Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning with Sasha Stone

Sasha Stone
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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

  1. 18h ago

    Janet Gets Radicalized

    Previously: A Terrifying Night in a Good Liberal Town | A Democrat’s Lonely and Hopeless Thanksgiving | Janet’s No Kings Halloween It was Halloween morning in Vista Butte. Another perfect day, of course. Was there ever anything else? A sky so blue it never looked real. A sun so bright it shames you for wasting a minute inside. Janet sometimes wished she could have a real Fall, a creepy Halloween. But in Vista Butte, it’s just another too-hot Saturday. Janet stirred in her bed, feeling bad for wishing for a real autumn. No one was luckier than she was. She knew that. The warm and inviting smell of freshly brewed coffee wafted in from the kitchen where she’d set the brew alarm for 7 am. But she wouldn’t get up just yet. She luxuriated in her sustainably sourced bamboo cotton sheets as her thoughts drifted to her plans for later. She’d been accepted back into the No Kings resistance group. They kicked her out after that embarrassing E-Bike incident. Her friends ghosted her, unfriended her on Facebook even. It was chilling to see just how quickly they could all turn. You think you know people, but they can always surprise you. You know me, Janet would say, you know I’m not a racist! You know that I smile and wave and am friends with many black and brown people. You know I hate Trump and MAGA too. I’m on your side, she pleaded. But it didn’t matter. She was marked, and no one wanted to be anywhere near her online or off. Janet even consulted with a virtual therapist who told her that she needed to own her part in it, to stop denying it, to admit what just being a white woman in America actually meant. What had she done to cause harm? How could she repair the damage? One of the books her therapist suggested she read just happened to be available at one of the free libraries near her street. Someone just gave it away. So Janet took it and went home to look up the reviews. There were others, too, Janet saw on Amazon that her therapist, a non-binary person named Jeba, had recommended she read. Jeba thought Janet might be secretly a racist. That was hard for her to hear. Those kids on the E-Bike were all white. One of them had a stepdad of color, but did that count? She said to the boys, “Go back to where you came from,” but she meant it as their neighborhood. But the story came out as if she said it as an anti-immigrant, a racist. So she thought the little pink book would help her. She spent many hours reading it, taking notes, and saying affirmations out loud. I will not be a racist today. Decentering myself is an act of careBeing uncomfortable does not mean I am being attacked.When in doubt, I can choose to observe, learn, and stay quiet.I am not neutral — my perspective is shaped by whiteness. This was a lot for Janet to take in. She never knew any of this about herself. She just tried to be a good person and save democracy from the fascists. And you know, eke out a little time for a glass of wine now and again? Was that so bad? So she decided to put some of her thoughts about being a secret racist on Facebook and to confess it to all of her friends and say how sorry she was and how hard she’s working now on being an anti-racist. She did the work. She owned it. No more micro-aggressions. For every post on Facebook where she admitted all of the times she was racist in her life without knowing it, she was rewarded with a cascade of likes. They warmed to her, talked to her again, laughed with her, and invited her back into groups where she’d been bounced. Maybe that’s why Jodi Mitchell, not Joni, JODI, called her and invited her to join the latest meet-up. The objective was ICE OUT of Vista Butte, and as long as the migrant refugees were hiding in their homes or wherever they lived — probably the apartments on the north end of town — no one should be enjoying themselves, especially in the 96% white town of Vista Butte. They would protest outside restaurants or house parties - anywhere there was fun and music and celebrating. Janet wouldn’t mind celebrating. It had been a while. She longed for those days of being young and drinking Cold Duck at sunset, something bought with a fake ID. Those old days of Vista Butte before it became, well, what it is now. She loved celebrating Halloween back in the day. But that was before she knew that she was nothing but a micro-aggression delivery device, and now she had to do the work. Her Halloween would be to ensure everyone was miserable until Trump was out of office. There was something disrupting her meditative thoughts and anti-racist aspirations. Was that music? Spanish language? Mexican music? It was too loud this early in Vista Butte. This was a quiet town. The rules were no construction before 8 a.m., but music? No one ever played music except on a Saturday night and then only until 10 pm. Then she remembered her neighbor, a slender middle-aged blonde from Germany, had told her last week that it was finally time to trim the large eucalyptus tree that stretched over both of their houses. “I have to get it done,” she’d said. “It will cost a fortune, but I have found some cheap workers, and that will cut the cost in half. I will be sorry for the noise, but it won’t last long.” Janet had only half-listened. She didn’t like her neighbor who was always on about something or other. Last week it was the rats. Her neighbor knew Janet had a rat problem and didn’t have the heart to kill them. “There is never just one rat,” the German woman had said. “There is always a nest. They will cause thousands of dollars in damage. You have to kill them, Janet.” She’d pressured her into putting out traps, but the deaths were so violent, so horrific - some of the rats would get caught halfway and would be screaming into the night. Janet would free them from the trap and fling them outside. They’d still probably die, but they wouldn’t be in pain. Everyone on NextDoor said poison would kill wildlife like owls and squirrels, and that was cruel. Live traps were also cruel because when you set the rat free, it had no idea where it was and could not protect itself and would be killed instantly by a predator. “You must kill them, Janet. It’s the humane thing to do.” Janet had tried to tell her that she couldn’t kill the rats. She tried. It wasn’t in her. She’d rather they crawl all over her at night — and they had — than endure another screaming half-dead rat caught in a trap or look at another pool of blood under a trap. “Then hire an exterminator,” the German had said. “But what about squirrels? No one wants to kill them. Why do they get to live and rats have to die?””Because, Janet, only rats will destroy your house, under your roof, wires, and will cause fires that will rage out of control and kill the whole town. It’s like the border. You have to have a secure border or your country will be overrun in ways you can’t control. Same with rats.” Janet had been so stunned by her neighbor’s comment that she was speechless. She watched her walk away and realized in an instant that she was living next door to a monster. She compared rats to immigrants? Was Janet’s neighbor a real Nazi? But now the workers' music was getting louder and obnoxious, and Janet couldn’t think. She had to tell her neighbor to tell them to turn it down. That kind of thing was not allowed in Vista Butte. But if she said something, that was the worst example of “white woman’s tears” and a microaggression. She had to just suck it up and forget about the music. Let someone else deal with it. But she grabbed her phone anyway, texted her neighbor, and told her about the music. She felt bad about it, but not enough to suffer. No one would know it was her. It might have been appropriate in a Mexican restaurant, but not on the quiet streets of her neighborhood. Moments later, she heard some low voices and the music abruptly stopped. Then, it was quiet except for the sound of a chainsaw, the hammers, the footsteps, and the cracking of the limbs as the mighty tree got a trimming. Janet heard her p… 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

