Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning with Sasha Stone

I’m probably the last person who should write about morality. I grew up on the Left, after all: a hippie childhood in Topanga Canyon, then coming of age as the first generation after Roe v. Wade as a liberated woman who did whatever I wanted, dressed however I wanted, and always felt free in my mind and heart. I was never someone who would have demanded morality. I didn’t even know what that was.
I watched the counterculture revolution of the 1960s and 1970s break free of norms and traditions. Where we’ve ended up is at the Empire’s end: a Caligula-like culture that strictly polices thought, speech, racism, sexism, homophobia, bigotry of any kind, but one that also treats morality and decency as oppressive relics from a patriarchal past.
So when a 20-year-old Jane Doe walked into the Chi Phi fraternity at Cornell on October 24, 2024, her only armor was the rule of “consent.” As long as it was okay with her and she said so, anything goes.
She agreed to a threesome with two 20-year-olds, but then, when more men flocked to her body like seagulls chasing a bag of chips left on the beach, she was too high or drunk to even know how to get herself out of it.
No one knew how to just say this is wrong, this is bad behavior because they don’t live in a culture that believes that — not unless it’s rape. But this wasn’t rape by any legal definition. She consented, then she consented again. Then, she was drowning in a sea of consent, and so were they.
In the days, weeks, and months that followed, Jane Doe would absorb the truth about what really happened that night. Shame would follow when she saw her classmates pointing and laughing at her, calling her a slut, saying it was a “gang bang.”
If the boys said nothing, she said nothing; no one would know what they did that night, but the boys bragged about it. They betrayed her trust, and she ended up looking bad.
The real kicker was being disinvited to that same frat with those same guys. In her mind, she was the one being punished and not the boys.
From the New York Times:
At Chi Phi, the fraternity was preparing for a Halloween party, and Jane Doe was eager to attend. Text messages included in the investigation show Mr. Ingalls assuring Jane Doe that he and other fraternity members wanted her to be there.
“chi phi is your house and you are welcome here,” he wrote, relaying the views of the fraternity’s president, who was not among those accused of sexual assault.
“thank u i really appreciate that,” Jane Doe responded. “
But then Jane Doe received a phone call from the fraternity’s president, according to the text messages.
She was disinvited from the party. It was for her own good, he said.
Jane Doe sent a biting text to Mr. Ingalls.
“I knew this was going to happen,” she wrote. “The woman will always get the short end of the stick. Yall aren’t my friends. Yall are covering your asses.”
That’s when the anger and resentment set in, and eventually, it would fester until she decided she needed to get something back, something she lost in her efforts to protect the boys and not herself.
Whether she knew it or not, she was walking around with a loaded gun and a trigger she could pull at any time. Two years later, she did just that, and the righteous, delusional, fanatical mob ignited into a frenzy. Even AOC got into the mix, condemning and convicting the boys, putting an image in everyone’s head about what happened that night.
Everything that came next has been a horror show. The Cornell newspaper released the boys' names, knowing that in modern-day America there can be no such thing as due process. If she was accusing them of rape, gang rape, then they were guilty.
The University newspaper, the Cornell Sun, wrote an op-ed naming the boys:
We refuse for this victim to be reduced to just another story. Cornell has failed to protect its students. Cornell has failed to address the growing issue of sexual assault on campus with its pathetic task force. Cornell has failed the student allegedly raped by those seven men at Chi Phi in October 2024. Cornell has failed her. Cornell has failed us.
To Matthew Ingalls, Jonathan Newell, Winston Lee, Gillio Lopes, Diego Sarabia, Scott Norris and Scott Kretzschmar: We know who you are and we refuse to let you benefit from this University’s concealment.
Two websites cropped up to name and shame the boys. One is Cornellseven.com, run and operated by activist Aaron B:
And the other, The Cornell 7, run by a former South Park writer, Toby Morton.
Some guy was mistakenly identified as one of them and began receiving death threats:
They had their villains. They just needed their innocent victim. Jane Doe is such a perfect name for the kind of victim our culture seems to so desperately need. A helpless baby deer caught in the headlights just before she’s run over.
In their mind’s eye, she had been passed out as men did a train on her. In reality, that was never true. In reality, she did consent. It was only later, as she thought about it, that she decided it wasn’t consensual. None of them got away clean. They all carried with them a film of shame.
It is not cool anymore among Gen Z and younger to have morals when it comes to sex. Consent is all they decide matters. And yet, morality is the only thing that might have stopped Jane Doe from consenting to the threesome in the first place. It’s okay to say that allowing men to snort ketamine off your “perfect body” is wrong.
Not to excuse the boys. Like her, they’ve been saturated in a culture that doesn’t think morality is cool either. It’s a culture where anything goes for almost everyone, unless you happen to be a heterosexual man.
Then, you are sequestered off into the booming online porn industry where sex is everywhere, any kind of sex, especially group sex with girls who act like they want it and anything goes. Imagine having one of these typical porn scenarios playing out in the very next room.
