Podcast
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
www.sashastone.com
www.sashastone.com
118episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
No Kings: The Lunatics Are Running The Asylum
Oct 1800:27:31Summary ready“If the rule you are following has led you to this, of what use was the rule?””Do you have any idea how crazy you are?””You mean the nature of this conversation?””I mean the nature of you.”So goes an exchange in No Country for Old Men, but it’s a conversation the Democrats might have with themselves as they gather for yet another protest after ten years of them. If the rule you are following has led you to this, of what use was the rule?”Protests are meant to be the voices of the unheard. Yet these protests are the voices of those who never shut up. Not for one minute, not for ten years, and all of us have had to endure them like being trapped inside Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory with hundreds of thousands of Veruca Salts.What are their No Kings protests anyway? What have they been since 2016? What are they trying to say? Is it like the ex who smashes all the dishes in the kitchen when her husband tries to leave? I won’t be ignored, DONALD.What’s the point of it? To what end now? Of what use was the rule? The voices of the unheard? More like the side that had everything. All the media, all the institutions, all the culture, and for a time, all of the government. The people had only Trump. They gathered their small donations and, by some miracle, voted him in, because they had a right to be represented, because this is their country too. It was a revolutionary act that mounted some sort of opposition to a movement that had swallowed up much of American society and demanded that we all go along or be left behind.They managed to have the mother of all protests in the Summer of 2020, smashing windows, burning buildings, beating up cops, and throwing massive fits that said WE’RE MAD! But mad at what? Democracy? Sorry, you lost an election?I try to remember being one of them and feeling the same way. But why did we think we had the right to protest an election just because it didn’t go our way? And not just protest, but protest all of the time over everything. Because we had all the power and we couldn’t stand to compromise with the other half of the country. They had to go, MAGA had to go. We canceled them. They’re racists, we said.Elections only counted if the Democrats won. The other side was not allowed to win, try to make a change, or fight for their right to representation. Not in 2016 and not in 2024. So the protests will not end because the people have to be made to suffer for their vote. So fine, the American people said in 2020. Okay, we’ll vote him out. Donald Trump is an existential threat, and our country is pure chaos. Desperate times call for desperate measures, so that, you know, like rigging an election, becomes necessary. And fine, we’ll vote in Joe Biden, maybe that will calm things down - finally, the protests will end. Cut to: a botched exit from Afghanistan, 13 American soldiers dead, two wars in Russia and the Middle East, one long dark winter, a bad economy, and are we topless at the White House?It was like George Spahn had moved in and ushered in the Manson Family. Things were getting weird, and the culture of silence and climate of fear meant no one would tell them that they were freaking America out. The Democrats became totalitarian while in power, not just censoring speech on social media, not just institutionalized cancel culture, and a transgender contagion that was spiraling out of control, an obsession with race and racism and antiracism, and if that weren’t enough, they weaponized the Justice Department and tried to throw Trump both in jail and off the ballot. Suddenly, the Trump chaos wasn’t looking so bad. But we still lived through the first president to have his home raided by the FBI, the first mug shot, and then watched him almost getting his head blown off on live television. None of that made even the slightest bit of difference. They were still somehow the victims even though they lost both 2016 and 2024 entirely on their own.Whose fault was it that Joe Biden, behaving like a king, elbowed out any challengers even though he was in serious decline? Whose fault was it that the Democrats and the media said nothing? George Clooney said nothing until he was publicly humiliated after the debate.Whose fault was it that they pushed Kamala Harris as the nominee, thinking it would be easy to defeat Trump, after all, he’s a twice-impeached, four-times indicted, convicted felon! Whose fault was it that Kamala Harris was a terrible candidate, and every honest Democrat knew that in 2020. But suddenly everyone just pretended not to remember how she was humiliated and triggered by Tulsi Gabbard, and then dropped out because she was polling so badly?Whose fault was it that the Democrats have given their party over to the lunatics who still insist trans women are women and that they should be able to play in sports against real women? “We just need to change the messaging,” said King Barack. What choice did reasonable people have but to vote the Democrats out and keep them out until such time as they can come back to sanity? They fight against mass deportations and want an open border, while also demanding free healthcare for all. They never see any problem with this. To them, it’s a human right that someone else always has to pay for. They are the victims here, and all of America is expected to address their needs OR ELSE. NO KINGS!They’re like the attention-starved kindergartner who can’t stop crying in the corner, the stalker ex who monitors your every move, and the nagging wife who won’t leave you alone, all rolled in one — what about ME? What about my NEEDS? They are the party of the rich, yet pretend to be the voice of the people. As if. That ship sailed long ago. The Bernie Sanders/AOC/Zohran Mamdani brand of socialism is yet more virtue signaling for graduates of Ivy League colleges and wealthy celebrities. As long as you signal Tax the Rich you can chum around with Anna Wintour and Kim Kardashian.It all sounds good, right? Let the poor people have free stuff, and they’ll leave us rich folks alone. They’re happy to pay a guilt tax as long as they can Instagram by day and sleep at night. Give the poor and the marginalized whatever they need, and join me on my yacht after that climate change fundraiser. I would be more sympathetic if, after ten years, they had something, anything other than more protests. If they could face the truth about how crazy they have become. If they could understand just for one minute that they were only getting one side of the story by a weaponized, biased media machine that seems to delight in keeping them mentally and emotionally unhinged. If any of them had any courage whatsoever to stand up to their own party, but they’re too afraid. Even Gavin Newsom is afraid. Who are they trying to convince by now with these protests? Who would be drawn in and want to vote for them? It’s mostly aging Baby Boomers and Jen Psaki viewers, naked grandpas on bikes, women with septum piercings calling babies parasites, and single women who shop at Erewon and Lululemon after high-priced pilates on Sunday.Why would you want to showcase all of that madness when most Americans are just trying to get through the work week? Have a beer on the weekend, maybe take a walk at sunset, maybe drive their Tesla that isn’t smeared with feces or keyed down the side. And hope that their kid doesn’t have to decide which gender to be in preschool or, god forbid, catch a glimpse of a naked appendage while coming upon a protest in the park or just trying to use the girls’ bathroom. Why, Democrats, why? The only semi-reasonable one of them is John Fetterman, whom I once believed should never have run after suffering a debilitating stroke. They were doing it for a yes vote, I thought. Boy, did that turn out to be wrong, and now, he’s their worst nightmare because he thinks for himself and isn’t afraid of them. Now, according to Axios, they’re trying to push him out. That’s right, the only semi-sane Democrat is now persona non grata with the totalitarians because, of course, he is. They punish dissent. That’s why they’re in this mess. Protests signal to the public that the Democrats are helpless, that they have no ability to win elections or to compromise or have any kind of rational conversations about anything, much less any plan to lead America anywhere. Their messaging for ten years now is all or nothing. Give us what we want or we’ll throw a fit. Listen to how insane they are with these TikTok videos:They shun anyone who votes for Trump. They treat the other half of the country like toxic waste. They have no way to attract new voters. Who would want anything to do with them? Sure, they still have lots of money and enthusiastic psychotic delusional voters, not to mention the legacy media and Hollywood.In their imaginary world, Trump is a king, a dictator, and a fascist when in reality, he’s just the guy they could not destroy or defeat. It’s never been Trump. America is exhausted. Ten years of the 19th nervous breakdowns the Left has been having over Trump, only to lose to him again in 2024, and probably to JD Vance in 2028 and 2032, is enough. The Democrats are doubling down on the very thing that makes them so repellent to voters. Helplessness and temper tantrums are no way to lead anyone anywhere. // 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
