Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning with Sasha Stone

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Caligula at the Grammys Feb 08, 2023

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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?

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How the Legacy Media Lost My Trust Feb 06, 2023

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“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-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.

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The Great Reset vs. The Great Uprising Jan 30, 2023

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“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 Jefferson

The Great Uprising

I 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

The Kavanaugh Delusion and the Hillary Democrat Jan 23, 2023

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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

The Fall of Hollywood's Empire Jan 15, 2023

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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

A New Year, a New Hope Jan 01, 2023

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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

The Shameful Jan 6 Show Trial and the Puppet Press Dec 20, 2022

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“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 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

Musk Derangement Syndrome Dec 15, 2022

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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

Yes, the 2020 Election was "Rigged" Dec 05, 2022

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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 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

It's Elon Musk Who is Trying to Save Democracy Nov 29, 2022

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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 violent protests of the Summer and January 6th led to the mass formation of hundreds of millions of Americans under the thumb of what Mattias Desmet calls technocratic totalitarianism.

Why is Twitter so important? To quote the movie Jaws, when Quint tells Brody to toss more chum in the water to attract the shark, Brody says, “Let Hooper take a turn.” Quint says back, “Hooper drives the boat, Chief.”

Twitter drives the boat, Chief.

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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