By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world. -Ralph Waldo Emerson You maniacs. You finally did it. You finally made people like me actually want to vote for Trump — not just vote for him because he’s a Republican, and he’ll do the dirty job of putting the brakes on “gender-affirming care.” I was already there. But actually wanting to vote for Trump specifically, to believe that on...
Aug 29, 2023•29 min
Memes sprouted up online as the rare, once-in-a-generation Hurricane Hilary threatened Los Angeles. “She’s back,” they all said. No one could mistake the namesake, with or without the extra “l.” Just before the hurricane was downgraded to a tropical storm and made its way toward me, I was revisiting Disney’s Snow White in the wake of comments made by Rachel Zegler, the young star chosen to revive and rebrand the Disney princess as non-white, feminist, and woke. Gone were the seven dwarfs. Gone w...
Aug 20, 2023•31 min
“Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” - Shakespeare Despite the shock and awe of the four indictments against former president Donald Trump, the Democrats are more vulnerable than they’ve been in decades. It isn’t just the Afghanistan exit, the economy, or the cancer growing inside the presidency, it’s also the radical policies the Democrats...
Aug 17, 2023•39 min
Dear Mr. Brooks, Your column might be the best thing written in the New York Times in the past seven years. You’ve undoubtedly been subjected to a fair amount of abuse for it. You should probably never have written it if the comments are any indication. But those are people in the bubble. They don’t represent either the majority or the future. They think they do, but they don’t. Your question, “Are we the bad guys”? The answer is yes. You are the bad guys. You have systematically dehumanized hal...
Aug 06, 2023•32 min
Part 1 - America at the Hands of a Cult | Part 2 - A Religious War As yet another indictment of Trump rolls out, they can barely contain their excitement. Is this finally it? Will that long-awaited termination of their tormenter give the ruling class the peace they demand? They’ve been patiently waiting, spending too much of their precious time hunched over a keyboard, saliva pooling at the edges of their mouths, tongues flicking with the promise of release - will anyone put them out of their mi...
Aug 03, 2023•29 min
“Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.” ― John Steinbeck I not only believed in the myth of Joe Biden, I helped sell it. My father had just died and it was easy for me to transpose my grief onto Joe as I tried to convince my fellow Hillary supporters that he was the only candidate to beat Trump. Yes, the “old white guy” whose moment had finally arrived. He would save us, we all thought. He was empathetic and kind. He was, I insisted, a good man. He’d once ...
Jul 29, 2023•38 min
This is a supplement to the piece I posted yesterday that needs clarification. It is all too easy to see both Barbie and Oppenheimer as two sides of the same coin - Barbie as the ultimate “woke” movie and Oppenheimer as a movie that attempts to vindicate or sympathize with Communism. But that would be a mistake. Barbie reflects our society now, a society not unlike what the Communist hunters most feared: ideological capture of our major institutions, our culture, our schools, and our government....
Jul 22, 2023•31 min
It’s beginning to look a lot like the 1950s. No two films recall that era more than Barbie and Oppenheimer, both opening this weekend. Despite these films being completely different in every way imaginable, they have captivated the internet as a reach back in time to a forgotten world, just as the sci-fi movies of the 1950s reached forward to a world they could never know. There is something about the two of them as Romeo and Juliet on the eve of the apocalypse that has inspired the internet to ...
Jul 22, 2023•33 min
Sound of Freedom is sailing toward $100 mil without breaking a sweat. It topped all Hollywood blockbusters, from Disney’s catastrophe, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, to Insidious, to Jennifer Lawrence’s middling sex comedy, No Hard Feelings. Only Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning could top it. For a film that cost just $14.5 million, Sound of Freedom is rounding the bases and humiliating Hollywood by the minute, as if to say - what, like it’s hard? They have one job in Holly...
Jul 16, 2023•30 min
“The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.” ― Thomas Jefferson November 8th, 2016. That was the day journalism, as we once knew it died. Gone was objectivity. Gone was a search for the truth, no matter where it led. Gone was holding the powerful to account. Gone was the desire to serve the public’s best interest. It’s been seven years now, and most of us are still in mourning. We can’t forget what journalism used to be. We sit glumly in fr...
