Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning with Sasha Stone

I stood in the corner of our tiny shack atop a mountain in Topanga and waited for my brother to come home. He would be there any minute and would see his beloved black lab mix, Cinder, dead under a sheet in the front yard.
We’d been out riding that afternoon. My mom was on our quarterhorse Teddybear. My younger sister and I rode the twin stallion ponies, Pumpkin (mine) and Fireball (hers).
It was summer. We were riding to Topanga Elementary to play in an empty schoolyard. Cinder came along. It was always hot, but that day, it was baking, and we were not prepared. All of a sudden, Cinder collapsed. My mother, in a panic, ordered my sister and me to ride our ponies to the school and bring back water.
Maybe we could save her, we thought. When we finally got to the school, we scoured the trash cans and found empty milk cartons. We rinsed them, filled them, then galloped back, Pony Express-style, to where my mom was waiting. But it was too late. Cinder was gone.
I don’t remember much else about that day, except what happened to my brother later, when he came home. I’d never seen my tough, strong older brother cry. That was my first lesson in the unique grief of losing a dog.
They call them “soul dogs” or “heart dogs” on Reddit. It’s that connection you have with a special dog that will never be matched by any other. I have always hated how the internet flattens things into group ideas, but in this case, they were right. I had to let go of my soul dog, Jack, and I’ll never be the same.
Mind you, I didn’t want to. I rationalized it many times. I even almost took him to the hospital and asked them to cut him open, remove the large cancerous mass inside of him, give him kidney dialysis, and chemo. Something, anything to keep him alive. Needles, hospital room, strangers, bright lights. That would not have been for Jack. That was for me. I couldn’t do that to him.
People have said, “You gave him such a happy life,” and I tried. But how do you measure the happiness of a dog? To me, Jack wanted more than anything to be free. Free of the leash. Free of doing only what I wanted him to do. Free to have maybe found a mate one time instead of having that possibility taken off the table. Free to roam, most of all, through the hills and the fields.
I could not give that to him. The best I could do was make a situation for a dog with the urge to roam slightly less terrible. Oh, I suppose I could have never gotten him in the first place, waited for the ideal owner, like a rancher to pick him up.
I don’t know if I was Jack’s ideal owner or not. I just know that he was my soul dog, for better or worse.
You don’t choose dogs. They choose you.
I’d pulled into a gas station near the Four Corners of Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico en route to the Telluride Film Festival in 2014 when I looked down, and there was a furry little wolfen creature, redheaded, with bright green eyes staring up at me, and was that a smile?
He already knew how to ask for food, and I was happy to oblige. Only I didn’t want to just feed the dog. I wanted to rescue him. I don’t know why, exactly. It felt like a calling. He was redheaded, like my pony Pumpkin. He had green eyes like mine. But it was his sweet disposition that meant it was love at first sight, even if I didn’t know it yet.
I told my daughter and her friend, both named Emma, to go get some dog food because we were taking this dog. When I turned around, he had crawled away and hidden under a trailer, but a woman pulled him out and handed him to me.
That sealed Jack’s fate, to be rescued by city girls. Jack wasn’t going to be my dog at first. My daughter’s friend wanted him, but her parents said no. That night, as the girls hung out in their basement room and I was cooking a roast chicken, I heard little feet tap-tap-tapping up the stairs, and there he was again, smiling up at me, wanting food. Okay, little pup, I thought, I guess I’m a dog person now.
“Don’t take him if you can’t keep him,” my younger sister warned. I knew what she meant. She’d thought I’d abandon Jack if some guy wanted me to, as I’d done once before when I was too stupid to know better. The dog went to my mom, who doted on her, but still. It sent the message that I couldn’t be trusted with a dog.
We had three cats already, but dogs weren’t allowed in our apartment in North Hollywood. When they found out, I was ordered to get rid of Jack. So we split to Burbank. I also broke up with a boyfriend over my dog. Sorry, I made my choice, and there was no going back
Four years later, we finally adopted a friend for him because he hated being alone, and my daughter Emma was leaving for college. We had a hard time choosing and were about to leave the shelter when a volunteer came out, holding a tiny, terrified terrier-poodle mix. She’d been there two weeks, and no one wanted her. How could we say no? It felt like another kind of calling.