Hollywood could not have cast them better if they were looking for inclusive and representative, though they’d never portray the alleged rapists as anything other than white. We see them now, their faces innocent and smiling, unaware of what lies ahead.
Each image on the website looks like a “wanted: dead or alive” poster.
The porn industry is booming to something like $13-60 billion a year. Young heterosexual men have nowhere else to turn because just looking at a girl across a room can be seen as predatory now, let alone asking for a phone number and the fear that goes along with dating a woman who can turn around and accuse you of anything.
Ah, but now, they can have an entire industry of OnlyFans girls welcoming them in, cultivating what feels like a real relationship almost, and even more importantly, they’re not treated like rapists.
Barely legal virgins making cute little TikToks to build a massive client base on OnlyFans and make hundreds of millions? Check.
Lily Phillips sleeping with 100 guys in a train and claiming she’s doing society a favor by helping these men out? Check.
Bonnie Blue proud of all the men she slept with and holding a Baby Daddy reveal party? Check.
And everywhere they look in culture, extreme sexuality is on display for almost every kind of person except them. Queer sexuality especially is treated like some kind of sacred ritual to be encouraged, with no limits.
Kids are even exposed to it because what parent would be caught dead sounding like a bigot? They seem obsessed with their private parts in deciding what gender they might be. This is all way too much for children.
Camryn Manheim went viral for saying the quiet part out loud: how white liberal women today desperately need queer kids to give them status in the non-binary, Ceterosexual, polysexual, multisexual, and pansexual world of Gen Z.
Of course she’s virtue-signaling for applause and making jokes to make gay sons feel better, but it also has the opposite effect by further shaming heterosexual sons, like they are somehow the minority.
It isn’t that morality should mean a “trans genocide” or forcing everyone to be heterosexual. It’s just that it’s become an upside-down culture, leaving young heterosexual men almost nowhere to turn but to porn and young women with no idea what to do with their bodies once they have opened the door with consent.
For these boys, finding a girl who wanted to party and had no problem having other men join in was straight out of a porn fantasy. They couldn’t believe their luck.
Women need the story
I didn’t want to watch Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story on Netflix. I already knew from how Ryan Murphy fetishized serial killer Ed Gein, suggesting that if he had been treated for gender dysphoria, he might not have killed all of those women. The blending of extreme violence and sexuality was too much.
But since I am a Lizzie Borden obsessive who's read everything, listened to every podcast, and knows all the details of the case, I thought, let’s see what this show is about. That was a mistake. There are scenes in that series I will never unsee. All I could think when it was over was how much Hollywood needs the Hays Code back.
Anyone can turn on Netflix and watch that series, which depicts an axe pounding a human head into a bloody pulp as Lizzie and her maid, splattered in the victim’s blood, embark on a love affair. Again, the message is that if only our society allowed queer women to feel empowered, maybe they would not kill.
They somehow bring in serial killer Aileen Wuornos, who brings her gay lover to the Borden House Bed and Breakfast (which didn’t exist as a B&B until after she had been arrested), and they have sex in all of the rooms, even on the murder couch.
As bad as it was, it became a must-see, with 12 million views after it dropped. Everyone was talking about it on TikTok, most people panning it because it’s terrible, but some women seemed to really believe the story, to see Lizzie Borden as the victim. She was not the victim. She murdered her parents so she could get the money and live the life to which she believed she was accustomed.
Kall Me Kris sums it up well:
But it’s the story that had to be rewritten for today’s Great Feminization, a culture dominated and saturated with the female gaze - a gaze that sees itself as both empowered and helpless. And always abused and traumatized by men.
Netflix has done the same thing with the new East of Eden, a feminist reboot that sympathizes with Cathy, the book's embodiment of evil.
And of course, the whole thing came full circle with the star, Florence Pugh, posting about the Cornell 7 on her Instagram, then talking about it at a Q&A:
Women have to be the victims now because men have to be at fault. But that also means women are infantilized, which ultimately makes them unable to even consent just by being female. Ironic, isn’t it?
This clip of Camille Paglia, a voice greatly missed right about now, was making the rounds.
The Pendulum Swing
I grew up in an era mostly free of morality and decency. We policed ourselves with our made-up rules around progressivism. But looking back now, I feel betrayed by my willingness to participate in behavior I thought was liberating, but in reality, I came out of a lot of it feeling used.
I don’t blame anyone but myself, but I sometimes wish I’d grown up with different rules, because now I can see all too clearly what having no standards of morality or decency can do to a person, to kids, to a culture.
The pendulum swing happened in the 1930s with the Hays Code, and it swung again with the Counterculture movement in the 1960s and 1970s. We’re overdue for another pendulum swing, and this time, it will have nowhere to go but back toward morality and decency.



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

I just made this little video as a Thank You to all of you who shared your kind words and sent in donations to help with vet bills. I am always overwhelmed by your kindness. I am hoping Jasper is on the mend. He has packed on some weight from the steroids, but so far he seems to be healing.
