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
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The Real Handmaids of the Woke Left
Jun 10, 202500:41:07Summary ready“All you have to do, I tell myself, is keep your mouth shut and look stupid. It shouldn't be that hard.” - Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale.Last month, Margaret Hoover lobbed Hillary Clinton with sickeningly sweet softball questions for a lengthy interview about her new book. What book was it? Who knows, and who cares? Whatever it is, almost nothing in it will be the truth.When asked what advice she would give to the first woman president, Hillary paused — a pregnant pause that seemed to say, “Well, why can’t it still be me?” as the audience laughed. Then, she said, “Don’t be a Handmaiden for the patriarchy,” like all the women on the Right.But she’s wrong. Republican women aren’t the Handmaids. On the contrary, they’ve put the so-called “feminists” to shame. They aren’t afraid of the fanatics on the Left who tried to force all of us into compliance. They have spoken out without mincing words about scientific and biological reality.Most importantly, they have been the only women in government willing to stare down the cult that seeks to erase women. Not a single Democrat has that kind of courage, male or female. But it’s those who call themselves “feminists” who have been exposed as cowards and frauds. They are the real Handmaids.I didn’t use to think so. I thought Hillary Clinton fought for the rights of women and girls. That’s how she sold herself, anyway, and liberal women like me bought the lie. I even downloaded an audio copy of The Handmaid’s Tale, thinking it would resonate with me as part of the “resistance.”But as the story unfolded, a chill went down my spine. It didn’t remind me of the Right. It reminded me of the Left, everything that had happened to us after Trump won the first time, and how quickly mass hysteria consumed us and how obedient we all became in the wake of it.As if to prove my point, I knew I could not tell my friends we were the side living the Handmaid’s Tale. As I began to pull away from my fellow comrades on the Left and directly challenge the new rules of the Woke, I thought some women who called themselves leaders would rise up and speak out. They never did.When I realized that the transgender social contagion had captured a generation of young girls and boys, and how so many of them were waking up to what happened to them at the hands of professionals, therapists, clinicians, and experts, I waited for strong female leaders to stand up for them, to protect them. They never did.When the fanatics on the Left rewrote the rules of biological reality, like there is no difference between men and women, that “trans women are women,” whether they’re competing in sports, Jeopardy, or Chess. I thought the strong female leaders who fought so hard for Title IX would speak up and fight for women and girls to compete fairly. They never did.Hillary Clinton’s silence on these fundamental rights to protect women and children has been deafening. Even though her history will be written by pandering sycophants like I used to be, who will never call her out for her silence and complicity, some of us will never forget.She and the other “feminists” leave quite a legacy. A whole generation of young women raised to sell themselves out, women like Olympic athlete Simone Biles, who exposed herself as a Handmaid on X by attacking Riley Gaines in a deeply personal way, calling her a “sore loser.”But imagine if Biles had to compete against biological men. Would she stand by and say nothing? Would she chant “trans women are women”?The real fight for women’s rights, and the rights of children, has exposed the so-called feminists like Hillary Clinton, Jane Fonda, Gloria Steinem, and every female Democrat in Congress as too weak and ineffectual ever to be real leaders.They’ve turned a blind eye to stories of girls being forced to share a dorm with a man pretending to be a woman whose visible erection gave him away. They said nothing when a sex offender infiltrated the Wi Spa in Los Angeles and exposed himself to little girls and women, with protesters outside chanting Trans Women are Women.The Democrats haven’t just gone along with it; they’ve gaslighted and shamed any Republican who dares to try to end the madness. They work hard every day to make sure young girls are told they do not have the right to speak up for their own protection, for fairness in sports, because it will ruin their lives if they do.Handmaids don’t speak out. They can’t. Handmaids do as they’re told. Handmaids live in fear. Handmaids bow to their authoritarian leader. That’s not the women on the Right, Hillary, that’s you.Whatever the feminist movement used to be, it’s been hijacked by approval-seeking narcissists who cling to abortion as the only act of empowerment they have left. They do not realize that all that does is further erode the rights of women. If babies don’t matter, then mothers don’t matter. If mothers don’t matter, civilization collapses.The first thing cults do is separate children from their mothers. It’s easy to see why. If you break that bond, they can be more easily controlled—both the women and the children.Like Hillary Clinton, Simone Biles might not know what Riley Gaines has suffered when she was trapped in a classroom and held hostage as activists surrounded her, screamed at her, and mocked her fear—all of giving a speech.Instead, Biles and the rest of the Handmaids of the Left have basked in the adoration bestowed upon them by the cult that rewards them for their obedience.But because of their “don’t ask, don’t tell” strategy of dealing with a problem they can’t solve, it’s been left up to a growing chorus of voices speaking out - loudly, boldly, and without fear.What does Hillary think that Trump, the man she called a rapist and a misogynist did what she never could, that he signed an Executive Order to protect women in sports.What does she think about his proclamation that it’s time to end the madness of “gender-affirming care?” Does it bother her that a man has done the dirty work? Who knows, no one will ever ask her that question. She exists in her own insular bubble, a padded cell that keeps the hard questions out.But the man she insists we should all fear is the one who helped rescue women and children from the clutches of fanaticism.It Takes a Village to De-Trans AmericaThe list of those who have stuck their necks out includes women and men from all backgrounds, on the Left and the Right. Megyn Kelly has become a singular force in the movement. As her media empire has grown, so has her voice. Her videos are seen by millions every day. The story of how this war was won cannot be told without her.The women of the Right that Hillary Clinton smeared deserve much credit, too, for staring down the cult and using their power in Congress to give victims a platform.Many women who still consider themselves Democrats are out there fighting, uniting with Republicans to pass legislation, like Jamie Reed, a former gender clinician who now goes state to state, ensuring bills protecting children from “gender affirming care” are passed.Those the Left shunned and exiled for speaking inconvenient truths are also out there fighting, like Jennifer Sey, who has launched a clothing company called XX-YY Athletics, which celebrates female athletes and points out the differences between the sexes.Here is their latest ad.And then there are the parents who are mad as hell and aren’t going to take it anymore.Outspoken Detransitioners like Chloe Cole and Prisha Mosley have given a face to the destructive effects of social contagion.There are even many in the gay and trans communities who understand cultists have hijacked their movement, and many of them are out there fighting too./// This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe
Summary
Original Sin and the Party of Creeps
May 25, 202500:32:28Summary readyI wasn’t sure I’d be able to finish the Jake Tapper/Alex Thompson book, Original Sin. I downloaded the audiobook, narrated by Tapper, to listen to as I drive across the country from California to Ohio to see my daughter for her birthday. Out my window, I see the same running commentary of the real America I witnessed years ago, which changed my mind about Trump and MAGA. When you see Trump’s name arising in unexpected places in nearly every state, from Arizona (“Viva Trump”) to Nebraska to Iowa to New York, you know something significant has shifted in this country.It felt like a secret cry for help among forgotten and abandoned Americans. I see it even now:I was not encouraged by the book’s first chapter, which describes a world where the Democratic Party isn’t corrupt, where they don’t hand-pick candidates and then force everyone to “Vote Blue No Matter Who,” where identity politics don’t rule the day, and where the democratic process is allowed to play out. What a load of garbage. To quote Deep Throat in All the President’s Men, “Oh, but it’s touching.” Just imagine Gavin Newsom attempting to challenge Kamala Harris. She might be the world’s worst candidate, but all points lead back to her; you have to start there, whether they had a primary or not. They knew that, which is why they skipped the foreplay and went straight to a first-ever installed candidate for president. So I didn’t think listening to an entire audiobook shaped by a false premise and awash in false media narratives would be a good use of my time. Maybe I’d listen to, I don’t know, the new Mark Twain biography.As Victor Davis Hanson points out, Jake Tapper is an unreliable narrator because there would be no Biden cover-up if the media had done its job:Had Original Sin been written by Tom Wolfe, Gore Vidal, or even Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi, it would have been the searing indictment of a deep state plot foiled by Mr. McGoo, told with bemused irony. But it is dead serious, for better or worse.But I must say, in the end, I’m glad I stuck with it. It might not be the definitive account of the rise and fall of a once-mighty empire I would have wanted, but it is a surprisingly revealing look behind the curtain all the same.Could it really be that Jeffrey Katzenberg and Steven Spielberg were brought in to “direct” Joe Biden with better light, sound, and acting coaching? Yes. Could it be that Rob Reiner and Jane Fonda broke down in hysterics at some mansion in the Hollywood Hills after the debate? Yes. If the aim was to scapegoat Joe Biden, they failed. He comes off as the most sympathetic, a victim of a massive machine of creeps that chewed him up and spit him out. Do they legitimately believe we would sympathize with some fat cat in Hollywood who threatens never to write another check unless they push Biden out? We’re supposed to care about what the donors think? Tapper seems to have emerged from the grim experience with a bit of a perspective shift. At least now, he’s able to talk about the problems the Democrats have in a way he hasn’t in the past ten years. The value of Original Sin, at least for someone like me who fled the party in disgust in 2020 after watching them use their power to take our elections away from the people and decide their outcome, isn’t so much that there are any new revelations. But it’s a book written from the inside, with access to over 200 voices anxious to be heard. That meant following the events as they unfolded in real time, and let me tell you, there is pleasure in that. I found it cathartic, not just because the Democrats had it coming, and got everything they deserved, but for the sheer joy of witnessing the most most powerful people in the world have their asses handed to them by the very democracy they claimed they wanted to protect. That George Clooney, Steven Spielberg, and Jeffrey Katzenberg were so heavily involved in the politics of the Democrats makes it all look like the Wizard of Oz, pulling back the curtain and exposing the ugly truth. Hollywood might make this into a series for HBO or Netflix, but since the co-founder and chairman of Netflix, Reed Hastings, was one of the fat cats who threatened to withhold funds unless the Democrats got rid of Biden, I’m guessing we won’t get the whole story. But if they wanted to tell it like it really happened, it would make one hell of a tale.The Story That Writes ItselfHollywood doesn’t have the guts to tell the whole story. They can’t because they’re part of it. They’re way too cozy with the Democrats, and if they really wanted to tell the truth, they’d have to admit, as with Michael Corleone, they are part of the same hypocrisy. At best, they could cobble together something that paints Trump as the ultimate evil that vain and selfish Joe and Jill Biden allowed to take back power. The real story is how they built a powerful coalition and had no choice but to turn to corruption to preserve that power. This would make a great long-form series.Episode One—The “hope and change” candidate lights up the world and chooses an “old white guy” to be his Veep, just as JFK did with LBJ, a cynical ploy to make his youth and inexperience (and, in this case, skin color) more palatable for a nervous electorate. Episode Two - The “hope and change” guy doesn’t like the “old white guy” as the successor of his powerful coalition, which now includes all of culture, all corporations, all institutions, all media, and all social media. Why go backwards? The “old white guy” with a stutter who just lost his beloved son to brain cancer was no longer useful to the “hope and change” guy. No one thinks much of it as he’s kicked to the curb and embarrassed as not electable enough, not desirable enough, and past his sell-by date. So, the “hope and change” guy picks the “Wall Street Sweetheart,” the former First Lady and Secretary of State, to become the “first woman POTUS.” With the help of a grassroots populist movement and an “Old Socialist” challenging the “Wall Street Sweetheart,” the party is fractured, and Trump