Jul 14, 2023•39 min
Houston, we have a problem. Now that COVID is long gone, and studios are putting out blockbusters again, it almost seems like things are back to “normal.” Yet, movie after movie keeps underperforming, which is a polite way of saying Hollywood movies are bombing at the box office. Why? Well, I don’t have to tell you why. You know why. Everyone knows why except the people tasked with covering Hollywood who are too afraid to say why. You can’t fix a problem you can’t name. In a recent poll, 42% cit...
Jul 09, 2023•29 min
The first time I realized I was a proud American was the month I spent in Italy in 1997 with a man who would become the father of my child that month, unbeknownst to either of us. The news was earth-shattering to him because we were worlds apart. We fought and then broke up over the best decision I ever made, to keep my child. He complained about America a lot, and I tolerated it, but then I found myself protective and defensive of my country. “Yeah, well, you sure like our Levis and our Marlbor...
Jul 04, 2023•17 min
Part One: The Timeline is here. Are we living through a culture war or a religious war? Can we even tell the difference by now? The Left demonized the religious for nearly all of my life, yet here we are, a country at the hands of a cult, and the intellectuals can’t get us out of it — No proper boundaries to protect children, no guiding principles beyond categorizing us by skin color or gender identity, a godlessness that has left us awash in narcissism and hollowed out morality. Progressivism i...
Jul 03, 2023•50 min
The Summer of 2020 was both a revolution and a coup, ultimately resulting in an unshakable pact between the Woke and all major corporate and cultural institutions in this country, up to and including the President of the United States. It isn’t a cult of one personality but of many. It’s a tawdry tale of influencers and algorithms, fast-moving technology and helicopter parents, social media, and Critical Theory. But Joe Biden is no cult leader. He’s more like a George Spahn figure, presenting a ...
Jun 25, 2023•53 min
My Dad called me “happy Sash,” which was ironic because I was never a happy kid. I was a worried kid, just like I’m a worried adult. My dad would say it often, “she’s a Happy Sash.” I think he wanted me to be happy because then maybe he wouldn’t worry. He was a worrier too. There aren’t many pictures of me as a baby, but here’s one. That’s me in the middle. As you can see, not exactly smiling. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus e...
Jun 18, 2023•13 min
“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men – not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular” - Edward R. Mur...
Jun 12, 2023•42 min
What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff — I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye. - JD Salinger Taylor Swift’s concerts have become cultural phenomenons, religious-like experiences for so many people worldwide, especially little girls. Happy moms post videos of their flushed, excited faces and near-hysteria at the first s...
Jun 07, 2023•44 min
I used to be a true blue loyalist. My grandmother, an FDR Democrat, and lifelong social worker, kept a signed picture of Bill Clinton on her kitchen wall until the day she died. My earliest memory kicks it all the way back to 1988 when I wore a Dukakis button to work and was mocked for it. “Who would vote for du-Taxus,” one woman said. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe...
May 31, 2023•45 min
As I began my drive across this big, beautiful country of ours, I saw real life going on. RVs filled with families hitched to trucks making their way somewhere. Lights turning on at grocery stores. Workers high atop utility poles fixing electrical lines. I drove through cities and pastures, across state lines, and on an interstate conceived and built by President Eisenhower. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sash...
May 17, 2023•31 min
The same network that called Tucker Carlson a “Right-wing extremist” has decided to put Donald Trump back on prime time. As their hypocrisy comes full circle, a pathetic #boycottcnn hashtag bloomed on Twitter. As if. CNN’s ratings were in near-total collapse when Trump threw them a lifeline. By contrast, the Murdochs dumped their best ratings-getter for speaking too many uncomfortable truths. To many on the Left, reality and truth are negotiable. They can fool themselves into believing Carlson w...
