Show notes
Since 2020, after the protests and the riots erupted on the streets of major cities, causing over one billion dollars in damages, implied threats have become the norm on the Left. Windows are boarded up in anticipation of more. During the Derek Chauvin trial, the crowd outside, including some politicians, openly threatened violent riots should he be found not guilty. Random beatings go unnoticed on the streets because they only play on Right-wing channels. Like my friends on the Left, I mourn the overturning of Roe v. Wade because I think it will drive a deeper wedge between the two Americas. To the Left, a fundamental right has been taken away. To the Right, a fundamental right has been granted.I keep hoping for some kind of unity. But now, the ongoing hatred by each side against the other is likely to only get much worse. The division is going to take the shape of red states and blue states, or as future generations will know them, abortion states and illegal abortion states.There was a moment between the unprecedented leak of the Dobbs decision and the final decision. Some justices might have been persuaded not to overturn a 50-year precedent. Some had suggested the leak was intentional for that reason. You’d think, given that, there might be some civility on offer for the Trump appointees. You know, the whole “you attract more flies with honey than vinegar” approach. But if you thought that, you’d be wrong. The Left, the Democrats, and the media did the opposite. They never let up. They seemed okay with using high-pressure tactics on justices who have been taking all manner of incoming for several years now. They stalked and harassed the SCOTUS justices in their homes. A group called Jane’s Revenge torched pro-life centers and vandalized property, sending the message “if abortions aren’t safe then you aren’t either.” And a would-be assassin showed up at the home of Justice Kavanaugh and threatened his life before calling 911 and turning himself in.Was there blanket media coverage by any outlets other than Fox? Of course not. What were they focused on? The January 6th show trial. Did the protesters stop marching outside their homes? No. The idea was that the justices deserve everything they had coming. For several years now, Justices Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, Barrett, and Thomas have been casually, routinely bullied in the press, harassed, and all but crucified by the Left on a daily basis. Because of their hatred of Trump, they have normalized dehumanization against his supporters, and his appointees. Whatever they think of Trump, however angry they feel about Mitch McConnell blocking Merrick Garland’s appointment but going along with Trump’s, treating Supreme Court Justices this way undermines their claim to care about “Democracy Itself.” Chuck Schumer had all but threatened violence against Kavanaugh and Gorsuch way back in 2020, though he downplayed it:Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing alone was unlike anything we’ve ever seen. We don’t have a press that would ever cover it that way, not amid the Me Too movement, but banging on the door of the Supreme Court, disrupting the confirmation hearing, screaming at Senators in hallways - was the exact kind of invasive activism that is endangering not just the Left itself, but the country at the hands of the Left. Kavanaugh was convicted without due process in the court of public opinion, smeared as a rapist. His family had to absorb all of it. Everyone Kavanaugh knew throughout his whole life now looked at him that way. The idea was to make him as weak of a Justice as possible, the Clarence Thomas treatment, so that the public would sour on the Court over time. There was never one moment where the Left backed off of any of it. When Amy Coney Barrett was being confirmed, she was labeled a racist (even though she has adopted Black children — even that was condemned), the media said she belonged to a religious cult and was called Lydia from the Handmaid’s Tale.Clarence Thomas has been hated by the Left since his confirmation, but only recently has it intensified, as Twitter blue-checks and the media suggest he should be impeached because of his wife’s thought-crimes on the election. They dress it up like “news” but it’s more of the same - mass hysteria, Trump obsession, the bottom dropping out. The treatment of Krysten Sinema in particular has been disturbing. Activists find her in airports, follow her into bathrooms, and even disrupted a wedding. The bullying and harassment on Twitter help to dehumanize her to the point where they don’t see a problem with stalking her in real life. All because she won’t agree to go along with the party-line. They don’t seem to realize that the way it works in America is that we elect people. We don’t throw massive fits to intimidate them to go along with what we want. The new Left doesn’t see it that way. They believe fits of hysteria and dehumanization are the right course of action. It just makes them less reliable as leaders. We need calm heads and steady hands, not the political equivalent of the children in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.I never understood why activists thought all of this was the right course of action. I always figured it would only make things worse because outside the media bubble and social media feedback loop, most people are horrified when it crosses the line, as it often does. Our country is in the middle of a Cold Civil War. There is no doubt about that. Unfortunately, we have a media that seems to profit off of it, not to mention social media that does better with a divided country than a united one. Every day, each side is hammered with negative stories about the other, driving hatred and rage, not to mention dehumanization. If