wins. Episode Three - The establishment and the Obama coalition decide that Trump should not be allowed to rule, forget democracy! Who needs it? No “old white guy” was supposed to win, least of all that guy. Millions pour into the streets in an orgy of self pity, imagined oppression, fragility, privilege and narcissism — mass hysteria takes hold, cancel culture grips the left. Hundreds lose their jobs as they desperately try to undo the election results and get rid of Trump. They impeach him, they frame him, they smear him, they attack him. The OG “old white guy” waiting in the wings isn’t looking so bad. An easy, lateral move. An establishment pick. One “old white guy” for another.Episode Four - 2020 is its own whole episode. It has to be. It was the year the Democrats sold their souls to the Devil to cling to power. They spent $1 billion with a “well-funded cabal” of elites to fund and amplify the racial protests, change election laws, $400 million to collect ballots, and trot in experts to lie about everything from the laptop to COVID to the protests. They censored Americans on social media, and the FBI forced censorship of the laptop. The country sinks. Media credibility is destroyed. Large swaths of the electorate abandon the Democrats. But the “old white guy” wins. So finally, he gets his dream at long last, to be president of the United States. Episode Five - The “old white guy” is finally the savior he always dreamed he’d be. He became a blank check for Black Americans, trans Americans, and especially women of color. He would finish what the “hope and change” guy started. Are we topless at the White House?But the “old white guy” bungles the withdrawal from Afghanistan, and his approval ratings tank. Americans don’t see a nice old grandpa anymore. They see George Spahn, who just moved the Manson Family into the White House, and now they’re running the country.Now what? He goes after Trump and MAGA, calling them fascists, extremists, and a danger to society. If the “old white guy” can’t have the presidency, then no one will.The “old white guy” isn’t so nice anymore. Trump is indicted four times, convicted, and takes a mug shot that goes viral. They’ve sold their soul to the Devil, after all, they’re not going to give up power so easily. Episode Six - The final battle. Trump teases and torments the “old white guy” and forces him to debate. Trump mocks him mercilessly at his rallies for not knowing where he is. For Trump, beating him will be a cake walk for anyone not sucked into the false reality pushed by the legacy media.Trump and Biden debate rematch. The “old white guy” crashes and burns so hard it nearly sets Rob Reiner’s hair on fire. “He just lost the election,” Dana Bash scribbles on a note to Jake Tapper. What now for the empire that was never the resistance?Trump survives an assassination attempt at Butler the following month. His entire campaign is transformed. Elon Musk joins his dream team. This was our last best hope for America. We wanted out. We wanted something new. We wanted to be set free:But inside the Bubble, it’s Original Sin. It’s denial. It’s a legacy press that lies to the monarchs, lies to their voters, sending them cascading into yet more hysteria. Please make the bad orange man go away! For the sake of democracy! Please give us our utopia back! Jane Fonda, Steven Spielberg, Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, David Simon, Jon Stewart, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, and Ro...
Summary
All the President's Media
May 17, 202500:31:01Summary readyJake Tapper and Alex Thompson writing an exposé of the conspiracy and cover-up to hide Joe Biden's cognitive decline is like the Watergate burglars writing a book about Nixon's alleged corruption. The conspiracy and cover-up are coming from inside the house.“A cancer on the Presidency”To most of us who aren’t inside the bubble of the Left, the Tapper/Thompson book looks more like a rescue mission than a Mea Culpa. They have a book to sell, and they know who their best and most profitable buyers are - people who read the New Yorker with disposable income who have thrown money at the Democrats for almost a decade, all with the promise that they’d make the bad orange man go away.What I know after a decade of irresponsible fear-mongering is that the “original sin” was the moment the Left, with all of the power, called itself “the resistance,” and with the help of a complicit press corps, went to war on a duly elected president and his supporters.Everything that came after that, up to and including Biden’s decision to run, was the result of a ruling class that refused to relinquish power, did not respect the voices of the people, and used everything in the kingdom to systematically dehumanize, demonize, and exile the other half of the country, or anyone who did not go along with them.As part of the resistance after the 2016 election, I should have seen who Trump really was — the guy on Celebrity Apprentice, the real estate playboy we all knew from the 1980s. But in our collective fever dream, we thought he’d somehow been captured and compromised by Putin, and had transformed into an evil fascist, racist, rapist dictator second only to Hitler.We drew a line. We were on this side, and anyone who voted for, was kind to, or associated with anyone on the other side was kicked out of utopia. We owned everything, so we could raise the drawbridge and forget about everyone else. We cultivated a dystopian fear bunker that policed thought and speech and strictly forbade any truth-telling lest it hurt the Democrats and helped Trump.That’s all they had left because everything else had failed. So, when a crazed lunatic surfer dude believed he was “saving democracy,” he picked up a gun and tried to shoot Trump. That was proof enough of the damage caused by the once-respected legacy press, and it was their “original sin.”And even after that, a freaked-out, unhinged group of people on TikTok actively call for the assassination of Trump with their “when it happens” and “somebody just do it,” memes.So when James Comey posts a photo of a message in the sand to “86” the 47th president, it takes on a different meaning than just a funny joke. He was, after all, the FBI director, and whatever happened with that other shooter in Butler?Their “original sin” has divided us, polarized us, and worst of all, betrayed our trust far worse than not reporting on the Biden story. Lying about Trump was worse. Making him a supernatural receptacle of all the evil in the world was worse.They’re still out there doing it now - like Lawrence O’Donnell, Tim Miller, Rick Wilson, Rachel Maddow — All the President’s Media perpetuating the kind of groupthink via deception that got them into this mess.Ten years of pumping hysteria into the veins of Americans, and what do they have to show for it? Nothing. Selling fear worked for a while, until it didn’t. After ten years of it, with a new generation coming of age that wasn’t plugged into cable news or the legacy media, Americans