His hair is growing back, and he is getting his energy back, even chasing squirrels and growling at strangers. I got a little worried last night because yesterday was his first full day without Prednisone. He was a little agitated at night, and I kept checking for fever. So far, so good, thank you, God. And thank you, dear readers, for caring about my pup! More photos in the video above.



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

MAGA, it would seem, is on the ropes. Things are looking dire. Tucker Carlson is appearing on NPR talking about removing Trump for threatening nuclear war, even though, you know, not long ago he was telling Ted Cruz that we should definitely nuke a country if they tried to assassinate our president.
Here is Ben Shapiro:
Marjorie Taylor Greene has learned the trick of the elite Left that you can be as rich as you want, live wherever you want, party all you want, marry and spend lavishly as long as you also hate on Trump and name-drop the “resistance.” Hey, it’s nice work if you can get it.
The idea is that Trump was supposed to rebuff Israel, ignore Iran’s threats of building a nuke because of Israel, find pedophiles that do not exist in the Epstein Files buried because of Israel, and listen to Tucker Carlson for advice OR ELSE. But really, it’s the Jews. It’s always been the Jews.
After ten years of Trump giving himself over to fight for representation of people who have been thrown away like human garbage by a country ruled by an aristocratic ideological utopian cult, after being the target of the worst attacks I’ve ever seen - his hair, his weight, his hands, his skin, his daughter, his sons, his wife, his walk, his clothes, what he says, what he does, where he goes, what he eats- here we are again: the walls are closing in, only this time the calls are coming from inside the house.
How hard would it be, you know, just for old times’ sake, to use your vote to prevent what is likely to be the Series Finale of the Trump Show? Him getting impeached a third time, maybe booted out of office this time. Sure, it would take a large majority of Senate Republicans, but by now, why wouldn’t they go along with it?
Then, he’d be prosecuted and frog-marched off in an orange jumpsuit as Jen Psaki and Kara Swisher throw a party at Rosie O’Donnell’s house, livestreamed on The View.
I mean, this is your future MAGA, should you choose to accept it:
And for these folks, their dream is finally coming true. Their ten-year war is about to come to an end because Trump supporters are jumping ships like rats. But someone should tell them their future will look grim with Trump out of the way.
Maybe they don’t realize what’s coming, how much worse it will be than either the country under Joe Biden or Donald Trump. Maybe they have no idea what’s in store for them after the revolution.
Maybe the revolutionaries somehow take X from Elon. Maybe they take control of AI and gain mind-control capabilities for generations to come. I know these people. They do it with a smile and the best intentions, but they want absolute power. They want their utopia back, and you are in the way.
The biggest threat is what will happen to our freedom, something most are not even factoring into the equation, but I know because I come from the Left.
In China, in Iran, in other countries run by dictators, everything seems to be going very well. People are smiling, going to work, living their lives and saying nothing. They stay silent because they know what will happen if they ever say what they really think.
My daughter has grown up inside of a culture now that is ruled by the same kind of fear. She already knows that she can’t say what she really thinks because everyone on the Left knows. They can’t write books they want to write—they can’t tell the truth—but they still have to smile and pretend everything is going great in utopia!
They have scared an entire generation into compliance. And it’s oh so much worse now that Sharia Law has entered the chat. Oh, I know we’re not supposed to think of guys like Abdul El-Sayed and Zohran Mamdani as anti-American terrorists - that’s racist!
But the more I think about it, the more I think this alliance was inevitable: two strident fundamentalist ideologies that hate America’s history and want to remake it from the ground up as something completely different, and they’re prepared to use their army of fanatics and scolds to make everyone go along with it.
The Left and their legacy media have spent ten years lying about Trump, saying fascism or authoritarianism was the threat. But it was never the Trump side that represented oppression and societal control. It’s always been the Left. And now, it’s gone to the next level.
And the only one standing in their way, the Gray Champion of the Fourth Turning, the guy so many in MAGA have turned against, is The Donald.
Perfect? No. Flawed, beyond. Messy — he makes it up as he goes along. Offends people casually. Can’t be controlled, but this man is the one, the only one who was tough enough, rich enough, and determined enough to stand up to the most powerful political party in American history and beat them twice.
He’s not done smart things this time around. He’s been too careless with his second win. He enriched himself and his family. He might have made a mistake trying to end the forever war with Iran.
But on his worst day, he is still the one to lead us to a brighter future, away from totalitarianism, away from fanaticism, away from societal control.
A Blue Tsunami
The conspiracy theories started instantly after Charlie’s death. The Jews did it, the same people who are hidden in the Epstein Files - the Pizzagate of it all - the dangerous invisible menace that was choking the life out of all good things in America.
Genocide and pedophiles, Epstein and Iran. And all of that came before they found their real weapon: affordability. Note the pivot by the Left away from “abolish ICE” and “Trans women are women” to kitchen table issues. Don’t be fooled. It’s just a new strategy to the same end goal.
