Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning with Sasha Stone

“So you’re voting for Du-taxus?” a woman said to me in 1988. I was a lowly receptionist at a gym called “Women Only,” which was probably later sued out of business. I had to answer the phone with, “ We have the way, Women Only, this is Sasha, may I help you? ” I was undoubtedly blurting out this mouthful when the client noticed my Dukakis pin, because why wouldn’t she? I told her yes, I was, thoug...

Joanna Parker paces in her office. The media narrative successfully sank the Republicans and their efforts to steal some of the Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce energy. Amateurs. After all this time, they still haven’t learned that WE control everything. Making them look like fools, waking up a whole generation to how stupid the Republicans are, was worth all of the trouble it took to hire well-paid and...

This election year promises to be one long “October Surprise” as the newly weaponized legal system, and Department of Justice go to unprecedented and extraordinary lengths not to stop Trump but to damage him enough that one of the least popular presidents in history can be once again dragged over the finish line in November. It’s so blatantly corrupt it’s hard to believe it’s actually happening. W...

I am not supposed to be rooting for Trump and MAGA. I’m supposed to be one of the million and change who huddles on my couch in terror, watching MSNBC as the results from Iowa trickle in. I’m supposed to somberly nod when Rachel Maddow tells her viewers they won’t show Trump’s speech. Shut down the speech! I am supposed to say, as if any of this is normal. I will not watch it . I will not listen f...

On January 6th, Trump will give a rally in Iowa. He’ll do what he’s done for seven years as a hunted man - reassure his supporters that there is nothing to fear but fear itself. Joe Biden, the President of the United States, will also give a speech that day and do what he has been doing since taking office: offer the people nothing but fear itself. Biden’s message? Be afraid. Be very, very afraid...

“Are you a Trump supporter now?” is the question my friends, acquaintances, and colleagues sometimes ask me. I know the answer to that question could end our relationship. So do they. Most of the time, they just don’t ask. They quietly assume that I might be, but what they don’t know can’t hurt them. Since 2016, being labeled “Trump supporter,” has given most people the green light to cut ties, pu...

Rob Reiner was jolted awake. Just minutes ago, he could have sworn he was holding his wife and sleeping soundly. Now, he could barely move. What was wrong with his feet? “Michele!” Reiner calls out for his wife. Silence. He glances around the room he is somehow trapped in. A small bed. Trinkets on shelves. A snowstorm outside. Where is he? Suddenly, the door bursts open, and none other than Annie...

[ Part One - Here ] Rob Reiner wanted to sleep. But his thoughts swirled around in his brain like a cage full of butterflies. Make it stop, make it stop. Haunted by Archie Bunker just hours ago , something about how January 6th was like the JFK assassination made Reiner’s Christmas Eve a nightmare. Maybe it all finally got to him, all those months of research looking into the history of the CIA, r...

Rob Reiner holds his phone in front of his face, and doom-scrolls Twitter. One after the other, all about the coming apocalypse, Donald Trump's potential win. The monster. The fascist. The BEAST is outpolling Uncle Joe - how is this happening? He’s indicted for felonies, a twice impeached crook, conman, and dictator. He waged an armed insurrection to attack the Capitol to overturn the election; he...

[Profanity warning…..] There is a scene in David Fincher’s The Social Network where Sean Parker (played by Justin Timberlake) has Mark Zuckerberg (played by Jesse Eisenberg) set up a meeting to have the most sought-after genius in tech, deliver an important message: “Sean Parker says f*ck you.” That’s what you do when you have the money Mark Zuckerberg was about to have, or if you’re the richest m...

You wouldn’t know me if you met me in May of 2019, as I drove to a luncheon for Joe Biden sponsored by a big donor at one of the mansions in a wealthy pocket of Los Angeles. I’d been hand-picked as an influencer after rising in the ranks of Team Hillary on social media. I’d thrown myself into politics in 2015, panicking about climate change. “We have to win,” I thought. By the end of 2020, just on...

Everything you’ve heard is true. The Republicans are losing on abortion. They are not motivated to turn out the same way the Democrats are unless Trump is on the ballot, and even then, the GOP is losing at a time when they should be blowing the Democrats out of power for a generation. The war is over, and the GOP lost, at least for now. Just as they are on the right side of history with “gender-af...

Ron DeSantis has every quality a presidential candidate needs - good looks, youth, a nice family, and a strong governance track record in Florida. What he doesn’t have, however, is more charisma than his chief rival, Donald Trump. To be fair, not many candidates, or people for that matter, have as much charisma as Trump does. It’s a once-in-a-generation thing that defies explanation. It’s just the...

Our country, at the hands of the Left, is falling apart. There is no center. It is as though termites have eaten away the foundation as we allowed so many activists to dismantle their “systems of oppression,” otherwise known as our heroes, our history, our movies, our achievements, our books, our poetry, our art. If America built it, it is corrupt, say the Woketopians. We’ve seen them edging ever...

A tweet about the Holocaust? Sorry, Gina Carano, you’re finished with Disney . A tweet about how violent protests lose elections got you fired? Sorry, David Shor, those are the consequences of your action s. You have to be held accountable. It’s not “cancel culture,” they insisted. It’s “consequence culture.” Intent doesn’t matter. Only impact does. Not even Thomas Jefferson was safe from the “Eye...

“And so shines a good deed in a weary world,” that’s the line that ran through my head as I finished John Nolte’s first novel, Borrowed Time . The truth is that I didn’t want it to end. I didn’t want to leave that imaginative world and have to face the reality of ours. I had already started it over just before the last few chapters to stave off the inevitable. Was it the book’s protagonist I liked...

Once upon a time, there was a Paper of Record. They proudly claimed that moniker because they valued journalism. They valued getting the facts before broadcasting the headline. For decades, they built the most trusted newspaper in the land. And that newspaper was called the New York Times. Then came the internet. A gaggle of hoodie-wearing flip-flop dudebros moving fast and breaking things nearly...

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 corp...

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...

“If they want a monster so badly, they ought to be provided by one.” ― Margaret Atwood Their 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...

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...

“ 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 happe...

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...

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 dr...

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 Emerson You 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...