Best of the Program | Guest: Bridget Phetasy | 8/20/19

Hey podcasters, it's a great show today.

We're talking about a lot of things.

Peter King, of course, the assault on the weapons ban.

We kind of take that apart.

Peter

might be wrong on that.

Also, the meaning that we have all lost and perhaps why we're shooting ourselves and others.

And Bridget Fettesey joins us.

She's probably one of the most screwed up people I know, and I love her for it.

But

she is somebody who has,

she's politically homeless.

She just started, she was in default mode, factory settings of, oh yeah, I'm a progressive because that's what my parents were.

Then she started to pay attention because she had to.

We talked about that.

We talked about Joe Rogan, ransomware, the Bill of Rights and the Second Amendment.

And we look at the rights and privileges, which I don't think I've ever heard anybody talk about it this way.

You don't want to miss it all on today's podcast.

You're listening to

the best of the blend back program.

The assault weapons ban that Democratic leaders have been reluctant to advance despite strong support among their rank and file members in the House just got its first Republican backer.

Yay, it's Pete King.

Peter King said, these are weapons of mass slaughter.

Huh.

I don't see any need for them in everyday society.

Oh.

Huh.

I mean, if Pete doesn't see it, then it's.

I think the Constitution says there's a Pete clause in the Constitution that anyone named Pete.

Shall not be infringed

by a guy named Pete, right?

So that's why Mayor Pete is such a big candidate on the left.

Right.

Because he can step in and ban anything to do the Pete Clause.

Right.

There is no Pete Clause.

You know, it's really amazing to me.

Let me explain the Constitution.

Right now, people are saying we have to change the Constitution and take that right away.

Now, what does it say in our Declaration of Independence?

What is our mission statement?

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.

There is no Pete clause.

That all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable, unchangeable

rights.

Among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

So let me take it out of the political realm.

What was the story yesterday, Stu?

Oh, the story yesterday that talked about how

45, was it 45 children or 35 children?

35 children have been been killed in a hot car

this year alone.

Last year, it was like 56 people were killed in a hot car.

52, and it was children.

52.

Children.

Children.

What happens is the parents are so dumb, they leave their kid in a hot car.

Now, your kid can die within 15 minutes.

Left in a hot car,

a car can go up in temperature within 10 minutes, and a child can die in 15.

Now,

we all seem to know not to do that to dogs,

but our children, well, they're sleeping.

Yeah, and it's 100 degrees outside, or it's 90 degrees outside, and that car

is an oven.

So what are you going to do about it?

There are more kids that die in hot cars

than there were kids that were killed by guns this year.

Well, you're talking about mass shootings.

So, I think

that's a good question.

Because, I mean, we talked about this a little bit yesterday.

The Washington Post made up this big profile, and they said 54 years, 165 mass shootings, 1,196 victims, and they listed them all in very tiny print to kind of give you this overwhelming feeling that, like, how the big of a problem is.

Well, that winds up to be 22 people per year, which is a problem.

It is not nothing, it's a big deal.

35 children just just this year in a hot car.

Last year, it was 52 children.

That's a lot.

That's a lot.

That's way too many.

No kid should die in a hot car.

That's crazy.

But we don't ban cars.

Now,

here's the other thing we don't ban.

We also don't tell people you have to have a license and a background check to have a child.

Why?

Now, to adopt, sure.

But to have a child, no.

That is your

inalienable right.

That power to have a child was bestowed on you with God.

So if your body is working the way God intended it, well,

you can have a child.

And no one, no one in this country would say, oh, well, let's infringe on those rights.

You know, I want to see before you have a child, I want to make sure that you're a good parent.

I want to make sure that you're the right kind of people.

You know, the only people who ever infringed on that?

Progressives.

Progressives.

It's the reason we have a blood test.

Now, why do we have a blood test today?

Why do we have it?

Does it, I mean, do they do anything with it?

What the hell is the blood test for?

The blood test was to make sure that you weren't marrying any cousins.

You weren't marrying any undesirables.

You're not gonna marry one of them useless people.

It was the beginning steps of eugenics to make sure that we only allow the right people to breed.

We don't want a country of imbeciles and idiots and quote coloreds.

That's why we have the blood test and the marriage license.

