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Route 66 will turn 100 next year. It slithers along I-40 as a road that almost didn’t think it needed to be there. So much of roadside America vanished once they built the interstate, but you can still see signs of it here and there.While glancing over at Route 66, as I drove back from Ohio to California, I couldn’t help but see how America has become so divided between those who exist in the virtual new frontier of the internet and those who still live in the long-forgotten old America, an America Big Tech will soon leave behind. A week or so ago, while driving through Lakewood, Ohio, I saw two police officers helping a ranting and raving woman open her locked car door. They just stood there, with their heads down, doing their job as temperatures sank to 20 degrees and the snow flurries swirled around their heads. They wanted to be home with their families, but there they were, doing their jobs.Cleveland is a symbol of an America in steep decline. Emptied out factories, some areas so crippled by poverty, they look like third-world countries. The businesses have been abandoned, graffiti covers almost every block, and most people know to stay away from these neighborhoods.My daughter was commissioned to paint a mural on the side of an abandoned building near a vacantd lot in a lower-middle-class neighborhood in Cleveland to dress it up a little. It is cities like Cleveland that Trump was elected to help fix. And it is why bringing in millions from poverty-ridden countries only means these Americans are pushed to the back of the line. His methods might be crude and in some cases, reckless, but his intentions have always been the same. Not just to Make America Great Again, but to Make America Safe Again. The Democrats can’t keep America safe because they have become disconnected from real life and exist inside a self-perpetuating feedback loop that tells them only what they want to hear.They can’t keep us safe on the streets. They can’t keep businesses safe. They can’t keep us safe on the roads. They can’t keep families safe in cities ruled by gang warfare. They can’t keep women safe from violent attacks by random lunatics who should not even be roaming the streets at all. They can’t keep women and girls safe in locker rooms. They can’t keep children safe in classrooms where they insist upon rewriting America’s history and foisting an ideological cult upon the young so that they, too, grow up believing they can change their gender if the color of their skin makes them bad people. They can’t keep those strung out on fentanyl safe either, the hundreds of thousands of overdoses every year. If anything, the Democrats are fighting to protect the rights of the drug cartels, like they fight to protect the rights of illegal immigrants, and like they fight to protect the rights of criminals. The Democrats exist in a protective bubble. They never see or hear the stories that come in brief flashes: a woman was punched on the subway, a man was carjacked with his toddler watching, a store was robbed, and a family was shot at a fast-food restaurant. Protesters beat someone up for wearing a MAGA hat, and a woman is kicked out of a gym for accurately calling attention to a naked man in the locker room. They can’t really address any of these problems, so they shapeshift their message to see what works. Once they win, they can’t deliver. Trump is trying to deliver, and all they’re doing is trying to stop him. Democrats RisingTyler Robinson has never looked better. He was smiling as he strode into the courthouse on trial for the murder of Charlie Kirk. And why wouldn’t he be smiling? He knows he’s a hero on the Left, and he knows that a loud faction of the Right is defending him by blaming - wait for it - Israel.Amanda Seyfried has refused to apologize for saying Charlie Kirk was “hateful,” even if her words echoed Robinson’s, who said that Charlie deserved to be killed because he “spread too much hate.” Seyfried, who has a major movie coming out in a couple of weeks, will be celebrated for her comments and will likely earn an Oscar nomination for a different role in which she plays the presumed second coming of Christ in the Shaker movement. Oh, the irony. The Kirk assassination should have rocked America to its core, as previous political assassinations have. Maybe it would have shaken us all awake so that we could ask, How did we ever get here? But if the Trump near-assassination didn’t do it, if so many of the Real Housewives of the Democratic Party celebrated with cold glasses of Chardonnay and an Instagram post, nothing would.The Democrats have the wind at their backs with major wins in elections all over the country, including the first Democrat to win in Miami in almost 30 years. They believe they have the messaging right and are hitting on affordability, healthcare, and a living wage. So by the looks of it now, nothing can stop them from taking the House in 2026 and the presidency in 2028.They haven’t changed a thing. They haven’t tacked to the center. They haven’t confronted “gender affirming care.” In fact, they’re openly bragging about supporting it, at least if the performative meme factory of frontrunner Gavin, the Great White Male Hope for the Democrats in 2028, is any indication.Here is Ben Shapiro.To them, opposing “trans kids” is “hate.” And that is what got