Affordability! That got MAGA’s attention. Gas prices are high. Trump couldn’t wave his magic wand and get rid of the inflation hangover from 2020. Tariffs were implemented to help Americans bring back manufacturing, but they seem to have had the opposite effect by making things cost more—or so they say. I haven’t seen it myself. It just looks like politics as usual to me.

Mark Halperin keeps suggesting a Blue Tsunami wipeout is coming in November. They could lose both the House and the Senate. And Texas.
Cook Political Report has now predicted doom as well, and even Rasmussen is coming up blue.


One of Trump’s gifts has always been eternal optimism. They threw their whole arsenal at him, and he’d pop up cheerily, wave to the crowd with a thumbs up, and get one with it.
Now, that might not work for the first time in ten years because his own side is going against him. Rick Wilson must be uncorking the champagne every night. Rachel Maddow is probably dancing naked under the full moon.
Should this be the moment MAGA has had enough and turns on the only guy who saw them at all, let alone fought for them, people like this sad woman will finally have their dreams come true.
Some people are still out there trying to hold the line, but it seems nearly impossible now.
How to Stop the Islamo-Commie Takeover
For ten years, the Democrats never figured out that the only way to stop Trump was to offer the people something better. Fear can only take you so far. The GOP can’t sell fear alone because most Americans don’t understand an existential threat like Communism fused with Islam.
In 1932, Herbert Hoover was painted as out of touch, with “rugged individualism” not matching the suffering of America’s underclass hit hard by the Great Depression. FDR won in a landslide and served for four terms, through World War II.
So how bad will it get if the Democrats win? Will they keep Trump or persecute him for the next two years? Will they impeach all of his Cabinet members? Try them for war crimes?
Trump was the Moonshot
In 2020, nothing in my life made sense anymore. The media I trusted were lying. The friends I had were too scared to speak out, and mobs were coming for me on almost a daily basis. I was alone. My daughter was away. All I could see coming off of my social media was hate. The most overwhelming and ugly hate I’d ever seen in my life, all aimed at one man and his supporters.
I don’t know exactly what happened to me, but something did. I pulled back. I knew I could not live that way anymore. I decided to find out for myself who Trump really was, who his supporters were, and what this MAGA movement was really about.
What I found was a guy who had fame, wealth, and power who had dropped into a story where he was cast as the unlikely hero, the guy who would represent forgotten Americans. If Obama represented the New America built mostly online - where geography did not matter as much as ideology- then Trump represented the other America - out there in the real world.
I saw this America when I drove across the country. There it was. The churches, the towns. The highways. The tire shops. The parks. The World War II memorials. It was an America those of us living our lives virtually didn’t think much about, but Trump reached them as they reached out to him.
The side with all of the power wanted their complete destruction. They were called racists, bigots, transphobes, extremists, fascists, Nazis, Christian Nationalists. None of it worked because they had the truth on their side, and they had Trump, and he was indestructible.
Trump did big things: kept his promises on the border, transgender ideology foisted upon children, and protecting women in sports. Perfect, no, but he gave us a chance at a better future. He wanted to move mountains, build ballrooms, and end wars. He took on crime directly and changed things.
But of course, it wasn’t enough because it’s never enough for the permanently aggrieved. Trump was never going to be destroyed by the Left. They tried and failed. Ah, but if he’s destroyed from within, that’s the best way to bring down the hero.
Such a lowly finale, isn’t it, for such a mighty warrior as Trump, who dodged bullets and came back to win a second time, handing his supporters more power than they’ve ever had or will ever have.
It’s hard for me to watch them give it all up after Trump gave so much. It’s hard for me to watch them leap off the cliff to their own demise, like lemmings. No future is written for them in this story except to paint them as the rioters at the Capitol who almost overthrew the United States.
As for me, well, I learned my lesson in 2016. I won’t be wasting much of my time trying to save people who don’t want to be saved. I’ll just have to stand back and watch in horror as they learn their lesson the hard way.
Either way, I will hold out hope for the decent Americans I know who are ride-or-die MAGA and who stood with Trump even when they were freezing to death, even in the midst of a shooting, and in the rain, watching the water come down in sheets, refusing to move, refusing to find shelter from the storm, and hanging on every word.




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

What kind of people would dance in the streets after the 9/11 terrorist attack that killed upwards of 3,000 people? The same ones who have now become elevated martyrs by large swaths of the Global Left: the Palestinians.
Katie Couric, like most mainstream journalists back then, had no problem exposing such monstrous behavior by those fed a steady diet of dehumanization of the American people. Would she do it today? No. Would any of them do it today? No.
Who would celebrate the live execution of a prominent activist on the Right, so much so that they’d lose their jobs for exposing what sociopaths they really are? Hundreds, if not thousands, on the Left did just that. Radicalized or mainstream, it didn’t matter. They have become what the Palestinians were back then: so propagandized and radicalized, they’ve lost their humanity.
