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Speaker 1: M uh love podcasts. I don't ship. Is that? Are

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Speaker 1: we allowed to open a show that way? I don't know. Well,

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Speaker 1: we did it, I'll let you do it. I didn't.

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Speaker 1: God damn it. This is terrible the best I am.

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Speaker 1: I am so sorry to everybody. Ye I have well

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Speaker 1: as everyone can can hear now by by listening to

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Speaker 1: the tremendous failure that has just occurred in everyone's earballs. Uh.

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Speaker 1: This is Behind the Bastards, a podcast about bad people,

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Speaker 1: namely me. And my guests today are Dan and Jordan's.

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Speaker 1: That's us. If I if I just said Dan, or

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Speaker 1: if I just said Jordan's, I would have to be

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Speaker 1: more specific. But when I say Dan and Jordan's, I

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Speaker 1: think everyone knows that it's it's the knowledge fight. Guys.

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Speaker 1: Your identity has become subsumed into your podcast, so enjoy that.

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Speaker 1: It was inevitable. Yeah, it was going to happen. I

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Speaker 1: think a lot of people have taken to just calling

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Speaker 1: us Jordan capital j capital d. Yeah, sort of a

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Speaker 1: combined down. I feel like they could do better. Who could? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: can you danger? Because it would have to be like

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Speaker 1: Dan or something like that. But but Jorg Dan is

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Speaker 1: like I feel like it's really just like giving like

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Speaker 1: cloud to one name. But you're stressing that d pretty

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Speaker 1: hard right in the middle, and I can appreciate that.

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Speaker 1: I think it's I think it's great we're really getting

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Speaker 1: into the weeds of this since they're solving it once

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Speaker 1: and for all. You know, that's what people come here for,

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Speaker 1: you know what. With explanation, I'll let you have it. Guys.

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Speaker 1: All right, Jordan, are you ready to hear about some ship?

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Speaker 1: You bet? Robert yea post your podcast? So you know

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Speaker 1: what sucks many many many things? Uh? You know, I

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Speaker 1: would say, broadly speaking, the right wing in America, the

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Speaker 1: Republican Party, the looming uh fascist threat that has been

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Speaker 1: slightly weed whacked back, but is still threatening to encroach

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Speaker 1: uh and choke all of us to death uh forever.

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Speaker 1: That Yeah, Engines and dragons monster. When you put it

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Speaker 1: like that, it is basically a dungeons and dragons monster.

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Speaker 1: So this episode is about e Gary Guy Gaxe. This

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Speaker 1: episode is about so Gary Guy GaX invented dungeons and dragons.

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Speaker 1: This episode is about the man who invented the modern

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Speaker 1: Republican Party, by which I mean the Party of Donald Trump,

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Speaker 1: by which I mean you know the fascists, and his

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Speaker 1: name was Robert Welch. You guys know who Robert Welch is.

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Speaker 1: I don't know who Robert Welch is. I'm gonna I'm

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Speaker 1: gonna feign ignorance for about three quarters. You definitely look

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Speaker 1: at me, and did you know about Robert Welch. The

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Speaker 1: whole point of me is to not know about Robert. Well,

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Speaker 1: you know him by a different name. Yeah, yeah, you

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Speaker 1: you Jordan know him as the founder of the John

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Speaker 1: Birch Society. Oh I do know him as the candy Man. Yes, Oh,

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Speaker 1: I do know him as the candy Man. Oh shit, candy.

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Speaker 1: So if you haven't heard of the John Birch Society,

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Speaker 1: they're loosely speaking, why we got President Ronald Reagan, President

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Speaker 1: Donald Trump, and the whole ecosystem of right wing grifters

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Speaker 1: who make money off of convincing their fans that everybody

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Speaker 1: on the left is part of a Marxist conspiracy, like

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Speaker 1: the idea that Joe Biden is a is a Communist agent,

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Speaker 1: which are are good friend of the pod Alex Jones

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Speaker 1: brings up repeatedly, is a descendant of a John Birch

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Speaker 1: Society talking point or at least a family of those

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Speaker 1: talking points. So that's that's the guy we're talking about today,