  2. Oct 18

    Obama’s War on Trump Reaches Its Penultimate Battle

    This November might mark the end of the Virtual Civil War we’ve been fighting for ten years. Or rather, Barack Obama and the establishment government’s war on half the country. The Democrats could take both the House and the Senate, effectively ending the Trump presidency and the MAGA movement. On the Right, they’re calling me a “Debbie Downer” or a catastrophist, just as they did on the Left when I tried to tell them Trump would win in 2016. But I worried a year ago, when the Trump administration cut Medicaid, millions lost their health insurance, and many saw their monthly premiums rise. When I spoke up about this, no one wanted to hear it. It wasn’t my job to tell the Right what to do with their power, but from where I sat, as a former Democrat, it felt like the beginning of the end. We don’t talk much about how that COVID era gave Americans financial relief and, for a time, free healthcare; some didn’t even have to pay rent. We got fat unemployment checks through the CARES Act, and under Biden, the spending went through the roof. No matter the Trump administration's intentions to cut spending, clean up fraud, and attempt to fix our broken system, once everyone felt the pinch of inflation, gas prices, the war in Iran, and healthcare costs, they'd finally be ready, I believed, to vote blue. I know I’m not the only person who feels like I’m living in the Twilight Zone. None of us understands what has happened to us in the age of the internet and social media, Obama and Trump. How can I have thought Trump was the ultimate evil in 2016, only to turn around and vote for him in 2024? And now spend my time warning about my former side? I was hoping that after the indictments, the impeachments, the assassination attempts, and the felony conviction, Trump’s second win would be the moment the delusional bubble burst on the Left and we could all go back to the way things were before the war. But that didn’t happen. They just got meaner and more radicalized, all the while learning how to hide that side of themselves, to lie to voters that they really aren’t as extreme as they were in the past. Even as some candidates have learned to lie better about “gender affirming care” or radical Islam to tamp down the widespread, mainstream radicalization that has overtaken the party, all one has to do is look at what’s happening in France to see that, in the midst of a Communist-like takeover, moderate liberalism won’t cut it. They don’t just want some of it. They want it all. And if France was the model the DSA in America pointed to as a socialist utopia, how do you explain a violent revolution unfolding on the streets? That won’t just happen here. It already has happened here. It wasn’t Islam; it was Black Lives Matter, but the forces of social-justice revolutionaries and the oppressed/oppressor doctrine rage on. I wake up every day confronting the cruelty of the Totalitarian Left as, even now, they try not just to destroy me and my business, but to wipe me out, erase me, unperson me. I feel it everywhere, not just online. I live in a town that would turn on me in an instant if they saw me in a MAGA hat. I know them. I live among them. They smile and chat with me on the street, and I hope they don’t get close enough to figure out who I am, that I’m scorched earth among their kind online. As of now, in the real world of my very small, very liberal town, I am a complete unknown. But if real life mirrored the internet, there would be wild-eyed fanatics putting up posters of me all over town that say TRUMP SUPPORTER. Because they were never held to account, nothing has really changed. They’re better liars, but no one has any plans to change how they treat the other half of the country they’ve thrown away like human garbage. They still see the evil in this country as racism, Islamophobia, sexism, misogyny, bigotry, transphobia. And now, they’ve married it to socialism, but even in France, that’s not enough, so Communism it will have to be. Barack Obama still leads the army on the Left. In many ways, his presidency of the ruling class half of the country never ended. He couldn’t walk away, not from the party, not from the country, because he could not stand to leave it in the hands of Donald Trump and to allow him and his movement to redirect the future of America, out of the hands of the totalitarian cult the Left has become. Today, he tweeted the most astonishing thing about Ilhan Omar: This, after they used the FBI and the CIA to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop while Trump was the sitting president, weaponized the government to frame Trump as a Russian asset, raided the home of a former president, indicted him four times, and convicted him of a felony on a ticky-tack charge. Tried to throw him off the ballot in several states - tied him up in court to keep him off the campaign trail. And all of that before you get to the debanking scandal, where ordinary Americans were cut off from their financial institutions on their political beliefs alone, throwing Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro in jail for Contempt of Congress, hunting down anyone who might have attended the rally on January 6th, throwing many of them in jail with no due process, not to mention the toll it took on their everyday lives as the media painted them as criminals. They held a lengthy show trial with Liz Cheney lying to the American public about Trump without him having any chance to defend himself or make his case to the people, with a full-court propaganda press doing their bidding. I’m not a fan of lawfare. I don’t think they should be raiding the home of Ilhan Omar, but the Democrats have done far worse and have gotten away with all of it. If Republicans can’t see what’s about to happen to them if they allow these folks to take back power, then I don’t know what to say anymore. Everything Trump did for them, all of these years, the lies spread by the media, the ways the government took power that did not belong to them to go to war on the American people, the lengths they went to destroy Trump and anyone who voted for him is the scandal, and it is the war. Trump is as good as it gets for MAGA. They will never have anyone that rich, that tough, that famous, that tenacious, that dedicated to fight for them again. Never. This was a once-in-a-generation opportunity, with a Gray Champion of the Fourth Turning attempting to stop the totalitarian takeover of this country and bring back a freer country to those of us who don’t want to live under the boot of tyrants. If MAGA allows their resentment over Israel and their temporary dip in finances to open the door to the Democrats, they will not know what hit them. They will once again be ordered to comply, or else. Their speech will be censored, especially if Democrats get control of AI. They will finally have Big Brother and a surveillance operation that already knows too much about all of us. With that power, they'll create Orwell’s nightmare of 1984. How do I know? Because I was one of them. I became a target for them. I was attacked, policed, and punished for thought crimes long before I ever became a Trump voter. They have changed nothing. They never had to change. No one has ever held them accountable except us voters. All I can hope is that I’m wrong. I can only hope that no one cares what Marjorie Taylor-Greene or Tucker Carlson thinks. I hope people laugh at my pessimistic outlook after November. But I watched everything I loved become captured in a totalitarian utopian cult - movies, books, science, education - they had the hearts and minds of Americans from preschool through college through the workforce. There was no escape. Their mandated ideology was and remains everywhere. And I know that if the Democrats take the House and the Senate, they will not only undo everything Trump did, but they will rig the system so they never lose another election ever again. We already saw them do it in 2020. Obama’s War The collective hate that now defines and consumes tod… 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

