
An Open Letter to Peter Baker of the New York Times
Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning with Sasha StoneShow Notes
Dear Mr. Baker, I am but one in a sea of many Americans viewed as a threat to the established order. I was once a part of that order. I helped build it. It would turn out I couldn’t survive because I couldn’t follow the rules of thought and speech that are mandated by everyone on the Left, especially those at the New York Times. It’s personal, you see. I used to believe that if all I did was read Page One of the New York Times, I’d be well-informed. Brainwashed is more like it. It’s easy to spot the bias now where it wasn’t before. For instance, this was the New York Times on January 12th, and one of the strongest activists for the Democrats pretending they’re pushing some sort of objective conclusion on X. But that’s just another day at the New York Times. I know you didn’t write this piece, Michelle Goldberg did, but it is worth mentioning as an aside that no, the “resistance libs” were not right. They were never right. I was one of them until I wasn’t. It’s been an ugly road out of the Doomsday Cult of the Left, but now, I live free as an exile. We were never the “resistance.” We were always the empire. We colonized the internet, after all, and, together with Barack Obama, the rise of Silicon Valley, social media, and the iPhone, as society migrated online, we were in control of all of it. But that’s a story for a different time, Mr. Baker. This letter is much more urgent regarding the matters at hand. Your “analysis” and observation about Trump and protests is so wildly off base, a complete distortion of reality, that I felt compelled to write you this letter. You wrote: You write: President Trump had a ringing message of solidarity on Tuesday for demonstrators in the streets. “KEEP PROTESTING - TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!!” he wrote on social media. He decried “the senseless killing of protesters,” and added that those pulling the triggers “will pay a big price.” He meant the protesters in Tehran, not Minneapolis. By contrast, the people in the streets of Minnesota, he wrote just 63 minutes earlier, were “anarchists and professional agitators” trying to cover up a fraud scandal. He vowed that “THE DAY OF RECKONING & RETRIBUTION IS COMING!” The eruption of protests on opposite sides of the planet at this moment in history has brought Mr. Trump’s views of democracy and popular dissent into stark relief. The situations in Iran and Minnesota, of course, are different and complicated, but the president’s rule of thumb seems simple enough: Those who take to the streets supporting a cause he favors are laudable heroes. Those who take to the streets to oppose him are illegitimate radicals. I read this, and my jaw dropped open, Mr. Baker. Where have you been for the past five years as we watched a split screen of protests in the Summer of 2020 and then on January 6th? Are you actually saying that you at the New York Times and anyone on the Left saw these things as comparable? Democracy and popular dissent in stark relief, boy, I couldn’t have said it better myself. Tell me this is satire. Tell me you do not live in such an isolated bubble that you can’t possibly see the blatant hypocrisy here? The treatment of these two events was very different and will be written about in opposite ways in history books forever. One will be seen as heroic and democracy in action, and the other, as dangerous. An insurrection in action. People like me were pulling our hair out, not because we would justify the riot at the Capitol, but because all of you said nothing about what happened in the Summer of 2020, a year that broke America and broke me. It wasn’t only your paper that lied that Trump “incited” a mob to storm the Capitol and that it was a threat to “democracy.” That was the narrative pushed by every legacy media outlet, with no kind words for the protesters who were also doing what protesters do - getting angry and having their voices heard by a government and a culture that had demonized them, dehumanized them, and abandoned them. Tr
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This November might mark the end of the Virtual Civil War we’ve been fighting for ten years. Or rather, Barack Obama and the establishment government’s war on half the country. The Democrats could take both the House and the Senate, effectively ending the Trump presidency and the MAGA movement. On the Right, they’re calling me a “Debbie Downer” or a catastrophist, just as they did on the Left when I tried to tell them Trump would win in 2016. But I worried a year ago, when the Trump administration cut Medicaid, millions lost their health insurance, and many saw their monthly premiums rise. When I spoke up about this, no one wanted to hear it. It wasn’t my job to tell the Right what to do with their power, but from where I sat, as a former Democrat, it felt like the beginning of the end. We don’t talk much about how that COVID era gave Americans financial relief and, for a time, free healthcare; some didn’t even have to pay rent. We got fat unemployment checks through the CARES Act, and under Biden, the spending went through the roof. No matter the Trump administration's intentions to cut spending, clean up fraud, and attempt to fix our broken system, once everyone felt the pinch of inflation, gas prices, the war in Iran, and healthcare costs, they'd finally be ready, I believed, to vote blue. I know I’m not the only person who feels like I’m living in the Twilight Zone. None of us understands