Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning with Sasha Stone

“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 Tragedy Just two years into the Joe Biden presidency, it has become abundantly clear that the only people actively trying to destroy this country are the Demo...

“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-Dick In 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 wh...

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.sashas...

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,...

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...

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 Rubin I 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...

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 Eden A few days ago, the most powerful, high-pro...

“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 mu...

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...

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 th...

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 raci...

“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, 1984 Jamie 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 ho...

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...

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 Men The break-in at the Democratic National Committee was small-time, ticky-tacky surveillance to get dirt on Nixon’s opponents for...

When Jack Dorsey invented a chat-like social media platform with character limitations, he probably had no idea it would one day become the most powerful propaganda tool this country, this world, has ever known. The danger was always that any Big Tech platform, let alone three of the biggest, would one day be under the control of one political party. In 2020, the combination of lockdowns and viole...

“A Native American elder once described his own inner struggles in this manner: Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time. When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, The one I feed the most.” ― George Bernard Shaw 28 years ago, I escaped real life for life online. I was desperate, y...

Trump was nearing the end of a campaign speech for Marco Rubio in Miami, days before the midterms when it started to rain. The MAGA faithful used their Trump signs as makeshift umbrellas. Trump’s mic cut in and out. He could barely read the teleprompter. “Is everybody having a good time?” he shouted to the crowd. The answer came roaring back. They were having the time of their lives, even as thund...

“Heroes may not be braver than anyone else. They're just braver 5 minutes longer.” ― Ronald Reagan The 2022 midterms have emerged as a Rorschach test—anger, disappointment, finger-pointing on the Right, and typical self-satisfied smugness on the Left. There are lessons to learn on both sides. Lingering in the back of everyone’s mind is how a president with such low approval ratings, high inflation...

Joe Biden had a smile on his face the morning after the midterms. That’s the look of someone who just escaped total disaster. At least for now. The lesson they were all supposed to get with one decisive red wave never arrived. That is bad news for them. Or maybe it’s bad news for all of us who are much more worried about America at the hands of the Democrats. For weeks, they parroted the mantra, a...

[ Apologies for the audio - it was raining pretty hard here and the power kept cutting off] “We had to do something [in Bush v. Gore ], because countries were laughing at us. France was laughing at us.” ― Antonin Scalia, The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court I grew up in the 1980s thinking my vote didn’t matter. I became an “election denier” because that is what the Democrats have...

“I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions.” ― George Carlin Joe Biden and the Democrats have a big problem. It isn’t just that they stand to lose in the midterm elections and maybe the Presidency in 2024. They stand to lose much more than that. They stand to lose everything. The American people, by now,...

As we head into the midterm elections, our virtual civil war all too often is fought on social media, as each side battles daily to capture the media narrative. Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter felt like a major win for the real “resistance.” He is our Luke Skywalker, one of our last best hopes for freedom against the Empire. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscr...