『Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning with Sasha Stone』のカバーアート

Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning with Sasha Stone

Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning with Sasha Stone

著者： Sasha Stone
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概要

 Essays on politics and culture from Sasha Stone's Substack. A former Democrat and Leftist who escaped the bubble to get to know the other side of the country and to take a more critical look at the left. Sashastone.substack.com

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  • Why I'm Sticking with Trump

    Why I'm Sticking with Trump
    2026/03/11
    I didn’t use to be a Trump voter, much less a Trump supporter. I can’t say I’m hard-core MAGA or what they call a “Triple Trump voter.” But as I’ve watched him over the past six years, my support for him has only grown. I could lie and pretend it hasn’t, maybe save myself the tiny bit of credibility I still have left, but that would not be the truth.As I watch Trump deflect attacks from both the Left and the Right over the war with Iran and various other things, I still see the Gray Champion of the Fourth Turning — The one guy who has the right stuff to stand in the breach and do the right thing, even if it’s not the popular thing. Whatever it is in Trump that guides him, some will say God, some will say a gut instinct, it gives him the necessary focus to blur out the distractions and the noise, take aim, and hit the bullseye.No president has ever faced the kind of opposition Trump has, not just from the world, but from the establishment in the United States, most especially the Democrats. Even now, they have no plan for any of us, no vision for the future. They only have their hatred of and their attacks on Trump and his MAGA base. What they want is for people like me to disappear, or else decide that all of their attacks on Trump have been justified. I was a fool, they want me to say, and I regret my vote. Except that I don’t. They want X to reflect real life, with all of these influencers and podcasters studiously dropping their support and regretting their vote, “I’m done with Trump,” they insist.But X isn’t real. It’s avatar life. Whatever is happening there, it’s the result of algorithms and engagement by people who spend way too much time doomscrolling and getting caught up in mass hysteria. Most people aren’t that plugged in. They’re just living their lives.I didn’t just vote for Trump to stop the Left from overtaking this country and leading us into their dystopian, 1984-like future, but that would be reason enough.No, I have come to genuinely admire Trump, flaws and all. I am sickened by the snooty Left and how they turned their noses up at Trump and his supporters when he tried to revamp the Kennedy Center. I vomited a little in my mouth when I saw Ben Stiller demand that Trump remove Tropic Thunder from a meme. Every time the elite gather and trash Trump, as they did at Jesse Jackson’s funeral, much to the horror of his own son, I see our potential future, which is really our past, a past we desperately need to leave behind. This is not their country. It never was. This country belongs to all of us.The Gray ChampionNine years ago, one of the authors of The Fourth Turning, Neil Howe, was asked if Trump was the Gray Champion. He didn’t know because it was too early to say. This was before 2020 and before January 6th, way before Trump’s second win in 2024.The key point he makes, though, is that a Gray Champion is full of ego and has an idea that if he breaks it or if he fixes it, he’ll be okay. It’s that combination of self-confidence, certainty, and recklessness to do what almost no one else would do that defines the one man who can stand up to not just the forces that oppose him but his own peers.It is the willingness to take big risks that, I think, makes a Gray Champion. Who else would even dare try? That makes them hated in their time, but history remembers them well.Lincoln was the target of assassination plots and was eventually assassinated.Winston Churchill was blamed for military failures during World War II:And Roosevelt was a target too:The bombing and neutralization of Iran is very Gray Champion-like, as is much of what Trump has already done both in the US and abroad in his second term. He is moving fast and perhaps breaking things to make his short time back in office matter.He also knows that if the US abandoned support for Israel now, Iran got a nuke, they would not hesitate to wipe Israel off the map, and though many on the MAGA Right would cheer that decision, it would be a disaster for the world. The allies would have no choice but to go to war with Iran anyway. Pay now or pay later.As with other Gray Champions of the past, Trump will have to take the bad with the good. The bombing of a school killing over 100 girls on the first day of the war — probably due to outdated intel — will have to be part of his legacy, no matter the outcome, which is still under investigation, but it looks like the US did it. This will put Trump in the Democrats' crosshairs should they take back power in 2026 or 2028. They might impeach him again or put him on trial for war crimes. The bombing of the school, along with the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, will be amplified by the establishment media, and whatever Trump’s successes will be won’t matter.I understand this war from a strategic perspective, to end a threat to both America and Israel, one of the three world powers that could be fighting us in a world war, along with Russia ...
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    29 分
  • Candace Owens: A Disney Villain of Her Own Making

    Candace Owens: A Disney Villain of Her Own Making
    2026/03/05
    The Disney movies I grew up with made it easy for a kid like me to recognize good vs. evil. We knew, walking in the door, that goodness would prevail, because it must. The alternative is nothing less than the end of civilization as we know it. Goodness was personified by the beautiful princess, whose purity of heart drew the forest creatures and eventually, a handsome prince. Their union was a symbol of harmony, stability, and happy endings.Evil was embodied in the wicked queen, who was jealous of the princess's purity, so much so that she couldn’t rest until the princess was obliterated. Somehow, the villains never know their demise is a certainty because goodness must prevail. Some might say that is what happened to the MAGA movement, one bright sunny day in Utah, when a psycho killer avenging the crippling despair of his transgender furry lover took aim and shot the handsome prince, killing him within minutes. Since then, MAGA has struggled to hold onto the coalition Charlie built, the support for the president he helped elect, and to protect the beautiful princess from the evil forces that threaten to destroy her, Turning Point, and MAGA.Candace Owens might think she’s the hero of this story. She’s written herself in after she was left on the cutting room floor. She’s amassed an audience of dimwitted women and a weaponized army of international bad actors hoping to infiltrate the US and use Candace to shape public opinion. A growing portion of her audience, as with many influencers on the Right now, is comprised of people convinced that Jews are behind every evil thing that ever happens, has ever happened or will ever happen, and in Candace Owens, they’ve found their princess. Candace is the only one who sees the truth!Candace is an instrument of God!Candace will make sure justice is served!How good it must feel for someone who's always been a whole lotta charisma with no real place to land. She tried out many different masks over time, moving through political parties and various ideologies until finally landing the role of a lifetime: mean girl with a microphone. After being booted out of the Daily Wire, her gossipy YouTube channel would take her into the wet, slimy corners of culture and politics, and her audience would lap it up. But she would hit paydirt when she decided to run with the idea that Brigitte Macron was really a man.Cruelty sells online, and Becoming Brigitte was a huge hit. Getting slapped with a massive lawsuit by the Macrons only seemed to make her more popular. By the end of that mess, everyone knew her name.So then what? Back to Blake Lively and Diddy’s Freak-Offs? Not for our Disney villain. She needed something as big, if not bigger. What could really dig into the tender spots and manifest itself as emotional terrorism in the same way? Who is as protected a target? Social media amplifies the ugliness inside of us all. The algorithms do the rest. The Left has been unleashing levels of dehumanization and bullying at Erika Kirk since the day Charlie died. Why her? Who knows. They hated him and were happy he was dead. They wanted to see his widow suffer, especially because she’s a pretty blonde. All the while, Candace, who’d been sidelined from Charlie’s life, didn’t attend his wedding to Erika, so the story goes, and was pushed out of TPUSA and not present at the memorial, saw that Erika was suddenly a subject both too hot to touch and impossible to ignore. And yeah, a pretty blonde.And so, just as the evil Queen in Snow White can’t stand it any longer and sends a huntsman to kill what torments her, Candace finally pulled the lever, especially after Erika Kirk told her to stop, in an interview with the very Jewish Bari Weiss, no less.So many women, and even some men, wanted to see our princess fall, and Candace was more than happy to serve it up fresh and hot. The Disney PrincessCharlie Kirk’s marriage to Erika was always met with the refrain, “she’s out of his league.” Charlie got lucky and found himself a true beauty. Half Syrian/Lebanese and half Swedish. Erika Kirk looks like no one else. With cascading platinum locks and sparkling blue eyes, she was Charlie’s dream girl. How did he ever get so lucky? He saw her, knew he wanted her, and he said to her, “I don’t want to hire you. I want to date you,” so goes the famous story of how they met.Candace is pretty, but she’s not that pretty. Few women are. Candace had to develop other skills that pretty girls usually don’t have to worry about. Candace is better on camera than Erika. She is better at performing and at storytelling. Erika is still slightly awkward and hasn’t yet found her voice. She’s trying under enormous pressure and undeserved scrutiny to keep Turning Point alive and make Charlie’s dreams come true. Not to mention caring for two small children and an ailing mother. But it’s Erika’s beauty, especially her leaning into her half-Swedish identity, that seems to ...
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    47 分
  • To Confront Their Failures, Democrats Must Confront Obama

    To Confront Their Failures, Democrats Must Confront Obama
    2026/02/22
    For the last five years, since I left the Democratic Party, I’ve been waiting for any sign that they’ve emerged from the Doomsday Bunker at long last, regained their perspective, come back to the real world, and are finally prepared to build a future for all of America because a house divided against itself cannot stand. The Democrats were booted out, not once but twice. In between, they had the chance to show us all that they were on the better side. If Trump were so terrible, what could they offer in return? The problem is that they’re still the party of Barack Obama, and to criticize any of it, to change course on anything is an affront to him and all that he built. To confront their failures, they must confront his. And they won’t do that. They failed to protect the border, the children, the workers, the families, and the businesses. They failed to keep us safe and failed to include us all in the American dream, choosing to focus instead on their wheel of oppression, which has now landed on illegal immigrants. True, no political party has amassed as much power as they still have. It was power they did not want to lose. I know. I was there. I didn’t even realize there was another America outside the one we built, with the help of the internet. It was a brand new world that felt like the future. But it was a world that left at least half the country, the working-class half, behind. When we emerged in 2016, shocked that they did not want to live in our utopia, it sent us cascading into mass delusion that Trump was an existential crisis instead of a duly elected leader for Americans who wanted to change. Rather than understand that, rather than work to fix the problem, rather than reach out to those abandoned, discarded masses, it’s been this. Petulance, temper tantrums, narcissism, self-pity, unending hysteria, like spoiled children who don’t get what they want on Christmas morning.Senator Adam Schiff has announced he will boycott Trump’s State of the Union, joining a growing list of, it must be said, weak and unappealing Democrats no one feels inspired by or wants to vote for. According to Newsweek, these are the Democrats who plan on playing hooky. * Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon* Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut* Senator Tina Smith of Minnesota* Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland* Representative Yassamin Ansari of Arizona* Representative Becca Balint of Vermont* Representative Greg Casar of Texas* Representative Veronica Escobar of Texas* Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington* Representative Delia Ramirez of Illinois* Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman of New JerseyAfter mocking Turning Point USA’s half-time, these Democrats are now doing the same thing, planning an alternative rally to boycott the State of the Union.According to Reuters:About a dozen Democrats in the Senate and House of Representatives have announced their participation in a “People’s State of the Union” event on the National Mall, near the Capitol, to highlight their opposition to the Republican administration’s policies, organizers said on Wednesday.Yeah, it will probably play like Kamala Harris’s closing argument to the “people” on October 29, just before Donald Trump cleaned her clock. Now, it’s deja vu all over again. Remember eight years ago when they boycotted the State of the Union? Yeah, good times. Do you think they had any idea Trump would come back and win in 2024?Nothing ever feels authentic. It always feels performative. They simply swap out whatever the current thing is and then fall in line like obedient robots. Harris was installed after they pushed Joe Biden out, and he pushed out any potential candidates who might defeat Trump. Now, instead of the screeching Me Too fanatics, it will be the screeching No Kings/ICE OUT fanatics. Sounds charming!They are running in place, getting nowhere, because they have nowhere to go. They’ve never confronted their failures, or the America under Obama that many voters did not want. Kamala Harris, like every Democrat, had nothing to sell but fear - fear of Trump, fear of the future, fear of change.Their platform is built on elevating the weak and the marginalized, so they need a constant supply. They need a sick America. Not a successful, healthy America. Trump projects exactly the opposite, and it drives them insane. So all they’re left with are their violent fits, their temper tantrums, their protests, and their boycotts. Yes, they have all of the cultural power. They have most of the wealth. What they don’t have are the people. If they did, they would not have lost to the guy they tried to impeach, throw in jail, remove from ballots, and even assassinate. You can’t be the side with all of that power and still treat the other half of the country like human garbage. They know that, at least some of them do. They just don’t know any way out by now. Their party has been hijacked by a cult. All the people have is a vote, ...
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    31 分
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