You can see it now in those TikTok videos that have turned “When it Happens” into a viral trend. That’s what ten years of dehumanizing can do to otherwise decent people. They say they’re decent, but TikTok proves otherwise.
They have cast themselves as morally superior to the other half of the country and would point to how some on the Right mocked George Floyd after his death in 2020. But the difference is that many prominent Republicans like Ted Cruz instantly condemned it. No Democrat has condemned the mockery and the celebration of Charlie’s death.
Oh sure, they all said what they had to say: the standard “violence has no place in our politics.” They said it, but did they mean it? How could they if they’ve never condemned the rising cult-like fantasies of Trump’s death and the celebration of Charlie's execution?
If anything, the Democrats were more worried Charlie’s influence would grow, so they sent out their One True King, Barack Obama, to put Charlie’s legacy in context.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did the same thing, acting as though what Charlie said - the cherry-picked, out-of-context quotes fed to them- was worse than their own side mocking and celebrating his murder. His words were worse than his death.
But that is who they are now. Speech is violence. Speech is hate. Speech must be tightly monitored and controlled. Is assassinating Charlie Kirk or trying to assassinate Donald Trump any different from the Jihadists who mass-murdered journalists at Charlie Hebdo in Paris for blasphemy against Mohammad?
Hasan Piker, aka the “Twitch streamer in California,” like Dean Withers, condemned those who made jokes of Charlie’s death. At least at first. Once Piker sensed the vacuum left in Charlie’s absence, he turned his death into a viral meme just a month or so later. Credit to Axios’ Alex Thompson for pressing him to explain it.
Piker’s song became a TikTok dance meme and a permission structure for many to showcase themselves as dead-eyed zombies dancing to the sound of the bullet hitting his neck a year later for the “Kirkaversary.”
Utopias only have two paths forward. They either collapse or they become more authoritarian. The Left still hasn’t confronted the radical elements on their side, not just Hasan Piker, but the many shooters who have risen up to become martyrs and heroes.
They mock, they meme, but underneath it all, as with Al-Qaeda or other radical Islamic groups, what motivates them is pure hatred. Words are violence. Words are hatred, and “some hate can’t be negotiated out.” They can laugh it off all they want, but they’ve left a paper trail.
Turning Point put up a Charlie Kirk statue, and it was immediately vandalized.
If they can meme a live execution and feel nothing, then why wouldn’t they see America as bad or worse than Al-Qaeda? The oppressor/oppressed indoctrination factory that is public schools and universities has raised them in the good/evil binary.
Video games, IP, and superhero movies all adopted that binary, and after Columbine and 9/11, parents like me shut our kids indoors to keep them safe, and this good/evil binary would one day become white people evil, brown people good, and Al-Qaeda, like the Palestinians, can’t be seen as the villains.
Abdul El-Sayed and Zohran Mamdani have arisen as cult leaders almost because there is nothing the Left will hold them accountable for, lest they be called racists. No one will look at El-Sayed’s erased history, the videos or the tweets. What did he think? What does he still think? No one will know because no one would dare ask.
The Democrats have never been held accountable for the sharp rise of radicalized violence and death fantasies that have gone mainstream. They’re rewarded for it with likes and reposts. They’ve never confronted it. They’ve never solved it, and the legacy media has supported them every step of the way, all the while demonizing MAGA as the more extreme side.
Piker was their masculine, patriarchal, non-white Joe Rogan. No more Mr. Nice Guy! Let’s get those Gen-Z and male voters. That was the plan anyway. Now, maybe it’s becoming a mess, a liability. Then again, maybe not. Maybe this is just who they are now.
How We Got Here
I know how we got here because I grew up on the Left. I was one of these people. I know what it felt like that day the towers were hit. I know why we pivoted so quickly to focus on the greater evil that was George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and those two wars that did what the war on Gaza has now done: flip the script, so America is the bad guy.
I know what happened in our schools. I know how women like me grew in power in America and changed our society amid the “Great Feminization.” I know what happened to my daughter’s generation, why so many white kids felt such deep shame they were willing to do anything to escape their own skin, even destroying their own bodies at the hands of a fundamentalist cult.
I know what it was like when Obama won and how we built our utopia - a better America shaped by more women and what it was like when our first female president was denied the win but just barely, putting in power a guy who would ultimately redeem Bush and Cheney and be sold as the World’s Greatest Evil to whole generations for the past ten years.
We were just kidding with Bush and Cheney. Trump is the really, really bad guy. And everyone went along with it.
Maybe I didn’t think it would go so far as young men picking up weapons to murder as part of the “resistance.” Maybe I didn’t think, in the wake of Charlie’s death, a guy like Hasan Piker would become such an influential voice and do exactly the opposite of what Charlie did by teaching young people to hate America.
But that’s what happens when a utopia becomes a totalitarian dystopia, closer to fascism than this country has ever gotten and not that far from where Al-Qaeda was on the eve of 9/11 - so full of hate and revenge fantasies that they would take advantage of the same people who welcomed them into their country and treated them with kindness.
