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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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You wouldn’t know me if you met me in May of 2019, as I drove to a luncheon for Joe Biden sponsored by a big donor at one of the mansions in a wealthy pocket of Los Angeles. I’d been hand-picked as an influencer after rising in the ranks of Team Hillary on social media. I’d thrown myself into politics in 2015, panicking about climate change. “We have to win,” I thought.
By the end of 2020, just one year later, I’d have left the Democratic Party for good, been yelled at by Neera Tanden on Twitter, and lost a good many of my friends and very nearly everything else, and now, by 2023, all I can think is that the Democrats have to lose. They have to be voted out.
I’ve been trying to tell my story in a way that matters for three years. I have failed to convince or persuade anyone from my side. They still treat me like someone who has been radicalized online or is somehow mentally incapacitated. They still see Trump as an existential threat to “democracy” and the grassroots movement known as MAGA as domestic extremists, white supremacists and a threat to their way of life.
The truth is, it was never “democracy” they wanted. Too messy. Too many dissenting viewpoints and speech they didn’t like. It was totalitarianism, complete and total dominance of American culture they wanted: the internet, the corporations, the universities, and now, the government.
Trump’s win in 2016 turned our utopia into a dystopia, as we walled ourselves off in a fear bunker and listened to the media tell us about the “monsters” that roamed the perimeter. Just make the “monsters” go away.
They were every bad thing we deleted from our utopia. The “ists” and the “phobes.” We had to go along with every last thing that was demanded of us, from gender ideology - castrating, mutilating, and sterilizing children - to sending our kids off to school as oppressors or oppressed.
I pledge allegiance to the flag, wasn’t a thing inside our bunker. The flag was racist because the “monsters” were racists. Our lawn signs signal to our neighbors that in this house, we believe…Our tweets, our Instagram, our Facebook, what we ate, what we drove, how we spoke, what pronouns we used - all signal the right message to the right people. If anyone steps out of line, they are shunned, attacked, demonized, or purged.
For me, the Summer of 2020 forced me out of the fear bunker. I packed a bag, opened the door, and decided to get to know the “monsters” I’d been conditioned to fear and dehumanize.
Since then, Nothing I’ve done has helped wake anyone on the Left. It’s impossible to pierce their bubble because they’re still locked into their social media feedback loops, which decide their shared reality - and they’re still watching CNN and MSNBC. They’re still reading the New York Times. They all seem to be “happy fascists” who can’t wait until our government gets rid of the “monsters.”
If they don’t like what the Times is saying, what Hollywood is producing, or what SNL is joking about, they’ll throw a fit, protest, and demand capitulation. But it’s one thing if it’s just on a cultural level. It’s an entirely different thing if it becomes government policy, and so it has.
What are the chances that our government and the Democrats will abandon all the power they assumed in the Trump era? Zero. If they somehow get rid of Trump, they’ll find a new emergency, a new “existential threat.” It’s Trump today, but it will be DeSantis tomorrow. Even an establishment stooge like Nikki Haley will get the Trump treatment eventually if she stands in their way.
No one gives up power willingly, certainly not a powerful movement like the ones the Democrats have built over the past 20 years by colonizing the internet at its inception, and as American society became dependent upon the internet, the Left had the one ring to rule them all.
As we watch them try to jail Trump, remove his name from ballots, and anticipate another election like 2020, our last hope to save America rests on the shoulders of the fractured, dysfunctional Republican Party. They are in no way prepared to take on this fight. They’re still running around in circles, looking for an alternative to Trump. Don’t you people get it? Are you that unaware of what has been happening for the past seven years?
The GOP, if they had any spine whatsoever, would be channeling Michael Corleone right about now and saying to the Democrats and the system that supports them: you can have my answer right now. My answer is this: NOTHING.
You get no capitulation whatsoever. We agree with none of it. Trump was not a Russian asset. He was not a traitor. He was not an “insurrectionist,” and he is not a “criminal.” None of that is true, and all of it is proof of a lying, corrupt administration that has assumed power that never belonged to them.
You get nothing. You do not get to do this to a former or future president. You do not get to destroy this country from within and make us look weak before the world by attacking a person a large portion of this country chose to represent them. You don’t get to weaponize our DOJ. You don’t get to destroy our history, our American dream, our heroes, our patriotism, our unity. You get nothing.
You don’t get to take Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July. You don’t get to take Halloween. You don’t get to take the great movies we all grew up on, and our shared experiences that made us all feel like Americans held together by a common dream - that anyone can be anything they want if they work hard enough, that America is not a country based on a fixed hierarchy. We’re supposed to be moving away from that, not embracing it.
