April 14, 2021 - 3:36pm
Around the world, California is romanticised as a glamorous haven of luxury and sunshine. But the reality, as we have been finding out, is quite different: rubbish stacked in the streets, a homelessness crisis, and an exodus of disillusioned residents. One of these disillusioned residents is Bridget Phetasy, a comedian, writer, podcaster and YouTuber based in Los Angeles, who has grown increasingly frustrated with her home state. California is in a ‘premageddon’, she fears, and that’s not just because of Gavin Newsom’s (the California governor who is up for recall) poor Covid response:
It’s a process that’s been happening for some time and it’s been accelerated by the pandemic and the lockdowns. I’ve been describing it as ‘premageddon’… It’s a little bit pre-apocalyptic or dystopian: you’re seeing increasing homelessness, which is tragic. And it’s also filthy because there’s garbage everywhere. It’s definitely not the Los Angeles I moved to in 2007 when I came back.
- Bridget Phetasy, UnHerd
On her vulnerability to Big Tech:
I would rather be free than have to silo who I am, privately and publicly. But my biggest fear is when you see things like, for instance, what happened in the wake of the president being de-platformed from social media. He basically disappeared, almost like a technical mob hit…. That would be detrimental to me. I always joke that I’m just gonna keep talking until I can’t because I feel like you’re constantly avoiding like the Eye of Sauron.
- Bridget Phetasy, UnHerd
On identity:
I don’t think it’s great that everybody is so invested in making their entire identity about these immutable characteristics, or, in some cases, mutable characteristics, which I can’t get my mind around. Your sex, your gender, your ethnicity — this is what you build your entire world around instead of what gives you meaning beyond the traits that you were just born with. It just feels like we’re going backwards.
- Bridget Phetasy, UnHerd
On the Left:
The Left feels much more insidious to me than the Right, because it seems social… When I talk to people about why they’re self censoring, it’s because they feel like they can’t say certain things. And that’s not being enforced by the government yet, although we are headed in that direction in California. But it is being enforced socially… And then people are petrified of saying anything at work, and are being made to go to these kind of diversity and inclusion trainings, and they can’t say anything about whether or not they agree with the stuff.
- Bridget Phetasy, UnHerd
On vaccine passports:
What’s so shocking to me is how many people are okay with this. I can’t figure out if it’s just because people like being told what to do, or need to be told what to do. And then there’s a sense of self righteousness that goes along with that. So you’re basically following the lead and then you get to be arrogant and take the moral high ground.
- Bridget Phetasy, UnHerd
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SubscribeI found it hilarious to listen to because she is so obviously one of them, she is perfect example of ‘The Revolution Eating Its Own.’
I imagine the more Fabian Marxists watching the Bolsheviks in dismay, and never thinking ‘What have We created’? Not realizing, as Walt Kelly’s Pogo did “”WeHave Met the Enemyand He IsUs“” is exactly what is going on.
I think we (I) appreciate what you mean. She went off to LA to roll out conventional, possibly moralistic Hollywood material, but she’s since been mugged on the road to reality. I would suggest this parallel: I’ve been thinking of writing an essay: “Orwell: Mugged on the Road Wigan Pier”
Orwell was totally “one of them”. Indeed, a bunch of “them” formally commissioned him to write about the coal miners in the north of England. That yielded “The Road to Wigan Pier,” of course. But when you read the piece you can see Orwell experiencing cognitive dissonance. And it turns out that the road to Wigan Pier ultimately led Orwell to Spain and to Orwell’s “red pilling” (or is it “black pilling”?) while fighting Franco’s fascists with the other internacionales.
So, she’s been having her experience sitting in a trench outside Madrid in 1936, and she discovers that the liberals really aren’t about freedom (liberalism) at all. Like the socially-conservative right, the socially-orthodox left is about bullying the rest of us live-and-let-live types into self-abnegation and submission.
Why not move to an alternative US platform, Bridget, like Odysee?
Bridget is another US podcaster that I’ve been following for a while, although I’ve never really heard her say anything funny. Perhaps the fact of the BLM woman buying all the expensive houses in largely white areas will do a lot to break the woke tyranny.
Anyway, it’s good to see these people getting some exposure over here. Some other suggestions: Jimmy Dore, Steven Crowder, Styxhexenhammer666 (he’s an American in Amsterdam), Jeremy from the Quartering, Eric Weinstein, Alexander Mercouris of The Duran, etc.
Peter Schiff, JP Sears. Schiff; a doomsday forecaster, but a top notch one, almost hypnotic in his hour long podcasts, as he calls for the ending of the Global economy and that all must buy gold, silver, and Developing Countries ETFs, (which he sells, but still, he has me convinced) And JP, the self help, spiritual vegan guru, who does right wing satirical, anti covid lockdown, skits. (and is always one step from Youtube canceling him)
Frasier, give them a whirl, I suspect you are in finance, so what about it? Bubble or growth?
Yes, I’ve watched a few Peter Schiff videos over the last few months. I don’t know JP Sears.