I certainly would not have thought any of them, let alone most of them, would see the war in Gaza as “genocide” and then apply that to all of America and its history, redeeming the monsters who attacked us on 9/11. We’re the bad guys, they insist. We’re the terrorists.
But here we are, America. We are about to put these people who hate this country, its history, and many of its citizens, in power. We’re about to sell out the American dream because of high gas prices.
It’s not lost on me that Democrats have been saying the same thing to their voters. I was one of them. I see the mirror image of this moment: when gas prices and inflation were too high under Biden, Democrats begged Americans to vote for Kamala to save the country. I know they see it that way too.
But I’ve been on both sides. I know each side’s strengths and weaknesses. And that’s why I know the side that either celebrated the murder of Charlie Kirk or said nothing about those who did is the side that is dangerous not just for America but for humanity.
President Select
My daughter was just three when the towers were hit. It was three hours early in California. My French boyfriend at the time had a habit of waking up with CNN, and there it was. Smoke billowing out of one of the towers at the World Trade Center. “Turn on the news,” I told my friend that day.
It took us all a while to figure out who did it and why, and the first thing that happened was everyone felt fear that Muslims would be attacked. Even George W. Bush felt it necessary to say Islam is peace. And it’s true, not all Muslims- like it’s true, not all people on the Left but you have to condemn the radicalized, or else they consume the whole.
We were still haunted by the Japanese Internment camps after the Pearl Harbor attack, which took us to World War II. We didn’t want to be that America, not us progressive liberals. We were the good guys.
The 2000 election left us bitter and unable to accept that Bush was legitimately elected. And that mattered more to us than the tragedy on 9/11. It had to, because Bush was the president, so everything had to go not just wrong but catastrophically wrong - the wars, Wall Street, Katrina. We were making our own reality even back then because we could.
In 2004, Michael Moore released Fahrenheit 911, which began with the premise that the 2000 election had been stolen.
The villain of Fahrenheit 9/11 was the Commander in Chief, and much was made of this moment, when he heard of the attacks and people like me nodded furiously along. We knew who the bad guys were, and they weren’t Al-Qaeda.
And in 2003, just two years after 9/11, when Michael Moore accepted the Oscar for Bowling for Columbine, he was booed, with a part of the Left with their perspective still intact. Needless to say, that wouldn’t happen now.
We were beginning a new origin story, one where the worst people in the world were put in power by the Supreme Court and Big Oil. We weren’t quite at the place where we would divide and measure goodness by skin color or gender, but we weren’t far off. We just needed a leader to believe in.
And as our hero rose in the form of a “skinny kid with a funny name,” we began to find marginalized groups as our protected, sacred symbols because of our love and devotion to Barack Obama.
Just as our first black President became our savior, our villain was rising too. It was Sarah Palin and her demonization of Radical Islamic Terror. That, we knew, made her a “racist” and a villain.
In 2012, she was depicted as a paranoid idiot whose bigotry clouded her judgment in Game Change.
The Tea Party had already been cast as a “white power” movement to thwart its growth, even if by 2016 it would elect a president with the help of Charlie Kirk.
By 2012, we were a bitterly divided country with the Left deciding its enemies were not the brown people in the Middle East but rather the homegrown racists in our own country. We began to slowly separate ourselves from them. Whatever unity we felt after 9/11 vanished.
That same year, Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty was released about the killing of Bin Laden. But the movie had no heroes. The final scene is brutal and haunting, full of children screaming and women crying.
The main character, whose life had been devoted to hunting Bin Laden, is left shaken and alone with the thought lingering in the air: what was it all for? Hardly the rousing moment of heroism we would expect when America won.
Game Change and Zero Dark Thirty were pure propaganda for the Democrats and the beginning of how we stopped seeing America as the hero after 9/11.
Not that America anymore
After 9/11, some questioned whether the Oscars would be held at all. Tom Cruise took to the stage and spoke to all of America, not just the blue half. He wanted to bring this country together, and that, he said, is what movies are for.
Remember that Hollywood? Remember that America?
After Charlie Kirk’s live execution, the cowards in Hollywood didn’t even have the courage to say his name at the Oscars or the Emmys, and still don’t. That shows you how divided we are, how scared they are, how they see their enemies as half the country, and how their deaths do not matter.
I think what hurts the most, watching so many of the 9/11 videos as I’ve been doing, is seeing and remembering when it was like back then, when we were one America, how everyone came through, how we held together, how so many ordinary people became heroes to help those who were trapped, many of them giving their lives for others.
Mothers lost sons and daughters. Wives lost husbands. 40% of those who were killed are still unaccounted for. It doesn’t seem like we’ve ever really come to terms with the tragedy of that day because, in its aftermath, the keepers of culture could not make America the hero.
But America was, and remains, the hero fighting the good fight. It’s the better fight, for a better world, even if I didn’t realize it until 25 years later. Now I see it. Now I understand because now I can see what dehumanization and radicalization can do.
