Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning with Sasha Stone

As we watch the horrific images of Hamas's brutal attack on Israeli citizens, there is no mistaking the face of evil.This is brutality on a scale most of us here in America have never witnessed - the rapes of women who are dragged through the streets to cheers. Babies murdered in their cribs — beheaded — fathers shot while trying to help their families escape—charred remains of still-smoking corpses in gardens, doorways, and cars.For the past three years, our government has lied to us about what happened on January 6th. The Vice President stood before us and compared a riot at the Capitol to 9/11 and Pearl Harbor. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

I was part of a movement on the Left that endlessly softened language to avoid offending a single person we deemed marginalized. What we couldn’t say, what we had to say … The list just kept getting longer. The judgments more severe.That Trump is an existential threat not for anything he’s ever done, but what he says is proof enough that this war we’re fighting is a war of words.I’m not allowed to use the word “sterilize,” just like I’m not allowed to use the word “mutilate” to describe what’s happening to thousands of young people all across this country. As though the words themselves are anywhere near as bad as the deeds they describe. I’ve realized lately that soft language often masks monstrosities we could not face otherwise. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

“If they want a monster so badly, they ought to be provided by one.” ― Margaret AtwoodTheir monster is Trump. He is the entire economy of the media machine. Without him, whole news networks would die, social media would become stagnant, and, more importantly, there would be no named evil for the New Puritans to unite in fear and hatred against.Their God is Barack Obama. Yes, that’s right. We're caught in a clash of the titans that involves two movements, largely built and cultivated online, that now define two paths forward for America. Obama’s 1984-like dystopia or Trump’s populist revolt against monopolistic power at the top, not unlike Teddy Roosevelt driving a spike through the Gilded Age.Trump is, without a doubt, and these trials prove it, the man in the arena. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

Joe Biden lied about who he was when he ran for president. He said he was a moderate. He isn’t. He said he would unite the country. He hasn’t. He said he would revive the economy. He didn’t.Lying is nothing new to the Democratic Party. The lies are big - The exit from Afghanistan was fine, January 6th was a violent insurrection, lockdowns were successful, the vaccine was not risky, the economy is strong, gender is a construct. And their lies are small, Stephen Colbert is funny.One of the biggest lies was that Kamala Harris was the right choice for Vice President. They lied because they had to. They lied because it was easy. They lied because no one in the media would call them out on it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

“We create the illusion that being informed is a kind of action in itself. So to wash that guilt out—to eliminate the shame and discomfort you feel over doing nothing as the world goes mad—you'll keep tuning in.” - Matt Taibbi, Hate, Inc.The other night on MSNBC, Nicolle Wallace reached her breaking point. Something must be done, or we will all live to regret it.“Something bad is going to happen,” she said. “What will we tell our children and grandchildren when it does”? Then she looked directly into the camera and said, “You good with NOTHING”?Her face flushed. Her expression, resolute.What “something” must be done? She didn’t say. Her guests couldn’t come up with a final solution either.But it’s worth asking Nicolle herself what will finally end her nightmare. Detainment camps for the “cesspool of the MAGA base"? Gulags? How do we dump the dissidents and non-compliant citizens far enough away that they can’t touch the America they once called home?//end This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

Yes, Trump can win.Many Conservatives worry that Trump can’t win. Democrats, they believe, have rigged the system in their favor, and there is no defeating them now so why even bother voting? Yes, that’s exactly where they want you to be. They want the grassroots movement that is MAGA to shut up and sit down and fade into obscurity.But here’s the truth. Trump can win on the economy alone. He can win on his own record on the economy, which ordinarily would have meant winning a decisive second term.But guess what? The Democrats face-planted, hard, on the economy. Now, Trump gets to come back and say I told you so.His entire campaign can be I told you so. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