  3. Oct 7

    The Word “Genocide” Has Lost All Meaning

    I always knew growing up half-Jewish meant hiding. I figured out early on that it wasn’t something you were supposed to be. My mother isn’t Jewish and, if anything, has never been a fan of Jews — especially now. It’s just the kind of thing you know growing up, even if you don’t talk much about it. Hollywood rarely presented Jewish people to American audiences, even if Hollywood was run by Jews. That left me wondering why not. Did I look Jewish? Was that bad? As a young woman, I knew it meant I didn’t fit either place. I didn’t fit in the Jewish community, and I didn’t fit outside of it. But somehow I just knew the shame that came with being born half-Jewish, or Jewish enough for the camps. A boyfriend once said, “They have to have done something…” Meaning: why were they so hated and persecuted? I can’t say I ever knew the answer, because I never knew the history. I didn’t think about it much because my heroes, many of whom were Jewish, also didn’t talk much about it — Bob Dylan, Woody Allen, Leonard Cohen, or the Coen brothers. Steven Spielberg would finally address it in Schindler’s List, and that movie would help keep the memory of the Holocaust alive. But that was 1993. A lifetime ago. How is it that it could be 2026 and we’d be living through a moment in history where they have turned “Zionist” into a slur? Was it always? And how easy it is now to see the word “Jew” hurled on social media as an insult so casually. How could it be that Tucker Carlson, like so many others, could be so soft on Hitler now? He assumed, wrongly, that it was not Hitler’s fault we went to war. With Jacob Reese-Mogg: Here is Victor Davis Hanson: Whole thing here. It was so ignorant and dangerous of Tucker to spread these lies about Hitler that even Poland’s embassy in Washington had to issue a statement. And every time I post about this, I know I will lose subscribers, especially paid ones, because Tucker Carlson has about 5.8 million subscribers on YouTube, not quite 6 million but getting there. And me, well, let’s just say I don’t have that many. Undeniable tension is building within the MAGA movement as we head into the midterms. There are so many angry people on the Right, resentful that we bombed Iran “for Israel.” Foreign wars quickly became Israel’s war. Then it became about the money sent to Israel. But now, it’s anger at Trump for siding with the Jews. I tried to stay neutral on the war in Gaza and have not talked much about what is happening on the Left and the Right. But it is getting too big to ignore. We are at a dramatic inflection point where the word “genocide” is hurled as both a weapon and a struggle session. SAY THE WORD, say it! Say it’s genocide! It’s the last worst word. The rest of the words have been tossed on the scrap heap: fascism, Nazi, dictator, racist, rapist, bigot, sexist, homophobe, transphobe. What do words even mean anymore? They’ve been twisted, co-opted, and reshaped to control how we think about ourselves in the world and how we define what we believe. If you say “it’s a genocide,” then you are in. If you deny it, you’re one of the bad people. They say it on the Left as emotional blackmail. They say it on the Right to imply intent. Those evil Jews just want to kill Palestinians when everyone knows the opposite is true. Genocide Every day, images flood social media of what Gaza looks like now after it was bombed by Israel. That’s proof of genocide, they said. How can it not be genocide? But the word they are looking for is war. That is what losing a war looks like. It is also what winning a war looks like. World War II was beyond anything most people alive today could ever imagine. They can’t remember, and no one will tell them what war looks like. But here is what it looks like. The Allies bombing Berlin into rubble. Hiroshima and Nagasaki after getting nuked: Is that “genocide”? No, that’s war. Genocide is the attempt to kill a whole people based on their ethnicity or their religion. That’s not what the Allies did in World War II, and it’s not what Israel has done now. If anything, the opposite is true. Hamas, like much of the Islamic world, wants not just to kill Jews but to wipe them off the map. That’s genocide. They just don’t have the wealth or the weaponry to carry it out. Here is Bill Maher: Trump hit Iran to castrate a genocidal regime before it could nuke Israel, yes, but also other countries too. Death is nothing to jihadists. They have no problem using children as tools of propaganda and weapons of war as long as it serves a higher purpose. October 7th was meant to be so bad that Israel had to respond, and then they would have their holy war to turn hearts and minds against Israel all over the world. The footage from the war is their proof to the world that Jews are the bad ones, the Nazis, and Israel therefore must be destroyed. From the River to the Sea… Antisemitism is nothing compared to genocide For a time, it was bad to be antisemitic. Now, it feels like yet another word that has no power. Anyone who is charged with antisemitism can deflect it much more easily than being called a rapist or a racist. It’s a way out for Jews who do not wish to be hated or shunned for being Jewish but not a Zionist, or Jewish but not approving of what Israel has done, Jewish but not really. But the problem is that Israel is the only place left where Jews could reclaim their homeland. As Jeremy Boreing said so eloquently, they have nowhere else to go. The war against them has lasted thousands of years. It won’t stop any time soon. Whole thing here. I can see the fight now, too. It’s not Left or Right. It’s not blue or red. It’s a fight for Western civilization. Israel represents not just democracy but civilization in an uncivilized part of the world. Forcing women to cover their faces and bodies, marrying 9-year-olds, throwing gay people off rooftops, and stoning women to death is not civilized, and no amount of woke ideology will change that. It is not civilized to fly airplanes into buildings and mass murder thousands of Americans. It’s not civilized to wear a suicide vest and blow up a building. It’s not civilized to paraglide into the Nova music festival and rape, torture, and murder Israelis for Allah. We are fighting a war here, too. It’s a war for the truth. We’ll have politicians winning elections now who will push the lies, some in office already do. And they will try to distort and co-opt October 7th. The woke white liberals desperately want this to be a story about white supremacy and oppressed brown people, but at some point, there is no saving the entire world. There is saving civilization. This Claude AI video beautifully illustrating Western civilization went viral last week, and nothing has put things into perspective better than this. So here are some hard truths: War isn’t exactly civilized either. It’s the worst thing human beings can do to each other, but we’ve been doing it almost as long as we’ve been around. But if someone starts a war, they’d best be prepared to fight to the death. One side or the other will win. And one side will lose. Hitler would not have stopped. He had to be stopped. Hamas will not stop, and they have to be stopped. Gaza looks that way not because of genocide, but because of war. Hamas can surrender any time. That would not be true if this were a genocide. If Israel walks away from finishing the job, they will lose the war, and Hamas will win. They are fighting for the civilized world they built. So are we. We will lose our country if we do not understand that. I would fight for Israel’s right to keep its home even if I weren’t half-Jewish. It isn’t my home. But it is theirs. My father was Jewish and went to Hebrew school. I wasn’t raised with any faith at all, except for the times I spent at my grandmother’s house, where she would celebrate the traditional holidays, both Christmas and Chanukah. She died a long time ago. I think of her now, what she would think of me, what she would want me to fight for, what she would want m… 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

