I believe our most significant problem is that we've become an adolescent and emotional country, instead of common sense and logical.
I'm 66, and back in the day, one didn't have a voice, or the ability to influence society until they'd matured and accumulated some life experience. As you mature and grow in experience, you tend to act in a different manner.
Today, teenagers become influencers, and media amplifies their opinions, regardless of whether they make sense at all. Civility is no longer an expectation, and short term solutions are accepted, when clearly, they will lead to bigger problems down the road.
I can't conceive of a solution to this, as media, and politicians who are ruled by polls versus common sense, accumulate more power.
In his 1988 commencement speech at the University of Michigan, the Russian poet Joseph Brodsky said this, among many other amazing things:
“At all costs try to avoid granting yourself the status of the victim. Of all the parts of your body, be most vigilant over your index finger, for it is blame-thirsty. A pointed finger is a victim’s logo — the opposite of the V-sign and a synonym for surrender. No matter how abominable your condition may be, try not to blame anything or anybody: history, the state, superiors, race, parents, the phase of the moon, childhood, toilet training, etc. The menu is vast and tedious, and this vastness and tedium alone should be offensive enough to set one’s intelligence against choosing from it. The moment that you place blame somewhere, you undermine your resolve to change anything; it could be argued even that that blame-thirsty finger oscillates as wildly as it does because the resolve was never great enough in the first place. After all, a victim status is not without its sweetness. It commands compassion, confers distinction, and whole nations and continents bask in the murk of mental discounts advertised as the victim’s conscience. There is an entire victim-culture, ranging from private counselors to international loans. The professed goal of this network notwithstanding, its net result is that of lowering one’s expectations from the threshold, so that a measly advantage could be perceived or billed as a major breakthrough. Of course, this is therapeutic and, given the scarcity of the world’s resources, perhaps even hygienic, so for want of a better identity, one may embrace it — but try to resist it. However abundant and irrefutable is the evidence that you are on the losing side, negate it as long as you have your wits about you, as long as your lips can utter “No.” On the whole, try to respect life not only for its amenities but for its hardships, too. They are a part of the game, and what’s good about a hardship is that it is not a deception. Whenever you are in trouble, in some scrape, on the verge of despair or in despair, remember: that’s life speaking to you in the only language it knows well. In other words, try to be a little masochistic: without a touch of masochism, the meaning of life is not complete. If this is of any help, try to remember that human dignity is an absolute, not a piecemeal notion, that it is inconsistent with special pleading, that it derives its poise from denying the obvious. Should you find this argument a bit on the heady side, think at least that by considering yourself a victim you but enlarge the vacuum of irresponsibility that demons or demagogues love so much to fill, since a paralyzed will is no dainty for angels.”
So so very proud of how far you've come on your sojourn of common sense intellectualism.
So very grateful that another talented, articulate, well-educated voice is trying to create a bridge for the Left to exodus to the Right, or at least to the Center. That's the only way we get back to Superman's motto.
I'm glad you understand this part:
"It is in these times that authoritarianism often arises because we need structure."
We are nearing the end of our Weimar Republic, I think.
We know what followed.
Pray that we can somehow prevent it, though I think Bible prophecy may have already begun to unfold at this point.
Sasha, I just want you to know something that just happened... I was driving around this morning, listening to this podcast between stops at the garden center and the hardware store. Towards the end of it, I pulled my old chevy truck up in front of our chicken coup on our little farm out here in Utah and listened, alone, to the last ten minutes or so.
I noticed, as Journey played "Don't Stop Believing," that the tears began streaming down my face. You may be the greatest voice in America at this moment. You speak to the very heart of it and every time you speak it gets better.
I notice a big difference between old school liberals and the (mostly young) neo left.
I grew up in the eighties and remained conservative but agreed with liberals that the ultra-rich were often corrupt and bribery in politics is a bad thing. And freedom was good.
The neo left are angry about everything. Nothing will ever change that. They are negative to the point of nihilism and against everything. Since they are easy to manipulate, too stupid and quarrelsome to live apart from the System let alone organize its overthrow, unlikely to have babies, and prefer screens to humanity they'll make ideal pod people for Papa Klaus.
You’re kidding yourself by thinking the left will ever hang their heads in shame.
If the ball ever stops rolling, they’ll go to their graves blaming Trump and his deplorable army for spreading their hate to the gullible masses.
And until the left loses its total control of academia (and that will be the hardest institution to root them out of), that’s the version of history that will be taught. Or that America was corrupt from its founding (in 1619) and is simply irredeemable.