The 50th Annual Telluride Film Festival went off mostly without a hitch. It was the same beautiful town in the mountains of Colorado I’d been visiting for at least ten years. There were movies earmarked for the Oscar race, critics and bloggers, and film industry professionals scurrying from place to place. But something felt different.It wasn’t just the lack of celebrities that are usually the draw for such an exclusive, expensive fest. The actors’ strike meant they could not show up, even if a few did sneak in for a party or two. Usually, they’re everywhere. Nicole Kidman getting coffee somewhere. I once rode the gondola with Jennifer Garner.It wasn’t even so many people I used to know barely talk to me now. They used to love me, now they hate me. They have no other choice, of course. They can’t be seen fraternizing with the enemy. Those who still have the courage to say hello are few and far between. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,Here once the embattled farmers stood,And fired the shot heard round the world. -Ralph Waldo EmersonYou maniacs. You finally did it. You finally made people like me actually want to vote for Trump — not just vote for him because he’s a Republican, and he’ll do the dirty job of putting the brakes on “gender-affirming care.” I was already there. But actually wanting to vote for Trump specifically, to believe that only Trump can finally end this ongoing insanity in our government, culture, and country? Well, that seemed impossible. I know the cost of crossing into enemy territory. I know that it means— into the garbage can with me. I know that it is social and career suicide. But I can’t watch them go after him like this, busting through norm after norm, relishing his humiliation, and not want to, at the very least, use my vote to protest what they’ve done. Here is Tulsi Gabbard:The first thing people will say to me is “stop lying, you were always a Trump supporter. You’ve just finally unmasked yourself.” They probably believe that’s true - it certainly makes it easier for them to sleep at night knowing their monstrous, unforgivable behavior was justified in their minds. I was with them when they protested Trump’s win in 2016. I was with them when we marched in protest throughout Trump’s presidency. I was with them all the way up until the election of 2020, when I saw for the first time the threat the new left posed to our formerly free country. I live in California, so my vote hardly matters. It’s more symbolic to say that I do not consent to my government or my tax dollars being used this way. I do not consent to a partisan, weaponized DOJ. I do not consent to show trials, performative indictments, or a two-tiered justice system. And I certainly don’t consent to mugshots of former presidents. It weakens our standing in the world. It makes us look small. It makes us look insane. It makes us look corrupt. Here are Glenn Greenwald and Patrick Bet-David:Trump must prevail because otherwise, they’ve shown us there will be no end to any of it. Once they’re done with Trump, they’ll move on to the next threat. More power for them means less freedom for us - in our lives, online, and in our culture. They will never stop on their own. They have to be stopped. #resistance cosplayLike the raid on Mar-a-Lago, the mugshot was totally unnecessary. It was petty and vindictive, yet another episode in their ongoing melodrama that casts themselves as the oppressed victims beating back centuries of White Supremacy and racism that they somehow see embodied in Trump. The Netflix series Black Mirror has two great episodes, and both offer up criticisms of what life on the Left has become. One is Nose Dive wherein people are given credit scores and worry about being judged by others. By the end, the only way out is to abandon all of it and learn how to live with people who say things that might offend. The other is Hated in the Nation, where social media users attack people using a hashtag. A hacker programs armies of robotic bees to attack those who engage in dehumanizing swarms against others.The Left believes this is Trump’s episode of Black Mirror. He is their crazed fascist racist white supremacist traitor insurrectionist seditionist rapist supervillain at the mercy of an extreme partisan Democrat DA who forced him into the worst jail in Georgia and made him take a mugshot. MAKE HIM SUFFER. Make him PAY. But maybe this is really their episode of Black Mirror. No matter what they do, they can’t kill the love the people have for Trump. Everything they do backfires on them, and his popularity only grows. This was especially true for Black voters on Tik Tok:In all of the Left’s hysteria and mania over the past seven years, they’ve done nothing to address those who have felt abandoned by what our government has become. Why? It is much easier for them to kill the messenger. Money drives politics; everyone knows that. But when Trump’s small money donors chipped in and raised $7 million almost overnight for Trump’s defense, it was proof enough of the widespread affection so many people have for Trump, and it was threatening for people who have all the money and believe that entitles them to all of the power. Well guess what? It doesn’t.Un-electable?I feel Ben Shapiro’s pain when he points out, as he does every day, that this is the grand plan for the Left, just as they did in 2022 to great effect - boost Trump and MAGA in the primary, destroy them in the general. The Daily Wire has laid out the trial dates, set conveniently to line up with the election year — they aren’t even bothering to hide it anymore and the media will never call them out on it — and this is meant to tie Trump up with court cases, win or lose, that will keep him from campaigning or make his entire campaign about his legal troubles, and not, say, the failings of the Biden administration a

Memes sprouted up online as the rare, once-in-a-generation Hurricane Hilary threatened Los Angeles. “She’s back,” they all said. No one could mistake the namesake, with or without the extra “l.”Just before the hurricane was downgraded to a tropical storm and made its way toward me, I was revisiting Disney’s Snow White in the wake of comments made by Rachel Zegler, the young star chosen to revive and rebrand the Disney princess as non-white, feminist, and woke.Gone were the seven dwarfs. Gone was the “skin as white as snow,” and there was talk of the infamous kiss that awakens Snow White to be surgically removed like the cancer it supposedly was.//end This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

“Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” - ShakespeareDespite the shock and awe of the four indictments against former president Donald Trump, the Democrats are more vulnerable than they’ve been in decades. It isn’t just the Afghanistan exit, the economy, or the cancer growing inside the presidency, it’s also the radical policies the Democrats have embraced since Biden took office in 2021.They are hemorrhaging working-class voters, especially among groups they believe belong to them, like those in the Black and Hispanic communities. They refuse to face their own failings, and why should they? With no legacy media to hold them to account, they can pretend nothing to see here, move along, move along. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

Dear Mr. Brooks,Your column might be the best thing written in the New York Times in the past seven years. You’ve undoubtedly been subjected to a fair amount of abuse for it. You should probably never have written it if the comments are any indication. But those are people in the bubble. They don’t represent either the majority or the future. They think they do, but they don’t. Your question, “Are we the bad guys”? The answer is yes. You are the bad guys. You have systematically dehumanized half the country because they dared to want to be represented by someone you don’t like. You have gone along with a warped distortion of who Donald Trump actually is, and you have perpetuated that lie to your own detriment. Oh, it’s much worse than that, Mr. Brooks. Are you sitting down? This is the moment just before the aristocracy you write so eloquently about comes crashing down around you. You might say you have just spotted the iceberg on the horizon. The water is too still. The ship is moving too fast. It can’t be turned around in time. The ship is made of iron, and it will sink.Like so many times before, an aristocratic minority can only stave off its ultimate collapse at the hands of the discontented majority for so long. Just look around at the abandoned mansions of the Gilded Age, a world that once was. Or take a trip to France and look at the chateaus in the countryside, or you might even look around in the American South at the plantations and high society before it was all Gone with the Wind. I’m not necessarily saying the red states are going to drag America back in time - that’s your narrative and the false opinion of the ruling class. This is about a new America waiting to be born once the establishment elite gets out of the way. You do get points for noticing, Mr. Brooks, even if it is too little, too late. You write:Are Trump supporters right that the indictments are just a political witch hunt? Of course not. As a card-carrying member of my class, I still basically trust the legal system and the neutral arbiters of justice. Trump is a monster in the way we’ve all been saying for years and deserves to go to prison.Neutral arbiters of justice? Did you really just write that with a straight face, Mr. Brooks? Do you really believe that? Yet here we have proof enough that you can’t be the good guys if you can’t even see that these investigations and indictments are designed only to stop Trump. Biden has said as much.No news on Joe Biden’s blatant corruption with his son, potentially protecting oligarchs from sanctions, influence peddling? And a DOJ that pivots to another Trump indictment every time there is bad news for Biden? Neutral? I don’t think so. Surely you’re not suggesting that, because you believe Trump is a “monster” that he deserves to “go to prison” without any trial? Is that what we call innocent until proven guilty, Mr. Brooks? Or is that what we call trial by mob? Tell me, what books have you read that paint yourselves as the good guys? Trump was never revealed to be the “monster” you promised. In fact, quite the opposite.He could have, as a fascist, shot protesters on the street in the Summer of 2020 oh wait, Biden did that when the Capitol police shot Ashli Babbitt. He could have jailed protesters, throwing them in solitary without a trial, convicting them in the court of public opinion as “white supremacists,” oh wait, Biden did that too. Censor social media outlets (oh, oops, Biden too), weaponize the DOJ (oh, darn it, Biden again), edge us closer to Nuclear war (D’OH also Biden), and attempt to jail his political opponents to hold onto power for the foreseeable future (YA, that’s actually Biden). Darnit. Will the real fascist please stand up?Trump might aspire to be an authoritarian but never had the necessary institutional support. He had just the opposite - every institution was at war with Trump every day of his presidency. I expect you’re educated enough to know that fascists require an alignment of power across all corporate, cultural, and political life — kind of like the Democrats, Mr. Brooks. Are you sure you have the right fascist? Or Tyrant or authoritarian or monster?For those who now say, “he led an armed insurrection to overthrow the US Government and install a white supremacist army to kill all the Black and Brown people,” or anything related to January 6th, I call b******t. The Trump emergency happened long before 2020, as any honest person knows.Steve Bannon accurately predicted in 2017 that the Democrats would take the House in 2018 and immediately impeach Trump. It didn’t even matter what it was for. Everything our FBI and the Democrats, along with you Never Trump Republicans, did to reject the duly elected President of the United States was unprecedented and evidence of an elite ruling class that does not want to give up its power to the people. I could spend a few paragraphs on January 6th, as I bore witness to a fake media narrative blooming out of the events that

