Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning with Sasha Stone

Imagine being an Iranian right now, especially an Iranian woman, as hundreds of thousands of American women gather to exercise their freedom in a free country, people like Jane Fonda who have everything and yet are still out there bleating about fascism and oppression. Imagine protesting something that doesn’t exist: a king in America. Protesting the very same democracy that put said “king” in power. Yes, that’s what democracy looks like. Sometimes it doesn’t go your way.Imagine being in Iran, knowing how many brave citizens attempted to protest their government, only to be mowed down just for standing there, seeing all of these idiots in America marching in their No Kings parade. It would be like someone dying of hunger watching the line form at the Golden Coral all-you-can-eat buffet. Even NPR covered the women protesting in Iran back in January:And now:They have no shame, these people. They throw their public temper tantrums, holding their dumb signs that say things like “fascism” and “dictators” and “No Kings,” serving only to project to the rest of the world how delusional and cut off from reality they have become. And we’re supposed to put these people — this cult — back in power? Imagine being anyone in Venezuela and watching this grotesque spectacle play out. Imagine what it must feel like in Iran as they hope and pray that Trump is successful in castrating their dictatorial, oppressive regime, and to see so many Americans rooting for his failure, protesting a war alongside the Houthis. That is how desperate they are now to win their war on Trump.I mean, you couldn’t make this up if you tried. The headline says it all: “Houthis enter Middle East war | Millions join anti-Trump protests worldwide.”The Houthis mantra: “God is the Greatest, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse the Jews, Victory to Islam.”Please let this be the moment the entire world sees them for what they really are, pampered, entitled, privileged aristocrats who wouldn’t know real problems if they shot them in the face for not wearing a mandatory hijab - oh, I know, hijabs are cool now, so why don’t you, Jane Fonda, put one on and move to Iran? Their protest might be seen as a “show of force,” and it’s true that they are a united, conformist, obedient cult, and sure, it will help them motivate their base to turn out and vote in the midterms, but all it really is, Jane Fonda, Bruce Springsteen, Robert De Niro, is a well-funded temper tantrum. We’re MAD because you wouldn’t all just go along with Kamala being installed after we coup’d out Joe Biden!We’re MAD because Barack Obama isn’t in power anymore, and our empire is collapsing.We’re MAD, and we can’t self-improve, yoga, meditate, or buy our way out of it. We’re MAD because our world is not pristine, harmonious, and sustainable because we LOST not once but twice to Trump!Maybe at any other time, we could laugh at their dumb No Kings protest, but it’s hard when our country is at war with a real dictatorship to watch these spoiled brats show the rest of the world how stupid Americans really are.At least on the Right, they’re consistent. They’re America First, anti-war, and uncomfortable with the US and its relationship with Israel. They’ve made that clear, even if I think most of them are still useful idiots for Russia, Iran, and China. But on the Left? The side that supposedly cares about human rights and women’s rights, especially? What’s their excuse? The truth is that they have been conditioned over almost 20 years to repeat the mantras fed to them by the media and social media, handed down by politicians. They don’t even know what is true anymore, much less the meaning of words. What is a dictator? Trump.What is a fascist? Trump.What is oppression? Trump. These people have no idea what oppression means. To Robert De Niro, it’s getting a bad seat at a restaurant. To Jane Fonda, it’s the wrinkles on her face that show her age. To Bruce Springsteen, it’s losing his power to influence voters away from Trump one Born in the USA at a time. Boo hoo. Cry me a river. There was always an easier way to remove Trump from office. All they ever had to do was offer the people something better, and they couldn’t even do that. They’ve never admitted failure. They’ve just decided to make everyone miserable until we finally relent and vote them back into office. Oh, how I wish we had good writers who could point out the absurdity of a would-be king trying to liberate a country from a dictatorship as his own citizens march in the streets, free as can be, demanding he be removed from power. Who will shame them? Not I, said the legacy media. Not I, said SNL, John Oliver, Stephen Colbert, or Jimmy Kimmel.Here are some hard truths from TikTok:Freedom over FascismIn my very affluent, very white, very liberal town, they shamelessly virtue signal: Freedom over fascism as Iranians huddle in their homes begging for our “fascist” to set them free? Freedom over fascism when you shun and destroy anyone who

