A Great American Rocketship + Phetasy Digest
Scenes From The No Kings Protests | Ayaan Hirsi Ali Is A Legend | A Reading of Bridge’s Viral Article | Gen X Holdin It Down | Hang In There, Sane Ladies | You Too, Boys | Groypers Are Ew
For weeks ahead of the Artemis II launch, I repeatedly re-watched For All Mankind (1989), the Brian Eno-soundtracked masterpiece composed exclusively of footage from the Apollo space program. I also kept thinking about Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “Windhover,” a reaction to the majesty of a falcon: “Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing! / Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here / Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion / Times told lovelier, more dangerous.”
But the day of the Artemis II launch, “Windhover” vanished from my mind, after I received a Facebook DM from my uncle Thomas, who has written articles, essays, poems, plays, fiction, and several books in his cottage outside Thurles, Ireland, a town of 8,000. It was a poem he’d written:
When there's a bridge Between stars and sod who knows all men may yet find God and so at last in one another see ourselves as sister- brother Bon voyage Artemis II
Uncle Thomas occasionally does an impression of John Wayne. It’s one of many ways that he expresses his deep love for America. The "Artemis II” poem is another lovely example of this spirit: Its speaker is piously overwhelmed by the universe, a void that’s about to be smaller than ever before, with a voyage once again led by the Yanks (and one Canadian), so the directness of American English is the best way to characterize this flight toward God: A rare moment where our species is as united as a family—stirred by the humane beauty of a rocket bursting into the steady air at 22 times the speed of sound, ascending like a God-appointed falcon, toward the grey chalky craters of our only moon, as part of a NASA mission to test equipment and scout for real estate, future gas stations along the route to Mars, through the darkness between giant bodies, the dust of interposing silences.
The poem’s speaker is so stunned by the enormity of it all that he disregards standard punctuation like commas and periods, reducing the stanza to an undifferentiated rush of thoughts. And then, as he looks up at the pluming terror of steam and fire, he feels an ancient hush, and it’s comforting, and he’s hopeful enough to say “Bon voyage” in salute.
Happy Easter, Pham.
DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #302
No Kings Protestors Are Doing Exactly What Trump Wants
Bridget just got back from L.A. and has firsthand reporting from the No Kings protest — which turned out to be mostly octogenarians with arts-and-crafts signs and Starbucks cups. She breaks down why Trump is definitely jerking off to being called a king, why the real counterculture in Santa Monica is going to Catholic Mass, and why Americans need to appreciate the miracle of airplanes more.
WALK-INS WELCOME - EPISODE #384
Our Tolerance Is Killing Us: Ayaan Hirsi Ali on Saving Civilization
Ayaan Hirsi Ali sits down with Bridget for an in-depth conversation about if and how the West can save itself. They discuss why the Constitution isn’t a suicide pact and shouldn’t be weaponized against us by those who seek our destruction, how our core values of tolerance and freedom are being exploited by adversaries who don’t share those values, the post-9/11 failure of Western elites to understand Islamic ideology and jihadist motivation, and the binary choice America faces with Iran’s regime — destroy them or they destroy us.
DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #303
Stop Pandering to Gen Z Radicals
Bridget reacts to her recent “Leave Me Behind” essay going viral and dives into why legacy media stars are desperately chasing a youth demographic that doesn’t care about them. She breaks down the difference between building a “territory” for your work versus fighting for “hierarchy” in an algorithm-driven world. It’s a call to stop performing for 20-somethings and start focusing on the “invisible audience” of late Boomers and Gen Xers.
A Love Letter to the Sane Women Holding It Down
Mar 22
I’ve been wanting to write this for a while because, more often than not, I find myself doomscrolling, screaming “NOT ALL WOMEN!” It seems like most of the women represented in media are, for lack of a better word, insane. I blame the algorithms for elevating the craziest of us. So this is for you—the woman reading this who has been quietly holding it t…
THE DAILY WIRE
America Tried To ‘Fix’ Men For Two Decades. Here’s What It Got Instead.
America spent two decades trying to “fix” masculinity. It nearly broke the country — and the guys who complained the loudest about it turned out to be the ones with the least ability to fix it. America needs manly men — not men who are afraid of their masculinity, and not men who only talk about it.
THE SPECTATOR
Meet the male Kardashians
What happens when the Internet’s Groypers gather in Miami Beach for a night of “slay gurl” partying? Reality TV, the likes of which have never been seen.
Good God the synchronicity. I’ve been reading Hopkins the last two weeks and am planning on writing my next script for our channel on a Hopkins poem.
I loved this poem from Uncle Thomas. Excellent.
Very nice - and I want more from Uncle Thomas! I love that poem - it's a keeper in my journal!