Part 1 - America at the Hands of a Cult | Part 2 - A Religious WarAs yet another indictment of Trump rolls out, they can barely contain their excitement. Is this finally it? Will that long-awaited termination of their tormenter give the ruling class the peace they demand?They’ve been patiently waiting, spending too much of their precious time hunched over a keyboard, saliva pooling at the edges of their mouths, tongues flicking with the promise of release - will anyone put them out of their misery?The election of Trump was never allowed in their country. They would have done anything to keep him out of power. They protested violently, they negotiated with electors, they blamed Putin for Russian interference then they set about removing Trump from power from Day One. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

“Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.” ― John SteinbeckI not only believed in the myth of Joe Biden, I helped sell it. My father had just died and it was easy for me to transpose my grief onto Joe as I tried to convince my fellow Hillary supporters that he was the only candidate to beat Trump. Yes, the “old white guy” whose moment had finally arrived. He would save us, we all thought. He was empathetic and kind. He was, I insisted, a good man.He’d once crossed the street in DC as the then Vice President to talk to my daughter’s 5th-grade class. My daughter stood just inches away from him. Who didn’t love Joe? Scranton Joe is the good man, the good father, who rode the Amtrak train home from DC every day to be with his family. He’s the forward-thinking progressive who fought for the Black community, for victims of sexual assault, and for gay rights before even Obama did.He was famously almost too young to serve when elected to the Senate in 1972. Here he is alongside his family, celebrating his birthday just one month before his wife and baby daughter would be killed in a car crash.How could so much good fortune be cut short by a tragedy that would leave his two boys without a mother? His young son Hunter suffered from a head injury while his other son Beau survived with broken bones.Joe Biden was sworn in at the hospital as his two young sons looked on with confusion. He pledged to put them first, and abandon his political career if it ever came to that.But there is another Joe Biden. It’s the one who has shunned his granddaughter he pretends does not exist. At least with the Biden name she could make something of herself. But no, says Joe. She isn’t one of us. It’s the Joe Biden who would exploit a family tragedy to hold a press conference and photo-op that was good for his image while being sworn in in1972. It’s the Joe Biden who claimed the death of his son Beau kept him from running as Obama’s successor in 2016, when the truth was that Obama didn’t want him to run. He wanted Hillary instead. "The incredible bond I have with my children is the gift I'm not sure I would have had, had I not been through what I went through [after the fatal crash]. But by focusing on my sons, I found my redemption." - Joe Biden, Yale Commencement Address, 2015As a Senator in 1972, Joe Biden would bear witness to the downfall of Richard Nixon, just two years away from resignation. He could not know all of those decades ago that he would face something far more serious than being caught on tape offering to pay off a blackmailer. No, this isn’t obstruction of justice Biden is accused of participating in. It’s out-and-out corruption, the worst kind, being a politician who traded power and influence for profit.Comparing what Biden is alleged to have done with even the most serious charges against Trump is laughable. The more of Biden’s story that is revealed, the worse the Trump hunters will look. As always, the legacy media is the only thing standing in the way of a Nixon-like downfall for Joe. They’re in way too deep now. If Biden goes down, so do they. After all, they were responsible for helping put Joe in power in 2020, to absolve themselves of the sins of Trump. Now, they will pay a price for ignoring the Biden scandal. All the President’s SonsIt’s hard to look at Joe Biden’s life and not think about East of Eden, the Steinbeck novel turned into a movie in 1955, based on the story of Cain and Abel. It’s not the same story, but it’s similar enough. The golden child, Beau, was meant to carry on the family name and was preparing to run for governor when he died tragically in 2015.The other son, Hunter, the wayward Cain, or Cal, was nothing but trouble for his father, acting out in obvious ways to get his approval and attention, but never quite getting it, engaging in corruption to enrich the Biden family. Hunter didn’t just engage in high risk behavior with cocaine and hookers, he did it on camera, uploaded it to porn sites, and left it all on his laptops, which he then abandon at a computer repair shop.He wasn’t exactly hiding it - if anything, he seemed like he was begging to get caught, to finally experience some of the much-needed consequences that might have changed his life. But they never came then and they won’t be coming now. But what about Joe? Did he have anything to do with the pay-offs by foreign leaders to buy influence? If he skimmed off the top and feigned ignorance, it would be one thing. But it’s far more sinister than that. If the allegations against him are true, Biden used the son with the dirty reputation as a go-between, knowing if they ever got caught, Hunter would take the fall. Biden would make sure he didn’t go to jail.Even as his son was spiraling into drugs and alcohol and his other son was dying of brain cancer, Joe Biden still managed to push forward to cash in on the Biden name and his position in the Obama administration.In 2013, Hunter Biden started a