what has happened to us in the age of the internet and social media, Obama and Trump. How can I have thought Trump was the ultimate evil in 2016, only to turn around and vote for him in 2024? And now spend my time warning about my former side? I was hoping that after the indictments, the impeachments, the assassination attempts, and the felony conviction, Trump’s second win would be the moment the delusional bubble burst on the Left and we could all go back to the way things were before the war. But that didn’t happen. They just got meaner and more radicalized, all the while learning how to hide that side of themselves, to lie to voters that they really aren’t as extreme as they were in the past. Even as some candidates have learned to lie better about “gender affirming care” or radical Islam to tamp down the widespread, mainstream radicalization that has overtaken the party, all one has to do is look at what’s happening in France to see that, in the midst of a Communist-like takeover, moderate liberalism won’t cut it. They don’t just want some of it. They want it all. And if France was the model the DSA in America pointed to as a socialist utopia, how do you explain a violent revolution unfolding on the streets? That won’t just happen here. It already has happened here. It wasn’t Islam; it was Black Lives Matter, but the forces of social-justice revolutionaries and the oppressed/oppressor doctrine rage on. I wake up every day confronting the cruelty of the Totalitarian Left as, even now, they try not just to destroy me and my business, but to wipe me out, erase me, unperson me. I feel it everywhere, not just online. I live in a town that would turn on me in an instant if they saw me in a MAGA hat. I know them. I live among them. They smile and chat with me on the street, and I hope they don’t get close enough to figure out who I am, that I’m scorched earth among their kind online. As of now, in the real world of my very small, very liberal town, I am a complete unknown. But if real life mirrored the internet, there would be wild-eyed fanatics putting up posters of me all over town that say TRUMP SUPPORTER. Because they were never held to account, nothing has really changed. They’re better liars, but no one has any plans to change how they treat the other half of the country they’ve thrown away like human garbage. They still see the evil in this country as racism, Islamophobia, sexism, misogyny, bigotry, transphobia. And now, they’ve married it to socialism, but even in France, that’s not enough, so Communism it will have to be.
I always knew growing up half-Jewish meant hiding. I figured out early on that it wasn’t something you were supposed to be. My mother isn’t Jewish and, if anything, has never been a fan of Jews — especially now. It’s just the kind of thing you know growing up, even if you don’t talk much about it. Hollywood rarely presented Jewish people to American audiences, even if Hollywood was run by Jews. That left me wondering why not. Did I look Jewish? Was that bad? As a young woman, I knew it meant I didn’t fit either place. I didn’t fit in the Jewish community, and I didn’t fit outside of it. But somehow I just knew the shame that came with being born half-Jewish, or Jewish enough for the camps. A boyfriend once said, “They have to have done something…” Meaning: why were they so hated and persecuted? I can’t say I ever knew the answer, because I never knew the history. I didn’t think about it much because my heroes, many of whom were Jewish, also didn’t talk much about it — Bob Dylan, Woody Allen, Leonard Cohen, or the Coen brothers. Steven Spielberg would finally address it in Schindler’s List, and that movie would help keep the memory of the Holocaust alive. But that was 1993. A lifetime ago. How is it that it could be 2026 and we’d be living through a moment in history where they have turned “Zionist” into a slur? Was it always? And how easy it is now to see the word “Jew” hurled on social media as an insult so casually. How could it be that Tucker Carlson, like so many others, could be so soft on Hitler now? He assumed, wrongly, that it was not Hitler’s fault we went to war. With Jacob Reese-Mogg: Here is Victor Davis Hanson: Whole thing here. It was so ignorant and dangerous of Tucker to spread these lies about Hitler that even Poland’s embassy in Washington had to issue a statement. And every time I post about this, I know I will lose subscribers, especially paid ones, because Tucker Carlson has about 5.8 million subscribers on YouTube, not quite 6 million but getting there. And me, well, let’s just say I don’t have that many. Undeniable tension is building within the MAGA movement as we head into the midterms. There are so many angry people on the Right, resentful that we bombed Iran “for Israel.” Foreign wars quickly became Israel’s war. Then it became about the money sent to Israel. But now, it’s anger at Trump for siding with the Jews. I tried to stay neutral on the war in Gaza and have not talked much about what is happening on the Left and the Right. But it is getting too big to ignore. We are at a dramatic inflection point where the word “genocide” is hurled as both a weapon and a struggle session. SAY THE WORD, say it! Say it’s genocide! It’s the last worst word. The rest of the words have been tossed on the scrap heap: fascism, Nazi, dictator, racist, rapist, bigot, sexist, homophobe, transphobe. What do words even mean anymore? They’ve been twisted, co-opted, and reshaped to control how we think about ourselves in the world and how we define what we believe. If you say “it’s a