Donald The Great
Oct 1600:37:36Summary readyHeroes are in short supply in America at a time when we need them the most. Hollywood can’t deliver them anymore, that’s for sure. They are too ashamed of themselves and their history to remember how. Heroes seem to be a matter of interpretation, like everything else in our two Americas. But one thing was certain on October 13th: Donald Trump was a hero that day.He was a hero because whatever it is that defines Donald Trump, he was not going to give up on those last remaining hostages. He would bring them home. He found the best people who could get the job done, and with help from leaders all over the world, we watched a miracle.What a difference a president makes. Instead of watching bodies falling off airplanes with 13 soldiers dead in the Afghanistan withdrawal, now we were watching hostages rushing into the waiting arms of their families. We are at war for the narrative of what we all just lived through over the past ten years. It’s like that line in the song from Hamilton, “who lives, who dies, who tells your story.” Who will tell it? How will it be written about in history books? If one half of America tells the story of Donald the Terrible and the other tells the story of Donald the Great, who wins? How will it be preserved on Google, YouTube, and AI? Here is what I know for sure. Trump isn’t Hitler. He isn’t a fascist. He isn’t a dictator. Whatever else he is, the Left has been lying about him. They lie in the legacy media. They lie on social media. They lie to themselves. I know because I lied too. I lied because it was socially acceptable, even encouraged. The bigger the lie, the greater the reward.Over the past five years, I learned something about myself I never knew until Trump. I’m someone who cares about the truth, and that became a problem for me if I wanted to stay inside utopia. The more questions I asked, the louder and stronger the attacks against me became. I was to accept the lies or else. It matters how we tell the story of Donald Trump and the political machine that tried and failed to destroy him. That doesn’t mean Trump is perfect, or that he doesn’t create chaos and push boundaries that can sometimes offend or insult people. However, it does mean telling the truth about him and ensuring his legacy is recorded in history as one of the greatest stories ever told, and the most exciting time any of us will ever live through. Donald The TerribleYou might have had to be like me, someone who has spent 30 years online, to understand how the Left could become so disconnected from reality for so long. They exist inside a perfectly contained bubble that perpetuates confirmation bias through a media/social media feedback loop. Social media, and now AI, are new technologies that we must somehow survive, even though they often deceive us into thinking that what we see and read reflects reality. It doesn’t. AI is a reflection of everything that has already been written. We must work hard to influence it, because it will reflect the lies.Our story begins in 2008, with the election of Barack Obama, as well as the dawn of the iPhone, Twitter, and Facebook, not to mention the Wall Street bailout that gave rise to two populist movements and sparked the crisis that led to the Fourth Turning. We had the opportunity to build a New America, a shining Woketopia on the Hill, with new rules of language and behavior — one big soup of humanity that required us all to find our tribal identifiers. Class went out the window, as did the free market and the silent majority. Identity became a means by which we ranked ourselves and others. Obama was our leader, and as wealth and power shifted leftward and society began migrating online, the Democrats amassed an unprecedented amount of power. If you were living like this, you felt like you were at the cutting edge of something brand new. We were not only leading the country but also the world. The problem was not only that we had abandoned much of America without even realizing it, assuming everyone would be on board with our new direction, but also that we did not build our house of bricks. We cultivated victimhood and fragility, which made us ill-equipped to deal with the rise of Donald Trump.He was our ogre rampaging the quiet countryside while we stayed locked behind the castle walls, terrified that he might storm through the gates. Our comedians became our court jesters, and the legacy media delivered only news that was acceptable to the ruling elite. Hollywood reflected our singular hysteria. We had our magic mirror to tell us, always, who is the fairest of them all. Had there not been a big lie that consumed us that Donald the Terrible was an existential threat, maybe we’d have been okay. But when, at long last, Donald the Terrible was pushed out of office and Joe Biden was installed as a placeholder for our King, Barack Obama, the Democrats couldn’t deliver. They showed the people that they still didn’t care about them, that they would double down on their same toxic policies and force all of us to live under their increasingly strident rules.The border was open. Crime was rampant, thanks to defund the police. Gender ideology was not only a full-blown contagion out of control, but no one was allowed to even talk about it. Somehow, that truth never found its way in. Instead, the lies grew and the delusion took the Democrats all the way to raiding Mar-a-Lago, four separate indictments to put Donald the Terrible in prison. They took his mug shot. They forced him to sit in court so he could not campaign. They slapped him with a nearly $100 million lawsuit for defaming someone who was never defamed. And never, in all of that time, did they once talk about Joe Biden’s failing cognitive abilities. Not once did they turn the camera around to look at themselves and see all the ways they were failing us.History must tell that story. It’s the only way to understand what came next and what made Trump a hero. Donald the GreatWhen I was a Trump deranged lunatic, I was doing what everyone else did every second of every day. I was scouring the world for proof of Trump’s evil nature. So I, too, read Mary Trump’s book on her uncle. I expected to find stories that would serve as the necessary smoking gun, justifying how much of our emotional real estate was now devoted to obsessing over him.Instead, I found myself seeing a different side of Trump than I’d been conditioned to believe, even though that clearly was not Mary Trump’s intention. She wanted me to see her uncle as uniquely dangerous, but how could I after reading the part where Trump was abandoned as a toddler when his mother was sent to the hospital after the difficult birth of his brother Robert? Donald Trump was just two years old, but he was already a fighter. He had to be. He had to survive without his mom at a time when he needed her the most. That was his first lesson in self-reliance. It was also his first lesson in seeing the brighter side of life. He could have spent all these years blaming his childhood and blaming her. But he never did. Why? Because he always paid tribute to his mother and chose the positive, he made his life better, and that is the power of positive thinking.That wasn’t the only lesson in being emotionally tough, but it does explain, at least a little bit, how he was able to keep pushing through attacks that almost no human could survive. He wasn’t babied. He wasn’t coddled. He was thrown right into the deep end.And that is how you get to the guy who did not falter when they used everything in their considerable arsenal to destroy him. Each time they went at him, whether they knew it or not, they were making him stronger and transforming him into Donald the Great. And perhaps that helps explain how Donald the Great came to exist at all. That is what we all saw on October 13th. We saw that guy, the guy who would not stand down and would never allow his enemies to tarnish his good name. Here is Megyn Kelly:The Democrats still have not learned their lesson. If anything, they’ve only gotten worse.They may not like that Trump writes stuff like this:But they always overplay their hand. I don’t happen to think his TIME cover is so bad. To me, it looks like he’s looking to Heaven, and there is a halo around his head. But why should he trust any of them after ten years of attempting to destroy him through imagery? A day before, TIME tweeted this out: Make America Great AgainTrump’s secret weapon has always been his loyal supporters, his MAGA base. He had their backs, so they had his. They showed up on January 6th at great cost to their reputations and their incomes. They were tarnished with lies and propaganda, but they stuck by Trump. It was felt most profoundly in Butler when none of his supporters ran after he was shot. As Trump said so eloquently at the convention just days later, they wanted to make sure he was okay.Then, when he says he isn’t supposed to be here, they chant back to ...
