Show notes
The worst thing that’s ever happened to the Democrats is democracy.It must be quite an existential crisis that, after all that, the rest of the country rejected their opinion of Donald Trump. That the guy they said was a rapist, a racist, a fascist, a dictator, a Nazi, a bigot, a transphobe, a misogynist, a Russian asset, a criminal, a felon, a fraudster, a fake, a traitor, an election denier and insurrectionist, an extremist, a terrorist, a white supremacist, a phony that they impeached twice and indicted four times, and became the first presidential candidate with a mug shot, and to be convicted of a felony still won the popular vote.That has got to really burn.But it isn’t the Trump side that is now in a perpetual state of shock because it existed inside a utopian bubble, cutting itself off from the rest of America. It isn’t the Trump side that cosplayed World War II for so long that it lost touch with reality about either our world now or what really happened in World War II. It isn’t the Trump side that was the empire.Their war-torn resistance fighters were so disgusted that none of the Democrats had done enough to “stop Hitler Trump and his Nazi leader, Elon Musk,” that their approval numbers were at historic lows. DO SOMETHING, their supporters cried.So Cory Booker took to the Senate floor to remind them of what they still stand for. And to rally the troops. He prepared in advance for the performance of his life. He denied himself food and water to go the distance. It was, for him, a chance to audition for the part of Charismatic Leader, the democrats so desperately need.Booker found a way: It’s not Left or Right but right or WRONG.It’s a far cry from Obama’s “not red states or blue states, but the United States.” The Democrats no longer believe that. They went from “don’t normalize Trump and his supporters” to it’s more than justified to demonize, dehumanize, even terrorize them. They are “bad people.” They’re no longer welcome. Not in our culture, restaurants, movie theaters, family gatherings, and, most of all, our democracy.Their anger stems from their class privilege of having everything they need, yet they can’t accept losing something they want.Here is Batya Ungar-Sargon:Either the Democrats really are caught up in a mass delusion about who Trump is and why he won, or else they’re the drama club, and none of it was ever real.Splendor in the GrassI wasn’t just in the Drama Club in high school. I was the undisputed queen. Just ask anyone who went to high school with me. I was a terrible student. I barely graduated. My nickname was “no-show Stone,” but the one thing I showed up for was the Drama Club.That's me as Elizabeth Proctor in the high school production of The Crucible.In case you’ve never seen or read The Crucible, Elizabeth Proctor was John Proctor's pregnant wife who was accused of witchcraft but who was spared because of the presumed innocence of her baby. Her husband, John Proctor, would be hanged.I could never have known that all of these decades later, we’d all be living in a Salem of our own making, and I’d be once again an accused and condemned witch.Inside the drama club, I had a magic mirror - a small group of people who thought I hung the moon. My Drama teacher thought that too. I was his favorite, at least for a time. I didn’t know the word “grooming” back then, but looking back on it, I see that’s probably what he was doing—a pinch here, a grope there. On the last day of my junior year, he French kissed me just before I went away for summer break.That Summer, he drove up to my house and dropped off a copy of the play Splendor in the Grass. I took that to mean I would be cast as the lead, the part Natalie Wood played in the movie. As the queen of the Drama Club, I got all of the leading roles. Of course, I would play Deannie.But when it came time to cast the play, the part went to someone who wasn’t even in the drama club. She was the prettiest girl in school: the Head Cheerleader and the Homecoming Queen. Our teacher had broken the silent code of the drama club - nobody from the outside is allowed in. Because if they do, our fantasy world is shattered.That’s all we had. We weren’t the popular kids, the cheerleaders, the jocks, the science nerds. We were people who didn’t belong anywhere else. But we also liked escaping into a fantasy world of being another person other than ourselves.During the Me Too movement, my friends would always bring up our drama teacher, but honestly, I was more angry that he’d given my part away to a prettier girl.In reality, the Homecoming Queen was the right person to play Deannie, even if our teacher probably just had the hots for her. She was good, too—better than I would have been. Because she was popular, everyone in the school came to see the play.We were all big fish in a small pond, which gave us power we weren’t willing to relinquish. But having the whole school see our play meant reality was here, whether we liked it or not.I often think about the drama club now when I watch Christopher Guest’s hilarious Waiting for Guffman, which is about a self-important director of a small town theater group and their delusions of grandeur.And that’s also what I see when I look at the democrats and all of the performative protesters and activists on the Left, from Eric Swalwell to AOC to Jasmine Crocket to Chuck Schumer to Cory Booker, to all of these delusional people who believe Musk did the Nazi salute and Trump is Hitler.They are Waiting for Guffman. They are the drama club.It’s a cosplay fantasy, a dystopian Renaissance Faire. None of it is real. The American people have been watching this performative outrage for almost a decade. They wanted to turn the channel so badly they voted for Donald Trump a second time, and now, here they all are, once again, caterwauling about the very democracy that just took them out of power.They still believe that doing exactly the same thing for this long will get them a different result, the very definition of insanity.But there’s a darkness too, a rising violence. What they all mean when they say “Hands off” is not just “hands off” our government, but “hands off” everything else too.Along with keying Teslas and violent outbursts against Trump supporters, there is a hashtag making the rounds on TikTok called “when it happens,” where users fantasize about Trump’s death.Identity First vs. America First.During the last Civil War, the two conflicting realities were that a country founded on freedom could not own human beings vs. the false reality that slaves could not survive as free human beings and that there would be chaos and collapse if things changed.Now, we find ourselves once again at a crossroads with two factions believing in two completely separate realities. This time, it’s not about westward expansion but rather our migration onto the new frontier of the internet, AI, and the upcoming robot revolution. What will this country be going forward? What will be our values? What will define male and female? What will decide power?You can see each of our potential futures laid out before us. Whole generations have come of age in virtual reality, where they can choose their own avatars and have their own audiences for their own show. It’s all performative. But to be included, you must follow the rules. If you don’t, out you go. 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