genocide,” then you are in. If you deny it, you’re one of the bad people. They say it on the Left as emotional blackmail. They say it on the Right to imply intent. Those evil Jews just want to kill Palestinians when everyone knows the opposite is true. Genocide Every day, images flood social media of what Gaza looks like now after it was bombed by Israel. That’s proof of genocide, they said. How can it not be genocide? But the word they are looking for is war. That is what losing a war looks like. It is also what winning a war looks like. World War II was beyond anything most people alive today could ever imagine. They can’t remember, and no one will tell them what war looks like. But here is what it looks like. The Allies bombing Berlin into rubble. Hiroshima and Nagasaki after getting nuked: Is that “genocide”? No, that’s war. Genocide is the attempt to kill a whole people based on their ethnicity or their religion. That’s not what the All
I’m probably the last person who should write about morality. I grew up on the Left, after all: a hippie childhood in Topanga Canyon, then coming of age as the first generation after Roe v. Wade as a liberated woman who did whatever I wanted, dressed however I wanted, and always felt free in my mind and heart. I was never someone who would have demanded morality. I didn’t even know what that was. I watched the counterculture revolution of the 1960s and 1970s break free of norms and traditions. Where we’ve ended up is at the Empire’s end: a Caligula-like culture that strictly polices thought, speech, racism, sexism, homophobia, bigotry of any kind, but one that also treats morality and decency as oppressive relics from a patriarchal past. So when a 20-year-old Jane Doe walked into the Chi Phi fraternity at Cornell on October 24, 2024, her only armor was the rule of “consent.” As long as it was okay with her and she said so, anything goes. She agreed to a threesome with two 20-year-olds, but then, when more men flocked to her body like seagulls chasing a bag of chips left on the beach, she was too high or drunk to even know how to get herself out of it. No one knew how to just say this is wrong, this is bad behavior because they don’t live in a culture that believes that — not unless it’s rape. But this wasn’t rape by any legal definition. She consented, then she consented again. Then, she was drowning in a sea of consent, and so were they. In the days, weeks, and months that followed, Jane Doe would absorb the truth about what really happened that night. Shame would follow when she saw her classmates pointing and laughing at her, calling her a slut, saying it was a “gang bang.” If the boys said nothing, she said nothing; no one would know what they did that night, but the boys bragged about it. They betrayed her trust, and she ended up looking bad. The real kicker was being disinvited to that same frat with those same guys. In her mind, she was the one being punished and not the boys. From the New York Times: At Chi Phi, the fraternity was preparing for a Halloween party, and Jane Doe was eager to attend. Text messages included in the investigation show Mr. Ingalls assuring Jane Doe that he and other fraternity members wanted her to be there. “chi phi is your house and you are welcome here,” he wrote, relaying the views of the fraternity’s president, who was not among those accused of sexual assault. “thank u i really appreciate that,” Jane Doe responded. “ But then Jane Doe received a phone call from the fraternity’s president, according to the text messages. She was disinvited from the party. It was for her own good, he said. Jane Doe sent a biting text to Mr. Ingalls. “I knew this was going to happen,” she wrote. “The woman will always get the short end of the stick. Yall aren’t my friends. Yall are covering your asses.” That’s when the anger and resentment set in, and eventually, it would fester until she decided she needed to get something back, something she lost in her efforts to protect the boys and not herself. Whether she knew it or not, she was walking around with a loaded gun and a trigger she could pull at any time. Two years later, she did just that, and the righteous, delusional, fanatical mob ignited into a frenzy. Even AOC got into the mix, condemning and convicting the boys, putting an image in everyone’s head about what happened that night. Everything that came next has been a horror show. The Cornell newspaper released the boys' names, knowing that in modern-day America there can be no such thing as due process. If she was accusing them of rape, gang rape, then they were guilty. The University newspaper, the Cornell Sun, wrote an op-ed naming the boys: We refuse for this victim to be reduced to just another story. Cornell has failed to protect its students. Cornell has failed to address the growing issue of sexual assault on campus with its pathetic task force. Cornell has failed the student allegedly r
I just made this little video as a Thank You to all of you who shared your kind words and sent in donations to help with vet bills. I am always overwhelmed by your kindness. I am hoping Jasper is on the mend. He has packed on some weight from the steroids, but so far he seems to be healing. His hair is growing back, and he is getting his energy back, even chasing squirrels and growling at strangers. I got a little worried last night because yesterday was his first full day without Prednisone. He was a little agitated at night, and I kept checking for fever. So far, so good, thank you, God. And thank you, dear readers, for caring about my pup! More photos in the video above.
