Why I Love America and Have Cautious Optimism About Its Future + Phetasy Digest

AfroMan Saves America | Champagne Socialist Are The Worst | Hot Spring Breakers Are Better Than "DEATH TO AMERICA" Any Day | Big Tech Censorship Has Us By The HooHoos | Two Letters About Men and Women

Artwork by Lara Cullen. Find her on Instagram @laracullenstudio.

It’s always incredible when something I write breaks through all the noise, and wow, did my “Letter to the Sane Women Holding it Down” speak to women. I realize there is a male version of this as well, as I wrote in my recent piece for The Daily Wire, the men who make the world are the men who continue to show up and do the work, day after day. The rugged normies are the folks who build this country, and as it is America’s birthday, how this country came to be is something I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking and reading about.

I’m also trying to instill my daughter with the wonder that is the United States of America. It’s easy to look around and only focus on the problems. It’s fashionable to repeat the mantras of defeatism that permeate our culture. “Late stage capitalism.” “We are a nation in decline.” “We are on the backside of an empire in decline.” “America is done.”

My feeling, as I look around and focus on what makes this country great, is that America is whatever we want it to be. We the People. We are gifted this miracle of an experiment. We are descendants in the long line of thought, debate, science, exploration, Enlightenment values, and freedom that all fall under the umbrella of “Western Civilization” and that people all over the globe have clamored to experience. We owe it to our kids and our grandkids and our ancestors to be stewards of this gift, this miracle.

I’ve long had a theory that a lot of our current problems in America could be solved if we all had to do just one task our ancestors used to do in order to survive, like, for instance, churn butter. I’ve been reading the Little House on the Prairie books to my toddler, she loves them, and it’s equally hilarious watching her eyes go wide as she says, “What??? They used a pig’s bladder as a balloon?” Or “What?? Her doll was a corncob with a handkerchief???” And having to explain to her that they didn’t have refrigeration, or cars, or roads, or running water. All of this progress in technology in just 150 years. It’s actually insane when you consider it.

Now, consider the leaps we will make in the next 150 years. That is, if we don’t self-destruct. There is a great documentary out in theaters about the promise and peril of Artificial Intelligence called The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist, and it does a great job of capturing the schizophrenic nature of our current moment. And yet, this country has been faced with many crossroads of promise and peril—and we are here.

I choose to remain cautiously optimistic. I have to for my daughter. What I won’t do is surrender to defeat, nihilism, self-loathing. I will do what my ancestors did. Take risks. Build. Put my head down and stay focused on the work. Feet planted firmly on the ground while looking up to the stars with wonder. Daring to dream of an even greater future and being one of the people working towards that, instead of against it.

We got our garden in. The dirt is so healing. As Maude says in my favorite movie, Harold and Maude, “I like to watch things grow.” Have a great weekend!

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DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #300

Champagne Socialists Tour Cuba While Afroman Wins America

Bridget Phetasy reacts to the ultimate irony of “Champagne Socialists” vacationing in the poverty-stricken ruins of Cuba while praising the system that broke it. Meanwhile, back in the states, Afroman is turning a botched police raid into a viral marketing masterpiece. It’s a tale of two worlds that proves one thing: whether you’re a communist tourist or a rapper with a lemon pound cake, capitalism always wins in the end.

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WALK-INS WELCOME - EPISODE #383

Big Tech Owns Society Now - Jacob Siegel

Jacob Siegel returns to talk about his new book The Information State: Politics and the Age of Total Control, which explains why the war on disinformation is a continuation of the War on Terror using repurposed counterinsurgency tools, and the replacement of bottom-up civic institutions with top-down algorithmic control. They cover how Obama’s administration built the censorship infrastructure that defined the Trump era, the role of the CIA in fabricating Russiagate through the Intelligence Community Assessment, how COVID censorship was far more radicalizing than Russiagate because it touched people’s everyday lives, how tech platforms concentrate power by eliminating private property rights, why younger generations don’t care about privacy because they’ve grown up under constant surveillance, and why freedom in the digital age must be found within the system rather than outside it.

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DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #301

Why Hot Happy Kids Are Driving Critics Crazy

Bridget breaks down the Jesse Watters spring break video that’s making intellectuals and prudes equally furious, explains why hot, dumb happy kids are actually a sign America is doing fine, and reacts to the most insane headline of 2026: a quadruple amputee cornhole champion charged with murder who dumped a body from a self-driving Tesla. Plus, the new wildly inappropriate video game kids are addicted to.

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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.

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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.

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