Summary
How the Democrats Became the Party of Hate
Oct 1100:47:30Summary readyI’ve been hated by the Party of Hate for five years and counting, maybe longer. For a while, I tricked myself into thinking it was people who didn’t really know me. They judged me on my tweets or my opinions. But then, after I came out as a Trump voter, I felt hate even from the people who did know me.I’ve seen sons disown their mothers, wives disown their husbands. I’ve felt the hatred from the people in my town who put up alienating lawn signs that seem to come from a good place until you think about what they’re really saying: agree with us, or we will hate you. When I was a kid, my stepdad forbade us from using the word “hate.” We were not allowed to say it for any reason, not “I hate brusselsprouts,” “I hate doing the dishes,” or most especially, “I hate you.”I felt it bubbling up so many times - what is a better word, I would wonder. There is no better word, I would conclude. Hate is the word we use to describe that all-consuming heat that bubbles up inside us that we can’t control. There are perfect words for things, or as Anton Chigurh said in No Country for Old Men, “you pick the one right tool.”What is love? I knew what that was the first time I saw my baby’s face. What is hate? What all of us felt in November of 2016 when Donald Trump won the election. From that day forward, for the next ten years, we would be defined by and consumed by hate.The hate wrapped itself around us. It comforted us. It made us feel morally superior and less alone in our misery and less helpless in our actions. It justified everything we did, whether it was protesting Trump’s inauguration or forming the #Resistance. It justified even worse, beating up, spitting on, and knocking the red hats off of Trump supporters. The rulers of the Left’s aristocracy, the empire that is now in tatters, said nothing. They seemed to delight in watching all of us good soldiers protest, even smash windows and burn buildings to show how angry we were, because that made them feel less like the failures they are. Blame Trump, blame the voters for the crime of voting them out. Blame anyone but themselves.All of culture was now consumed by the hatred that blotted out the sun and kept us trapped in a long, dark winter of misery and rage. It was our obligation as citizens of utopia to take a side against the half of America that had betrayed Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Hollywood, universities, corporations, institutions, book publishing, libraries, and restaurants all sent the same message to the Red Hats: you are not welcome here.The directive from on high was not to “normalize” what was not “normal.” The people didn’t just vote in Trump to represent them — that would be democracy. This was something else. This was an affront to all the better people —the ones with all the power. Those who called themselves the good side, the moral side, the side written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by Steven Spielberg, the lawn sign people who say JUST BE KIND, were in the grips of an emotion they could not name, let alone control.You do not speak like we do. You do not believe what we believe. You do not accept our version of reality. We don’t want you here. We hate you. Hate was what we were feeling, and yet hate was a word we’d given away. It didn’t mean this overwhelming sensation that made us use our social media to demonize and dehumanize the working class. It meant people who did not go along with our progressive ideology. It started back in the 1990s with the fight for gay marriage. “Love is love” meant you’re with us. “Hate” meant you were against us. Hate was what all of those bad people over there were, the God people, the Conservatives, that’s what defined them, not us.Without the right words to describe what we were feeling, we had to find other words. Nazi, fascist, dictator, bigot, homophobe, racist, rapist, xenophobe, transphobe. And when that wasn’t enough, we had to go after how he looked, his weight, his hair, his hands, his skin, his relationship with his family, the cars he drove, the food he ate.Trump was the only thing we could see because hate was the only thing we could feel. Like this woman on TikTok who embodies so much of what defines the Left today.It wasn’t that Trump didn’t troll or provoke us or give as good as he got. He did. Every one of his tweets drove us deeper into our hatred. How could he say that? That’s not funny. That’s not a joke. That’s offensive. Presidents don’t talk that way. Who would dare talk that way? Don’t laugh. Take it seriously. Don’t normalize him. Maybe for a while, the hatred was an understandable response to someone who offended everything we stood for. But after years of it, even I couldn’t take it anymore. It wasn’t just poison I could feel — a poison that began to make me sick — it was poison in our culture. It touched everything, ruined everything, destroyed a once-mighty movement, and collapsed an empire. That hate we felt, that united us, meant everything had to be sucked into it, like a black hole. Jokes weren’t funny. Movies were dystopian and apocalyptic, and still are. Keep the people afraid. We are oppressed, said the wealthy ruling class. Hate became a useful weapon for the empire. They could police thought and speech to aim their weapon at anyone who disagreed with them, defied their rules, and thought for themselves. Two Minutes of Hate Although they will deny it and wish for it not to be true, what we all built back when Obama won was like 1984. We built an “inside” that kept everyone else on the “outside.” If you wanted to be on the “inside,” you had to follow our strict rules; otherwise, you were out.In 1984, Big Brother uses Two Minutes of Hate to keep the people consumed by an emotion that prevents them from ever thinking for themselves. Who would want to be hated like that?And yet, that described exactly what it was like to watch everyone I knew every single day on social media. It spilled over into real life because the media drove it — from morning news on NPR and the networks, through the day with social media feedback loops, to cable news, and late-night comedy. It was Two Minutes of Hate all day, every day.I didn’t want to be part of it, and I had to know what was true and what wasn’t. In 1984, we know Big Brother is lying about Goldstein, if Goldstein even existed. The version of Trump we thought existed was the same kind of useful illusion. What was the way out of this, I wondered. I’d already felt the wrath of my friends online for asking questions or breaking our strict code of thought and speech. They hated me, too. So I decided to try to reprogram my brain by cutting off all information coming from the media and social media.It wasn’t easy. I filled up my head with only news from the Right. I wanted to know who they really were. I had to know if any of it was true. What I eventually found out was that no, it wasn’t true. Every screeching accusation is a choice to condemn someone on flimsy evidence without giving them the benefit of the doubt. How can we live like this, I thought. We must be able to tolerate one another. But how? The first thing I needed to do was remember what words really meant. NewspeakNewspeak is necessary in 1984 for the same reason it’s necessary on the Left. Like masks, it identifies who is who in a civilization migrating online, where words are sometimes all we have to decide who is who.Our manipulation of words like 'love' and 'hate' meant that they became elastic over time. We used them for our own purposes to drive our agenda. Break the rules of language, no matter how crazy and ridiculous they become, and you are HATE. The worst offender of Newspeak is undoubtedly “Gender Affirming Care.” It’s a word game for them. You can’t oppose it without opposing the “affirmation” of their gender. It is demanded and mandated. Which is how we get videos like this.Children are conditioned to obey these strict rules because waiting on the other side for them is Two Minutes of Hate, or a lifetime of it.Obey our rules, or else it’s all done with rainbows and unicorns and a smile. Now look at how Charlie Kirk approached this difficult subject, with compassion and grace, but also by edging ever so closely to the truth. Is it any wonder they had to silence him by any means necessary? Child-like words are given for extreme procedures that they are in no way ready for. Top surgery is, in reality, a double mastectomy on a pre-teen or teenage girl who can’t consent. Bottom surgery is either chemical or surgical castration, or mutilating your otherwise healthy organs to fake male body parts. The words became ways to define this bizarre new fundamentalism that has overtaken so many young people, and why so many of them are fleeing for freer, saner pastures. Did you know there was a word called Adultism? It means, “behaviors and attitudes based on the assumption that adults are better than young people, and entitled to act upon young people without their agreement. This mistreatment is reinforced by social institutions, laws, customs, and attitudes.” Heterosexism, cisgender — so many words. All it means is that you cannot question any of it and must follow these words to decide the meaning of things, rather than what you know in your mind and heart to be true; it’s 2+5=5.Trump’s biggest crime was that he stripped away gentle language and spoke the plain truth. None of their weapons of war — the Two Minutes of Hate — worked on him. We forgot the lesson from our childhood about the power of words. They are just words. They are not bullets whizzing through the air from rooftops. They are not shooting a CEO on the streets of New York. They are not setting fire to Teslas.<...
Summary
The Only Thing Charlie Kirk and George Floyd Shared Was a Birthday
Oct 500:45:11Summary readyGeorge Floyd was born on October 14th, 1973. Charlie Kirk was born thirty years later, on October 14th, 1993. That is an odd coincidence, a cosmic joke upon us: we have two paths forward for America. How we honor these men in death will decide our country’s fate. We all remember what happened on Memorial Day weekend of 2020. We all saw the video. It was horrific to watch a man die while begging to be freed and calling out for his mother. The video showed an unconcerned Derek Chauvin calmly placing his knee on the suspect to subdue him. Then we saw the life drained from George Floyd.Overnight, he was transformed from a career criminal trying to pass a $20 counterfeit bill to score drugs into a martyr for the systemic racism of America’s police, and a “racist” America that elected Donald Trump.Millions poured into the streets, breaking lockdowns. Defund the police, they chanted. A photo circulated online of a fake Derek Chauvin with a “Make America White Again” hat. If you worried about the riots, the looting, and the violence, or sympathized with anyone who was brutalized that Summer, like Sue and her 100-year-old mattress store, you too were a “racist.”When I showed the video of Sue, my friends shouted, “How can you care more about property than people?” As buildings burned, as chaos reigned, whatever mass hysteria had taken hold four years earlier, when Donald Trump won, had now reached its pinnacle. It felt like war. But against what? Police brutality, White America, Donald Trump?In reality, it was a way to reclaim not just the White House, but what Mark Halperin calls “cultural hegemony,” where they get to decide what we can and can’t say and think. They decide what books and movies are “racist” or phobic of one kind or another. After that Summer, there would be no debate about any of it. That America was “systemically racist” was the default. Anything you said could convict you in the court of public opinion as a “racist.” All it took was one accusation against you.A massive industry of “antiracism” ballooned as wealthy whites poured millions into their desperately sought-after absolution. It was laughable and grotesque, but it set the tone for what American society would become in the future. There was a disease in America that needed to be eradicated — the disease of “whiteness.” This was and still is being taught in public schools and universities. It’s so bad that young people see transitioning or becoming non-binary as a way of being accepted. Now you start to see why Charlie Kirk was and is such a problem for them. He challenged those ideas. He challenged the mandated doctrine. He criticized Affirmative Action and DEI, not to mention trans rights and sex outside of marriage, and that abortion is murder. All of that went straight to the heart of the empire.But let’s not get it twisted. The reaction to George Floyd’s death was to transform America into a fascist-like Woketopia with nearly every major institution on board and handed more power to those at the top, who could destroy anyone for breaking the strict rules.That has meant the Left is free to dehumanize the Right in any way they want, as long as they tag their target with the mortal sin of “racism,” which they have attempted to do to Charlie to distort his message and silence his voice.In those days and weeks after Floyd’s death, no one on the Right celebrated. Trump did not do what Barack Obama did: make a public statement of condolences before launching into an attack.Trump never smeared George Floyd in death, though he did condemn the protests. The high-minded media ignored the violence almost completely in 2020, and no one would dare write an investigative piece on the life of George Floyd or look at the case critically. When Bari Weiss and James Bennett were chased out of the New York Times, it was the Left eating its own for daring to challenge the mob. Firing Donald McNeil or David Shor did not happen because they questioned the doctrine. It was because they were accused of being “racists.” That is very different from people being fired for dancing on Charlie Kirk’s grave.To pretend, in any way, that the Right has the power to re-order society, to mandate thought and speech, to implement strict doctrine in every institution, corporation, business, and social media platform is to either have amnesia about the last ten years or to willfully lie.That isn’t exactly the sentiment of Thomas Chatterton Williams in this Atlantic story, The Other Martyr - MAGA has found its George Floyd. The title is slightly misleading, but since it’s behind the paywall, I don’t have much to work with. He writes:For many on the left, Floyd’s asphyxiation turned a flawed and desperate man into a Christ figure, someone who bore the weight of the world’s failings and, in so doing, cleared a path to fix them. In the feverish weeks since Charlie Kirk’s assassination, the MAGA right is undergoing its own religious ferment, animated by a new martyr. Just as the left used Floyd’s death to justify and hasten all manner of political ends, the right is invoking Kirk’s name to advance illiberal aims and silence opponents. In death, Kirk has become a cudgel.Even if Trump has gone so far as to condemn Jimmy Kimmel and threaten to silence speech in Charlie’s name, there is no comparing that to how our society was transformed in the wake of Floyd’s death.These are not now, nor have they ever been, two equal sides. The Left is feeling a fraction of what all Americans have been forced to endure for ten long years. Jimmy Kimmel was taken off the air for five seconds. The Trump admin wants to know why PBS and NPR were so one-sided for so long and why the public airwaves only support one side. But even asking that question is fascist. That’s how much power the Left has.We see them all rising up to sign letters by the thousands, with Jane Fonda daring to pretend to care about free speech on “both sides” to mock our leaders. Yet she and all of the high-status elites in the aristocracy said not one word as cancel culture purged hundreds for thought crimes for years.I lost much of my income in 2024 for mocking “White dudes for Harris,” and Gina Carano was fired from Disney for a tweet. Tucker Carlson was thrown off the air after Chuck Schumer threatened Rupert Murdoch from the Senate floor. Every time, the Left cheered. Now they want to pretend like they care about free speech?The truth is that Charlie threatened them because he did what they could never do. He offered to discuss his views with people he disagreed with. He put the ideas to the test. He spoke with respect and kindness, but his ideas were resonating, and he was changing minds one debate at a time. So of course, they can’t afford to see his star keep rising now that their empire is in collapse. That’s why all of the big names are now coming out to make a statement about Charlie when he’s not here to defend himself. No one did this in the wake of Floyd’s death, certainly not at the New York Times. Here is Ta-Nehisi Coates echoing that sentiment:But Mark Halperin, who interviewed Charlie many times and who knew him well, was not holding back in his rebuke of the lie that Charlie “spread hate.”They don’t realize that the more they try to lie about Charlie, to bury him in the past as a “racist” who “spread hate,” the more people like Halperin and others will fight to protect his good name. Here is Emily Jashinsky breaking down a NY Times investigation on Charlie Kirk’s debating style, like he’s an insect in a jar. That is how desperate they are to hold onto the cultural hegemony and to silence Charlie.Here is Megyn Kelly going to great lengths to debunk the viral lies about Charlie.Charlie said provocative things because he wanted to shake college kids out of their indoctrination stupor and have them think critically about what they had been taught to recite by rote. That’s what teachers are supposed to do. That is what art, journalism, and comedy used to do. Yet, that is what the Left sacrificed to demand obedience to the doctrine. Which Way Forward, AmericaTwo 19-year-olds. One is Violet Affleck, the victim of every awful lesson pushed upon her by her extremely progressive schools and parents who can’t stand up to her. Here she is at the United Nations making a pitch for masks in 2025. Meanwhile, another 19-year-old, Brilyn Hollyhand, is continuing the tradition of Charlie Kirk. He’s not cowering. He’s not shrinking back. He’s fired up because one man led by example. Which way forward, America? Masks? Helplessness? Celebrating victimhood or something else, another way forward, a way out, a way to success. Perhaps Charlie was a threat because he sought to rewrite the future for everyone, regardless of their skin color. Maybe his aim was to try something new because the old way wasn’t working. The old way led to George Floyd. They don’t even want to take the chance that what Charlie was saying was resonating. They’re happy he’s not here anymore. They’re happy he was silenced. They want a sick and crippled America because then they are necessary. Unfortunately for them, Charlie wasn’t like George Floyd. He wasn’t famous only in death. He stood for more than just serving as a religious symbol. If you disagreed with him, he welcomed you in. Debate him. Change his mind.He has left his legacy everywhere - YouTube, podcasts, speeches, and interviews. Surely they must realize that every time they lie about Charlie, all it takes is one search to see the truth about who he was.Here is Charlie engaging in a respectful debate about DEI and affirmative action, where people can listen, learn, and form their own opinions. The Ri...