Her name was Pippa, but we changed it to Luna, and though she looks desperately sad in that photo, she bloomed, and Jack and Luna became a happy, bonded pair, and the three of us were inseparable until the day Jack died. Thursday, March 19, 2026.
But that’s not to say Jack was easy. He wasn’t. I didn’t train him properly because I never wanted to change his personality. I didn’t want an obedient dog. I wanted this dog. But that meant he could be quite obstinate when he wanted to go in a different direction from me. It got worse as he got older, when he became a grumpy old dog. He would pull just to pull, and much of the time I’d give in, except when I couldn’t, and sometimes I couldn’t.
He also could not eat his food in a bowl like other dogs. It had to be on a flat surface, and he would scatter the kibble all across the floor before lying down to eat it. Yes, I spoiled him, and responsible dog owners would not approve.
It could have been worse. He could be a growler or a biter, but this dog did not have an aggressive bone in his body. He was sweet and gentle, the nicest dog I’ve ever met. He made friends with everyone, dogs, cats, and people.
I don’t think it really occurred to him what his life would be like until he got older. But I think once he figured it out that this was really it, a life on a leash, walking through neighborhoods, occasionally running free, I think he got grumpier, more obstinate, and he pulled on his leash harder, and it became a battle of wills.
Sometimes I was angry and annoyed at him. Now those moments come flooding back with an enormous sense of guilt. How could I have ever thought of being annoyed at him for even one second?
Maybe I’m projecting. Maybe he never figured it out. Maybe he never thought about it. He just knew he was frustrated with how much pain he was in and with how limited his life had become, and there was nothing I could do to change that for him or fix it.
I always wished he could speak. I always wanted to talk to him, “Remember when I found you at the Four Corners? Remember how much you loved running in the sand at the beach? Remember rolling in the snow? Remember the motels and the road trips? Remember how you liked to chase the ball? Remember driving into a blizzard? Remember getting stranded in the sand after I took a wrong turn and how we had to be towed out?
Remember how you would wimper when we drove to the airport to pick up my daughter Emma because you were so happy to see her? Remember how you herded us and we all had to leave the apartment at the same time, or you would keep looking for the one that was missing.
Remember all the friends you made in every neighborhood we lived in? Remember the horse we used to feed that wanted to be friends with you because everyone wanted to be friends with you.
Where would you like to go today? The park? The field? The hills? And I know what his answer would be. He would wag his tail and be ready to go. When he could no longer jump into the car, I got him stairs. When the stairs became too hard, I got him a ramp.
Where does it hurt, Jack? Tell me where the pain is. Tell me where to check. Tell me when you need to go to the vet. Talk to me. But all he could do was signal to me with his body, his behavior, and his eyes, and I was not paying close enough attention. There’s the guilt again. Could I have helped him if we’d caught it sooner? I don’t know.
Our long walks through town and our hikes began to slow down last year, and he could only make it around the block. Then, just this past week, he could barely make it down the street, and then, barely from the car to the front door.
It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, making the call to end his life. It was time for him to go, and I knew I had to grim up and face the music. He’d gone off his food for two weeks. He threw up even baby food, and then he couldn’t keep down water. He could barely breathe.
I would hear him wretching in the middle of the night and find him stuck under the table, his body completely cold, and I kept thinking any minute he would take his last breath, but he somehow held on.
Jack turned into a different dog in the last moments of his life, and for some reason, this breaks my heart the most. Gone was the willful, obstinate, slightly annoying dog who sometimes made our daily walks frustrating. In his weakened state, he went wherever I wanted him to go. He came when I called him.
Every night, almost, he disappeared into the back yard because he knew he was dying. And every night I went outside with a flashlight to call him back in, and he would come, just like a normal dog. He was doing it for me, I realize now, even at his own expense.
Everywhere I look, there is Jack. The green grass that I know he would want to roll in. The rib bones, I know, he would want to chew. The drives I know he would want to take. The dog beds I bought that still sit untouched in a pile on the patio. And the gravel that he could never pass without lying down in.
