Dear America (w/Brendan Fitzgibbons)

Well that happened. So now what? In this all new solo episode, Brendan talks to America, and it answers back, not just in Taco Bell orders. 

He then goes all in on: 

• The idea of America as a multitude, not a single entity. 
• Donald Trump as a molotov cocktail to everything we know. 
• What this all means going forward. 
• The one thing we CAN'T let this election do to us. 
• And the amazing story of a teacher's list that changed everyone's life. 

RESOURCES
Brendan Fitzgibbons
Calm's Silent Ad
How to Scream

Transcript

Hello and good morning to a very special the day after an election spiritual asshole episode. This is as topical as we get over here, folks. This is the most topical shit you've ever seen. It's gonna be a TikTok video as a podcast. , I hope you, some of you are expecting recipes, weird children dancing.

And probably some tips how to use a lawnmower. Thank you so much for coming. I know I've been off the grid. I finished my book proposal, which you guys are going to love when it comes out. And I've been really busy with that and my TV show. But I've been thinking about you all the time. And I'm thinking about maybe switching to doing [00:01:00] like much shorter podcasts, just more frequently, but TBD on that.

Anyways, I wanted to chime in today because I have a lot of thoughts about what happened last night and this morning. And I'm thinking about you guys and thinking about what you think about it, all of it. And. I want to contextualize it in terms of a spiritual perspective. Maybe offer a different take than a lot of people are saying, which, you know, what a lot of people are saying, ah, or, or Hell yeah, dog. I told you, dog. I love kid rock. I will not be offering any of those takes. In fact, I'm going to try and do this all in one take. Myself so you guys can get the raw gritty response from what I think happened now I could get into like the granular of what I think happened like the strategery of it all But I want to just back up and more talk about this on a macro like spiritual level and some of you might not like What I'm about to say, but it's okay.

Just have an open mind have an open heart do seven [00:02:00] mushrooms And maybe a pizza and let's just strap in. okay. So first of all, the title of this episode is called Dear America. Like usually what happens when something like this happens, I've now lived through a lot of elections is a lot of liberal leaning people such as myself will get online and write some like long drown out sad think piece about what does this really mean?

Or they'll try to dissect it in terms of gender or race or a country that's riddled in Um, a traumatic, dramatic past of racism and sexism and all that stuff and therefore this is just like Karma coming to roost or something but I want to talk about this a little bit differently because I think that for those of you that have been listening to my podcast you guys are along for this wild ride and I'm gonna start by saying the title of this episode.

It's called dear america and a lot of people are gonna come on here and say that like Or say, a lot of people are going to go on the internet and say how fucked up we are, and this is just a reflection of how fucked up we are. [00:03:00] But I'd like to remind everybody that America is a geographic body of land that has been drawn up and diced into 50 different states and territories almost entirely arbitrarily.

And the idea that America Is separate from anybody else or different than anybody else. Kind of is why we're in a bit of a crisis in the first place, in my opinion. So I don't even see America anymore as like this place. That's a singular entity. Like how the fuck could you actually sum up America? Right?

Cause we have, on one hand, we have like, a city like Los Angeles, a city like Dallas, Texas, then we have Wyoming, then we have Alaska, then we have New Orleans, which is basically a different country than Boston, which is a different country than all of Kansas, which is somewhat of a haunting nightmare. And so, I'd like to just start by, like, having that be a baseline.

Like, this idea that [00:04:00] somehow we can sum up America as one singular entity is kind of crazy to me. Like, that's not true. We are such a multitude of so many things. If it was up to me, y'all, this country would be ten countries. Bottom line, just for the anthems, like, don't you want to hear the Florida anthem of, We Found Love in a Homeless Place?

Come on guys, don't you want to hear the Oregon anthem of just one guy? Playing a harp alone under a big tree So I would like to just caution against the idea that like America is something like that idea of well, we're this you know now I want to kind of talk about Trump And this is going to be a different take than many people probably have had.

Um, but I do believe, and I've said in this podcast several times, and so many other people have said in this podcast so many times, we are all mirror reflections of each other. So for better or for worse, Donald Trump is a mirror. Of a lot of our psyche. Like, have you been on the internet? Have you read [00:05:00] YouTube comments?

To me, he's kind of like a walking YouTube comment. and I wanted to say all this with the caveat of, I did not vote for this guy. So this is not how I wanted things to go. So let's just be very clear as I proceed. With that being said, I also want to say. I welcome everybody to this podcast of some of my favorite people in the world voted for Trump, including my mother, who probably stayed up all night last night partying by doing a bunch of raw milk shots.