Summary
Assassination Nation
Sep 2600:41:03Summary readyThey came out, all of them, like Lady Macbeth, crying, “Out, damn spot,” anything to distance themselves from the words of Tyler Robinson to his lover to justify the killing of Charlie Kirk. What was Charlie’s big crime? He believed in the biological reality of men and women and refused to go along with what he thought was a lie. To Tyler Robinson, that meant he was “spreading too much hate,” and it could not be “negotiated down.” He was not having a mental collapse. He was not suicidal. He was a cold-blooded assassin doing the bidding of fanatics whose fury had brought them to this deadly moment. And so Charlie had to die because that’s what happens to “fascists.” All of us who have been booted out of utopia for one reason or another know what it feels like to have our characters assassinated by people who think their moral superiority means they have the right to be Judge, Jury, and now, Executioner of those who refuse to comply and conform.One wrong word and you’re a “racist,” even trying to stand up for someone being called a racist, like Megyn Kelly or Chris Harrison did, means they’ll assassinate your character anyway, with no due process and no presumption of innocence. It was in 2020 that I could not take it anymore, this ugly, unending, bottomless dehumanizing of Trump and his supporters. Maybe it was my over-abundance of empathy, maybe it was that I’d been attacked, my character assassinated. Or maybe it was lockdowns, my dear friend and ex-boyfriend overdosing on heroin from loneliness, and my daughter moving across the country. Whatever it was, I felt the cold hand of evil every time I logged on, and I watched them unleash hell on one man, his family, his staff, and his supporters.Why are they doing this? I demanded of them. They must know what I know that dehumanizing whole groups of people is never the right side of history, no matter what. But once they cast Trump supporters as “racist white people,” “fascists,” and “Nazis,” there were no limits on what they could say or do. But someone had to be lying. Why would millions of people have voted for Trump, including my brother, if he were as bad as the media said he was? And it turns out it wasn’t just the media doing the lying. It was the Democrats, too, and all of those good soldiers on social media going along with their lies.I used to be one of them. I went along with the lies, too, because I thought we were fighting to defeat an existential threat. But by the end of it, all I could see was that we’d built an empire of lies, just like Bernie Madoff did, and that our empire would collapse just like his once people started to uncover the truth. It was always going to end up here, because that’s how dehumanization campaigns always end. Lynchings in the Deep South, concentration camps in Nazi Germany, and the hangings in Salem. Or the Manson murders in 1969, the bombing of the Capitol in the 1970s. And now, attacks on ICE officers.Here is Mark Halperin covering for Megyn Kelly.The violence has continued because it’s barely been reported accurately. They only publicize killings if they fit the already prescribed narrative, like if a “far right” white man opened fire. When it’s on their side, they never address ideology. They say nothing when the hive mind indulges in a Trump death fantasy for an entire weekend, or TikTok users begging for someone to “just do it” and become a hero. Or planning their celebrations for the day Trump dies — where else did they think this was going? It wasn’t just the assassination of Charlie Kirk; it was the response to the assassination. It was revealing because it showed just how delicious it all was for them. Why else would they have been celebrating and cheering? That’s the itch they want to scratch, and they’re just glad someone out there got the job done so they didn’t have to get their hands dirty.Oh, how good that feels when all you have are fantasies and words and cancel culture and shunning and screaming at, which then became spitting on and kicking and finally, shooting. Violence, that’s what all of this was invented for, right? How else do you think you could get people to fight and kill in war? They came out on social media like flesh-eating zombies from a 1950s horror movie. We won’t mourn a “racist” or a “fascist,” they insisted. It seemed to track alongside the decency of those whose humanity was still intact, and who knew that we don’t shoot people because they disagree with us. The more we all felt for Charlie and his family, the uglier their social media posts became. They could not absorb what just happened to America. So it had to be Charlie’s fault, Out Damn Spot:Amanda Seyfried then backed away and gaslighted like they always do, deflecting blame, bringing up other acts of violence to lessen what just happened to America. This was it, the moment people like her and the Democrats, along with their influencers, could have stood up, led by example, and said ENOUGH. Hollywood, the Left, and the Democrats have looked uglier. Try as they might to reclaim their moral superiority, their reaction to Charlie’s death said it all. Even if many of them did not go along with it, the fact that they haven’t stood up against it makes them culpable for that and everything that’s coming next. Charlie did not incite violence. He did not spread “hate.” He stated his opinions while listening to the opinions of others. It is his opinions they don’t like because they are strictly verboten inside utopia. You must believe what they believe, speak like they do, or else. They have never figured out the ugly truth, that they are the fascists, as this TikTok user explains so perfectly:Charlie’s death was a test, one they failed. They spent all of their decency cred turning Jimmy Kimmel into a martyr for free speech as the news was breaking that the Biden administration forced YouTube to censor and demonitize those who would not use preferred pronouns or dared to doubt the results of the 2020 election. Kimmel cried, so what? Kimmel got high ratings, so what? Nothing could clean them of the stench. Out, damn spot. Another TikTok user:After they destroyed and ripped up their version of Charlie, the high wore off. Hungry for more, they went after his wife, Erika. These tweets receive hundreds of thousands of likes, which is why they often appear at the top of everyone’s feed. Each time, you are given a choice: flesh-eating zombie or decency. Now, she was a woman who was acting, who didn’t shed a single tear. They dug into her past and found a bikini pic from her days as Ms. Arizona and somehow connected her to Trump. Nothing could clean them of the stench of Charlie’s blood, no matter how hard they tried to rewrite the narrative that they were the good guys fighting actual Nazis. They have to reckon with the truth about who Charlie really was and then ask themselves whether these tweets, this decade-long dehumanization, mean they had nothing to do with it, and even now, must continue to pummel Charlie’s reputation when he’s not even here to defend himself. The legacy media knew ten years ago that violence was rising on the Left in response to Trump, as a direct result of the messages they were sending. They were not telling us the truth. Not then, not now.Some of them want pats on the back for finally noticing and writing stories about what people on the Right have been talking about for years.Matt Walsh imagines what would have happened if all of this had gone the other way. The Democrats need a revival of decencyWhat if Obama or Hillary or any of them had the courage and, yes, the decency, to say enough? ENOUGH. It’s time to put our weapons down because a man was just shot in the neck for no other reason except that he didn’t agree with the Left. What if they could say that? What if they could have their own revival, a revival of decency?What if that was the message Jimmy Kimmel gave? What if the Democrats made speeches in Congress, and that was the message? What if they apologized to all of us for lying about half the country for ten years? What if they said it was wrong to call other people “Nazis” and “Fascists”? The best they can muster, because even they know how bad this looks, deep down they know, is to “both sides” it, as Hillary does here:Rather than focus on themselves and what they’ve done, they have had Trump to use as their dumping ground. They are addicted to the daily ritual. That’s the only purpose Jimmy Kimmel serves now, and John Oliver, Stephen Colbert, and the legacy media and Hollywood. But you have to ask, when is it enough?Ten years of nothing but blaming Trump, of hating and bullying people who might not agree with their increasingly cult-like doctrine, with no one in the Democratic Party to call them out or tell them to stand down. No one in the media either. If no one ever tells them that it’s wrong, why would they stop?They have lost everything. Their numbers are in the toilet because Americans can’t stand them anymore. The death of Charlie Kirk and their reaction to it have only made it worse. It has been a clarifying moment for many of us who might have been holding out hope that something this horrific might finally pierce the mass delusion that has taken us to this very dark place. The problem with what we built, our utopia oh so long ago at the dawn of social media, the iPhone, and our god and king, Barack Obama, was explained best by Milan Kundera in his book Laughter and Forgetting:Having an insulated, isolated utopia where the rest of America is locked out allows everyone to play the part they want. E. Jean Carroll gets to pretend she was defamed and walk away with almost a hundred million. Jimmy...