This is a supplement to the piece I posted yesterday that needs clarification. It is all too easy to see both Barbie and Oppenheimer as two sides of the same coin - Barbie as the ultimate “woke” movie and Oppenheimer as a movie that attempts to vindicate or sympathize with Communism.But that would be a mistake. Barbie reflects our society now, a society not unlike what the Communist hunters most feared: ideological capture of our major institutions, our culture, our schools, and our government. I enjoyed Barbie because laughing at a silly movie was fun, but it is important to put it in context of what we’re living through now.As Critical Drinker explains: Barbie is light-hearted and not intended as propaganda, but it makes assumptions about our shared reality that really only has meaning for those on the Left who go along with it. Men are bad, women are good, but gender is not a binary, etc.Oppenheimer is about the America before the war and the America after the war. Everything changed dramatically in the wake of Hitler, Stalin, and the bombs dropping on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which would eventually take us to the Cold War. Oppenheimer was never a Communist. The film Oppenheimer is not about Communism. It isn’t even really a Left vs. Right film. There isn’t much politics involved at all. Some might react to the movie without seeing it, falsely believing it’s Communist propaganda — understandably, because of Hollywood’s reputation of late. But that would be unfair and a misread of what Oppenheimer is about. In the 1930s, amid the Great Depression, Hooverville, and the New Deal, it was a “Great Awokoning” of a kind. Those on the Left who cared about social justice started organizations to help those left behind. FDR’s New Deal, for instance, left behind Black Americans. In the book about Oppenheimer, he was so well-read, compassionate, and worldly that he understood it was an unequal society, just like Orwell or any decent person who lived back then would. That is what drew him, and Orwell, at one point, to Communism. And both would eventually abandon it once they saw where it led.Oppenheimer and Orwell were free thinkers. They valued freedom of the mind more than anything, just as I do. That is why Orwell wrote 1984, and it’s why Oppenheimer’s quote about science is such a good one:Does anyone think today’s Left still believes that? They do not. They don’t believe in freedom of the mind at all. They believe in forced conformity and ideological compliance in art, science, education, and even relationships between people, language, comedy, and everything else they control, which is almost everything.Oppenheimer’s first girlfriend, Jean Tatlock, was a card-carrying member of the Communist Party. Many of Oppenheimer’s friends were also Communists. They continued to try to recruit him, but he always refused to join — he was a singular thinker and did not want to belong to any group or have any allegiances. He also, and I want to be clear here, BUILT THE ATOM BOMB THAT ENDED THE WAR. Anyone who wants to dump on Oppenheimer has to understand his place in history, and if you are applying his suspected ties to Communism as being more important than BUILDING THE ATOM BOMB THAT ENDED THE WAR, then you are no different from the screeching fanatics on the Left.Whether you think he should have built the bomb is beside the point. He helped end World War II, full stop. He was hailed as a hero for doing so. Our government wanted to build what President Ike warned against in his farewell address, the Military Industrial Complex: Oppenheimer did everything he could to prevent the arms race, which put him at odds with the government and the military. Oppenheimer was Jewish, which meant he was already an outsider and felt like one his entire life. But playing such an important part in history — with the caveat that they dropped the bomb on Japan and killed hundreds of thousands of people, of course — mattered to him. He believed he was building the bomb for Hitler, not Japan. The paranoia in our country was understandable. Communist spies were working in our government. There was a united effort to indoctrinate our citizens to their ideology. There was Communist ideology injected into Hollywood screenplays. There was a Communist movement here. Their fear was not unfounded. Many of those involved in the Communist movement in the 1930s would ultimately abandon it once they saw Stalin’s murder of millions and his extreme totalitarian ideology. Most people on the Left did not know the extent of it because then, like now, only useful information filtered through.I grew up thinking Communism was “good,” and would only later understand how that ideology had manifested in the former Soviet Union, in China, in North Korea. Has it ever worked out without becoming a dystopian nightmare? No. That’s why Winston Churchill concluded this about Democracy:Yet, with the mass hysteria after the Rosenbergs were caught and executed, and the shooti

It’s beginning to look a lot like the 1950s. No two films recall that era more than Barbie and Oppenheimer, both opening this weekend. Despite these films being completely different in every way imaginable, they have captivated the internet as a reach back in time to a forgotten world, just as the sci-fi movies of the 1950s reached forward to a world they could never know.There is something about the two of them as Romeo and Juliet on the eve of the apocalypse that has inspired the internet to reimagine a whole different movie called Barbenheimer: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

Sound of Freedom is sailing toward $100 mil without breaking a sweat. It topped all Hollywood blockbusters, from Disney’s catastrophe, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, to Insidious, to Jennifer Lawrence’s middling sex comedy, No Hard Feelings. Only Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning could top it.For a film that cost just $14.5 million, Sound of Freedom is rounding the bases and humiliating Hollywood by the minute, as if to say - what, like it’s hard?They have one job in Hollywood: tell a great story. Why would they expect people to turn out if they can't even do that? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