I stood in the corner of our tiny shack atop a mountain in Topanga and waited for my brother to come home. He would be there any minute and would see his beloved black lab mix, Cinder, dead under a sheet in the front yard. We’d been out riding that afternoon. My mom was on our quarterhorse Teddybear. My younger sister and I rode the twin stallion ponies, Pumpkin (mine) and Fireball (hers). It was summer. We were riding to Topanga Elementary to play in an empty schoolyard. Cinder came along. It was always hot, but that day, it was baking, and we were not prepared. All of a sudden, Cinder collapsed. My mother, in a panic, ordered my sister and me to ride our ponies to the school and bring back water. Maybe we could save her, we thought. When we finally got to the school, we scoured the trash cans and found empty milk cartons. We rinsed them, filled them, then galloped back, Pony Express-style, to where my mom was waiting. But it was too late. Cinder was gone.I don’t remember much else about that day, except what happened to my brother later, when he came home. I’d never seen my tough, strong older brother cry. That was my first lesson in the unique grief of losing a dog. They call them “soul dogs” or “heart dogs” on Reddit. It’s that connection you have with a special dog that will never be matched by any other. I have always hated how the internet flattens things into group ideas, but in this case, they were right. I had to let go of my soul dog, Jack, and I’ll never be the same.Mind you, I didn’t want to. I rationalized it many times. I even almost took him to the hospital and asked them to cut him open, remove the large cancerous mass inside of him, give him kidney dialysis, and chemo. Something, anything to keep him alive. Needles, hospital room, strangers, bright lights. That would not have been for Jack. That was for me. I couldn’t do that to him.People have said, “You gave him such a happy life,” and I tried. But how do you measure the happiness of a dog? To me, Jack wanted more than anything to be free. Free of the leash. Free of doing only what I wanted him to do. Free to have maybe found a mate one time instead of having that possibility taken off the table. Free to roam, most of all, through the hills and the fields.I could not give that to him. The best I could do was make a situation for a dog with the urge to roam slightly less terrible. Oh, I suppose I could have never gotten him in the first place, waited for the ideal owner, like a rancher to pick him up. I don’t know if I was Jack’s ideal owner or not. I just know that he was my soul dog, for better or worse.You don’t choose dogs. They choose you. I’d pulled into a gas station near the Four Corners of Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico en route to the Telluride Film Festival in 2014 when I looked down, and there was a furry little wolfen creature, redheaded, with bright green eyes staring up at me, and was that a smile? He already knew how to ask for food, and I was happy to oblige. Only I didn’t want to just feed the dog. I wanted to rescue him. I don’t know why, exactly. It felt like a calling. He was redheaded, like my pony Pumpkin. He had green eyes like mine. But it was his sweet disposition that meant it was love at first sight, even if I didn’t know it yet.I told my daughter and her friend, both named Emma, to go get some dog food because we were taking this dog. When I turned around, he had crawled away and hidden under a trailer, but a woman pulled him out and handed him to me. That sealed Jack’s fate, to be rescued by city girls. Jack wasn’t going to be my dog at first. My daughter’s friend wanted him, but her parents said no. That night, as the girls hung out in their basement room and I was cooking a roast chicken, I heard little feet tap-tap-tapping up the stairs, and there he was again, smiling up at me, wanting food. Okay, little pup, I thought, I guess I’m a dog person now.“Don’t take him if you can’t keep him,” my younger sister warned. I knew what she meant. She’d thought I’d abandon Jack if some guy wanted me to, as I’d done once before when I was too stupid to know better. The dog went to my mom, who doted on her, but still. It sent the message that I couldn’t be trusted with a dog. We had three cats already, but dogs weren’t allowed in our apartment in North Hollywood. When they found out, I was ordered to get rid of Jack. So we split to Burbank. I also broke up with a boyfriend over my dog. Sorry, I made my choice, and there was no going backFour years later, we finally adopted a friend for him because he hated being alone, and my daughter Emma was leaving for college. We had a hard time choosing and were about to leave the shelter when a volunteer came out, holding a tiny, terrified terrier-poodle mix. She’d been there two weeks, and no one wanted her. How could we say no? It felt like another kind of calling.Her name was Pippa, but we changed it to Luna, and though she looks desperately sad in that photo, she blo