Summary
It Is AOC Who is "Uneducated" and "Ignorant" About Charlie Kirk
Sep 2100:59:28Summary readyIf Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez plans to run for president in 2028, she’s just made the biggest mistake of her political career. That speech of hers will be written in ink, and it will haunt her for years to come. Why? Because she didn’t know the first thing about Charlie Kirk, and everyone who watched her give that speech knows she’s either ignorant or lying. We know that on the Left, they do not believe in any kind of presumption of innocence when it comes to words. Words are harm. Words are violence. Most of all, words define who you are. They found some words Charlie Kirk may have said one time, but they strip them of context and refuse to confront the whole human being. But that’s what they do, right? That’s why so many of us have fled. AOC’s attempt at a posthumous cancellation of Kirk made her look ridiculous. I don’t know if she realizes it yet, but she will one day. George Floyd’s death was the very thing the Left feared showing up in real life. We know what came after. But with Charlie Kirk’s assassination by a guy who didn’t like his words, it was on an entirely different level.George Floyd, like Melissa Hortman, served as a symbol of the Left’s view of a country full of bad people, “racists” and “misogynists.” Who they really were didn’t matter. Charlie Kirk was everywhere. We saw him speaking to us on YouTube, on TikTok, on X, on podcasts. He was on Bill Maher. He was on South Park. He was leading a massive movement of young people who were excited about changing the world. The algorithms didn’t know he died. Our brains and our hearts somehow had to process someone who was so close and yet no longer with us. I’m writing a longer piece about the Democratic Party and its failure to meet the moment, but in honor of the memorial for Charlie Kirk on Sunday, I thought I would put together a video montage of clips and various voices to give Ms. Ocasio-Cortez a better idea of who Charlie Kirk really was. The truth is that they’re all bitter and jealous of what Charlie Kirk was doing. No Democrat ever would or could. They don’t debate. They shut you down. They shut you out. They shut you up. I’ve never talked to a Democrat who ever wanted to listen. They start to glitch out if you try. They’ll hang up, or they’ll start hurling insults, or they’ll walk away. The idea that any of them could do what Charlie did time and time again, offering up respectful but spirited debate, is laughable. He was the voice for so many who could not articulate arguments as well as he could and who had the courage to touch untouchable topics. There is not a single Democrat who can do that. They only know how to tell you what to think.The legacy media and the Left will attempt to write Charlie’s story, and they’ll write it badly. They’ll scare people by warning of rising “Christian Nationalism.” They’ll cherry-pick things he’s said because why wouldn’t they? That’s why it’s important for those who know him to counter that argument any time they can.Let this be the beginning of making sure they don’t lie about him out of a lack of “education” or “ignorance.” I hope you enjoy the video. 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
It's Too Late to Cry "Cancel Culture"
Sep 1500:34:24Summary readyIt’s funny that they all suddenly care about censorship, free speech, and cancel culture, isn’t it? And the chilling effects that had on open expression? Have they looked at Hollywood lately? Ever hear of a culture of silence and a climate of fear that has all but gutted a once-thriving industry? Do they remember why Elon Musk had to buy Twitter?How many people did we watch unpersoned, disappeared, and banished from utopia? How many lives have been ruined just for daring to speak the truth about the differences between biological men and women? Remember All Lives Matter? Remember Blue Lives Matter? Remember the MAGA hat and all of the ways people were assaulted, screamed at, spit on, and shunned just for wearing them?Do the hundreds of names in the database for Cancel Culture register at all? Remember the Harper’s Letter and how so many were canceled just for signing it? Now, we’re all supposed to feel bad because those who chose to dance on Charlie Kirk’s grave are now losing their jobs? Well, my friends, turnabout is fair play. What drama queens. They get fired, and it’s the end of the world? They lost their jobs, try losing everything. Your family, your marriage, your friends, your status. The Right doesn’t have that kind of power. And besides, no one is banning them from social media for posting things like this:I know I’m supposed to care and play the game of saying that firing people is wrong. Maybe it’s wrong, but honestly, I don’t care. If we just move on and pretend all of this is on par with using the wrong pronoun or questioning masks or the results of an election, then how can we ever absorb something as serious as someone being shot and having his throat exploded in front of his wife, his kids, and a rally full of students? Here is someone who was there and witnessed it. How can we just move past this with all the usual memes and mocking, sneering posts?Look at these awful women mocking Erika Kirk. If they get fired for this, I have not an ounce left in me that cares even a little bit. Maybe that makes me a hypocrite and a bad person, but I would not want these soulless monsters working for me.I wouldn’t want a guy like this working for me either, partly because he is awash in mass hysteria and trapped inside a delusion of his own making, and partly because he seems to think it’s necessary to keep killing people he thinks are “fascists”:Cancel culture was always about power. It was wrong when it began after Trump’s win in 2016. It existed before that, mostly as a joke on Black Twitter, and in the murky, icky depths of Tumblr circa 2013. But it became frightening and chilling when institutions got involved. And when the government got involved, it was authoritarianism. Julie Kelly has a story on the crackdown after January 6th that should make anyone’s head spin about what they did to American citizens, most of whom were practicing their First Amendment rights when they were treated like terrorists. Kamala Harris herself compared that day with 9/11 and Pearl Harbor, as if to justify everything that was about to happen to them (aka internment camps and Gitmo), from the show trials to the absurd charges thrown at many of them, policing their thought and speech, convicting them in the Court of Public Opinion with “spectral” evidence. They were accused and convicted “racists.”I have stood up to cancel culture for the last five years, even longer. I stood up for those wrongly accused, whose lives were ruined over the same things, either imagined crimes of their past, or one wrong word spoken, or a joke made on Twitter, like Gina Carano, who was fired for joking about COVID and pronouns.Why is it always on MAGA to take the high road? Imagine if a prominent left-leaning influencer of Charlie Kirk’s stature (they don’t have one, but let’s say they did) was assassinated at a rally. Millions would pour into the streets all over the world. MAGA can’t. Why? Because they’d be once again demonized as dangerous extremists. Their right to protest was eliminated after January 6th.Imagine if, in 2015, the Right had done this to Democrats:Yes, January 6th was bad, but so were the protests when Trump was inaugurated. Yet, it’s always one group that is punished and one group that is either ignored or celebrated.Sure, you get the fake Patriot Front out in force in an attempt to continue the lie that Charlie Kirk was a “fascist,” but the Right doesn’t riot and rally and protest like the Left. They can’t, but also, contrary to popular belief, it’s not who they are.For the record, the side that shoots the guy in the neck because they don’t like his opinions is the fascist side. Supporting those celebrating his death is to support fascism or extremism. Do I think Stephen King’s books should have been removed? No. Do I understand why MAGA would want to use its power to pay them back? Absolutely. When the Left rampaged through the cities all through the Summer of 2020, leaving violence and mayhem in their wake, the media barely covered it. No one was punished for it. In fact, all were rewarded. Anyone who criticized the protests even a little bit was canceled for it. I remember. I was there. When January 6th unfolded, there was violence, just as there had been all Summer. Yet, only one side was demonized for it. All the American people saw for months, years after, was the January 6th footage on a loop. Even now, they bring it up as though the Summer never even happened.After Biden took power, he weaponized the DOJ to go after Trump, indicting him four times after the Democrats impeached him twice. They tried to throw him off the ballot in several states. He defeated them all and won again, impossibly, in November. When Trump’s DOJ went after John Bolton, the Left clutched pearls — how could he be using lawfare against his opponents!? When