Show notes
The Democrats, the media, and the blue-checks on Twitter have no idea how many people have been red-pilled over the past three years. No one who watches Joe and Mika or Rachel Maddow or reads the New York Times will ever be red-pilled. They simply believe that is the only reality. How could it not be if every high-status person in America is going along with it? If your friends and family go along with it, if your social media feed confirms it every day with links. If it’s in the media, it must be true, right? How do you not trust it if it’s on NBC News or the Washington Post?Waking up to the media’s near-total collapse during the Trump years is a big part of being red-pilled. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. The only way to escape the media’s hold on the narrative is to cut it out completely, at least until you can see that there is another reality, and very often, the actual truth.If they hadn’t already given up on the “establishment” watching them crush Bernie Sanders like a bug in 2016, 2020 would do it. The response to COVID was a big one. Dividing the country the way it did into the compliant and the non-compliant. What it did to businesses, to the minds of children, to everyone who was locked down and locked in - unable to attend funerals, weddings, and death beds. But the raid on Mar-a-Lago very likely has red-pilled Americans even more, especially when you put it together with the authoritarianism during COVID, the suppression of speech, the silencing of dissent, and the dehumanization we all live with every day. To watch our Department of Justice raid a former president’s home months before the midterms, where the Democrats were expected to do very badly, looks suspect to anyone. If they were trying to create distrust in our institutions, they succeeded. Most Americans have seen, maybe for the first time, that our government has become too powerful, too punitive, and too authoritarian in crushing dissenting voices and outsiders who challenge that authority. We call that being red-pilled.More worrisome is the ongoing mass hysteria that started on Twitter, spread into our institutions of power, and now has spread to our government. To have such a complicit and compliant media is even more terrifying. What wouldn’t they go along with by now? Gulags? We all thought “cancel culture” would be confined to social media but clearly it has become the modus operandi for our establishment government. It’s hard not see this as yet another extension of the insanity and hysteria over Trump. As the Wall Street Journal’s Kimberly Strassel writes:Trump derangement syndrome has a curious way of scrambling coherent thought. Witness the Democratic-media complex’s blind insistence the Justice Department raid on Donald Trump’s home is just and necessary—rather than a dangerous move for their party and the republic.In descending on Mar-a-Lago, the department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation shifted the U.S. into the category of countries whose ruling parties use government power to investigate political rivals. No attorney general has ever signed off on a raid on a former president’s home, in what could be the groundwork for criminal charges.The Mar-a-Lago raid on its own would have one thing. But it comes right after Merrick Garland announced the “largest investigation in American history” against a former president. That came on the heels of prime-time hearings that aired on every news network except Fox, led by Liz Cheney, where they compared January 6th to the end of slavery and the Jim Crow South. This, after Kamala Harris, compared January 6th to Pearl Harbor and 9/11. A red-pilled America is probably starting to think the reaction to Trump, rather than Trump himself, might be the even bigger threat. They were already losing voters by the millions. Hispanic voters, Asian voters, even Black voters were being red-pilled and drifting rightward. That meant there was likely a red wave in the November midterms. Biden’s catastrophic poll numbers meant Democrats could lose and lose big. That was unacceptable. It shouldn’t be too surprising that they used that moment to hold their primetime extravaganza of Janaury 6th. If they can’t win over voters with better candidates or policies, they will scare the living daylights out of them. Donald Trump hadn’t even announced he was running for office, but the failure of Biden and the Democrats alone was enough to launch an all-out war on Trump, his henchmen, and his supporters.Instead of bringing more voters in, the administrative state has now red-pilled even more Americans. That’s certainly true of Hispanic voters, as a recent Spectator article outlines: It’s likely that many of these voters agree with Rep. Mayra Flores (R-Texas) who responded to the Mar-a-Lago search thus: “The FBI raid on the residence of the former POTUS is unprecedented. We do not live in a third world country.” This point will certainly resonate with many first and second generation Hispanic immigrants, many of whom came to the United States to escape countries where such secret police raids are all too common. It’s doubtful that Flores or her constituents were satisfied by Attorney General Garland’s dilatory and defensive acknowledgment that he approved the decision to seek the search warrant.Whether the newly red-pilled Americans will become GOP voters or whether they will support Trump at all remains an open question. But many of them will be coming out of August 8th with a high distrust for a government that would use the Department of Justice to sabotage its political enemies. The Spectator’s Gary Anderson wonders if Biden has crossed the point of no return:Rome’s republic collapsed when its politicians started using the law to eliminate opponents, a custom that began with the Marius–Sulla civil war. The guy in power used the judiciary authority of the Roman Senate to eliminate his adversaries. The intended victim would raise legions and fleets in self-defense; this took money. The contender who could raise the most troops or who was the better tactician got to be in charge. Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon because he knew that his opponents in the Senate had decided to have him executed if he returned to Rome without the protection of his legions. He had violated several Roman Republic laws during his invasion of Gaul, but there would be no fair public trial. The concept of Roman justice was dead. From that point on, might made right.Is this the beginning of the great war that will define the Fourth Turning? Writes Neil Howe and William Strauss:“Decisive events will occur—events so vast, powerful, and unique that they lie beyond today's wildest hypotheses. These events will inspire great documents and speeches, visions of a new political order being framed. People will discover a hitherto unimagined capacity to fight and die, and to let their children fight and die, for a communal cause. The Spirit of America will return, because there will be no other choice.Thus will Americans reenact the great ancient myth of the ekpyrosis. Thus will we achieve our next rendezvous with destiny.”Here we are, almost two years into the Biden presidency, and Biden has proven himself to be beyond incompetent, despite being continually propped up by the media. It isn’t a coincidence that they are coming for Trump the same week they are desperately trying to boost Biden’s poll numbers. They might be able to keep the people afraid enough to be distracted. Still, there is no getting around what happened a year ago when Biden’s sloppy exit from Afghanistan led to the deaths of a dozen American soldiers and sent his poll numbers crashing down:A 20-year-old man who was the brother of one of the dead soldiers recently killed himself near the memorial for his brother. Except for the Daily Beast, only Conservative sites covered the story. It would be shocking at any other time except the one we live in now. The media and our government willfully ignore the carnage left in the wake of Biden’s bad policies, whether it’s Afghanistan which likely caused Putin to invade Ukraine, China to flirt with invading Taiwan, the rising murder rate in cities with “defund the police,” or the two January 6th rioters who have committed suicide, or Ashli Babbitt shot point blank by a member of the Capitol Police - these Americans just don’t matter because they don’t serve the narrative.What is most frightening about watching the media spin on a story like the unprecedented raid on a former president’s home, or any story on any day, is how they always offload the bad stuff onto Trump and MAGA. Now, they’ve pivoted away from the naked abuse of power displayed by a politicized DOJ and towards the reaction by the GOP against the FBI. While it’s true that a man showed up at FBI headquarters with a nail gun, it’s not like that’s the only act of political violence we’ve seen lately. They control the media, however, and can drive fear and hysteria however they want. That’s just pure gaslighting. Why shouldn’t there be a volcanic response? Do they want everyone to lie down and pretend to like it? They can protest as loudly, and as violently as they want over every single thing Trump said or did for the four years he was in power, but the GOP is not allowed to be angry about this?The media has long since lost touch with reality. They listen to Twitter, not the American public. For too long now, the Biden administration has been taking its cues from the wrong people. They think if it makes Joy Behar happy, it’s worth doing. They think it's the right move if Rob Reiner approves on Twitter. Twitter is a small pond with way too many big fish driving ongoing hysteria and preventing the Democrats from focusing on the problems of average Americans. Chasing Trump for six years based on one mass hysteria event after another has destroyed the Democratic Party and possibly our Department of Justice. Just because they can indict Trump on some procedural error doesn’t mean they should. The problem with mass hysteria is that it often leads to the dehumanization of whole groups of people. While most see it as more of a physical affliction, like coughing fits or laughing disease, it can also work when a threat spreads quickly in a tight-knit community. Think about a snake slithering into a tent. The more who are connected, the faster the hysteria spreads. That can be helpful in life or death situations, but when it comes to what is mostly an existential threat, like witches or Communists, or even Jews, or newly freed Black Americans after the Civil War, that fear eventually morphs into dehumanization. That often leads to the worst crimes against humanity. Once people are dehumanized, as Trump and his supporters have been, there are no limits to what can be done to them. That’s not to compare Trump supporters with Jews during the Holocaust or the Jim Crow South; it’s just to say that the mechanisms are the same. The “good Germans” had been conditioned to dehumanize Jews, which meant they could be carted off to concentration camps long before anyone knew anything about gas chambers. The Germans believed Hitler was making Germany safer and more prosperous now that the “parasites” had been purged.The hysteria only ends when they’ve gotten rid of the bad thing. That is why we watched person after person purged and persecuted from their jobs, Hollywood, and social media all through the Trump years, a practice that continues to this day. In 2016 there are more people online and connected than ever before. In 2020, even more people were online and connected. Dehumanization is the red line we should never cross, not necessarily because of what it does to other people, but because of what