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Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning with Sasha Stone

Hosted by Sasha Stone · EN

Essays on politics and culture from Sasha Stone's Substack. A former Democrat and Leftist who escaped the bubble to get to know the other side of the country and to take a more critical look at the left. Sashastone.substack.com

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Netflix and the WB Just Killed Off Movie Theaters
Dec 600:29:36Summary ready
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
Summary
Erika Kirk and The Wicked Witches of the Left
Dec 200:45:24Summary ready
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 <a target="_blank" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20250924182040/https://www.change.org/p/prevent-charlie-kirk-from-speaking-at-utah-state-university?utm_campaign=petition_dashboard&utm_medium=copylink&recruiter=1376891878&recruited_by_id=e7a843b0-4de1-...
Summary
How Dare We Speak Happy Thanksgiving!
Nov 2600:18:26Summary ready
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
Summary
Barack Obama and the "Bitter Clingers"
Nov 1600:43:39Summary ready
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...
Summary
Totalitarians at the Gate
Nov 700:40:55Summary ready
For a brief moment in time, the Democrats were humiliated in defeat. November of 2024 was the body blow necessary to end the war on Trump. They lost. Trump won, and that was that.They never absorbed that loss, however, except in the way that it made them meaner, angrier, and more willing to blow through norms and abandon what remained of their humanity to chase victory by any means necessary. That would include spending hundreds of millions on Prop 50. It would include celebrating the murder of Charlie Kirk and fantasizing about Trump’s imminent death.It would be about sacrificing being “good people doing good things” to “stop fascism.” And somewhere in there, they took a dark turn. I watched it. I wrote about it. I warned about it. I could see it in their attacks on Tesla and their destruction of Elon Musk in an attempt to kill him and his business.I could see them at the No Kings rally, angry and motivated. Their desperation to find a Joe Rogan or compete with the memes on the Right failing at every turn. They looked to me like the monster in The Thing that could imitate but could never be what they thought won Trump the election.Their men are attempting to appear more masculine. Gavin Newsom and JB Pritzker have no problem fomenting insurrection against the government, and the newly elected Mayor of New York just taunted Trump to “turn up the volume.”The women bask in it and pretend they’re still feminists when all they wanted all along was to be rescued by men, and here we are again. It’s funny. But not so funny.To them, all is justified in the name of “saving democracy.” But that’s never been what any of this has been about. They are totalitarians at heart, and they are prepared to sacrifice almost everything - friends, families, marriages, whole industries of culture and education - to attain it absolutely.Utopias only have two potential paths. They become totalitarian, like the Soviet Union, like China, or they collapse. What you sacrifice in chasing utopia is personal freedom, art, journalism, comedy, and common ground with those who disagree with you. A totalitarian system wants it all and is prepared to take it if it isn’t given willingly.They were already halfway there before Zohran Mamdani became the new leader of the new Left. Matt Taibbi calls this the end of the Democratic Party, and he’s right. Totalitarianism will mean giving up even that. It’s all for one and one for all, and those who aren’t on board will be left behind.Here is Ben Shapiro:For now, they are holding their not-famous, bland, cookie-cutter centrists —like those who won in Virginia and New Jersey —whose names and faces no one remembers, close enough to not scare people away. They’re centrists in name only. The new socialist wave will obliterate them, and if they don’t realize that yet, they soon will.This came through my mail, even though I was never put on any list, and I have no idea how it arrived after five years of trying to leave the Democratic Party.Does the Right have anything like that? Are they in any way prepared to go up against people this fired up? No. They aren’t. They have Scott Pressler, and they had Charlie Kirk, and everyone else seems to be invested in building their platforms for clicks and views, not for votes. MAGA is on the ropes.The heart of a totalitarian is that all things are necessary to achieve the singular goal of absolute power and dominance for the cause. The cause is usually a Marxist-like government system, but it doesn’t have to be. It can be fascist, too. But even that has its roots in socialism because in totalitarianism, there is no power for the individual against the state.Over at the Free Press, Olivia Reingold looked deeper into the DSA:…The Free Press reviewed thousands of pages of internal Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) documents, which show that the organization’s leaders view Mamdani as a tool in their agenda to abolish prisons and borders, and ultimately end in what they call the “barbaric order of capitalism.” The DSA, founded in 1982, is a political body dedicated to the doctrine of democratic socialism, which is a variety of socialism that simply specifies how it would like revolution to occur: peacefully, through the subversion of democracy. Mamdani, a dues-paying DSA member since 2017, is the tip of that spear.The Democrat machine cultivated “cancel culture” and used it as a method of societal control. No one would dare say anything that would get them banished from Utopia, except those of us who did and were. That form of policing was straight out of the Cultural Revolution, or Stalin’s Komsomol or Hitler’s Youth.In our bubble of the Left, we required no military because the system we built made it possible to destroy people with a single accusation. Over time, our hearts and minds had to be captured or suppressed. If you could not go along with it, and I couldn’t, you were out.For a society that had migrated to the virtual frontier, that didn’t mean you were sent to a gulag or killed, but it did mean you could lose everything and have to rebuild. Not the end of the world, but still, imagine a system like that attaining absolute power because MAGA dropped the ball?That totalitarian practice of punishing thought crimes and dissent spread to government when Joe Biden took power, which is why they censored the internet with impunity and would have continued to do it had the richest man in