Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning with Sasha Stone

One Last Ride….=It’s been a long time coming, hasn’t it MAGA? What a ride it’s been for you.As people like me were arguing with Bernie bros about the 2016 nomination for president and were caught up in our unending phantasmagoria about a “reality TV star” who was rising in the ranks on the Right, you were being verbally and physically attacked already, bullied at rallies, spit on, kicked, called racists, Nazis, fascists, bigots. It would only get worse.How far you’ve come from the last inaugural when so many protesters burned cars and smashed windows, screaming, “Not my president.”The beautiful and elegant Melania Trump never graced the cover of any magazine. They mocked her Christmas decorations and called her an uncaring Nazi.But almost no one got it worse than Ivanka Trump, although all the Trump kids were put through the dehumanizer the Left had become. They were called ugly and inbred. There were jokes about Trump sleeping with his own daughter just because he was proud of her and praised her, as he does all of his kids. This was mainstream on the Left, dehumanization on a grand scale.As long as that was the version we told ourselves — that they were the rich, hollow, power-hungry elites like the cast of Succession, we could convince ourselves we were the hard-scrabble people lifting up the minority class and making the world a better place one marginalized group at a time. But what of the majority?It would eventually lead to the government and their media lying about you on January 6th, riding the hysteria to ban the social media app Parler from Amazon’s web server and the then-sitting president of the United States from YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.It seemed there was no place for you in America anymore. But what did you do in the face of that kind of social and political oppression? You rose up, and you fought back. You didn’t have to do it by smashing windows or protesting. You did it with true grit, organizing, fundraising, and keeping the MAGA spirit high. You never lost your faith because you knew exactly what you were fighting for and what you were up against.And most of all, your unbreakable loyalty to Trump kept hope alive that one day there might be fairness in government, in our culture, and in our major institutions that decided it was perfectly fine to treat you like hostile invaders in your own country.But people like me had no idea that it was happening. What we heard was that Trump’s rallies were violent, that his supporters were beating up Black people, and that his rallies were like Hitler’s. If you scare people enough, they’ll go along with anything.We were the side that had all of the power. We were the empire. We were never the resistance. That we turned our helplessness and fanaticism into dehumanizing half the country is a shame we should never live down.I didn’t realize it until 2020. I was so trusting of people like Rachel Maddow. I listened to NPR without even thinking about their political bias. We were the side that told the truth, I believed. We weren’t fooled by Fox News and Breitbart. How could anyone not trust NBC News? How could I ever think that what they told me on CNN might not be the whole story?I didn’t realize until the Tom Cotton op-ed disaster at the New York Times that my information was being carefully curated. I watched all of my friends and colleagues crucify Bari Weiss on Twitter for allowing the Cotton piece to be published in the New York Times. It was harm, they said. It would get people killed, they said. It terrorized their staff, they said.Tom Cotton was a United States Senator who merely reported what most Americans already believed. The protests were violent and destructive. A majority of Americans wanted the military to be brought in. Bari Weiss was trying to give the majority a voice in the paper of record.But as we’d done with almost every news story since the beginning of the Trump era, we stretched the truth like taffy to suit our needs. Trump was Hitler, and this was fascism— we’d all convinced ourselves to believe, and with the help of the military “experts,” they trotted out to agree.The truth? They needed the protests to be as violent and chaotic as possible. They encouraged them to make Trump look bad.By 2020, I’d already been the target of so much abuse from the Left. I was called a “white supremacist,” a bigot, a racist, and a transphobe. Many on the Left now just assume it’s true —that I “went to the dark side.”Not a day goes by that someone from my former side does not lob me with some kind of hateful insult. Just yesterday, I was told by a long-time follower of my film site that I was a “vile person,” and they regretted ever following me for all of those years. “Enjoy MAGA,” he said. 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

Joe Biden said goodbye. He wanted to mirror Eisenhower, who once warned of the Military Industrial Complex, but Biden saw something equally alarming—the Big Tech oligarchy. He sees Zuckerberg and Bezos attending Trump’s inaugural. He greatly fears the power of Elon Musk. He realizes that his side lost control of it and now, he wants all of us to be afraid.Well, I’m sorry, Joe. I can’t play that game anymore. It’s time to say goodbye. Farewell, Joe Biden, farewell, Democrats. Farewell, hysteria. Farewell to mandated preferred pronouns in everyone’s bio. Farewell to being forced to lie about whether or not masks work. Farewell to not being allowed to give people the benefit of the doubt. Farewell to being too afraid to ask questions about an experimental vaccine. Farewell to Critical Race and gender theory in elementary schools.Farewell to the ruling oligarchy — yes, Joe. You were the frontman for it. You can’t fool me. I was part of it, too. It was like a daisy chain of paper dolls—Hollywood, all major corporate and cultural institutions, Big Pharma, and all of the ads they pumped into the veins of Americans that showcased the American utopia in all of its splendor. Just take this pill, and you, too, can be with us, in the happy place. Farewell to a government censoring speech via social media. Farewell to the absence of masculinity. Farewell to worrying about every word that comes out of our mouths, what we drive, what we wear on Halloween, what we buy, what we eat, what we watch, what we desire.Farewell to being made to hate ourselves and everything we know to be true but can’t say out loud. Farewell to being the oppressors or the oppressed defined only by the color of our skin. Farewell to hating our history, hating our country, hating our heroes. Farewell to virtue signaling our goodness. Farewell to always being told that it’s better to keep your head down and say nothing about any of it.Farewell to never being able to take a joke. Farewell to seeing problematic content in every movie and farewell to the warning labels now affixed to all of them. Farewell to seeing all men as predators and all women as victims. Farewell to a country ruled by fear because our leaders can’t see it any other way. Farewell to a president who called half the country “ultra fascists,” “ultra MAGA,” and “extreme MAGA Republicans.” Farewell to a government that believes its biggest threat comes from the people of the United States.Farewell to life inside the doomsday cult, where every single day is the end of the world. Farewell to every word taken literally and seen as another chapter of Mein Kampf. Farewell to repression and sanctimony. Farewell to the long, dark winter. Farewell to lawn signs. Farewell to pretending Kamala Harris wasn’t a terrible candidate installed by the deep state. Farewell to ever having to worry about speaking the truth. Farewell to the unshakable hopelessness, the unending sadness, the mourning of the long-forgotten Old Left. It’s never coming back. Everything has to be rebuilt. Welcome to the beginning of the rest of your life. At least now, you can have a life. Bringing it all Back HomeWatching the confirmation hearings was bringing it all back. Adam Schiff was still out of his mind, braying like he’s Cotton Mather in the Oyer in Terminer in Salem, demanding Pam Bondi say Joe Biden “won the election.” Why did it matter so much to him? Are there really that many Americans out there who need to hear those words said out loud?The nominees’ worth depended on whether or not they would stand up to the tyrant fascist racist rapist dictator that they impeached twice, indicted four times convicted on a bogus felony charge, all of which eventually landed in the fevered dreams of a washed-up surfer hippie from Hawaii who got himself a gun and tried to kill the president to SAVE DEMOCRACY. And they still lost. They lost the Electoral College and they lost the popular vote. I never get tired of saying that. Talk about owning the libs. What can we do except quote Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire. HA. HA HA HA.That’s how much America hates them. After all, how hard could it possibly be to beat Hitler? The problem with utopias is that they can’t last. They either must become more authoritarian and thus, less utopian, or they collapse. By the end of our utopia, anyone we knew could be one of those things. A bad person. A sexist. A racist. A homophobe. A bigot. A transphobe. Toxic masculinity. White feminism. Everyone was either an abuser or a victim. The weaker we were, the more we were celebrated. We’d snuffed out all independent thought. We were under constant surveillance by the government, advertisers, AI, algorithms, and each other. We began to wonder what real life even was anymore. It was like Winston and Julia in 1984 trying to carve out some love and lust from the dystopia under Big Brother’s ever-watchful gaze, with children spies at the ready to tattle—and cancel—those who broke the rules. So if you say Joe Biden won the 2020 election, like you say 2+2=5, then democracy might have a chance. But if you dare think for yourself and start looking behind closed doors and see things you aren’t supposed to see, well, now you threaten democracy.When I pushed open the door of the doomsday bunker and escaped, I knew there was no going back. I also knew I couldn’t save anyone, much less the once-great culture I used to love. There is no saving whatever it was we used to call the Left. There is only saving America from what it had become so that all of us at least have a fighting chance.No, it won’t be perfect. Yes, it might be chaos — entertaining chaos — but chaos all the same. We’ll have to learn how to tolerate each other again, live together somehow, and learn this new way of life suddenly foisted upon us with the internet. Now, we know what it looks like to shut ourselves off from people and ideas we cannot control.If the Democrats on Blue Sky and in the Senate Confirmation hearings are any indication, nothing much has changed on the inside. They’re still transfixed by the one guy they couldn’t cancel, the one guy they couldn’t destroy. 1984 Part TwoAnd maybe now we’re about to find out what happens in the sequel. Does Big Brother find a way to regain power by destroying Elon Musk to retake X and make it Twitter again? Do those of us exiled and canceled remain on the outside? Does the New York Times beg Bari Weiss to come back, or The Atlantic to throw themselves at the feet of Walter Kirn, or Rolling Stone magazine, the crap rag it has become, offer Matt Taibbi millions to write for them again?Can those on the inside who have speciated with a whole new language and belief system learn to live with the unwashed masses again? Can they tolerate offensive speech? Can it all be one big, happy, dysfunctional family?On the inside, the news that Carrie Underwood and the Village People were playing at the inaugural birthed a fresh new crop of mass hysteria and rage. So I’m guessing Saturday Night Live won’t have Trump back any time soon. The Oscars won’t ask him to attend, and those who still believe they control this country will hold onto their collapsing empire until ashes, ashes, it all falls down.I don’t know. But it doesn’t matter. Because today we say farewell. And oh, how sweet it is. // 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

Six years ago on Medium, I wrote the following:The Republicans have systematically turned climate change into a partisan issue, you know, like abortion, and have done so to manipulate their gullible electorate into believing the lie that there is no such thing as man-made climate change. They spew the dumbo rhetoric any time they can, that “oh the weather changes all the time.” Or “I don’t believe climate change is real — even if the planet is warming, it isn’t our fault.”Yeah, it is. You dig up fossil fuels and you burn them, that warms the planet. They were buried for millions of years which, in turn, cooled the planet, making it an ideal atmosphere for all kinds of different forms of life, including us. What’s coming next is uncharted territory for humanity. We have no idea how bad it’s going to get. We just know it WILL be bad.I was not only furious with rage, but I was quick to blame the other side for deliberately sabotaging our noble efforts to stop the warming of the planet, as though we ourselves were not contributing to it. We acted like we could buy a hybrid here, go vegan there, recycle our plastic, and be absolved from contributing to this existential crisis we all now must face.It isn’t that I don’t believe the planet is warming, or that sea level won’t rise, or that it is directly the fault of so many people on the planet. What has changed is that I no longer blame the other side, and I no longer see my former side as the good guys in the fight. No, I see them as hypocrites. I was a hypocrite too.I’d been in a bubble for much of my adult life because I lived online, in virtual spaces. Yes, I was raising my daughter in public schools, but those were a bubble too. We all belonged inside the same utopia. We read the same articles. We watched the same news. Our worries were the same worries. We spoke the same language, and all of us shared the belief that the biggest threat we faced was climate change and that the biggest obstacle we faced was the Republicans.And then, my daughter moved across the country, and I got a couple of dogs. Rather than fly and leave my dogs at home, I began driving across the country. Those drives changed everything for me, not just how I saw climate change but how I saw my fellow Americans. This was how people actually lived, not how we did, inside our haze of paper straws and cotton diapers.I saw the trucks driving on the interstates to deliver food and goods, the many hotels that require air conditioning and heating, the slaughterhouse trucks providing food for so many in this country, and the tiny houses in the middle of the desert with one embattled air conditioner sticking out of the window.Looking at all of this, all of these places, and all of these businesses, it was easy to see that there was no turning this thing around. There is no way to convince every state and citizen to hop aboard what is an existential crisis for the upper class. Life just isn’t like that.Everyone wants things that work, cars that run, planes that fly. They want washing machines, dishwashers, flat-screen TVs, office buildings, emergency rooms, and new computers and tech support lines, to buy groceries they can afford, to get fruit in the middle of winter, to watch movies and doom scroll social media — and “every Tweet warms the planet,” as Roy Scranton once wrote.Even if we could convince every single American to accept our fixes, what would we do about Russia, India, or China? We seemed to have gone all in on fantasy but we’re disconnected from reality.What we believe on the Left, or at least we used to, was climate change was Armageddon, doomsday, the end of everything. Therefore, what mattered to us isn’t so much that we solve the problems to survive climate change, but that we convert everyone else to our way of thinking. If we could do that, we believed, we could start making the big changes to our country and world.The Left is still haunted by the ghosts of the past, back when we really did have the power and the opportunity to make real change. We squandered that power, and then we blamed the other side. In so doing, we could wash our hands of real solutions, whether it was gun violence, poverty, failing schools, floods, fires, or hurricanes.And now, in the perfect cocktail of high Santa Ana winds, no rain for months, and a city caught off guard, the fires rampaged through the beaches of the Pacific Palisades and Malibu and the mountains of Alta Dena and continue to burn.There were rumors of not enough water, not enough firefighters, and no way to control the speed of the flames as they ripped through the dry brush, burning one house after another as we watched the tragedy unfold on live television or YouTube.This time, the narrative swirled around California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, and the Los Angeles Mayor, Karen Bass, newly elected in 2022 as the first female and second Black person to serve. Bass had left the country in January, known as the last month of the Santa Ana cycle that comes every Fall.From the University of California:The region sees about 10 Santa Ana wind events a year on average, typically occurring from fall into January. When conditions are dry, as they are right now, these winds can become a severe fire hazard.//end 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

As we approach the four-year anniversary of January 6th, I keep hearing Robin Williams's words from way back: “Reality, what a concept.”It is not reality but unreality that so many on the Left live by. Want to know why Joe Biden’s age was covered up for so long? Why didn’t anyone speak up against puberty blockers before? Why is box office for Hollywood films in near-total collapse and ratings for cable news shows in freefall? Look no further than Obama’s unreality machine.In that unreality, Liz Cheney is not a formerly low-level rep from Wyoming with a famous last name who was voted out in a landslide but is instead an American hero who “put country over party” when she turned what was left of her career into a vendetta against Donald Trump. For that, she was love-bombed by the propaganda press and an instant star in the Democratic Party, the “one good Republican,” as they saw it. Mitt Romney and Adam Kinzinger would be relegated to supporting players.In the unreality, it makes sense for Joe Biden to bestow upon Liz Cheney the Citizens Medal to rapturous applause by the Left.TV appearances and glowing headlines in high-minded outlets like the New York Times reminded me of that line in the Robert Redford film Quiz Show, when they ponder why Charles Van Doren would have to cheat just to win. Because “he’s not going to get on the cover of TIME Magazine as Mark Van Doren’s son.”And so Liz, with her sensible suits and the authoritative tone she got from her father, played an important role in the greatest scam ever perpetrated on the American public, or at least one of them, that Donald Trump was so evil, so dangerous, so powerful he could destroy not just the Constitution but democracy itself.And that his supporters were cult-like obedient zombies who picked up their weapons and stormed the Capitol to hang Mike Pence and overthrow the government. Oh you mean the one protected by the most powerful military force the world has ever known? That government? In the unreality, you must accept that, or you will suffer severe social consequences.The truth was never going to be enough. They needed star witnesses like Cassidy Hutchinson to toss into the media churn to keep the story on Page One every day of the Biden presidency. They needed a Soviet-style primetime show trial wherein the Trump side was not even allowed a proper defense. General Milley and Benny Thompson made guest appearances to remind everyone of what it was all really about - WHITE RAGE.They must really think the American people are that stupid. They had lived through months of violent protesting all Summer, and they were supposed to clutch pearls at a riot at the Capitol? Yes, it was violent, but so were the protests in 2020. Ah, but those protests were “mostly peaceful” and justified in the unreality.It’s the government’s job to meet the needs of its people, not the people’s job to meet the needs of the government. January 6th was a day our politicians should have recognized that their unreality machine left millions of people out. And it was those unheard voices that should have been heard that day. Yes, some of them got violent and breached the Capitol, and they should be punished fairly, but that isn’t what our government did. They went to war on their own citizens, something the Left had never done, not since the Civil War. 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