This is grief. This is what it means to lose a soul dog. I know I loved him too much. I was prepared for almost everything except saying goodbye. I want to tell you everything about him, to remember everywhere we went and every cute thing he ever did, like how, when he signaled to me that he couldn’t get off the couch to get a drink of water, I would lift the bowl for him. When the droplets hit his paw, he had to gently clean them off. I don’t know why, but that one thing he’s always done crushes my heart.
I can’t possibly tell you of our adventures together, how close we were, and how hard it is now for Luna to walk alone. She lies down near Jack’s spot because she still senses his presence, as do I. I keep smelling his fur, which might sound weird, but I loved how Jack smelled. It was like the smell of a baby. You recognize it.
I did not want to let him go. I wanted to be selfish and keep him around until he died on his own, but my younger sister, who once warned me not to take him if I could not keep him, told me that he’s shown up for me, and now it’s time for me to show up for him.
Holding him, petting him, brushing him because I’d been doing that every day for a week, and then saying goodbye to him as the poison was injected into his beautiful, tiny, spotted paw, then waiting for his heart to stop felt like falling into a deep well - into a world without color, without joy. My soul dog was my constant companion for 12 too-short years. Now I try to see his soul - which was never mine - as finally free.
I still think I hear him, especially at night. I hear his panting or his breathing, how he would sigh, letting out all his air, before he settled in to sleep. I would hear him pacing and circling before he lay down. I always knew where he was. And he was never far.
I pray that he visits me in my dreams. I pray that he’s the first thing I see when I get to Heaven.
Run, my beautiful dog, my precious heart, my Happy Jack, my Buddy. Be obstinate and annoying. Be your perfect, wonderful self because now you are finally free.

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I didn’t use to be a Trump voter, much less a Trump supporter. I can’t say I’m hard-core MAGA or what they call a “Triple Trump voter.” But as I’ve watched him over the past six years, my support for him has only grown. I could lie and pretend it hasn’t, maybe save myself the tiny bit of credibility I still have left, but that would not be the truth.
As I watch Trump deflect attacks from both the Left and the Right over the war with Iran and various other things, I still see the Gray Champion of the Fourth Turning — The one guy who has the right stuff to stand in the breach and do the right thing, even if it’s not the popular thing.
Whatever it is in Trump that guides him, some will say God, some will say a gut instinct, it gives him the necessary focus to blur out the distractions and the noise, take aim, and hit the bullseye.
No president has ever faced the kind of opposition Trump has, not just from the world, but from the establishment in the United States, most especially the Democrats. Even now, they have no plan for any of us, no vision for the future. They only have their hatred of and their attacks on Trump and his MAGA base.
What they want is for people like me to disappear, or else decide that all of their attacks on Trump have been justified. I was a fool, they want me to say, and I regret my vote. Except that I don’t.
They want X to reflect real life, with all of these influencers and podcasters studiously dropping their support and regretting their vote, “I’m done with Trump,” they insist.
But X isn’t real. It’s avatar life. Whatever is happening there, it’s the result of algorithms and engagement by people who spend way too much time doomscrolling and getting caught up in mass hysteria. Most people aren’t that plugged in. They’re just living their lives.
I didn’t just vote for Trump to stop the Left from overtaking this country and leading us into their dystopian, 1984-like future, but that would be reason enough.
No, I have come to genuinely admire Trump, flaws and all. I am sickened by the snooty Left and how they turned their noses up at Trump and his supporters when he tried to revamp the Kennedy Center. I vomited a little in my mouth when I saw Ben Stiller demand that Trump remove Tropic Thunder from a meme.
Every time the elite gather and trash Trump, as they did at Jesse Jackson’s funeral, much to the horror of his own son, I see our potential future, which is really our past, a past we desperately need to leave behind.
This is not their country. It never was. This country belongs to all of us.
The Gray Champion
Nine years ago, one of the authors of The Fourth Turning, Neil Howe, was asked if Trump was the Gray Champion. He didn’t know because it was too early to say. This was before 2020 and before January 6th, way before Trump’s second win in 2024.