the world not bought Twitter and freed speech, which allowed for a counter movement to rise and win.Joe Biden and his administration, along with the Democrats, thought nothing of indicting Trump on weak charges, raiding Mar-a-Lago to paint him as a criminal. Their dehumanization and rage for him knew no bounds. They wanted him in jail. They wanted him off the ballot. They wanted him out of their government, their culture, and their country. They wanted him dead. And still do.Jay Jones’ texts fantasizing about the death of Republicans and their children are not an exception. It’s the rule. They openly talk about “when it happens” to Trump and plan to celebrate that day with playlists and dancing in the street. That is where they were mentally before this November 4th, and their blue wave revived the movement. Now, they are winning.You’d think, given that, they would ease up on the ugliness, the dehumanization, and the hate. Think again. These aren’t people who want to share this country or even share the same restaurant as Trump and MAGA. You can’t lie about a whole group of people like they have, calling them Nazis and racists and bigots, and not have it end as easily as one election. This is, to them, war.Mamdani’s speech proved it. It was masks off, and here comes the revolution, and the enemies are the rich, the Capitalists, and the free thinkers. You think cancel culture was bad? Just you wait until they have control of AI, YouTube, Facebook, and all social media platforms, not to mention all of Hollywood, book publishing, universal preschool, and the universities.And what happens when the money runs out? Even now, Mamdani needs money, and he’s asking for it to help pay for his transition team. Get used to it, rich people. You are the ones who will fund this production.The policies matter less than their total control of the country they believe belongs to them. But the one person they can’t control is Donald Trump, and that’s how he’s gotten the better of them again and again. They believe this time, they finally got him. They think the time has come to declare victory. I wouldn’t be so sure.When you control the corporate press, the universities, the public schools, the culture, you can create any reality you want. That’s a totalitarian paradise, and why they’ve constructed it that way. A Trump win was never in the plan. It took them a while to find just the right narrative to preserve utopia, which was in a state of collapse.All it took was for Trump to focus on tariffs and not the economy, to celebrate a lavish Halloween ball amid a government shutdown, and most of all for voters to get a taste of Republicans ripping away SNAP benefits and rising healthcare costs. So they shut down the government to manufacture a crisis because, of course, they did. It was Defcon 1.Victor Davis Hanson on Emily Jashinsky’s After PartyThat handed the Democrats their oppression cosplay, lining up the shot perfectly. How did the GOP not see this coming? They became arrogant and too comfortable with the idea that the Democratic Party had imploded. The only reason they imploded is that they didn’t have the right script. Now, they do.The forces at play to destroy MAGA are everywhere. Do you think totalitarians play around? They do not. Now that Tyler Robinson conveniently assassinated Charlie Kirk, the vultures have flown in, and there is division everywhere.Nick Fuentes, boosted by the New York Times, will become the face of MAGA over the next few years. Excusing him, excusing those who interview him, or apologizing for him is a gift handed to the Left on a silver platter like the Epstein Files. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.The more people try to censor someone like Fuentes, however, the more energy and popularity he will attain. Anger among the public, especially the young, will find its way out and land somewhere. It will be...
Summary
Janet's "No Kings" Halloween
Nov 300:25:37Summary ready
[I meant to get this out before Halloween, but life got in the way — previous Janet stories — Part One | Part Two ]Janet left Two Moons Yoga Studio, where a gaggle of concerned American citizens — the true patriots — held an emergency “No Kings, Cancel Halloween” meeting to save democracy. The attendees were Janet’s age. They were her neighbors, but she didn’t know most of them. They were all directed to join the NextDoor app to get to know each other better online.Janet used the app frequently. Even though they had a rule about no politics, she would use NextDoor to inform her neighbors if ICE agents had entered the town’s perimeter. She would also warn neighbors about the e-bikes speeding through town, endangering animals and pedestrians. She would take pictures of people whose dogs left messes that their owners did not pick up and post them on NextDoor, and she would make sure to let everyone know how many people were responsibly wearing masks at the Farmer’s Market.COVID wasn’t over, Janet knew. It was still a constant threat, especially to the marginalized, trans people, Black and Brown people, and immigrants. It was her duty to wear a mask at all times, even at the meeting at Two Moons Yoga. Only some people there were wearing masks, but not all. Janet was sure to jot down their names in case she needed to warn people later.The meeting went well. Everyone was on the same page that democracy and their way of life were now under a grave threat. This is not normal, said Barack Obama. Janet agreed. Their action plan was to go door to door and inform their neighbors that Halloween would be canceled due to the government shutdown and the fascist occupation of the country. They had even bigger goals, like canceling Thanksgiving and boycotting Christmas, too. But one step at a time. Halloween was in just a few days, and it was time to send a message to the government that we would not be buying candy or trick-or-treating while Nazis roamed our streets.Everyone had a list of the neighborhood’s sections. Janet would go that evening after she watched MSNBC. She didn’t want to interrupt her neighbors, who were probably just as glued to their TVs. That was the only way to stay informed now that the country has been overtaken by fascists.Nothing else can be trusted now. The media is terrified of Trump, not even the ladies of The View talk politics anymore. Janet can only watch for five minutes before they move on to shallow interviews and publicity hits. Trump has intimidated everyone, suing networks, disappearing Jimmy Kimmel for a joke, and that has had a chilling effect on free speech. Janet wasn’t exactly thrilled about knocking on doors, but she had to do something. She couldn’t just stay home and post about HIM on Facebook and