It is my heart-warm and world-embracing Christmas hope and aspiration that all of us, the high, the low, the rich, the poor, the admired, the despised, the loved, the hated, the civilized, the savage, may eventually be gathered together in a heaven of everlasting rest and peace and bliss, except the inventor of the telephone.Mark Twain - Letter to the Editor, New York Evening World, 23 December 1890If you grow up on the Left, you grow up without religion. After the counterculture movement split from conventional religion in the 1960s, we’d done everything we knew how to do to fill up the eternal emptiness that had us chasing everything from sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll, cults in the 1970s, gurus, and ashrams, the self-help movement, the mental health movement, and eventually, we ended up back where we started.We “found religion,” but this time as the politics of identity, where our happiness depended on how we solved the problems of society, like racism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, and climate change. It came from needing to feel good about ourselves and our world, but it was followed by anger and resentment when we could not convert the entire country to our way of life.The truth about the Left is that they know no other way of life. This was the problem for the Southerners after the Civil War. They, too, knew no other way of life and could not evolve out of their hatred, fear, and hysteria. All they could do was preserve it by banishing those who threatened it. I wish I could say I’ve come out of these past several years with a renewed faith in humanity. The truth is exactly the opposite. What I saw was what collective hatred, fear, and tribalism can do to otherwise decent people. I saw what we’re all capable of when our power is threatened. I saw how easy it is to go along with the crowd, even when what they’re doing is wrong.I always thought the people I called my heroes were made of tougher stuff. Better stuff. Kinder stuff. I always thought my side was the side of the good guys who would be immune to group dehumanization. I also did I think we would ever be the ruling class aristocracy sneering at the middle and working class, gathering all of our culture, wealth, and institutions, and hogging them for ourselves.Now that the empire is in collapse, those with all of the power are scrambling, not just to explain it but as a way to get back some of what’s been taken. Good luck with that one. Take yet another agonizing, unbearable column by your typical Leftist elite, Jill Filipovic, writing for The Guardian:Worse than what, Jill? Indoctrinating children to choose their genders, then surgically or chemically sterilizing them? Or does it just come down to immigrants and their right to cross the border illegally by the millions, their safety, and our safety be damned? Corruption? You mean like government censorship on a laptop or covering up the mental incapacity of the Commander in Chief for four years? Weaponizing the Department of Justice? Immorality? Like what exactly? Lying to the public via the propaganda press? Calling half the country “garbage” or “White Supremacists” or “Nazis”? And what rights? The right to have an opinion without losing your job, status, or social standing? Your right to play in sports as a biological female without having to compete with biological men? Oh, of course not. She means abortion, as usual. Honey, if you want an abortion, there’s a pop-up clinic down the street. People like Jill examine half the country as insects in a jar, watching how they behave in tightly confined spaces, how they respond to being called racists, or how they are de-banked or canceled off of social media. It’s fun, right? To watch the insects get stressed and claw at the glass for a way out? The disgust drips from every word, even as she tries to make nice-nice, now that her ass has been handed to her in a historic, humiliating defeat.Trump won again, Jill. Eat that for breakfast. It isn’t you people who have to learn to tolerate Trump voters. It’s you who have to apologize to them for what you’ve done not only to them but to this country. You have destroyed every great thing you ever built, and listen to you now, pretending you still have the moral high ground. She then tries to explain why she’s writing this at all:To paraphrase a line from Carrie, “Shut up, Jill. Just shut up.”These are the kinds of people I used to call home. I knew them, mingled with them, read them, RT’d them and was Facebook friends with them. Now, they terrify me. They are the banality of evil. They are the side that would go along with segregation, even if they’ll never admit it. They’re the side that would lock arms as the Jews were carted off to camps, and no, they’ll never see themselves that way. She writes:Oh, poor deluded Jill. She has no idea what just happened, does she? It would do her a world of good to start opening her mind to reality, escape the fear bunker, and start interfacing with the truth. She should read David Samuels’ piece in Tablet, one I’ll be writing about in more depth for my next piece: “Trump’s head turn was a perfect example of an event that has no explanation outside the favor of the gods, or whatever modern equivalent involving wind factors and directional probabilities you might prefer to the word “God.” Trump was fated to win, just as Achilles was fated to overcome Hector, because the gods, or if you prefer the forces of cosmic randomness, were on his side, on that day, at that moment. That move not only saved his life by allowing him to escape an assassin’s bullet; it revitalized his chi and set in motion a series of subsequent events that generated a reordering of the entire world.”“You can’t stop what’s coming. It ain’t all waiting on you. That’s vanity.”A Christmas StoryI was always the first to wake up on Christmas morning. It was almost like a job. I’d scramble into the living room before the sun even came up to gaze upon the abundance of treasures beneath the Christmas tree. I never believed Santa was real, but those presents got there somehow. It was my grandmother who enlisted my older sister to help her wrap all of the presents after the rest of us had gone to sleep. It was a magic trick she performed every Christmas to keep the illusion of Santa alive in our imaginations.She thought she had us fooled. We let her pretend. It didn’t matter because every Christmas morning was a rare moment of pure joy. One after the other, we’d tear through the presents, not waiting for each person to finish before moving on to the next. Pure carnage but oh what fun. I never really thought much about what Christmas really means until recently. If it is only about driving the economy or buying stuff, then it isn’t worth celebrating. But if it is about something much bigger than ourselves, a way to unify us as one people under God, well, then it means something.I began thinking back on my life, on my childhood, and how religion fit into it. Most movies during the Hays Code era (before the 1960s and 1970s) were infused with Christian ideology, especially Christmas movies. And why wouldn’t they be? George Bailey prays in It’s a Wonderful Life, and an angel shows up to answer his prayers. In A Charlie Brown Christmas, they sing about the “Newborn King,” who is, of course, Jesus. We all used to share that as a country. It was a thread that united us, along with being American citizens. We all watched these movies because we understood the foundational principles of what made America. That isn’t true anymore. To even reference religion, as I’m doing now, is practically a revolutionary act. There is a new religion in town, a fundamentalist one that offers no path to redemption or forgiveness and demands total compliance or else.What does any of it mean to us now? Is it really just about the list of things we buy? Is it about the movies we all treasure every year? Is it about what unites us, not what divides us? Is it about something bigger than ourselves? Are we still even allowed to say “Merry Christmas?” I don’t have the answers; I just know that I was raised by a devout atheist who hated religion, and thus, I never thought about Christmas other than as a way to give things and get things. But now, thanks to my four years of getting to know Trump supporters, I see that and many other things differently. I wandered out of darkness and despair toward what looked like a golden light of hope and optimism, surrounded by people our ruling class deemed “dangerous” at best and “human garbage” at worst. I knew every step that brought me closer to them would be one more step that separated me from everyone and everything else.As I’ve written so often here, it was another Christmas movie, maybe the best one, that reminded me of what happened to me. It was The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. The moral of that story is that you can’t steal Christmas. It isn’t something you can buy or attain. It isn’t even something you can give. That’s why the Whos in Whoville are still celebrating and singing even after the Grinch takes away every last symbol of Christmas. He couldn’t take away the one thing that mattered most - what was in the hearts and minds of those celebrating.I can’t call myself a Christian or even a person of faith. I lean in, and that’s farther than I did before. But I also know I have learned the same lesson the Grinch did. I saw people abandoned by our political establishment, institutions, and culture - people who should have been angry and bitter. But they weren’t. They were happy. That’s how my heart grew and why I think differently about Christmas now.It wasn’t Trump supporters who demanded I pick a side—it was the Left. They have imagined an unbearable reality for most of us. Perhaps it comforts people like Jill Filipovic, but for the rest of us, we choose the better way, one that values forgiveness, redemption, and humility. And one that allows us to say, even shout, Merry Christmas. So than

I wished I’d edited the OG Hero’s Journey more, but I wanted to finish it as quickly as possible. I kept thinking of things to add, and a professional editor friend of mine gave me some notes. So I tinkered with it a bit, but today, I decided to edit an extended version, a “Director’s Cut,” as a thank you to the premium subscribers.I’ve spent four years now unable to figure out a way to offer extra content as a perk, but I just came up with one. Now, I can add all of those things I wanted to add - like the Trump/Biden Debate, Kamala Harris, a few extra clips like this one from Megyn Kelly:Not to mention the dismissed cases against Trump, the defamation case, etc. I added a few things here and there, and I think it is better than the first one, though it will be longer by about 20 minutes.This is for those who might be interested or enjoyed the first ones. If you sent me money a different way and are still counted as a free subscriber, let me know so I can upgrade you. It isn’t my favorite thing to put things behind a paywall, but I did want to add an additional thank you. In these tough times, I know money is hard to come by. That’s why almost everything I write here is free. But this is a way to appreciate those extra folks who have chipped in. This isn’t the last thing I’ll be posting before Christmas and New Year’s but I wanted to get out anyway.Thanks again to everyone who reads, whether you are premo or not.Sasha 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