It was an evil reason to start it.

So now, what the hell are we doing?

Do they have a right to do that?

Do you think they have a right to tell you, hey, by the way, you can only have one child?

No,

because it's a God-given right.

That's what the Bill of Rights means.

That's what our Declaration of Independence means.

That's what's different about us than any other country.

We say that man is born with certain rights.

And one of those rights is to defend yourself.

Well, how are you going to defend yourself?

What?

You're going to defend yourself against the United States military?

Well, yeah, it seems to me that ISIS and Al-Qaeda and everybody else was doing a pretty good job.

Seems like the rebels in the Middle East are doing a pretty good job.

What is it that, why are they holding up flags, American flags, and signs that say we need a Second Amendment in Hong Kong today?

Because yes, if that's your only, if that's the last resort, if your government has become so tyrannical,

yes, I will defend myself against fighter jets and tanks.

I will.

We all will.

They come and they round people up in countries

because they can't defend themselves.

You have a right to self-defense.

You have an inalienable right.

Now, of course, these guns are

mass destruction weapons.

Okay,

let's not equate any gun

to

Russia just blew up accidentally in

one of their towns.

Oops, there goes a nuclear weapon.

That's a weapon of mass destruction.

A weapon of war?

Any gun, any knife, any pair of hands is a weapon of war.

What's happening right now is Peter King and others on the Democrat or Republican side, they don't understand the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, any of the amendments.

They don't understand them.

Shall not befringed.

Infringed.

Shall not be.

You can't change this right.

It's the only one that has that clause in it.

You know, it doesn't say, hey, freedom of speech, freedom of religion.

It just says shall not.

Congress shall not do these things.

This one is: no, no, no.

Not only say you shall not take these guns, you shall not even infringe on them.

You can't even come close to this one.

Well, you know, you're what?

You're not going to ban somebody crying fire from a crowded movie theater.

Well, that one doesn't say shall not be infringed, does it?

This one does.

And it's not that I love guns.

It's that I love freedom.

I love freedom.

What is the real cause of what's happening to us?

I'll get to it here in 60 seconds.

Stand by.

I want to talk to you about the real problem in our society that no one seems to want to address.

But it is everywhere.

We are in a society right now that is fundamentally changing.

We are changing on many, many levels.

We're changing jobs.

We know that things are not going to be the same.

Massive companies are trying to find their way through this

change.

Our towns are changing.

There's no jobs in many of our small towns in America.

Farming is seemingly dying in this nation.

We are a nation of farmers.

When you lose that, you begin to lose real meaning.

Our city skylines are so bright we can't even see the stars and ask ourselves, wow,

who who are we?

Let alone who am I?

We are being filled with meaningless junk.

We're a nation of shoppers.

We're all trying to fill some empty hole.

There doesn't seem to be any answers.

Not from the ages.

No,

look backward.

Look backward and see if you can find any answers.

No, nobody at any time had any good answers.

No, it's all new answers.

That doesn't make sense.

Our children aren't talking to each other.

We're just texting one another.

We're becoming animals online.

There's a real problem with depression.

Suicides are through the roof.

What is the cause of mass shooters?

Most times it's loneliness.

They've been ostracized.

They feel alone.

They don't have any meaning in their life.

They're looking just for something to make them feel, or worse, looking for something to make them famous because that's how empty we are.

Do you know that scientists now say they're on the verge of creating a pill to make loneliness go away?

What the hell does that pill do to you?

It makes you not feel lonely?

Should we not be working on a pill and be maybe perhaps working on ourselves to be able to see people for who they are and where they're going and what's happening in their life.

Depression is something that hits and you think

it's logical.

It starts someplace logical.

And then it's like a snowball.

And if you're prone to clinical depression at all, and we all go through periods of time in our life

where this happens to us.

There's a chemical reaction.

You're not getting the endorphins in your brain that you need.

And so what happens is it starts out logical and then it becomes clinical.

Then it becomes chemical.

And you go further and further and further down until you start thinking, you know, the answer is the world's better without me, but I'm not going alone.

Who's having a serious conversation

about

the mental health of our society?

Who's having that conversation?

Why do you think drugs, opioids are so out of whack right now?

We're having an epidemic.

It's worse than anything I think we've ever had before.

