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. Sashastone.substack.com

www.sashastone.com

Last refreshed: January 17th, 2026 at 6:44 PM ⓘ

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Episodes

Whoopi Goldberg and Ilya Shapiro Prove Intent Does Matter

On his daily podcast, Ben Shapiro notes that many were outraged that ABC had suspended Whoopi Goldberg from The View for two weeks following comments she made about race and the Holocaust. But Shapiro notes that it isn’t good enough to suspend her, per the Left’s and The View’s OWN standards. He cites the Ilya Shapiro case wherein Georgetown Law is now trying to decide whether Ilya Shapiro should be fired for an offensive tweet. The students at Georgetown are holding a protest and demanding he i...

Feb 02, 2022•15 min

Are You Now or Have You Ever Been ...?

There is no doubt, at least to my mind, that we’re living through some kind of a mass hysteria event. Writing on his site, John Kass says : A weak president who is out of control, one who wildly denounces those who disagree with him as sinners against the state, blaming them for the failures of his extreme legislative agenda that can not generate enough votes in the Senate is not a hopeful business. It is a frightening thing. It is something out of bad paranoid fiction, or post-war Eastern Europ...

Jan 17, 2022•26 min

Truth, Justice and the American Way

What’s so funny about Peace, Love, and Understanding? We’ll leave 2021 with no stronger grasp on collective truth than we had in 2020. One kind of dystopian nightmare is exchanged with another. I wish Biden had tried to unite this country. But he didn’t. I wish the Left had not gone so utterly insane. But they did. I wish I hadn’t seen just how corrupt our media class in this country is. But I did. I wish I didn’t wake up from the comfort of the delusion that I was fighting on the right side, bu...

Jan 01, 2022•22 min

Houses of the Holy: The New Religion of the Left Threatens the Democrats

The Democrats are out of touch and out of time. There have been so many opportunities for the Democrats to turn things around since the wake-up call in 2016. To understand why Trump not only won but got that close in the first place is to have the kind of self-awareness that leads to genuine reflection and change. But that isn’t how it went down. As Barton Swaim puts it in the WSJ: Which brings us back to Donald Trump. His nomination in 2016, and even more his election to the presidency, was an ...

Dec 19, 2021•24 min

The Kings of Film Twitter

Barney was mostly invisible on Film Twitter. His 3,593 or so loyal followers hung around but he couldn’t break out much farther than that. He was a no-blue-check-nobody. You have to be somebody to get one. It’s a game of status. Who has it and who doesn’t. It was just outside of his reach. Was that fame? Maybe it was. He knew he should leave Twitter. Just walk away from it. The sick game of begging for likes, validation, attention. Wanting to matter but not knowing where to start. No one cared w...

Nov 21, 2021•20 min

The Horror Movies I Love are Frozen in Time

Stanley Kubrick’s sublime The Shining breaks all of the rules. It breaks the rules of adaptation by completely upending the plot and meaning of Stephen King’s original book. The plot of the movie doesn’t really even make sense from a story point of view. King’s book is very much about telekinesis inside people and inside the Overlook Hotel. The hotel wants the boy Danny because his powers are so great. In their way is the mother Wendy, strong and protective, who will keep them from getting the b...

Oct 31, 2021•19 min

Operation: Save Joe Biden's Poll Numbers

Somewhere in Washington, in a parked car. Ike: It’s a dumpster fire. Mike: They’ll bound back. Ike: Didn’t Elon Musk invent some kind of brain enhancement thing? Is it too soon to get that for Biden? Is it only chimps? Mike: What? Ike: Nutrisystem … Nutra grain … Mike: Nuralink! Ike: Is it too late to join human clinical trials? Mike: Don’t be an ass. Everybody gets old. Ike: Most people don’t get that old. Mike: The boomers. They built it all. Now, they’re destroying it all. Everything is comin...

Oct 25, 2021•17 min

Getting Tired of the Puritans

In 2021, there are only two paths for the left generally and the Democrats specifically to take: totalitarianism or collapse. Some days, like today, when the New York Times’ Kara Swisher parrots the talking points of the progressive left (what does that even mean anymore) while pretending to write about Big Tech, it feels hopeless. The massive wave of support to cancel Dave Chappelle, or have Netflix pull his show The Closer, is overwhelming. And yes, this too shall pass. As long as no one is be...

Oct 18, 2021•25 min

Reimagined History: Monica Lewinsky, The Academy Museum, and Kim Kardashian

Probably every society goes through revisionist history. Usually this happens gradually, over time, as stories become myths which become legends. Truth or fiction, it doesn’t really matter, does it? Even now, stories are being retold to serve various agendas. The story of the election in 2020 has become a dark and witchy fairy tale on the left and a religious persecution story on the right. Each side clings to the myth that helps them sleep better at night. Yes, there are monsters roaming the co...

Oct 10, 2021•22 min

Listen to: My Unfinished Near Future Sci-Fi Novel on Standby

This is the podcast version of my last post. I will offer these up to see if they are more convenient for people. If you’d like to subscribe to this on your podcast app, you can do so with this link, I believe. Let me know if it works. https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/66221.rss I am trying to figure out how to add it to Apple Podcasts, which will make it easier. But I will post them here as well. Let me know if this works better. Thanks, This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss th...

Oct 04, 2021•20 min

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