A New Year, A New Hope – Sasha Stone 1/1/23

Source: sashastone.substack.com

Two years ago, I started this Substack to find a path out of the madness that had overtaken the Left. The madness was everywhere. People were getting fired right and left, mostly left, for saying words they weren’t supposed to say. There was a sudden climate of fear that was crippling nearly every institution of power, most especially the one I work in: Hollywood.

The fear was that there were racists and rapists everywhere and in everything. Sex and race became two major mass hysteria events in this country after the election of Donald Trump in 2016. To Trump supporters, his win was nothing less than a miracle. A smart strategy involving a few key swing states to bring in a slim Electoral College victory, mainly with the help of Facebook’s micro-targeting.

To the Left, to the establishment especially, it was the Devil Himself, riding into Salem Village one freezing winter in 1692. He was the Man in the Long Black Coat. He was, to them, the only kind of evil they knew. He was everything they feared wrapped up in a single man: white, male, heterosexual, and mocking them openly. No one could look away. He was and remains too charismatic to ignore.

For a while I thought Trump had so offended them that he really was the existential crisis they kept insisting had happened to our country. It wasn’t until the Al Franken witch hunt, then the Kavanaugh swarm, that I realized something was very very wrong with the Left. I was seeing it every day on Twitter too. People were being purged, exiled, fired, shunned, attacked, canceled, unpersoned everywhere. It was once accused, forever guilty.

I began to put on the brakes on my own website when it came to this hysteria. It had hit the Oscar race hard, driving conspiracy theories about certain films being racist and Hollywood being sexist. It wouldn’t completely upend the industry until the Summer of 2020. Now, they’re seeing just how bad things have become since no one wants to watch the movies anymore.

The midterms of 2022 was proof enough that whatever power they put in place in 2020 to win that election, they were still relying on. It certainly wasn’t the candidates who were barely there. No, it was a well-oiled machine – a fascist-like system that aligned every major institution of power to support the Democrats. All because they feared Trump and his supporters winning a single election. Early, mail-in voting, ballot harvesting, billions in donations. They caught a lucky break with abortion driving Gen-Z to the polls.

But it was still more than that. There was still media manipulation driving one narrative about the “Big Lie,” The “insurrection” and “violent extremism.” Watching them put the pieces in place again, subvert the truth again, lie to the public again made me feel sick.

But then Elon Musk bought Twitter. And suddenly, the clouds parted. It felt like some kind of miracle.

The blue checks still dominate the app, of course, and still bully journalists into silence and compliance. We’re not out of the woods yet. But there is hope. There is something. One person – a very wealthy person – is willing to take the heat. Musk is taking much incoming for this.

There he is, John Blumenthal – World’s Dumbest Man who wrote the op-ed, Op-Ed: I bought a Tesla to help the environment. Now, I’m embarrassed to drive it . My own eyes water with second-hand embarrassment reading his piece. It starts this way:

The [Tesla] was impractical, but it had sentimental value. My environmental activist friends were not impressed by my assiduous urban composting, LED bulb installations and energy-saving appliances. I needed to do more to diminish my carbon footprint. The icebergs were melting, my friends said, and at least one polar bear was wandering around homeless and hungry because of me.

Then, after Musk buys Twitter, our pearl-clutching, couch-fainting idiot writes:

Because of the recent revelation of Elon Musk’s political views — all of which I abhor — I’m starting to worry about what sort of political statement the car is making. Will people see me as a symbol of right-wing environmentalism, a living oxymoron?

When people ask me why I left the Left, I always flip it back around and say, how can you stand being part of the Left now? This guy never cared about the climate or the environment. He cared about his image. He wanted the pats on the back from his peers. For the Left, virtue signaling is more important than even reducing your carbon footprint. Not everyone on the Left, of course, but the loudest among them.

And he closes it this way:

I don’t know whether to sell, but I do know that I’m just not as comfortable driving it anymore.

It’s a beautifully designed car with no carbon emission, and initially, I was proud of owning it and being seen driving a vehicle that displayed my concern for the environment. But I’m a liberal, and if Musk’s politics don’t change radically for the better, driving a Tesla will become, at least for me, as hypocritical and untenable as driving a gas guzzler was.

It would be brilliant satire if it weren’t actually happening. This guy wrote that with a straight face, awash in liberal guilt for daring to drive a Tesla. You can’t make it up.

I want you to stop and think about what this op-ed actually is. It is a typical struggle session. It’s one I encounter almost every day, sometimes in the comment section here. THINK LIKE WE DO OR ELSE. Someone once said to me on my own website, “I went to Sasha Stone’s Substack and it was just Fox News talking points so I don’t know if I want to read her work anymore.”

They can’t stand that one bee has strayed from the hive, from the established order of things. They can’t stand someone like Musk humanizing the Right, thinking the Babylon Bee is funny and opening his heart to the exiled. They, we, must renounce Trump and his supporters — agree with their hysteria and false narrative, or we too are the bad people, the extremists….

Read More…