new order, the DOE was responsible for developing federal education guidelines and initiatives like Common Core, enforcing civil rights compliance in schools, and administering federal student aid. Press Secretary Caroline Levitt describing to reporters Thursday morning what tasks will remain under the department. Pell grants and student loans will still be run out of the department in Washington, D.C. but the great responsibility of educating our nation students will return to the states. The Department of Education plays a critical role in enforcing civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination. Who's going to do that now? Any critical functions of the department such as that will remain, but again, we're greatly reducing the scale scale and the size of this department. President Trump saying Pell grants, a common form of undergraduate aid and Title 1 funding allocated toward children with disabilities will be preserved in full. Women like I used to be. White women who believed the feminist lie that we should chase our happiness because nothing else should matter. Everything else was oppression. Even the babies we helped make and the men we wanted to love us and the jobs that made us rich and the society that catered to us. It was never enough. We weren't happy, so someone should have to pay. But it was the women who hated Bernie and his Bernie or bust. We hated the whole movement because for us, it was as bad as Trump, even worse. After all, we knew socialism had no shot. But now, are they finally desperate enough? The left still has a big problem. The war between economic populism and identity politics. So far, identity politics has won. Vivek Ramaswamy's explanation of WOKE capitalism explains why the rich like WOKE ideology because it protects them from attacks. They're stuck with gender affirming care. They're stuck with denying the biological reality of males and females. They're stuck with critical race theory. They're stuck with DEI and esg. They're stuck with the problem of how to sell both socialism and a wide open border. Come to America, get free stuff. They do this without realizing that most socialist countries must have an ironclad border. Exactly for this reason. They're still consumed by the delusion that Trump and his movement are the Fourth Reich and the Second Confederacy. There is no path back to sanity. All they can do is pile on the delusion one rally at a time. The Lessons of History Communism survived in Stalin's Soviet Union and thrives in Xi Jinping's China. It's everything else that didn't. The left's ongoing mass delusions and hysteria have destroyed everything I once loved about the left. They destroyed free thought and free speech. They destroyed Hollywood. I can't even read books written in this country anymore. Every so often I find one that isn't captured by the ideology. But it's rare. That is our warning. It isn't just economic populism the left will sell. They can't. It has to be everything else that goes along with communism. Ideological mandates, Indoctrination everywhere. You must love Big Brother. The conservatives in MAGA must fight the urge not to repeat the mistakes of the past by becoming the side of thought and speech policing blacklists in cancel culture as they were back in the 1950s. No matter how much they fear indoctrination, it's a genuine threat. To be sure, we only have to look at our kids to see the effects. Everywhere we look, we see exactly what the communist hunters feared. If Joseph McCarthy came back to life and saw what they did to Snow White, he would never stop throwing up. Ref Hannah and Her Sisters the new Snow White is, after all, about socialist ideology. She's not a beautiful princess rescued by a handsome prince. She's a social justice warrior rescued by a dirtbag leftist fighting for wealth distribution. A lot of people are saying in the film's defense that it isn't a terrible failure, it isn't too bad, or that it is actually surprisingly ok, okay, but it's Snow White. If you remake Snow White and it's just okay, that is a terrible failure. Rachel Zegler's wide eyed Snow White with her Lord Farquhar hairstyle doesn't just hope her prince will come. She wants to be a good leader for her people rather than a yearning for love and adventure and charming frolics. The main drive of this Snow White is to restore the kingdom's faith in the social contract. And the fact that Disney itself is a giant oligarchy doesn't matter. They're signaling their virtue with the casting of a Latina in the lead whose skin isn't white as snow because that is white supremacy. Instead, she was born in a snowstorm. Disney's shareholders like it this way because of course they do absolution for their sins of wealth and privilege. For Disney, DEI and ESG are here to stay. For podcast listeners, a headline Disney shareholder Sean Maga in rejection of anti LGBTQ and pro Elon Musk proposals at annual meeting, the right could easily fall into the trap of trying to eradicate the woke. Already AOC is out there blathering about free expression as though the left has ever allowed for that, or even cared about it. Disney's advertising policy, after all, is about only advertising on ideologically compliant websites. The only freedom they want is to push their fundamentalism on the rest of us, especially the kids. It's funny how close we all are to Orwell's 1984. The left has built an inside with the ability to purge or unperson people like me to the outside. Imagine what would happen if they ever got a mandate. The lesson of 1984, however, wasn't to say communism is bad. Orwell himself was a communist. It was to say that in practice, communism was no better than fascism. The right should be the warriors for free speech. We've already seen what will happen if the left takes hold of it. But if the right becomes no better than the left, well, as Matt Taibbi says, we're screwed. Thank you for listening to my podcast. Sashastone.substack.com Hope you all have a great weekend. And remember to thine own self be true. Her name is Noelle and I have a dream about her she rings my bell I got you in class in half an hour oh how she rocks in Keds and tube socks but she doesn't know who I am and she doesn't give a damn about me Cause I'm just a teenage dirtbag baby yeah I'm just a teenage dirtbag baby Listen to Iron Maiden baby with me her boyfriend's a dick and he brings a gun to school and he'd simply kick my ass if he knew the truth he lives on my block and he drives an Iraq but he doesn't know who I am and he doesn't give a damn about me Cause I'm just a teenage dirt bag baby yeah I'm just a teenage dirt bag? Baby, listen to Iron Ma? And maybe with me? No, she doesn't know what she's missing? Turn back? No, she doesn't know what she's missing? Man, I feel like mold? It's prom night? And I am lonely? Lo and behold? She's walking over to me? This must be fake? My lip starts to shake? And how does she know who I am? And why does she give a damn about me? M she said I got tickets to Iron Maiden? Baby, come with me Friday? Don't say maybe I'm just a teenage dirtbag? Baby, like you? No, she doesn't know what she's missing? No, she doesn't know what she's missing? It.