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Speaker 1: Bob Welch, founder the John Birch Society. Yeah, dude, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I don't. I don't, I don't. I think, first off,

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Speaker 1: my my initial sign that he's not a good guy

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Speaker 1: is you're talking about him. So that's that's a red

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Speaker 1: flag right off the bat. And then Bob Welch, that's

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Speaker 1: just a that's just a right wing name. That's just

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Speaker 1: what it is. Yeah, Yeah, Bob Welch is is is

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Speaker 1: you'd guess that he founded some sort of society that

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Speaker 1: did something terrible. So Robert H. W. Welch Jr. Which,

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Speaker 1: by God, the more thorough you are with the name,

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Speaker 1: the worse it sounds. Was born on a farm. Why

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Speaker 1: do all these jerks have the initials h W two? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: he does, he does. He's got a real George Bush

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Speaker 1: fibe going on, what the hell? Well, I mean, that's

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Speaker 1: how the word white starts right in their world, white white, white.

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Speaker 1: I think that's what it is. I think Robert quite Welch,

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Speaker 1: that actually completely You might be right. So Whitey was

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Speaker 1: born on a farm in Choen County, North Carolina, on

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Speaker 1: December one, eighteen ninety nine. He was a brilliant child,

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Speaker 1: some might even say a genius. He could read by

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Speaker 1: age three, and he knew his multiplication tables by age four.

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Speaker 1: By age seven, he was studying Latin, and at age

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Speaker 1: twelve he enrolled in the University of North Carolina. He

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Speaker 1: graduated at age sixteen. Uh, and yeah, everything that happens

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Speaker 1: in the story should be taking his evidence for white

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Speaker 1: child prodigy should be dosed with paint chips. I think

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Speaker 1: that's yeah. I always feel like when I hear something

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Speaker 1: like that, and I hear like someone new multiplication tables

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Speaker 1: at four, I'd be like, who prove it? Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: would say prove it. And and if you can prove

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Speaker 1: that a kid is that smart, you gotta slow him

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Speaker 1: down somehow. I would write to be able to quiz

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Speaker 1: that four year old. I see how deep you're not

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Speaker 1: to the table is? Yeah? And I think if you're

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Speaker 1: a four year old with perfect knowledge of the multiplication tables,

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Speaker 1: take them out of school for two years, don't let

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Speaker 1: him read books, make them work on a farm. Did

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Speaker 1: you write a Kurt Vonnegut short story at us? What

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Speaker 1: just Happen? Look? Vonnegut was right. The problem is that

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Speaker 1: people are too smart these two fast. Give them braces,

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Speaker 1: take them down the notch. Yeah yeah, slow them down somehow,

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Speaker 1: just you know, put blinders on the kid, feed him lead,

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Speaker 1: whatever it takes, and then the versus true. If you're

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Speaker 1: not good at something, give them steroids and ship give

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Speaker 1: him all the drugs to make them smarter. I think

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Speaker 1: everyone who can't do the multiplication tables by age four,

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Speaker 1: mandatory steroids. Everyone who can illiterate farm in the Midwest.

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Speaker 1: I like it. That's my deal. Society in charge of children, Okay,

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Speaker 1: so uh yeah. Bobby Welch, child prodigy, entered the Naval

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Speaker 1: Academy at Annapolis in nineteen seventeen, a year when nothing

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Speaker 1: else of particular interest occurred. He resigned after just two

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Speaker 1: years when he decided that a military career was not

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Speaker 1: for him. Instead, he wanted to be a lawyer, so

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Speaker 1: he enrolled in Harvard Law School, but this didn't wind

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Speaker 1: up working out much better for him. Robert clashed regularly

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Speaker 1: with his professor's, particularly the hilariously named Felix Frankfurter, who

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Speaker 1: would grow up. It's a real guy, it's a real

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Speaker 1: guy's name. He went on to become a Supreme Court justice.

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Speaker 1: Of course, a lot of people have to overcome something

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Speaker 1: in order to do something great. And I think being

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Speaker 1: born with Felix, he had his handicap and it made

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Speaker 1: him great. Yeah, Justice, hot dog. Yeah, because that's the hardest.

