302 Comments

Man, I can think of many, many people who should read this. But they won’t. And even if they did, they’d dismiss it as “right wing propaganda” as they do with everything that doesn’t confirm their ideology and contradicts what they believe to be true.

Thank you for writing this.

Expand full comment

I actually had another part of Gladiator in mind where one of the other slaves, Juba (played by Djimon Hounsou) says to Maximus, "You have a great name. They must kill your name before they can kill you."

TDS was never about the man, it was -- and is -- about what he represents. An existential threat to the ever-expanding (and expensive) administrative state, an America for *all* Americans, not just a select elite (along with those who serve them), and a focus on getting our own house in order before expending blood and coin fighting endless wars on the other side of the globe.

Now consider what the morally, financially, ethically, and intellectually compromised Muppet that was installed to "save us" from the Bad Orange Man has done to this nation in just two short, awful years. The economy is set to implode any day now, with the banking system being the canary in the coalmine. We are on the precipice of direct war with a nuclear superpower over a nation that has zero strategic or economic value to the U.S., not to mention the Americans who will likely soon be sent off to fight and die to protect a bunch of corrupt Ukrainian oligarchs who just so happened to have poured dump trucks of cash in to the Biden family coffers. Our perpetually failing educational school system from K thru post grad has for the most part stopped teaching academics in lieu of straight up Neo-Marxism, hyper-sexualizing children, and attempting to eradicate the entire notion of gender -- all the while still howling and whinging over imagined gender discrimination lurking around every corner. I could go on, but if you're reading this Stack then already know the score.

And "But they’re playing with (their Reichstag) fire" was a brilliant line.

Expand full comment

Wow, Sasha, it’s an everything in it article. Thank you. Brilliant, soulful writing.

Expand full comment

Typo:

"... all we can do is the Trump show day in and day." (needs a final "out")

Really excellent essay, but you could point out that the Jan 6th protesters were incited by the FBI (not very successfully), that the protestors were all unarmed (what kind of "insurrection" is entirely unarmed?), that the people in the Capitol were deliberately let into the building by Capitol Police and even escorted about (see Tucker videos), and that the only real violence was the murder of unarmed veteran Ashley Babbit by the Capitol Police.

Expand full comment

Very well done, Sasha. The primary response this evokes is sadness. Those who know history know how, given that human nature has not changed one iota over the millennia, this is likely to end. Those who have once drunk the heady wine of power bought through violence and intimidation will forever lust after it. History shows they do not give it up without a fight. Just ask Maximilien Robespierre.

Expand full comment

This is poignant, insightful and humble. I only started following you since Did I Just Leave a Cult? in mid February... regardless of ideology, I wish all voting citizens could be persons of reason and truth seekers like you... I tip my conservative hat to you, Sasha!

Expand full comment

Wow. Absolutely right on the money. I can't add a thing, aside from my respect. Thank you.

Expand full comment

Attagirl, Sasha.

When we give these manipulative bastards an even break, they just stick it up our ass. Again and again.

Like they're doing us a favor. And then demand thanks. No more.

Keep chopping wood. Truth is the strongest solvent to years of lies.

Expand full comment

From the red scare of the 1950’s to Trump of 2016 the Communist have infiltrated our government and brainwashed the Democrat voter to believe that Capitalism and conservatism is evil. Unfortunately the small brains of the Democrat voter have been easily manipulated into this mind set and they are now true believers in Socialism and Communism. From College campuses, Hollywood, social media, Main stream media and now high school and grammar school the Leftist who have taken over the Democrat party have spun an unbelievable story so large that to deny it would be impossible.

The only hope we have is that people like Sasha and many other True Liberals start opening their eyes to the big Lie of the Democrat party and than maybe we can get back to a normal existence here in America.

But, in the meantime the last 50 years of keeping the Communist of Russia and China apart has now changed and the clowns running our country have brought our two biggest enemies together. This will be a bigger problem that the American people and from the looks of it the American people will have no idea that America will no longer be the dominant leader in the world and this will destroy our way of life.

Expand full comment

Truly it’s the people who have nothing left but Trump. Everything else has been exposed as the psychological prison of an omnipresent financial slave system.

Expand full comment
founding

As a life-long Dem, I tuned into the 2016 Republican debates for more comic relief. Who could forget Rick Perry not being able to remember the three cabinet posts he vowed to eliminate? Having a known serial buffooner like Trump in the mix promised that it would be even funnier than the 2012 version.

But as soon as Trump began to say everything that the other candidates would not/could not say--chiefly, bring home the troops, bring home the jobs, and secure the border--and seem to mean it, I stood up and took notice. I've been on the Trump train (more or less) ever since.