 So I ain't here to judge anybody on who they voted for. People who really liked Robert Kennedy, I get it. He was different. Okay, maybe he did, you know, do some weird things with some whales, but that's fine. Heh heh heh heh heh. Well, I'm gonna talk about Trump and just offer this perspective and just see what you guys think about this.

It's somewhat hopeful, actually. if you look at every major trend and every facet of our life, our modern life 20 years, What is one central theme that you can take from [00:06:00] it? And that is like the decentralization of power, meaning that we're slowly coming back to oneness. And I truly believe that, that Now we're almost at a place where one person can create an entire feature film using AI and their iPhone, right?

You don't need these gatekeepers anymore. There's a massive trend in sports now where coaches are your buddy. So it's like this like really big decentralization like think about how you can have access to everything right now. Without any gatekeepers, without any outside force, you have an internet connection.

I mean, the, the entertainment industry is such a good example. Being able to basically Airbnb, like that idea of like, no longer you're going to hotels. We will turn our homes over to you. Like it's a slow trend to oneness. And I kind of think that you can't really argue with that. Because of the internet, we've been given [00:07:00] maximum information, which allows us to make much more educated choices and rely a lot less on institutions and experts to make the choices for ourselves.

Like pretty soon, they're going to have. , underground, ring of doctors that we can go to who probably won't even have certificates or anything. Because, we are all becoming educated in a way that we don't subscribe to any system ever. Like, there is no more system of, like, We all do things this way, you know?

So, How does this go back to Trump? I do think one of the things that's happened under the Trump administration is that he's completely broken the media. And it's a media that needed to be broken. And that's another thing that I'm talking about.

Think about how you consume your media information. It's not Think about how you watch, you know, when I grew up, it was television, people watching five shows, right? So all these things are being fractured. So I think that he basically threw a Molotov [00:08:00] cocktail through the media and is sort of throwing a metaphoric Molotov cocktail through our politics.

I wish that this, this kind of change was done a lot more peacefully and with a lot better rhetoric. Um. And maybe not with so many fucking red hats. But what I think I'm trying to say here is the people want massive change. And rightfully so. We have a binary political system that's insane. One of the things I think everybody can agree on is that we all want more choice.

Why the hell do we have 700 choices for Oreos and two for president or two for politics? That's fully crazy, right? So I think as long as that is what's going on, it's fine. The American people are gonna want the person that seems like they're gonna change the system the most. I disagree that it's him.

Like, I think he had a term to prove that, and he did not do it, and nor do I think he's gonna do anything like that now. But, I do think we want that, and we're gonna [00:09:00] keep calling for it. I also hope that maybe, just maybe, his presidency Such when I saw him at McDonald's in the drive thru. I was like being a maniac I was like this cannot be real Cuz it's so absurd That I'm like, this guy, I can't win.

Right. But maybe it's just like also showing us so clearly that the idea of a centralized, powerful King, like president is insane and nobody should have this much power. I don't care who you are. So that's. My hope, and I know that this is easier for me to say this like as a dude who is not having his rights taken away or threatened as much under, you know, project 2025 or whatever it is, but I do think it's important to look at the macro of like what's happening and what this says about us.

And I don't mean it in a sense of like that we're evil or bad, but he [00:10:00] is a reflection and we do live in a country that very much values fame and money, two things that he's mastered his whole life. Also, you have to say like, dude, guys, whatever your fucking dream is, man, you can do it. If this dude,

if this reality game show host. Guys, could become president, cause an insurrection, go get 26 counts of indictment, have three separate lawsuits, come back, and then win by more? Guys, anything is possible. Anything. This is the most important thing I want to say to you guys. I woke up this morning, because like I said, I wasn't happy last night, but I, I was, I was kind of very level headed about it.

And dudes, I put money on this. This is how confident I was that he was going to lose. Which is hilarious. So I woke up this morning thinking, you know what? I can't control [00:11:00] politics. I can't control Donald Trump, but I can control my life. And I know that people have talked about this a lot, but one of the things that I don't like about the election cycles is getting so caught up in the fear and trend.

Like, I don't know if you guys listened or watched last night, but I was at my friend's house. We're watching it on ABC, and in the middle of the broadcast, the website Calm just bought a 30 seconds of silence. And it felt like. The ocean was hugging me because it felt so good in a sea of like the media beating the drums like do do do do do What's gonna happen and it just like they love this Back and forth binary like good versus evil dichotomy narrative that makes us all scared feeling in survival mode and then getting mad at each other like I refuse if there's one thing that I if there's two things I want to leave you guys with I [00:12:00] absolutely reject the politics of the other side is bad.