went looking for normalcy that they somehow found in Donald Trump.All anyone had to do was what I did, and what so many other people did: take a look for ourselves at Trump and MAGA. Once we did that, we’d never trust the media ever again.Follow the MoneyThe reason the excerpt in the New Yorker is about George Clooney is for their target audience. Who else would care? Frontloaded with Clooney’s journey to Sudan and subsequent charity work seems designed to signal to the reader that the fate of the Democratic Party wasn’t up to some actor past his prime. No, he was important. And for a time, he was.Nothing illustrates the disconnect of today’s Democratic Party better than the fundraiser in LA that “shook Clooney to his core” because Joe Biden didn’t recognize him. All that money, all that power, all that celebrity, was exactly the wrong message to sell to a beleaguered working class sick of the sight of them.His house in the South of France, his “big movie” for Netflix, his phone call to Julia, and his brush with politics all explain his New York Times op-ed that forced Joe Biden out and put Kamala Harris in. Clooney said that Biden “saved democracy” in 2020 and could save it again by stepping aside.Imagine that kind of hubris to believe Joe Biden had the power to save Democracy and that somewhere deep inside, George Clooney believed he could save it too. What they mean is to save their empire, to preserve their power. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe
Summary
The Democrats Can't Outrun the Woke
May 13, 202500:36:57Summary readyWhatever it is we did to kids that started around 2013 has led to whole generations of freaked-out, delusional cult members who can barely function now when things don’t go their way. There is no turning it around. There is no changing what so many of them believe.This militant army worked well for the Democrats, but I do wonder if any of them looked at Kenosha or Portland and thought, What have we done?Because so many adults were too afraid to confront the problem until the problem grew up and joined the workforce, that power is out now, and it is destroying the Democratic Party, not to mention everything else the Left controls, faster than you can say Holy Woketopia Batman.That fear that has crippled all of them surprised me. I didn’t know so many would be so willing to conform, stay quiet, say nothing, or join the mob and pick up a stone. I don’t know, I guess I thought there would be more like me, people willing to stand up and push back.Lionel Shriver talks about this personality type while on a recent episode of the Triggernometry podcast.Speaking of mania, I’ll never forget how a film critic named Sean O’Connell once wrote a film review about Pixar’s Turning Red. He didn't particularly like the movie because he wrote from his perspective (normie white dude). The attacks came fast and hard, from young Asian girls who had begged for representation in movies, to the scolds on Twitter. Then came the agonizing op-eds. By the end, he didn’t lose his job, but he almost did. He had to apologize and take down the review.It went all the way to this:Even after his apology, the tweets that flooded in continued to punish him for not liking what is (not a very good movie in the first place) about a 12-year-old girl getting her period. He was being honest, as film critics are supposed to do, but not anymore.They even escalated it and asked him to name names:Sean O’Connell should have stood up to them. He should have done what I did every time they came for me. You turn around and you flip them the double bird. It isn’t that hard. Yes, you will lose almost everything, but in return, you will gain your self-respect.If they can’t even tell the truth in a film review back 2022, how can they possibly fix what is wrong with any of it, from Hollywood to the Democratic Party?Send in the DudebrosIt’s obvious to everyone that Democrats are repelling men. All men. Young men, old men, Black and Hispanic men. They’ve decided the reason for that is the “woke crap” that many can’t stand but will never admit out loud.They say they’ve gotten the message. Now, they figure they don’t have to do much, like offer the public a way out of the madness that has afflicted their party, and thus, all of the cultural, corporate, and educational institutions they control.No, it’s a messaging problem, not a policy problem. They only have to dispatch a few mascu-bros to get the talking points out that they hate the “woke crap” too but they still want to be good people and do the right thing, unlike the other half of the country who are bad people, and don’t want to do the right thing.It’s easy to spot the likely paid influencers on TikTok who almost look normal until they start parroting the talking points of the madness of the Left. And then, just like that, we’re sucked back into the crazy.Oh, it isn’t as bad as the women who dominate the party and TikTok. If I spend too much time surfing that algo, as I often do for research, I come out of it thinking, is that really what became of it all-thirty years of progressivism, feminism, and activism, and it ends with delusion and mania?Influencer Henry Sisson has emerged as a supposedly brotastic anti-woke Democrat on Piers Morgan.Then, there was David Hogg on Bill Maher, pretending it’s possible to bring some sanity to the party so young men can “get laid and have fun.”Perhaps it is a good strategy. Just give those who can’t stand the wokeness a reason not to worry about it anymore.Reactions like that might help them accomplish their goal of bringing people back to the party, especially men, but I doubt it. Matt Walsh is correct when he says they were never cool.Ultimately, their reality disconnect prevents them from ending their ongoing mass hysteria. Take this piece at Daily Kos (yes, it still exists, shockingly), by this person, note the pronouns in bio:She/Her writes:That March story about Enola Gay was part of an electronic preliminary pull that flagged certain words that might unearth woke content. That didn’t mean Pete Hegseth banned it. As with the children’s book by Julianne Moore, it was put in the “to be looked at” pile, but that didn’t stop the headlines.If you see that many headlines hitting your feed and it’s spread far and wide, and people you trust and admire, why wouldn’t you believe it? And if they are being misled to that degree, how can they ever be expected to pull themselves out of it? And if they are not telling us the truth but just trying to hurt Trump, how can we trust them?After all that, they dumped him anyway. Lesson learned, eh, David?The Democrats have become so afraid of blowback that they have to try to get their message out anonymously. But do they ever ask themselves how we can address the needs of the people if we are that afraid of our own party?Recently, Mark Halperin spoke for them in an attempt to force the Democrats to the table to confront some of it.Why They’re Stuck with itWokeness isn’t a “fad,” like a tramp stamp tattoo you mature your way out of, then seek to remove. This goes deep, probably deeper than anyone ever knew back in 2012 and 2013 when the “whole of society” effort began unfolding in schools, in institutions, and online to gently introduce Critical Race Theory as a new way of seeing ourselves in the world. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe
Summary
The Last Spectacular Ball of the Elite's Empire
May 6, 202500:30:40Summary ready“The last spectacular ball in the history of the empire ... [but] a new and hostile Russia glared through the large windows of the palace ... while we danced, the workers were striking and the clouds in the Far East were hanging dangerously low." - Grand Duke Alexander MikhailovitchThe theme of the Met Gala this year was Black Dandyism. In case you don’t know what that is, The Met explains:Black Dandyism is cool and all as its authentic self. I’m not sure it maintained that coolness last night with “radical chic” on full display as a symbol of virtue for the powerful watching in real time as their empire comes crumbling down.You no doubt noticed the vibe shift. Something seemed off about it. It was like the Blue Origin flight. It felt inauthentic, all for show, a ritual to genuflect to their chosen status symbols while disguising who they really are.Not that they will be criticized by the people who matter to them. Those outlets that aren’t owned by Donald Newhouse, the billionaire who owns Vogue and the New Yorker, worth around $18 billion, wouldn’t dare say a word. Everyone is to applaud and praise them for their goodness and moral virtue.But as I watched the parade of famous Black artists walk the red carpet, alongside ashamed, self-hating white celebrities who looked like they’d been kidnapped and who couldn’t wash away the fear in their eyes, I could see the man behind the curtain, or in this case, the woman.Who are they kidding? This was not power or progress, not for any of them. The Met Gala served the same purpose it always has: to make rich white people look good. How they measure what defines good is all that has changed.The white guilt among the wealthy in our modern Gilded Age is thick. They know something is ending. They can feel the ground shifting beneath their feet. Just as the very wealthy in the late 1800s did. They have no choice but to try to buy absolution by bribing the virtuous to be their facade.They have no choice. They know the mob would eat them alive if they didn’t defer, de-center, elevate, platform, and do something to make their insular world seem like the good place, not the bad place. They have to be on the right side to survive a little bit longer, to hold their place in society, even as, especially as everything falls apart.They didn’t call it “virtue signaling” during the Gilded Age. They called it Civic Virtue, which has a long history in America, going all the way back to the Revolution. It is one of the reasons we see so many of the big names from that era splashed across major institutions, like the Andrew Carnegie institution, etc.The billionaires alive today are all expected to give back to society in a way that justifies or absolves them of their sins. But something else entirely is going on with what we saw at the Met Gala and with Blue Origin. It wasn’t Civic Virtue so much as virtue signaling.But it does seem strange in a year when Donald Trump and his MAGA Deplorables won the popular vote, where he is attempting major change to elevate the silent majority, to attend this spectacular ball and to send yet another message to America that you are not invited to this party because we think you are bad people, racists. So we’ll celebrate in front of you. We’ll rub it in as though we never lost the election at all.The wealthy aristocracy in our country has figured out that they need shields. They must hide behind people whom no one would dare attack or criticize. It is the reversal of the fanaticism that afflicted and ignited the mob when the streets were filled with protesters in the Summer of 2020.What we see now is their way of healing from the trauma of the agreed-upon reality that emerged that Summer. Most people don’t remember how unprecedented this uprising really was. Remember chanting through the neighborhoods in Seattle?If you were cowering in your home as a Good White Liberal, what did you make of that? How much guilt did you feel? Their escape hatch for all of this madness we’ve been living through, a fake-pretend fix to oppression because Lulu Lemon and the Lifetime Network now center Black characters and de-center “whiteness.”I’ll never forget my white friends in Santa Monica, of all places, hurling themselves in front of “Black bodies” because the cops were less likely to shoot them. They all believed this delusion, even in Santa Monica. But now, there is a reversal of that dynamic playing out. White people need Black people and other non-whites or LGTBQIA+ members to hide behind. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe
Summary
What Kamala Harris Gets Wrong About Elephants
May 2, 202500:18:20Summary readyKamala Harris might have many gifts, but intelligence is not one of them. How else to explain her speech, where she compared today’s Left to a herd of protective elephants?Here is the clip:As with most of Kamala Harris’ speeches, there was no there there. It was delusional gobbledegook that seemed to get really obvious things wrong, especially the way she ended the speech by saying this country doesn’t belong to those in the White House but to “we the people.” Yeah, uh, what part of winning the popular vote is not “we the people,” Kamala?I thought of that line in The Big Lebowski:The Democrats have decided their leader should be Kamala Harris, and they set her loose, careless metaphors and all. What else can they do? Tell the truth? “Sorry, we tried to make Kamala Harris happen again. We already knew she was a tragically weak candidate who couldn’t even win in her home state of California, and is mostly known for her extreme cringe and her viral word salad clips. But she’s a woman of color, and white women will never vote for a normie white dude, so let’s make Kamala Harris great again?”Granted, most people on the Left have become so disconnected from reality that they can’t see the big picture anymore, but even still, if there is one thing we know about elephants other than that they are intelligent, empathetic creatures, it is that they, like all mammals, protect their young to ensure reproduction and survival.And of all animals to drag into this mess, why must it be elephants? This is a strange thing to be outraged about, but I love elephants. I love them like I love pigs. It isn’t just that they are intelligent, although they are ranked number five on the list from How Stuff Works (pigs not far behind).I love their deep empathy because I have too much of it and can relate. I love how they remember those who protected and raised them, even decades later. I hate that they are hunted and butchered (just as I hate factory