Hello And Welcome to New Followers
Discover more from Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning with Sasha Stone
Hello And Welcome to New Followers
RCP Edition
Hello to new readers, and thank you for subscribing! First off, I’d like to apologize for not uploading the full podcast for the last piece, but the full version there now, and I have also opened up comments to everyone on that piece. I usually keep them behind the paywall because it cuts out some of the abuse, but we’ll give it a try.
I will also say that I’ll be on Megyn Kelly’s show tomorrow (July 20) for a few minutes. Her podcast is available on itunes and Sirius XM, and on youtube, If you’re interested.
Why am I doing this? Well, I have been mostly chased off of Facebook and Twitter. I still write for the business I started in 1999, awardsdaily.com, with a staff. Since I own it, no one can fire me. I could fire myself for, you know, spending too much time on Substack. My site will shut down when I decide it should shut down. I am grateful I never sold it (not that anyone offered to buy it).
I also have a little movie on Netflix about the summer I saw Jaws at 10, in 1975. You might like that. The Summer of the Shark.
For this Substack, which I started right when things began to spiral for the Democratic Party and me, I am hoping to find common ground with people who believe in the American experiment and want to preserve it, fortify it, and celebrate it.
I also write about culture, not just politics, and sometimes the Oscars. Mostly, it’s about politics, though. Or rather, the most destructive force in American culture at the moment, which I believe is the new Left.
Like so many others out there, I am politically homeless. I am trying to see people as people, and not people as part of a tribe. It isn’t easy to do. But I don’t feel like I can sit this one out. I must try to use whatever voice I have to shake the tree.
For those lost souls, welcome. Things will not be getting easier during this Fourth Turning. We’re going to need each other. With this Substack, I hope to help build a better path forward.
Hey, it’s worth a shot, right?
One of the things I love to do every year is to drive across the country. It gets me off the internet and back in real life. It is such a big, beautiful place, the United States. You can’t know this country, its people, its beliefs, its economy unless you see it for yourself.
Last May, as I was driving through Pennsylvania, I had stayed on the road too late. It was getting dark. Usually, I try to find a motel before nightfall. But if I’d done that, I would have missed the most beautiful sunset I’ve ever seen.
Here are a few photos of that. It was really something.
Hello And Welcome to New Followers
I guess I've always been more conservative than most folks I know. I'm a devout, practicing Catholic now - after being raised but not really practicing the faith. And so politically, theologically, even practically, I'm usually out of step.
And yet I get along with most everyone, from all walks of life. I've been in a room full of Nobel winners and made small talk, have hung out at more biker bars than I can count, been the only white person in a club - whether Hispanic, black or Asian - and never felt out of place in any of them.
And I think it gets to what you allude to here: See folks as folks. Treat folks as folks.
We are all more alike than dissimilar: We're all struggling with life, we're all watching parents grow older, kids grow up, dealing with our changing dreams for life as we ourselves age. Everyone's got family that drives them nuts yet sustains them, everyone's got at least one coworker who make them bonkers, a longtime friend or family member from whom they're estranged and unsure how to reconnect, everyone's got memories great and ordinary, and at least one side-splittingly hilarious story.
The secret to fitting in wherever you are is to simply learn to listen to one another. See God's image in everyone around you.
Those who prefer to live by alternate rules tend to struggle to find peace.
They also tend to be the coworker nobody wants to hang out with ...
I just found you yesterday and shared the article with my husband. Excellent!
I agree with Jim below - just treat people like people. It’s only been recently (and not everywhere fortunately) where it all came down to politics. I grew up in the “don’t talk politics or religion” except to people you know well era, and it served us well. Those things didn’t divide back when everything was about politics. Now that it IS, the country is a sad sad place.
One anecdote about the Obama years. I have had a nonprofit in Uganda for 13+ years. (There are less then 3% mzungus/whites people in Uganda, for context here.) I’ve spent a LOT of time there and other than little kids doing the mzungu dance (which is a positive thing), skin color has not been an issue on either side. (Well, they do think all Americans are rich so I get the mzungu price for things.)
When Obamacare was in the works I was opposed, as well as to some other policies of the time. POLICIES. I didn’t like Obama because he was a Politician, capital P, and not one interested in uniting the country in any way.
I posted a link to an article on my FB and a high school friend sent me a LONG message about how racist I was. Not in a nice - or short - way. When I responded about a) POLICIES not skin color, and b) I work with 100% black people and literally none of us care, she got even more mad and vitriolic. I finally unfriended her - there was clearly no communication or thinking happening. That was my first taste of the educated white woman progressive crazy person. Not my last sadly.
I told my husband years ago that the country was lost as long as we have the internet. It has both exposed and caused severe mental illness, and let people live in tribes of fantasy induced mania. People don’t have to get along anymore, like in the pre-AOL days. I’m a right leaning libertarian - what I *want* is for people just to leave me alone. Unfortunately, you can’t do that anymore!