[Introduction: I made this as a special gift for Christmas or the holidays because I wanted to do something more than just a regular podcast to say thank you for your support, your friendship, your letters (yes I read them) and just for being great people. I hope that you will get something out of it. I tried to keep it short but it’s too long. Either way, it’s a learning curve! The transcript with most of the video references is below). Every so often, I say out loud, “Trump won.” I repeat it in my head a few times because even now, I barely believe it. Eight long years of conflict, madness, division, corruption - there have been convictions, jail time, even suicides among Jan 6ers whose lives were destroyed because they were faithful enough to Trump to have his back when the chips were down.What our government, our media, and the ruling class wanted was to terrorize Trump supporters out of their loyalty to him. “It’s a cult,” they continue to insist. But even after all of that, Trump won. He won the Electoral College and the popular vote. There has never been a story like this one in all of American history, and even the Good People of the Left know that. But there have been stories like this in all the most beloved films and books. This story is one we all know. It’s called The Hero’s Journey, and any honest person knows that we just watched Trump live out his. By the end of it, he has people like me wandering around saying “Trump won.” His victory meant more than just winning an election. It meant the return of reality and normalcy somehow, I know it sounds crazy to say that but it’s true. Trump refused to stand down, no matter what they threw at him. He refused to cower in the face of an assassin’s bullet. He soldiered on, as the best heroes do, passing every test, humiliating his rivals, and even those who hated Trump can’t help but be impressed. One only needs to look at the two covers of TIME Magazine, which feature Trump as Man of the Year, to see how it started and how it’s going.Trump didn’t write this story; his enemies did, and in so doing, they sealed their fate to become but a footnote in the unforgettable story of the greatest political comeback in American history. Says Victor Davis Hanson:So, how did we get here? What is the Hero’s Journey, and how does Trump’s story fit so well? Trump’s Hero’s JourneyWe could leave it at that, but I’d like to go through the stages one by one. Part One - The Ordinary WorldTo massive ratings success, millions of Americans welcomed Trump into their ordinary world every week. He was already a star. People tuned in to hear him say “You’re fired.” But they also tuned in to hear him say what was true but couldn’t be said out loud. They knew him, and they loved him. Reality TV was about to become actual reality. In 2016, America could be divided into two groups: those who watched The Apprentice and those who did not. If you knew Trump from that ordinary world, nothing he said would shock you. But if you were like me, already insulated in a protective cocoon of extreme political correctness, a utopia where offensive language is not to be tolerated, and a class of people who would not be caught dead watching The Apprentice, his words would be paralyzing, enough to cause fits of mass hysteria that would last for years. Trump has been a fixture in American culture since the 1980s. He mocked himself and was always in on the joke. Just one year before the Left decided he was Hitler, he hosted Saturday Night Live. Despite Trump’s wealth and the Left’s attempts to portray him as an out-of-touch billionaire, he speaks the language of ordinary working-class Americans somehow. Trump is the guy who eats at McDonald’s. He’s the guy who talks to the golfer and the caddy. But to make him into Hitler, it took a village of liars who had no intention of handing over power to Trump or any of the Americans who voted for him. But Trump’s ordinary world was not politics. He was an outsider, the perfect hero to be plucked from one world and thrust into the special world, one he did not fully understand. Part Two - The Call to Adventure (refusing the call)The Hero is always reluctant to answer the call. Trump was asked again and again if he’d consider getting into politics. The answer was always no.Running for president seemed to be the last thing Trump had left to do and he knew that. He was right, in those early days, to say that America wasn’t ready for people who tell it like it is. Part Three - Accepting the CallTrump, like so many others born outside of Manhattan, maintained a chip on his shoulder that drove him to not just become one of the Manhattan elites but to earn their respect. So it stung when Obama called him out and humiliated him in a room full of people who thought they were superior to Trump in every way. Obama was hitting back after the “birther conspiracy” most on the Left deemed “racist.” But really, he was playing his most powerful card — that he was accepted by the ruling class, and Trump was not.This set up the epic battle between the two men for the next decade, one Trump would ultimately win. Obama wasn’t just accepted by the ruling class. He was their symbol of virtue. As wealth concentrated on the Left, what they, we, needed was absolution from our sins of privilege. Obama provided that. He was the closest thing we had to religion.By contrast, Trump represented our collective sins. If we could blot out the Sun, we could somehow deny those bad qualities in ourselves. That guy over there is the bad guy. We’re not like that.But by 2015, Trump was finally ready. The Hero is always unprepared for what this step actually means. They might start the journey almost as a lark. But once they accept that fateful call, there can be no turning back. Trump famously vanquished his primary opponents, picking them off one by one as a country already addicted to reality shows watched this one. That’s what it looked like, anyway. Every great reality show needs a great villain. And there was no more entertaining villain than Donald Trump.Who would dare talk to Jeb Bush like that?And who would dare talk to Hillary Clinton like that? Part Four - The Mentor and the TalismanTrump had several key mentors, including Roy Cohn and his father. But the one who matters most in Trump’s Hero’s Journey is Steve Bannon, who was busy building a populist movement that needed a tough leader like Trump. Here, Bannon talks about their first meeting.Bannon took the long view then and now. He’d read The Fourth Turning by Neil Howe and William Strauss. Ten years after the book was written, he lived through the 2008 financial crisis. Bannon made the movie Generation Zero about what was coming next. He has always had an eye on how America must land after the Fourth Turning - in the direction of populism, not globalism.On October 7, 2016, the infamous Access Hollywood tape dropped as an October surprise. As Bannon tells it, the wolves were at the door. Trump had a decision to make: a mea culpa with David Muir and ABC News or fight, fight, fight. Bannon is the Yoda to Trump’s Luke Skywalker because he helped sculpt and guide the hero toward his ultimate goal. Though Trump pushed him out in his first term, Bannon remained loyal to Trump and even spent four months in Danbury prison. For Bannon, it’s never been about Trump specifically but about guiding the ship in the right direction. He needed Trump then, and he needs him now.Part Five - Crossing the ThresholdFor Trump, the 2016 election was the threshold between the ordinary world and the special world, a win that shocked even him. Winning was supposed to mean that the American people accepted him as their president. He didn’t understand why they were protesting in the streets, as they were saying he was “illegitimate” and #notmypresident. He won, after all, so why weren’t they treating him that way?In 2016, those of us on the Left decided that this country, its culture, its government, and its institutions all belonged to us. If we proclaimed Trump a racist, Nazi, fascist and thus, rendered him ineligible to serve, we had every right to treat him and his supporters as unwanted invaders in our country.Part Six: Tests, Allies and EnemiesBeing a Trump ally is not for the faint of heart. He is no walk in the park, especially not then. He’ll insult even those closest to him and spend much of his time in office antagonizing the press and the swamp creatures. But Trump’s role was not to be liked by any of them. It was to represent the people who voted for him, as is. Nonetheless, the establishment government ate Trump alive in his first term because he wasn’t a lawyer or a politician. He had to hit the ground running, and was met with oppositional forces who sought to sabotage, discredit, and ultimately push him out of power. It was a slow-moving coup, and Trump was no match for the empire. Nancy Pelosi ripped up the State of the Union. The Democrats took the House and impeached him two years into his first term, just as Steve Bannon had predicted. Trump’s agenda to drain the swamp and close the border had to be pushed aside as he fought for his own reputation and his presidency.Part Seven - The ApproachFor Trump, The Approach was the 2020 election. Trump could see what the powerful forces that opposed him were doing to rig the election. Even I could see it as a Biden voter. It was not hard. Nothing made sense. What we would all find out much later is we didn’t imagine it. They bragged about it in TIME Magazine. 2020 was one of the hardest years for Trump. He was in over his head and no one in DC or the media wanted to help him deal with the pandemic. They wanted — needed — him to fail, just as they needed the protests over the Summer to be bad enough to threaten Trump and his family.Trump caught COVID, survived it, and then went out and did five rallies per day in hopes of making up lost ground. He knew the pandemic crashed the economy, his stronge

I’ll admit that this Thanksgiving road trip wasn’t exactly fun. Oh, don’t get me wrong. The minute I see my daughter, I am over the moon. Thanksgiving was as it should be: warm family, good food, and giving thanks. I never want to say goodbye and I hate that she lives all the way across the country.It was the before and the after when the trouble began. Somehow, last May’s road trip did not bring the darkness, but this one did. It was too much time spent thinking about things I’d been pushing aside for too long. I feel like I’ve been running just ahead of a tidal wave. And no, that doesn’t mean anything like depression but just the plain truth of what has become of me and my life after the past four years of moving from one side of a Civil War to the other.Was it a Civil War, or was it a revolutionary war? I can’t really tell. I just know that it was a war with two sides. You had to pick one. However, no one on the Right punishes anyone on the Left for believing what they believe, not really. They boycott companies that sell their ideology, like Budweiser. But they don’t disinvite you to Thanksgiving.I knew I could not discuss politics with my daughter’s boyfriend’s family, and I didn’t. Whatever they believed, I was willing to put it aside because we were all together for a holiday about appreciating everything we had. And in the big picture, I have much to be thankful for. I feel lucky in that way.Last May I ended up in the ER twice on my road trip, once for slicing open my palm in Lincoln, Nebraska and once while trying to outrun a screaming ambulance with my elderly dog barely able to make it across the street. I tripped and landed on my elbow, breaking my arm. But the dog was fine.Nonetheless, I wasn’t haunted last time like I have been this time. If my life was a novel, those injuries might have been warnings for something much more serious to come. Not serious like the death of a loved one or a terminal illness, but serious in a different way, a life-shattering, unavoidable way.But my life isn’t a novel. Maybe the tidal wave finally caught up with me now that I had so much time to think. At home, I am always online, reading and listening to like-minded people and not feeling so alone. But in a car driving for hours, there was no escaping it.This isn’t some nightmare I’m living through, and one day, I will wake up. I’ve bought a one-way ticket aboard the Counterculture Express, and there’s no turning back now.It wasn’t so much everything I’ve been writing about and saying for the past four years that haunted me. It was what’s just happened to me in the past few months. I’ve spent almost a decade being that one person who stands on the side of those being canceled, using whatever online clout I’d attained from a life lived mostly online to defend them.I have even stood up for those accused of being sex offenders. I’ll never forget spending much of my reputational clout standing up for a writer named Devin Faraci. Long before Hollywood blacklisted me, the worst thing they could say about me was that I was a rapist apologist. And they said it all of the time.Later, when I began drifting away from the Left and writing here on Substack, I was interviewed by Megyn Kelly. Somehow, Devin Faraci saw it. After being a patron on his Patreon, writing columns defending him, and standing up for him at great cost - he threw me under the bus. He called me out on Twitter because he had to let everyone know that he might be a sexual assaulter, but I was now on the other side of the war, and that was worse.But even as horrible as that was, it wasn’t what had occupied my thoughts for the past two weeks while doing something I usually love. Driving. No. It was how I’d wasted so much of my time working a 24/7 job, investing my whole life in an industry that would completely turn its back on me in the way they have. It has always been chilling to live through it, but somehow, I’d avoided really thinking about it, and now, as I drove nearly 3,000 miles to Ohio and back, I couldn’t think of anything else.It’s Oscar season, and I’m doing what I’ve done every year since 1999: reporting on the Oscar race. Even back in May, I had a whole staff working with me to proofread my stories, remind me of breaking news, or run a contest form. Now, it’s a ghost town, and it’s just me. But driving all day means I can’t do the job alone.I was playing with fire, I always knew, and said so many times when people asked me how I was able to get away with writing honestly here on Substack while the climate of fear and the culture of silence crippled so much of Hollywood. How had I remained untouched? 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