The key point he makes, though, is that a Gray Champion is full of ego and has an idea that if he breaks it or if he fixes it, he’ll be okay. It’s that combination of self-confidence, certainty, and recklessness to do what almost no one else would do that defines the one man who can stand up to not just the forces that oppose him but his own peers.
It is the willingness to take big risks that, I think, makes a Gray Champion. Who else would even dare try? That makes them hated in their time, but history remembers them well.
Lincoln was the target of assassination plots and was eventually assassinated.
Winston Churchill was blamed for military failures during World War II:
And Roosevelt was a target too:
The bombing and neutralization of Iran is very Gray Champion-like, as is much of what Trump has already done both in the US and abroad in his second term. He is moving fast and perhaps breaking things to make his short time back in office matter.
He also knows that if the US abandoned support for Israel now, Iran got a nuke, they would not hesitate to wipe Israel off the map, and though many on the MAGA Right would cheer that decision, it would be a disaster for the world. The allies would have no choice but to go to war with Iran anyway. Pay now or pay later.
As with other Gray Champions of the past, Trump will have to take the bad with the good. The bombing of a school killing over 100 girls on the first day of the war — probably due to outdated intel — will have to be part of his legacy, no matter the outcome, which is still under investigation, but it looks like the US did it.
This will put Trump in the Democrats' crosshairs should they take back power in 2026 or 2028. They might impeach him again or put him on trial for war crimes. The bombing of the school, along with the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, will be amplified by the establishment media, and whatever Trump’s successes will be won’t matter.
I understand this war from a strategic perspective, to end a threat to both America and Israel, one of the three world powers that could be fighting us in a world war, along with Russia and China. That wasn’t the case with the Ukraine war. That, to me, had nothing to do with the United States. But this war does.
But I also can’t cry about obliterating a regime that was that oppressive with its people, not that it’s our job to liberate them. As with Venezuela, it’s hard not to feel some American pride that our president did what no one else had the courage to do.
So yes, those girls died tragically, but hopefully, future daughters of Iran will not have to live under the kind of oppressive tyranny the Democrats pretend they’ve been living under for the last ten years.
This was something all of us on the Left used to understand, which is why Hollywood made Not Without My Daughter in the 1980s, a true story about an American mother fleeing Iran to ensure her daughter lived free in America.
And the end of the movie, the most miraculous sight of all, an American flag:
In case you’re wondering why Trump is in power now and why he’s the Gray Champion, that’s why. There was once an America that looked at the flag and saw freedom and safety. That is now threatened by a massive alignment of power that has decided to change everything about this country and transform it into a fundamentalist cult.
There is no such thing as a moderate Democrat
Okay, maybe John Fetterman counts. But, as we’ve now seen from the unearthed tweets by the Great White Hope in Texas, the crazy is baked in. It is more than just a fad or trend. While it’s true that “dark woke” seeks to break their rules of behavior, it’s also true that their newfound religion is unshakable.
The Democrats are counting on winning elections without changing anything about their party. Trump hate sells, and they can’t pivot away from it even if they wanted to.
To fix a problem, you have to first name it, and in ten years, the Democrats never have. They’ve left people like me with no choice but to walk away. Even though poll after poll tells them how unpopular they are, even though the box office is now a ghost town, and you almost can’t pay people to watch movies or television shows, or cable or network news, they still seem to believe they are superior to the other half of the country and that all of America wants them back. They don’t.
There are plenty on the MAGA Right, at least online, who see this as their moment to pull away from Trump and forge a new path toward an America First utopia of their own making. Count me out. I know what is waiting on the other side if they hand power back to the Left.
In the Melania documentary that just dropped on Amazon, there is a great shot of a massive, gleaming luxury car, The Beast, and on its license plate it reads 45-47. It is as spectacular and hilariously funny as Trump himself. Who else but a Gray Champion would even try to run again, much less actually win?
The critics’ spiteful, negative reviews of Melania, compared to the audience reviews, say it all.
I still remember another quote from a guy in East Palestine, Ohio, who called Trump, “a Man of the people” when he pulled up in his motorcade to visit them. The Democrats should spend every day for the rest of their lives pondering why.