Like, I don't, I can't stand it. And it's so, it's very new. I don't know if you guys know this, but like, the idea that like, you would judge other people for their vote is such a new idea that was completely constructed by the media. Matt Taibbi, a great political writer, wrote this book called hate ink. And he said, after the cold war, the media was like, well, we don't have an external enemy anymore.

So let's make it be each other. Like this side's wrong. This is the good side. This is the bad side. So we started becoming scared of each other. We started like having all these partisan opinions about people. That is such a new thing. Like when I was growing up, nobody talked about politics. Nobody talked about who you voted for.

Nobody was judging you investigating you. Nobody was tweeting out. How you're an idiot cuz what you think. [00:13:00] That shit is a new thing, and it's completely Perpetuated by the media and like I don't know about you But I ain't trying to be punked by them just like I'm not trying to be punked by the fact that 95 percent of the fucking commercials last night were Pharmaceutical commercials.

Like hey, are you nervous about who's gonna be president? I know it's gonna fix this This old man with a new erection. I mean, every single fucking commercial. I don't watch TV like that, and I was like, Oh my god. So, that's programming. We've been programmed now to think, for the most part, that each other are the problem.

And I will never, ever feel that way. I have nothing but love for everybody. And, even if it is hard sometimes. You know? So, let's say that. And the second takeaway I want to say is, there is nobody in your life that deserves to take up this amount of brain space and time from you.

All you have, your thoughts and your actions and your feelings and your habits [00:14:00] are finite. This isn't an infinite resource. Like, because in a given day you're only up, whatever, 14 hours a day. So, you're, they say in between, what, 60 and 80 thousand thoughts, right? So if you spent most of your day pissed off about the election, like I decided a long time ago I'm not gonna think about Trump as much anymore, and I went through this in 2016 and I was like, pretty upset.

Because, that dude doesn't deserve to be in our in your brain. He doesn't deserve to be in my brain. Cause that's precious fucking real estate. He's not thinking about me, at all. He's wondering about how he can get the fry machine to work at McDonald's right now. He's wondering about how he could sell more golden bibles, okay?

He's not thinking about you. And if we are going to spend that much time ruminating about anything, the way to get out of it, which is such a good tip is to do something. Right. So I just encourage all of [00:15:00] us, but just like, please remember that your perspective, who you are as a person that is in like how you interact with the world.

I would argue is more important than what you think about Donald Trump or what you think about Kamala Harris because that's what you're actually putting out there, the thoughts you're broadcasting, the feelings you have, and if the thoughts you're broadcasting every day is we're fucked these next four years, this country's terrible, we all suffer because you think that way, so I would just choose to choose to not let these people Run your life and run your emotional life, because it's not fair, and this is finite, man.

We're not here that long. It sucks that we're gonna spend 12 years of our lives with this guy. It really does. Like, I don't care who you are, I don't want to see anybody for that long, much less every news story about this guy for 12 years. It's [00:16:00] not good for our brains, okay? But you do have a choice. You can turn it off, you can walk away, and you can say, This is not going to be a part of my reality.

And I think a major reason why he got so successful is because everybody on both sides has constantly been putting energy and focus on him. Wherever your focus goes, your energy grows. So, like, we focus so much energy on this dude. He just gets bigger and bigger like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, which he kind of looks like, but yellow and orange. So that's my take. I'm actually hopeful today in a weird way, in a way that I did not expect because it made me realize even more how much I need to take care of me, the people I love, and the work I want to do to make this world a better place because if I relied on Kamala Harris or Joe Biden to do that, They're not going to do it either.

They're not going to do it at the level that I want to. You think Joe Biden's having this [00:17:00] podcast right now? Joe Biden's trying to find his pants right now. Okay. So I would just like encourage all of us to like, not do the America's the worst. We're terrible. We're fucked thing because it's not going to help anybody.

And you're still going to have to live. It doesn't mean that you have to like it. It doesn't mean you have to swallow it. It doesn't mean that what happened last night wasn't wild. And not cool and that she wasn't held to a crazy ass double standard. I mean, it's fucking homeboy out here talking about shooting journalists casually.

Um, and they're like, but she has a weird laugh. Um, yes, all of those things can be true, but how can we move forward from a creative productive space to make this more of a world that is beautiful, inclusive and peaceful and doesn't rely on leaders? Like, I don't want to rely on any leader to run my life or think that they're going to make everything better because they'd not, but you can, you can do that.

And lastly, I want [00:18:00] to end on a very positive story of impact and how much impact you can have on somebody. So I went to the, uh, to temple. It's beautiful. It's in the Pacific Palisades where they meditate. It's a Buddhist temple. I'm not a Buddhist, but I've been down with meditating and I want to meditate more with people.