I liken Biden & Co. to Michal Douglass' corporate raider character Gordon Gekko in "Wall St." who made his fortune buying, then carving up companies and destroying the lives which depended on those companies. The same is being done to America. Our so-called captains of industry (along with their brethren on Wall St.) have spent the last 30 years selling off pieces of our once mighty industrial base to the highest bidder. Now the party of the ass is doing the same to our culture and our government. We have become a cell bitch for the WEF and the WHO, abandoning any loyalty or concern for the citizens who (allegedly) put them in power. The asses and their coconspirators in Hollywood and the MSM have been actively fomenting a race war and now moving onto brainwashing and mutilating your children -- at least those who are allowed to be born alive. Is it any wonder why depression is so rampant among the young, and especially so the progressive-identifying young, and even more so, girls.
Depressed 14-year old: "I feel empty inside and lost. Perhaps if I slice off my breasts I will feel whole again?"
As usual, Sasha - an excellent piece, by any standard.
"...they will have to hang their heads in shame for what they’ve done."
Except they won't. They are constitutionally incapable of shame because they have none.
"Those who run this country have to believe in it, have to believe in all of it."
Would that this was true - but clearly, it is not.
"And while it is cause for alarm, we also know that if we have faith in ourselves and if we have not given up on our country, we can find our way through this moment because we always have. But if we condemn or deny or erase our history we’ll never know that this too shall pass."
Tell me, if you can, just where might such faith be found? Those of us of a certain age and older are not the ones condemning, denying, or erasing history - we're the ones fighting to preserve it, but it is becoming clear that we're only defending against a tsunami using a bag of sand. Will this pass? The world has become quite small, and increasingly easier to be controlled by globalist financiers - I sincerely hope you are correct, but I have my doubts.
"We need our male heroes. We need our mothers. We need to tie them to past generations and to our own history. We need masculinity, and if all we do is punish it, diminish it and try to eradicate it, there is nothing else that can take its place."
True, but not only are we not welcome, there is no place for us in the country as it is, now.
I wondered when I might disagree with your views, and it is here:
"If you don’t believe in it, don’t let the door hit you on the way out."
I believe in the country you describe in the immediately preceding paragraph, but they will not just leave us behind to restore and rebuild because they are hell-bent on ruling us.
Just because I disagree doesn't mean that yours is wrong, or that mine is right, only that I find it challenging.
Your writing is a breath of fresh air. I'm glad that I have been able to enjoy it before darkness falls.
School shootings. Pass a law legally prohibiting the adults in a school from protecting the children, wait for the occasional nut case, blame Republicans and guns, never mention said law, rinse and repeat. (After all, people will not willingly get in the boxcars.)
Why as I type this comment are several tears rolling down my cheeks as you speak to me once again with your Substack? Like one of the commenters, I too vacillate between hope and resignation when I read your pieces.
I read the Fourth Turning a couple of years ago and am an increasing devotee as we clearly work towards the crisis. Then I read 1984. Have to watch the movie that you made me aware of today.
When you show up on Real Clear Politics in the "Most Read" section, you are reaching quite an audience and obviously speaking to it. Amazing for a newcomer. Keep it up please.
You have a genuine and compelling manner and message. You have gained a certain amount of traction with your writings. Why not a speaking tour? Perhaps a rotational group of speakers; each at a separate venue on a schedule. 3-4 speakers - one at each venue for a 4 week period in significant locations? A modern-day approach to Thomas Paine and The American Crisis/print/publications from the early stages of America's independence movement. Purpose: to spark that needed courage and leadership.
Wow ... Remarkable insights, and from the heart, Shasha, each next article you deliver leaves me stunned ... just keep going if you can find the morale, your voice is important!
Sasha, that was one of the most incredible pieces of truth I have ever heard. I just wish I knew how to get my Democrat friends to open their eyes before it's too late.
Just read this on Michael Shellenberger's Substack Public:
Since World War II, psychologists have observed a relationship between political victimhood or grievance movements and aggression and violence. “The potential for aggression in victimhood movements is much larger than in the general population,” notes psychologist Sam Vaknin. “Anything that is grievance-based leads to violence and death."
Interesting to consider the relationship between the Dems, victim ideology, and violence.
To readers: I will definitely try to identify the clips on the podcast instead of just letting them play. I know they're confusing. Sorry about that.
I believe our most significant problem is that we've become an adolescent and emotional country, instead of common sense and logical.