Trump supporters are not in a cult. They see in Trump a flawed hero. They also know he is spending what’s left of his life trying to make America Great Again. His supporters believe in him, and the ride or die ones will stick it out to the bitter end.
They waited in the freezing rain, in the suffocating heat of Summer, through assassinations and celebrations. Always, Trump is there with a smile and a thumbs up, the only guy who saw them at all, let alone represented them in the country they love.
I might not have been there from the beginning, but as a discarded outsider, I have more in common with Donald Trump than just about any Democrat. I wish for his survival and that his last years will be spent playing golf at Mar-a-Lago and that history will remember him well.
So you won’t find me regretting my vote or wishing for a different leader. I’ll take the guy who can get the dirty job done. I don’t want a United States that is like Europe. I’ll take an America that is like its current president, a chaotic work in progress that always lands on its feet.
Godspeed Trump and MAGA. Godspeed.


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The Disney movies I grew up with made it easy for a kid like me to recognize good vs. evil. We knew, walking in the door, that goodness would prevail, because it must. The alternative is nothing less than the end of civilization as we know it.
Goodness was personified by the beautiful princess, whose purity of heart drew the forest creatures and eventually, a handsome prince. Their union was a symbol of harmony, stability, and happy endings.
Evil was embodied in the wicked queen, who was jealous of the princess's purity, so much so that she couldn’t rest until the princess was obliterated. Somehow, the villains never know their demise is a certainty because goodness must prevail.
Some might say that is what happened to the MAGA movement, one bright sunny day in Utah, when a psycho killer avenging the crippling despair of his transgender furry lover took aim and shot the handsome prince, killing him within minutes.
Since then, MAGA has struggled to hold onto the coalition Charlie built, the support for the president he helped elect, and to protect the beautiful princess from the evil forces that threaten to destroy her, Turning Point, and MAGA.
Candace Owens might think she’s the hero of this story. She’s written herself in after she was left on the cutting room floor. She’s amassed an audience of dimwitted women and a weaponized army of international bad actors hoping to infiltrate the US and use Candace to shape public opinion.
A growing portion of her audience, as with many influencers on the Right now, is comprised of people convinced that Jews are behind every evil thing that ever happens, has ever happened or will ever happen, and in Candace Owens, they’ve found their princess.
Candace is the only one who sees the truth!Candace is an instrument of God!Candace will make sure justice is served!
How good it must feel for someone who's always been a whole lotta charisma with no real place to land. She tried out many different masks over time, moving through political parties and various ideologies until finally landing the role of a lifetime: mean girl with a microphone.
After being booted out of the Daily Wire, her gossipy YouTube channel would take her into the wet, slimy corners of culture and politics, and her audience would lap it up. But she would hit paydirt when she decided to run with the idea that Brigitte Macron was really a man.
Cruelty sells online, and Becoming Brigitte was a huge hit.
Getting slapped with a massive lawsuit by the Macrons only seemed to make her more popular. By the end of that mess, everyone knew her name.
So then what? Back to Blake Lively and Diddy’s Freak-Offs? Not for our Disney villain. She needed something as big, if not bigger. What could really dig into the tender spots and manifest itself as emotional terrorism in the same way? Who is as protected a target?
Social media amplifies the ugliness inside of us all. The algorithms do the rest. The Left has been unleashing levels of dehumanization and bullying at Erika Kirk since the day Charlie died. Why her? Who knows. They hated him and were happy he was dead. They wanted to see his widow suffer, especially because she’s a pretty blonde.
All the while, Candace, who’d been sidelined from Charlie’s life, didn’t attend his wedding to Erika, so the story goes, and was pushed out of TPUSA and not present at the memorial, saw that Erika was suddenly a subject both too hot to touch and impossible to ignore. And yeah, a pretty blonde.
And so, just as the evil Queen in Snow White can’t stand it any longer and sends a huntsman to kill what torments her, Candace finally pulled the lever, especially after Erika Kirk told her to stop, in an interview with the very Jewish Bari Weiss, no less.
So many women, and even some men, wanted to see our princess fall, and Candace was more than happy to serve it up fresh and hot.
