Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning with Sasha Stone

• The Gun Control Lie I Once Believed In

  As a lifelong Democrat, I always thought the problem of gun violence was easy to solve. Just get rid of the guns. It was one of the most important issues for us as Bill Clinton rallied voters to the polls in 1992. But back then, it wasn’t mass shootings that we worried about. It was handguns. Just look at this scene in Aaron Sorkin’s The American President, released in 1995, where Michael Douglas has to bury protecting the climate to pass a weapons bill, but by the end, he realizes he doesn’t have to sacrifice anything. He can and will get both.Four years later, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold would become famous by shooting up Columbine High School with illegally purchased weapons. That led to the renewal of the now-expired 1994 Assault Weapons Ban originally implemented after Patrick Edward Purdy killed five children at an elementary school in Stockton, California, in 1989. We had a joke back then called “going postal,” referring to the same kind of person who would open fire on post offices or other office buildings. It seemed like men reacted violently to being rejected, either by a job or a woman. School shootings were rare. But Columbine hit differently than any tragedy that came before it.It wasn’t just the crime itself; it was the pleasure the shooters took in carrying it out, performing for the security cameras, the casual cruelty, and later, how they became subversive icons. All of these years later, many of our early theories about them turned out to be wrong. They weren’t really bullied. For them, it was more about the thrill of killing and gaining fame for it. By 1999, two significant changes had occurred in American society. The 24-hour news cycle, thanks to the O.J. Simpson trial, and the rise of the internet, which could give us our news even faster. However, it did something else as well. It allowed ordinary people to become famous overnight. That’s still true. Anyone can get famous for anything. Mass shooters also have their influencers and platforms. But even more importantly, like the Columbine shooters, they are all caught up in the romance of building a mythology behind their planned shootings, their grand statements against society as they carry out their evil acts. They seem to have empathy for other shooters. They want to be like them. They want to be feared and remembered. The more evil the deed, the greater the myth. The endgame always seems to be suicide, go out with a bang. Solving that problem, understanding it, trying to get ahead of it, proved too difficult, so we pivoted to the guns. Always the guns. Just get rid of the guns, and the problem will be solved.Like these TikTokers: I used to believe that. I also demonized people who carried them, and it was an easy excuse to blame the other side. What else is new? At least we want to do something about it, I would say. For this reason, I began studying mass shooters. I thought that if I could identify the one thing they had in common, maybe we could find a way to reach them before they decide to pick up a gun.Every time I brought it up to anyone I knew on the Left, I would always get the same answer: it’s the guns. Take away the guns, solve the problem. They didn’t want to talk about anything else. If you lived through the Oklahoma City bombing and 9/11, it seemed obvious that if people want to kill, there are other ways. Just look at suicide bombers, or people who drive trucks through crowds, or go on stabbing sprees. No, guns just made it easier, but taking them away is not only impossible, it doesn’t solve the problem. In my research, I came across a site called GunViolence.org. They lay out just how rare mass shootings are compared to the rest of the shootings in America. I was shocked when I actually looked at the numbers. Here is their ten-year review:Gun deaths are part of the everyday reality for many working-class families living in high-crime cities, and yet, in the post-George Floyd America, even talking about “Black on Black” crime is strictly verboten. It has to be the guns. On August 27, the same day as the most recent shooting in Minneapolis at a Catholic school, several other people lost their lives to gun violence. Like this:And this:And this - a man shot in his home in Mississippi. Two more:How about this shooting, captured on Facebook Live and viewed by millions in Chicago: The same party that thinks guns are the problem have not only refused