I didn’t use to be a Trump voter, much less a Trump supporter. I can’t say I’m hard-core MAGA or what they call a “Triple Trump voter.” But as I’ve watched him over the past six years, my support for him has only grown. I could lie and pretend it hasn’t, maybe save myself the tiny bit of credibility I still have left, but that would not be the truth.As I watch Trump deflect attacks from both the Left and the Right over the war with Iran and various other things, I still see the Gray Champion of the Fourth Turning — The one guy who has the right stuff to stand in the breach and do the right thing, even if it’s not the popular thing. Whatever it is in Trump that guides him, some will say God, some will say a gut instinct, it gives him the necessary focus to blur out the distractions and the noise, take aim, and hit the bullseye.No president has ever faced the kind of opposition Trump has, not just from the world, but from the establishment in the United States, most especially the Democrats. Even now, they have no plan for any of us, no vision for the future. They only have their hatred of and their attacks on Trump and his MAGA base. What they want is for people like me to disappear, or else decide that all of their attacks on Trump have been justified. I was a fool, they want me to say, and I regret my vote. Except that I don’t. They want X to reflect real life, with all of these influencers and podcasters studiously dropping their support and regretting their vote, “I’m done with Trump,” they insist.But X isn’t real. It’s avatar life. Whatever is happening there, it’s the result of algorithms and engagement by people who spend way too much time doomscrolling and getting caught up in mass hysteria. Most people aren’t that plugged in. They’re just living their lives.I didn’t just vote for Trump to stop the Left from overtaking this country and leading us into their dystopian, 1984-like future, but that would be reason enough.No, I have come to genuinely admire Trump, flaws and all. I am sickened by the snooty Left and how they turned their noses up at Trump and his supporters when he tried to revamp the Kennedy Center. I vomited a little in my mouth when I saw Ben Stiller demand that Trump remove Tropic Thunder from a meme. Every time the elite gather and trash Trump, as they did at Jesse Jackson’s funeral, much to the horror of his own son, I see our potential future, which is really our past, a past we desperately need to leave behind. This is not their country. It never was. This country belongs to all of us.The Gray ChampionNine years ago, one of the authors of The Fourth Turning, Neil Howe, was asked if Trump was the Gray Champion. He didn’t know because it was too early to say. This was before 2020 and before January 6th, way before Trump’s second win in 2024.The key point he makes, though, is that a Gray Champion is full of ego and has an idea that if he breaks it or if he fixes it, he’ll be okay. It’s that combination of self-confidence, certainty, and recklessness to do what almost no one else would do that defines the one man who can stand up to not just the forces that oppose him but his own peers.It is the willingness to take big risks that, I think, makes a Gray Champion. Who else would even dare try? That makes them hated in their time, but history remembers them well.Lincoln was the target of assassination plots and was eventually assassinated.Winston Churchill was blamed for military failures during World War II:And Roosevelt was a target too:The bombing and neutralization of Iran is very Gray Champion-like, as is much of what Trump has already done both in the US and abroad in his second term. He is moving fast and perhaps breaking things to make his short time back in office matter.He also knows that if the US abandoned support for Israel now, Iran got a nuke, they would not hesitate to wipe Israel off the map, and though many on the MAGA Right would cheer that decision, it would be a disaster for the world. The allies would have no choice but to go to war with Iran anyway. Pay now or pay later.As with other Gray Champions of the past, Trump will have to take the bad with the good. The bombing of a school killing over 100 girls on the first day of the war — probably due to outdated intel — will have to be part of his legacy, no matter the outcome, which is still under investigation, but it looks like the US did it. This will put Trump in the Democrats' crosshairs should they take back power in 2026 or 2028. They might impeach him again or put him on trial for war crimes. The bombing of the school, along with the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, will be amplified by the establishment media, and whatever Trump’s successes will be won’t matter.I understand this war from a strategic perspective, to end a threat to both America and Israel, one of the three world powers that could be fighting us in a world war, along with Russia and China. That wasn’t the case with the Ukraine war. That, t