(If you have not yet listened to Part One, that is here)Janet was dreading Thanksgiving this year. She dreaded it every year. Holidays made her feel a sense of foreboding. What was coming next, she thought, how much worse could it possibly get?It had been a rough few weeks for Janet and countless other women in the country. She barely remembered election night except that at some point, she rooted around in a closet, dug out her ex-boyfriend’s electric razor, and … shaved her head. Did she really shave her head?As she lay in bed, still too depressed to make coffee, she ran a palm over her scalp and felt the stubble. She’d actually done it. She’d shaved it all off. And how could she have forgotten? One morning, she stumbled into the market in her bathrobe and was greeted with sympathetic stares by the cashier. No, it wasn’t the election they were referring to. They all thought she had cancer.“Can I do anything for you, dear?” One of them said, touching Janet’s arm. ”You can get me a new president and a better country,” Janet had snapped back. The woman’s face melted from concern to a shared knowing of the tragedy that had just taken place. Janet could see her working it out in her mind. Janet was one of those women who shaved her head after the election.Well, so what? Janet thought as she clutched her robe tightly around her body before ducking back into her house, slamming the door behind her. The only reason she’d gone out was that she’d emptied every wine bottle in the house, and now, she needed another glass. Yes, it was the morning, no, don’t ask her about it. Janet knew that if there was any time to remain permanently drunk, this was it.What a terrible night that was. November 5th. She figured the election would be close but Rick Wilson had assured her that Trump would lose and lose badly.She’d watched the results come in until she heard the independents flipped to Trump in record numbers. That was when her heart sank. It was like watching the Needle at the New York Times flip from Hillary winning by 95% to Trump winning by 95%. Now, the needles were all pointing Trump’s way again, all of the swing states.How could this be happening? After all the ways the Democrats and the media showed the American people how evil and monstrous Trump was? Now, she had to wait months for her hair to grow out. What had she done? 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

The Democrats and the Left are still working their way through the seven stages of grief over the election. Many of them continue to be in denial as to how so many people could have voted for Trump and made the popular vote even close at all.In their defense, this wasn’t just an election loss. It was the single most humiliating defeat probably in American history. They spent eight years doing nothing but selling hatred and fear of Trump. They pulled out the stops, from Hollywood to the Justice Department. Headline after headline told the Democrats that all of the evil known to mankind was embodied in this one man, and all they had to do was stop him, and their village could live on peacefully.Trump became the monster, the volcano that required sacrifices so that it didn’t destroy the crops. He was the Devil riding into Salem. He was HITLER. Now, they’re grappling with 77 million people in America who don’t believe their hysteria anymore. It’s been punctured at long last.But those are the rational ones. There are still many of them trapped inside the fear bunker who are now trying to survive in a country they view as full of Nazis and bigots, full of hate and white supremacy. Or else toxic masculinity won the race, and now how to raise their daughters in a country full of rapists?But if they’re honest with themselves, really honest, they will have to face the truth. Sure, they abandoned the working class. Joe Biden got out of the race too late for them to mount a proper campaign. Kamala Harris was a terrible candidate (I threw that last one in there, though it’s a truth they have yet to accept or admit). Elon Musk rigged the election (yes, they are saying that).But they have yet to address one fundamental question about why they lost: Why aren’t they cool anymore? Being cool means thinking critically, but that was abandoned years ago on the Left. It means being a rebel against the system, but they are the system. It means being counterculture, but they are the culture.True, it’s hard to be cool when you are crippled by mass hysteria, and when every tweet by Trump is the end of the world, I know because I felt it too. But it started even before that, even before Trump. One might say the Left losing their cool opened the door for the rise of Trump. Why? Because Trump is and has always been cool.He was cool in the 1980s when being rich was cool, and saying whatever was on your mind that disrupted the status quo was cool. In the 90s, he became an icon in hip-hop culture. Maybe things shifted a little when he starred on a Reality-TV series, those weren’t cool, and especially once he got into politics as Obama’s rival, that most definitely was not cool. 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

There’s almost nothing worse than getting dumped. You’ve done everything right. You had all the money in the world — a billion dollars! You had all the celebrities — Harrison Ford, Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Julia Roberts, George Clooney, Meryl Streep and Barbra Streisand! Who could ask for anything more? Well, it turns out 76 million people.This wasn’t just a “don’t call me, I’ll call you” or “we can still be friends” or “maybe someday in the future we could…” No, this was a “get lost, lose my number, forget you ever knew me” kind of break-up. The Democrats aren’t handling it well, to put it mildly.They’re shaving their heads. They’re uninviting family members to Thanksgiving. They’re obsessing over everything Trump is doing and saying, refusing to go quietly. In other words, they’re turning into Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction.It isn’t enough to blame the “woke” and the crazies for the collapse of the empire. It goes much deeper than that. Yes, they’ve lost their minds, and Americans are fleeing faster than rats off a sinking ship, but the truth is the Democrats orchestrated their own demise. Even those who think they get it, don’t really.Bill Maher, for instance, is given pats on the back for kind of, sort of getting it but if you listen really close, you’ll hear the tell-tale TDS worming its way in. Trump is crazy, his voters are dumb.I hate to be the bearer of bad news, Democrats, but this isn’t 2004, as Nate Silver has proclaimed. It isn’t 1988 or 2000, either. No, you must go much further to find a period like the one we’re living through now. You have to go back to 1972.More specifically, the swing between 1968 and 1980, as Ben Shapiro has often discussed in books and on his podcast. His comment was one of the things that drew me to the Right because, finally, someone said something that made sense. He tweeted this in the Summer of 2020, though it would be four more years before 1980 actually arrived.And 1980 has arrived right on time. That makes me think it’s not about just four more years of Trump. This is the long game. This is probably 12 years of Republican rule.Navigating a moment like this depends on confronting the truth, not the preferred truth, not the denial, but the real reason why Trump won such a massive victory after the Democrats spent almost ten years trying to destroy him. The answer isn’t to double down on Trump being a “monster” or a “fascist” or a “sociopath.” All that will do is postpone the inevitable, and it will only make Trump more popular. 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

It was like watching SEAL Team Six spelunk into a dangerous war zone and release the hostages from inside the bunker. Millions of us wandered out. We felt as though a great weight had been lifted. The sun shined once again after one long, dark winter. We were half-celebrating, half in a state of shock. “You mean … we’re finally free?” Yes, said the soldiers. You are free.And as the author jotted out those words above, she thought to herself, can I actually write that? Will people say I am exploiting the suffering of the Jews during the Holocaust or still being held in Gaza? Will they say I don’t know real suffering, and how dare I write such a thing? Yes, they will say that. But no, it won’t matter anymore.The truth is that I was always free to write it. I just had to do it outside of the doomsday cult the Left has become. It wasn’t some orb out in the middle of the Mojave. It was every major institution in America. And they most certainly aren’t giving up without a fight. Heed the words of Peter Boghossian:Trump drove so many mad, from the Never Trumpers to the Woke Left, because they destroyed themselves trying to destroy him. Their biggest problem was that they were never fighting the real Trump. They were fighting one they invented, a supervillain whose mere presence could end democracy itself.It’s hard to imagine such smart people losing their critical thinking ability. Power will do that to you, though. No one gives it up willingly. But still, you’d think some of them might have had an inkling America was ready for change by now.It’s like that Milan Kundera quote about Totalitarianism:That’s what’s happened to America in the past four years. Our SEAL Team Six came just in time to liberate us from the tyranny of the minority.Did Rick Wilson really go into election night thinking Trump would lose that badly? How could he have been so confident to make this video the day before Election Day?How could the disconnect from reality be that profound? And when he was thoroughly and completely humiliated, along with all the other Never Trumpers, he blamed the voters. He blamed America.Meanwhile, a wellness check is needed on Jojo from Jerz, another who was so certain her daily rages on X, which earned her so many likes, represented, in any way, the majority in America:The country can’t be run by people like Jojo from Jerz. She’s just too crazy. No reality has ever once entered the chat. And there are too many just like her that control the entire Democratic Party.Even if Trump only serves one term and JD Vance is somehow beaten by a Democrat (I wouldn’t hold my breath), they can always be credited as the liberators who freed all of us, our culture, our economy, our institutions from a cult.For those living in agony for the last four years, you can come out, come out wherever you are.A Mental Health CrisisJust before the election, Mark Halperin predicted a mental health crisis in this country if Donald Trump should win the election.At first, I thought he was exaggerating, but as I watched the reaction on the Left in the wake of another shocking win, I realized he wasn’t. Isn’t it just possible there is something wrong with the messenger if these folks are shocked yet again by a Donald Trump victory? I was shocked along with them in 2016, but by 2020, I got it.The more educated people are, the more they rely on NPR, the New York Times, NBC News, CNN, the New Yorker, New York Magazine, and the Hollywood trades—the less likely they are to see things as they really are rather than how they want them to be. And while it’s true reality distortion exists on the Right, it’s nowhere near the same level.The media is turning the so-called “4B movement” into a bigger story than it actually is because that, too, is a way to sell fear. These young women are the equivalent of an adolescent who is mad at her parents and refuses to eat her vegetables. NO, I WON’T DO IT!They somehow think this will cause any man in America one second of grief. The last thing they want is to have sex with any of them. Moreover, it’s funny that they would think Conservatives would be mad that they aren’t having sex and getting pregnant because all that means is less abortions.All of them are using whatever weapon they have to exact revenge on anyone who voted for Trump. They are people who already see themselves as victims. They see Trump and his voters as victimizers. They’re living out some kind of fantasy where they can cosplay oppression. In a weird way, Trump gave them exactly what they needed.Inside Woketopia, the more marginalized you are, the more elevated you are. Black and trans people are treated like holy icons. Much is made of how to talk to them, how to make sure they feel safe around you because your white skin is so triggering. Each of them uses their marginalized status as a way to impose their will upon the rest of us. It’s blasphemy to criticize or confront them.And herein lies the problem for the Democrats. They can’t confront the crazy, let alone eradicate it. They are too afraid of the activists and the bullies on social media. They’re afraid their careers will be over, like everyone else inside the doomsday cult.A Trump win makes them all believe that they have, in one election, lost all of their power. That’s why you see so many Instagram posts about suicide hotlines but only for LGBTQIA or Queer women, or BIPOC. No white woman or man will get any sympathy for daring to use the moment to suggest they are in worse pain.But the psychosis is real. Watch this mother use her children to draw sympathy from them — yes, from them. Their hysteria and pain feed her need to feel like a victim. This bad thing just happened to HER, so everyone should have to pay, even her own kids.These kids will one day realize that they have been raised by a virulent narcissist, which is what drives this movement more than anything, and perhaps they will be among those who lead the next liberation should America once again be overtaken by a cult.The End of DaysThe women on the Left have centered their entire movement on the act of aborting a child they helped produce, as though the fetus itself, that got there through no fault of its own, is their oppressor. They worry for their daughter’s inability to get an abortion, as though that’s something every girl should want.// 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