I think Schiff is largely correct, and I have read books like the brilliantly explanatory Paper Money Collapse by Detlev Schlichter. It’s all a matter of timing. I am not in finance.
Reminds me a bit of the Triggernometry podcast guys.
They have great guests and are really good interviewers on the whole, but I can 100% understand why comedy didn’t work out for them
Interestingly, Freddie Sayers’ interview with Jonathan Sumption is not linked on UnHerd’s own Interviews page (I checked again before posting). Whether this is due to some obscure editorial nuance or simple oversight, I do not know, but having recommended the interview to numerous people since, I have to wonder how many of them managed to find it.
The search terms “UnHerd Jonathan Sumption” will find the page on DuckDuckGo.
(It seems I managed to “dislike” my own comment — yayyy!)
I would not advocate a “Vaccine Passport”. Instead, I’d advocate a “COVID Status Certificate” …slightly different! Not everyone can have a vaccine (yet!) but every adult can have a lateral flow test (there and then if necessary) or be proven to having had the disease in the last 6 months.
Why does your right to conceal your status trump my right to go somewhere reasonably safely?
Who says it need be mandatory? Some businesses will welcome the opportunity to say “come into my shop – everyone here is most likely clean of COVID”. Those that don’t want to say that need not do so.
Also, from time to time over the next few years I could imagine a business checking our status during “risky” high R times, but not doing so at times when the virus is not present in the community.
The exclusion argument is moot too. 76% of adults (and growing) in the UK have smart phones. Those that don’t can just have a lateral flow test and wait 30 mins!
The “extension” argument (e.g. adding credit score) is just scaremongering. This is a COVID status certificate we are talking about.
It’s not detrimental to ethnic communities either Freddie – you are conflating correlation with causation! With a COVID status certificate, you don’t need a vaccine. Having a vaccine is obviously more convenient because you don’t have to keep taking lateral flow tests every few days – you can choose whether you have a vaccine or not!
In the UK, the reason it hasn’t been brought in yet is because there are just too many adults who haven’t even had the opportunity to be vaccinated yet, so too many people would be inconvenienced with frequent lateral flow tests. As time passes, the vaccine rollout will progress down the age groups and an ever smaller number need be inconvenienced.
Why does your right to conceal your status trump my right to go somewhere reasonably safely?
why does your desire to lose weight impact on my eating habits? You already have a right to move about in “reasonable safety;” this is a back-door attempt to redefine the term, and worse, it relies on coercion, the usual mark of bad ideas.
The extension argument is a recognition of govt’s worst tendencies – to always expand its scope and power. You’re signing onto a version of the Chinese social credit system.
why does your desire to lose weight impact on my eating habits? You already have a right to move about in “reasonable safety;”
It doesn’t. Your eating habits have nothing to do with my weight! As far as I know, your flab can’t float in my direction and stick to me! Whereas, your COVID could head my direction and could cause me long COVID, hospitalisation, loss of earnings and, in extremis, death.
Neither does my solution rely on coercion – I specifically said it need not be mandatory and that the need for them might only be required from time to time.
I can avoid businesses / venues that don’t participate and you can you can avoid those that do.
Football clubs that want full stadiums will likely participate.
You seem to presume that the pandemic is over. It seems to me that it (or some variant) will recur and that some kind of certification would actually avoid future total lockdowns … think of it as a smarter way to curtail the spread of the virus.
Since I don’t have covid in the first place, you have nothing to worry about. When did you adopt the idea of people forced to prove their innocence as the standard of conduct in a free society?
It’s coercion no matter how you try to gloss that over, very much like with the Chinese system where some data point is used to regulate access to ordinary transactions.
Perhaps a variant will occur, which mostly means the pandemic will never be over. It’s a virus; we’ve yet to eradicate the flu, the common cold, HIV, and so forth.
Are you seriously trying to make a parallel between COVID positive / COVID negative with Guilt / Innocence?
the parallel makes itself. If lockdowns and other punitive measures were the answer, then Florida would be worse off than New York. And if you start demanding proof of clean health over this virus, then you have no principle on which to oppose a future demand pertaining to something else.
I recomend a watching of some ‘Peter Schiff’ youtubes, or Dalio, or Munger, or any of the doomsayers who predict the imminent collapse of the Western economy, and thus the world, by the economic situation of the Covid Response. May not happen, probably will.
Lockdown has been proven to cause more death than not locking down anywhere a comparison has been made (other than islands which shut the borders like the NZ). California/Florida, North Dakota/South Dakota. Belarus/East Europe, Sweden/Europe.
“Why does your right to conceal your status trump my right to go somewhere reasonably safely?” Because Freedom? Get your vaccine, if you think it works then what are you afraid of?
You speak as though this is Ebola. Shame…. they have really got to you.
Your fear would be laughable if it weren‘t so damn frightening.
Why do you assume I fear for myself? I don’t. I would just rather have a smarter solution than lockdown next time it rears its ugly head. Rather like raising the Thames barrier next time there’s a high tide – a lot simpler than drying out whole swathes of Central London.
What’s your solution? Bolsonaro’s I guess!