“The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.” ― Thomas JeffersonNovember 8th, 2016. That was the day journalism, as we once knew it died. Gone was objectivity. Gone was a search for the truth, no matter where it led. Gone was holding the powerful to account. Gone was the desire to serve the public’s best interest.It’s been seven years now, and most of us are still in mourning. We can’t forget what journalism used to be. We sit glumly in front of yet another viewing of All the President’s Men, Broadcast News, or The Insider where reporters still cared about the truth, and all we can do is take another drink and cry. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

Houston, we have a problem.Now that COVID is long gone, and studios are putting out blockbusters again, it almost seems like things are back to “normal.” Yet, movie after movie keeps underperforming, which is a polite way of saying Hollywood movies are bombing at the box office.Why? Well, I don’t have to tell you why. You know why. Everyone knows why except the people tasked with covering Hollywood who are too afraid to say why. You can’t fix a problem you can’t name.In a recent poll, 42% cite movies getting worse as the main reason they no longer pay to see them. Why have they gotten worse? Because Hollywood swapped great storytelling for franchise movies long ago, then they transformed those franchise movies into agenda-delivery devices. Get full access to Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning with Sasha Stone at sashastone.substack.com/subscribe This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

The first time I realized I was a proud American was the month I spent in Italy in 1997 with a man who would become the father of my child that month, unbeknownst to either of us. The news was earth-shattering to him because we were worlds apart. We fought and then broke up over the best decision I ever made, to keep my child.He complained about America a lot, and I tolerated it, but then I found myself protective and defensive of my country.“Yeah, well, you sure like our Levis and our Marlboros,” I said. “Not to mention our movies.” I had him there. I knew in that moment that I was a patriot. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

Part One: The Timeline is here.Are we living through a culture war or a religious war? Can we even tell the difference by now?The Left demonized the religious for nearly all of my life, yet here we are, a country at the hands of a cult, and the intellectuals can’t get us out of it — No proper boundaries to protect children, no guiding principles beyond categorizing us by skin color or gender identity, a godlessness that has left us awash in narcissism and hollowed out morality.Progressivism is an invasive species. It can’t stop on its own. It has to blow through everything.The #MeToo and Times Up movements collapsed. The funds dried up for Black Lives Matter. The box office in Hollywood is like a ghost town. All they have left now is to invade the minds and hearts of children to indoctrinate them into this bizarre new cult that seemingly came out of nowhere (aka Tumblr, Circa 2012). This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

The Summer of 2020 was both a revolution and a coup, ultimately resulting in an unshakable pact between the Woke and all major corporate and cultural institutions in this country, up to and including the President of the United States.It isn’t a cult of one personality but of many. It’s a tawdry tale of influencers and algorithms, fast-moving technology and helicopter parents, social media, and Critical Theory. But Joe Biden is no cult leader. He’s more like a George Spahn figure, presenting a more acceptable front while the Manson family did as they pleased behind the scenes.\ This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

My Dad called me “happy Sash,” which was ironic because I was never a happy kid. I was a worried kid, just like I’m a worried adult. My dad would say it often, “she’s a Happy Sash.” I think he wanted me to be happy because then maybe he wouldn’t worry. He was a worrier too.There aren’t many pictures of me as a baby, but here’s one. That’s me in the middle. As you can see, not exactly smiling. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men – not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular” - Edward R. MurrowAny honest person knows that the Federal indictment of Trump is “shockingly weak.” Worse than that, it’s yet another lie pushed on Americans about Trump.Trust me, I know. I used to be one of them. We started lying around 2012, once we realized how powerful Twitter was when it came to manufacturing the narrative we wanted. We rescued Obama’s second term by turning Mitt Romney into something he wasn’t.That was a newfound superpower. We could manufacture the reality we wanted, but the price we would pay over time was to slowly but surely become disconnected from the truth.Lying became like heroin. We needed higher and stronger doses for it to be effective. It couldn’t just be “Dick Cheney is a war criminal” or “W. Bush was the President Select.” It must be Trump is not just an “existential crisis” but an invasion of OUR country. And that meant they would have to go to war. And in the fog of war, anything goes. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff — I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye. - JD SalingerTaylor Swift’s concerts have become cultural phenomenons, religious-like experiences for so many people worldwide, especially little girls. Happy moms post videos of their flushed, excited faces and near-hysteria at the first sight of their idol.It’s girl world, to be sure. But it’s also become, like so many other things in American culture, LGBTQIA world too, like the upcoming Barbie movie is sure to be. There doesn’t seem to be anywhere left that belongs only to girls. From locker rooms to sports to clothes and makeup, girls are vanishing. Recently, Taylor Swift “got political,” and was no doubt backed into a corner by activists demanding she take a loud public side against what they believe are “harmful” laws hurting their community. Which laws? They don’t say, and you aren’t allowed to ask. They’re all bad, they insist. You’re with us, or you’re against us. There is one law growing in prominence not just here but in other countries too, and that’s to put the breaks on “gender-affirming care” for minors. But if you support gay marriage or you want to be a good ally, you have to go along with that too, you have to be part of a movement that is sterilizing children legally, in the United States in 2023. Most people, including Taylor Swift, have no idea just how bad things have gotten. I too was mostly unaware of what “gender-affirming care” actually means. I also didn’t know how bad things had gotten for women in sports. Denying biological reality seems to be something fundamentalist religions do, not educated liberal societies, yet here we are, insisting trans women are women. They can believe that if they want to but it doesn’t make it true. The media does such an expert job of pandering to activists, pretending like it’s a small percentage of athletes. But the truth is that there is widespread suppression of dissent and a climate of fear that keeps so many from speaking out about how this is not just a tiny movement anymore. It’s the core identity and belief of the Democratic Party. They can’t see this as a social contagion because that news never enters their feedback loop. All they hear, over and over again, is “protect trans kids.” Does protecting them include making them infertile? Does it include surgery that creates a false opening that must be dilated several times a day, or it closes up? Does it mean eliminating their sexual function? For life?Standing up to any of it is hard. We all saw what happened to JK Rowling. The activists are out in force, patrolling reading lists, science labs, school libraries, and all media outlets. Just in writing this, I run the risk of losing everything. But so what? I’ll take my talking points from exiled scientists - the new heretics of our time, like evolutionary biologists Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein:As long as we still have a First Amendment, there is no justifiable reason to stay silent on something so urgent. Controlling speech has been the only reason this madness has gone as far as it has. But thankfully, the voices of dissent are getting louder, and there is strength in numbers. When Twitter, under Elon Musk’s ownership, struck a deal with the Daily Wire to stream What is a Woman on the first day of Pride, they got spooked enough to pull the deal unless they removed two scenes they labeled “hate speech.” One of those scenes included a desperate father who had been charged with child abuse for misgendering his own daughter, as he fought to stop her from life-altering medical intervention.Thankfully, Musk stepped in and put the kibosh on Twitter censorship, even tweeting out the film to his followers. By the end of the weekend, it had been viewed close to 200 million times. Because of Matt Walsh standing up and speaking out, and because Elon Musk bought Twitter, more people know about what goes on behind closed doors at gender clinics, at universities, and in the minds of so many well-meaning politicians. How is it we have arrived in 2023 and the people sticking up for truth, science, and reason are the Conservative Christians?Here are some of the film’s best scenes:The activists have pushed the American public too far. While most everyone was accepting of gay rights and gay marriage, they kept moving the line. Now, elementary schools are making Pride somehow part of their curriculum. But Pride isn’t what it used to be. It’s not the many gay parents I got to know while I was raising my daughter. It’s now expanded like a mushroom cloud to include this unforgivable abuse of minor children under the Orwellian term “medical care.” At this point, I know beyond any doubt that there is no fixing the Left. There is only leaving - leave the schools, leave the therapists, leave the online bubbl