For four years now, maybe longer, I’ve been saying like a mantra, “There is no saving the Left. There is only saving the country from them.” And so America has, definitely and decisively.But scrolling X this morning, I’m reminded of the scene in Michael Mann’s The Insider when 60 Minutes continued to remain in denial after their corruption had been laid bare:It took 60 Minutes too long to accept what they’d participated in with the Jeffrey Wigand scandal, just as it will take the Left too long to accept what they’ve done to themselves and this country. But time marches on without them.And as the line goes from Citizen Kane, they’re going to need more than one lesson and they’re going to get more than one lesson.I say the Left, but it’s really the perception of reality shaped by the legacy press, the New York Times, CBS and NBC News, the Washington Post, along with MSNBC and CNN. They’ve been lying every day to the American people and for that their reputations will pay a high price.I’ll never forget Christmas of 2020, when my nephew, who had gotten COVID and was now immune, wanted to visit. But he wasn’t vaccinated. Because of that, several members of my family became hysterical. When I shouted at them, “HE ALREADY HAD COVID,” they sent me links to NBC news articles that said it was contagious unless you were vaccinated, which was a lie.Donald Trump was not running against Kamala Harris so much as he was running against the media industrial complex which now, like so much of our culture, is inseparable from government.The New York Times headline, “Trump storms back,” is designed to pander to those who are still stuck on January 6th.They have to sell fear because that is how they feel now that they are forced to share this country with the “basket of deplorables.” They think they still speak for all of us but their ability to do that ended long ago. Now, they speak only for those still trapped in an elitist bubble that only wants Trump to go away. 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

In Breaking Away, the Cutters have everything against them. Their bike barely works, their shoes are old and tattered, and only one of them can ride. But they still want to compete in the big race against the best and the brightest rich college kids. Something in us, something in me, feels an eternal ache to see the underdogs win. No one needs to tell us who they are, and we can see if we’re watching the same movie. The Cutters are the team we want to win despite the enormous odds against them. They’re riding in the race of their lives, fueled by a desire to prove they are just as good as the college kids. They’re not just as good, they’re better. Good writing can be boiled down to one simple principle: be hard on your protagonist because everyone reading or watching will be invested in that protagonist overcoming the obstacles and winning. That is the Hero’s Journey, and it is the story, at least so far, of Donald Trump and his Basket of Deplorables. And now, as we head into the last day, I find myself on the edge of my seat, just as I was when I first saw Breaking Away. Will they actually win? Can I get that lucky to taste that kind of sweet relief? Rooting for the underdog can sometimes mean rooting for the loser, too, like in Rocky when an underdog fighter dares to dream big. Even if he doesn’t win the fight, no one comes out of it thinking of Rocky as the loser. Or, as Google AI explains, “Rocky's personal victory comes from going the distance, making it through all 15 rounds of the fight. Rocky's performance demonstrates that he honors his family and friends and that you can't humiliate someone who doesn't want to be humiliated.”I can’t think of a paragraph that better describes Trump, MAGA, and the three elections that made the empire sweat and rewrote the rules of how and who can run for the presidency. Hollywood doesn’t make movies like Breaking Away or Rocky now. They don’t see white men as having any obstacles because they’re born with “white privilege,” and the only people worth focusing on are those people of color who are born into obstacles. These are the rules of equity Kamala Harris has lived by and believes. And the rules that might elect her leader of the free world. It’s surreal watching the people with all the power sweat their last battle against Trump. They are the team that wants to win so badly they’ve become corrupt, relying on a propaganda press to coddle and protect Harris, as they try to cosplay making history.But if you’re paying close attention and you’re following the plot, you’ll be able to see who the good guys are in this story and who the bad guys are. The bad guys use Harris as a shield, a symbol of virtue, to hide their own identities. They are mostly white men and women of enormous wealth who desperately need to appear virtuous lest the people rise up and challenge their power. I’m invested now. I want the right ending. I don’t want to have to sit through the ending that wouldn’t sell a single ticket. Sure, if Harris had gotten there on her own - if she’d fought hard through a tough primary and then ran for the presidency if all of that business with Joe Biden hadn’t been so down and dirty, with everyone lying about what really happened even now, if her husband hadn’t been accused of slapping a woman because of a jealous tantrum - maybe I could celebrate the first woman of color President of the United States.But the Democrats and the media have been gaslighting us for years now, though it’s never been quite as bad as it’s been this past year heading into their final battle.It’s all so fake. It reminds me of what happened in the Oscar race when the rich white elites that run Hollywood decided they needed absolution and all were in agreement to start awarding people of color nominations and wins to make it seem as though things had really changed. But they hadn’t. The same people run the show now as always. They are just wearing masks. The irony is that the real Hollywood movie is on the other side. That’s where the good writing is. There has never been a hero like Trump, especially as we watched him survive their unprecedented attacks on him, from the demoralizing raid of Mar-a-Lago, to the lurid Stormy Daniels trial, to the Fani Willis debacle, to Leticia James and her idiotic charges against him.And all the while, the media played along, pretending like it was legit in hopes of rewriting the hero as the villain. Ah, but the people aren’t that dumb. They know bad writing when they see it. I think of Steve Bannon, who helped unite people abandoned and invisible to our culture and government to give them a voice, something to fight for, to work toward, an American dream. He sought to build what he called “inclusive, participatory, nationalist populism,” and now his dream has been realized as the oligarchs bleed Black and Hispanic voters.These monsters threw Steve Bannon in jail not because of anything he did but because he said stuff they didn’t like. He inspires people they see as human garbage. And I really don’t want to watch the version of this story where all of them are rewarded for what they’ve done to working-class Americans who deserve so much better.I became a Trump supporter because I believed in this story. I believe in these people. Everyone on the Left is miserable. They’ve hollowed out their culture. They can’t laugh at jokes. They’ve become humorless scolds. Yet, the Trump voters are not. Their happiness, their carefree spirit is infectious. Who wouldn’t want to them to win?At the same time, the empire is the empire for a reason. They have built a system that is nearly impossible to defeat. This isn’t Breaking Away. It isn’t a matter of being the best bike rider on the track. This is deep corruption by people who have all the power and don’t want to lose it. For most of my life, our government has been locked in a deep state, an establishment that is impossible to penetrate. People don’t just come from the outside like Trump. They need institutional backing. A whole generation is now growing up with something I never had - a big, bold challenge to that power. Half the country doesn’t see it. They’re watching a different movie. A boring one. They have bought the lies of the media. They fear an outsider like Trump and his audacity to challenge the results of the 2020 election, with or without the riot. Ah, but that is democracy. What they represent is institutional power that they have decided doesn’t belong to any of us. That is what Trump has challenged. And that is why they seek to destroy him. It’s breathtaking to watch, at least to me. But then again, I’m a movie kid. I like this story. I want to see the underdog, the hero, prevail.We should prepare ourselves for a loss that isn’t really a loss, like Rocky, despite the hideous people on the left — the bad guys — who will want to gloat and rub it in. Yeah, they will have won the same way they won in 2020 by pushing a fourth Obama term on the people, but no intelligent person will ever see it as fair. She has the entire legacy press propping her up, and Trump has them pushing him down and showing the worst of him day in and day out. What Trump has done, what Steve Bannon has done, and what all of the MAGA deplorables have done is nothing less than a revolution, one the people of this country desperately needed. They’ve built a foundation. They aren’t going away. This is only the beginning.Why? Because they love this country. They’re patriots. They know this country belongs to them — to us — as much as it does any American citizen. It was disgusting and unacceptable watching how the powerful shut them out of culture, the economy, social media, and politics. Who do they think they are? So, let’s get this straight one last time. When you are born in America, you have rights given to you by God, not by the state. Those rights cannot be taken from you: free speech, the right to protest anything you want any time you want, and the right to equal protection under the law. I hope Trump wins in a landslide. They have it coming to them, and America would be so much better off. Hand the government back to the people because whatever they’ve built, it is no longer serving our needs.But if he doesn’t, he will finally be able to take a well-deserved rest. He most certainly earned it. His place in history is secured. There will never be another like him. And to all of you I’ve been with for the past four years I’ve been writing on Substack, you have given me so much, taught me so much, and been so kind to me when almost everyone I knew threw me away like human garbage. It bothers me that Trump supporters continue to be verbally and physically abused just for wearing a red MAGA hat. Because I know you, and they don’t. Like this man who recently beat up a Trump supporter:So here is me in my MAGA hat. My dark MAGA hat to tell you thank you and godspeed, MAGA. Godspeed. Trump2024.So let’s have it, one last dance. 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