Trump’s help to bring in the National Guard to clean up crime, but have also attempted to “defund the police,” called all police “racists” all through 2020, and continue to ignore crime in cities like Los Angeles where all of the products have to be locked away and criminals aren’t even prosecuted for theft under $1000.There is no question that the Democrat brand lately stands for defending and protecting criminals and crime rather than protecting citizens. They won’t talk about how residents in DC are relieved to be able to walk on the streets and feel safe at night. This latest shooter, Robert/Robin Westman, bought his guns legally. Giffords.org gives Minnesota a grade of “B.” Yet, here are their suggestions to improve that grade:None of these improvements would have stopped Westman from shooting his gun through the window while Catholic students were praying on the second day of school. He did it because he knew that they were too trusting and that there would be few barriers in his way. For a guy like Westman, or any of the latest trend of trans and nonbinary perpetrators of violence, wearing a mask of a woman offers an extra layer of protection, but it also reveals someone who doesn’t want to be who he is in a society that no longer has any use for men. Not only won’t they look into it, but their greatest fear coming out of the event was whether they would offend the transgender community.You see how easy it is to blame the guns? Then, you never have to look at anything else, uncomfortable things, things no one can even talk about.And for those complaining that the Republicans are “politicizing a tragedy,” know this: all the Democrats have done for the last 30 years is politicize tragedies. Never let a crisis go to waste. And the answer is always the guns. Because “it’s the guns,” we never had to face what we’d done to contribute to making this country worse. We never had to confront what the feminist movement had done to men. Listen to how these women talk on TikTok. It isn’t just that men have fled the Democratic Party. It’s that they’ve been abandoned by them and, worse, they’ve been demonized.I am not excusing violence, certainly not mass murder, certainly not of children. But how can we not even talk about what has happened to men over the past 20 years that has brought them to the point where so many of them feel like there is no place for them in society, that they are loathed at best, invisible at worst? And if we don’t understand them, if we don’t see them, if we don’t know how to reach them, how can we possibly stop them? Oh, don’t worry, we’ll just take away the gun. That will solve the problem.We never had to confront what psych meds might have done to potential mass shooters. We weren’t even allowed to bring it up lest we offend those afflicted with mental illness. At least now, under Trump, we have RFK, Jr. to take a look, finally, at whether or not these drugs had any impact on mass shootings. After the massacre at Sandy Hook, I realized we lost the gun debate. Adam Lanza’s guns were locked up. But he stole them, shot his mother in the face, and went on a rampage, where he would later end his life.I knew that wasn’t about the guns. It couldn’t be. So what else was going on? How can we prevent this problem from happening again? The guns? Seriously? That’s all you got? Yes, that’s all they got. Even now. But what I know now is that we have to do the other thing. We have to pivot to protecting children — schools, churches, parks, restaurants. We must ensure our buildings are shooter-proof, just as we make sure they are earthquake-proof. Debating about guns for 30 more years isn’t going to do anything. And then, we have to have a serious conversation about the deeper issues at play, not just with the most recent shooting, but with all mass shootings. How is it that they become celebrities? Why do men feel left behind? Why do they think they need something like this to be valued? Why did this shooter and so many others of late feel they had to transition or identify as something other than a man to be seen and valued? What can we do as a society to help them?We live in a take-no-prisoners new world of algorithms and isolation. It will likely disrupt our species in ways we can’t even fathom. But one thing I know for sure is that to make the conversation only about guns is to be unprepared for everything that’s coming next. // 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

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• First, They Came for The Smithsonian...

