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Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning with Sasha Stone: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Sasha Stone
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.
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- Today28 min
Jane Fonda's Women's Media Center Fired Me Because I Voted for Trump
Jane Fonda, like so many on the Left, is the worst kind of hypocrite. She plays the part of a free speech warrior while participating in the most totalitarian movement this country has ever seen.There she was, yet again, yapping into a microphone to protest Trump’s UFC 250. The signs behind her are ablaze with pure lies - Civil Rights! The First Amendment! You can’t silence us! But Jane Fonda and the company she founded, Women’s Media Center, do not practice what they preach. They fired me for the crime of voting for Donald Trump. I had been regularly hired for almost ten years to write their Women in Oscars report until a story broke in the Hollywood Reporter calling me a “MAGA darling.” And just like that, my 25-year career as a “woman-owned” Oscar website went up in flames, as did my freelance gig for WMC.It’s true, I did vote for Donald Trump. Not only did I vote for him, but I also made my support for him known on social media, which is what caught the reporter’s attention in the first place. I was supposed to cower in fear. Support the Democrats or else. I could have done what a lot of people did and kept my vote for Trump secret, but I didn’t think I should have to. Weren’t we the side that stood up for free speech and free expression?No. We weren’t then, and aren’t now. There is a long trail of writers, thinkers, actors, artists, musicians, and ordinary citizens who have been destroyed by the Left’s machine for the crime of dissent. And thousands more who suffer in silence, knowing there are so many things they can’t say.Only one side regularly censored users on social media, and that was the Biden administration working with the FBI. Only one side used the FBI and the CIA to censor the Hunter Biden laptop to thwart the re-election of the sitting president. That wasn’t the Right.Because Jimmy Kimmel got a slap on the wrist and Trump sued CBS News, and there’s a merger with Paramount and Warner Bros., to people like Jane Fonda, that means the First Amendment is under threat. My message to her: clean your own house, Jane. Jane Fonda obviously wasn’t directly involved in firing me. She has no idea who I even am. It was someone else, someone I trusted, maybe someone who seemed like a decent person, but, like everyone else, from writers to publicists to friends, once I crossed that bright red line, I was no longer someone they would associate with at parties, let alone hire.It certainly wasn’t because I did not do good work. I did. I even asked Grok to fact-check my memory, and here is what came back:Nobody knows the Oscars like I do, and I did the best work for them on the cheap because I liked doing it. I tried to make my case as clearly as possible to the Hollywood Reporter that I could not go along with the unprecedented lawfare against Trump, and especially not “gender affirming care” on minor children. These things motivated me to do more than just vote. I had to go public. I thought my support would help others come out from the shadows. I knew as I was talking to that reporter that nothing I said would make a difference. I wouldn’t have even talked to her except she said she’d write the story anyway. She was reporting on what I thought and what I was tweeting, which was verboten inside utopia. And boy, did the hammer come down.After the story broke and I felt every door that had once been open to me slam in my face, I kept hearing yet another piece of bad news. The studios were pulling their ads. Yet another writer was leaving the site. I was not invited to screenings, parties, and premieres. The publicists all ghosted me. It was as though I had been arrested for committing mass murder.One of the last of the gut punches was losing that freelance gig at Women’s Media Center. I kind of knew it was coming because, of course, it would be. They all went along with it, and almost no one had the courage to push back or resist any of it. I wrote to them anyway because I wanted to hear it from them. And I got the expected answer.Jane Fonda founded the Women’s Media Center in 2005, along with Robin Morgan and Gloria Steinem. They describe themselves as “a progressive, nonpartisan nonprofit focused on increasing the visibility, influence, and decision-making power of women and girls in media.”They were perfectly happy to drop a woman writer for the sole crime of not agreeing with their politics. I’d say they don’t really support women in media so much as they support those who go along with them.I never played the woman card, but I could have. I built my site just to build it, and it became successful. I was a single mom in 1999 and raised my baby and my website at the same time. It is quite the story, especially for those who pretend to care about women in media. Why would it matter if I voted for Trump? Why would that mean I could no longer write the report? Why have