MAGA, it would seem, is on the ropes. Things are looking dire. Tucker Carlson is appearing on NPR talking about removing Trump for threatening nuclear war, even though, you know, not long ago he was telling Ted Cruz that we should definitely nuke a country if they tried to assassinate our president. Here is Ben Shapiro: Marjorie Taylor Greene has learned the trick of the elite Left that you can be as rich as you want, live wherever you want, party all you want, marry and spend lavishly as long as you also hate on Trump and name-drop the “resistance.” Hey, it’s nice work if you can get it. The idea is that Trump was supposed to rebuff Israel, ignore Iran’s threats of building a nuke because of Israel, find pedophiles that do not exist in the Epstein Files buried because of Israel, and listen to Tucker Carlson for advice OR ELSE. But really, it’s the Jews. It’s always been the Jews. After ten years of Trump giving himself over to fight for representation of people who have been thrown away like human garbage by a country ruled by an aristocratic ideological utopian cult, after being the target of the worst attacks I’ve ever seen - his hair, his weight, his hands, his skin, his daughter, his sons, his wife, his walk, his clothes, what he says, what he does, where he goes, what he eats- here we are again: the walls are closing in, only this time the calls are coming from inside the house. How hard would it be, you know, just for old times’ sake, to use your vote to prevent what is likely to be the Series Finale of the Trump Show? Him getting impeached a third time, maybe booted out of office this time. Sure, it would take a large majority of Senate Republicans, but by now, why wouldn’t they go along with it? Then, he’d be prosecuted and frog-marched off in an orange jumpsuit as Jen Psaki and Kara Swisher throw a party at Rosie O’Donnell’s house, livestreamed on The View. I mean, this is your future MAGA, should you choose to accept it: And for these folks, their dream is finally coming true. Their ten-year war is about to come to an end because Trump supporters are jumping ships like rats. But someone should tell them their future will look grim with Trump out of the way. Maybe they don’t realize what’s coming, how much worse it will be than either the country under Joe Biden or Donald Trump. Maybe they have no idea what’s in store for them after the revolution. Maybe the revolutionaries somehow take X from Elon. Maybe they take control of AI and gain mind-control capabilities for generations to come. I know these people. They do it with a smile and the best intentions, but they want absolute power. They want their utopia back, and you are in the way. The biggest threat is what will happen to our freedom, something most are not even factoring into the equation, but I know because I come from the Left. In China, in Iran, in other countries run by dictators, everything seems to be going very well. People are smiling, going to work, living their lives and saying nothing. They stay silent because they know what will happen if they ever say what they really think. My daughter has grown up inside of a culture now that is ruled by the same kind of fear. She already knows that she can’t say what she really thinks because everyone on the Left knows. They can’t write books they want to write—they can’t tell the truth—but they still have to smile and pretend everything is going great in utopia! They have scared an entire generation into compliance. And it’s oh so much worse now that Sharia Law has entered the chat. Oh, I know we’re not supposed to think of guys like Abdul El-Sayed and Zohran Mamdani as anti-American terrorists - that’s racist! But the more I think about it, the more I think this alliance was inevitable: two strident fundamentalist ideologies that hate America’s history and want to remake it from the ground up as something completely different, and they’re prepared to use their army of fanatics and scolds to make ever