  Before the fascists came, America was finally on the right track. As the saying goes, when you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow. That’s what happened with our violent but mostly peaceful revolution in the Summer of 2020. When Joe Biden took office, we had complete control over the message and could fire anyone at will if they used the wrong pronoun, doubted the election results, or dared to defy mask mandates or lockdowns. Or even wore a red hat. We erected a high fence around the Capitol. We shunned, destroyed, de-banked, fired, bullied, harassed, and abused anyone who ever supported Trump. The hearts and minds did follow, they had to. We’d laid the groundwork for our revolution decades before. Most Americans were unaware of it. So were most parents until lockdowns. Then, unfortunately, they saw, but by then it was too late. A whole army had come of age and now, had taken to the streets. Conform or else.That’s how culture changed, and it changed dramatically, almost overnight — all were in compliance. Movies, fashion, books, the arts, comedy, and yes, museums finally did what they were supposed to do - tell us how to think, what to think, and whose side to be on. America wasn’t ready for that back in the 1950s when Communist hunters in government and Hollywood punished those seeking to use culture as a conduit for dogma. It’s the Conservatives once again attempting to purge American culture of an infectious mind virus. When Trump gave a speech at Mount Rushmore, it was a warning, like Mein Kampf. America knew where we were headed, but they put him in power anyway four years later. Then again, how do we really know he was elected? Like they say on TikTok, “he wasn’t shot, he didn’t win, he is on the list.”We know how close the election was. Just as when Hitler won in Germany, Trump’s win was close enough to rob him of his mandate to decide America wants change. America doesn’t. America is “woke” and likes it that way, and if they don’t, too bad.Now, the fascists want the Old America back. They want people to feel proud of their country and be inspired to make the most of themselves, regardless of skin color or class. As if that’s even possible in a White Supremacist empire founded by colonizers on stolen land on the backs of oppressed and enslaved people. But we’re going to fight them, just like we will fight them, trying to close the border or clean up crime or end the crisis of unhoused persons. Fortunately, we have complete control of the BBC, NBC, CBS, ABC, The New York Times, and the Washington Post. They will project our message - they have to. They know that and have since 2020. And that message will have to be that Trump wants to eradicate all mentions of slavery, pretend it never existed at all. When Jillian Michaels tried to explain to the Good People at CNN that purging the “woke” from the Smithsonian wasn’t about erasing slavery, it didn’t go so well:But she’s a fascist-apologist, which means we must do what we can to exclude her, purge her, and silence her. There is only one point of view allowed in our America. Anyone who tries to criticize us or dismantle what we built over the past 20 years must be destroyed. That is anti-fascism.So that meant she had to go on News Nation to try to further explain what she really meant.It doesn’t really matter what Jillian Michaels thinks. What matters is what we tell her to think, and if she doesn’t go along with it, she must be punished. We want every child or teenager forced to visit the Smithsonian with their school or their parents to know they should be ashamed of not just the color of their skin (if they are white) but of their country, its history, and its so-called heroes. We want every Black child or teenager who is forced to visit the museum to also know that they are forever and eternal victims; we need them to be. We need an endless supply of oppressed people to continue demonizing the oppressors and preserve our power. Not to mention, raise money from wealthy, guilty white people who need absolution for their sins of wealth and privilege. Otherwise, what’s the point?Yes, it’s to make everyone feel welcome, but they must know their place as symbols of oppression and never be allowed to rise beyond the menial jobs white people won’t take. That keeps them in their lane. It’s better than life in the third world. And it helps justify our movement. One exhibit depicts what looks like the Baby Jesus and family caught by border agents while trying to cross over the wall. Art must tell us what to think. This image conveys the migrants as martyrs under an oppressive system. It’s a message that we project across all facets of culture under our control. We guide viewers on how to interpret this image and draw a conclusion about America. The message must be that all people who cross the border do so seeking democracy and a decent life. They are good. If you see them as terrorists or rapists or gang members, you are bad. You are a racist. If there is a Sydney Sweeney ad that celebrates “good genes,” well, the Gap will answer it with how we’re all supposed to reflect female beauty as every color of the rainbow, because the Sydney Sweeney ad was racist. Here is another exhibit which reflects how we see our protected groups — it’s never about achievement. It’s only about identity. Identity is achievement. From the White House: I