I think it's super powerful. It's why we'll be going to Joe Dispenza in January in LA. Okay. So I go to this Buddhist temple with Asha. Asha did my podcast. She just moved here. It was great. So this Buddhist monk. Gives a homily, and he tells us this story, and I'll try to say this. I'm all I'm just remembering this, so I'm paraphrasing, but the payoff's awesome.

Okay, so I think it's like the 1960s, and there was this teacher, okay, at elementary school. And she struck up, like, a really interesting relationship with this kid named, let's say his name was David. Okay, so they had this, like, funny back and forth. At one point, David was talking so much that she jokingly put tape on his mouth.

Okay, right now that woman would be arrested and in [00:19:00] jail. So she put tape on his mouth, then he took it off after three minutes, because I guess he couldn't stop talking, right? So he's in third grade. She then moves up to teach fifth grade math. So this is a math teacher, alright? So she's teaching a group full of kids, and she's having a hard time getting their attention.

Then one day, she comes into class and says, Okay, I want everyone to take out a piece of paper, and I want everyone to write three columns. Someone's, their first name, everybody in the class, first name, last name. And your favorite thing about that person. So this is 30 kids, right? This is today's assignment.

So every kid wrote down first name, last name thing that they really liked about that kid, their classmates, they really liked, right? Teacher goes home that night. She compiles a list for everybody what everyone said about that person. So each person's getting 30 things what their classmates said about that person, right?

So it's like, you know, you've always were so helpful with my math. You know, you've always been there for me. You're a great friend. So she brings the list in on [00:20:00] Monday and hands them to the kids. This is a math teacher. All of the kids start reading the list out loud in class, and they're all like shocked, like, Oh my god, I can't believe you thought that, like, oh my god, that's so nice of you, like, these kids.

They might have been older than 5th grade, it might have been like 7th, right? Okay, so, David is in that class too, right? So he got a list, okay? So she continues teaching, and then it's like, Eight years later, she goes on a vacation. The teacher, she gets picked up from her parents and her parents are like, Hey, have you heard from David recently?

And she's like, no. And she's like, well, and her parents got really quiet. David died in Vietnam. And his parents really want you to come to the funeral. Okay? So she hadn't heard from him. She had no idea. Let's back up and say like she thought the list exercise went over well, but she didn't she was like, oh, I guess it was fine No one really talked about it, right?

Okay, [00:21:00] so She's like, okay, I'll go to the funeral. So she goes to the funeral. David died in Vietnam. She walks in and like four or five of the pallbearers are soldiers from Vietnam. And they're like, Oh my God, are you miss Smith? Whatever her name was, miss Washington. And she's like, yeah. And they're like, Oh my God, David talked about you all the time.

And she was like, really? They're like, yeah, absolutely. Then at the funeral, all of the classmates of David were there. The same people that were in the class that she gave the list. Right. Okay, so they have this funeral, then afterwards, they go out to eat. So, it's the teacher, David's parents, and all these kids from their class.

David's parents go, Hey, uh, Mrs. Smith, we want to show you something. They take out the wallet, David's wallet died, the guy who died in Vietnam and they show her in the wallet was the list, So 12 to 13 years later, he's still carrying around the list. Then everybody at the dinner, everybody at the dinner table on the restaurant that was in her class start [00:22:00] talking about where their list is and they're like, oh my god, my list is on You know, it's framed on my desk.

Oh my God. Like I put my lists, you know, in a prominent place that I can see every day. And then another one of her students takes out her purse. She's been carrying the list for this seven years. And she was shocked because she did not think that. Activity had that big of an impact. So I just want you to think about what that list could be for you.

The little thing you could do that could ripple that hard. , that was not that much work to make that list. That was not that much work to have that much of an impact on our lives. But she stepped out. Of the known, and said, instead of doing math today, we're going to compliment everybody.

And that complimenting is going to change everybody's life for the rest of their life. So if she can do that, what can you do? What can I do that's like that? What are things that we can do that can [00:23:00] have that big of an impact? And I promise you, that will stay with somebody much more than a presidential election.

It just will. And I'm not saying that this doesn't have significant impact about what happened, that there isn't going to be some kind of consequences, but like, that's, you can control the list. Y'all, you can do it. And I will stand firm in that. So dear America, we're going to build our own place.

So we don't have to look to you. And I will talk to you. And I will still go to all your Taco Bells. Alright y'all, I hope you have the best week ever. Contact me on Instagram. At the underscore Brennan Fitzgibbons on Instagram. Hit me up. love you, you're the best. Have an incredible week. Stay up, stay in you.

You are amazing, never forget that. You're more important than anybody else. You the best. [00:24:00]