NextDoor. Some had suggested giving out bags of groceries to those whose SNAP benefits would run out. Yes, a community effort for the poor and downtrodden. It’s just that Vista Butte isn’t a town full of poor people. It was expensive to live here. Were there poor people in this town? Then she remembered the maid who comes to clean her house once a month, and everyone has a gardener. Maybe she would approach them with a bag of groceries when she saw them at work. Would it be weird to take a selfie and post it on Instagram to show how important it is to recognize the poor right now?Assuming the maid was poor just because she cleaned houses for a living wasn’t racist, was it? Is it offensive to call her a maid? What’s the appropriate term? Janet asked ChatGPT. The answer: housekeeper, house cleaner, or domestic worker.” Okay, so domestic workers might be the poor people in Vista Butte, like immigrants. Janet did her best not to offend marginalized people. She didn’t know if any such people lived in Vista Butte. The town was, after all, 96% white, affluent, and very liberal. But on the off chance she might encounter one, she wanted them to know she cared about their health, too. That’s why she wears a mask outside every day.Janet began walking up her street and could feel the October breeze. This was the best time of year in Vista Butte. It wasn’t too hot and it wasn’t yet too cold. It was one of those perfect fall days. Every so often, you could smell smoke from a fireplace off in the distance. She didn’t want to think about HIM on a day like this. She needed to be living in the moment more. Self-care. Meditation. Daily walks. Breathing exercises.The election was almost one year ago. Janet’s hair had finally grown back after she shaved it to protest THE FASCIST in the White House. She thought about keeping it because people were so kind to her when they thought she was battling cancer. She never said she was. They just assumed, and she kind of let them. It felt good to have people be nice to her.Things aren’t getting better, Janet knew. They’re getting worse. Much worse. He disembowled the East Wing to put up a Nazi building. He defiled the Lincoln bedroom’s bathroom and put in a Roman bathhouse. Everything is ugly, tacky gold. He hates America! He had a late-stage Roman Empire ball at Mar-a-Lago, apparently. While millions were about to starve because of the government shutdown. He was having a party for billionaires!Janet tried not to think of it. Instead, she looked around at all of the Vote Yes on Prop 50 signs that were stabbed into the lawns of all of her neighbors. What good people they were. They raised $120 million. Imagine that. Of course, it will pass. We have to save democracy, she thought, by adding more seats in Congress. Janet herself donated around $300. Somewhere in the distance, she could hear buzzing, whirring, what is that sound? She knew before she even saw them that it was those kids on the electric bikes that had been terrorizing the town. E-Bikes. Everyone had complained on Next Door. Even the MAGGAt, who goes by the name RedHat. Even he, or she, or they, no he or she, hated them. They were dangerous. They were loud. It was the only time she and RedHat agreed on anything. He was always the first to chime in on her ICE posts. “Good job, ICE,” he would say. “We need to protect American workers,” and “the media is lying about ICE and scaring people.” But Red Hat was living in a Fox News fantasy world, Janet knew. Their fights got so heated that Janet had to block RedHat and then warn everyone on Next Door not to engage with him. There is no point, she would say. He is too lost and can’t be helped. All we can do is block him. But he just made a new account. What will we do with all of these racists who voted for Trump? She thought, We can’t live with them. We can’t forgive them. Their days are numbered. Already, the Democrats are leading in the polls. It’s just a matter of time before we take back the country and save democracy. But what to do with all of those bad people? Janet didn’t know. But she hoped someone did. Red Hat was right about the bikes, though. The kids didn’t know how to control them. They went too fast down the road. They scared dogs and cats, and they scared Janet. She could hear them off in the distance now. Then, she could see them. There they were, a gang of about six boys speeding right toward her. Janet was still holding her No Kings sign, which she’d brought to the meeting, which said No KKK No FASCIST USA and NO KINGS. She held it up in front of her so the boys could see her clearly in case they weren’t paying attention. Could they see her? They had a devilish look on their faces and were speeding right toward her. Were they planning on hitting her? Would they hit a middle-aged woman in a mask carrying a No Kings sign? Yes, Janet knew, they would because they’re DUMB KIDS. It was now a game of chicken, and Janet was not playing that game. Just as they got within a few feet of her, she leaped out of the way and stumbled, falling face down onto the concrete. She could hear them screaming with laughter as they sped by. “Chicken!” one of them called out. Janet was furious. She ripped her mask off her face and stood in the middle of the road with her cell phone aimed right at them. “I’m recording you!” She said. The boys screeched to a halt on their bikes and turned around to look at her. They apparently thought this was really funny because they could not stop laughing. “Go ahead, No Kings,” one of them said, and that cracked them all up even more. “I will!” Janet said, “And then I’ll call the police! How do you like that?” “We didn’t do anything,” another said. A couple of them had their own cell phones out and began recording her. “You tried to kill me!” Janet said. That made the boys burst into yet more uncontrollable giggles as they began mocking her. “Oh, no! She almost died!” ”Death by E-bike!”“You don’t even live in this town, do you?” Janet said. “Why don’t you go back to where you came from?” “Why don’t you?” One of them said. “I live here. Do you?”They didn’t answer, but just thought the whole thing was either super funny or a waste of time. And with that, off they went, with their noisy, irritating, dangerous E-Bikes headed for who knows where. Janet searched around for her mask, but the strap was broken. She was too traumatized to bother picking it up. She did take her sign, which was wrinkled and dirty. She looked around to see if any of her neighbors had witnessed the ugly scene. She might need a witness if she called the cops. But why bother? What could they do? She would keep trying to get E-Bikes banned so the neighborhood could be peacefu...
Summary
No Country for Old Media: The Shameful Blackout on Arctic Frost
Oct 3100:23:45Summary ready
When the hilarious clips of Katie Porter losing her temper went viral, I thought What a great skit that would make on Saturday Night Live. Would they dare? The answer came the following Saturday. Of course not. Why not? Because on the Left, they protect their own. The alignment of culture, media, and the Democrats has been a deadly one for them in all ways. It has caused a mass exodus of people like me fleeing the bubble for more honest and truthful alternative media. It has led to empty theaters across America and a ratings free-fall in cable and network news.Desperate times call for desperate measures, which is why CBS News hired Bari Weiss and why we’re just starting to see Hollywood attempt to pull away from the monoculture. But it might be too late. As the lines go in No Country for Old Men, “Well, it’s a mess, ain’t it, Sheriff?” “Well, if it ain’t, it’ll do ‘til the mess gets here.”Welcome to No Country for Old Media, where a story as big as Arctic Frost meets deafening silence inside the bubble, where once again, Axios stands alone.Lucky for me, I listen to the Real Clear Politics podcast every day, which is where I first heard about the story. If these guys are alarmed about it, I know it’s more than just partisan politics. Carl Cannon, Tom Bevan, and Andrew Walworth are straight shooters. It’s a sign of how fast new media is growing that they’ve now announced they will be joining the Megyn Kelly channel on SiriusXM. Is it worse than Watergate? I think so. But you have to look at the big picture, not just one story. The Democrats’ ten-year war to prevent Trump from representing those who voted for him and to deny half the country their right to representation remains one of the biggest scandals in American history. We’ve never had an administration refuse to step aside because they didn’t like the winner and decide for the American people that their votes didn’t matter because one side had all of the power. It was never Trump who refused to leave. It was Barack Obama and the America he believed he had forever shaped.Since the Democrats have complete control of the legacy media, they decide what matters. They have manufactured nearly every major crisis where Trump is concerned. So much so that they’ve inadvertently manifested a Boy Who Cried Wolf scenario for themselves, which is why they’re so dangerous now. They are willing to do and say anything to win a war they’ve already lost. This press conference was ignored by the legacy press, but it’s worth listening to. It lays out in shocking detail just how deep the rabbit hole goes.It’s No Country for Old Media because they can’t cover a story like this, no matter how big it gets. They don’t chase the story anymore. Just as Tommy Lee Jones in the movie is always a day late and a dollar short chasing the bad guys and can’t save the hero, our old media is too afraid to tell the truth and doesn’t get there until much later, if they get there at all. How long did it take them to talk about Joe Biden’s cognitive decline? After Nixon thoroughly humiliated the Democrats in 1972, winning every state except Massachusetts, his approval numbers were at an all-time high. Taking down a guy that popular was compelling news for the American people, who watched his approval numbers crash, and then watched him resign over it.A crash like that isn’t something you see every day, and it’s certainly not the case with Trump. His approvals have been steady because they have been attacking him nonstop. But the legacy media is MIA on all of it. Why? Because they’re part of it. It was the massive alignment of power that I finally could see in 2020, which is why I left the Democratic Party. I believed they had too much power and that the election was anything but “free and fair.” I was a Biden voter, but I assumed we would be on a level playing field. We weren’t. 2020 was a pivotal year for me and many others. I had been Joe Biden’s #1 best gal until the Summer. When the violence began and the legacy media covered it up, it radicalized me, you might say, for the truth. I could see that Trump was gaining ground over that summer, with his five rallies a day and how insane the Left had become. He won Iowa, Ohio, and Florida, which meant that without the way they changed the laws for ballot collecting and counting, he probably would have won. But the election was already over long before election day. That isn’t how our elections are supposed to go. Candidates make their case to the people, and the people vote.But the Democrats collected the majority of their ballots before campaigning was even over, which required keeping the public in the dark about many things, like Biden’s age — they hid him, as they did Kamala Harris’ incompetence. And then, there was the rising fanaticism on the Left and the violence over the Summer. They kept it all hidden from view, just like they’re doing now. What I saw was not so much a rigged election as a rigged system. The “Secret bipartisan campaign” in TIME Magazine lays out exactly how widespread this effort was to subvert American democracy. They all believed it was their right to do so. But it never was. They manufactured an illusion to fool the public. It was the legacy media's job to expose those lies. They never did. Not then, not now.Trump might have been unable to lose. His inability to accept the loss might not have been what we want in our leaders. But as a Biden voter who was now horrified and disillusioned with my party and all of American society they controlled, I was grateful Trump took them on. I also knew January 6th was a much too convenient tool to dismiss everything the Democrats did to drag Old Joe over the finish line.Even now, they can’t confront their own corruption, or even the plain facts about what Joe Biden did to elbow out competition in 2024, what George Clooney did, what Obama did, and how undemocratic it was to put Kamala Harris in without the voices of the people whose votes should matter more. They don’t have to confront it or even talk about it because the legacy media, like Hollywood, like so much of our society, has their backs. It was never about Trump at all. It was about their refusal to step aside and allow America to change. Arctic Frost is an opportunity for them to come clean and admit everything they did to stay in power, and how badly that has hurt them as a party and a movement — how badly it has hurt America — our trust in our institutions and our ability to coexist as a country. Even if the Democrats have destroyed themselves by becoming too corrupt to function, it is how the press became their willing puppets that is the real tragedy here. We don’t need more propaganda. We need more truth in our news.Getting there months or years later is not good enough. Things are moving too fast. This country is changing. Technology is changing. It’s adapt or die. This is no country for old media. It’s time to leave them behind. To quote another line from No Country for Old Men, “You can’t stop what’s coming. It ain’t all waiting on you. That’s vanity.” //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