mean, of course, we know that Irish and Italian immigrants were attacked and prevented from voting and working in the US. They were white. But we can’t tell that story because it muddies the message. All children need to know is that Benjamin Franklin was a racist. Art should depict any person who is marginalized as saintly and god-like. Here is an example of one of our children who is probably the last generation to know the truth before the fascists came.All school children should learn, as early as possible, about the various identity groups in case they might belong to one — surely they are aware of this even as toddlers. What we used to call a fetish is also now identity:The American History Museum’s “LGBTQ+ History” exhibit seeks to “understand evolving and overlapping identities such as lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender, queer, transsexual, transvestite, mahu, homosexual, fluid, invert, urning, third sex, two sex, gender-bender, sapphist, hijra, friend of Dorothy, drag queen/king, and many other experiences.” If this were actual art, there would be an exhibit labeled “The Woke Eye view” and offer some critical thinking of Critical Theory. But that would be blasphemy. Artists have always spoken truth to power, and we have all of the cultural power, so we decide the message. Because identity matters, the transgender fight is on par with Jim Crow in our ideology, so if you remove any of it, it is like you are erasing Black history, too.Illegal immigration is identity. Crime is identity. Theft, carjacking, murder, and rape are identity, unless you’re white. Then you drive the news cycle for several weeks as we lament the harms of “white supremacy” on our society.If you try to stop any of it, then you will be screamed at, “F— you! You f—ing fascists! Why are you here? I don’t want you in my city!” So said one brave resistance fighter who then, in a fit of pure rage, hurled a footlong sub at the Gestapo then fled the scene. We turned that into art, too. Ordinarily, we might care that the sandwich would make for a pretty good meal for an unhoused person, or that it costs carbon emissions to grow the animal, slaughter it, then drive the meat to Subway, and finally put the sandwich together, probably all labor by people of color or other marginalized groups. We might protest him or cancel him on social media for his carbon footprint. But that would be in ordinary times. These are not ordinary times. Anti-fascism is preventing crime in the cities because policing crime is another form of oppression. Anyone who supports making the streets safer is a fascist. All of the Good White Liberals agree: Fascism is here. Even Bill Maher says so. Sure, he kind of has to because if he doesn’t, he might not get invited to the parties anymore. Or his show might be canceled outright. Or maybe he believes it. We get to say what kind of lawfare amounts to fascism. Terry Moran gets to say. Sure, we raided Trump’s home and indicted him, took his mug shot. Threw Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro in jail for Contempt of Congress, tried to throw Trump in jail, tried to throw him off the ballot, probably tried to shoot him; we might have de-banked a few and kicked people off social media. Fired them for offensive words, ideas, or headlines. But you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.It all works together. Keep teaching that America is an empire of “white supremacy” and Black and Brown people must turn to crime and drug addiction just to survive it, well, then, we don’t want the National Guard in our cities, because what would happen if they cleaned up crime? No crime, no democracy. We need the museum to explain why we need DEI, why we have crime, and why we need to accept crime and homelessness as a part of normal life in a sick and broken country like ours. As long as our country is sick and broken, then our movement is justified. We must eradicate fascism and restore democracy. 2020 was only the beginning. We just need to ensure we have complete control over the young. We want them as early as infancy. We want them in preschool. We want everything they see and everything they learn to be our message. Our America. Was it Orwell who said, “Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.” That is our fight now. Who controls the present? We need to protect our message that not all are created equal. Our history must remind us every day that we should feel shame about our past, because how else to justify our survival? // 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

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• Gavin Newsom Doesn't Want to Beat Trump--He Wants to BE Trump

  When I was struggling in my 20s, I would receive a $50 check from my dad every week. It would come from Gene Stone’s Janitorial Service. He’s dead now, and he would never want to be remembered that way. He was a jazz drummer, after all, and that is what he wanted people to know about him. But he also had a janitorial service where he would clean office buildings owned by his friend Dave from high school. Dave made it big in real estate and threw my dad a bone by giving him a reliable route to clean his office buildings. My dad needed the money, so he went every day on his route, cleaning toilets, washing down countertops, and vacuuming the carpets in low-rent buildings deep in the San Fernando Valley.I know the route because he gave it to me when I was a struggling single mom who wanted to raise my baby and not put her in daycare. And for a time, I worked as a janitor so I could bring my baby with me. It was honest work, except for those few individuals who seemed to take pleasure in ruining a bathroom in ways that no one would ever say out loud, much less write about in a Substack post. But I cleaned them, and I did the best job I could to make my pops proud and not embarrass him in front of his friend Dave. Now, we see the Gavin Newsom meme factory being praised by the media and the Left, for making fun of janitors.They think they’re just doing what MAGA does, making fun of people. They make fun of Scott Pressler by calling him Nancy Mace. They make fun of Trump’s assassination and the bandage. Except, as usual, the pod people have it wrong. Trump doesn’t make fun of janitors. He doesn’t make fun of gay men. Rick Grenell, the so-called “janitor,” is gay.Not only doesn’t Trump make fun of the underclass, but he also took over the Kennedy Center and now the Smithsonian to do what our cultural overlords would never do: open up America’s culture to everyone. As it is, both of these government institutions have served the upper-class whites who need absolution for their sins of wealth and privilege, so they virtue signal with social justice to shame all of those bad people over there who do not “believe” in their colonization origin story.I know what it is to be among the sneering class. I know what it is to virtue signal. I know what it feels like to be a “white savior” and how, for years, that was the only way people like me could feel any sort of purpose or worth. Because otherwise, we were just another “white supremacist.”I also know how this ideology benefited those at the top, and how ashamed I once was that my dad was once a janitor. Because, like all of those in Hollywood and everywhere else in American culture, what you want is to be part of the rarified elite, no janitors allowed. As long as you virtue signal, you are seen as “good” and “pure.”Well, not anymore. Newsom’s desperate bid to unseat America’s alpha male is reminiscent of a jungle fight between two silverback gorillas. My money is on Trump. For ten years, the Left has tried to mock him, humiliate him, defeat him, and all they got for it was a lousy White Dudes for Harris t-shirt and a humiliating loss in November of 2024.Trump has made a fool of every Democrat for ten years, and he’ll make a fool of Gavin Newsom, too. Although he might not have to. The way it looks to me is like watching George Bailey and his future wife dance at the edge of the pool, not realizing they’re about to fall in. They think the cheering is for the dancing.Newsom’s obsession with Trump has reached almost stalker-level. He so badly wants to be Trump that he’ll stop at nothing, it seems, and is perfectly happy to abandon the moral high ground to get there. But, as usual, because the Left can’t meme, he’s doing it wrong. Their imitation of Trump and MAGA is off because they are depicting the version they see, not the version that exists. They don’t get it that much of what drove Trump’s popularity was empathy. People like me couldn’t stand watching their endless obsession, the unending hatred, the nonstop attacks. That’s partly why I left the party. And all they’re doing now is helping to rally MAGA once again. Newsom is a try-hard pick-me. He is the sleazy villain in a Lifetime movie. He’s giving snooty college brat who bullies the nice guy. Don’t forget where our hearts landed with the movie Breaking Away.He’s the wrong one in a 1980s high school romcom, like James Spader in Pretty in Pink:His meme army, flying high on Adderall and Wellbutrin, probably thinks making fun of the working class is a winning pitch, and maybe it is for the upper class, who have run out of every other option. I mean, it’s not like they have anything to offer the people, right?You can’t feed your family with memes. They have no plan for the future, no vision, no way of governing the whole country except perhaps to throw half of us into gulags. What do they have left except to imitate what has defeated them? And when you’ve lost Joe Scarbrough:The party that is already too online is feeding the beast the Left has morphed into, as they have become consumed by their pathological hatred of Trump. So maybe that’s right — this is exactly how to win hearts and minds of soulless sociopaths. According to Harry Enten, it’s working! They’re hoping mockery and bullying by a white guy who tweets in all-caps will work as political viagra to restore morale among their base. Ultimately, what they seem to crave is their own version of Trump. Newsom is so power hungry that he is happy to go along with it. But Trump is a survivor. He was raised to be a killer by a father who would not tolerate weakness. How else could he have survived two impeachments, four indictments, a felony conviction, two assassination attempts, and non-stop attacks from the empire for ten long years? By contrast, Newsom won’t survive even one scandal. Listen to him try to defend stealing his friend’s wife:Oh, and let’s not forget when he ran like a coward from Erin Friday: First, he made headlines for saying allowing biological men to compete against biological women was “deeply unfair,” then he