I used to be a true blue loyalist. My grandmother, an FDR Democrat, and lifelong social worker, kept a signed picture of Bill Clinton on her kitchen wall until the day she died. My earliest memory kicks it all the way back to 1988 when I wore a Dukakis button to work and was mocked for it. “Who would vote for du-Taxus,” one woman said. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

As I began my drive across this big, beautiful country of ours, I saw real life going on. RVs filled with families hitched to trucks making their way somewhere. Lights turning on at grocery stores. Workers high atop utility poles fixing electrical lines. I drove through cities and pastures, across state lines, and on an interstate conceived and built by President Eisenhower. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

The same network that called Tucker Carlson a “Right-wing extremist” has decided to put Donald Trump back on prime time. As their hypocrisy comes full circle, a pathetic #boycottcnn hashtag bloomed on Twitter. As if.CNN’s ratings were in near-total collapse when Trump threw them a lifeline. By contrast, the Murdochs dumped their best ratings-getter for speaking too many uncomfortable truths.To many on the Left, reality and truth are negotiable. They can fool themselves into believing Carlson was dumped for being a “racist” and “inciting violence.” But Fox News clearly had no idea what they had with Tucker Carlson and now they’ve taken one step closer to their own demise. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

“Fear not the path of Truth for the lack of People walking on it.” ― Robert F. KennedyA new poll by ABC News/Washington Post shows both Trump and DeSantis beating Biden by 6 points.According to this poll, the public does not believe Biden is fit to serve mentally or physically.@Politics_Polls Has the mental sharpness it takes to serve effectively as president: Joe Biden: Yes 32% No 63% Donald Trump: Yes 54% No 43% .Is in good enough physical health to serve effectively as president: Joe Biden: Yes 33% No 62% Donald Trump: Yes 64% No 28%None of this matters much when you have abandoned the truth and depend on a manufactured reality curated by a partisan public relations department disguised as legacy media. And no one is all that worried. They know the fix is in. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

“Free societies...are societies in motion, and with motion comes tension, dissent, friction. Free people strike sparks, and those sparks are the best evidence of freedom's existence.” ― Salman RushdieLast week, Democrats Chuck Schumer and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez locked arms with Conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch to silence Tucker Carlson off Fox News.Yes, the same side that once fought against the Black List and for cultural icons like Lenny Bruce and the Red Hot Chili Peppers was now cheering on defacto censorship by an oligarch. What a change from the old Left. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

[Imaginary Tucker Carlson Monologue for Monday, April 24th, 2023]TUCKER CARLSON: “Good Evening, and welcome to Tucker Carlson Tonight. No doubt you’ve heard of the name Ray Epps. You have heard his name many times on this broadcast in connection with the events of January 6th. You’ve heard me tell you that our government was lying about what happened that day and that they haven’t stopped lying, and that they have an entire media empire helping them lie to you every day.But those compliant patsies are never going to be threatened with legal action, like a defamation case, to shut them up, just like all of the talk about hacked voting machines after 2016 by Jill Stein and many in the media never led to defamation cases like the one Fox just settled with Dominion for $800 million.Oh no. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

“When you're at the end of your rope, tie a knot and hold on.” ― Theodore RooseveltJoe Biden and the Democrats could learn something from what just happened on Twitter, where a populist revolt is currently underway. The blue check scam was powerful - a minority of elites who have granted themselves outsized influence on the media narrative, the Democratic Party and reality itself.Elon Musk played a game of cat and mouse with the blue checks first by taking them away, then giving them back after they launched a dumb hashtag campaign because the “unwashed masses” could now have access to status on Twitter. It was obscene but telling. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

beware those who are quick to censorthey are afraid of what they do not knowbeware those who seek constant crowds forthey are nothing alone - Charles BukowskiAn old friend texted me recently to ask how I was handling the “new Twitter.” I had to think for a minute, and then I realized that in the language of the Left, he meant that Elon Musk had bought the site, and now it’s overrun by hate speech and neo-Nazis. Do I still feel safe using it? “Oh,” I texted back. “I’m not in the bubble of the Left anymore, so it doesn’t bother me. I like it. I am a fan of free speech.” There was a long pause, something I’ve become accustomed to when conversing with someone on the Left. They don’t want to argue. They don’t want to go any further. They just want to slowly back away. The idea that Twitter was now overrun by “hate speech” was just an accepted reality because that is how much power the blue-checks on Twitter have to influence the mainstream media narrative, which trickles down everywhere.But when a viral video circulated with a BBC reporter who could not name even one example of hate speech, that didn’t make news in the mainstream because it contradicted the narrative.The story will make the rounds on the Right, but the mainstream narrative has more power, and if a story contradicts the government’s official narrative, it will never make the news. That’s still true with Musk as the new owner, but it’s a step up from the government using Twitter as a filter to silence dissent. That Twitter users had enough power and status to decide reality is what made Twitter dangerous. This has been true since the beginning, as it slowly became the most powerful propaganda tool the Democrats had. Once Musk took over Twitter and decided the blue checks were granting status to people deemed “special” but not to others, he set about messing with their own self-importance by taking away their privilege of the verification badge, giving users who pay a monthly fee the opportunity to have a blue check instead.What is brilliant about this, and maybe most people don’t get it, is that Musk understood the collective power of the blue-check army and now he’s punctured it, dismantled it, like stealing all of their horses in the middle of the night, leaving them nowhere to go to fight the next battle. But they aren’t used to anyone challenging their power. Musk has been feeling the impact of their collective wrath ever since. HOW DARE YOU! “I’m not paying for that,” they proclaimed. But oh, how delicious it will be to see some of these once-mighty prominent legacy blue-checks naked without that little verification symbol. Supposedly that’s somehow ruined Twitter. What it’s done is democratize it. It might be more chaotic now, maybe even slightly more unpredictable, but that makes it more thrilling, not less. What “ruined” Twitter was the #resistance, transforming the platform into one massive propaganda outlet for The Democrats in an imaginary battle with Donald Trump that began in 2017, when the company tweaked its algorithm to push more engaged tweets to the top of everyone’s feed.Even if they have the choice to see “latest Tweets,” most prefer to see what tweets are driving the narratives in a given day so they can ride the wave of outrage, whatever is trending, whatever person is “it,” who can be dunked on, humiliated or bullied into an apology or chased off the platform entirely.The bullying on Twitter had become a problem, not just for users, but corporations and institutions that were suddenly worried about being hurled into the public arena for shaming. That is Twitter’s curse and power, which is why Musk never needed to sweat competition like Substack Notes. As someone who has been swarmed and bullied more times than I can count, I already feel a little more free using Twitter now. They’re right that it has changed. But Musk didn’t ruin it. He rescued it.Elon’s StumbleElon Musk has made, by my calculations, only one major mistake since he took over Twitter, and that was assuming journalist Matt Taibbi owed him something after the two broke the all-important Twitter Files story. He thought Taibbi should move his Substack over to Twitter to help Twitter profit. But this vindicated the hysterical rantings by people like Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Mehdi Hasan. They accused Taibbi and others of being bought and paid for by “the Richest Man in the World.” Now they had proof that was the intention all along.Taibbi, however, was never working for Musk, and if he has any loyalty, it’s to Substack, where he’s built his substantial following of readers like me who rely on him to tell us the truth. It’s also his main source of income. Musk isn’t paying him. It wasn’t so much what he did to Taibbi that was the mistake. It was more about giving up a powerful Chess piece he had with the alliance of journalists investigating the Twitter files. Despite how the legacy media has been trying to downplay it, it is the story of the year, maybe of the

“In a country that doesn't discriminate between fame and infamy, the latter presents itself as plainly more achievable.” ― Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About KevinAudrey/Aiden and Riley GainesIf we had strong leaders in the White House, which we do not, they would have stepped up to a podium somewhere after the mass shooting at Christian Covenant and the attack on champion swimmer, Riley Gaines by trans activists and tried to lower the temperature.Instead, just days after the shooting, the President took the opportunity to blame Republicans, especially those in Tennessee still reeling from a shocking massacre at a Christian school. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

“Weimar Germany conjures up fears of what can happen when there is simply no societal consensus on how to move forward and every minor difference becomes a cause of existential political battles,” ― Eric D. Weitz, Weimar Germany: Promise and TragedyJust two years into the Joe Biden presidency, it has become abundantly clear that the only people actively trying to destroy this country are the Democrats and the cult that has overtaken them.How much worse could it possibly get than a former President of the United States indicted in the city that made him on a case that no one believes in good faith was legitimate? No government that believes in America would ever do such a thing to rip this country apart, especially after COVID, after the Summer of 2020, and after January 6th. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

“Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-DickIn 2016, Donald Trump became the 45th President of the United States. Like all presidents, he was elected to do the best job he could in service of the American people. Our elections are meant to tell our government what we want. But somewhere along the way, we’ve lost touch with what this country was designed to be - a Constitutional Republic.We don’t go through the trouble of elections to have them systematically undermined because the administrative state, and an elite ruling class, don’t like dealing with someone they can’t control. We don’t spend four years throwing everything at our elected leaders to see what sticks. We don’t send our Department of Justice to raid the home of a former president to “find something.” We don’t punish our elected leaders just for the crime of winning.We don’t indict them on ticky-tack procedural matters because the person now in the White House is too weak and too unpopular to win a second term. In this country, it’s supposed to be a fair contest between those who win the primary elections. Putting that heavy of a thumb on the scale is corruption on a level we’ve never seen, at least not in my lifetime. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

Because the truth is, it was never really about Trump. It was about us. What we were before Trump, what we did while Trump was in office, and what we’re doing now. Sooner or later, the clock is going to run out on this madness. Democrats can’t live with or without Trump. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