does the Left take any accountability for the bed they made? Ever?In theory, I don’t agree with Cancel Culture. But I guess I don’t care that much now, not after everything I’ve seen them do, not just what they did to me, but what they’ve done to MAGA for the past ten years, or anyone who broke their rules. They had all of the power, and they abused that power. This is their precedent. They’ve never apologized to those who have been canceled, like me, Graham Linehan, JK Rowling, and Joseph Massey, and hundreds of others, for making a joke or having an opinion. So cry me a river.But sure, if they all step forward and say, “We’re so very sorry we canceled all of you. You are now officially uncanceled,” then maybe MAGA should think about feeling bad about it. But until then, they're having to lie in the bed they made — tastes like victory.And besides, on the Left, they fail upwards. If anything, they’ll be celebrated for getting fired. Look at Stephen Colbert, who has now won an Emmy and will be getting a standing ovation tonight at the ceremony and a pat on the back for condemning political assassinations. Just not character assassinations. He’d never condemn those. He wouldn’t have a career. As they gather at the Emmys tonight to hand each other gold statues none of them really deserve, they will all pretend for one more night that they’re the good guys as a heartbroken MAGA gathers at the Kennedy Center to honor Charlie Kirk, something they will see as a desecration. They probably think it will be a Nazi rally. Instead, they might be surprised to find them honoring Charlie the best way they know how, by praying. They won’t be able to avoid thinking about Charlie Kirk at the Emmys. They’ll pretend to care about Cancel Culture because the worm has finally turned. But his death, that brutal public execution, has embedded itself in our culture, yes, even on the Left. Sooner or later, they will have to confront the truth about who Charlie Kirk really was. Because, even in the afterlife, he still knows how to encourage people to question their core beliefs with amazing grace. // 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
The Left Red-Pills America...
Sep 1200:29:36Summary readyThe death of Charlie Kirk and the reaction to it have shaken millions of Americans, at least those who have managed to hold on to their humanity in the past ten years. Even if the prominent Democrats in the party tried to project a uniform message of decency, to condemn the violence and offer condolences to the family, it was increasingly evident that they were no longer in control of their own party. Not even President Barack Obama himself could set the tone for these people, so consumed with hatred are they. Maybe they thought selling fear for ten years and calling Trump and his supporters an existential threat was a good idea because it would motivate their voters to the polls. Instead, they’ve created a Frankenstein monster that is now roaming the quiet countryside and scaring the crap out of normal Americans.They want all of us in this country to join them, to agree that Charlie Kirk got what he deserved. He supports gun rights, after all. That alone meant they would shed no tears for him, his wife, or his kids. That was the least of it. On TikTok, Blue Sky, and X, they went on and on, plastering the social media apps with negative stories about Kirk to erase any legacy the Right might try to build in his name.And maybe they thought the rest of America would agree that they should close off their hearts and separate themselves from their empathy to serve the greater political cause that has taken the place of just about everything else in their lives. But they miscalculated how normal people view violent death, especially political assassinations.On TikTok, many users were expressing their anger at the Left, and some of them even said this was it; they were no longer a part of the Democratic Party. Here is a video:And Jennifer Sey just registered as a Republican from “unaffiliated.”And Colin Wright redrew his famous chart:This is the last thing the Democrats needed. All they have left is Zohran Mamdani and Gavin Newsom’s meme factory of would-be nepo babies of the Lincoln Project. They have no vision, no hope, no policies, no fixes, no solutions - nothing. All they have is this. Their hatred of anyone who doesn’t conform and comply. Their approval rating has never been lower. Registrations are down by the millions. They’re losing the support of Gen-Z. They have no plan to bring voters in except to draw more militant fanatics, and now, they’ve once again exposed how lacking in any common decency they have become. Congratulations, Democrats, oops, you did it again.From the New York Post:They’re an army of Lord of Flies whose parents coddled them and raised them to believe all of their finger paintings were masterpieces, that their traumas defined them, and were “gentle-parented,” and when that didn’t work, were drugged into perfection. They don’t seem to understand that no one deserves to die just for having a different opinion.When one person’s death means nothing to you and all you do is make a video where you calmly recite the reasons you don’t care and why no one else should care? What is left of you?They sound like modern versions of the Stepford Wives who say exactly what they’re supposed to say, repeating it almost word for word like robots:There is no one to pull them back from the brink. They collect so many likes that it messes with their heads. Their followers demand more, give us more. They’re punished if they dissent, if they disagree, if they do any critical thinking whatsoever. Anyone who uses TikTok and any social media app knows that it’s dominated by the Left. We built it, after all, oh so long ago. Even the Democrats themselves are under the control of the fanatics in their party, which is why they all felt emboldened to boo Charlie Kirk’s name when they called for a moment of silence. Even if they didn’t agree with it, why would they want to show the public just how petty they are?Not that we needed this tragic event to expose that ugly truth. It’s been obvious for some time that the Left has been hijacked by the modern equivalent of the Manson Family. Joe Biden was the George Spahn-like figure who presented the mask of normalcy for what was most definitely not normal.All they had to do was the bare minimum, either stay silent or offer condolences and some generic comment on free speech and how political violence is never okay. But they couldn’t even do that. Why? Because there is nothing left of them. All they have is this pathological need to control everyone and everything, whether it’s destroying the careers of convicted thought criminals or celebrating their assassinations. All they know is they wanted them gone. In all of their lies about Charlie Kirk, their endless posts with hundreds of thousands of likes that prop up their own manufactured goodness as if to say, See, we still have the moral high ground, they came off somehow looking worse than they ever have. Charlie Kirk was a nice guy. They’re celebrating his death because they didn’t know that. They didn’t know that because no one would tell them. Not their own social media feeds, not the legacy media. And when Ezra Klein tried to tell them with a New York Times op-ed, they began attacking him too, because of course they did. The dehumanization is a feature, not a bug. Here is Benny Johnson and Chris Cuomo:The Left so badly wants this to be a “both sides” issue, but it isn’t. The Right mourned the death of Congresswoman Melissa Hortman. They did not blanket X or Blue Sky or any other social media site, smearing her. They would not have posted something like this on the Right:But until the people with the real power on the Left condemn them, nothing will change. They can make any false reality they want. They can tell themselves any lies they want. But what we’ve seen now in how they’ve responded to something that would shake any normal person out of their partisan stupor could cost them not just for the midterms but for 2028 and beyond.They think they have the narrative well in hand because the media is so supportive of everything they do. But every once in a while, they go too far, and they end up red-pilling Americans who shrink back in horror at who and what they’ve become and want no part of it.I am not saying “The Left” killed Charlie Kirk. Maybe someone on the Left did. Maybe they didn’t. It doesn’t really matter because they’ve shown their true colors in their perilous moment in our history. It’s like that scene in The Dead Zone when Martin Sheen picks up the baby to protect himself. There is no unseeing that.They might think the silencing of Charlie Kirk will cripple the MAGA movement and everything he’s done to build Turning Point USA and mobilize the young. But because of his death, MAGA will be more energized, not less, more motivated, not less, more determined than ever to save America from this madness. And they must because they are our only hope.Charlie Kirk has left a legacy, whether they realize it or not. It isn’t just how psychotic they’ve become, and how so many of us have fled. But it’s all of those young people he inspired who adored him. They will remember the assassination of Charlie Kirk. It will shape their youth the way the killing of Martin Luther King, Jr., RFK, and JFK shaped generations before. They will know that he was killed to silence him, and they will remember how the Left reacted to his death. And they will grow up knowing that it was wrong.Most of all, they will know that he built a movement that would ultimately defeat the most powerful political machine in American history. And if he can do it, so can they./// 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