backtracked, because of course he did.Ben Shapiro opened his show with the latest scandal involving Newsom, who, of course, pivoted to Trump when called out:Newsom’s tyrannical COVID policies destroyed the minds of children, not to mention small businesses. We watched them all close down. He kept students locked down longer than he should have. And that cost California a $2 billion settlement for students hurt by the lockdowns, and there is no way to recover what they’ve lost. Besides, Sheriff Chad Bianco is hot on Newsom’s heels, highlighting the governor’s obvious weakness when it came to leading California through a crisis. Newsom is now in a mad scramble to prevent gas prices from soaring to $8 per gallon. Environmental groups are coming for him, just as the LGBTQIA lobby came for him. He’ll cave because he’s spineless. His biggest problem is that he can’t meme his way out of being a white, heteronormative male in a party that supposedly speaks to the marginalized. Gen Z, Black voters, and women will need to be on board for Newsom to win the primary. If Newsom and Kamala Harris, for instance, or even AOC, go head-to-head, then they will be at war with themselves. Who are we, they will ask, are we the party that can only win with white men? Or are we the party that wants to make history?Either way, in focusing only on the soulless bullies in his party, Newsom will have a hard time selling his own rotten policies to the Rust Belt. He won’t be running against Trump. He’ll be running against JD Vance. I’d bet the farm on JD. Why? Because he came from nothing, survived an abusive, drug addicted mother, fought to defend our country, and wrote a brilliant book about forgotten America.And the more they boo him, like they did at the Kennedy Center…Or kick him out of restaurants, as they did in Scotland, the more likely people like me will stand up for him and stand behind him.JD’s success was earned, Newsom’s was not. Just as Newsom hides behind his zillennials who do his meming for him, he will have to rely on the legacy media to transform him from a cipher into a man of substance.But if you’re making fun of janitors, you’re making fun of my dad and others like him who didn’t have a powerful aunt in San Francisco but had to make money the old-fashioned way - they had to earn it. No one who makes fun of janitors should ever be President of the United States.The hardest work Newsom has ever done is slicking back his hair for a photo op. He’s survived nothing. He’s built nothing. He stands for nothing. And in that way, he’s the perfect representative for today’s Democratic Party. 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

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• The Democrats at the Abyss

  Nobody would discuss how strange everything became on the Left after Trump won the first time. But here’s the truth: We went stark raving bonkers, especially the women.There was never anyone to pull us back from the abyss. The legacy media profited from our collective hysteria. The Democrats amplified it to scare voters to the polls. It worked for a while, until it didn’t.And most of all, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton seemed to like watching the world burn on their behalf. I never thought that at the time, but looking back on it, I can see how cynical they were, how greedy for power they became. Along with the legacy media, Hollywood, and all institutions and corporations, we were their weapons of war, and they never seemed to care what that would do to us over time.The day my father died, I arrived at the VA hospice five minutes too late. His body was still warm. The day before, I recorded this scene from It’s a Wonderful Life. The next day, he was dead.When the hospice nurse handed me his flag and said, “On behalf of the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump…” I burst out laughing. I was laughing at my father’s deathbed.It was like a Facebook status update come to life, where I seemed to believe my narrative of who I was and what I stood for had followed me into that room, or that everyone else in that room would find it as ridiculous as I did that Trump was the president. No one else laughed. It wasn’t funny. And I seemed delusional.I wish I could say that was my wake-up call, but it wasn’t. That was only the beginning. It would get so much worse.When my younger sister, a Bernie supporter, showed up, we were screaming at each other in a hospice with all of the other dying veterans and their families within earshot. 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

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• The Democrats are Trapped in a Hell of Their Own Making

  I sometimes wonder what it must be like at bedtime for the New York Times’ Peter Baker and his wife, The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser. Do they worry that the Gestapo will kick down their door and haul them off to Alligator Alcatraz for writing negatively about Trump?Do they watch out their window for the bright light of a circling Black Ops helicopter? Do they cling to each other in the dark and whisper like they’re Anne Frank’s family hiding from the Nazis?For them and millions just like them enjoying their lives at the top of the food chain, every day is the end of democracy, the end of America, the end of the world. They are afflicted with the disease of hyperbole, and they can’t seem to find their way out of it.Once you use up threats to democracy, Hitler, fascist, dictator, Nazi, racist, rapist, pedophile - you have nowhere left to go. You’ve hit the wall. You can’t get any more extreme than the most extreme.Because they can no longer distinguish between fantasy and reality, they are too crazy to lead this country, and Americans know it. Nothing they do now can fix the problem because the problem is everything - it’s the empire. Americans rightly chose the less crazy side in 2024. They chose the real America, not America online.I got online 30 years ago. I helped build the empire. I fought like a good soldier for the Democrats until I could not stand living inside of what became a Doomsday cult anymore, and in 2020, I left.Since then, I’ve been sifting through the wreckage of the last ten years, trying to make sense of it. Was this just the unintended consequences of a movement rooted largely online? Is that how we became so disconnected from the truth and reality? Or was there more?As the Russiagate hoax unravels, and hungry reporters like Matt Taibbi excavate just how deep the rabbit hole goes, I have to wonder, was any of it real? Were we just tools of the establishment to prevent a populist uprising? Have they destroyed the collective mental health of millions of Americans just as a power grab?When a real revolution hit the streets in the Summer of 2020, a generation believed they were fighting the system because they were told that Trump was the system. They didn’t realize they were the unwitting puppets of a much bigger system. A “hearts and minds” campaign that destroyed their sense of reality, this country’s unity, and any hope of coming out of it.What the last ten years are starting to look like to me is that our government orchestrated the same kind of “color revolution” they’ve used to manipulate the elections in other countries. Only this time they did it here. They had the motive, the means, and the opportunity.Motive - to destroy the man who threatened our king, Barack Obama. Means - they controlled everything from the legacy media to Hollywood to social media. Opportunity — create an ongoing crisis that would require a “whole of society” approach to combat, such as communism or COVID-19.The same people who manufactured protests in other countries likely did the same thing here, at least to some degree. Why wouldn’t they? All they had to do was sell Trump as an existential threat who only won because Putin meddled in our elections. And just like that, he’s illegitimate.The press wasn’t going to challenge them. They’d spend ten years going after Trump. No one in the #resistance would either because they couldn’t be seen as “normalizing” a fascist. All institutions, corporations, and celebrities were all in on the war effort.And yet, they failed. Trump beat them at their own game. How did he do that? Because Trump was someone who didn’t just build his platform online, as the Democrats have done. He also invested his time in America, the place. He built his house of bricks, and the Democrats did not.A New America OnlineIt all sounded good when Barack Obama built his coalition and his army of devoted followers on Twitter. I was one of them. The first record of an Obama Twitter account was in March of 2007. He signed up for it but hadn’t used it and had just 23 followers.By May 5th of 2007, Obama was using Twitter to speak directly to his now 1,475 followers.On November 3, 2007, Obama was building a much bigger coalition, laying out his plans and appearances, and now had 5,000+ followers.Heading into the election, the last capture is on November 1, 2008.I got on Twitter around that time, too, because Obama was the new thing, and so was Twitter. They grew up together and, in doing so, birthed a new America online —a new empire, a new utopia. As of today, Barack Obama is followed by 130 million people, second only to Elon Musk.This might explain, at least in part, why all of us perceived Donald Trump as such an existential threat. Trump used Twitter, and he had been using the app himself since around 2010.Politicians speaking directly to the people, as though all of us could reach out and touch them, is without precedent in American history, at least in the modern age.It might have seemed like all of us were ahead of the game back then. We had complete control of the media narrative. If we wanted to spread the lie that Mitt Romney was a sexist because he said he had binders full of women, we could.But Trump had a platform and a voice equal to that of Obama’s. That meant there was only so much we could do to shape the narrative. Trump did it all on his own as his Tweets began to drive the news cycle, especially after he won in 2016. And how could they not?It must have driven Hillary Clinton and the Democrats insane that Trump had access to Twitter and could say whatever he wanted to say, and they could do nothing about it.By the time the 2016 election rolled around, Trump had 13 million followers and Hillary Clinton had just 10 million. The differences between the two campaigns were stark. Hillary’s side was all about identity-making history and centering on women and people of color.Trump’s was about delivering for the people. 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

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