The Disney Princess
Charlie Kirk’s marriage to Erika was always met with the refrain, “she’s out of his league.” Charlie got lucky and found himself a true beauty. Half Syrian/Lebanese and half Swedish.
Erika Kirk looks like no one else. With cascading platinum locks and sparkling blue eyes, she was Charlie’s dream girl. How did he ever get so lucky? He saw her, knew he wanted her, and he said to her, “I don’t want to hire you. I want to date you,” so goes the famous story of how they met.
Candace is pretty, but she’s not that pretty. Few women are. Candace had to develop other skills that pretty girls usually don’t have to worry about. Candace is better on camera than Erika. She is better at performing and at storytelling.
Erika is still slightly awkward and hasn’t yet found her voice. She’s trying under enormous pressure and undeserved scrutiny to keep Turning Point alive and make Charlie’s dreams come true. Not to mention caring for two small children and an ailing mother.
But it’s Erika’s beauty, especially her leaning into her half-Swedish identity, that seems to drive Candace into fits of despair and jealousy. What else could explain it?
Candace admits she wasn’t the kind of kid that people sought out to be in beauty pageants. “I was funny looking,” she says. “I had an underbite.”
And therein lies the tragedy of Candace Owens. She has an abundance of charisma and is a gifted storyteller. But none of that gave her the happy ending she wanted because it was never about the handsome prince. She wanted power, influence, all eyes on her. And that has taken her down a dark path.
A Disney Villain
Her slice and dice this time would be called The Bride of Charlie, like the Bride of Frankenstein (get it, FrankenSTEIN?), with Charlie as the hapless creature, and Erika built just for him and used as bait to lure him into a trap that would eventually get him killed.
The views were up in the millions as Candace’s audience spread the lies and rumors far and wide on social media.
Her idiot followers pretended like there was something to the story when it was obvious they just needed another woman to hurl into the public arena, our modern-day Colosseum. Why? Because they’re bored, they’re stupid, and they don’t know what else to do with their time.
Her “investigative series” is a whole lotta nothing. It is petty and dumb, revealing that Candace just wants to be back in the movie and keeps writing herself back into the script.
“He was like a little brother to me,” she has said. No one would treat their little brother this way. She brags about encouraging Charlie to date women and pushing him toward Erika. All the while suggesting she was more important to Charlie, to Turning Point, to the entire world than Erika ever could be.
Pick MELook at METalk about MENot her.
But not even Charlie is as important as the bigger conspiracy that Israel killed him. Candace repurposed Charlie’s corpse as proof of her delusional fantasies that Israel would even bother. She has invented a version of Charlie that never existed and used him as a prop to push insane levels of Jew hate not seen for a long time in media, if ever, not counting Nazi Germany.
It wouldn’t be until the US and Israel bombed Iran that it would all come together for her in a nice, neat package. They needed Charlie out of the way so they could start this war.
Whatever is happening now, courtesy of algorithms and anonymous users driving influencers farther to the Right, Robert Malone warns that we’re seeing the kind of hate we haven’t seen since World War II, the last Fourth Turning.
And So Shines a Good Deed in a Weary World
Calling out Candace Owens is dangerous. Once she makes you a target, her minions will attack like the flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz. Some people on the Right do have the courage not so much to attack Candace, although plenty have, but to stand up for Erika.
One such person is the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh, who dedicated an entire show to exposing just how ridiculous The Bride of Charlie actually is, and none of it is evidence of any crime. It’s not true, Matt says, and so it’s wrong. But for someone like him, who mostly exists in the Tucker Carlson lane, to do so was brave.
The whole video is worth watching, and you can find it here. Here is how he opens it:
Candace might be playing with fire like Alex Jones did when he was hit with a billion-dollar lawsuit after Sandy Hook. Candace is slippery in the things she says, always careful to add “in my imagination” or “this is speculation.” But she has done visible harm to Erika Kirk’s reputation, the very definition of defamation.
She’s also made the children of Charlie Kirk have to grow up with these lies, this unfair albatross that will haunt them forever. How could anyone who calls themselves a friend of Charlie do that?