- 1 weeks ago31 min
60 Minutes and the Collapse of the Empire
Charles Manson famously said, “You can’t kill me. I’m already dead.” I thought about that quote as the 60 Minutes scandal erupted, with a conversation between reporter Scott Pelley and newly hired producer Nick Bilton. From the NYT:“She is murdering ‘60 Minutes,’” [Scott Pelley] said. “She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it, and she’s been doing exactly that.”Mr. Pelley added: “She has no qualifications for her job; you have slender qualifications for this job. The changes that she’s made at the ‘Evening News’ have been catastrophic, so why should we expect that any of this is going to be any better?”Mr. Bilton responded: “Well, I will show you. That’s what I have to say. That is my plan over the next two weeks. I’ll be meeting with everyone. I’m very excited to meet with everyone, yourself included.”Needless to say, it didn’t exactly go as planned. Several sanctimonious “don’t you know who I am” statements later, Pelley was out. 60 Minutes isn’t quite dead, but it is a relic of the past. In the 1990s, it was pulling in 20-30 million viewers. That dropped to 14-16 million in the 2000s. By the 2010s, it was down to 10-12 million. Now, just 9 million people tune in every week in a country of 340 million. Much of that is due to the changes in technology, but still. There is no doubt that 60 Minutes, like all of legacy media, is trapped inside the same bubble that thinks Jimmy Kimmel’s nightly monologue is still relevant, believes the Oscars still represent the majority of moviegoers, and that the New York Times has its finger on the pulse of everyday America. Like so much of what we might call “resistance era culture,” there doesn’t seem to be a place for 60 Minutes in our culture now, beyond being a propaganda tool for the Democrats, which explains why so many of them feel a profound sense of loss now that Bari Weiss was brought in to give them a refresh. Pelley’s statement to call out the new management at 60 Minutes was the hissy fit heard round the world. The irony is that his statement is itself bad journalism. He throws around serious allegations without offering any concrete examples:Pelley has since talked to the New York Times to explain what he means by some of this, but even still, these are all examples of his own bias, one he can’t see and refuses to admit even exists. Instead, he insists that 60 Minutes is now showing bias simply by representing the other point of view.In the interview, he explains how Bari Weiss wanted him to portray the other side of the story in the killing of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. He says he did not think she drove her car into the officer or that Pretti was in any way violent. While that doesn’t mean they should have lost their lives, there is no question that they were at war with federal officers in a way we’ve never seen since the last Civil War. His bias was front and center at a speech in 2025, where his mass delusions about what this country has become were laid bare. This guy was willing to give Bari Weiss a chance, come on.Already a legend in his own mind, Pelley is writing his own legacy now as a self-made hero who stood up to the fascist regime.Here is Michael Moynihan: A Woketopia, if You Can Keep ItSome say 60 Minutes never recovered from its biggest scandal, when CBS Corporate forced the show to censor an interview with Big Tobacco whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand, as depicted in Michael Mann’s brilliant film The Insider. The Hollywood of today would never make a movie like that unless it somehow blamed Trump and the Republicans. Not only wouldn’t they make it, but they couldn’t make it, no one inside the empire would allow it because, contrary to their own mass delusions, the fascism was always coming from inside the house — all sticks of wood bound together as one, where no dissent is allowed.I look around now, and I see relics of the old empire. They’re frantic and wild-eyed. They’re terrified that it all came crashing down. They don’t know why America turned away. But I do. We never set out to build an empire. For us, it was riding the wave of new technology, new social media, a new computer in our pockets, and a brand new president to bring us into the promised land.It was not Donald Trump's fault that our empire collapsed. It was the old cliche about how power corrupts. We acquired too much of it. Every company, institution, celebrity, movie studio, publishing house, and ordinary person has a social media platform. If you controlled social media, you could control them. Our public humiliation factory kept everyone in line, lest they be “it” on social media.That was true even before Trump won, but the tweak to the algorithm in 2017,
- 2 weeks ago20 min
An Open Letter to Paul Krugman
