About Sasha Stone’s Podcast

This week, a friend introduced me to one of his favorite podcasts: "Sasha Stone's Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning."

I jumped right into Sasha' most current podcast, "The Mugshot Heard Round the World: Did the Democrats finally make a Trump voter?"" Sasha is intensely and creatively thoughtful and her non-partisan ideas will emotionally move for those of us who are not completely enraptured with one political tribe. Hence, the "Free Thinking" part of the title to her podcast.

Despite the paltry and insulting offerings to American voters year after year, the challenge is still to vote for the lesser of two evils, right? What is the lesser of two evils in 2024, at the point where the Democrats have repeatedly shat upon the rule of law, desperately embraced censorship and become louder cheerleaders for endless war than even the Republicans?

And will this be the year when black voters thoroughly reject the political party that has repeatedly taken them for granted, often in insulting ways? I'm speaking of the Democrats. I'm basing this question on several conversations I've recently had over the past month, but Sasha also sees a wider trend based on her own research.  And I don't think that most loyal democrats have the faintest inkling that these tectonic plates are dramatically shifting.

In this single episode, Sasha repeatedly challenged me, forcing me to reframe some of my long-held ideas. I immediately became a subscriber. I invite you to listen if you are looking to be challenged.

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The Mistreatment of Jordan Peterson: How Cancel Culture Works

The case of Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson illustrates how cancel culture works. The chilling effect is how and where most of the damage occurs.  Here is an excerpt of an article at The Free Press titled, "Jordan Peterson Goes to ‘War’: The psychologist sells out auditoriums. But he can be stripped of his clinical license because of his tweets. He tells TFP why he won’t back down:

Most of Peterson’s work is technical. (Even the titles of his research are intimidating, like his 2007 paper “Reducing memory distortions in egoistic self-enhancers: Effects of indirect social facilitation.”) Other projects by Peterson are completely anodyne, like his guide and program to improve essay writing.

That’s not what the Ontario Court has taken issue with.

The problem isn’t his clinical practice or his academic research. It’s his worldview. Specifically, his tweets and a few podcast comments, which the College of Psychologists of Ontario, a licensing body for psychologists in the province, considered “unprofessional.”

“The percentage of people who actively oppose what I’m saying is very, very tiny,” Peterson said. “But some of them are extremely committed. And so they can bring disproportionate sway to the decision.” ...

Even if Peterson ultimately loses his license, a man with his following on social media can’t ever be “cancelled.” (And he no longer sees patients anyway.) The more chilling effect of the court’s decision is that it acts as an intimidation toward all other clinical psychologists: self-censor if you share Peterson’s views, or face punishment.

“In all of the areas in which we see pervasive self-censorship, it only takes one example for people to become unwilling to speak their mind. Or even one threat,” Pamela Paresky, a psychologist and author, told The Free Press. “When people say that cancel culture isn’t real because they don’t see people that have legitimately been cancelled, they don’t understand that cancel culture isn't about the cancelling, it’s about the culture. And it’s a culture of fear.”

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They Stay Up All Night Fretting that Someone Might Be Off-Narrative

Tweet from Jim Ferguson: Tweet from Jim Ferguson: "WEF Orders Firefox, Chrome & Safari To Start Blocking ‘Blacklisted Websites’ The information war continues as the #WEF2030Agenda lose ground to truth seekers. So now they are attempting to pass laws to attack information they don’t like." The linked article: "The WEF-controlled nation of France is the first nation to issue a legal directive to web browser company’s to block all websites listed on a blacklist compiled by the Macron regime."

They want to control the browsers now. They are moving up the chain.  I was worried that they were going to try to control the web hosting services next.

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“What is Your Gender Identity?”

"What is Your Gender Identity?"

How would you respond to this question if you were put on the spot? Here's one approach . . .

If I were asked today, I would say something like this: "Unlike sex, "gender identity" is an incoherent and thus meaningless term."

Why do I think "gender identity" is an incoherent term? Here is one reason:

In other words, gender ideologists claim that one's genitals are both A) completely irrelevant to one's gender and B) highly relevant to one's gender. To make both of these claims is incoherent. Here's another thing I might add:

Another idea . . .

Perhaps you could point out that "gender ideology" embraces the regressive sex stereotypes most of us (not only feminists) have been trying to downplay for decades:

A comment to the above tweet:

It really sucks to know that we worked so hard to erase gender stereotypes. Let girls and boys dress how they want, play with whatever toys they wanted, play whatever sports, have whatever interests...boys can dance, girls can be mechanics. We fought so hard. Then this crap.

Or you could invite them to listen to this podcast where Bari Weiss interviews Andrew Sullivan, a pioneer in gay rights.  Sullivan doesn't support gender ideology because it is functionally homophobic. Most children claiming to be confused about their sex will, if left alone (not surgically butchered and rendered sterile by cross-sex hormones) grow up to accept their bodies, the great majority of them growing up to be gay (and see here).  For this reason, Sullivan characterizes gender ideology to be homophobic.

If things heat up too much, you might want to inject some humor:

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A study in Self-Sabotage and Self-Censorship

Seymour Hersh looks at the absence of discussion regarding the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline:

Polling in Germany has consistently shown enormous discontent with the economic crisis it faces. One survey analyzed by Bloomberg last month found that only 39 percent of German voters believe the country will be a leading industrial nation in the next decade. The dispatch specifically cited internal political infighting over the nation’s home and business heating subsidy policies but did not mention a major cause of the crisis—Biden’s decision to destroy the Nord Stream pipelines.

A review of recent reporting on the German economic crisis in German, American, and international business publications—much of it excellent—yielded not a single citation of the pipeline’s destruction as a major reason for national pessimism. I couldn’t help wondering what Pinter would have said about the self-censorship.

In July Politico reported that Robert Habeck, the German vice chancellor and economic minister, a member of the Green Party, warned that the country was certain to face a shrinking economy and a transition to green energy that “will put a burden” on the population. In May, the German government announced that the country had entered a recession. Some of the nation’s companies, according to Politico, “have begun to ditch the Fatherland, triggering fears of deindustrialization.”

Habeck said the economic downturn could be explained by high energy prices, which Germany felt more intensely than other countries “because it relied on cheap Russian gas.” The article did not state why there is no longer Russian gas flowing to Germany...

Scholz said nothing in public and returned to the White House last winter for a private two-day visit—his plane carried no members of the German media with him—that included a long one-on-one session with Biden. There was no state dinner nor a press conference, other than a brief exchange of platitudes with the president in front of the White House press corps, who were not permitted to not to ask questions.

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