  4. Oct 2

    The Cornell 7 and The “Consent” Trap

    I’m probably the last person who should write about morality. I grew up on the Left, after all: a hippie childhood in Topanga Canyon, then coming of age as the first generation after Roe v. Wade as a liberated woman who did whatever I wanted, dressed however I wanted, and always felt free in my mind and heart. I was never someone who would have demanded morality. I didn’t even know what that was. I watched the counterculture revolution of the 1960s and 1970s break free of norms and traditions. Where we’ve ended up is at the Empire’s end: a Caligula-like culture that strictly polices thought, speech, racism, sexism, homophobia, bigotry of any kind, but one that also treats morality and decency as oppressive relics from a patriarchal past. So when a 20-year-old Jane Doe walked into the Chi Phi fraternity at Cornell on October 24, 2024, her only armor was the rule of “consent.” As long as it was okay with her and she said so, anything goes. She agreed to a threesome with two 20-year-olds, but then, when more men flocked to her body like seagulls chasing a bag of chips left on the beach, she was too high or drunk to even know how to get herself out of it. No one knew how to just say this is wrong, this is bad behavior because they don’t live in a culture that believes that — not unless it’s rape. But this wasn’t rape by any legal definition. She consented, then she consented again. Then, she was drowning in a sea of consent, and so were they. In the days, weeks, and months that followed, Jane Doe would absorb the truth about what really happened that night. Shame would follow when she saw her classmates pointing and laughing at her, calling her a slut, saying it was a “gang bang.” If the boys said nothing, she said nothing; no one would know what they did that night, but the boys bragged about it. They betrayed her trust, and she ended up looking bad. The real kicker was being disinvited to that same frat with those same guys. In her mind, she was the one being punished and not the boys. From the New York Times: At Chi Phi, the fraternity was preparing for a Halloween party, and Jane Doe was eager to attend. Text messages included in the investigation show Mr. Ingalls assuring Jane Doe that he and other fraternity members wanted her to be there. “chi phi is your house and you are welcome here,” he wrote, relaying the views of the fraternity’s president, who was not among those accused of sexual assault. “thank u i really appreciate that,” Jane Doe responded. “ But then Jane Doe received a phone call from the fraternity’s president, according to the text messages. She was disinvited from the party. It was for her own good, he said. Jane Doe sent a biting text to Mr. Ingalls. “I knew this was going to happen,” she wrote. “The woman will always get the short end of the stick. Yall aren’t my friends. Yall are covering your asses.” That’s when the anger and resentment set in, and eventually, it would fester until she decided she needed to get something back, something she lost in her efforts to protect the boys and not herself. Whether she knew it or not, she was walking around with a loaded gun and a trigger she could pull at any time. Two years later, she did just that, and the righteous, delusional, fanatical mob ignited into a frenzy. Even AOC got into the mix, condemning and convicting the boys, putting an image in everyone’s head about what happened that night. Everything that came next has been a horror show. The Cornell newspaper released the boys' names, knowing that in modern-day America there can be no such thing as due process. If she was accusing them of rape, gang rape, then they were guilty. The University newspaper, the Cornell Sun, wrote an op-ed naming the boys: We refuse for this victim to be reduced to just another story. Cornell has failed to protect its students. Cornell has failed to address the growing issue of sexual assault on campus with its pathetic task force. Cornell has failed the student allegedly raped by those seven men at Chi Phi in October 2024. Cornell has failed her. Cornell has failed us. To Matthew Ingalls, Jonathan Newell, Winston Lee, Gillio Lopes, Diego Sarabia, Scott Norris and Scott Kretzschmar: We know who you are and we refuse to let you benefit from this University’s concealment. Two websites cropped up to name and shame the boys. One is Cornellseven.com, run and operated by activist Aaron B: And the other, The Cornell 7, run by a former South Park writer, Toby Morton. Some guy was mistakenly identified as one of them and began receiving death threats: They had their villains. They just needed their innocent victim. Jane Doe is such a perfect name for the kind of victim our culture seems to so desperately need. A helpless baby deer caught in the headlights just before she’s run over. In their mind’s eye, she had been passed out as men did a train on her. In reality, that was never true. In reality, she did consent. It was only later, as she thought about it, that she decided it wasn’t consensual. None of them got away clean. They all carried with them a film of shame. It is not cool anymore among Gen Z and younger to have morals when it comes to sex. Consent is all they decide matters. And yet, morality is the only thing that might have stopped Jane Doe from consenting to the threesome in the first place. It’s okay to say that allowing men to snort ketamine off your “perfect body” is wrong. Not to excuse the boys. Like her, they’ve been saturated in a culture that doesn’t think morality is cool either. It’s a culture where anything goes for almost everyone, unless you happen to be a heterosexual man. Then, you are sequestered off into the booming online porn industry where sex is everywhere, any kind of sex, especially group sex with girls who act like they want it and anything goes. Imagine having one of these typical porn scenarios playing out in the very next room. Hollywood could not have cast them better if they were looking for inclusive and representative, though they’d never portray the alleged rapists as anything other than white. We see them now, their faces innocent and smiling, unaware of what lies ahead. Each image on the website looks like a “wanted: dead or alive” poster. The porn industry is booming to something like $13-60 billion a year. Young heterosexual men have nowhere else to turn because just looking at a girl across a room can be seen as predatory now, let alone asking for a phone number and the fear that goes along with dating a woman who can turn around and accuse you of anything. Ah, but now, they can have an entire industry of OnlyFans girls welcoming them in, cultivating what feels like a real relationship almost, and even more importantly, they’re not treated like rapists. Barely legal virgins making cute little TikToks to build a massive client base on OnlyFans and make hundreds of millions? Check. Lily Phillips sleeping with 100 guys in a train and claiming she’s doing society a favor by helping these men out? Check. Bonnie Blue proud of all the men she slept with and holding a Baby Daddy reveal party? Check. And everywhere they look in culture, extreme sexuality is on display for almost every kind of person except them. Queer sexuality especially is treated like some kind of sacred ritual to be encouraged, with no limits. Kids are even exposed to it because what parent would be caught dead sounding like a bigot? They seem obsessed with their private parts in deciding what gender they might be. This is all way too much for children. Camryn Manheim went viral for saying the quiet part out loud: how white liberal women today desperately need queer kids to give them status in the non-binary, Ceterosexual, polysexual, multisexual, and pansexual world of Gen Z. Of course she’s virtue-signaling for applause and making jokes to make gay sons feel better, but it also has the opposite effect by further shaming heterosexual sons, like they are somehow the minority. It isn’t th… 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