And I've lived a few years.

I remember how bad crack was.

I remember the heroin plague.

I remember all of this.

This is worse because it's coming in pills

and it's going everywhere.

It's in the inner city.

It's in the heartland.

It's happening with

old people, business people, homeless people.

It's happening with everybody.

And it's rotting us from the inside.

It's an opioid crisis.

It's not an opioid crisis.

It's a gun crisis.

It's not a gun crisis.

It's a human crisis.

It's a soul crisis.

It's a loneliness crisis.

It's a lack of meaning crisis.

It's a depression crisis.

People only shoot other people when they feel there's no meaning attached to anything.

I finished a book today.

I finished it this morning.

It's uh called The Volunteer, and it's a guy who

uh was a was a Polish

resistance fighter started fighting against the Germans from the minute they got in he's just a normal ordinary guy

and

what happened to him was he

he just changed he saw a need and he just changed

and he

he went and he volunteered to to go to Auschwitz to see if he could help.

And then he fought his whole life.

His whole life was just hell.

He was in Auschwitz for two years, then escaped.

And I mean, the things that happened to him, just horrible.

I want to.

I want to share

one

thing that he wrote just before he was killed by the Russians.

It.

It is our answer.

It's not more gun control, drug control, or anything else.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

Hey, it's Glenn, and if you like what you hear on the program, you should check out Pat Gray Unleashed.

His podcast is available wherever you download your favorite podcast.

Bridget Fetesy.

She is a comedian.

She is a writer.

She's really screwed up.

And that's why I think I like her so much because I can relate to her so much.

She joins us now.

She's just written an article for The Spectator called The Battle Cry of the Politically Homeless.

Hello, fellow traveler.

How are you?

That's quite an intro.

She's really screwed up.

Well, I mean, you are.

Let's be honest, yes.

So, Britain,

just for anybody who doesn't know you, you were a writer for Playboy.

You've always considered yourself a progressive, but you're not somebody who really even thought about it.

You just did your life, right?

Yeah, I kind of always refer to it as my factory settings.

It was more,

you know, it was like I was in a Google self-driving car, and I just was born and raised a liberal Democrat and worked really hard and was chasing, you know, paycheck after paycheck and never really paid attention, was told that people like yourself are evil and

just kept moving until I came out of my coma.

And you came out of your 2013.

You came out of your coma because you started saying things that all of a sudden were not politically correct.

And you're like, wait a minute.

Yeah,

the culture, I mean, I think the culture has shifted to the extremes in both directions.

So perhaps a lot of people haven't moved.

The culture moved around us.

And

so I was not aware of this.

It wasn't like I was online participating in the culture wars all of these years, and I just stumbled into them.

And I think this is true for a lot of Americans.

And so now you write this for the spectator because nobody is, I mean, you've been erased from Playboy.

I mean, that's sans.

They don't erase anything.

But

all of your articles that you wrote for them for a long time, they're all gone, very popular, gone.

Very popular.

And

you've kind of been, as the Chinese would say, disappeared.

I have a bet, yeah.

Right.

It's interesting times.

Right.

And so the people that are talking to you are people like me, which you don't necessarily are, you're not necessarily thrilled about.

You're not like, oh,

I'm thrilled to be talking to you, Glenn.

How dare you?

No, but I mean, you know, you never saw yourself two years ago going, you know what, I might be friends with Glenn Beck.

No, I wouldn't.

I always say this because I got sober in 2013.

And I say if you had told me in 2013 that I would have been friends with Glenn Beck, I would have been like, what drugs are you on?

Give me more of them.

So

you, in this article, you talk about how

you're just,

you're somebody with a brain.

You have your own ideas.

You might disagree with people, but you're not in a tribe.

And this has got to stop.

I think, you know, I get a lot of fair criticism on this, obviously,

from the tribes.

And

I'm not so naive to think we live in a two-party system essentially when people might feel this way, but then when the going gets tougher, it comes to voting day, they have to pick something.

Somebody, they have to make a choice.

But what, you know, I set up

an email for people to tell me how they felt about this.

Some people say nobody shifted politically.

They just are,

they just think they might be more conservative, but the culture has shifted, which in a lot of cases is probably true.