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Speaker 1: If you want to be the hardest, it can be

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Speaker 1: too for other people to laugh at you become a

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Speaker 1: Supreme Court justice, because then everybody's got to be scared

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Speaker 1: one way or the other. You're gonna terrify half the

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Speaker 1: population if it pleases the hot dog. Oh god, oh god,

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Speaker 1: I'm so sorry. Please don't take away my reproductive health care.

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Speaker 1: In the case of Hines versus the United States, he's

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Speaker 1: gonna have to recuse himself. He cannot. He could not

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Speaker 1: rule on anything to do with the John Kerry campaign

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Speaker 1: for that reason. Um Frankfurter was a liberal Supreme Court justice,

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Speaker 1: which might explain why Robert Welch hated him so much.

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Speaker 1: Welch's biography, which is quite a text, says that the

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Speaker 1: young Robert Welch hated Felix Frankfurter because, quote, the young

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Speaker 1: man from North Carolina recognized hogwash when he heard it,

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Speaker 1: and a hogwash is spelled in all caps and also

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Speaker 1: spelled out with like a like a dash in between

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Speaker 1: each word. That's good, it's a fascinating publication. That's a

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Speaker 1: that's a Canterbury Tales level of bullshit right there. Yeah, magnificent.

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Speaker 1: Did someone who was with the John Birch Society right

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Speaker 1: this biography? Yes? Absolutely, yeah, no, A thousands like the

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Speaker 1: editorial style. It was written probably by Bob Welch. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Welch left Harvard just a year before he would have graduated.

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Speaker 1: He decided that he'd learned enough and it was time

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Speaker 1: to make a shipload of money. And this wonder kin

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Speaker 1: had a specific plan for how he was going to

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Speaker 1: get rich. The motherfucking candy business. Hell yeah, hell yeah,

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Speaker 1: candies where the money is. Man. You know, that's the

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Speaker 1: thing about candy. You get older, it stays appealing to

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Speaker 1: people of the same age. I don't know why I

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Speaker 1: tried to I don't know why I tried to Fast Times.

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Speaker 1: Tried to Fast Times that one. So Bob's brilliant idea

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Speaker 1: was something called the Papa Sucker. The Papa Sucker, the

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Speaker 1: Papa Sucker. Yeah, speaking of Fast Times jokes, because it

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Speaker 1: is what it sounds like. What would happen when your

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Speaker 1: dad gets a blowjob. But it was actually a caramel

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Speaker 1: lollipop designed to not melt in the summer heat. That's

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Speaker 1: exactly like what would happen if your dad got a

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Speaker 1: blowjob right there. I'm pretty sorry. Yeah, And like your

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Speaker 1: dad's penis, it was filled with dangerous chemicals, which is

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Speaker 1: why it didn't melt in the summer heat. Probably that's

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Speaker 1: good stuff, not a good lying to keep. You take

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Speaker 1: the rough with the smooth, as they say, dangerous chemicals.

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Speaker 1: It's not melt especially when it comes to your dad's generals.

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Speaker 1: You got to take the rough with when it comes

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Speaker 1: to a Papa Sucker. Unfortunate, unfortunate. This is really gone

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Speaker 1: on the rails, but they're not great rails. So despite

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Speaker 1: the novelty of Bob Welch's Papa Sucker, his first business,

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Speaker 1: named the Oxford Candy Company, did not go well. Uh.

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Speaker 1: The cause seems to have again been the fact that

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Speaker 1: Bob Welch did not play well with others. He had

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Speaker 1: an increasing series of tins disagreements with his board of directors.

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Speaker 1: They had a fight over what he described as their

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Speaker 1: desire to reduce the quality of their products to improve profits,

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Speaker 1: Welch quit and again walked away. So getting a bit

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Speaker 1: of a theme, like everything all I want to do

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Speaker 1: is tortured children for morality tales. Yeah, he just keeps

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Speaker 1: getting into disagreements with people, be they his professors or

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Speaker 1: his business partners, and then piecing the funk out. That's

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Speaker 1: that's early life. Bob Welch not an easy guy to

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Speaker 1: get along with, So he's also not an easy guy

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Speaker 1: to dissuade from his sacred task of selling candy. Um.

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Speaker 1: He set up another candy company, this one in Berlin,

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Speaker 1: and money was tight because he had a couple of

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Speaker 1: kids by this point, so he took a second job

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Speaker 1: as a salesman for E. J. Brack and Sons, which

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Speaker 1: was one of the largest candy companies in the world.

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Speaker 1: They're the people who make candy corn, among other you know.

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Speaker 1: Oh so they're evil too, Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. Their

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Speaker 1: history's greatest monsters corn pumpkin. They make candy pumpkin's. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the candy corn substances in a bunch of different shapes.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, you mean the little pumpkins that are

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Speaker 1: made out of candy corn. I do like the very

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Speaker 1: specific term substance. Whatever it's made of which you don't

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Speaker 1: know and neither. It's just a substance. Man tried to

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Speaker 1: convince me that like, candy pumpkins are better like candy.

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Speaker 1: Corn sucks, but candy pumpkins are good like No, it's

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Speaker 1: just more. It's the same. It's a larger piece of

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Speaker 1: the same terrible candies, just a ball. You know, it

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Speaker 1: is great. I have this, there's this. So the person

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Speaker 1: I lived with for a while is a is a

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Speaker 1: Chinese national, and she introduced me to this wonderful restaurant

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Speaker 1: in Portland that's like a Chinese street food restaurant and

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Speaker 1: have this dish that I've never had before that's just

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Speaker 1: corn and fried batter and green onions and cilantro and

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Speaker 1: it's fucking awesome. Oh it's so good, Like I don't

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Speaker 1: know how it's it does sound good, incredible. But you

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Speaker 1: know what, Bob Welch would really hate the idea of

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Speaker 1: you living with a Chinese national. He would hate everything.

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Speaker 1: As soon as I said Chinese, he would have started screaming,

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Speaker 1: ever the mouth this mouth. Well, I don't know if

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Speaker 1: I convinced him my friend was descended from Chang Kai check,

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Speaker 1: he'd probably have been all right with that. He was

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Speaker 1: a big chang head as that was all around. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that would be that would be mouse sedgenation. Mao, Dan

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Speaker 1: are running. I feel like you had that one in

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Speaker 1: your head for years and then you hardened it into

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Speaker 1: a joke about Chang Kai check because if only I'm

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Speaker 1: tortured by new versions of that same shitty joke all day.

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Speaker 1: Jordan's made that joke fifteen times on the podcast. I've

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Speaker 1: just edited out every time. Yeah, you're wise to do that. So. Uh.

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Speaker 1: This second candy company didn't work very well because it

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Speaker 1: was the Great Depression and people didn't have disposable income

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Speaker 1: for candy. Probably was a bad time to start a

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Speaker 1: candy business. Uh, and his his new company fell apart

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Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty three. Fortunately, Bras was still making money

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Speaker 1: and he was doing well enough as a salesman that

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Speaker 1: they took him on as a full time employee, which

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Speaker 1: kept him afloat for the next year or so. In

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Speaker 1: nineteen thirty four, he started his third candy company, the

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Speaker 1: Midwest Candy Company of Attica, Indiana. Uh And unfortunately his

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Speaker 1: candy was as bad as his company's name, and Welch's

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Speaker 1: third enterprise failed. So he said, how's that doing. Was

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Speaker 1: he still selling the papa suckers? No, he he had

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Speaker 1: to give the leave the Papa sucker behind when he

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Speaker 1: had a fight with his business partners. So all the

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Speaker 1: papa suckers that are getting sold, yeah, they're keeping the loss.

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Speaker 1: That's the worst loss right there. He's not getting a

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Speaker 1: dime from any of the papas that are getting sucked

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Speaker 1: these days, which is a real shame. So, yeah, three

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Speaker 1: failed candy companies. In a ninety five Bob Welch files

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Speaker 1: for bankruptcy, which is, you know, pretty on brand for him.

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Speaker 1: It's the financial equivalent of like running away when you

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Speaker 1: get into an argument. So so far everything scans. He

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Speaker 1: returns to Boston and he gets a job working for

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Speaker 1: his younger brother, who was also in the candy business

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Speaker 1: and a lot more successful than his older brother. The

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Speaker 1: James O. Welch company was a success, and this is

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Speaker 1: what finally brought Robert Welch the wealth he desired. He

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Speaker 1: was made VP in charge of sales and advertising, and

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Speaker 1: as the company grew, this meant Roberts spent years traveling

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Speaker 1: across the country to offices in Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Houston,

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Speaker 1: Los Angeles and Seattle. Now a wealthy man, he began

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Speaker 1: racking up positions on government boards, the Boston Chamber of Commerce,

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Speaker 1: the Cambridge Chamber of Commerce, and eventually a role as

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Speaker 1: a national counselor for the US Chamber of Commerce. Is

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Speaker 1: anything thats you into a right wing lunatic more than

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Speaker 1: getting rich off of somebody else's work? Yeah, especially your

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Speaker 1: brother's work. Yeah right, a regular right wing thing? Is

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Speaker 1: that how they all get to where they are ahead? Sorry?

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Speaker 1: Just he takes a lot of credit for the company's success,

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Speaker 1: but judging by the fact that he had three failed

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Speaker 1: candy companies and only succeeded when he latched onto his brothers,

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Speaker 1: I'm gonna guess the James was the talent and the

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Speaker 1: family might be the case. Yeah, if I recall correctly.

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Speaker 1: Didn't they make some like pretty like memorable candies? Yeah? No,

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Speaker 1: the James O. Welch Company has made some some of

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Speaker 1: the all time great candies. Uh they all sound weird

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Speaker 1: when yeah, and some sort of weird sugary rope thing.

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Speaker 1: I don't know, like they made a bunch of candy candy. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's not like it's not like the god fearing modern

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Speaker 1: candy that we have today. It was all strange and

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Speaker 1: terrifying and involved four pounds little nibbles, those little so

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Speaker 1: you can't even sell kids something with horror in the name.

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Speaker 1: Now it's just social justice warriors. Yeah, cancel cultures, run

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Speaker 1: them buck And now we can't have our horehound candy.

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Speaker 1: Why can't I buy a fox stick today? Why can't

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Speaker 1: I go to any candy shop I want to and

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Speaker 1: buy a fox stand. I wanted a fox, a fox

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Speaker 1: stick and a Papa sucker. Come on, So, I just

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Speaker 1: like it's sugar Mama's Sugar Mama's Jesus way to be

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Speaker 1: a misogynist day. But I think, but isn't like sugar

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Speaker 1: Daddy and sugar Baby aren't sugar. They have junior Mints,

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Speaker 1: sugar Daddies, sugar babies, sugar Mama's Welch is fudge, welch

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Speaker 1: is Freppe and pom poms. Wow. I finally understand the

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Speaker 1: popularity of incest porn on the Internet. I think it

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Speaker 1: all comes from there. It's all the Papa suckers and

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Speaker 1: the sugar model starts there. I see it. It's all

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Speaker 1: made making sense. Now, Yeah, you know you say that

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Speaker 1: Jordan's It makes the Welch company motto suck on a

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Speaker 1: Mama make a lot more sense. Yeah, that does sound right.

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Speaker 1: That that all is starting to scan now. So, like

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Speaker 1: all men who get rich through a mixture of blind

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Speaker 1: luck and family ties, Robert Welch decided to write a book.

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Speaker 1: The Road to Salesmanship was about exactly the book you'd

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Speaker 1: guessed that it was. I found a copy of it

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Speaker 1: on Amazon today for three ninety nine and the product

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Speaker 1: description text is wonderful. Uh, just gonna read you the

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Speaker 1: Amazon description text, which is a little bit off the

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Speaker 1: beaten path, but it it's quite funny. The Road to

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Speaker 1: Salesmanship Brackets Pamphlet Robert Welch Robert not capitalized, Welch capitalized

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Speaker 1: ninety one raring out of print, Collector's item limited available.

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Speaker 1: The Road to Salesmanship Pamphlet and Brackets by Robert Welch,

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Speaker 1: this time capitalized. This is a document and then new

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Speaker 1: sentence that was written by the founder of the John

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Speaker 1: Birch Society, but written decades before he founded the John

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Speaker 1: Bridge Society. Now they start calling the John Bridge Society.

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Speaker 1: This is not about the John Bridge Society or any projects.

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Speaker 1: Rinciples of the john Bridge Society. This is a unique

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Speaker 1: look at the early thoughts of Robert Welch, long before

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Speaker 1: he founded the john Bridge Society. And I enjoyed that.

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Speaker 1: M hm. So I looked through the book a bit.

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Speaker 1: I found it online. There's also a free copy. Don't

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Speaker 1: don't pay Amazon for this fucking book, um, so I

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Speaker 1: I and don't read it also it's not worth reading.

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Speaker 1: But I skimmed a couple of chapters just to see

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Speaker 1: if there was anything entertaining about it, because I was

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Speaker 1: hoping that like it was filled with I don't know,

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Speaker 1: a bunch of crypto fascist nonsense, and it's it's it's

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Speaker 1: even too boring for that. It seemed to have been

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Speaker 1: mostly folksy and anecdotes about his sales experience and in

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Speaker 1: inoffensive advice on how to sell stuff. He does start

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Speaker 1: the he does. I enjoyed that He starts the book

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Speaker 1: by noting that unlike like loser jobs like bricklaying and lumberjacking,

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Speaker 1: being a salesman is a true profession, like being a doctor. Specifically,

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Speaker 1: throw ship on brick layers and lumberjacks. Any idiot can

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Speaker 1: do those jobs selling ship. That's hard. Salesman do occupy

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Speaker 1: the same rarefied territory as doctors nowadays. You know, you

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Speaker 1: think about a used car salesman, you're like, that guy

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Speaker 1: is a surgeon the same level of quality. Yeah, just

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Speaker 1: a used body salesman. I mean you think when the

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Speaker 1: coronavirus first hit, our first responders were the doctors, the nurses,

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Speaker 1: and the candy salesman. Yeah. Absolutely. Also, I really do

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Speaker 1: think the candy sells itself. Yeah. I don't know, it

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Speaker 1: doesn't take much. I'm not impressed by a candy salesman.

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Speaker 1: I mean, as long as it's not a disastrously gross candy,

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Speaker 1: or as long as it's not called the Papa Sucker. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but it'll be all right. You're gonna be all right.

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Speaker 1: Eminem's ever needed an ad campaign, yeah, because they absolutely have.

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Speaker 1: But it's just they had a long one every Christmas,

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Speaker 1: great ad campaign, but they didn't need them. They would

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Speaker 1: have sold their chocolate with or without them. Yeah. Meanwhile,

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Speaker 1: I think the only job that Robert Welch did was

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Speaker 1: was the Papa Sucker. Suck on your Papa, Oh boy. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I didn't expect us to go down anyway for this episode.

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Speaker 1: Apparently he ends the book on a series of final

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Speaker 1: don'ts for Salesman, which include and these are. The actual

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Speaker 1: text of all of these is more boring than you'd expect.

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Speaker 1: But the don't there funny a knife can have two edges.

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Speaker 1: Everybody knows that drum is hollow. People rent offices to

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Speaker 1: do business in remember the future, and professors belong in classrooms. Wait,

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Speaker 1: those are the don't Those are the don'ts. So don't professor. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: don't be unless you're unless you're in a classroom. Don't

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Speaker 1: teach people about candy when you're trying to sell to

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Speaker 1: That's a good point. Oh, I get you now, especially

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Speaker 1: don't be a liberal candy prefersior. Oh, you can't do that.

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Speaker 1: They like to imagine that the knife has two edges.

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Speaker 1: Thing is is a reference to the many knife fights

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Speaker 1: that candy salesman got into in the nineties. Wouldn't surprise

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Speaker 1: my brutal business is dangerous work. You saw what happened

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Speaker 1: to the Augustus gloup Kid. Yeah, and that that Robin

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Speaker 1: Williams movie The Candy Man. So the impression that I

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Speaker 1: got from my limited reading of this book is that

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Speaker 1: young Bob Welch was something of a pampus know at all, um,

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Speaker 1: but I got no hint that he was particularly unhinged

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Speaker 1: or unreasonable, like it's not there's nothing like like. There's

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Speaker 1: no hints as to what he became in the book.

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Speaker 1: He just seems like kind of a dick um, which

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Speaker 1: I guess is one hint, but not not much of

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Speaker 1: one compared to what happens next. So, during World War Two,

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Speaker 1: Welch served on the War Production Board. If it seems

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Speaker 1: odd to you that a candy man would be appointed

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Speaker 1: to help manage national military production during a global battle

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Speaker 1: for survival of democracy, yes, yes it does, but that

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Speaker 1: is what happened. Uh bullets, But Eminem's yeah, just another

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Speaker 1: kind of Papa sucker. We have a long history of

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Speaker 1: giving people jobs are not qualified for in this country.

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Speaker 1: It's it's a creative strength. So, as a result of

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Speaker 1: his work in the War Production Board, Welch spent more

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Speaker 1: and more time in Washington, d c. During the forties.

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Speaker 1: He also became chairman of the National Confectioners Association's Washington Committee.

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Speaker 1: In nineteen seven, he received the candy industry's highest honor,

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Speaker 1: the Kettle Award, from Candy Industry Magazine. So he's really

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Speaker 1: he's arrived. You can't top the kettle award if you're

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Speaker 1: a candy man for for for what did he receive

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Speaker 1: this award forgetting all those kids to suck on their

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Speaker 1: papa's But I mean, like high sales. Was he a

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Speaker 1: good candy creator? Was he just around win World War Two?

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Speaker 1: Why did he get this award? He's honestly, I think

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Speaker 1: ink and this is this isn't written anywhere, but reading

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Speaker 1: between the lines from everything I read about his his

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Speaker 1: earlier life, I think his real talent was that he

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00:23:08,720 --> 00:23:11,800
Speaker 1: was very good at getting other rich businessman to like him.

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Speaker 1: And I like, that's why you'll notice the thing that

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Speaker 1: he really does best. He wasn't a particularly good business

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Speaker 1: owner or candy salesman, but he was great at being

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Speaker 1: on the board of big candy industry companies because rich

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Speaker 1: guys liked him. It's like, I think that was his

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Speaker 1: talent that I'll take you a long way in America. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean. The analog is like people who get a

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00:23:31,840 --> 00:23:35,280
Speaker 1: lot of stuff through networking, Like maybe not they're intrinsic skills.

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00:23:35,760 --> 00:23:38,639
Speaker 1: They might get more gigs or shows or stuff because

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00:23:38,680 --> 00:23:41,720
Speaker 1: of the ability to schmooz and stuff. And Robert Welsh was.

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Speaker 1: From everything I could tell, it seems like he was

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00:23:43,800 --> 00:23:48,520
Speaker 1: pretty pretty good at that. That's how you get a cattle. Yeah, yeah,

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00:23:48,680 --> 00:23:50,639
Speaker 1: that's how you get a cattle. You get you get

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00:23:50,640 --> 00:23:54,040
Speaker 1: a cattle. Nobody's trying to take the Man's Cattle Award. Sure,

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Speaker 1: he fucking brought us closer to fascism than any other

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Speaker 1: living or any other American he's ever lived. But he

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Speaker 1: won that kettle. Here in the kettle I allowed. Did

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Speaker 1: you know the weekend is freaking out because he didn't

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Speaker 1: get the kettle? Do you know that Tom Hanks won

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Speaker 1: kettle two years in a row, both of them for

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00:24:15,160 --> 00:24:19,120
Speaker 1: his Forrest Gump life is like a box of chocolates.

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Speaker 1: That was the best thing that ever happened to the candy.

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Speaker 1: And okay, you're right, we need we pulled throughout the

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Speaker 1: next year the Academy award two years in a row.

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Speaker 1: Cattle two years in a row. Very impressive. All right,

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Speaker 1: all right? I thought it was because of Philadelphia, but

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00:24:33,119 --> 00:24:37,200
Speaker 1: he doubt he eats Reese's peanut butter cups in Philadelphia.