Summary
Meet the Socialist Socialites
Oct 3000:36:36Summary ready
I imagine right about now, the group chats between Hillary Clinton, Neera Tanden, and Huma Abedin are lit. Democratic Socialism is at the gates. Once upon a time, that was their worst nightmare. Now, it’s their inevitable reality. If Andrew Cuomo does somehow pull off a miraculous last-minute one-in-a-million win in New York, he will do so without any help from the establishment Democrats. But even a weak endorsement from Hakeem Jeffries for Zohran Mamdani is enough. They know their goose is cooked. Even if they’re not happy about it, they have no choice but to go along with it.We wanted to smash the Patriarchy. They wanted to smash the oligarchy.I am old enough to remember how those of us in the I’m With Her army fought viciously with “Bernie bros” throughout the 2016 primary, calling them racists and misogynists, saying they were “useful idiots” for Trump. We wanted to smash the Patriarchy. They wanted to smash the oligarchy.Most of us Hillarycrats were terrified that Democratic Socialism would pull the party too far to the Left and we’d never win an election again. It was the word “socialism,” and no matter how many times they put “Democratic” in front of it, the song remained the same.Maybe we were the last generation forced to read Animal Farm in high school, but we seemed to remember what so many in the Bernie movement had suddenly forgotten. Not only doesn’t Communism sell, but it doesn’t work. That message never got through, and socialism, Democratic or otherwise, would be like those dinosaur eggs that magically appeared in Jurassic Park. Socialism, like life, finds a way.Look at the Democrats now. They’re all in. Even if they weren’t, they know better than to say so out loud. They also know they’re out of moves. They’ve had their shot, and all it meant was Trump beating them again. But I still wonder what’s going on in those group chats. Does Hillary know that this potentially means the Republicans will rule for much longer? Or does she, like all of the fanatics on the Left, still believe they are just one election away from taking back the country We'd better hope they aren’t. Socialist SocialitesYou’ve heard of Vivek Ramaswamy’s Woke Capitalism. Now, meet Woke Socialism —the hybrid of AOC and Bernie, and their Green New Deal manifesto, merging the two ideologies into one complete organism. Zohran Mamdani is their love child, so perfect for today’s Left that he almost seems like he was created in a lab.You see them everywhere, these socialist socialites. Somehow, it’s become the ultimate pretty girl cred, like “Free Palestine” and “This baby is not yet human.” They like socialism for the same reason they like fat acceptance. As long as homely and otherwise rejected women are allowed in, that gives the pretty girls the freedom to display their beauty without being hated for it. Here are hot girls for Mamdani:We saw this on display at a recent Vogue Hollywood fashion show, populist enough for Gavin Newsom to attend. An array of all designated marginalized and their allies, the virtue signalers, all in one place. It was one big mix of the new Gilded Age and the high-society Woketopians in their finest. Here were two famous transgender models greeted with euphoric cheers.How to reflect social justice while luxuriating in extreme wealth? Just chant Tax the rich! Tax the rich! Tax the rich! That was all AOC needed to abandon her working-class cred to join the high-status Woketopians at the Met Gala.It’s its own kind of evangelical grift. But it is the workaround necessary in the totalitarian America promised if the Democrats return to power. We’ve seen what it looks like. We already know. Obey the rules, or you’re banished forever. AOC’s gleaming face in that photo has been replaced by an angry one. Her speech at the Mamdani rally was very much an “us vs. them” anthem, and by them, she means you, the majority in America that voted for Trump. There is no escaping the fact that the party about to embrace socialism is the party of wealth and the ruling class. It’s an inconvenient detail they all mostly gloss over. Here is Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi on America This Week:It is no longer Bernie’s dream of smashing the oligarchy — they are the oligarchy. The workaround is to make it no longer about class but about race and gender. Then, there are no limits on wealth. The lawn sign people desperately crave the status that comes with being deemed an oppressed group, the highest status attained inside Woketopia. You can borrow oppression by, say, making illegal immigration your most important cause. You can be out there chattering about racists. Accuse, lest ye be accused. And best of all, wealthy and powerful high-status figures like Michelle Obama or Oprah Winfrey can still be oppressed and maintain their status while helping to fund the revolution. Meanwhile, some working-class white man in Wisconsin, unemployed and strung out on fentanyl, is forever the oppressor because they need a constant supply of them — white men, Christians, Jews, and billionaires. Here is Barstool Sports Dave Portnoy:Mamdani must rely on his identity to make wealthy elites feel the same sense of inner purpose we all felt the first time we heard Barack Obama speak. He made us feel worthy because our support of him, just because of his identity, made the country better. We mattered. We were important. We were changing the world. What else does Mamdani have to sell? Sure, he’s charming and charismatic. He has a great social media game. He is offering a vision for the future rather than only Trump hate. But I also wonder, could his pitch have worked if he were a normie white dude selling it? It only barely worked for Bernie.How many will heed this warning?Or this:What Mamdani has, like every other designated marginalized group, is protective status inside Woketopia. No one can ever criticize you once you are deemed oppressed because then you get to call them racists, homophobes, transphobes, more phobes, more ists, and even ignite a mob to chase, condemn, and purge the offender. When I hear Mamdani speak, or any Democrat besides John Fetterman, I hear them always choosing to see the worst, to see all the