I'm 66, and back in the day, one didn't have a voice, or the ability to influence society until they'd matured and accumulated some life experience. As you mature and grow in experience, you tend to act in a different manner.
Today, teenagers become influencers, and media amplifies their opinions, regardless of whether they make sense at all. Civility is no longer an expectation, and short term solutions are accepted, when clearly, they will lead to bigger problems down the road.
I can't conceive of a solution to this, as media, and politicians who are ruled by polls versus common sense, accumulate more power.
In his 1988 commencement speech at the University of Michigan, the Russian poet Joseph Brodsky said this, among many other amazing things:
“At all costs try to avoid granting yourself the status of the victim. Of all the parts of your body, be most vigilant over your index finger, for it is blame-thirsty. A pointed finger is a victim’s logo — the opposite of the V-sign and a synonym for surrender. No matter how abominable your condition may be, try not to blame anything or anybody: history, the state, superiors, race, parents, the phase of the moon, childhood, toilet training, etc. The menu is vast and tedious, and this vastness and tedium alone should be offensive enough to set one’s intelligence against choosing from it. The moment that you place blame somewhere, you undermine your resolve to change anything; it could be argued even that that blame-thirsty finger oscillates as wildly as it does because the resolve was never great enough in the first place. After all, a victim status is not without its sweetness. It commands compassion, confers distinction, and whole nations and continents bask in the murk of mental discounts advertised as the victim’s conscience. There is an entire victim-culture, ranging from private counselors to international loans. The professed goal of this network notwithstanding, its net result is that of lowering one’s expectations from the threshold, so that a measly advantage could be perceived or billed as a major breakthrough. Of course, this is therapeutic and, given the scarcity of the world’s resources, perhaps even hygienic, so for want of a better identity, one may embrace it — but try to resist it. However abundant and irrefutable is the evidence that you are on the losing side, negate it as long as you have your wits about you, as long as your lips can utter “No.” On the whole, try to respect life not only for its amenities but for its hardships, too. They are a part of the game, and what’s good about a hardship is that it is not a deception. Whenever you are in trouble, in some scrape, on the verge of despair or in despair, remember: that’s life speaking to you in the only language it knows well. In other words, try to be a little masochistic: without a touch of masochism, the meaning of life is not complete. If this is of any help, try to remember that human dignity is an absolute, not a piecemeal notion, that it is inconsistent with special pleading, that it derives its poise from denying the obvious. Should you find this argument a bit on the heady side, think at least that by considering yourself a victim you but enlarge the vacuum of irresponsibility that demons or demagogues love so much to fill, since a paralyzed will is no dainty for angels.”
Great article.
So so very proud of how far you've come on your sojourn of common sense intellectualism.
So very grateful that another talented, articulate, well-educated voice is trying to create a bridge for the Left to exodus to the Right, or at least to the Center. That's the only way we get back to Superman's motto.
I'm glad you understand this part:
"It is in these times that authoritarianism often arises because we need structure."
We are nearing the end of our Weimar Republic, I think.
We know what followed.
Pray that we can somehow prevent it, though I think Bible prophecy may have already begun to unfold at this point.
God bless.
Sasha, I just want you to know something that just happened... I was driving around this morning, listening to this podcast between stops at the garden center and the hardware store. Towards the end of it, I pulled my old chevy truck up in front of our chicken coup on our little farm out here in Utah and listened, alone, to the last ten minutes or so.
I noticed, as Journey played "Don't Stop Believing," that the tears began streaming down my face. You may be the greatest voice in America at this moment. You speak to the very heart of it and every time you speak it gets better.
Thank You
I notice a big difference between old school liberals and the (mostly young) neo left.
I grew up in the eighties and remained conservative but agreed with liberals that the ultra-rich were often corrupt and bribery in politics is a bad thing. And freedom was good.
The neo left are angry about everything. Nothing will ever change that. They are negative to the point of nihilism and against everything. Since they are easy to manipulate, too stupid and quarrelsome to live apart from the System let alone organize its overthrow, unlikely to have babies, and prefer screens to humanity they'll make ideal pod people for Papa Klaus.
I love you, Sasha, but:
You’re kidding yourself by thinking the left will ever hang their heads in shame.
If the ball ever stops rolling, they’ll go to their graves blaming Trump and his deplorable army for spreading their hate to the gullible masses.
And until the left loses its total control of academia (and that will be the hardest institution to root them out of), that’s the version of history that will be taught. Or that America was corrupt from its founding (in 1619) and is simply irredeemable.