So that’s all the more reason I was moved by Matt Walsh’s willingness to go there. He didn’t attack her, and he could have. He didn’t destroy her, and he could have. He tried to appeal to the better angels of her nature, but the thing is, I don’t think she has any.
Matt was a very good friend of Charlie Kirk, and this is what friends do. They don’t pillage the corpse for clicks and views. They don’t bully, harass, and smear the widow and endanger the lives of their children. They don’t try to dismantle the movement Charlie built. Candace was no friend to Charlie Kirk.
But Matt was. If I had to guess, I’d say he made a silent promise to his good friend that he would step up and provide support and be a kind of guardian angel for Erika and their two kids. His monologue is so good, so well written, so moving it should have been more of a reason for others to do the same. But the content churn won’t allow it. It’s onto the next thing.
Matt’s monologue makes me think Charlie Kirk was right in how he chose his closest friends. If it’s true that he had parted ways with Candace Owens before his death, that speaks volumes. If his legacy is to be handed over to anyone, let it be to those who cared about him, so they care about Erika. Those seeking to destroy the ones Charlie loved the most should be kept far, far away.
But all you have to do is listen to Charlie’s voice, to his children, and to Erika to find solid ground. This is real. That other stuff isn’t.
Charlie Kirk is missed because, like Scott Adams and even the podcast America This Week, he had a calming effect on the spiraling craziness. His words echo from beyond the grave to shame the pretenders like Candace, who can never be like Charlie.
In the end, it would turn out that Candace’s object of scorn wasn’t Erika at all. It was Charlie. She could never be him. She would never be loved like that. She will never lead a movement like he did. She will never change the world. She will always be on the outside, her face pressed against the glass, screaming into the void.
Candace cast herself as the villain in our Disney movie. And if her rise has been fascinating to watch, her fall will be spectacular. If, for no other reason, goodness must prevail.

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For the last five years, since I left the Democratic Party, I’ve been waiting for any sign that they’ve emerged from the Doomsday Bunker at long last, regained their perspective, come back to the real world, and are finally prepared to build a future for all of America because a house divided against itself cannot stand.
The Democrats were booted out, not once but twice. In between, they had the chance to show us all that they were on the better side. If Trump were so terrible, what could they offer in return?
The problem is that they’re still the party of Barack Obama, and to criticize any of it, to change course on anything is an affront to him and all that he built. To confront their failures, they must confront his. And they won’t do that.
They failed to protect the border, the children, the workers, the families, and the businesses. They failed to keep us safe and failed to include us all in the American dream, choosing to focus instead on their wheel of oppression, which has now landed on illegal immigrants.
True, no political party has amassed as much power as they still have. It was power they did not want to lose. I know. I was there. I didn’t even realize there was another America outside the one we built, with the help of the internet. It was a brand new world that felt like the future.
But it was a world that left at least half the country, the working-class half, behind. When we emerged in 2016, shocked that they did not want to live in our utopia, it sent us cascading into mass delusion that Trump was an existential crisis instead of a duly elected leader for Americans who wanted to change.
Rather than understand that, rather than work to fix the problem, rather than reach out to those abandoned, discarded masses, it’s been this. Petulance, temper tantrums, narcissism, self-pity, unending hysteria, like spoiled children who don’t get what they want on Christmas morning.
Senator Adam Schiff has announced he will boycott Trump’s State of the Union, joining a growing list of, it must be said, weak and unappealing Democrats no one feels inspired by or wants to vote for.
According to Newsweek, these are the Democrats who plan on playing hooky.
* Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon
* Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut
* Senator Tina Smith of Minnesota
* Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland
* Representative Yassamin Ansari of Arizona
* Representative Becca Balint of Vermont
* Representative Greg Casar of Texas
* Representative Veronica Escobar of Texas
* Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington
* Representative Delia Ramirez of Illinois
* Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey
After mocking Turning Point USA’s half-time, these Democrats are now doing the same thing, planning an alternative rally to boycott the State of the Union.
According to Reuters:
About a dozen Democrats in the Senate and House of Representatives have announced their participation in a “People’s State of the Union” event on the National Mall, near the Capitol, to highlight their opposition to the Republican administration’s policies, organizers said on Wednesday.