complaints against policies the majority of Americans care about, like crime and the border, the answer is always that they are bad people for caring about their own lives. They are a racist, an Islamaphobe, or a transphobe. Here is the Great White Hope, Gavin Newsom, doing just that on a podcast: Their inability to see beyond that, or for voters to snap out of it and return to the real world, has put them in their most precarious position since the Civil War.Gone with the Wind If you are wondering how the Left was lost or why they are in a hell of their own making, or why they can’t snap out of it, or why they seem like every day is the end of the world, look no further than the South during the last Civil War. They did not want to give up their way of life, or their utopia, either. They were happy, and they did not realize the rest of the country wanted to move on. When the North decided slavery would not expand to the states, the South was willing to fight and die to hold onto what once was instead of evolving into what must now be. The Left is so desperate to hold onto their way of life, they are willing to fight to preserve crime in the cities, to open the border and allow all of the migrants to flow freely into America, and for Medicare for all and universal education to pay for them too.It was a fixed hierarchy in the American South, just as there is a fixed hierarchy among today’s Left. Just as the South was a contradiction to America’s foundational principles, that all men are created equal, so too are today’s Democrats a contradiction to America’s promise, that class no longer decides success, certainly not gender or skin color, but hard work, merit, and talent do. Obviously, that hasn’t always been true for everyone. But it is the whole point of an America at all. Mamdani insists he wants all New Yorkers to live a dignified life. It sounds great, doesn’t it? Once you start digging into exactly what he means by that, you realize he’s not just talking about economics. He’s also talking about thought and speech.Woke socialism is, for the Left, the best of all possible worlds. As long as the marginalized living in poverty are lifted up and elevated, the wealthy ruling class, the Socialist Socialites, can justify their absurdly comfortable lives in a country that has afforded them more wealth and privilege than most will see in their lifetimes. They’re hoping that if they keep the government shut down, if they make Americans suffer, then we will have no choice but to abandon the American experiment and lean in to the same failed policies that have so many fleeing from all over the world just for the chance to live here and be free. As Orwell warned in Animal Farm, it is human nature that ultimately upends utopia. Sooner or later, the powerful take control anyway because all animals might be equal, but some animals are more equal than others. Music:Tip Jar This is a public episode. 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Summary
Did The Great Feminization Cause The Great Awokening?
Oct 2600:24:48Summary ready
Somehow, I missed this story that appeared in Compact Magazine by Helen Andrews, The Great Feminization.” In it, she writes:Cancel culture is simply what women do whenever there are enough of them in a given organization or field. That is the Great Feminization thesis, which the same author later elaborated upon at book length: Everything you think of as “wokeness” is simply an epiphenomenon of demographic feminization.The explanatory power of this simple thesis was incredible. It really did unlock the secrets of the era we are living in. Wokeness is not a new ideology, an outgrowth of Marxism, or a result of post-Obama disillusionment. It is simply feminine patterns of behavior applied to institutions where women were few in number until recently. How did I not see it before?And:The substance fits, too. Everything you think of as wokeness involves prioritizing the feminine over the masculine: empathy over rationality, safety over risk, cohesion over competition. Other writers who have proposed their own versions of the Great Feminization thesis, such as Noah Carl or Bo Winegard and Cory Clark, who looked at feminization’s effects on academia, offer survey data showing sex differences in political values. One survey, for example, found that 71 percent of men said protecting free speech was more important than preserving a cohesive society, and 59 percent of women said the opposite.And this, which would make a great dystopian sci-fi novel:All of these observations matched my observations of wokeness, but soon the happy thrill of discovering a new theory eventually gave way to a sinking feeling. If wokeness really is the result of the Great Feminization, then the eruption of insanity in 2020 was just a small taste of what the future holds. Imagine what will happen as the remaining men age out of these society-shaping professions and the younger, more feminized generations take full control.Yes to all of this. I would also argue that a feminized society has given more power to the LGBTQIA movement because the one identity group not allowed is masculine, heterosexual men. Feminization has meant, to me, a much more boring and dreary culture—agonizing, if you want the truth. Hollywood has never recovered. Her piece explains much of what I’ve been dancing around in the past five years, and it might explain why hatred toward me, especially by women, is so profound. Why am I not behaving like all the other women by obeying the rules of Woketopia?Cancel culture started on the pages of Tumblr circa 2013 when middle school-aged girls began constructing a totalitarian system of control that punished people for stepping out of line. Here was Liat Kaplan admitting she helped start it all. It also has its roots in the rise of Black Twitter, though largely driven by women. When it was co-opted by the more dominant group - white women - it swallowed society whole, at least on the Left and in the bubble.When you think about it, whole generations of girls have been raised to be empowered, while men have been raised to be exactly the opposite, disempowered. How did we think it would turn out? So much of our common theories about what’s happened to us can be laid at the feet of the matriarchy, and the Left’s ongoing insistence that the system of oppression upon which their movement is based has not been fundamentally altered. They still need a fresh crop of oppressed people because that is how white women find their sense of purpose, their virtue signals — illegal immigration, Free Palestine, in order to justify their authoritarian control of our culture and its institutions. They still pretend we live in a rape culture where women are victims and men are predators. And yet, we know things have dramatically changed. Their movement cannot account for that change.I raised a daughter in the same progressive schools and culture that bred this madness. Part of why I write this site and have risked so much is to help clear a path for her to live a freer life and say what she actually thinks without losing everything. But I also watched how boys raised alongside her came of age in a society that punished them for who they were, and many of them wander around aimlessly, or they become mass shooters, or they suffer lives of quiet desperation. And yet, none of us ever thought about why this may be, or at least we didn’t have adequate solutions. We all know what happened with girls and boys in our schools. I watched it happen. The boys had too much energy, couldn’t be controlled, and were constantly singled out as the problem, while the girls thrived. Yet, the only response was to try to change the boys so they fit, rather than change the system to accommodate their needs. I lived all of this because I am, or was, the typical female Liberal. I remember when mostly white women, the Oprah generation, became the most profitable demographic with the most disposable income. We were mostly unmarried, homeowners, business owners, or the ones who went to work while men stayed home with the babies. All corporations aimed their products at us. When Gen-Z became the more desirable demographic, women took it personally, and that explains why they are in such a state now when it comes to Trump and his defeat of Queen Hillary. A society that had empowered women expected a woman to finally be elected president. Women on the Left believe that in a patriarchy, once women pass the childbearing years, they become worthless. After the age of 40 or 50, invisible. But that’s never been true. Post-menopausal women do have value because they can become leaders and grandmothers to help guide younger women. I could go into a whole thing here about human evolution, but I’ll spare you the extra 500 words. I used my own sexuality as a card to play for decades, and then when it was gone, I was lost in some ways. But I also realized that if you re-order society and “smash the patriarchy,” you never have to absorb that shift. You can pretend there is no reality to any of it. Fat women can be sexy, old women can stay young and desirable. If everyone is equal (Marxism), women never have to face getting old and fading away. Makes sense.It’s just a screeching harpie. Relax. The truth is that once you see the feminization thesis, you can’t unsee it. It’s suddenly everywhere. Now, I will look at personal attacks against me a little differently. It’s just a screeching harpie. Relax. The other half of this story that must be told is the rise of Trump in response to it. I’ve written about that too:There is a reason the man who is an affront to these screeching harpies has taken power and won our Virtual Civil war. He’s an unapologetic, heterosexual, masculine man. Barack Obama was not. He was a sensitive, empathetic man who led our country for eight transformative years. If the end result of that was a feminization of society, then Trump is the response to it.I even jokingly made this political ad last year before the election:In all the ways Trump is the Gray Champion of the Fourth Turning, this might be the most profound. The absence of men and masculinity has set society off-kilter. We’ve all noticed, it’s just that no one has articulated it quite as well as Helen Andrews or J. Stone, who wrote the book. Understanding it as a feminization also removes any discussion of race, which is where many get tripped up when discussing wokeness. They see the word “woke” as a dog whistle. And yet, all this time, it had nothing to do with race except in the way that white women, who dominate the Left, need to virtue signal, and the best way to do that is to use minorities.It also tracks that emotional manipulation drives this. Women are more likely to use emotion as a lever of power, which explains why, for ten years, we’ve seen the rise of mass hysteria. Sure, it’s a cliche to call women hysterical, but how else to explain it? Listen to this woman who is straight out of Central Casting for the kinds of women who control the Left and thus, society.So the question then becomes, how do we stop it? How do we change it? I’m not sure it can be fixed. As I’ve been saying for a while now, there is no saving the Left. There is only saving America from them. We must build anew, build outside of what is in place now. We’re halfway there already. But Helen Andrews believes that once we return to a meritocracy, the problem will take care of itself. It’s hard to argue with that. What a mess we’ve made of things by denying those who are good at what they do to rise in this country of all countries. It had to be Trump. There was no one else with the right set of skills to get the dirty job done. //End song:Link to tip jar. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://www.sashastone.co...
Summary
The Democrats Have a Nazi Problem
Oct 2400:41:47Summary ready
The Democrats are involved in their own cover-up. They’re covering up for a Nazi. How could they! All they’ve done for ten years is scream about Nazis! Trump was Hitler, I was told and told and told and told, leading a Brown Shirt army, awakening the White Nationalists, and radicalizing them to rise up and kill Black and Brown people. I was told the Democrats were the side fighting Nazis! It’s okay to punch one, and they’re all Nazis! The Democrats told us! But there is a Nazi in their midst. A genuine bona fide Nazi by their own rules, a Nazi. We don’t give Graham Platner the benefit of the doubt. That’s not how this works. It’s one strike and you’re out.We convict him in the court of public opinion because these are your rules, Democrats. This is the bed you made, and I’m afraid you will have to lie in it. Why are they having a hard time with calling Platner a Nazi and pushing him out like they all pushed out Al Franken after he was called a rapist? For the same reason they aren’t pushing out Jay Jones for his vicious fantasies about killing the children of Republicans. They don’t think they have to, and they are right. They have the legacy media on their side, and to them, only those on the Right can ever be called a Nazi and have it stick. Political violence only matters if someone on the Right does it. Joe Biden told us that. The people we have to fear most are the radical MAGA extremists. Platner will slither on through because that’s how the game is played.Mark Halperin, Sean Spicer, and Dan Turrentine on 2way.The problem is, they like him. They want him to stay in their party because they need macho, macho, macho men. He’s a macho Nazi! He sounds like a real man, not like a Democrat.They’ll have to convince the ladies of The View, however, because they are not on board. Somehow, they realize that if they give Platner a pass, it essentially renders all of their accusations against the Right for ten years null and void.These are their rules. They set the no tolerance for Nazis policy. And anyone they deem a Nazi is, in fact, a Nazi. So by their own rules, we must conclude Graham Platner is a Nazi. There is no presumption of innocence allowed. There is no benefit of the doubt. There is certainly no tolerance, redemption, or forgiveness allowed. It’s once accused, forever guilty. That is their most powerful weapon against the Right.Everyone is a Nazi who voted for Trump. Elon is a Nazi for waving to the crowd. The media, far and wide, reported that story as an actual fact, and the utopians inside the Doomsday Cult not only believed it but still do. Just ask them. Trump is a Nazi because Trump is Hitler. Ivanka is a Nazi because she is Hitler’s daughter. Melania is a Nazi because she wore an outfit one time that the Left decided looked like a Nazi outfit. The utopians inside the Doomsday Cult not only believed it about Melania in 2020, but still do. Then again, is there anything they wouldn’t believe? Right now, they are rolling around in agony yet again because Trump is demolishing the East Wing to build a ballroom. It sounds like a great idea, and Trump is a builder —so why not?If Obama were building the ballroom, they would hail it as a profound moment in history where America’s “white supremacist” past was finally confronted. They would be more honest about how they really feel about the Founding Fathers, who built this country on the backs of slaves, and the White House is representative of our colonizing, 1692 white male patriarchal past. Obama would be hailed as a hero and celebrated on the pages of the New York Times for tearing down that past and building anew.But since it’s Trump, it is a desecration. Because he’s a Nazi, racist, fascist, dictator, criminal, felon, rapist, and most recently, pedophile. Everyone has to be a Nazi because, as the ruling class, they are the oppressed side. Their otherwise pristine lives were disrupted when the other half of the country, the less powerful half, decided they wanted to participate in our democracy, but also couldn’t stand living under the suffocating totalitarian GOODNESS of the lawn sign people. You’ve heard of the Good Germans, now meet the Good Liberals.Here is a list of what you can’t say, eat, drive, or wear. Everything you ever did in your past is subject to our judgment. We will decide your character and convict you of whatever we damn well please. We will call you racists, and everyone will go along with it. And your life will be destroyed over it. What did you once wear on Halloween that could now come back to haunt you?Once marked by them, your whole life was ruined, now that American society had been sucked into the utopian cult of the Left. You were marked, and that meant you were to be banished, shunned, disappeared as the BAD THING, a NAZI. Which kind of sounds like actual Nazis, doesn’t it? The word Nazi is, to them, a casual adjective. The sky is blue, that flower is pink, that person in a red hat is a Nazi. They don’t think twice about it and have emboldened themselves to say it all the time. They have also screamed it, chanted it, and even used it to justify violence.Charlie Kirk’s assassin believed he was fighting fascism, which is another word for Nazi, because none of these people really know their history. These words are stand-ins for their own helpless hatred and rage against people who don’t agree with them on their totalitarian worldview. When the Epstein story failed to take down Trump, the Democrats decided pedophile was now their favorite word. And all Republicans were guilty of it. They scream it, wild-eyed with spittle spraying out of their mouths. They say it on TikTok to any Trump supporter because, you know, Nazi was played out. Can you imagine Nazi being played out? Now it’s PEDOPHILE!! This is on billboards, on the No Kings signs. They say it casually and frequently, as they use the only weapons they have in our virtual Civil War, WORDS. Words to them are harm and they are violence, so they fire them at will. Freaky virtue signaling podcast host Jennifer Welch, who has almost single-handedly alienated all heterosexual men from the Left, loves to point her bony finger at her fellow Americans. Accuse lest ye be accused. Here she is calling Stephen Miller and other Trump supporters Nazis. What this whole ugly affair has exposed is that they never meant any of it. It was all politics. They just didn’t want to share this country or hand it over to people they deemed beneath them. It was all lies for ten years. They destroyed people based on those lies, and they never thought twice about it. People have actually died and been viciously assaulted. Most of us were victims of a long con. They never believed it. They just wanted to win.Which is why it’s funny to hear Democrats like Jaime Harrison pretend they aren’t the side that has been throwing their fellow Americans away like human garbage for a decade, all because they couldn’t beat Trump.So yes, the Democrats have a Nazi problem, and it’s high time that the Republicans gave them a taste of their own medicine by saying so at every opportunity. Who knows, maybe it will make the Good People of the Left think twice the next time they point their finger and scream NAZI! // 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
Summary

Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning with Sasha Stone

All episodes

Netflix and the WB Just Killed Off Movie Theaters

Erika Kirk and The Wicked Witches of the Left

How Dare We Speak Happy Thanksgiving!

Barack Obama and the "Bitter Clingers"

Totalitarians at the Gate

Janet's "No Kings" Halloween

No Country for Old Media: The Shameful Blackout on Arctic Frost

Meet the Socialist Socialites

Did The Great Feminization Cause The Great Awokening?

The Democrats Have a Nazi Problem

Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning with Sasha Stone

All episodes

Netflix and the WB Just Killed Off Movie Theaters

Erika Kirk and The Wicked Witches of the Left

How Dare We Speak Happy Thanksgiving!

Barack Obama and the "Bitter Clingers"

Totalitarians at the Gate

Janet's "No Kings" Halloween

No Country for Old Media: The Shameful Blackout on Arctic Frost

Meet the Socialist Socialites

Did The Great Feminization Cause The Great Awokening?

The Democrats Have a Nazi Problem