Show notes
I have angels in my comment section who report when commenters lose their cool and fly off the handle at me. Most of the time, I delete them. Sometimes I don’t. This one sailed through my inbox, and it will finally get this person banned after almost 6,000 comments in three years, and he’s not even a paid subscriber. Please excuse the profanity:I can’t lie and pretend to be excited for Supergirl. It’s not a movie made for me, and I’m not sure I can handle one more girl boss movie, especially one whose tagline is “Truth, justice, and whatever.” Maybe my daughter will like it. But let’s move on to the red meat of this, shall we? What is this “non-stop hate binge” I’ve been on lately? It’s true, I have been out in force on X, fighting the wave of what I would define as “hate” aimed at Erika Kirk and Turning Point. It’s not something I could or ever would ignore. I’m not built that way, which is how I got into this mess in the first place. I’m Gen-X. We tend to say what we really think. We’re not good with the comfortable lies, and we weren’t raised to shrink back from conflict.And, like Trump, I have a bit of an impulse control disorder when it comes to social media. If I didn’t, my life would never have changed the way it has. I began fighting the Left when I saw how they were dehumanizing the Right, Melania and Ivanka Trump, MAGA supporters, and even Trump himself. It cost me almost everything. Smarter people know how to shut up. They know how to keep their heads down and go along to get along. I’ve never been that way. I’ve been online for 30 years of my life, entirely too long. I’ve wasted years arguing pointlessly on X or Facebook. It is spitting in the wind. It does nothing to change anyone’s mind, and it only makes me unlikable and a target. But I can’t help it. I don’t know how any reasonable person could not be thoroughly disgusted and horrified by Candace Owens and how she has exploited the murder of Charlie Kirk. It’s not only dividing the Right, undoing so much of what Charlie did, but it’s exposing ugliness and dehumanization on the side I have always defended.I can’t help but think Candace is jealous, not of Erika, but of Charlie, his reach and popularity, how beloved he was and is, especially in the wake of his death. So she just decided to steal from him - his legacy, his reputation, his movement, his influence. She did this by co-opting his story and spinning a delusional yarn about what is a fairly open and shut assassination case, one that pins the blame on the fanatical Left. She doesn’t need the money. Her husband, George Farmer, is worth between $180 and $200 million, not to mention how much Candace is making by spinning tall tales to feed her audience of mostly bored women who need drama in their lives. Lifetime movies don’t cut it anymore because they, like everything else in Hollywood, went “woke.” Even psychological thrillers and romance novels have gone “woke,” as have true crime podcasts. So instead, they follow the snake oil salesman, the huckster, the Barnam and Bailey lying YouTuber down any rabbit hole she chooses to offer up, anything to make it seem like they’re involved in some gossipy, dirty, evil secret, that they know something no one else does. It’s easier to believe we can control inexplicable horrific tragedies, whether it’s the Democrats always blaming guns or it’s a faction of the Right always blaming Israel.No, Candace is not doing this for money. She’s doing it for that insidious word for the internet age: clout. As long as they’re talking about you, as long as you’re a trending topic, your clicks and views will rise. You will be highly ranked on the podcast charts, and you’ll see that as a success. At least, until it isn’t. Who could resist what it must feel like to have millions of people tuning in to hear what scandalous thing you’ll say next? How could anyone not become addicted to it and constantly feed the beast, hungry for more? The algorithms have ravaged our brains and nervous systems, and in Candace Owens's case, her morality.True, she needs a new narrative to wipe off the sticky scum of humiliation now that her “Brigitte Macron is really a man” conspiracy collapsed. What better way to pivot away from that and redefine CANDACE? The hatred, bullying, and ugliness aimed at Erika Kirk come from both the Left and the Right. Each side has its reasons for wanting to destroy her and Turning Point. On the Left, it’s obvious. Even Barack Obama called Charlie a racist, more or less, in the wake of his death. They can’t abide a movement like his that was attracting so many young people. They couldn’t just accept the death of Charlie. They had to work every day to kill off his legacy, and that meant going after his widow, Erika. If some on the Left have abandoned their decency and humanity to stay in power, some on the Right are doing it out of a deep-seated hatred of Israel and distrust of the Jewish people. There is no other way to say it. That is the stinking rot that lies in the soul of Candace Owens, what drives her popularity on YouTube and social media, because Jew hate is global. And yes, it’s also banal, as Walter Kirn explains here with Matt Taibbi on America This Week. I know what Jewish hate feels like. I am half Jewish on my dad’s side, which meant I was never technically Jewish but Jewish enough for the camps. My sisters and I knew that we felt some hesitation saying we were Jewish around some people. It was just something we grew up knowing. What Candace is doing, what so many of her minions are doing, is in service of what I believe is evil and ugly. I don’t even think the recent massacre on Bondi Beach would pull any of them out of it, Left or Right.Standing up to Candace Owens and her mob of psychos and sociopaths is no easy task. Almost everyone is afraid of her because she brings out the knives, and she goes for the jugular. Her army of minions will do her bidding like the monkeys in the Wizard of Oz. She will destroy you if she can. Lucky for me, I’m so insignificant she wouldn’t bother. But Tim Pool is not insignificant. He has a large platform, and he put it all on the line to stand up and do the right thing. He let her have it in a well-deserved viral rant.He then went on Piers Morgan and explained it even further:Another brave voice is Matt Walsh, who gave, I think, the best and most passionate explanation of why these conspiracy theories are hurtful and damaging to not just Erika Kirk and Turning Point, but to the country, because this madness threatens to destroy the MAGA movement. No one has said it better.I would never have guessed that the two heroes to emerge from this mess would be Tim Pool and Matt Walsh, but here we are. These kinds of moments test all of us. That’s not to say people can’t criticize Israel, or that the United States should fight Israel’s wars or give them money. But this goes deeper, and making this MAGA’s biggest political issue is a losing proposition. Here is Carl Cannon of RealClearPolitics, along with Tom Bevan and Andrew Walworth, on the Megyn Kelly show. The “Woke Mind Virus” destroyed the Left, and the “Woke Right Mind Virus” threatens to destroy MAGA if it keeps heading in this direction, as Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi discuss on America This Week. As I watched the video on Bondi Beach, I thought about Ana Kasparian saying on X, “I would never step foot in Israel.” I think about how Candace Owens will spin this as some false flag operation, and I worry for what’s coming next.Humans have been at war for over 90% of our existence. It is in our nature. We will go to war whether it’s on social media or in Gaza or Bondi Beach. To fight any war requires dehumanizing the enemy. Once you get there, where even a shot in the neck that kills a husband and a father, makes no difference to you whether you are on the Left or the Right, then you are beyond saving because you have lost your humanity, like the Good Germans in World War II, like the Good White People in the South after the Civil War, like the Puritans in Salem. The Left mocked these Trump supporters for showing empathy and solidarity to Trump after he was shot. They said it was a cult. They laughed at them. But I saw the decent people I’ve come to know over the past decade. That’s the kind of humanity we need. These past ten years have taught me that I will never go along with dehumanizing other people. I’d rather lose everything. The reason I’m here on Substack is the same reason I will lose subscribers for this post. I couldn’t do the other thing. I couldn’t shut up. If that makes me a “bitter old woman,” then so be it.Here is Frank Turek:We must be brave. We must be decent. We must hold the line. ///Tip Jar 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