it does to ourselves, nothing less than the total destruction of the human soul.In Salem, over 200 people were accused of witchcraft, all because a few adolescent girls began faking symptoms. With limited education - they only had the Bible, and only men were allowed to study it - and an isolated new utopia, the Puritans were constantly under siege by direct threats. It was freezing cold. Native Americans were attacking them without warning. And then came the Devil Himself, their greatest fear.Witches had no way out of the accusation, just as someone today is always guilty once accused. They could confess as a witch and live or refuse to confess and be hanged among members of their community who cheered on their deaths. But not everyone was compliant, just like now. Giles Corey was a terrible person by all accounts. He beat his wife regularly. But he refused to confess to being a witch. They tortured him with heavy stones placed on his chest until his tongue fell out of his mouth, and he died. Then there was Thomas Maule, a Quaker, who spent a year in jail to make sure the story of Salem was told and remembered. Maule understood persecution because in Salem, they didn’t only jail accused witches. They didn’t much like anyone who wasn’t a Puritan. They jailed Quakers all of the time and treated them like outsiders, much like our Left now does to non-compliant Trump supporters. Maule is credited with leading the way toward the First Amendment and as the founder of objective journalism that held the powerful to account. There were no real witches in Salem, America is not corrupt to its core with “white supremacy,” and Trump is not an omnipotent Super Villain. We’re all just human beings, flaws and all. Trump is still the same gadfly from the 1980s whose fame revolved around his opulent lifestyle. He’s the same guy who starred in Celebrity Apprentice. Trump is not secretive - if anything, he’s an over-sharer. He doesn’t hide things or tries to grab power behind the scenes. Everything is right on the page, warts and all. He perplexes the Left because he still believes in an America where everyone has a right to say what they want, lives how they want, thinks what they want regardless of the fast-changing rules of behavior mandated by the new Left. Trump’s rise is no coincidence. He is overtly and deliberately offensive. He mocked a disabled reporter. He made fun of John McCain. He called Marco Rubio “Little Marco.” He often seems like a bully. But there is a side to Trump people don’t know and don’t see. The human side of Trump. When you take the time to see that, dehumanization evaporates. This doesn’t mean I’m suggesting you “like” Trump, see him as a good person or even support him. It just means we should get a grip before things go too far to turn back around. We’re already there. There is nothing left of the Trump hunters. They have been destroyed by their addiction. It defines who they are now and defines what they are. For people who have everything - money, culture, art museums, every major corporation in the country, all Big Tech platforms were undone by their need to destroy one man. Americans are looking at the January 6th committee hearings, and now, with the raid on Mar-a-Lago and thinking, do they not trust their own candidates or policies to win in November? Why are they so worried the people will vote for Trump instead? Shouldn’t they be fixing themselves rather than trying to take out their opponent before he’s even announced he’s running?They can’t quit Trump because he went at the Kings and the Queens - Obama, Bill Clinton, the Bush’s, the Cheneys. The Squad. Nancy Pelosi. He mocked all of them. He got his MAGA fingerprints all over the furniture in the White House. Now, they’re done dancing around it. With a fully compliant media and a rabid blue-check army on Twitter they are ready for their authoritarian closeup. To quote Paddy Chayefsky’s brilliant screenplay for Network, Trump has meddled with the primal forces of nature, and for that, he must ATONE. While discussing Network, Chayefsky warned against what he called “the destructiveness of absolute beliefs.” He then added, “That the only total commitment any of us can have is to other human beings.”Our government leaders should spend less time with their ruthless, grotesque power grabs and more time trying to make us see each other as human beings again. Or as Jefferson Smith, an outsider who came to Washington only to see his character smeared, once said, “love thy neighbor.”Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is a film about government corruption and the one man who went into the machine thinking he could make a difference. I do not doubt that the intentions of Adam Schiff, Liz Cheney, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden aren’t good. But in their unending hunt to destroy Trump, they’ve destroyed themselves.I never thought anything could shake my faith and loyalty to the Democratic Party. I trusted them. I believed in them. That doesn’t mean I think the Republican Party is any better, but they don’t control everything as the Democrats do. They will probably indict Trump. That will mark the last gasp of their collapsing empire. The red pills will be eaten like candy. No American will ever see them the same way again. I am not MAGA. I am not a Conservative. My friends and family do not understand why I care about Trump and his supporters. They want me to join them in their hatred. They want me to be inside the same group hysteria as they are. I know where they’re coming from. I used to be among them. I did everything they’re doing now. But the red pill is a powerful one. Once you find your way out of the bubble of hysteria on the Left, it feels more like normal life. People are people again. And that, my friends, is worth waking up for. 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