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

Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning with Sasha Stone

Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning with Sasha Stone

著者： Sasha Stone
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概要

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

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  • The Odyssey Proves Woke Is a Feature, Not a Bug

    The Odyssey Proves Woke Is a Feature, Not a Bug
    2026/05/17
    [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 white male patriarchy. What is different now, amid our current Fourth Turning, is that the Woke Code includes only half of America. To the Left, they would rewrite this narrative to say that Hollywood depicted mostly White America, and that is what has changed. ...
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    23 分
  • Interview with Jenny Holland

    Interview with Jenny Holland
    2026/05/15

    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
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    1 時間 29 分
  • Spencer Pratt is the Hero We Didn't Know We Needed

    Spencer Pratt is the Hero We Didn't Know We Needed
    2026/05/12
    “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 fire that the city should have been more prepared for, to put it mildly. He is ...
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    35 分
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