Charlie Kirk killed, except that his death was like lifting a fallen tree in the forest. All of the creepy crawlies came out. It isn’t just the Left. Some on the Right are making a play for the giant hole Charlie left behind. “I don’t care about the midterms,” says Candace Owens. “I hate the Republican Party,” says Tucker Carlson. Marjorie Taylor Greene is enjoying her fifteen minutes of fame by being a useful idiot for the Left, telling CNN and 60 Minutes everything they want to hear. MAGA is tearing itself apart. What separated Charlie Kirk from the parasitic vultures who have flown in to peck at the corpse is that he wasn’t in it just for clicks and views or for money. He was in it because he believed in it, and he was dedicated to helping defeat the Left to save this country, especially its youth. Without him, however, the Democrats can use their powerful media machine to manipulate the message, even to deflect from their own craziness long enough to fool the public into trusting them before they once again demand that all must comply or else. That’s our potential future if the Right can’t get it together to mount a proper offense.The problem for the Democrats is that the mass delusions they push onto the American public have almost no practical application in the real America, the one I’ve just seen as I’ve driven across the country.What I saw was an America that needs politicians not just for “affordability,” but to keep things running - buses, grocery stores, schools, and most especially, to keep them and their neighborhoods safe, something the Democrats can’t and won’t do. Trump telling working-class Americans to buy fewer dolls this Christmas is the kind of thing that can sink a presidency and a legacy. True, he isn’t running for re-election, but it’s the kind of thing that will stick. The truth matters less than the perception, and for now, the Democrats control the media and thus, the message. To defeat the Democrats, Trump and MAGA will have to find a way to tell Americans to buy as many dolls as they want because now they can afford them. Sticks and StonesThe greatest crime imaginable to the Good People of the Left is a bad word. I was there when we began curating our soft language. Make the words inoffensive, and the problems will be solved. There is no homelessness; there are the “unhoused” people. There are no drug addicts, but mentally ill people. We don’t give away our pets, we “rehome” them. It isn’t catastrophic, life-altering medications and surgeries that sterilize children and wreck their bodies for life. It’s “gender affirming care.” So, of course, Trump would be their biggest enemy. He got famous for saying anything, even if — especially if — it was shocking. The Left knows this and yet, they can’t help themselves. It’s “dangerous” because bad words are “dangerous” in a Woketopia ruled by soft language.They exist in an ecosystem that turns the story of a Cinnebon employee caught on tape using the N-word into the biggest scandal of the week. That convinces them that every terrible thing they’ve said and done for ten years has been justified. This country is infested, they believe, with “racists,” and they plan to do something about it once they take back power. How will they do that? By mandating thought and speech, just as they did last time. The internet gives them that kind of control to decide who gets to stay and who has to go. They won’t only use it, they’ll expand on it. But words are nothing compared to a bullet in the neck, a punch in the face, or a knife across the throat. But even if the victims are not white, crime remains an elusive concept for them because crime presents as “systemically racist police,” or mass incarceration, or something Trump and MAGA did. They especially ignore crimes by illegal immigrants. Cleveland and other cities like it have been ravaged by crime and drugs. Trump’s answer was to send in National Guard troops to protect ICE agents and clean up the cities. Then he began bombing the cartel boats bringing drugs to the United States. Everything he does is to keep America safe, and yet, to the Democrats, that’s criminal activity. So the citizens languish, overdose, and die, and the only person to ever do anything about it is the guy they still want to impeach, destroy, or even kill. Of Thee I SingI have just spent the past few weeks driving across this big, beautiful, complicated country, and I’ve never seen a greater disconnect between the traumas foisted upon Americans by the Democrats and the reality of life on the ground. In real life, we can still see each other as fellow Americans. The guy in the elevator can pet my dog and talk to me about how much he misses his dog, who died last year. There are no identifiers that pit us against each other, unless someone is wearing a MAGA hat or a No Kings t-shirt.But that is not true online. We are tracked and traced, our likes and our friends are used to put us in a specific category. An America ruled by the Left will take that one step further, all the way to 1984, where those allowed in are only those who love Big Brother.During the last Civil War, one of the greatest concerns was holding the Union together. It mattered that America survive. Here’s hoping we honor their sacrifice, find a better way forward for all of us, and yes, hold onto the dream. 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