  5. Sep 30

    A Happy Ending for Jasper

    I just made this little video as a Thank You to all of you who shared your kind words and sent in donations to help with vet bills. I am always overwhelmed by your kindness. I am hoping Jasper is on the mend. He has packed on some weight from the steroids, but so far he seems to be healing. His hair is growing back, and he is getting his energy back, even chasing squirrels and growling at strangers. I got a little worried last night because yesterday was his first full day without Prednisone. He was a little agitated at night, and I kept checking for fever. So far, so good, thank you, God. And thank you, dear readers, for caring about my pup! More photos in the video above. 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

  6. Sep 26

    Only MAGA Can Stop the “Islamo-Commie” Takeover of America

    MAGA, it would seem, is on the ropes. Things are looking dire. Tucker Carlson is appearing on NPR talking about removing Trump for threatening nuclear war, even though, you know, not long ago he was telling Ted Cruz that we should definitely nuke a country if they tried to assassinate our president. Here is Ben Shapiro: Marjorie Taylor Greene has learned the trick of the elite Left that you can be as rich as you want, live wherever you want, party all you want, marry and spend lavishly as long as you also hate on Trump and name-drop the “resistance.” Hey, it’s nice work if you can get it. The idea is that Trump was supposed to rebuff Israel, ignore Iran’s threats of building a nuke because of Israel, find pedophiles that do not exist in the Epstein Files buried because of Israel, and listen to Tucker Carlson for advice OR ELSE. But really, it’s the Jews. It’s always been the Jews. After ten years of Trump giving himself over to fight for representation of people who have been thrown away like human garbage by a country ruled by an aristocratic ideological utopian cult, after being the target of the worst attacks I’ve ever seen - his hair, his weight, his hands, his skin, his daughter, his sons, his wife, his walk, his clothes, what he says, what he does, where he goes, what he eats- here we are again: the walls are closing in, only this time the calls are coming from inside the house. How hard would it be, you know, just for old times’ sake, to use your vote to prevent what is likely to be the Series Finale of the Trump Show? Him getting impeached a third time, maybe booted out of office this time. Sure, it would take a large majority of Senate Republicans, but by now, why wouldn’t they go along with it? Then, he’d be prosecuted and frog-marched off in an orange jumpsuit as Jen Psaki and Kara Swisher throw a party at Rosie O’Donnell’s house, livestreamed on The View. I mean, this is your future MAGA, should you choose to accept it: And for these folks, their dream is finally coming true. Their ten-year war is about to come to an end because Trump supporters are jumping ships like rats. But someone should tell them their future will look grim with Trump out of the way. Maybe they don’t realize what’s coming, how much worse it will be than either the country under Joe Biden or Donald Trump. Maybe they have no idea what’s in store for them after the revolution. Maybe the revolutionaries somehow take X from Elon. Maybe they take control of AI and gain mind-control capabilities for generations to come. I know these people. They do it with a smile and the best intentions, but they want absolute power. They want their utopia back, and you are in the way. The biggest threat is what will happen to our freedom, something most are not even factoring into the equation, but I know because I come from the Left. In China, in Iran, in other countries run by dictators, everything seems to be going very well. People are smiling, going to work, living their lives and saying nothing. They stay silent because they know what will happen if they ever say what they really think. My daughter has grown up inside of a culture now that is ruled by the same kind of fear. She already knows that she can’t say what she really thinks because everyone on the Left knows. They can’t write books they want to write—they can’t tell the truth—but they still have to smile and pretend everything is going great in utopia! They have scared an entire generation into compliance. And it’s oh so much worse now that Sharia Law has entered the chat. Oh, I know we’re not supposed to think of guys like Abdul El-Sayed and Zohran Mamdani as anti-American terrorists - that’s racist! But the more I think about it, the more I think this alliance was inevitable: two strident fundamentalist ideologies that hate America’s history and want to remake it from the ground up as something completely different, and they’re prepared to use their army of fanatics and scolds to make everyone go along with it. The Left and their legacy media have spent ten years lying about Trump, saying fascism or authoritarianism was the threat. But it was never the Trump side that represented oppression and societal control. It’s always been the Left. And now, it’s gone to the next level. And the only one standing in their way, the Gray Champion of the Fourth Turning, the guy so many in MAGA have turned against, is The Donald. Perfect? No. Flawed, beyond. Messy — he makes it up as he goes along. Offends people casually. Can’t be controlled, but this man is the one, the only one who was tough enough, rich enough, and determined enough to stand up to the most powerful political party in American history and beat them twice. He’s not done smart things this time around. He’s been too careless with his second win. He enriched himself and his family. He might have made a mistake trying to end the forever war with Iran. But on his worst day, he is still the one to lead us to a brighter future, away from totalitarianism, away from fanaticism, away from societal control. A Blue Tsunami The conspiracy theories started instantly after Charlie’s death. The Jews did it, the same people who are hidden in the Epstein Files - the Pizzagate of it all - the dangerous invisible menace that was choking the life out of all good things in America. Genocide and pedophiles, Epstein and Iran. And all of that came before they found their real weapon: affordability. Note the pivot by the Left away from “abolish ICE” and “Trans women are women” to kitchen table issues. Don’t be fooled. It’s just a new strategy to the same end goal. Affordability! That got MAGA’s attention. Gas prices are high. Trump couldn’t wave his magic wand and get rid of the inflation hangover from 2020. Tariffs were implemented to help Americans bring back manufacturing, but they seem to have had the opposite effect by making things cost more—or so they say. I haven’t seen it myself. It just looks like politics as usual to me. Mark Halperin keeps suggesting a Blue Tsunami wipeout is coming in November. They could lose both the House and the Senate. And Texas. Cook Political Report has now predicted doom as well, and even Rasmussen is coming up blue. One of Trump’s gifts has always been eternal optimism. They threw their whole arsenal at him, and he’d pop up cheerily, wave to the crowd with a thumbs up, and get one with it. Now, that might not work for the first time in ten years because his own side is going against him. Rick Wilson must be uncorking the champagne every night. Rachel Maddow is probably dancing naked under the full moon. Should this be the moment MAGA has had enough and turns on the only guy who saw them at all, let alone fought for them, people like this sad woman will finally have their dreams come true. Some people are still out there trying to hold the line, but it seems nearly impossible now. How to Stop the Islamo-Commie Takeover For ten years, the Democrats never figured out that the only way to stop Trump was to offer the people something better. Fear can only take you so far. The GOP can’t sell fear alone because most Americans don’t understand an existential threat like Communism fused with Islam. In 1932, Herbert Hoover was painted as out of touch, with “rugged individualism” not matching the suffering of America’s underclass hit hard by the Great Depression. FDR won in a landslide and served for four terms, through World War II. So how bad will it get if the Democrats win? Will they keep Trump or persecute him for the next two years? Will they impeach all of his Cabinet members? Try them for war crimes? Trump was the Moonshot In 2020, nothing in my life made sense anymore. The media I trusted were lying. The friends I had were too scared to speak out, and mobs were coming for me on almost a daily basis. I was alone. My daughter was away. All I could see coming off of my social media was hate. The most overwhelming and ugly hate I’d ever seen in my life, all aimed a… 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

  7. Sep 19

    Why We Can’t Feel 9/11 25 Years Later

    What kind of people would dance in the streets after the 9/11 terrorist attack that killed upwards of 3,000 people? The same ones who have now become elevated martyrs by large swaths of the Global Left: the Palestinians. Katie Couric, like most mainstream journalists back then, had no problem exposing such monstrous behavior by those fed a steady diet of dehumanization of the American people. Would she do it today? No. Would any of them do it today? No. Who would celebrate the live execution of a prominent activist on the Right, so much so that they’d lose their jobs for exposing what sociopaths they really are? Hundreds, if not thousands, on the Left did just that. Radicalized or mainstream, it didn’t matter. They have become what the Palestinians were back then: so propagandized and radicalized, they’ve lost their humanity. You can see it now in those TikTok videos that have turned “When it Happens” into a viral trend. That’s what ten years of dehumanizing can do to otherwise decent people. They say they’re decent, but TikTok proves otherwise. They have cast themselves as morally superior to the other half of the country and would point to how some on the Right mocked George Floyd after his death in 2020. But the difference is that many prominent Republicans like Ted Cruz instantly condemned it. No Democrat has condemned the mockery and the celebration of Charlie’s death. Oh sure, they all said what they had to say: the standard “violence has no place in our politics.” They said it, but did they mean it? How could they if they’ve never condemned the rising cult-like fantasies of Trump’s death and the celebration of Charlie's execution? If anything, the Democrats were more worried Charlie’s influence would grow, so they sent out their One True King, Barack Obama, to put Charlie’s legacy in context. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did the same thing, acting as though what Charlie said - the cherry-picked, out-of-context quotes fed to them- was worse than their own side mocking and celebrating his murder. His words were worse than his death. But that is who they are now. Speech is violence. Speech is hate. Speech must be tightly monitored and controlled. Is assassinating Charlie Kirk or trying to assassinate Donald Trump any different from the Jihadists who mass-murdered journalists at Charlie Hebdo in Paris for blasphemy against Mohammad? Hasan Piker, aka the “Twitch streamer in California,” like Dean Withers, condemned those who made jokes of Charlie’s death. At least at first. Once Piker sensed the vacuum left in Charlie’s absence, he turned his death into a viral meme just a month or so later. Credit to Axios’ Alex Thompson for pressing him to explain it. Piker’s song became a TikTok dance meme and a permission structure for many to showcase themselves as dead-eyed zombies dancing to the sound of the bullet hitting his neck a year later for the “Kirkaversary.” Utopias only have two paths forward. They either collapse or they become more authoritarian. The Left still hasn’t confronted the radical elements on their side, not just Hasan Piker, but the many shooters who have risen up to become martyrs and heroes. They mock, they meme, but underneath it all, as with Al-Qaeda or other radical Islamic groups, what motivates them is pure hatred. Words are violence. Words are hatred, and “some hate can’t be negotiated out.” They can laugh it off all they want, but they’ve left a paper trail. Turning Point put up a Charlie Kirk statue, and it was immediately vandalized. If they can meme a live execution and feel nothing, then why wouldn’t they see America as bad or worse than Al-Qaeda? The oppressor/oppressed indoctrination factory that is public schools and universities has raised them in the good/evil binary. Video games, IP, and superhero movies all adopted that binary, and after Columbine and 9/11, parents like me shut our kids indoors to keep them safe, and this good/evil binary would one day become white people evil, brown people good, and Al-Qaeda, like the Palestinians, can’t be seen as the villains. Abdul El-Sayed and Zohran Mamdani have arisen as cult leaders almost because there is nothing the Left will hold them accountable for, lest they be called racists. No one will look at El-Sayed’s erased history, the videos or the tweets. What did he think? What does he still think? No one will know because no one would dare ask. The Democrats have never been held accountable for the sharp rise of radicalized violence and death fantasies that have gone mainstream. They’re rewarded for it with likes and reposts. They’ve never confronted it. They’ve never solved it, and the legacy media has supported them every step of the way, all the while demonizing MAGA as the more extreme side. Piker was their masculine, patriarchal, non-white Joe Rogan. No more Mr. Nice Guy! Let’s get those Gen-Z and male voters. That was the plan anyway. Now, maybe it’s becoming a mess, a liability. Then again, maybe not. Maybe this is just who they are now. How We Got Here I know how we got here because I grew up on the Left. I was one of these people. I know what it felt like that day the towers were hit. I know why we pivoted so quickly to focus on the greater evil that was George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and those two wars that did what the war on Gaza has now done: flip the script, so America is the bad guy. I know what happened in our schools. I know how women like me grew in power in America and changed our society amid the “Great Feminization.” I know what happened to my daughter’s generation, why so many white kids felt such deep shame they were willing to do anything to escape their own skin, even destroying their own bodies at the hands of a fundamentalist cult. I know what it was like when Obama won and how we built our utopia - a better America shaped by more women and what it was like when our first female president was denied the win but just barely, putting in power a guy who would ultimately redeem Bush and Cheney and be sold as the World’s Greatest Evil to whole generations for the past ten years. We were just kidding with Bush and Cheney. Trump is the really, really bad guy. And everyone went along with it. Maybe I didn’t think it would go so far as young men picking up weapons to murder as part of the “resistance.” Maybe I didn’t think, in the wake of Charlie’s death, a guy like Hasan Piker would become such an influential voice and do exactly the opposite of what Charlie did by teaching young people to hate America. But that’s what happens when a utopia becomes a totalitarian dystopia, closer to fascism than this country has ever gotten and not that far from where Al-Qaeda was on the eve of 9/11 - so full of hate and revenge fantasies that they would take advantage of the same people who welcomed them into their country and treated them with kindness. I certainly would not have thought any of them, let alone most of them, would see the war in Gaza as “genocide” and then apply that to all of America and its history, redeeming the monsters who attacked us on 9/11. We’re the bad guys, they insist. We’re the terrorists. But here we are, America. We are about to put these people who hate this country, its history, and many of its citizens, in power. We’re about to sell out the American dream because of high gas prices. It’s not lost on me that Democrats have been saying the same thing to their voters. I was one of them. I see the mirror image of this moment: when gas prices and inflation were too high under Biden, Democrats begged Americans to vote for Kamala to save the country. I know they see it that way too. But I’ve been on both sides. I know each side’s strengths and weaknesses. And that’s why I know the side that either celebrated the murder of Charlie Kirk or said nothing about those who did is the side that is dangerous not just for America but for humanity. President Select My daughter was just three when the towers were hit. It was three hours early in California. My French boyfrien… 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

  8. Sep 10

    Why They Had to Kill Charlie Kirk Twice

    America lived through a political assassination one year ago today, and millions of people either barely noticed, shrugged it off, or openly celebrated. That was one of the darkest days in American history, a day I never thought I’d live through, watching people I used to know lose their humanity. One famous example was the actress Amanda Seyfried, who posted this: Charlie Kirk did not incite violence, and he was not “hateful.” Tyler Robinson shot Charlie Kirk to please people like Amanda Seyfried. She doesn’t regret her words. She stands by them, like the good little cult member she is. She complained about having to hire a bodyguard. She should feel lucky she wasn’t shot in the neck, lucky her kids don’t have to grow up without her. The Left felt emboldened by his death, even going so far as to celebrate it then and even now. When people lost their jobs for it - because who wants to employ a sociopathic monster - they whined about free speech. Jimmy Kimmel's cold heart could only make a bad situation worse. And then the videos. They tweeted and were rewarded for their ugliness. There was no bottom. I watched in horror as they went at Charlie’s memory; so scared were they that his legacy would expand and grow like a mushroom cloud. They thought their true hatred could extinguish everything Charlie left behind, but they were wrong. They were attacking a cartoon they invented, not the real Charlie Kirk. Charlie was right in the text he wrote the day before he died that Andrew Wilson read: the Left was trying to kill him. Tyler Robinson said the reason he killed Charlie Kirk was that “Some hate can’t be negotiated out.” Amanda Seyfried said “hate,” so did Tyler Robinson, and so did his defense attorney at the hearing where Robinson pled Not Guilty. The Left killed Charlie Kirk. Tyler Robinson just pulled the trigger. Their conviction in the Court of Public Opinion was that dissent was hate and Charlie Kirk would not stop spreading it; therefore, he should be silenced one way or another. Assassinations don’t happen every day, not in my lifetime anyway, especially not from a rooftop at a public event. A year prior to Charlie’s murder, on July 13, 2024, another killer climbed onto a rooftop and almost shot Trump to death. He missed. Just barely. There would be two more assassination attempts on Trump’s life, and plenty more that might have been. Why is it so important to the Left that their enemies die? Because that’s where all of this totalitarianism has to go. Charlie stood for exactly the opposite. He didn’t incite violence. He stood up for robust debate. But to the Left, they don’t believe that, which is why they’ve begun to resort to violence, excusing violence, celebrating violence. To them, that’s their solution to their biggest problem - what to do with all of these people who don’t agree with them? Hate to the Left is described as being anti-abortion, against “transing the kids,” and holding traditional beliefs about family and faith. That’s the first layer. It goes deeper. If you are against illegal immigration, you’re a fascist; if you support lower taxes, you’re killing Americans. “You’re a racist, a bigot, a homophobe, a transphobe.” They don’t even know what defines their hate anymore. They just know they’re consumed by it, which is all the more ironic given that they tagged Charlie with that word: hate. There was nothing hateful about Charlie Kirk, and he leaves behind a deep, dark hole that won’t be filled any time soon. The Left has become not unlike the jihadists who kill those who mock Allah. Even if they aren’t condoning violence, they’re condoning punishing people just for the crime of criticizing them. That no one shamed those who celebrated tells you everything about their values, and we’re supposed to put these people back in power? No, Charlie wanted to talk to them, to change their minds, to put himself in danger every time he faced them. They hit him with everything they had to shut him up, and nothing worked. And Charlie Kirk got through to them just by stating his opinion and making his case. Imagine that. He was about the best the Right had to offer. He was a lighthouse. The Left had to kill Charlie again because they had to kill his ideas, his thoughts, his speech, lest they somehow find a way out and reach the minds of the indoctrinated and maybe introduce critical thinking. We can’t have that. Are there enough voices to counter the lies by the Left as they attempt to write Charlie’s history? I don’t know. But just for the record, here is how Charlie Kirk spoke about gay people or the LGBT community. Here is how he spoke when confronted about his opinion on affirmative action. He never backed off of what he believed, but he made indoctrinated college kids defend what they’d been taught, and many of them might have left those conversations asking questions too, like how it was that they spent so much of their education being told what to think, not how to think. That is the gift Charlie Kirk gave them. He taught them what college should have - how to think. How to reason. How to question. And for that, he was “spreading too much hate.” No one on the Left had any curiosity about Charlie Kirk because to question the official narrative is too dangerous. But one person did and made this viral TikTok. Shabooki_Sunshine puts into words how I feel, too. I wish more people on the Left would think this way. It wasn’t only the Left. A faction of the Right also rose up in an attempt to kill what Charlie built and what he stood for, attempting to steal his legacy, destroy his widow, and undo everything he worked his entire life to build. The worst of them is the ugly, rotten heart of Candace Owens, bitter that Charlie distanced himself from her, who was exiled from Turning Point because she, like so many of them, had gone full Hitler in deciding the Jews were responsible for all of the evils in the world. That was never Charlie Kirk. Owens flew in like a hungry vulture to pick at Charlie’s corpse and steal his legacy, as she has no legacy of her own. Even now, on the one-year anniversary of her death, she’s harassing his widow, making it all about her. Has there ever been such a loathsome creature? She has done nothing good for humanity or tried to change minds in any positive way. Her entire platform is built on taking advantage of very stupid people, women mostly, who are transfixed by her gobbledegook. Charlie deserved better, but Candace stole him and now pretends he belongs to her. Most disappointing of all are those whom Charlie trusted, bowing in silent deference to Candace, either because they don’t want to alienate her large audience or they’re afraid of her, so they stay silent. They say nothing as she drags Erika Kirk into the arena again and again, blaming her for Charlie’s murder, blaming the Jews, and blaming Erika for being manipulated by the Jews. It is a black hole of delusion and bitterness. Candace Owens had to kill Charlie a second time because she didn’t like the guy who saw her for who she really was, because, of course, he did. Any bright light could figure that one out, even if he was too trusting for too long. She needed him to die a different way so she could rob the grave and get rich. It shouldn’t be that Candace wrote herself into his story so that everyone talking about Charlie Kirk or Erika will have to talk about her, too. But for an empty-eyed sociopath like Candace, even negative attention is better than none at all. The truth is that even in death, Charlie still outclasses all of them, on the Left and the Right, who are trying to kill him twice. The more they lie about him, the less power they have. They could not build what he built. They could not reach the lost boys cast aside by an indifferent cult that had no place for the majority of Americans who don’t have an identity category to elevate themselves and are just trying to live decent lives. They failed to kill Charlie’s memory because his goodness shines throu… 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

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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

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