Here is a clip from Triggernometry and guest Richard Miniter (watch the whole thing, it’s great).
I finally watched The Great Boatlift - the largest sea rescue in history - where so many New Yorkers volunteered their boats to rescue 500,000 people off the Island of Manhattan.
In these videos, I see the America I remember, the one I fled 30 years ago to spend the rest of my life online. I miss that America, the one that believed in our collective goodness, not the one where one side took all of the power and abused that power by seeing the other half of the country as their enemy.
And worse, became radicalized to the point of violence, to the point of mocking the assassinated and believing they have no other choice but to wish for the death of their president, in video after video after video.
9/10 and 9/11 will come back to us every year to remind us of what is great about this country and what is trying to destroy this country. Every year, we will be forced to stare evil in the face and fight for the forces of good standing in its way.
Godspeed, America. Godspeed.
.


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

America lived through a political assassination one year ago today, and millions of people either barely noticed, shrugged it off, or openly celebrated. That was one of the darkest days in American history, a day I never thought I’d live through, watching people I used to know lose their humanity.
One famous example was the actress Amanda Seyfried, who posted this:
Charlie Kirk did not incite violence, and he was not “hateful.” Tyler Robinson shot Charlie Kirk to please people like Amanda Seyfried.
She doesn’t regret her words. She stands by them, like the good little cult member she is. She complained about having to hire a bodyguard. She should feel lucky she wasn’t shot in the neck, lucky her kids don’t have to grow up without her.
The Left felt emboldened by his death, even going so far as to celebrate it then and even now. When people lost their jobs for it - because who wants to employ a sociopathic monster - they whined about free speech. Jimmy Kimmel's cold heart could only make a bad situation worse.
And then the videos.
They tweeted and were rewarded for their ugliness. There was no bottom.
I watched in horror as they went at Charlie’s memory; so scared were they that his legacy would expand and grow like a mushroom cloud. They thought their true hatred could extinguish everything Charlie left behind, but they were wrong. They were attacking a cartoon they invented, not the real Charlie Kirk.
Charlie was right in the text he wrote the day before he died that Andrew Wilson read: the Left was trying to kill him.
Tyler Robinson said the reason he killed Charlie Kirk was that “Some hate can’t be negotiated out.”
Amanda Seyfried said “hate,” so did Tyler Robinson, and so did his defense attorney at the hearing where Robinson pled Not Guilty.
The Left killed Charlie Kirk. Tyler Robinson just pulled the trigger. Their conviction in the Court of Public Opinion was that dissent was hate and Charlie Kirk would not stop spreading it; therefore, he should be silenced one way or another.
Assassinations don’t happen every day, not in my lifetime anyway, especially not from a rooftop at a public event. A year prior to Charlie’s murder, on July 13, 2024, another killer climbed onto a rooftop and almost shot Trump to death. He missed. Just barely.
There would be two more assassination attempts on Trump’s life, and plenty more that might have been. Why is it so important to the Left that their enemies die? Because that’s where all of this totalitarianism has to go. Charlie stood for exactly the opposite. He didn’t incite violence. He stood up for robust debate.
But to the Left, they don’t believe that, which is why they’ve begun to resort to violence, excusing violence, celebrating violence. To them, that’s their solution to their biggest problem - what to do with all of these people who don’t agree with them?
Hate to the Left is described as being anti-abortion, against “transing the kids,” and holding traditional beliefs about family and faith. That’s the first layer. It goes deeper. If you are against illegal immigration, you’re a fascist; if you support lower taxes, you’re killing Americans.
“You’re a racist, a bigot, a homophobe, a transphobe.”
They don’t even know what defines their hate anymore. They just know they’re consumed by it, which is all the more ironic given that they tagged Charlie with that word: hate.
There was nothing hateful about Charlie Kirk, and he leaves behind a deep, dark hole that won’t be filled any time soon.
The Left has become not unlike the jihadists who kill those who mock Allah. Even if they aren’t condoning violence, they’re condoning punishing people just for the crime of criticizing them. That no one shamed those who celebrated tells you everything about their values, and we’re supposed to put these people back in power?
No, Charlie wanted to talk to them, to change their minds, to put himself in danger every time he faced them. They hit him with everything they had to shut him up, and nothing worked.
And Charlie Kirk got through to them just by stating his opinion and making his case. Imagine that. He was about the best the Right had to offer. He was a lighthouse.
The Left had to kill Charlie again because they had to kill his ideas, his thoughts, his speech, lest they somehow find a way out and reach the minds of the indoctrinated and maybe introduce critical thinking. We can’t have that.
Are there enough voices to counter the lies by the Left as they attempt to write Charlie’s history? I don’t know. But just for the record, here is how Charlie Kirk spoke about gay people or the LGBT community.
Here is how he spoke when confronted about his opinion on affirmative action.