It’s kind of amazing that there was ever a time in American life when we pledged ourselves one Nation under God, isn’t it? It seems we are no longer that and have become fractured into many different nations, not even just two. But it does seem very clear that a new religion is upon us. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

Utopias by their nature have only two options if they’re to survive. They must lean into totalitarianism or collapse. We’re now at the moment when the Democrats, with complete control of the legacy media, nearly all major institutions of power — including those run by the government — are slowly adopting totalitarian practices to shut out speech they don’t like. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

How is it possible that the highest-grossing, best-reviewed film of the year - by critics and audiences - that was credited with saving the film industry amid near-total collapse would not be winning Best Picture at the Oscars on Sunday, March 12th? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

President Biden is anxious to take his rightful place in history as a real president, not an establishment stooge who kicked around congress for decades, or a guy who has to be told where to stand, what to say, where to go. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

“The modus operandi of every cult is to convince you there's something wrong with you and only they can fix it.” ― Marty RubinI grew up in the era of cults. My siblings and I attended a small elementary school in Topanga Canyon back in the 1970s, when it was still a wilderness of hippies and health food stores - not a safe haven for the 1%.We were heathens, without a doubt, raised like weeds by a former beauty queen who had dropped out of high school at 16 to have my older brother. She met my father at a nightclub called Pandora’s Box in Hollywood. If you look carefully you can see it in the background of Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

This is the podcast version. If you’d like to read the text version, that is here. I usually post them together but this time I didn’t. Which do you prefer? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

“The gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. It is a tedious job to build them up again; they never quite shine. And the child's world is never quite whole again. It is an aching kind of growing.” John Steinbeck, East of EdenA few days ago, the most powerful, high-profile news media in this country were thoroughly humiliated by Jeff Gerth at the Columbia Journalism Review with a four-part series called The Press Versus The President.Fair-minded and stubbornly objective, this awards-worthy piece of investigative journalism, begins the hard work of sifting through the past seven years to try to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

“I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccesful rebellions indeed generally establish the incroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions, as not to discourage them too much. It is a medecine necessary for the sound health of government.” ― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas JeffersonThe Great UprisingI grew up as a child of the 1970s where I watched the rise and fall of the counterculture protest movements that included everything from Kent State to Patti Hearst, the bombing of the Capitol, the Black Panthers, Gloria Steinem, and eventually, the Manson murders would douse the flames and drive the silent majority far, far away from the Left. I also remember Nixon’s landslide win in 1972 and how hopeless that made everyone on the Left feel, like all of it had been for nothing. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

2016 was meant to be the crowning achievement for the Hillary Democrat. Those who stuck by her in her in 2008, during the Benghazi hearings, the Monica Lewinsky scandal, the non-stop criticisms of her during Bill Clinton’s presidency, and the early feminists who followed her leadership out of college and into politics that would eventually make the impossible possible: The first woman President of the United States.I was one of them. The more research I did on the life and career of Hillary Rodham Clinton the more I came to respect and admire her. I made videos, I fought hard on Twitter with Trump supporters and “Bernie bros.” I wrote essay after essay on Medium to boost enthusiasm. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

Do you remember good movies? I mean, really good movies you had to see in the movie theater the second they came out? Movies so good you would sacrifice your grocery money to see? Do you remember lining up for hours on opening day?I do. I didn’t just watch movies, I lived in them. I grew up on top of a mountain in Topanga Canyon, back when it wasn’t a gated community for the 1% but was instead the land of the hippies - the Manson Family and the Rolling Stones. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

Two years ago, I started this Substack to find a path out of the madness that had overtaken the Left. The madness was everywhere. People were getting fired right and left, mostly left, for saying words they weren’t supposed to say. There was a sudden climate of fear that was crippling nearly every institution of power, most especially the one I work in: Hollywood.The fear was that there were racists and rapists everywhere and in everything. Sex and race became two major mass hysteria events in this country after the election of Donald Trump in 2016. To Trump supporters, his win was nothing less than a miracle. A smart strategy involving a few key swing states to bring in a slim Electoral College victory, mainly with the help of Facebook’s micro-targeting. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

“And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” ― George Orwell, 1984Jamie Raskin wants to tell you a story. It’s one that has tumbled around in his brain for years now. It’s also one he hopes to make his name on. Jamie Raskin: hero at long last.All he had to do was stand before the American people and pretend that President Trump planned an “insurrection,” an overthrow of the United States government. How hard could that be? He’d already tried to impeach him twice, along with Democrats and a handful of Never-Trumpers. All of this worked so beautifully in the midterms to scare voters away from MAGA. Let’s keep it going, they think. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

As the new owner of Twitter, Elon Musk is, to quote, Ben Shapiro, moving fast and breaking things. He could see a big problem, as anyone outside the media feedback loop can. Twitter had become not just the propaganda arm of the State, but was being used as a filter to dodge the First Amendment, to police thought and speech.They didn’t do it directly or overtly. They did it alongside enthusiastic “good soldiers” for the State. The users - the blue-checks - and the employees saw themselves as the #resistance. To them, banning Trump was spiking their flag at Iwo Jima. They won, or so they thought. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

Old Journalism Ethics | Rivers“We're under a lot of pressure, you know, and you put us there. Nothing's riding on this except the, uh, first amendment to the Constitution, freedom of the press, and maybe the future of the country.” - Ben Bradlee, All the President’s MenThe break-in at the Democratic National Committee was small-time, ticky-tacky surveillance to get dirt on Nixon’s opponents for his upcoming re-election bid. When the burglars were caught, but for the efforts of the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, Nixon would have served his second term after his landslide win in 1972. But that was back when we had the kind of journalists who were not afraid to hold the powerful to account. How the mighty have fallen. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe