2021 has been a crazy year. As we enter 2022, Brittany and Emma talk about some lessons we have learned about the way the world works in 2021.

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Here’s a transcript of our conversation:

Brittany: Hi, Emma.

Emma: Hi, Brittany.

Brittany: So by the time, our listeners tune into this, we will be done with 2021, or as I like to say, the second year of 2020, it feels like never-ending. but we made it. And so Connor, I did this last year and I thought it would be fun to do this year too, is just kind of talk about what did we learn, you know, from this year. Not necessarily like what did Emma and I learn in our lives, but what did we learn as a country? What did we learn as people, right? What lessons have we learned? And I think with COVID, and honestly, so much happened this year. So much happened this year. So I think there’s a lot that we can cover. So I think, you know, Emma and I will just kind of jump into this a little bit. So I think, one of the important things that we learned this year is that foreign policy is still a big deal and it matters. I think for a long time we were so focused on COVID that no one really thought of anything else, right? That was the only thing we talked about was COVID and maybe jobs in the economy, because that’s kind of what hand in hand, but with the world shut down, we weren’t really talking about anti-war issues anymore, which are, or very important regardless. And I think Afghanistan was a really good reminder that we’re still, I guess you’d call it nation-building, right? We’re still in other countries occupying them and it’s not as simple as just, you know, withdrawing troops and you know, Ron Paul used to say, we marched right in. We can just march right out. And I tend to believe that, but there was a lot of, just a lot of controversy, I think to a lot of people. Like, I said, they just weren’t really focused on us being over there anymore. People just weren’t paying attention. Yeah. And so, one thing I would like people to take away from this year is that no matter what’s going on, no matter what distractions I would call them, you know, that are going on here, they’re still important and terrible things. You know, we’re doing abroad and I think one thing, a lot of times, the elites like the government and media and all of them will try to distract us here. So, it’ll be like, okay, this is going on, so don’t pay attention to this. And so for a long time, I think COVID was just distracting from everything going on in the world. So, yeah. So I think remembering that foreign policy matters no matter what’s going on here.

Emma: Yeah, no kidding. Especially when you have to, our government is so insistent on being involved in everything that happens around the world. It’s kind of like, well, maybe we should be paying attention to the policies that our country has if we’re gonna be involved in literally everything that happens around the world. So I, totally agree with you on that. One that I think we all kind of collectively learned this year is that there is such a double standard between the elites and normal folks like you and I. And when I say elites, I don’t mean necessarily rich people, although a lot of the elites are very wealthy and powerful. I mean, people that are well connected that have influence that are in positions of power. And like I said, a lot of times that comes with money too. Or maybe money’s a for it. But we saw this at events like the Met Gala, which is this big, you know, kind of fancy ball dinner thing that happens in New York every year. And it was funny cuz a lot of people were wondering what’s gonna happen at the Met Gala with COVID stuff and they were really strict about no one can even come within the block basically, unless they had been vaccinated. But they were making all of the workers there wear masks. Yes. While all of the celebrities that were attending and you know, I think it’s like something like $20,000 a ticket or in that ballpark. Yeah. So very expensive to attend. Everyone who was attending didn’t have to wear one. And there are all these pictures of like, people carrying AOCs dress that says Tax the Rich and AOC doesn’t have a mask on. And like the, you know, the worker people all have to and they look miserable. And it wasn’t even just the Met Gala, but there have been all these different awards shows where it’s the same kind of thing. Everyone working there has to wear a mask and everyone attending doesn’t, which is just crazy to me. It’s like, does COVID just look at a person and say, oh you, you’re a celebrity, I’m not gonna go infect you. Like that’s just like, it goes to bed works.

Brittany: It goes to bed a certain time and if you’re eating chicken wings, it goes away.

Emma: Yeah. If you’re sitting down with a drink, it is, it can infect you, but if you’re standing up walking across a restaurant, it can. Yeah. Yep. So, the double standards I think were a huge one. And it’s like politicians, we see that with them as well where there’s videos of them getting ready to go on air and they put on their mask before they go on air, but then when they’re walking around and talking to everyone, they have it off. And even Fauci that happened with him, he was at some sort of party in DC and someone caught him putting his mask on and taking it off depending on who he was talking to and what their reaction would be. So I’m pretty fed up with the double standards in the COVID Theater and I think a lot of other people are as well.

Brittany: I think COVID theater is the right way to put it. It actually reminds me a lot of the TSA, you know when all the post 9-11 stuff happened Yeah. And people were thinking like, it’s keeping us safe, but we know now TSA did nothing, you know, for a lot of people I think we believe or you know, the max aren’t really doing anything and there’s some science to say that. So it’s so silly. So another thing and, this is actually I think a positive, so we’ve talked about woke a lot. That’s, you know, these people that virtue signal or their social justice warriors and gosh, am I, help me, I’m trying, I’m like drawing a blank on how to describe woke in just a straightforward, easy way.

Emma: Sure. I would say it’s basically this idea that everyone needs to identify with what their victim status is.

Brittany: Oh, that’s a good way to put it.

Emma: So it’s almost like this contest of who’s more oppressed Yep. Who’s had more problems in their life. And then the wokeness is basically just saying like, you go along with whatever the left wing tells you or you go along with what the media says you should care about. And it’s tough to explain cuz it’s really like complicated and it’s, it almost comes from this thing called intersectionality, which is like, if you support one left, cause you have to support of them.

Brittany: All of ’em. Yep.

Emma: Yeah. It gets all jumbled though. It’s hard to even explain.

Brittany: Well sorry to put you on the spot cause I was like, no. Trying to blank on how I can explain this. So I wanna talk about we woke but in a positive way for Liberty. And that is that I think that it’s, not here to stay. I think it’s being challenged in ways. I didn’t think it was being challenged even, you know, last year or the year before. So we saw a lot of interesting things. There’s a couple things to mention. One in the Virginia election this year, we saw the voters revolt fight back against you. We’ve talked about critical race theory a lot on this show. They fought back against, you know, school districts saying that they should teach, they should have the right to teach students whatever they want to teach them because we can’t trust parents. Parents might be racist or parents might be this. And so we saw all the voters in Virginia say, no, we don’t believe that. Yeah. You know we’re fighting back against this. Virginia hasn’t had a Republican governor, I might get this wrong, I wanna say in like nine years, but it could have been longer than that.

Emma: Yeah, this year it’s been a while.

Brittany: It’s been a while. And this year you had that. So that’s one big win. the next one, actually I’m gonna do, I thought I was gonna do three, I’m gonna do four. The next one was with Dave Chappelle he’s a comedian, not for kids, but he is a comedian who just tells it like it is. He makes some funny observations. And when he said something against a group, that people were angry about the transgender group and some other people were like boycotting him. They were saying don’t show his comedy special. You know, he needs to be held responsible for this. But a funny thing about comedy is everybody is subject to being teased. That’s kind of what makes comedy funny, right? You go up and you kind of poke fun at things and people who watch comedy should know that. But now it’s become this new woke thing where you can only say approved things and you can’t hurt anybody’s feelings. And it’s very silly. So you saw a lot of people stand up and defend Dave Chappelle and say, no, he’s a comedian, he’s just making jokes. You know, we need to stop getting all up in arms. And so I think that was a real big pro. Yeah. and then I think this one’s a little bit, of a stretch, but with the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict, what we saw is people start remembering that the rule of law matters in the face of wokecism. Yeah. So with that case, and Emma, you and I did a whole episode on that, with, wokecism, there was this belief that you know, the law doesn’t matter if anybody’s construed as being like racist or being against, you know, a group. And that really wasn’t the issue with the written house case. But, people started realizing that the rule of law matters. And that was really refreshing to me because I thought, okay, maybe things aren’t as bad as we think they’re, so that’s all I have for that.

Emma: Yeah. On, that note too, I think people learned, especially with the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, that it’s important to vet your information yourself. Yes. And look for the facts on your own and do your own research. Because the media, you know, we’ve talked about this in a whole other episode, so maybe we’ll link to that in the show notes if you wanna hear more about this. But the media was so dishonest in how they portrayed that trial that there are almost two groups of people in the United States, the ones that followed the trial on their own or watched the live streams or got commentary from a very serious, you know, fact-based source. Or there’s the people that were just kind of getting their information from social media going along with what CNN, MSN, and BBC were telling them. And those two groups of people regardless of what their political background was or what they thought about Kyle Rittenhouse or what they think about guns, those two people came away with super different conclusions. Which is scary. Yes. Because it shows how powerful the media is. And I think that almost takes me into a whole different point, which is that the media still lies. Oh yes. All the time, they lie constantly, And not only do they lie, but they omit information, that’s not convenient for them and for their powerful friends. And we talked about the elites. I mean, one really big example that we had of this was there was a story about Hunter Biden who Oh my goodness Yes. Is President Joe Biden’s son. And he had some really crazy stuff that was going on in his personal life. And you know, I feel badly for him cuz he was dealing with some pretty serious issues. But there was a news story that was very, it was very important that people hear about this story because it had stuff to also do with Joe Biden who’s his dad. And at the time, it was during the election, the presidential election when he was up against Donald Trump. And when this story came out, I believe it was Facebook and Twitter, were not allowing people to post the link to the story. And that’s I think one of the most just blatant examples that we’ve seen of media coverups. And you know, granted tech is a little bit different than like TV media, but a lot of times they sort, they sort of work in tandem and they sort of are on the same side of these things. And that’s something that actually had the ability to influence an election. And it’s so funny to me because the media is constantly saying, oh, you know, Trump and his election fraud and he’s trying to influence elections and all this stuff. And I don’t really have too much of an opinion on that. But it’s funny that they say that and then at the same time they’re like literally censoring very important information and not telling the public things that are highly relevant in an election when you’re choosing the next leader of the free world. So that to me was a huge one, is, you know, the media is completely willing to lie to us. There was even stuff with, Jeffrey Epstein who, you know this, I’m not gonna go into his history. I was gonna say that’s a hard one to explain quickly. He’s a bad dude and we all know he’s a bad dude. And the media, it came out this year through Project Veritas that they had actually learned that a really long time ago and they did not allow the reporter to tell the story. They killed the story is what they call it in, news. So this stuff happens constantly. We only see just a little bit, we’re like just scratching the surface probably. But, I’m glad that more and more people are starting to distrust the media because I think the media is very powerful and has way too much control over what happens in our country. So little bit of a silver lining.

Brittany: Yeah, I agree with that entirely. I think we also saw a lot of pushback between this follow the science and the science only being whatever the government says or whatever, you know, Fauci says, and there was a lot of things, and it ties into what you said, Emma, with media, right. When Joe Rogan used some alternative treatment to cure his COVID and the media started saying he was using horse medicine and he was using this, and Joe Rogan was almost thinking about like suing because he was like, you’re saying things that aren’t true. Yeah. So the media wanted to scare everybody into doing things that weren’t what the government wanted us to do. And I think that’s one, I think the media obviously lies as you said, but it was good because people, a lot of people listen to Joe Rogan, I don’t remember the amount off the top of my head, but Joe Rogan is huge. Yeah. And so here you had people going, wait a second, you’re, you’re telling blatant lies. Or you had people who maybe were on, on board with a lot of the mask and the vaccine stuff, but now they’re like, wait for a second, the science keeps like, you guys keep changing your mind. You keep doing this and that. And so I think a lot of people now are starting to question more and I think that’s something we could say for the last two years in general. Yeah. I think there’s been a massive waking up of people saying, Hey, we keep trusting the government, but why? You know, they’re not always right. So I think that’s a big win.

Emma: Yeah, I totally agree. And another one that’s interesting that I think, you know, kind of ties into that is that people are still super divided on COVID stuff. People are not, you know, there’s certain people that I think are starting to see through sort of the lies and through this idea that science is just owned by Dr. Fauci and he’s the only one who can give us good information. There’s a lot of people that I think have been kind of waking up from COVID stuff, but then there are a lot of people that sadly I think are just going to blindly trust the quote-unquote authorities no matter what happens. And no matter what they say, no matter how extreme they are, I think there are certain people out there that are always going to say, no, my personal freedom doesn’t matter. I don’t need to do Thanksgiving with my family. I’m not gonna actually go read the facts for myself. I’m just gonna trust what I see Fauci saying or what I see the media saying or whatever that may be. And I think that’s why I think COVID has been a big reason why there have been so many other big divisions in the country over the last couple of years is it’s almost like these battle lines are being drawn between, and it, it’s not the same group of people necessarily on each side for each different issue. But I do think it’s kind of shown us that maybe we don’t have as much in common with our neighbors as we might think. And I think the big line that you’re on either one side or the other, or o on goodness can’t talk. But I think it’s basically a matter of, you know, do you trust, what is told to you by authorities? Do you trust that the government has your best interests in mind or are you more skeptical? And I think the folks that are more skeptical are the ones that, you know, have been kind of waking up. Like, wow, the government totally lied to us about COVID multiple times. They’ve been gaslighting us, making us feel crazy for not wanting to go along with their rules. And I, again, I think the media has had a huge part in that and kind of, you know, muddying the waters and making it really hard to figure out what’s true and what’s not. But yeah, I mean there, I feel like COVID right now is one of the big issues dividing people. And it’s been interesting to see where everyone stands on that stuff.

Brittany: No, I absolutely agree. And I mean we could go on forever and ever, but I think, yeah, I think we’re at time.

Emma: Yeah. Yes, we are. So, we’ll wrap it up here today guys, and talk to you all soon. anything we’re linking in the show notes, maybe the one about Kyle Rittenhouse, we’ll throw that in there so you guys can listen to that episode if you missed it. And we will talk to you all again soon.

Brittany: Talk to you soon.