And obviously,

what I'm hearing is self-selected because I represent these people who don't feel represented.

So, these are the people who are writing me.

Now,

what is interesting are the people who have shifted politically and are in swing states.

Those are the ones who are fascinating to me.

Like a woman wrote to me from Florida and she came center from the right because of Trump's often demonizing rhetoric and she just doesn't like the way that he speaks.

And as

she mentioned that she just doesn't know if she can stomach voting for him, but she certainly can't get on board with the left either.

And I said, you know, I asked her what she would do and she doesn't know.

My biggest fear is that people like that woman will sit the election out completely.

That won't be good.

No,

there's a lot of people who are just saying, I'm, this, it's disgusting to me on both sides.

And, and not to be, you know, I think ultimately too, the other refrain that I hear over and over and over again are people who have been alienated by their, the left.

And essentially, they say,

Trump is a limited problem that we have to deal with.

What they're seeing on the left, socialism

and

free speech erosion in a social way,

that kind of approved message that everybody needs to get on board with or be canceled, that that is more insidious and dangerous in the long term than whatever is going on in the right.

So it's interesting.

It's interesting in my inbox.

And if people want to email me, they can.

I am politically homeless at Gmail.

Feel free.

I'd love to hear from anyone.

So the criticism I get from the right the most is that I'm of moral relativism.

And on the left, it's that I'm

like a Martin Luther King kind of white moderate.

What?

What is the left saying to you?

White?

I don't even understand that.

What?

That I'm like the equivalent of a good German.

And, you know, like, or as they, I heard like

a thousand times that Martin Luther King had a lot to say about white moderates, which is ridiculous because not everybody writing is white.

So

bad argument.

We just, we live in a bizarre time.

Listen to this.

I'd love to get your thoughts on this.

We all, both sides, have worried that our rights would be trampled by stormtroopers in the government, right?

We all thought, you know, the the government's going to go fascist or communist or whatever, and, you know, a Bill of Rights, and they're all going to be taken by the government.

But really,

it is insidious the way this is happening.

The government is really becoming Google, Amazon, you know, these giant corporations, and the stormtroopers are just the mob.

Neither one of those are covered by the Constitution.

So

Google can isolate anyone they want.

The government couldn't because of the First Amendment, but Google can.

And the enforcers are not coming from the government.

They're coming from the people.

Yeah,

this is what's deeply concerning to me is when

on my good days, I feel like that kind of cancel culture, in particular where I'm seeing it on the left and and progressive.

Nobody's pure, nobody can pass these purity tests constantly.

Eventually, this snake will eat itself.

It's like a snake eating its own tail.

Eventually, it has to eat itself and maybe fizzle out.

But then I see something like what happened with Sarah Silverman, for instance, last week, where she went on a podcast and she was talking about how she got

in movie role because of her, um, because of the sketch she did in 2007 in which she was in blackface.

and

and and apologized for in like 2010 on her own show and apologizing yeah and and it was a i i believe it was a it was a criticism you know she was making fun of racism

and and

so

this is the stuff that is deeply worrisome to me because

we have to offer people paths to redemption and when you're canceling people for things that they've apologized for, that they maybe have learned from,

I don't know,

from the perspective of somebody who was a Democrat and looking at perhaps what the Democrats are doing going into 2020, I don't actually see how that's helpful to them.

Now, you know, people on your show are like, good, they're walking right into a brick wall again, which I

understand.

But from the perspective of somebody who's,

I often hear that, you know, if you're in the center, all of these YouTube is creating this path to the right, and there's only a path to the right.

Well, that's because the far left has eroded the center left, and

there is no path to the left, essentially.

If you're a moderate, even at all, you're essentially, you know, I don't, I don't even know if you're right, if you're right of Bernie, you're essentially a conservative now.

You're as bad as me.

Yeah, you're as bad as me, and I'm bad as Hitler.

Yeah.

Hang on.

We're going to continue our conversation with Bridget Fetti.

You can find her and follow her at Twitter at Bridget Fettisy and BridgetFetesy.com.

Back in

just a second.

More on the battle cry of the political homeless.

Bridget, you're new to the gun world.

Are you not?

I'm new.

Sorry, I didn't.

You're new to the gun.

You're new to the gun world, right?