Dear Paul Krugman,You used to be the kind of journalist I thought was telling the truth. I looked up to you, as I did so many writers at the New York Times. I was a different person then. That was before everything changed. The year was 2020, a summer of riots and a breakthrough moment when many of us realized for the first time that the Gray Lady was not telling us the truth.I have been on the internet for 30 years. I watched the collapse of traditional media and the rise of opinion-based journalism, the kind you do, Paul. Do you mind if I call you Paul? Mr. Krugman sounds so formal, and really, I’d like for you to see me as a human being, someone worthy of your attention and respect.Now that I have confirmation of what I’ve assumed all along, that people like you, Kara Swisher, Peter Baker, and Susan Glasser would like people like me thrown into re-education camps or gulags, I feel it’s worth the extra effort to get you to see real people again.To the horror of many, you went viral last week for your comments on what all of you will do with Trump supporters and the system that elected him. It was ugly, Paul. As ugly as anything I’ve seen written by a high-minded journalist and certainly closer to what the Nazis believed about the Jews than anything I’ve seen in my lifetime:“Purging of the United States, we need a de-MAGAfication. I’m not going over the top by using a word that’s very similar to the de-Nazification that we pursued successfully after World War Two in Germany. It’s not just the MAGA ideology, but the whole structure of hugely unequal power, hugely unequal wealth that made this horrific moment possible. It’s not going to be easy, but, and maybe it’s not going to be doable, but we have to try, because this is an absolute, this is a nightmare, this is the nightmare beyond, I think, even the worst fantasies of progressives, beyond the worst fantasies of conservatives, who still have a conscience, there still are plenty of those, but they’re no longer MAGA. This has to be turned around, and we should not, above all, whitewash or forget this moment. This is where a lot of forces in America have been leading, and if we don’t do something beyond just getting rid of Trump, it’s going to happen again.”It can’t have been easy, watching Trump win a second time and this time the popular vote, or to admit you are no longer relevant and that the only value you have is in giving the base of the Democratic Party their daily dose of hate and fear. Why didn’t Americans listen to your constant bleating about the end of the world? That’s an important question to ask, Paul.After all, they’re your most popular videos.Your Substack, with over 500K subscribers, is no less alarmist:It looks like your Substack is paying you more than you made at the Times, that’s for sure. So why not keep pumping it out, day after day, like a broken record — fear, hysteria, hatred, more fear, more hatred. What could possibly go wrong? You all seem certain you’re about to take back power and put things back where they belong. The only question you seem to have on your lips is not how we can better address the needs of the people, but what you will do with all of those MAGAts.You don’t even pretend there is a whole country or even half of a country that voted all of you out, not once but twice. You have no shame in admitting you see yourselves as better than the working-class half of America. You fully admit it. You bask in it. You know your power, Paul, and that’s maybe the only true thing you know about yourself.So let me set you straight on a few things. You are not the Allied Forces after World War II, and Trump is not now, nor has he ever been, Hitler. The closest thing to Fascism this country has ever seen is with all of you in power. It became “all sticks of wood bound together as one,” a “fasci,” with all elements of our society mandating conformity or else. Your side ruled through fear and violence, and still does. You violently beat Trump supporters and feel emboldened to do so, just like Hitler’s Brown Shirts. You probably never even knew that in 2015, Trump supporters were beaten and harassed and called Nazis. On the Left, there is no such thing as free thought and speech, which is why cancel culture collapsed the empire and why Tyler Robinson had to silence Charlie Kirk. So who are the real fascists, Paul? On your side, thought and speech are heavily policed throughout our culture. Everyone is tracked, monitored, and under constant surveillance lest they like the wrong tweet, follow the wrong person on social media, or read the wrong news outlet. Just because people like you cosplay that ICE is the Gestapo doesn’t make it so. It took 80 years for the world to forget about the Holocaust. But no one should ever forget what that looked like, and i
- 2 weeks ago37 min
Ashley St. Clair's Gift to the Democrats