You don’t get to blame Trump for a riot that was planned and coordinated in advance by well-paid FBI informants radicalizing desperate people on the fringe. You don’t get to use all of your lawyers to attempt to intimidate or threaten any lawyers who might represent Trump. You don’t get to attempt to take Trump’s name off the ballot and prevent American citizens from voting for him.
ENOUGH.
But right now, the GOP is not channeling Michael Corleone. Many of them have become demoralized and ashamed, buying into the nonsense media narratives about Trump. Trump is brash and unpredictable, a wild thing that makes them sad for the GOP of old, the stodgy Paul Ryan Conservatives who were buttoned up and “clean.” They hid in the shadows. They governed from behind closed doors.
Well, sorry. That GOP is dead and gone. The America First GOP is trying to tell the guys in the cigar room in suits that the huddled masses are banging on the castle walls. Are you really going to throw away an energized, grassroots movement like MAGA? Who is going to turn out for your better candidate? Paul Ryan’s Boy Scout troop?
That old GOP is so demoralized that they’re willing to hand America over to a full-blown cult that hates this country, that wants to tear it down to the studs and rebuild it as an identity-first “woketopia” where we all have to be ashamed of Thomas Jefferson, ashamed of our Declaration of Independence, ashamed of our history - much of which was good and admirable and worthy of celebration.
In the glorious film The Edge, written by David Mamet, Anthony Hopkins lays out what often leads men to die in the wilderness because they are too ashamed of their bad choices and the mistakes they made to get them there. What do they die of? They die of shame.
How can any Republican think any of this is okay, no matter what you think about Trump? How can you let THIS be our America, and why aren’t you fighting harder to put a stop to it? Now is the time to rally around Trump and say ENOUGH. Suck it up, for the betterment of the country and future generations.
If the GOP blinks, this — all of what we’ve seen them to do to Trump and MAGA — will be all of our new normal. And for that, they will all be forced to hang their heads in shame.
This is What “Insurrection” Looks Like
Most, not all, of these protests we saw leading up to January 6th came from the Left, at least until 2020. They were not punished. They were rewarded. Their protests helped fortify “The System.” They were used to point out to the American people that this was what they were supposed to want because the angry mob told them so. And if they didn’t, there would be more mobs, riots, and marches.
Michigan
Wisconsin
Black Lives Matter
Protests Against Trump’s Inauguration
Violent attacks against Trump supporters
The Women’s March
March for Science
Protests Against Justice Kavanaugh
Protests Against the Dobbs Decision, which included a death threat against Justice Kavanaugh
The Summer of 2020
The Tennessee Three
“Cry Bitch”
The only one of these protests that was treated like terrorism against the United States was January 6th, a riot planned in advance and known by the FBI yet too convenient of an opportunity to paint MAGA as the violent extremists and hand absolute power to the Democrats — what they couldn’t do after that?
This is the moment to say ENOUGH. We’re done. No more. You can’t treat our citizens this way. You can’t treat a political candidate this way just because he challenges what has become a stagnate, oppressive, dysfunctional swamp. Four indictments, really? Kicking him off of social media, really? Censoring the Hunter Biden laptop, really?
If you paid attention to the Twitter files and all that they exposed, if you know how they rehearsed the media’s reaction to the Hunter Biden laptop story with so-called “journalists.” If you knew about the Stanford program to censor political speech by Conservatives and how they censored and policed thought online by using Big Tech as a filter, how they’ve overtaken Google and Wikipedia and Youtube - you would see what I see - you would see the real “insurrection.”
President Biden had the gall to attempt to control Internet Service Providers, or ISPs, to control speech. The FCC is now voting on this. There is no bottom. What they want to do is force all of us to accept their version of America. Their version of the 2020 election.
I could see them rigging the 2020 election the minute they began gaslighting us about the protests. Then I watched them changed the dates in the swing states. I watched them collect giant bags of ballots to be counted later, with many of the regulations usually in place that rejected ballots eliminated.
They would spend a billion dollars to drag Biden over the finish line. Even if they did nothing illegal, it was the most corrupt election of my lifetime and I left the Democratic Party because of it. Yet, we’re not even allowed to discuss it because of the Reichstag Fire that was January 6th.
The only thing that has allowed them to get even this far is that many in the GOP are thumb-suckers lost in the wilderness who would rather die of shame than unite with MAGA and fight back.
Stop them now, or spend the next 20 years or so watching them do the same thing they did to Trump and MAGA to you. Watch them lie about you, indict you, persecute you, and attempt to put you in jail for your ideology. Watch them dump your social media network like they did with Parler. If they get control of the ISPs, that is exactly what they will do under the guise of “hate speech” and “disinformation.
No matter what you think about Trump, the way he has been treated since he dared to run for President should scare, and wake up, every American. That they’ve weaponized the entire government, the Justice System, and the entire legacy media should disgust and enrage every American. It’s time to say ENOUGH.
That sunny day in May, I was hopeful as I lunched on paella and cream puffs and sipped champagne with my fellow Biden supporters. I felt hope for the first time - hope to get back everything we thought we lost back in 2016. Hope that we could continue our fight for the climate. I knew who I was and where I belonged. I’ve never felt so necessary, so important.
One year later, it would hit me like a ton of bricks. We were never the good people we pretended to be. We were the “monsters.”
And I was spending all of my time fighting on the side of people like this:
As we prepare for another brutal election season, I wonder who is worse. Those who have overthrown this flawed but beautiful country of ours to remake it as a totalitarian dystopia, or those who don’t have the courage to defeat them.
//end
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A rumination on the collapse of culture on the left. Is it really that bad? Yes, it is really that bad.
DF all you needed was this from the 'half of the internet' you posted:
" That old GOP is so demoralized that they’re willing to hand America over to a full-blown cult that hates this country, that wants to tear it down to the studs and rebuild it as an identity-first “woketopia” where we all have to be ashamed of Thomas Jefferson, ashamed of our Declaration of Independence, ashamed of our history - much of which was good and admirable and worthy of celebration."
I don't agree with one thing from the above sentence except that woke, means lotss of different things to different poeple. No Dems are ashamed of our country, but some of the history has been written to the accolades of those favoring the status quo. Some were the winners of battles and some were the winners of political movements.
Jefferson and the founders were literally the WOKE of their time. They woke up to not having the ability to do as they please without taxes, and they didn't like no representation, and they didn't want anyone to limit what they could do based on a government or ANY other organization saying so. Hence. The separation of Church and state, the decision of creating a union of states away from England and creating a more perfect union.
They were as woke as Fuck when they drafted the articles and the declaration of independence. But to your point or the author of that lengthy diatribes point, they were mad as hell and weren't gonna take it anymore.
So when we think of Jefferson and others being WOKE.....why was it good then, but now it's a bad word. Being tired of the 'same old' and more of it, is because it's the same and it's old. Just like old pussy, they wanted something new and knew the old they didn't like so they put some rules in, just like todays legislature is trying to do. Albeit that the GOP is like old england being dragged along begrudgingly. The difference is the the new WOKE is mostly on the Dems side, with new ideas and looking for ways to be inclusive and fair to ALL, where is the old guard GOP is trying to keep all these limits, and more so- to keep the status quo.
Was Jefferson woke? Fuckk yeah he was!
But don't believe me about Jefferson, take it from the man TJ himself in his last letter:
In his last message to America, on June 24, 1826, ten days before he died on July 4 (the same day that John Adams died), Jefferson declined an invitation to be in Washington for the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. He wrote, "All eyes are opened, or opening to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them."
My man was a "Woke ASS Warrior" for this nation. You just CANT'/ don't see the patriotism in any new-woke ideas, certainly not if they come from the Dems side, my conservative dudes.
One of these days, even Bill Mahar might come over to "our" side. He is on the cusp now by openly rejecting and loudly criticizing the progressive left on his TV show and in a blog. He is frank and direct in his remarks.
Jesus was a Conservative ... You can see that in His teachings.
And there's also the fact that Jesus wasn't setting fire
and burning down the churches.
But the Insurrection people do.
... And Jesus was also surely persecuted by the overzealous
government leaders - just like Trump is today.
... So it surely stands to reason - Trump is like Jesus.
Jesus taught love thy neighbor. Trump teaches hate thy neighbor.
We could go down the list and compare their positions but I'll do that in a separate thread.
Plus the temples were made out of stone. Pretty fire resistant.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Salty Again
.... Jesus was NOT "Insurrectionist"...
Jesus was a Conservative ... You can see that in His teachings.
And there's also the fact that Jesus wasn't setting fire
and burning down the churches.
But the Insurrection people do.
... And Jesus was also surely persecuted by the overzealous
government leaders - just like Trump is today.
... So it surely stands to reason - Trump is like Jesus.
Jesus was a Conservative ... You can see that in His teachings.
And there's also the fact that Jesus wasn't setting fire
and burning down the churches.
But the Insurrection people do.
... And Jesus was also surely persecuted by the overzealous
government leaders - just like Trump is today.
... So it surely stands to reason - Trump is like Jesus.
Meet the Real "Insurrectionists"