I liken Biden & Co. to Michal Douglass' corporate raider character Gordon Gekko in "Wall St." who made his fortune buying, then carving up companies and destroying the lives which depended on those companies. The same is being done to America. Our so-called captains of industry (along with their brethren on Wall St.) have spent the last 30 years selling off pieces of our once mighty industrial base to the highest bidder. Now the party of the ass is doing the same to our culture and our government. We have become a cell bitch for the WEF and the WHO, abandoning any loyalty or concern for the citizens who (allegedly) put them in power. The asses and their coconspirators in Hollywood and the MSM have been actively fomenting a race war and now moving onto brainwashing and mutilating your children -- at least those who are allowed to be born alive. Is it any wonder why depression is so rampant among the young, and especially so the progressive-identifying young, and even more so, girls.
Depressed 14-year old: "I feel empty inside and lost. Perhaps if I slice off my breasts I will feel whole again?"
Society: "Bless you for your bravery!"
As usual, Sasha - an excellent piece, by any standard.
"...they will have to hang their heads in shame for what they’ve done."
Except they won't. They are constitutionally incapable of shame because they have none.
"Those who run this country have to believe in it, have to believe in all of it."
Would that this was true - but clearly, it is not.
"And while it is cause for alarm, we also know that if we have faith in ourselves and if we have not given up on our country, we can find our way through this moment because we always have. But if we condemn or deny or erase our history we’ll never know that this too shall pass."
Tell me, if you can, just where might such faith be found? Those of us of a certain age and older are not the ones condemning, denying, or erasing history - we're the ones fighting to preserve it, but it is becoming clear that we're only defending against a tsunami using a bag of sand. Will this pass? The world has become quite small, and increasingly easier to be controlled by globalist financiers - I sincerely hope you are correct, but I have my doubts.
"We need our male heroes. We need our mothers. We need to tie them to past generations and to our own history. We need masculinity, and if all we do is punish it, diminish it and try to eradicate it, there is nothing else that can take its place."
True, but not only are we not welcome, there is no place for us in the country as it is, now.
I wondered when I might disagree with your views, and it is here:
"If you don’t believe in it, don’t let the door hit you on the way out."
I believe in the country you describe in the immediately preceding paragraph, but they will not just leave us behind to restore and rebuild because they are hell-bent on ruling us.
Just because I disagree doesn't mean that yours is wrong, or that mine is right, only that I find it challenging.
Your writing is a breath of fresh air. I'm glad that I have been able to enjoy it before darkness falls.
School shootings. Pass a law legally prohibiting the adults in a school from protecting the children, wait for the occasional nut case, blame Republicans and guns, never mention said law, rinse and repeat. (After all, people will not willingly get in the boxcars.)
Why as I type this comment are several tears rolling down my cheeks as you speak to me once again with your Substack? Like one of the commenters, I too vacillate between hope and resignation when I read your pieces.
I read the Fourth Turning a couple of years ago and am an increasing devotee as we clearly work towards the crisis. Then I read 1984. Have to watch the movie that you made me aware of today.
When you show up on Real Clear Politics in the "Most Read" section, you are reaching quite an audience and obviously speaking to it. Amazing for a newcomer. Keep it up please.
You have a genuine and compelling manner and message. You have gained a certain amount of traction with your writings. Why not a speaking tour? Perhaps a rotational group of speakers; each at a separate venue on a schedule. 3-4 speakers - one at each venue for a 4 week period in significant locations? A modern-day approach to Thomas Paine and The American Crisis/print/publications from the early stages of America's independence movement. Purpose: to spark that needed courage and leadership.
Wow ... Remarkable insights, and from the heart, Shasha, each next article you deliver leaves me stunned ... just keep going if you can find the morale, your voice is important!
Sasha, that was one of the most incredible pieces of truth I have ever heard. I just wish I knew how to get my Democrat friends to open their eyes before it's too late.
Just read this on Michael Shellenberger's Substack Public:
Since World War II, psychologists have observed a relationship between political victimhood or grievance movements and aggression and violence. “The potential for aggression in victimhood movements is much larger than in the general population,” notes psychologist Sam Vaknin. “Anything that is grievance-based leads to violence and death."
Interesting to consider the relationship between the Dems, victim ideology, and violence.
That vicious zombie mob yelling at Riley Gaines: “TRANS WOMEN ARE WOMEN!!!” 🤬🤬🤬
I don’t think I can unsee that or memory hole that.
I can see them just as easily in Orwell yelling “TWO PLUS TWO EQUALS FIVE!!! 🤬🤬🤬