Relax, Mom, I'm Monitoring The Situation + Phetasy Digest
Iran War Memes Extravaganza | American Fem-Libtoids Chanting "dEaTh To aMeRiCa" | WokalDistance Reveals the Modern Leftist Playbook | Bridget's Spectator Column is Ahead of Its Time (As Usual)
Norman Mailer’s vision of America is enormous, but it can also be so small: “There could be no politics which gave warmth to one’s body until the country had recovered its imagination, its pioneer lust for the unexpected and incalculable.” As Americans, we occasionally believe that we have lost our spirit, our imagination, our combustible beauty and all the Hell that it causes. America has always had this quiet anxiety. But in its 250th year, it seems to be winning its fight against nihilism and spinelessness.
Operation Epic Fury has hammered this in, and there’s no shortage of evidence or memes, because the documentation and propagandization of the war is available immediately: Elon Musk shared that, this week, X saw its highest usage ever. Millions of us waded through the tsunami of information like futuristic detectives, searching for truth the way journalists used to. I sent my friends (including the Phetasy Team) so many “monitoring the situation” memes and jokes that we began abbreviating it as “MTS,” as in, “I’m MTS, are you?”
For some reason, the results of my incessant info-mining, and the passionate movement it aligned with, reminded me of Walt Whitman’s poem “America,” from his masterpiece Leaves of Grass, specifically his reading of it—the only extant audio of his voice, soundtracked by the crackle you’d expect from a wax recording cylinder recorded in 1888. It makes a pretty good hype track when you’re MTS.
DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #294
America Bombed Iran and Made Memes About It
Bridget breaks down the weekend’s military operations and the bizarre explosion of AI-generated meme warfare that followed. From missile strikes set to relaxing beach music to the “first AI meme blitz,” Bridget explores our increasingly dissociative relationship with modern conflict.
WALK-INS WELCOME - EPISODE #380
The Activist Handbook They Don’t Want You to Know About - Michael Young
Michael Young returns to the podcast for another epic conversation with Bridget to pull back the curtain on Beautiful Trouble—the activist handbook that’s basically Rules for Radicals on steroids. If you’ve ever wondered why protests seem to turn on and off like a faucet, why certain tactics feel weirdly coordinated, or how Minnesota went from zero to chaos overnight, this conversation breaks down the entire playbook. Michael walks us through the actual training manuals activists use: how to put targets in decision dilemmas, why “the real action is your target’s reaction,” deploying sympathetic characters like the Wall of Moms, playing to the audience that isn’t there (the cameras), using your radical fringe to shift the Overton window, the spectrum of allies strategy, power mapping, and how they literally hold training camps teaching people how to organize protests with color-coded violence zones.
DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #295
Liberal Feminists Love the Ayatollah
Bridget dives into the “breathtaking circular logic” of American progressive women who are mourning the dismantling of a theocratic regime. From TikTokers calling for the “Death of America” to the silence of feminists regarding actual patriarchy, Bridget asks why liberal women are more afraid of “Islamophobia” than a regime that hangs women for showing their hair.
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.
BRIDGET WAS RIGHT
THE SPECTATOR: A state of virtual war