Yes.

Right, right.

And were you just your factory default settings against guns?

You know, I think that when you, when people ask me what,

when I started really opening my eyes to

the culture wars it was around

probably 2014 2015 and there was i was writing for playboy there was yet another mass shooting and i

was emotionally reacting as is completely understandable in those situations online

and i was like i don't know anything about guns

i don't know how to i don't know anything about them i don't know any i don't know anything about the laws i don't even know how to

hold one or load one.

And

so I realized, you know,

understandably why I would react emotionally, but perhaps I should maybe get some information before I was spouting my mouth off.

And I go on.

Can I tell you something, Bridget?

That is something that no one in the media does.

The majority of them have zero idea.

I could, I'm not a gun expert.

I could trap them in two questions.

They have no idea what they're talking about, and yet they're coming off and pontificating.

And look, I'll have a reasonable gun conversation with anybody if you know what you're talking about.

Right.

But if you're just, if you're just making stuff up, well, an assault weapon, what's an assault weapon?

What is it?

Can you define it?

Well, it looks spooky.

I mean, you know, that's you can't have a conversation.

That's like trying to

talk about if we should go back to the moon or not with a kindergartner.

It's interesting because I put out a call to my listener or to my at that time following it on Twitter, and I said, you know, I don't know anything about this.

I'd really like to hear what you have to think about it.

And I got such thoughtful, intelligent, long, written answers about people's feelings, primarily independents and conservatives about the

responsible gun owners in most cases.

And then I started just doing my own research and

and being that

and and now I'm you know starting to shoot and I

I

oh you will be ours

I mean according to the left I already am yeah I know I know I know it's just crazy it's crazy because I was told that the people that I wrote about that in the battle cry of the politically homeless I was told we don't exist, you know, there by both sides.

Everyone was like, and people like you don't exist.

Oh, I think you're the, I think you're the majority.

Yeah.

But again, the question is: okay, so we're confused, which

and maybe feeling morally conflicted about what to do in the upcoming election or politically conflicted, or there's one,

you know, there's one thing that we believe in that will have us vote one way or another or are strongly against.

And so

I understand when people say they don't exist.

I know what they're saying, that at the end of the day, people have to pull the lever and vote.

Yeah.

Bridget, it's a lot easier to just throw people in categories, though.

We only have about one minute left, but I wanted to get your take on this Joe Rogan article that came out from the Atlantic.

You have an hour.

Yes, we do, actually.

What's the problem with it?

I just think it's an insidious attempt to undermine the very real need for men like Joe Rogan and masculinity, what his fans represent.

And I know what they're doing.

And also comedy.

I know what pieces like this are doing because they've been kind of implying that Joe is this person who's, you know, a gateway drug to the alt-right.

And pieces like this lay the groundwork very insidiously for that.

And this is where

I rage.

The alt-right is very specific and very small.

It's very small.

There's nothing about Joe Rogan that the alt-right would go, I like that guy.

I think he, I mean, they might like him to watch him, but that's not, he is not alt-right.

Oh, these people.

I know.

It makes it.

I get frustrated because I feel like it's hard to put your finger on, but I'm like, I know what you're doing.

I know what you're doing with this piece.

It's ridiculous.

And it's undermining.

It's like, oh, why is this guy who's representative of millions of men popular?

What are you talking about?

Why is that even a question?

Yeah,

it's a weird piece.

I mean, it kind of makes it appear as if what they're saying is like, look, we're, you know, he, he's really problematic.

He's giving voices to these people in the fringes that don't deserve voices.

And like, that's a who are they to?

Who are they?

Who are are they?

Who decided that they could have a voice in whatever magazine or whatever they, who, who gave them the right to speak for everyone?

It's so past regressive, too.

Just the way that it says things.

I think at the end, his conclusion is, you know, I tried on Joe Rogan's masculinity.

It's not for me, but that kind of insidious throwing under the bus of masculinity is

this is not good.

Okay, we'll come back.

I want to talk to you a little bit more about that.

And the underlying problem is,

I think, that no one is willing to talk about.

And you are in a unique position to talk about it.

Bridget Fetesy.

You know, there's a lot of people that are really starting to wake up.

Some of them have been neutral and just kind of asleep at the Switch politically.

And that's one of the people we're talking to who I think is incredibly brave is Bridget Fedesey.

She's a writer, a host of the podcast

Walk Ins Welcome.

But we've had Jamie Kilstein.

I just had a podcast with Jamie Kilstein, what, last week.

Now, this is a guy who I mean, he was nasty to me.

He had me on his resume as not liking him.

And wore as a badge of honor.

And we had a great conversation, Bridget.

Just great.

Yep.

I love Jamie.

And he's, and it's, it's people who are saying, wait a minute.

Let me examine what I've done.

Let me examine what I really believe, you know?

And those people are going to change the world.

They're just, because I think that's the majority.

They just need,

the majority just needs to see people willing to take the hits.

And it's scary.

It is scary.

And it's easier for me because I don't have kids in a school system.

I don't have a job that's corporate where I'm dealing with HR.

When people ask me what they should do, depending on their situation,

especially coming from the left in particular, I'm usually understanding of why they have to keep their head down and be quiet.

I'm less so.

I used to be more so.

I'm less so now because it's not my country.

It's not your country.

It's all of our country.

And you're risking just as much.

I mean, you are.

I'm risking.

I'm not risking my livelihood because this is my livelihood.

So

I am understanding when, you know,

people have mouths to feed.

That's not true.

I've talked to you in times when you were like, I don't know what I'm going to do.

I don't know what I'm going to do.

I don't know who I'm going to work for.

Oh, yeah, that is true.

Right.

And

I've risked my livelihood.

You know, I put my livelihood and my life in some regards, my family's

on the line.

That's true.

So let me change subjects because I brought up guns with you a minute ago because we're now talking about banning assault weapons, which we've already done that.

It didn't work.

And so it was lifted.

There is no statistics that show that's effective at all, period zero.

But I don't think that we should be having the gun debate, quite honestly.

I think this is because we're a society that is run by politicians that want to divide us and nobody wants to actually talk about the truth.

The truth is we're having more shootings and mass shootings and shootings in Chicago because there's a hole in us.

We are a sick nation and a sick culture.

And all of us,

the drug epidemic is because there's a hole in us.

It's so complex, you know, when you really look at all of these situations and there are many different ones that you just mentioned, it is

incredibly, I'm fascinated about the psychology and the social psychology that

happened, that's happening.

And I do feel like there's a certain amount of,

I always joke on Twitter.

I say, are you okay, America?

You know, there, it feels like collectively the entire country is careening towards some kind of rock bottom.

Like where we are.

So I'm more concerned, Bridget.

Maybe you're saying this.

I'm more concerned that

so many people feel lonely, empty inside.

They have deep depression.

Nobody's talking about the mental health of our kids or of our society.

Nobody's talking about this.

And it's insidious.

Or they do.

And it's in a way that

isn't helpful.

So if you're talking about mental health, it's in a way that's kind of still making it seem, I feel like I don't know anybody who doesn't have mental health issues.

I have mental health issues.

It's so rare to meet somebody who's just balanced and doesn't struggle with some form of anxiety or depression.

And

well, you live in Los Angeles or California, so

in Texas, we're pretty stable.

We're pretty stable.

I do think so.

Yeah,

yes and no.

I think that a lot of it's hidden because people feel like they have to hide it.

What I learned

in writing for Playboy all those years was that men in particular, there's a lot of resources for women to kind of talk about their feelings.

And it's when I would reach out and say, hey guys, how you doing?

Or ask them a question, I would get these long essays because they didn't really feel like they could open up to somebody or they didn't feel like it was socially acceptable to admit that they were struggling.

So there's a lot of secretiveness

around

struggle, feeling like you're struggling.

I think people feel isolated.

by their own struggles because they feel like they don't want to admit that publicly because it will make them seem weak.

Yeah,

they don't believe or know yet that everybody is going through something that they're hiding.

Everybody is going through something that they're ashamed of or they think they're alone on, and they're not.

They're just not alone.

I'm a huge fan of therapy.

Yeah, you are somebody who went through an awful lot.

Your story, your life story is amazing.

And if you missed it, you listen to my podcast.

Just go to wherever you find podcasts and look for the one with Bridget.

You can find it on YouTube, I think, as well.