May 11, 2023•24 min
“Fear not the path of Truth for the lack of People walking on it.” ― Robert F. Kennedy A new poll by ABC News/Washington Post shows both Trump and DeSantis beating Biden by 6 points. According to this poll, the public does not believe Biden is fit to serve mentally or physically. @Politics_Polls Has the mental sharpness it takes to serve effectively as president: Joe Biden: Yes 32% No 63% Donald Trump: Yes 54% No 43% . Is in good enough physical health to serve effectively as president: Joe Bide...
May 08, 2023•47 min
“Free societies...are societies in motion, and with motion comes tension, dissent, friction. Free people strike sparks, and those sparks are the best evidence of freedom's existence.” ― Salman Rushdie Last week, Democrats Chuck Schumer and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez locked arms with Conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch to silence Tucker Carlson off Fox News. Yes, the same side that once fought against the Black List and for cultural icons like Lenny Bruce and the Red Hot Chili Peppers was now c...
May 03, 2023•47 min
[Imaginary Tucker Carlson Monologue for Monday, April 24th, 2023] TUCKER CARLSON: “Good Evening, and welcome to Tucker Carlson Tonight. No doubt you’ve heard of the name Ray Epps. You have heard his name many times on this broadcast in connection with the events of January 6th. You’ve heard me tell you that our government was lying about what happened that day and that they haven’t stopped lying, and that they have an entire media empire helping them lie to you every day. But those compliant pat...
Apr 26, 2023•36 min
“When you're at the end of your rope, tie a knot and hold on.” ― Theodore Roosevelt Joe Biden and the Democrats could learn something from what just happened on Twitter, where a populist revolt is currently underway. The blue check scam was powerful - a minority of elites who have granted themselves outsized influence on the media narrative, the Democratic Party and reality itself. Elon Musk played a game of cat and mouse with the blue checks first by taking them away, then giving them back afte...
Apr 24, 2023•49 min
beware those who are quick to censor they are afraid of what they do not know beware those who seek constant crowds for they are nothing alone - Charles Bukowski An old friend texted me recently to ask how I was handling the “new Twitter.” I had to think for a minute, and then I realized that in the language of the Left, he meant that Elon Musk had bought the site, and now it’s overrun by hate speech and neo-Nazis. Do I still feel safe using it? “Oh,” I texted back. “I’m not in the bubble of the...
Apr 20, 2023•29 min
“In a country that doesn't discriminate between fame and infamy, the latter presents itself as plainly more achievable.” ― Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin Audrey/Aiden and Riley Gaines If we had strong leaders in the White House, which we do not, they would have stepped up to a podium somewhere after the mass shooting at Christian Covenant and the attack on champion swimmer, Riley Gaines by trans activists and tried to lower the temperature. Instead, just days after the shooting, the...
Apr 15, 2023•36 min
“Weimar Germany conjures up fears of what can happen when there is simply no societal consensus on how to move forward and every minor difference becomes a cause of existential political battles,” ― Eric D. Weitz, Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy Just two years into the Joe Biden presidency, it has become abundantly clear that the only people actively trying to destroy this country are the Democrats and the cult that has overtaken them. How much worse could it possibly get than a former Presi...
Apr 08, 2023•47 min
“Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick In 2016, Donald Trump became the 45th President of the United States. Like all presidents, he was elected to do the best job he could in service of the American people. Our elections are meant to tell our government what we want. But somewhere along the way, we’ve lost touch with what this country was designed to be ...
Apr 03, 2023•44 min
Because the truth is, it was never really about Trump. It was about us. What we were before Trump, what we did while Trump was in office, and what we’re doing now. Sooner or later, the clock is going to run out on this madness. Democrats can’t live with or without Trump. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe...
Mar 26, 2023•37 min
It’s kind of amazing that there was ever a time in American life when we pledged ourselves one Nation under God , isn’t it? It seems we are no longer that and have become fractured into many different nations, not even just two. But it does seem very clear that a new religion is upon us. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe...
Mar 21, 2023•34 min