Ashley St. Clair is all of us. Well, she might not be you. She might not even be me. Although I see some of myself in her. But she is this mess we’ve built. Like all of us, she has played a role in this ongoing virtual Civil War between Left and Right, played out amid tangled algorithms, giant egos, hurt feelings, and cash flow. She is the same age as my daughter, just 28 years old, but it feels like she’s lived five lifetimes. She has shapeshifted from MAGA to having Elon Musk’s baby, to a public fight over said baby, to throwing herself at the feet of the Left, branding herself as a one-woman confessional who will dangle all of the dirty details of “the MAGA cult” like bloody chum to hungry sharks.She is smart enough to know two things. First, the Left still controls most of our culture. If you want book deals, successful podcasts with the top-tier advertisers, or stories about you in the New York Times, or even movie deals about your life, you have to be accepted by them. And second, they won’t accept you unless you bring the goods. And boy does she ever. What do you want to know, she says on her TikTok as she applies gobs of makeup she doesn’t need - contour, foundation, concealer, blush, more concealer, more contour, powder. Do you want to know MAGA is a cult? Here you go. Are they racists? Oh yeah, she says, as she dabs her eyes with a powder puff.She might not realize it, but her makeup is a metaphor for the role she’s playing now, a real person hiding under layers and layers of disguise. Who is she this time? She’s the one talking to Jennifer Welch, the Wicked Witch of the Left:She was on with the chipper lunatic Suzanne Lambert:And Haley on the Go:And the most cringey of all was a giggly appearance with our favorite Cartier Communist, Hasan Piker. Baby Mama BluesAshley has not gone full Monica Lewinsky and claimed victimhood to excuse her role in becoming yet another baby mama for the Henry VIII of Silicon Valley, Elon Musk. She does seem to take some responsibility for agreeing to go to bed with him upon first meeting. He even asked her what name she liked. Elon was upfront about what he wanted from her, and she seemed fully on board.As a hot conservative female who already had one kid in her early 20s, her ovaries were calling Elon’s name. He slid into her DMs before sliding into other places - yes, says Ashley, she joined the Mile High Club, courtesy of Elon’s private jet.But one thing an influencer, however fluid in politics, must preserve is their platform. What good is having the richest man in the world’s baby if you can’t brag about it? Be known for it? Have instant status because of it? Not to mention the child having to wander around the planet, not being Elon’s son, while everyone knows he is, like that b*****d son of Henry VIII.St. Clair is throwing around the figure of $40 million to buy her off, but she doesn’t say exactly who is offering it. Musk had originally offered a deal with $15 million up front and then $100,000 per month to raise the child, money most people couldn’t imagine in an entire lifetime. But that came with an NDA. She refused.Musk has said he gave her $2.5 million up front, then $500,000 per year. She has said he slashed her child support payments, causing her to sell her Tesla to cover expenses. Either way, whatever she’s gotten is not enough, not in 2026 when the platform is everything. Ashley St. Clair wants more.And in that way, too, she is all of us and this grotesque online machine we’ve all helped build, where a person can become a star overnight, then the object of scorn, with an angry mob attempting to destroy them as the entire internet watches. She was viciously attacked as a gold digger by MAGA, then they made AI porn of her, she says, even depicting her as an underage sex object, which is why she’s suing Musk.How it started, how it’s goingAshley St. Clair started her career as a blonde, appearing on Fox News pushing the MAGA line:And at the Babylon Bee, making content like this:Her past warring against the transgender community means it’s iffy whether or not she’ll ultimately get a pass, no matter the mea culpas she’s handed out like candy. This TikTok user says forget it.After all, Ashley St. Clair wrote a children’s book in hopes of saving some of the young from destroying their bodies. It kind of seemed like she believed it, right?Since then, however, she has found ways to get out of it. She’s thrown herself at the mercy of prominent Democrats like podcaster David Pakman:She’s talked about how ignorant she was, how she fell into a cult and didn’t know what she was doing. She talks about her past of being locked away and home schooled, where she was isolated from other people, before going to college and hitting the party scene, and eventually, to hear her tell it, she ended up in a cult.<
- 3 weeks ago33 min
The Real "Autopsy" The Democrats Can't Face
The 2024 election was a disaster for the Democrats. They have never been held to account for any of it. That would ordinarily be the job of the legacy media, but they’ve long since abandoned any pretense of objectivity. They are part of the “resistance,” and friendly fire is not in the job description.Do I sound bitter? I suppose I am. I once believed in not just the Democratic Party but the Obama coalition. I was a loyal, devoted soldier who believed we were all fighting the good fight, even before Trump won. We were the side that cared about climate change, women’s rights, the poor, and the marginalized.It took me decades to go from being a cynical 18-year-old in the 1980s who didn’t think there was any point to voting to a person who believed my vote could change the world. That cynicism would be polished off over time, as we headed into the 1990s with political correctness and therapy culture on the rise. We wanted to fix ourselves. We wanted — needed — to fill the void left by the doom spiral in the aftermath of the “Me Generation” and their counterculture revolution.It was Bill Clinton, by way of Aaron Sorkin, who ultimately pulled us out of it and primed us for a spiritual revival under the euphoric, history-making win of Barack Obama. I believed in hope and change. I believed in a new America.I believed my friends on Facebook who treated me with respect and love every time I fired off an impassioned plea for votes. I believed all of the women who made those signs for the Women’s March, the Climate March, and the Gun Control March. I, too, thought Trump’s win meant America couldn’t handle the first black president and the Confederacy was back for another round.What I know now is that none of it was real. We were not the New Puritans leading the country into the promised land. We were like every other political party, seeking absolute power and total control. Any truthful autopsy would have to start there. The Democrats have been lying to themselves and lying to their voters about what these last ten years have really been about: the refusal to relinquish power after losing an election. Democracy becomes a problem for a party that no longer believes in it if the wrong people win.From Real Clear Politics podcast Andrew Walworth, Tom Bevan and Carl Cannon:Any honest autopsy of the 2024 election would have to start back in 2016, when Hillary Clinton was anointed by Obama, who leapfrogged Biden, meaning Biden would finally get his shot in 2020. They should have thought that one through because it would come back to bite them four years later when they pushed him out of office.They practice top-down democracy, in which party leaders attempt to steer voters in the right direction rather than allowing candidates to make the case to the people. The problem with the Democrats is that they needed someone like Donald Trump to blow through their carefully laid plans.The shame of what the Democrats did in 2024 is almost as bad as what they did in 2020 to orchestrate Joe Biden’s win. Both of these elections were rooted in the mass delusion that Donald Trump wasn’t just a political opponent but an existential threat, so anything goes - even censoring the Hunter Biden laptop, or pushing out a duly elected president.That delusion gave them unlimited power in their minds, which made them the most corrupt political party in my lifetime, taking what never belonged to them, pushing “resistance theater” throughout American society, and coming up mostly empty anyway.A real autopsy would require cleaning house on all of it, admitting everything. It would require admitting to their voters that they knew they were lying about Trump to cover up their own failures.After all, wouldn’t it have been easier just to offer the people something better rather than treating Trump like a supervillain that could not be destroyed by ordinary means? No, because their biggest problem is that their only vision for the future is to reach back into the past. They still want to undo the Trump presidency rather than learn from it. They are fighting to bring back the utopia we all built under Barack Obama, and that has been the Democrats’ fatal mistake.Barack Obama’s grip on the party means they can’t move forward.A real autopsy would have to talk about Obama’s ongoing influence and control of the party. Why do you think he’s making appearances with Zohran Mamdani and James Talarico? He sees them as the party’s future because they are Obama clones, more or less. You don’t see him out there boosting Gavin Newsom, just as you don’t see many leaders on the Left rising to take Obama’s place. They must all be shadows of him, which is why it was Kamala Harris in 2024, Joe Biden in 2020, and Hillary Clinton in 2016.Obama couldn’t lose. He was
- May 17, 202622 min
The Odyssey Proves Woke Is a Feature, Not a Bug
[A crosspost with Hollywood Woketopia, my other Substack]Every so often, a moment in culture arrives, a Sydney Sweeney ad, or Project Hail Mary. Every time, we hear that the Woke fever has finally broken. Hollywood cares about the people again. Right?The same reason Kamala Harris is likely to be the nominee in 2028, the same reason the Democrats are still selling the lie that any kind of attempt by Republicans to even out the redistricting is “Jim Crow 2.0,” is proof enough that on the Left, Woke is not going anywhere. It is who they are now. Not all of them, but the most powerful among them.Early on, when Mark Halperin and others were insisting Gavin Newsom would be the nominee in 2028, I said there was no way the Democrats would get behind a white guy, no matter how passionately he genuflects to the Woke (“Anti-woke is anti-black!”). I know the Democrats. I was one. I helped build the modern-day party of the Great Feminization and the Great Awokening. I know what fires them up every day, and it isn’t just taking back power; it’s foisting their religion upon the rest of us.They think it’s the opposite, that it’s the Right that is foisting their “Christian Nationalism” upon them. While it’s true that a faction of the Right has unmasked to become the very thing Rob Reiner warned about in his movie, God and Country, they aren’t the majority. Perhaps that’s true on the Left. But look around. Their religion is the dominant culture in America.When news got out that Christopher Nolan had cast Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy, the “most beautiful woman in the world,” whose face launched a thousand ships, it ignited yet another culture war. How you reacted was like whether or not you wore a mask outside in 2020. It was a test. You’re on one side, or you’re on the other. Notice it, comment on it, object to it, criticize it, and you’re one of the bad people to be purged. And if that weren’t enough, Nolan brought back Ellen Page from Inception, now recast as Elliot Page, the male, as an act of affirmation and yet another test. These are Orwellian 2+2=5 and force people to choose between ignoring it and going to see a big-effects movie in IMAX, or not buying a ticket and boycotting the film. Elon Musk took the bait, becoming the villain Hollywood needed to turn seeing The Odyssey into a righteous and political act. You can see them now: the bearded male feminists buying tickets ten times in a row. “Take that, Elon Musk!” The ladies of Blue Sky will go in groups, then fawn over how beautiful Lupita Nyong’o is and overuse the male pronoun for Ellen/Elliot Page. “Wasn’t he great?”The game is becoming exhausting by now, as Hollywood demands the hard-working American public be impressed by them, lectured by them, and corrected by them. All audiences really want is the one thing Hollywood seems unable to accomplish: entertain them.It isn’t that Nyong’o isn’t pretty. She is. It’s that Helen of Troy was white, famously so, even if Greek. Nyong’o is a unique beauty, not a universal one, a reality the Left wants to force, because Hollywood doesn’t care about its audience. They want to look good.Probably the worst thing about the game Hollywood plays with the movie fans they helped raise is that Lupita Nyong’o is held out as a sacrificial lamb. She isn’t pushing any ideology, unlike Ellen/Elliot Page. They are putting her out there and expecting her to absorb criticism about herself, including whether she is pretty enough. I met her once, back in 2013 in Telluride, before her career took off. She was too young to know how to act like a celebrity. She was so nice, I was won over. She would win an Oscar that year and become a big star in Hollywood. Is it fair to put her in this position just so they can feel good about themselves? No. Does it change anything? No. There is still such a thing as truth and reality, even if that is the thing that is unfair. The Woke Code and the Hays CodeThe Hays Code (1930-1968) represented an era wherein decency and morality were mandated in all Hollywood films. The Christian conservatism/morality mandated by the Hays Code reflected less a separation between art and governance and more a united effort toward a utopian society of goodness, especially as we moved through the last Fourth Turning, the Great Depression, and World War II, a time where the world saw true evil in Hitler and Stalin, not to mention the nuclear bomb.That isn’t all that different from what the Woke Code is now. It’s roughly the same kind of thing: rigid rules to depict an ideal society. The difference is that Christian advocates have been replaced by progressive activists, and the villain is the w
- May 15, 20261h 28m
Interview with Jenny Holland
Jenny Holland has been running a similar track to mine for the last five years or so, but she got there before me. We both were more or less red-pilled by Steve Bannon. Here, we had a conversation for about an hour and a half. I hate doing video because I have a face for radio. But Jenny looks great so I thought I would put it up anyway. Also, I think my camera’s focus was off a bit - but the audio works great. I don’t have a timecodes but the transcript should appear.You can find her Substack here:And her YouTube is here:I will be driving across the country starting this weekend so I will be dropping some travel pics and whatnot. Hope you have a great weekend. And, as always, thanks for being so supportive and such a great community. 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
- May 12, 202635 min
Spencer Pratt is the Hero We Didn't Know We Needed
“Now you know why they call me Dirty Harry, every dirty job that comes along.”Just as audiences didn’t know how much they needed Dirty Harry until he showed up on a movie screen in 1971, residents of Los Angeles had no idea how much they needed Spencer Pratt until they saw him face off against two of the leading candidates for Mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass and Nithya Raman.Bass and Raman couldn’t even answer simple questions, like whether illegal immigrants should be able to vote or whether there should be homeless encampments outside elementary schools. And every time the camera cut to Pratt, his reaction was always the same: “ You have got to be kidding me.”He spoke truths no one in the Democratic Party ever could or would because they don’t have to. They are never asked hard questions they don’t already have answers to, and they are never challenged as directly as they were by Spencer Pratt.They’re also protected by the legacy media, by Hollywood, by late-night comedy. As long as they properly virtue signal and obey the rules of Woketopia, no one ever holds them accountable for the problems in a city overrun by crime, drugs, and homelessness. Until now.Pratt wiped up the floor with Bass and Raman, so much so that they have now dropped out of a debate by the League of Women Voters that would have been held on May 13th. Now, it’s been canceled because someone, somewhere, told them they'd do better if they employed the Biden basement strategy: stay out of sight and let the system win the election. The Democrats and Hollywood have the same problem. They can’t tell the truth. Just as in 1971, when Dirty Harry sliced through the pretense like a hot knife through ice cream, so too has Spencer Pratt gotten our attention with his innovative campaign and simple, common-sense messaging, in an entertaining, imaginative way. True, AI might be the beginning of the end, but the way Pratt uses it has expanded the possibilities. With the help of Charles Curran, whose studio is responsible for many of these, we can now see how useful AI can be for creating an effective, viral campaign ad without the heavy lift of an entire production company and millions of dollars in campaign funds. This is AI at a grassroots level, but in its own way, it’s also artful commentary, the kind we never see aimed at the Left.AI, now in Pratt's hands, poses an unpredictable threat to the opposition, who will figure it out soon enough. It is also a threat to Hollywood for the same reasons. It doesn’t have to be politically correct or rely on partisan celebrities to approve of the messaging. AI also cuts through the noise, like Dirty Harry, like Spencer Pratt, because it represents freedom at a time of extremely oppressive micro-managing over all culture, and film especially.Dirty Harry was politically incorrect, but it told the truth at a time when most people were too afraid to talk about the soft-on-crime policies in the wake of the counterculture revolution. Too many rapes and serial killers on the rise, too many hippies, the Zodiac killer, the Manson murders - crime was everywhere, yet the culture of the time wasn’t exactly tuned in. If critics in the 1970s thought Dirty Harry was fascist, as Pauline Kael did, ordinary Americans - Nixon’s Silent Majority - felt seen.And now, residents of Los Angeles, many of them too poor to afford homes in the gated communities of the rich and famous who fund Mayor Karen Bass, might feel seen in the passionate messaging of Spencer Pratt. His voice is urgent in a time of complacency. He sees the problems the Left ignores. He speaks the truth when everyone else parrots the comforting lies. Los Angeles has been neglected for far too long, with the wildfires that burned down Pratt’s home becoming the tipping point. It was time for someone to rise up and say enough is enough. They don’t know how to deal with a shooting star like Pratt. When the Democrats try to dismiss him as a fame-hungry reality star, he hits them with something moving and undeniable. It’s true that Pratt was the enfant terrible of a mid-aughts reality show called The Hills. Not exactly the kind of leader people who shop at Erewon after doing hot yoga on La Brea have in mind for a leader. But his sincerity shines through. This is personal, and we can feel it. He says Bass has the unions and the money, but he has the moms. He has Democrats and Conservatives backing him. They call him MAGA, but he really isn’t. He is the first politician who is genuinely attempting to run a non-partisan campaign and actually reach across the aisle, which is exactly the hero America needs right now, not just in LA, but everywhere. It’s hard not to be won over by Spencer Pratt because he is so sincere. All of that manic bluster from the old days of The Hills has clearly been transformed by the trauma of his house burning down in a
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About Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning with Sasha Stone
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.
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