The Disney movies I grew up with made it easy for a kid like me to recognize good vs. evil. We knew, walking in the door, that goodness would prevail, because it must. The alternative is nothing less than the end of civilization as we know it. Goodness was personified by the beautiful princess, whose purity of heart drew the forest creatures and eventually, a handsome prince. Their union was a symbol of harmony, stability, and happy endings.Evil was embodied in the wicked queen, who was jealous of the princess's purity, so much so that she couldn’t rest until the princess was obliterated. Somehow, the villains never know their demise is a certainty because goodness must prevail. Some might say that is what happened to the MAGA movement, one bright sunny day in Utah, when a psycho killer avenging the crippling despair of his transgender furry lover took aim and shot the handsome prince, killing him within minutes. Since then, MAGA has struggled to hold onto the coalition Charlie built, the support for the president he helped elect, and to protect the beautiful princess from the evil forces that threaten to destroy her, Turning Point, and MAGA.Candace Owens might think she’s the hero of this story. She’s written herself in after she was left on the cutting room floor. She’s amassed an audience of dimwitted women and a weaponized army of international bad actors hoping to infiltrate the US and use Candace to shape public opinion. A growing portion of her audience, as with many influencers on the Right now, is comprised of people convinced that Jews are behind every evil thing that ever happens, has ever happened or will ever happen, and in Candace Owens, they’ve found their princess. Candace is the only one who sees the truth!Candace is an instrument of God!Candace will make sure justice is served!How good it must feel for someone who's always been a whole lotta charisma with no real place to land. She tried out many different masks over time, moving through political parties and various ideologies until finally landing the role of a lifetime: mean girl with a microphone. After being booted out of the Daily Wire, her gossipy YouTube channel would take her into the wet, slimy corners of culture and politics, and her audience would lap it up. But she would hit paydirt when she decided to run with the idea that Brigitte Macron was really a man.Cruelty sells online, and Becoming Brigitte was a huge hit. Getting slapped with a massive lawsuit by the Macrons only seemed to make her more popular. By the end of that mess, everyone knew her name.So then what? Back to Blake Lively and Diddy’s Freak-Offs? Not for our Disney villain. She needed something as big, if not bigger. What could really dig into the tender spots and manifest itself as emotional terrorism in the same way? Who is as protected a target? Social media amplifies the ugliness inside of us all. The algorithms do the rest. The Left has been unleashing levels of dehumanization and bullying at Erika Kirk since the day Charlie died. Why her? Who knows. They hated him and were happy he was dead. They wanted to see his widow suffer, especially because she’s a pretty blonde. All the while, Candace, who’d been sidelined from Charlie’s life, didn’t attend his wedding to Erika, so the story goes, and was pushed out of TPUSA and not present at the memorial, saw that Erika was suddenly a subject both too hot to touch and impossible to ignore. And yeah, a pretty blonde.And so, just as the evil Queen in Snow White can’t stand it any longer and sends a huntsman to kill what torments her, Candace finally pulled the lever, especially after Erika Kirk told her to stop, in an interview with the very Jewish Bari Weiss, no less.So many women, and even some men, wanted to see our princess fall, and Candace was more than happy to serve it up fresh and hot. The Disney PrincessCharlie Kirk’s marriage to Erika was always met with the refrain, “she’s out of his league.” Charlie got lucky and found himself a true beauty. Half Syrian/Lebanese and half Swedish. Erika Kirk looks like no one else. With cascading platinum locks and sparkling blue eyes, she was Charlie’s dream girl. How did he ever get so lucky? He saw her, knew he wanted her, and he said to her, “I don’t want to hire you. I want to date you,” so goes the famous story of how they met.Candace is pretty, but she’s not that pretty. Few women are. Candace had to develop other skills that pretty girls usually don’t have to worry about. Candace is better on camera than Erika. She is better at performing and at storytelling. Erika is still slightly awkward and hasn’t yet found her voice. She’s trying under enormous pressure and undeserved scrutiny to keep Turning Point alive and make Charlie’s dreams come true. Not to mention caring for two small children and an ailing mother. But it’s Erika’s beauty, especially her leaning into her half-Swedish identity, that seems to drive Candace into fits of despair and jealousy. What else c