farming with pigs). I realize I must accept these realities, but it doesn’t make it hurt any less.But mostly, like all mammals, elephants are known for being ferocious protectors of their young, so much so that the entire group is often involved in saving even one calf.You should see what a mother elephant would do to anyone who came near her baby with a surgical scalpel or dangerous, irreversible drugs to sterilize them for life.Do you think elephants would be casually aborting their children or allowing gender clinics to guide them toward irreversible harm to their bodies, all in the name of some imaginary mass delusion? Do you think elephants would divide people based on skin color and gender identity and deem those the most vulnerable?Elephants are matriarchal because the older female elephants have gathered enough knowledge to help guide and lead the herd through treacherous terrain. The males must leave when they become adolescents and form a herd with other males who teach them what they need to know.For the Left, they like the part where elephants form a herd of females and exile the males. They don’t like the part where the most important thing to them is ensuring reproduction and survival.That’s last thing they do on the Left now. They seem to be actively trying to extinct themselves, whether it’s buckling to a dangerous cult that sterilizes the young, or encouraging abortions to the tune of one million per year.Those who have paid the highest price for this are the children whose mothers can’t protect them because they are cowards, not like mother elephants, that’s for sure. Fathers, too. They’ve been castrated metaphorically and literally. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe
Summary
Why the Democrats Will (try to) Impeach Trump a Third Time
May 1, 202500:39:37Summary ready“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”―George Orwell,1984It isn’t that one crazy, alleged animal-abusing Democrat who just introduced articles of impeachment against Trump who will define Resistance 2.0.It’s the more serious threat that looms ahead should the Democrats take the House next year.Steve Bannon has become the harbinger. He predicted it in 2018, and he’s predicting it now.He’s right. They have no other plan for America, not in the four years Trump was in power the first time, not for Biden’s four years, and not now. They have one directive: to purge Trump and MAGA from utopia.It’s beginning to look a lot like 2016, only this time I’m watching from the other side of the door. I escaped, but only just barely. I sometimes look back at who I was then and scratch my head. How could I have been that easily manipulated? How could I have believed them?I believed it all. I read every book on Putin. I hung on every word that came out of Rachel Maddow’s mouth. I believed the New York Times had our best interests at heart. I could not believe or even imagine that the people I trusted would eventually expose themselves as weaponized, partisan propaganda machines.I try to connect with the Democratic centrist I used to be because that is still where most of my friends and family are, not to mention all of American culture and most institutions. They live in a completely separate reality, and I live in this one.The only comparison I can make takes us back to just before the last Civil War. One reality not only justified slavery but also existed inside a utopian Antebellum paradise of Southern Belles and wealthy plantations, but also believed ending slavery was an existential crisis they could not survive. How else to convince so many to go fight and die for a cause?The pre-war propaganda whipped both sides into a frenzy that would eventually take them to war. From War History Online:In the decade prior to the Civil War, the American press began flourishing and evolved rapidly in terms of technology, output, and distribution. Meanwhile, the number of newspapers expanded and a new style of weekly pictorial publications filled with comics and illustrations became popular and widespread in northern and southern states.This mass distribution of picture-based media was eagerly and voraciously consumed by the American public. It also proved ideal for distributing and disseminating propaganda and successfully pushed divisive ideologies from both sides of the divide.Sound familiar?When the Union Army won the war, however, their utopian paradise in the South was upended, which kicked off episodes of mass hysteria that would eventually lead to Jim Crow laws, the KKK, segregation, and worse.It’s easy, especially for the modern-day Left, to see those crimes against humanity as a disease that lives inside of white people, the sin of racism, a war they believe they’re still fighting today.The side that suddenly had all of the wealth and power after the rise of Silicon Valley and the marriage between the Obama coalition and culture was lacking only one thing: spiritual reliefI was part of it. I was a “woke” blogger, though we did not use that word then, and many don’t dare use it now. What mattered to me was elevating non-whites and other marginalized groups in the film industry. That gave me, a white woman, a sense of purpose, a deeper meaning for my work and my life, something I’d never felt before.But to be “woke” as translated for white people means believing you share your country and your culture with racists afflicted with “white fragility.” At first, it was an idea that spread, but by 2020, it was mandated.It makes sense when you consider our country expanding onto the new frontier of the internet, where the free market, cities, towns, and demographic groups mattered less than this giant swirling soup of humanity we suddenly had to make sense of. What better way than to divide us up into easily recognizable categories?2016 was, to all of us, a sign that the Confederacy had returned, especially since Trump was now a prominent figure on Twitter, just like Obama had been. We saw his win as an act of war. We were to obstruct, block, shun, attack, or resist. He was not to be allowed to govern, which would ensure his destruction, or so we thought.What we didn’t do, however, was listen to the voters. They were invisible to us because we wrote them off as angry white deplorables clinging to their guns and religion. They don’t deserve representation. No, it wasn’t we who failed. It was Trump who invaded us and is now oppressing us.We couldn’t see things any other way. Because we were the “good” side and those people over there had to be the “bad side.” The nation’s first Black president, we believed, was hated by white Americans, and now, they were coming to dismantle his legacy, our utopia, and Make America White Again. They still believe that. It is existential to them, which explains the ongoing need to purge their utopia of threatening people.Those same realities that decided who got to stay and who had to go also existed in George Orwell’s 1984. What is “cancel culture” anyway, but virtual gulags?Anyone who didn’t agree with the