But you have a fascinating life history, but you got to a place to where you thought

you had no value.

You

were worthless.

And I feel like I hear this a lot from people all across the board.

And I think what you're talking about, this hole that we're feeling,

a lot of people are relating to that.

There's this sense of meaninglessness, hopelessness, and worthlessness.

And I am a huge advocate.

I had to build my core and my self-esteem basically from the ground up.

And this is where I am an advocate for reaching out, asking for help and personal responsibility, because no one can give that to us.

We have to go outward.

for help and inward to look, hold that mirror up to ourselves and truthfully look at where our weaknesses are, where we are, you know, a lot of people will be struggling and I'll be talking to them and my email is always filled with people telling me their stories and then you find out perhaps that they're drinking too much or et cetera.

So there are certain things that people can do to change their life and they're hard choices and changes to make.

the easy thing to do is sit around and whine and blame everybody.

The hard thing to do is to look at ourself and say you know it truly is

changing yourself and then um

then change the world kind of changes around you just by by the very act of you taking control over what you can't control which is

essentially your yourself

bridget do you feel

you still battle with days where you're like

i'm worth

yeah

um

more so,

less worthlessness because I have deeply gone into

I found God, essentially.

And not to turn off all the non-believers, but hang on just a second.

Our apologies then to Fred.

Okay, go ahead.

So I did find, I do,

I think I struggle the most with nihilism.

And in our culture today, I feel everything's so connected.

We're living in this 24-hour news cycle that just wears you down, as you and Sue know probably better than anyone.

And it starts to, you start to feel my biggest struggle is the nihilism.

And I've written about this before.

When I'm in that place of what's it all for, that is a dangerous place for me.

So, you know, it's amazing.

If you look at the millennials, you see that all of it, they just want to be a part of something

of meaning.

And then the other side of the millennials is

life has no meaning.

It's either, I mean, it is, there is this, this, that generation is yearning for something of meaning.

And yet everyone, you know, in their life, generally speaking, in culture, is taking away everything that has meaning.

You know?

And so if you're not

right, I see what you're saying.

No, I just, I think that meaning and what I really had to learn, particularly getting sober, is that meaning doesn't happen to you.

You make meaning.

You have me.

I volunteer with elderly people.

I go,

I work with people who are addicts.

I feel like being of service is a way to find meaning instead of hashtag resisting online all day and expecting the meaning to come find you.

And this is, I mean, I think the biggest problem in America, honestly, other is a two-pronged sense of entitlement and victim culture.

And this is all across the board, left, right, and center.

I see it everywhere.

And when I read my grandfather's letters from World War II, the tone in which he writes is so inspiring and not whiny.

And I see it even in myself.

We live in just a whiny culture in general.

It's the air that we we breathe and live in.

And I have to kind of, you know, he's writing about being underway and getting bombed every day for two months and then calls himself out for self-pity.

I'm like, grandpa,

you can feel sorry for yourself.

You're getting bombed.

And he's like, I know that nobody would want to feel, you know, nobody wants me to feel sorry for myself.

And I'm just having a moment.

And

we're out here like, man,

you know, that's when when you call me brave which thank you i appreciate it i think it is some of the speaking out is an act of bravery but i mean i read my grandpa's letters every day to keep me in check because that was a brave man who was fighting for something that he believed in and

with no self-pity or victimhood at all will you do me a favor would you come back would you come back um

go through your grandpa's letters and give us give us examples of his writing

and then come back.

Yeah.

Okay.

I will, definitely.

Good, because I'm tired of listening to you.

Maybe we'll listen to your grandfather.

Maybe he had something.

Yeah.

I'm tired of listening to you.

Okay.

Bridget, it's always great to talk to you and have you on.

It's great to be here.

Let me know when you, when you can

compile some of your grandfather's words because

I think that'd be great to listen to.

Okay.

Yeah, I would love to.

All my best.

Thank you for having me.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

God bless.

I love,

love

people who are open to discovering new things and people who are taking charge of themselves.

Her story is, I mean, she was a heroin addict.

She was, you know,

raped when she was, you know, in her teens.

And just, I mean, she has had one bad after another.

So, yeah, she screwed up, but boy, she's more sane than most people I know, I think.

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