He never backed off of what he believed, but he made indoctrinated college kids defend what they’d been taught, and many of them might have left those conversations asking questions too, like how it was that they spent so much of their education being told what to think, not how to think.
That is the gift Charlie Kirk gave them. He taught them what college should have - how to think. How to reason. How to question. And for that, he was “spreading too much hate.”
No one on the Left had any curiosity about Charlie Kirk because to question the official narrative is too dangerous. But one person did and made this viral TikTok. Shabooki_Sunshine puts into words how I feel, too. I wish more people on the Left would think this way.
It wasn’t only the Left. A faction of the Right also rose up in an attempt to kill what Charlie built and what he stood for, attempting to steal his legacy, destroy his widow, and undo everything he worked his entire life to build.
The worst of them is the ugly, rotten heart of Candace Owens, bitter that Charlie distanced himself from her, who was exiled from Turning Point because she, like so many of them, had gone full Hitler in deciding the Jews were responsible for all of the evils in the world. That was never Charlie Kirk.
Owens flew in like a hungry vulture to pick at Charlie’s corpse and steal his legacy, as she has no legacy of her own. Even now, on the one-year anniversary of her death, she’s harassing his widow, making it all about her. Has there ever been such a loathsome creature?
She has done nothing good for humanity or tried to change minds in any positive way. Her entire platform is built on taking advantage of very stupid people, women mostly, who are transfixed by her gobbledegook. Charlie deserved better, but Candace stole him and now pretends he belongs to her.
Most disappointing of all are those whom Charlie trusted, bowing in silent deference to Candace, either because they don’t want to alienate her large audience or they’re afraid of her, so they stay silent. They say nothing as she drags Erika Kirk into the arena again and again, blaming her for Charlie’s murder, blaming the Jews, and blaming Erika for being manipulated by the Jews. It is a black hole of delusion and bitterness.
Candace Owens had to kill Charlie a second time because she didn’t like the guy who saw her for who she really was, because, of course, he did. Any bright light could figure that one out, even if he was too trusting for too long. She needed him to die a different way so she could rob the grave and get rich.
It shouldn’t be that Candace wrote herself into his story so that everyone talking about Charlie Kirk or Erika will have to talk about her, too. But for an empty-eyed sociopath like Candace, even negative attention is better than none at all.
The truth is that even in death, Charlie still outclasses all of them, on the Left and the Right, who are trying to kill him twice. The more they lie about him, the less power they have. They could not build what he built.
They could not reach the lost boys cast aside by an indifferent cult that had no place for the majority of Americans who don’t have an identity category to elevate themselves and are just trying to live decent lives.
They failed to kill Charlie’s memory because his goodness shines through. It’s there in all of the many videos he’s left behind, like a trail of breadcrumbs. It’s there in the beautiful faces of his wife and children.
It’s there in how he built a movement and helped elect a president.
I hear you, Charlie. I hear your voice, and I know how much you want to be in the fight now, helping stave off a blue wave, helping guide the young, helping to protect your wife and kids.
What Charlie Kirk taught me
America lost something when Charlie was killed. We saw who we were in how the Left celebrated his death. We saw who we were when the insane conspiracy theories were unstoppable. We saw who we were when few people stood up for Erika Kirk, who was bullied and demonized for months.
But we lost something even bigger, too. We lost a bridge back to each other, a guy who would go anywhere and talk to anyone. We don’t have anyone like that now. We don’t have someone who cared that much about bringing back faith and family to the young who are the mercy of the Left’s fundamentalist cult or the increasingly extreme forces rising on the Right.
We needed Charlie, and we still need him. But since we don’t have him, we have to keep his memory alive. We have to make sure they don’t kill him twice.
The day before Charlie was murdered, he posted this on X:
The next day, everyone realized how right he was.
I wish I could say what I learned from Charlie was the kindness he showed to people who called him a racist to his face. I wish I could say I was that good. But I am not. The hatred that fills my heart when I see how people lie about Charlie Kirk, especially on the Left, feels like water on a sinking boat. The more I try to bail it out, the more futile it is.
I didn’t know Charlie Kirk or think much of him before September 10, 2025. I felt like a phony when he was murdered because I had not been paying attention to what an irreplaceable voice he was.
It’s quite a thing to discover who someone is after they’re gone. As I began watching his videos and listening closely to what he said, not what they said he said, I found his voice more necessary than ever. Every time I hear it while scrolling TikTok, I stop and listen. Be more like Charlie Kirk, I think to myself. Listen, debate, persuade. Humanize.
I saw young students take the microphone to face him down, hoping to own him, but every time I saw them thaw out and find their humanity because Charlie treated them with respect and always told the crowd to do the same.
We need to keep what Charlie left behind alive. We need to protect it. We need to amplify it. We need to make sure the wavering flame is never fully snuffed out.
His friends and colleagues, not to mention his wife, shouldn’t have to fight every day to keep what Charlie built alive. But he can rest in peace because we can take it from here. But no, we will never be the same.



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