you only read news from one side, you will never understand the other side’s position. Navigating between both worlds it’s easier to see where media manipulation drives outrage. The Democrats and the Left can’t mount a proper offense against Donald Trump because they are fighting a cartoon version that doesn’t exist in real life. That, I think, more than anything explains their ongoing sense of helplessness. If you watch a Trump rally, you won’t see desperation, panic, rage or outrage. Trump is easy-going, confident and funny. Yesterday’s rally in Illinois, for instance, he joked about a potential candidate for governor plucking a hair off of his head. “We’re still looking for that hair,” he said. The only thing the media pulled from that entire rally was when one of his endorsed candidates, Mary Miller, accidentally said: “thank you for saving white—right to life.” Because of that, “Nazis in Illinois” trended all day on Twitter. They genuinely believe that this will help them win elections. It just makes people hate them, more and more every day.Trump’s side is using the “radical Left” to draw support from the middle. And guess what? It’s working. The Left is radical. They live up to that label every single day. Democrats are not doing anything to draw supporters to their side because they are driven to extreme outrage over almost everything. It lasts a couple of days until a new one replaces it. They don’t seem able to get a grip.They also seem to continually justify this brand of invasive activism, which scares ordinary Americans and has since it burst onto the scene in 2020.The Democrats and the Left have called parents worried about their children being indoctrinated into the Left’s new religion, “Domestic Terrorists.” They went along with gaslighting Americans all through the Summer of 2020 when so many small businesses were destroyed, many with no insurance to rebuild, many of them minority-owned. At the time, it was like so many stories on the Left, a taboo subject. Michael Tracey was one of the few brave enough to wade into those waters.The national media might have “moved on” from the riots in Minneapolis, but residents have nowhere to go. Much of the Twin Cities is still in ruins. Boarded-up storefronts still display makeshift notices that read “black owned” or “minority owned” to ward off further destruction. Many locals are reluctant to speak on the record, but some are eager to do so.“It’s been agony,” says Mohamed Ali, a native of Somalia. “I respect the public anger, but I think we carried it too far, to burn our city.” At the height of the chaos, rioters set a large fire in front of his apartment, which sits atop several streetside shops. He spray-painted desperate appeals onto plywood affixed to the storefront windows: “Don’t burn please . . . Kids live upstairs.”While the overturning of Roe v. Wade has spurred some into action, they still have their ongoing problem with the language of inclusivity and what issues they are prioritizing. How can they, for instance, fight for women’s rights when they aren’t fighting for women’s rights in sports? I saw one sign that said “Abortion is a human right.” But it isn’t. It WAS a right to terminate a pregnancy granted to a woman at a time when women were forced to endanger their own lives to have an illegal abortion. This was done both for economic reasons, and, as with Gloria Steinem, so a woman’s entire life wasn’t derailed by an unwanted pregnancy.It is not, nor has it ever been, a HUMAN RIGHT. Life is a human right. Terminating life is not. It is a controversial procedure that we will be debating for the next 100 years. I don’t think abortion should be illegal in this or any other country. I grew up in the post-Roe 1980s and I know how casually my generation and subsequent generations used abortion as a form of birth control. I also know what it feels to regret having had an abortion and how you live with that sorrow your entire life. It is just never discussed much on the Left.I think this is a good time to have a longer and deeper conversation about abortion since this isn’t 1972. We have advanced forms of birth control, like the IUD and patches. We have apps that track your menstrual cycle. Abortions are down significantly since the era when I came of age. That should be another conversation we have. Pew research says:Things are changing. The world is changing. The predictions for future populations are starting to become worrisome. That doesn’t mean women should be forced to have unwanted pregnancies, but it is something that should be widely discussed. Who knows where these stats might go.Fertility rates are down across the board. The Census announced that in 2021, US percentage change in population was its lowest since its founding. Male sperm count is declining. Generation-Z is having less sex, and many millennials have said they aren’t interested in having children at all. More women are choosing to have kids later, which means it’s more difficult to even get pregnant. Elon Musk has said there aren’t enough people and that civilization will collapse if people don’t start having more. Even if you are fine with that grim prediction, those who determine the future are going to be those who have the most babies. It’s simple math.The best plan for the Left is to use the overturning of Roe to mobilize voters ahead of the midterms, with the idea that if they can flip two Senate seats and regain a majority, they can codify the right to abortion into law. It doesn’t seem that hard. But the Left in its current state, lurching from outrage to outrage, using increasingly invasive intimidation practices, not to mention the New Woke Order, and the crashing economy, still has their work cut out for them. 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