The Democrats have been chasing the dragon for so long even they don’t know what they stand for anymore. Shaped by identity politics and social justice, Kamala Harris sure looks the part. But peel back even the surface layer, and there’s nothing - just the failed dreams of a utopia gone wrong.No one says it better than Kenneth L. Khachigian at the Wall Street Journal:Ms. Harris was unprepared to enter the rough and tumble of national politics and at the 11th hour relies on being propped up, as she has throughout her career, by patrons—Barack Obama, his operatives and a national media that is predominantly desperate to prevent Mr. Trump from re-entering office. Ms. Harris is a victim of her own success through moving up the political ladder without being fully tested by challenge and conflict.Joe Biden wasn’t supposed to defy the rules of the Ponzi Scheme. He was supposed to do what every Democrat does. Go along with the mounting deception. But even Joe Biden’s win was a deception in and of itself. We were promised a moderate. What we got instead was a George Spahn, who allowed a cult-like movement to move into the White House.They hid Joe Biden’s age even then. I know because I stood just five feet away from him at a donor brunch in May of 2019. I was plucked from the internet as an influencer because I’d been such a passionate and devoted Democrat, a good Liberal who voted blue no matter who, ever since George W. Bush narrowly defeated Al Gore.I loved Joe Biden back in 2019. He was old, I knew, but he could do the job. How else to take out a one-term president with a strong economy but to pull the country back to the last time they felt safe? Pulling the country back meant a return to the Obama era. Only later would I discover what a mistake that would turn out to be.Trump should have served a second term. He was cheated out of it, as were his supporters and all of America, who would have likely voted for him just based on the economy alone.The Democrats could have taken the loss and rebuilt a new movement with new blood and a new direction. But the Democrats were never going to let that happen. They had to preserve the empire under Obama, an empire now in collapse. They’ve held on too long and now, there is nothing left.Joe Biden was already too old by November of 2020. They hid him in the basement so none of us could see how fast he was declining. I could see it because I had seen where he was back in May of 2019. But instead of facing the problem head-on, the Democrats kept hiding Joe, lying to the public with their full-court propaganda press happily playing along.They elbowed out the brave truth-tellers like Dean Phillps and RFK, Jr., And they handed Joe Biden the primary win, corrupt though it was with their army of eager beaver lawyers meddling in our elections by removing Cornel West, Jill Stein, and anyone else who dared to challenge their authority, from the ballot. They even tried to remove Trump, which forced the Supreme Court to smack them down.Then, when Joe Biden’s age was finally exposed, and there was nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide, the Democrats instigated a coup. But Joe Biden wasn’t going along with it, shockingly. It took Obama’s yachting pal George Clooney to write an embarrassing op-ed in an attempt to push out old Joe, arguing that they should choose a candidate, speed-dating style.Well, they didn’t do that, did they, George? They hand-picked Kamala Harris without a single vote, and you went along with it, too, didn’t you? You wiped your chin and did your duty as the Good Liberal you are. Welcome to the pages of history, for better or worse.I knew the Democrats were in trouble even before the 2020 election. I tried warning them. I said Trump would win if they couldn’t find their way back to sanity. Oh, how naive I was. I didn’t know back then how much power the Left had amassed in the Trump era - an unprecedented alignment that reached from Hollywood across Silicon Valley to the universities and public schools through corporations and the Big Pharma monopolies. 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

Janet had a choice to make. Would she wear the T-shirt that said, “What’s so funny about peace, love, and understanding?” or would she put on the one that said, “Trump is a scab.” It wasn’t a hard choice. The election was in a week.Every morning, Janet took her coffee to the window, where she would watch her small California town residents walk their dogs, drive their kids to school, and get in their morning fitness regime. She kept a sharp eye out for those who didn’t clean up after their dogs. There was always that one person.This morning was no different. A woman still in her bathrobe shuffled down the street with two dogs. One looked like a collie, and the other was a tiny poodle. The bigger dog waded into a deep thicket of shrubs and did his business.Janet watched the owner start to shuffle off. “Aren’t you going to clean it up?” yelled Janet from her window across the street. Usually, the person she shouts at will apologize profusely and start digging around for a bag. But this woman didn’t do that. She looked at the window and flipped Janet the bird, shouting, “Mind your own f*cking business. I’m walking AROUND!”Janet watched the woman shuffle down the sidewalk and walk behind the bushes. That was supposed to make Janet feel shame for assuming the worst, but she didn’t. She assumed the worst because people always make bad decisions when they think no one is watching. But Janet was watching.The woman waded her way through the bushes, sticks and dried leaves clinging to the cotton fleece of her bathrobe. She pulled at the leash of the smaller dog, who refused to follow her. The dog wouldn’t budge. “Fine,” the woman said, propping the leash on a branch. The bigger dog was sniffing through the bushes as the woman angrily ripped off a green plastic bag and scooped up the pet waste.Then she looked over at the window where Janet was sitting and held the bag: “SEE!? ARE YOU HAPPY?” Then she flipped her off again, gathered up the two leashes, and shuffled back down the street.Janet thought she didn’t have to get so upset about it. Was there a better way to handle it? Was she just supposed to have waited to see if the woman would pick it up even though she didn’t look like she would? At least Janet could help keep the street clean.A Good Town Full of Good PeopleVista Butte was a town of responsible citizens who do the right thing. People followed the rules, which is why it was so safe. There was no crime, and it was quiet. They had to work to make it quiet.Like when they built a pickleball court in the middle of town, which drew so many kids to play after school. The court made so much noise that it disrupted the peaceful harmony of the town center, so the city decided to move it to the outskirts of town.But it upset the school kids because they liked having a place to go after school and release their pent-up energy instead of staring at their screens all day. Did they really believe that or did their parents tell them to say that? Either way, they went door to door to get signatures to save the Pickle Ball court.It was a waste of time because there was a perfectly good court on the East End. True, they had to pay to park, and kids would need their parents to drive them there, but they could be as loud as they wanted, and it wouldn’t disrupt the serenity of the townspeople. Janet voted against the measure because everybody in Vista Butte has to work together to keep the town quiet and clean.As Hillary Clinton said, it takes a village.Today, Janet was going to do some yard work before Halloween. The Santa Anas were coming, a wind storm. That meant fire season, and she needed to clean up the brush in her front yard. Firebugs get it in their heads to set off a blazing wildfire when the warm wind kicks up. Always men. No woman would do something like that.Janet could drive down to the corner where all the migrants waited to be picked up for a day's work. It would only cost her about 50 bucks for the whole job. One guy could handle it. It wasn’t that much work. That was much cheaper than the town gardeners, who charge you $50 an hour.Well, what the hell? She figured she might as well get in some exercise. She wasn't getting any younger, and her body wasn't getting any thinner. Yard work was a good way to get the steps in and grow her fitness circle on her Apple Watch.Janet had five Harris/Walz signs on her lawn. One of them was just an old Biden/Harris poster, which she ripped off the top where Biden was. It was a perfect metaphor for the election: Rip off the old white guy’s name and elevate the woman of color. It didn't matter that there wasn't a primary. When you have to save the country from rising fascism, you do what you must.But it made Janet happy, making history, even if it wasn’t exactly the democratic process. Old white men don't like getting out of the way to allow marginalized groups to rise—the history of America. The white male patriarchy is keeping all of us down.It’s long past time for a woman to lead, Janet thought. We need change. We need to turn the page. Harris cares about the middle class. She cares about immigrants. She cares about poor people. She’s not rude or mean or crude or nasty or abusive. She’s not a racist or a sexist or a misogynist or a bigot.Janet was ready. In fact, she'd already voted, like most women in America. Vista Butte was, Janet knew, 99% liberal. It had to be, what with all of the Harris/Walz signs everywhere.Harris/Walz - Obviously.Harris/Walz - Save Democracy.Harris/Walz - We’re not going back.Harris/Walz - Vote for freedom.Harris/Walz - Democracy or dictator.For a minute, she thought, why are we even bothering with an election? Maybe they should just do what they did for the primary: just place Kamala Harris. Trump is the one who is not qualified. He's a criminal; he's a felon.Besides, Project 2025 will become the law of the land. They’ll throw Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski in prison. Abortion will be banned, and we’ll never have an election again, so why not get ahead of it now? Why are we wasting time convincing people to vote? Why are we pretending that democracy even applies in this situation? It doesn't.We’re seriously going through all this worrying about the swing states, focusing all of our energy on undecided voters? Why is the fate of the Republic, the fate of the world's future, resting on people who are too stupid to know now who they want to vote for? That's what our elections have come down to, those people who sit in a Frank Luntz focus group. Come on.Those are the kind of people who sit in the Starbucks line for an hour deciding whether they want the Caramel Ribbon Crunch or the Pumpkin Spice Frappuccino blended. Pick something and move on! Pick something!It was Halloween. Janet wasn't going to allow herself to get upset, not today. Halloween was her favorite holiday. She remembered the old days when kids dressed up in costumes they made themselves. They weren’t brands disguised as costumes. Everything is advertising now. 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