Expand full comment
Mar 26, 2023·edited Mar 26, 2023

Very brave column, Sasha. I have been telling the left, in my ridiculous way in online comment threads, since Inauguration Day, 2017, that Democrats do not get Trump because they mistakenly believe they are "The Resistance", when all along, the truth is, they are the Status Quo and that Trump IS the Resistance and his MAGA ARE the Resistance. This was most evident in the dueling 2016 campaign slogans... Hillary's "I'm With Her" vs Trump's "I'm With You."

Trump can only exist because his opposition is so horridly rotten and beholden, which they prove with every ludicrous iteration of: "This time, fer sher, we got him."

Today, we find that the Democratic Party is no longer compatible with our Bill of Rights. Today, we find that Huey Long was right when he warned, "When fascism comes to America, it will be called anti-fascism."

Wake-up from Woke, America! Elitist self-obsession is self-destruction.

Expand full comment

“I still voted for Biden.“

Sasha, I read your piece here and there is much of it I agree with. Especially the part that exposes “the resistance”, as actually “the empire”. As a child of Russian Jews who fled the emerging Soviet empire of the beginning of the 20th century; I know this story full well.

I grew up in the 60’s and 70’s. I know what “counterculture” and “resistance” looks like; and it never has sponsors like ABC, CBS, NBC, Coca Cola, Netflix, Google and Facebook. The real thing doesn’t have sponsors at all, it looks more like the Tea Party and MAGA, or those parents in Loudon County, VA.

I remember family dinners in the 1970’s with half my family on one side and half on the other and we would Duke it out constantly but at the end of each day, know that both sides had merit in their arguments, and that no matter what, we were family and loved each other.

This New Democrat dystopian nightmare allows no reconciliation. No debate.

This new evil empire born out of the Democrats having lost an election in 2016….NOT a resistance. It’s the rise of Stalin. It’s “Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back” (starring Donald Trump as the hapless Han Solo encased in carbonite….at the end.

But as I read respected writer after writer currently say “I voted for Biden, but I regret it now” or something to that effect. I can’t help but feel a need or longing for absolution. Liberal legal scholar, Alan Dershowitz, says over and over again that the Democrats are running roughshod over the Constitution and the rule of law itself (Christ! We are the USA and there is razor wire around our Capitol and we have actual Gulags with political prisoners!!! 😢 ); yet he voted for it (Hillary, Biden,…et al) and is proud of it.

Sasha Stone here writes that she was caught up in it and used her talents to vote for Biden and promote the empire, but now regrets it and is doing all she can to undo the evil empire that now rules us all in this American dystopian nightmare.

So you got played. And now it’s time to make a course correction. The Left created a monster, a troll, to beat a perceived boogeyman, Trump, and now that monster is bigger than all of us and is eating our all our souls. Every day we grow weaker and it grows stronger.

I don’t have answers, but I think the path to absolution will be in no longer feeding the monster.

The opposite of love is not hate; or vice versa;

it’s indifference.

Expand full comment
founding

Excellent piece, Sasha! You manage to meet the very high bar you've set for yourself, and others, every time!

"...we were never the 'resistance.' We were always the empire. We were a massive alignment of corporate and cultural power that had, over the past twenty years, become the side with all of the money..."

I've always felt this way, but have never been able to articulate it.

"...we owned what we believed now defined America."

"It’s just that it didn’t. It only seemed that way. We had control of the mainstream media and that gave us a distorted image of our own importance and convinced us that if we could control the narrative we could decide reality."

This seems to have not changed.

"That’s how they got away with their 'cabal' of powerful allies to essentially rig the 2020 election. They didn’t do it with fraudulent ballots or anything like that. They had enough lawyers and enough money to simply change any laws that got in their way. They also needed complete control of the media to gaslight us about everything..."

This ought to serve as a caution about standing on legality, versus that which is constitutional, or failing that, ethical. Let's not forget, what the Nazis in Germany did was entirely legal.

"It...vindicates January 6th, the protest, and the riot because it proves that this was never about justice or the rule of law, or even Democracy. It was about a fairy tale. A story based on delusions fighting a supervillain that doesn’t exist."

I submit this has been the case since election night in 2016. The wailing, the gnashing of teeth, and the rending of garments was that the fairy tale that SHOULD have been reality vanished before their very eyes.

The parallel between the first Russian revolution is almost prescient. The modern-day Romanovs haven't learned, or they have forgotten there was a second revolution fourteen years later. The Russian Romanovs didn't survive the second - perhaps the constitution and due process may save the modern-day Romanovs a similar fate.

Expand full comment

I disagree they jave nothing left but Trump. They still have the election fraud they used in 2020 and which still worked a trick in 2022 mid-terms despite it being more effectively covered up. There will be a major depression and social unrest before the 2024 elections. Riots and city burnings again. The election fraud is never vovered ny the media except to gaslight those trying to expose the truth.

Expand full comment

What an eloquent piece.

And, yes, we're watching death throes or birth pangs, I'm never sure which, but I'm really, really hoping it's death throes.

Expand full comment