The Girl on the Train
Sep 900:26:14Summary readyAfter a shift at Zepeddie's Pizzeria in Charlotte, North Carolina, Iryna Zarutska boarded the train and quickly made a decision where to sit. Did she think about her safety? Did she fear sitting in front of a Black man with dreadlocks and a face twisted into worried knots? Or did she find a seat far away from him, just on a hunch?The truth is that Iryna had no real choice. If she avoided the seat in front of the Black man, she might look like a racist. She had no reason to fear him, after all, because she was sympathetic to the plight of racism in America and even had the words “Black Lives Matter” and “I can’t breathe” scrawled on a chalkboard in her room. She was learning to speak English, and what better way than to get to know the villains and the heroes in America in 2025? She was just 23, having arrived in the US at the age of 20, with a degree in art and restoration from Synergy College in Kyiv. She joined a settlement of other Ukrainian refugees in Charlotte. She knew enough to tuck her hair into her cap, keep her glasses on, and not look like the blonde beauty that has now blanketed all social media. If you look like that, no one will leave you alone. But a little fear would have done Iryna good, as it would do any young woman riding the train at night. Fear is her only protection. The problem is, when it comes to Black men, white women are shamed out of that fear. They don’t want to appear like racists or Karens. They won’t grab their purse in an elevator or avoid sitting too close to a Black man. They don’t want to buy into the stereotype that has white women fearing Black men for centuries.As she boarded the train that night heading home, she could not have known that the man she sat in front of had thirteen previous arrests and was diagnosed with schizophrenia. She wrapped her arms around her body and seemed to display a sense of foreboding. She looked afraid of something or someone, just not of the guy sitting behind her.With her earbuds canceling out all noise, she might not have heard the man take out his knife. Before she knew it, he was stabbing her neck, killing her. Did the other passengers scream? Did anyone try to do anything to alert her to the danger? No. They were too afraid. When her murderer finished, he paced around the train as the passengers huddled in fear, with blood dripping all around him, her blood. She escaped the war in Ukraine only to be murdered by a country also at war, at war with the truth. The truth about crime, about mental health, about Defund the Police, about bad governance.There was a time when this would have been a major news story. Now, after 2020, this story would have to be memory-holed, like every other story where a Black man is the perp. The only stories that go viral now or become major news stories are those that fit the narrative - it’s white men, incels, “white supremacists,” and MAGA you have to fear. So, how would Iryna have known to even be afraid or cautious that she might want to find a seat far from everyone on the train? Maybe she wouldn’t wear her headphones. Maybe she would look around at everyone, even the guy sitting behind her. But she didn’t. Here are Megyn Kelly, Rich Lowry, and Charles C. W. Cooke.Stories like these are reported on local news, but they never capture the attention of the major networks or legacy media, like this story of a woman in Chicago who was beaten to a pulp by a repeat offender. Reporting on white women as victims might devalue their brand. It might generate outrage and an uproar that they are contributing to racism and discrimination. But what about Iryna and other young women just like her? Will we send them out into the world without warning that violence can come at any time, no matter the skin color?And why is everyone okay with the double standard? The silence by the media on deaths or killings that don’t involve a white man? How do they get away with lying to their viewers and their readers? Has the New York Times even covered this story? If they do, it will likely be only to call out “MAGA” for turning it into a story about race.“Don’t be a Good White Liberal” Those were the words I told my daughter many years ago when she went off to college. “Always protect yourself, no matter who it is. Don’t let white guilt prevent you from being cautious.” I had to tell her that. I had to drill it into her head. It would be our secret. She would never have to tell anyone, but she would know. What prompted me to tell her that was the story of Lily Burk from 2009. She was the daughter of a progressive Liberal who helped her mother feed the homeless in Los Angeles. She attended one of the expensive, fancy private schools I could never have afforded for my daughter. One day, Burk wanted to practice driving, so her mother sent her out to run some errands. She happened to see one of the homeless people she fed for charity. She knew him. He knew her. He pressured her to drive him to an ATM and get him some money. Her card didn’t work. So he bashed her head against the dashboard and murdered her.That was long before Black Lives Matter, before Defund the Police, before cashless bail. Even then, it wasn’t exactly easy to talk about a crime like this, much less warn our daughters as they headed off to college. But that story haunted me. Even now, I can’t imagine what it must have been like for her mother to wonder, How could I have let her take my car? How could I have raised her to be so trusting? Why didn’t I tell her to be cautious even around homeless Black men? I knew I had to get the message across to my daughter, Don’t be a Good White Liberal at the cost of your own safety. You’d think I would have followed my own advice. But white guilt runs deep. That’s why in 2023, I fell for a scam. I thought it was a call from my bank. I could tell the caller was Black, so I was as accommodating and trusting as I could be, not wanting to seem like a Karen. He told me that someone had stolen my bank card, and he listed my purchases. Somehow, he had my account information. Then he said, “Did you wire $4,000 to someone?” And in a panic, I said NO! He said he’d stop the payment, but I had to confirm that it was me. That was my mistake. If I hadn’t been trying not to be a racist, I might have doubted him or asked him if I could call him back, but I was too worried about his feelings. Once he got my confirmation, he was able to disappear with $5,000 from my bank account, all the money I had. I’ve never told that story because I am ashamed of how stupid I was, how easily manipulated I was, and that white guilt. It turned out to be a harbinger of things to come. The next year, I was canceled by Hollywood and called a “racist,” which would wipe out my income. Oh, the irony.The story here isn’t to fear Black men or that Black men are more dangerous. It’s that white guilt often means ignoring the gut instinct for self-protection. The false narrative pushed out by Hollywood, the legacy media, and the Democrats - that only white men are bad or violent will ultimately make all women unsafe, and hiding the truth to fit the narrative will get more women like Iryna killed.Every night I go to sleep, I worry about my daughter. I want Trump to send the National Guard into Cleveland. I want her to be protected while living in such close proximity to a high-crime city. But if she can’t be protected and the streets can’t be safe, then let her remember to protect herself, to be aware of who and what is around her at all times. I made her watch the video. I don’t want her to be another girl on the train, failed by weak leaders and undone by white guilt. Iryna deserved better. She deserved to fulfill her life as an artist. To maybe get married, maybe travel back to Ukraine when the war is over. But most of all, she deserved to be safe, to be left alone, to make it to her stop just so she could get off the train and find her way back home safe and sound.The GoFundMe for Iryna has now raised $112,616. // 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
Podcast: Mamdani, Obama's Legacy, and Where This Fourth Turning is Going
Sep 701:18:47Summary readyIn anticipation of a Fourth Turning series for paid subscribers, my friend Andy just posted our conversation about the Fourth Turning and various other topics. His youtube is The Generation Report and his Substack is Fourth Turning Chronicles. Hope you enjoy! 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