On January 6th, I should have been huddled on my couch and glued to MSNBC. Their hysteria and fear would have validated everything I already believed about those awful extremist racists and incels waving their “white supremacist” MAGA flags, climbing the walls of the Capitol, and fighting with police officers.But that isn’t where I was on January 6th. I was scratching my head in confusion. A riot? People were trying to break into the Capitol? Why? Most of MAGA were standing before Trump as he spoke to them about the election we’d just lived through. He had convinced Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz to debate the election in the Senate when, all of a sudden, a riot erupted.That was when I knew something very bad was about to happen. No, not to our government officials. I knew they’d be fine. It was the Trump supporters who would not be. They had no power.It wouldn’t matter, I knew, that we’d seen unprecedented violence over the Summer and that those protesters weren’t treated like terrorists or insurrectionists. It was different with MAGA who were by then, already named enemies of the state.Most people I knew on the Left had no clue what Trump supporters were really like. Most of them existed inside the protective bubble of the Left. We’d built our Shining Woketopia on the Hill after Obama rose to power. And we essentially abandoned half the country and never looked back.We carefully curated our information streams, our language, our movies, our music, our fashion. We “wokeified” it piece by piece until we’d come close to reaching our ideal as a society. And then Trump won in 2016 and our whole world turned upside down.Trump supporters were, to us, everything we wanted them to be: angry white men who wanted to tie women to beds and keep them pregnant and having babies like pigs in gestational crates. They were crude and uneducated. They were racists and bigots and drove around in gas guzzlers, wrecking the planet. They were incels who hid on 4-Chan, trolls who did nothing but hurt all of the vulnerable groups, especially women.They paraded so ridiculously around with those racist red hats and those garish flags. We were traumatized just seeing them. If we saw a Trump supporter in our neighborhood or in our public spaces, we would have to alert the manager and have them removed like a dead animal the cat dragged in. 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

"The essence of propaganda consists in winning people over to an idea so sincerely, so vitally, that in the end they succumb to it utterly and can never again escape from it," —Joseph GoebbelsIt was on a Sunday that the Nazi army marched into New York City and gathered at Madison Square Garden.They came in all skin colors, white and Black and Brown, and from all different backgrounds, Asian, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, atheists, young and old, rich and poor, Left and Right, gay and straight as American citizens who desperately wanted to taste freedom again, security again, a government that cared about them again, and to Make America Great Again.What they don't know is that they're Nazis. Barbra Streisand and Hillary Clinton have said as much, so isn’t it time that they listened?How dare they gather, Hitler-like, at Madison Square Garden to worship at the altar of the fuhrer himself, Donald Trump. That’s what the New Yorker says, what the New York Times says, and what John Cusack says.I know what you’re thinking. John who? John Cusack. Remember him? Once a heartthrob of sorts back in the 80s? Yeah, that guy.We were all so in love with him. Every boyfriend we ever had was John Cusack in one form or another. But that was then. Things have changed now that fascism has arrived in America.So to protect us from it, Cusack didn’t hold up a boom box, no. This time, he woke up in his penthouse, tossed around in his high thread count sheets, gazed upon the streets of Manhattan, and remembered Donald Trump was holding a historic rally at Madison Square Garden. He fumbled for his phone and spit out his testimony:Donald Trump is Hitler, and his supporters are Nazis. How do we know that? That’s just what we’re all supposed to believe. So far, Trump has done nothing to warrant such an accusation ah, but we don’t really care about that. We care about the thing we police at all costs: speech. What Trump says IS fascism. Free speech is fascism.But if you need proof, let’s say that Trump has said he will deport the 10 million migrants who flooded through America’s weakened border under the Biden/Harris administration. This was after the Democrats spent four years declaring Trump’s border policies were RACIST and FASCIST. So when Biden won, why wouldn’t they come?It’s funny that Americans are thinking about themselves at a time like this. I mean, they should be anti-fascists, putting their own needs aside. The definition of fascism might be all power to the state against the individual, but that’s in ordinary times.Power to the state against the individual is how you stop fascism now. Because if free people choose the guy who says he’s going to fix the border problem and yes, that might include some deportations — that means we are no longer able to staff our labor force and grow a stronger coalition in the swing states.So we dumped them into towns like Springfield, Ohio, and expect everyone who lives there to share our existential angst about racism. Forget about your kids in school, your social services, and your safety. All power to the state means you say nothing, you do nothing, you suck it up.You see, the anti-fascists are the ones who demand you drop all of your friendships if you vote for the fascists. It might sound confusing, but it’s not. All you have to do is conform or else.You might have heard that “conform or else” is the very definition of fascism, but really, it’s how you get rid of it. You pressure everyone you know to do what we tell you to do, think how we want you to think, speak how we want you to speak or we will DESTROY YOU. 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

“I came for you, for you, I came for you, but you did not need my urgency. I came for you, for you, I came for you, but your life was one long emergency.” Bruce SpringsteenTo be on the Left in America is to live in one long emergency. It’s depressing and exhausting, and it’s time to move on. It is the misery of the upper class, the misery of a disrupted utopia, and the misery of people who have too much power and have become too comfortable with it, so much so that they do not want to let it go.I can’t really blame Barack Obama. What must it feel like to feel like a god, to have all of American culture worship you, upend what used to be great movies, great books, great rock and roll, and now, in its place, a reflection of you? That would mess with your head. It would be hard to let go. No wonder he keeps showing up. No wonder he demands that the only people allowed to run for president are lesser, duller versions of himself.Imagine what it must feel like to be George Clooney, Julia Roberts, or Tom Hanks. Yes, you are among the highest-status Americans inside utopia because you have befriended the man who would be King. But none of them have come from such a high place and fallen so hard as Bruce Springsteen, who abandoned the badlands for the mansion on the hill.Bruce Springsteen was my idol growing up in the 1980s. I wrapped my legs ‘round his velvet rims and strapped my hands cross his engines. I was just a scared and lonely rider who had to know how it feels, who had to know if love was wild, who had to know if love was real.Me and Bruce, hiding on the backstreets, going down to the river. I wore out the groove on every single album he ever produced and then could only listen to live bootlegs. Now, I can’t listen at all.What I know about Bruce is what I know about the modern-day Left. He doesn’t know America anymore. He does not even know the kinds of people who needed his music and who made him rich. He joins the list of once and former icons who helped lift up the lost and forgotten Americans, to make them feel included in something important in our culture.And now they sneer at them. Stephen King, Steven Spielberg, Barbra Streisand, JJ Abrams, Taylor Swift, and Beyonce sit on a pile of money given to them by the same Americans they now call Nazis.That’s why you see idiots like Jack White or the Foo Fighters throwing a hissy fit that Trump might use their precious music at a rally. Yeah, heaven forbid the truck drivers who deliver their food or the nurses who wash off the vomit and urine after a night of partying should be able to hear their music and forget their troubles for a night. 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

Years from now, the question will go something like this, “where were you when you first realized the media was lying to you about Trump?”Me, I was watching Trump speak at Mount Rushmore in 2020 just as the COVID lockdowns had abruptly ended to make way for the largest protests in American history. They said it was about systemic racism, but I knew it wasn’t. It was about Trump and all of the forces at play to remove him from power.Yes, even the protests.Trump was the first person of any kind of prominence to call out the madness of “cancel culture,” the burning of cities, the violence the media suppressed, and he vowed to do something about it. I didn’t agree with everything he said, but I realized then and there that he was not who I thought he was.At least half the country has been trapped in a mass delusion for ten years, maybe longer. What else can explain what has happened to so many of them, how they could be so consumed by hatred that they would go along with any punishment enacted upon Trump, or whomever the next person in line behind him will be. Elon Musk? JD Vance?We joke that it’s TDS or Trump Derangement Syndrome, but I think that’s being too kind.The good news is that more and more people are waking up to what has been done to us all in the name of preserving the American utopia built under the Obama administration. Trump had to represent racism because how else could they sell him as an “existential threat” to the country?Says Adam B. Coleman:I try to remember when it started, this idea that America was under an urgent threat of rising racism and “white supremacy.” It happened around the time of the Tea Party’s founding, the only grassroots movement I’ve ever seen coming from the Right.For most of my life, the Republicans were the establishment party. After the 2008 Wall Street crash, the Tea Party began mobilizing and forming a powerful coalition that must have worried many in our establishment government.Just arguing class or economics or dismantling the bloated administrative state would not have convinced hearts and minds to turn on them. They had to be so toxic Americans would never want to associate with them, help them, support them, or even listen to them. 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