Yeah, it will probably play like Kamala Harris’s closing argument to the “people” on October 29, just before Donald Trump cleaned her clock.
Now, it’s deja vu all over again. Remember eight years ago when they boycotted the State of the Union? Yeah, good times. Do you think they had any idea Trump would come back and win in 2024?
Nothing ever feels authentic. It always feels performative. They simply swap out whatever the current thing is and then fall in line like obedient robots. Harris was installed after they pushed Joe Biden out, and he pushed out any potential candidates who might defeat Trump.
Now, instead of the screeching Me Too fanatics, it will be the screeching No Kings/ICE OUT fanatics. Sounds charming!
They are running in place, getting nowhere, because they have nowhere to go. They’ve never confronted their failures, or the America under Obama that many voters did not want. Kamala Harris, like every Democrat, had nothing to sell but fear - fear of Trump, fear of the future, fear of change.
Their platform is built on elevating the weak and the marginalized, so they need a constant supply. They need a sick America. Not a successful, healthy America. Trump projects exactly the opposite, and it drives them insane. So all they’re left with are their violent fits, their temper tantrums, their protests, and their boycotts.
Yes, they have all of the cultural power. They have most of the wealth. What they don’t have are the people. If they did, they would not have lost to the guy they tried to impeach, throw in jail, remove from ballots, and even assassinate.
You can’t be the side with all of that power and still treat the other half of the country like human garbage. They know that, at least some of them do. They just don’t know any way out by now. Their party has been hijacked by a cult.
All the people have is a vote, and since they voted against the Democrats, they’re invisible. No American raped, assaulted, abused, or murdered by an illegal immigrant on their watch has any value whatsoever to them.
Only Jon Fetterman seems able to exist in any kind of reality that makes sense to the rest of us, maybe because he has Trump supporters in his life and doesn’t get his reality only from MS-Now and the New York Times:
In ten years, they’ve never figured out that it wasn’t about Trump at all. It’s always been about them, about freeing America from the clutches of their increasingly insane and out-of-touch policies. The Democrats gave people like me no other options but to vote against them. Trump is in power now only because he survived, and no one else could.
In Lionel Shriver’s excellent new novel, A Better Life (review forthcoming), she points out that the dominant culture on the Left isn’t raising Americans to fight for their place in this country anymore, but to be among the elite who don’t have to work and don’t have to leave behind their offspring to build on what they have. That’s the spirit America was founded on. Watch the full video here.
And that’s where Donald Trump comes in. That is what MAGA is about, and it’s why he’s built a strong movement that demands a secure border. He wants to fight for a better America and to inspire generations to rise up and fill those shoes.
Trump is making big moves, generational moves, and the Democrats and their ruling class don’t know how to match it or deal with it. Trump was able to do the hard things like ending “gender affirming care,” securing the border, and trying to make peace in the Middle East and elsewhere. He’s set up Trump accounts for young people to start building their finances early. No tax on tips or overtime or social security - these are some of the bold ideas he’s pushed forth that the Democrats pretend don’t exist.
That’s why he’s the Gray Champion of the Fourth Turning. There is no one else of his generation who could or would even try to do what he has done, to fight for a strong America, to fight for a better life for all of us.
Maybe he fails more than he succeeds, but the point is, he’s trying. He wants the fighting spirit that founded this nation back. He’s not giving up on those discarded, forgotten Americans the Democrats seek to jetison and replace.
The state of the Democratic Party now seems to be fighting for a sicker, more helpless America that can’t leave anything for the next generation. They have found a kind of religion in identity, and that matters more than their identity as Americans. All they have to sell is fear, insisting everyone go along with their mass delusion, yes, even ten years later.
They should not be surprised if Americans say, “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.”

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When Karoline Leavitt was asked about whether Trump believes he’s been falsely called a racist, she quipped, “You’re kidding, right?”
I thought I would dig up some oldies but goodies and take a trip down memory lane. I am working on a much longer video examing the moral panic of the past 20 years around racism (and other ists and phobes) but I thought you might enjoy taking a look at this montage. Just click the video above.


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe