Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning with Sasha Stone
Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning with Sasha Stone
Oh, the Inhumanity
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Oh, the Inhumanity

I aligned myself in hatred against the other half of the country until I couldn't take it anymore

When I found my way to Trump’s rallies in the Summer of 2020, I felt like I had crawled out of a desert searching for signs of life. No one could know my discovery. I had to keep it a secret. If anyone found me out, I would be MAGA. I would be a Trump supporter, and that would be the end of my career and most of my relationships.

Despite how often I’d become the target of the fanatical mobs that rule over social media and the Left writ large, I’d knew not to cross the Trump Line. That would be the last straw. I would be shunned, I knew.

Yet, every time I got that notification from Right Side Broadcasting’s YouTube channel that Trump was about to take the stage, even now, four years after I first began watching them, my mood was immediately lifted.

I love those people, I would always think. I didn’t belong anywhere but I somehow belonged there. They still had their senses of humor well intact. They loved this country and were proud of their heritage and patriotism. They were every skin color, every gender, even gay and trans - all under the same tent, an Island of Misfit Toys - all MAGA.

Once I figured out what great people they were, how their time with Trump was precious, I began to worry. What was going to happen them, I wondered. My side had all of the power. They were the Empire and they wanted nothing but the total obliteration of MAGA and especially Trump.

I thought, if only they could thaw out their systematic dehumanization campaign, if I could somehow break the spell cast upon them by the media and their social media feedback loops, then they could just shrug and move on with their lives.

But that isn’t what happened. We summoned a hungry beast that needed to be fed. It was anger at having a political enemy, but there was more to it than that. It was a sadistic, indulgent bacchanalia of hatred that united the Left and became its main form of entertainment.

Who are Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert if they aren’t sucking on the bones of Trump night after night? Whatever audience now remains to watch their terrible shows or the MSNBC power lineup is there for one reason and one reason only. The beast is hungry, and the beast must be fed.

I too once felt the hate within me. It connected me to my community online. It seemed like nothing else mattered all of a sudden except this rising hysteria none of us could manage. We began purging anyone accused of assault or racism. There was no due process. It was simply a matter of tossing them out of utopia.

We’d be fine after that, at least for a little while. But the beast always got hungry again; sooner or later, it would return to Trump.

We were winners when it was just us, Obama, and our online paradise. Now, we were holding back the inevitable pendulum swing, desperate to cling to the past, unable to relinquish our war on Trump. If only we could stop him for good and destroy him forever, things would return to normal.

But they never did. For me, the hatred began to feel like toxic sludge in my veins. I couldn’t take it, not for one more minute. I knew enough about history to know what we were doing was wrong. Yet, how do you convince the New York Times, MSNBC, CNN, Hollywood, and the entire Democratic Establishment that what they’re engaging was not just bad for our country but dangerous?

It didn’t occur to me until much later, long after I escaped the bubble of the Left, that they needed to hate Trump because it was the only way they could feel something, anything.

Their addiction meant they needed a stronger and stronger hit. It wasn’t enough to call him a rapist or racist. It had to get all the way to dictator, all the way to a threat to end American democracy as we once knew it.

Arthur C. Clarke wrote in 2001 that “newspapers of Utopia … would be terribly dull.” And that’s what’s happened to culture on the Left. It’s boring without Trump. They kept dragging him back to their cable news shows daily, dragging him back to the headlines in the New York Times. On X, Trump humiliation was the only fun they seemed allowed to have.

Trump, then, was their release valve. They were dancing with the Devil and they liked it, they liked it. It became an abusive relationship for them, with Trump’s defiance keeping them engaged in the fight. The more he fought back, the more satisfying it was to see him crushed.

Here is Megyn Kelly:

Today, they look like bitter little fools. They look like people with nothing to offer the country, no way to save it, and no path toward the light out of the darkness. They’re just millions of versions of Mrs. Gulch chasing around Dorothy and her little dog, too.

They haven’t been the good guys for a long time. They destroyed themselves trying to destroy Trump. They don’t know it yet, not even after what happened on Saturday.

Look Back in Anger

Source: Wikimedia

We were a movement defined by hedonism on a quest to leave religion behind and birth the counterculture. We chased sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll all through the 1960s and 1970s, only to come out of it wanting the American dream like everyone else.

As we cut our hair, put on suits, bought homes, and became executives, we once again tried for the power of the presidency after the whole thing collapsed in 1980. Ronald Reagan rose because the Left and everything they stood for was nothing Americans wanted anymore, just like now.

I came of age in the 1980s thinking there was no point in voting. Politics wasn’t for me. Why bother? I was sucked back in around the time the Clintons became the first Democrats to hold the White House for two full terms since FDR.

Then, we had Aaron Sorkin and the West Wing. We had a new way of speaking. We had self-help and Big Pharma. We had therapists, psych meds, and yoga. We had Oprah! Things were turning around just in time for the rise of the internet.

As we migrated online, we formed a movement based on Twitter, of all places, with our new leader, the nation’s first Black President, Barack Obama. What wouldn’t we do for him? Suddenly, we had a collective sense of purpose. We had a shared ideology and a charismatic leader to take us into the Promised Land.

How great it was back then. Nothing could stop us. Thousands of us connected at once, pushing the same set of beliefs, language, and rules of behavior. We tinkered with our utopian diorama for years all through the Obama era. We didn’t think much about the other half of the country, those Republicans we left behind.

Right about the time of Obama’s second term, in 2012, we started to notice what we believed to be the low-frequency hum of evil — racism. Those people we’d left behind were mobilizing into a powerful group known as the Tea Party, and they were coming for the first Black president.

To most of us, he was perfect. If they didn’t like his policies, they must be racists.

Racists unless they comply. Racists unless they speak our language. Racists if they worry about the border or terrorism or indoctrination in schools. Racists if they talk about crime in the cities or hate crimes by anyone other than white people.

The hate that now connected us, that ran through our veins, became institutionalized. Trump’s rise to the governing systems in our country was thought to be racist, threatening the better half of America. What, then, must they do?

With Trump’s win in 2016, there was no way to escape the mass hysteria that now this country was ruled by a racist, a rapist, a fascist, a bigot, and a homophobe. He was the Devil riding into Salem.

The minute Trump stepped into the White House, removing him from power by any means necessary was normalized. Violent fantasies were rewarded. Robert De Niro wanted to punch him in the mouth. It took the Supreme Court to stop them from removing him from ballots in various states and to blunt the full force of Jack Smith and the weaponized DOJ.

They raided Mar-a-Lago in the dead of night, and people like Rosie O’Donnell and Joy Behar screamed in ecstasy. That should have been the moment the public stood up and said ENOUGH. But it was just grooming the public to see what our government could get away with.

Then came the indictments, which only made their mouths water for more. It was like a long striptease with the money shot being Trump in jail. They dreamed it. They yearned for it.

As the cases against Trump fell apart, they had no choice but to scream HE’S A THREAT TO DEMOCRACY! DEMOCRACY. WILL END IF HE WINS! HE’S UNFIT TO SERVE!

We can’t blame the Left for the sad sack that killed Corey Comperatore and wounded Trump. But it was the shot heard round the world. It was something the Left could not ignore, like Jackie Kennedy’s decision to leave blood on her suit, “let them see what they’ve done,” she said.

I’ve seen Trump speak in the pouring rain in Florida, removing his red cap and allowing the rain to destroy his hair. I’ve heard him joke about the “front row Joes” who follow him from town to town. I’ve heard him recite The Snake. I’ve seen him praise his family, his supporters, and fellow politicians.

And yes, I’ve seen him insult and say cruel things and hit back at the people who love him the most. In other words, I’ve seen him be flawed, like all of us. And maybe that’s what drove the Left insane the most. They made Obama into a God. But in Trump, they see themselves.

MAGA Strong

The hardest thing to explain to people on the Left or in the media is the relationship between Trump and his supporters. It’s not the cult they insist it is. If there is a cult in this country, they’re it.

No, this is unlike anything I’ve ever seen in American history. It isn’t the dominant culture. It isn’t the popular crowd. These are the outsiders who protect each other through thick and thin. He has their backs, and they have his.

That’s why it was so moving to see the moment Trump raised his fist to his supporters and for them to burst into wild cheers and chant USA USA USA.

If you know MAGA, that’s what they do, no matter where Trump is. That’s the chant that says we know what you’re fighting for. We’re fighting, too. We’re fighting for the country we love.

I haven’t done many things right in my life. It’s been, in many ways, one long agonizing flail. But I have done a few things right, like building a business and having a child. One of those things was finding my way out of the dystopian fear bunker the Left has become.

As I watched the reactions from so many on the Left who were upset that the shooter missed and felt no shame about that, I was suddenly grateful I wasn’t one of them. I jumped off the train. Now, I get to be one of the good guys who was on the right side of history when hysteria and rage swallowed up the Left.

Not all people on the Left are unable to see where we are now, but all it takes is for a few of them to start opening their eyes and speaking the truth. Actor Tim Robbins just today was one of them:

He gives me hope that all is not lost.

Now, though, I feel patriotism and affection for the former president, the fighter, the Gray Champion of the Fourth Turning.

How can we do anything but stand back in awe and admiration at anyone who can take it and take it some more, raise his fist in defiance, and offer hope to his loyal MAGA supporters?

I find I am suddenly MAGA because I, too, want to make America great again and chant USA USA USA.

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Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning with Sasha Stone
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