reversed hierarchy was out. You couldn’t just go along with it; you had to believe it. You had to love Big Brother.Orwell had it so right when he wrote in that last paragraph, “He was in the public dock, confessing everything, implicating everybody.”I could feel it, the mass dehumanization. It didn’t sit right with me. I was disgusted by how my side was behaving, but it wasn’t until I walked in the shoes of Trump supporters that I knew for sure that this really was a Civil War.No, Trump supporters were not getting lynched or put in concentration camps or a gulag. But the mechanisms at play are the same. I’ve never seen people in America feel emboldened to attack another group this way, but no doubt it has happened many times throughout our history.To justify that they are the “good” side, they must continue to find victims of oppression based on skin color or gender identity. They don’t seem to care that much about the hollowed-out, torn-down neighborhoods in the middle of the country, where people of all skin colors are suffering. No, it has to be those who come from other countries, helpless and faceless, defined only by one thing: the color of their skin. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe
Summary
There's No Such Thing as a "Sane" Democrat
Apr 22, 202500:37:51Summary readyThe rage and hysteria are escalating. They’re openly calling for Trump’s assassination.They’re marching, they’re protesting, they’re screaming into the void for what, they don’t know. Something has been taken from them, something they desperately want back. It’s been ten long years of fighting, but nothing has worked. There is no way out for them. They’re trapped.If you talk to one of them, they will tell you they believe things that aren’t true. Trump is taking away Social Security and Medicaid. They’ve eliminated the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. They’ve eliminated the Department of Education. They’re “disappearing” people from the streets and sending them to concentration camps.The truth doesn’t seem to matter and hasn’t for a long time now. Hyperbole is all because they have nothing left to sell, no vision for America’s future. Who would they be if they weren’t the people hunting Donald Trump? They do not know. They’ve destroyed themselves trying to destroy him.The headlines fed to them supercharge their rage. These are mostly educated white women in real life, but in their fantastical imaginings of their cosplay resistance, they are warrior protectors of every oppressed group. It’s all coming true. Doomsday is here.They don’t like the word “hysteria” because it hearkens back to the dark ages when women’s mental health issues were mislabeled that way. It’s the word. It’s always the word. They felt like no one could hear them scream. Out of that eternal frustration came the feminist movement, a movement now dead in its tracks.It’s the word “hysteria,” like the word “woke,” like the word “illegal,” like the word woman like the word “homeless,” like the word “fat.” Change the word, change reality.These white women can’t be feminists anymore because that makes them “white feminists” or “Karens.” They hate those words too. They must always defer, apologize, step back, de-center themselves, and elevate women of color who matter more. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe
Summary
A Good Friday Special: Interview with Poet Joseph Massey + Giveaway
Apr 18, 202501:09:36Summary readyI have known Joseph Massey For quite some time now, we have always wanted to do an interview, but we never made it happen for one reason or another. Now, after we collaborated on a video (see below) and he’s written a brand new book that has shot to the top of the charts at Amazon, thanks to an appearance on Megyn Kelly’s show, we thought it was a good time to have a deep conversation about everything from his faith, to his poetry and of course, to the craziness of the Left and cancel culture.We will be giving away five free copies of America is the Poem. Joseph will select interested participants from the comments. Please leave a comment if you’d like to be considered. I will contact the winners for addresses.Have a listen to the podcast above, and here is a link to the book on Amazon:America is the Poem video, Joseph and I collaborated on together:Joseph’s appearance on Megyn Kelly’s show:A sampling of photos of Massey’s work, but you can find more at his Instagram.For more or to subscribe to Joseph’s Substack, click here: Joseph Massey Hope you enjoy our conversation, and let me know if you’d like to hear more interviews from me. I hope to post one more thing for Easter Weekend, but otherwise, please enjoy the holiday, and for those celebrating Passover too. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe
Summary
Ashley St Clair Went In With Eyes Open
Apr 16, 202500:16:59Summary readyThe Wall Street Journal has dropped a hit piece on Elon Musk. Their headline suggests Elon Musk is farming out his seed and growing crops for a super-intelligent generation to colonize Mars in the near future. That’s the story they wish to tell, and it’s the story Ashley St Clair is grateful they will tell it. After all, the only thing she seems to want out of this is to be “not a secret.”The story is behind the paywall and I am not that invested to pay for this and other hysterical bleating from Rupert Murdoch’s high-minded Conservative outlet. I was a subscriber for many years but lately, I’m not finding much difference there from everywhere else — it’s an endless war on Trump. We get it. You don’t like him. We get it. You don’t like Elon, either.Instead, I’ll draw from this piece from The Independent:St Clair, 26, went public with her claims that she and Musk share a child in February. Now she has claimed that the billionaire offered her a one-time payment of $15 million, plus $100,000 a month until her child turns 21, in exchange for her silence.Well, that probably explains Amber Heard’s move to Spain and her mystery baby delivered via surrogacy. As long as she never says Elon Musk fathered it, she can live out her life with money and privacy, plus a baby she always wanted (she did not want Elon).Heard was scorched earth anyway by the time she moved to Spain. Maybe this was the cash infusion that got her there and allowed her to live out her days in comfort caring for her baby girl. Here is a picture of the two of them:Heard, like St Clair, went into this with her eyes open. Unlike Sinclair, and not needing a bounce of fame, Heard (maybe) took the money and ran.By contrast, St Clair seems to very much want everyone to know who fathered her baby, and why wouldn’t she? In a time of influencer culture, what could be a better narrative than Mean Old Elon flew her somewhere exotic, filling her head with pretty little lies, and then filling her womb with sperm, whereupon a baby was made?Where did that baby come from? It came from you, Ashley. That’s what happens when you spread your legs for Daddy. Take note.To pretend she had no idea this was where the whole thing would end up is absurd. She knew he wanted to father a child with her. She didn’t know that no one would ever know about it and what good is sleeping with, much less having a baby with the richest and arguably second most famous man in the world if nobody knows about it.Good for her she came of age in a culture of victimhood. Everyone is a victim, especially grown women, didn’t you know? As yet another single mother with a mystery baby, she is a nobody. As one of Elon’s baby mamas, however, she can now become a somebody, a superstar of her wildest dreams. Maybe that’s right, maybe it isn’t, but money is nothing compared to fame, unless you’re Amber Heard.St Clair acts like she just gave birth to the b*****d child of King Henry XIII and is fighting for him to be recognized as a royal. And now, has cast herself as the brave martyr, the poor peasant girl the King commanded to lay back and take it. She rejected the offer. “I don’t want my son to feel like he’s a secret,” St Clair reportedly told Musk’s fixer Jared Birchall, who runs Musk’s family office.And:St Clair claimed that Musk has used his wealth to silence some of the other women who have had his children, according to the report.And:St Clair gained an insight into Musk’s “paranoid” way of thinking when they dated in 2023 after meeting in the spring of that year. Their romance began on Musk’s social media platform X after he began to interact with her posts.She was invited by Musk to visit X’s headquarters in San Francisco. From there, he took her on a separate trip to Rhode Island on his private plane, where the Space X CEO was visiting one of his sons at college, and then later on a getaway to St. Barts for New Year.During their time together, Musk frequently talked to St Clair about having children, she claimed. “The first time they had sex, Musk joked that they should ‘pick a name’ for their future child,” the outlet reports.On the trip to St. Barts, she told Musk that she was ovulating. “What are we waiting for?” he reportedly replied, and their son was conceived, according to St Clair.I’m less interested in the part of the story where Elon Musk wants to populate to colonize Mars with his version of a super-intelligent offspring, or as the Left will very likely dub it, a “master race.” The part of the story I am interested in is the idea that Ashley St Clair, or any woman who spreads her legs for Elon or allows his sperm to be injected into her, is, in any way, a victim.Ashley St Clair knew exactly what she was involving herself in, but she could not stop herself because almost no young woman could. Many young women go through the ritual of pretending to fall in love with a rich old dude so they can then get pregnant and be financially taken care of for the rest of their lives. Everybody knows that. Get that honey, or else no money is the new get that ice, or else no dice. Ashley apparently thought she was Cinderella, that she’d get the fairy tale. Most women want that too. They want the romance. They want the wealth. They want a good father. They want the faithful man. They want a happy ending. They also want to be empowered. They want a man who will listen to them and hang on every word. They want a man who will be attracted to only them for the rest of their lives. They want a country that remains attracted to old women, fat women, and women who are not traditionally pretty. They want it all because they have been told they deserve it all, because they’re “worth it.”Well, you can’t have it all. If Ashley St Clair wanted a husband and a father for her child, the last person she would so willingly sleep with is Elon Musk, who made no secret of telling her yes, I would love to impregnate you.” But no, I’m not exactly looking for a commitment. What did she expect? He would abandon everything, rush by her side, marry her, and they could, oh, I don’t know, go live happily in a SpaceX Tiny House?Fanatical activists are out there calling him a Nazi, fire-bombing Teslas, and trying to destroy his businesses, and here’s Ashley whining, WAAAA, pay attention to ME!! That’s not to say anyone should approve of plugging willing women in order to produce as many children as possible. But the FLDS does it too, minus the sex with underage children part. That’s AmoreI speak from experience. I went to Italy to meet a man I fell in love with on the internet. I spent a month there. I came back pregnant. He was furious. He did not want me to have the baby, like every man who engages in casual sex except Elon Musk. Trust me, the used part is not “have a baby with me, and I’ll pay you $15 million to keep it under wraps.” The used part is, “Let’s have fun, and if you get pregnant, you’ll abort the baby, right?” Would I have loved a real relationship and a real marriage with a happy home and lots of kids? Yes, of course. I wanted the fairy tale, too. But the whining by Ashley St Clair and the pearl-clutching by both the Left and the Right of what these women have CHOSEN to do with their bodies is nauseating. They are not children. They are not Handmaids. They are not victims. Ashley St Clair all but begged him, “Impregnate me Elon!!” And we’re supposed to feel sorry for her now?The truth? She wants control of all of it. She wants the lavish lifestyle and to be known as the woman Elon Musk plucked off the internet to father his super-intelligent Mars space force. She was so pretty and so smart he chose her! What else is she going to be? How do you keep that a secret for 20 years? She didn’t make that choice for her kid. She made it for herself. Own it, Ashley. And to Conservatives glomming onto this, I will quote an email I just received from the Daily Caller’s Editor At Large, Geoffrey Ingersoll:It’s for that outcry on the right to become so loud that Trump simply has to part ways with Musk. As far as motivations go, this much could barely be described as ulterior. Onlookers in public can see the real goal.I supported my daughter on my own. I worked jobs that I could do either with her in a backpack (sports photography), sleeping on my chest (movie critic), working from home (horoscope writer) or in a stroller nearby (working as a janitor). Eventually, I built my own business, which was successful enough that we would be fine—a “woman-owned” business everyone on the Left approved of until they found out I voted for Trump.But I don’t regret that decision, just as I don’t regret flying off to Italy and getting pregnant. Raising my daughter has been the best thing I have ever done, and there is no close second. But it was my decision. Just like it was my bad decision not to have babies I could have had. I wish I could blame feminism or the men who got me pregnant, but I have only myself to blame. And I live with that regret every day of my life.Do I feel sorry for the kids involved because they don’t have a father around, and is that good role modeling for men? Sure, I feel bad for them. No, it’s not good role modeling for men. Like my daughter, every kid deserv...
Summary