422
00:24:37,200 --> 00:24:39,640
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's true. Yeah, that Tom Hanks

423
00:24:39,720 --> 00:24:46,439
Speaker 1: is actually the only man to get the egot k yeah, okay,

424
00:24:46,600 --> 00:24:49,440
Speaker 1: So Welch's real gift seems to have been in organizing

425
00:24:49,520 --> 00:24:52,520
Speaker 1: people in businesses. He had a genius for managing teams

426
00:24:52,720 --> 00:24:56,280
Speaker 1: and forgetting again rich people to like him. In nineteen fifty,

427
00:24:56,320 --> 00:24:58,200
Speaker 1: he was appointed to the board of directors for the

428
00:24:58,280 --> 00:25:01,480
Speaker 1: National Association of manufact Jurors. He held this job for

429
00:25:01,560 --> 00:25:03,720
Speaker 1: a while and through it was in regular contact with

430
00:25:03,800 --> 00:25:06,160
Speaker 1: wealthy and powerful people in a bunch of different industries.

431
00:25:06,400 --> 00:25:07,880
Speaker 1: And is at this point that I'm going to start

432
00:25:07,960 --> 00:25:12,439
Speaker 1: quoting from the World of the John Birch Society by D. J. Malloy,

433
00:25:12,680 --> 00:25:15,040
Speaker 1: which is a real fun book about a bunch of

434
00:25:15,359 --> 00:25:19,560
Speaker 1: terrible ship Welch first became involved in politics in nineteen

435
00:25:19,600 --> 00:25:22,159
Speaker 1: forty six, when he volunteered to work on Republican Robert

436
00:25:22,200 --> 00:25:25,760
Speaker 1: Bradford's successful campaign to become governor of Massachusetts. He was

437
00:25:25,760 --> 00:25:28,760
Speaker 1: appointed vice chairman of the state's Republican Finance Committee. Two

438
00:25:28,800 --> 00:25:31,320
Speaker 1: years later, in nineteen forty nine, Welch went a major

439
00:25:31,400 --> 00:25:33,760
Speaker 1: step further, however, when he announced his intention to become

440
00:25:33,800 --> 00:25:36,520
Speaker 1: the next Lieutenant governor of the Bay State. Like many

441
00:25:36,600 --> 00:25:40,120
Speaker 1: other conservatives and businessmen of the time, reducing government interference

442
00:25:40,160 --> 00:25:43,480
Speaker 1: in the economy, and turning back the creeping collectivism of

443
00:25:43,560 --> 00:25:47,040
Speaker 1: Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal were among Welch's principal concerns,

444
00:25:47,080 --> 00:25:49,359
Speaker 1: as he made clear in an interview with Courtney Sheldon

445
00:25:49,440 --> 00:25:51,960
Speaker 1: of the Christian Science Monitor on the eve of the election.

446
00:25:52,280 --> 00:25:55,119
Speaker 1: Our first and most important job, Welch explained, is to

447
00:25:55,280 --> 00:25:57,760
Speaker 1: keep us from going any further than we have already

448
00:25:57,800 --> 00:26:00,800
Speaker 1: gone in the extension of government ownership of business, operation

449
00:26:00,840 --> 00:26:04,040
Speaker 1: of business, interference with business, control of business, and control

450
00:26:04,080 --> 00:26:06,600
Speaker 1: of the details of our daily living. He was also

451
00:26:06,760 --> 00:26:10,280
Speaker 1: very strongly opposed, he said, to socialized medicine at the

452
00:26:10,400 --> 00:26:14,119
Speaker 1: national or state level, to federal aid to education in

453
00:26:14,200 --> 00:26:17,720
Speaker 1: any shape, manner, or form, and to federal housing plans.

454
00:26:18,320 --> 00:26:23,440
Speaker 1: So nineteen forties, Bob Welch is like, not only funck

455
00:26:23,520 --> 00:26:27,840
Speaker 1: the New Deal, fuck the concept of state paid healthcare,

456
00:26:28,119 --> 00:26:31,000
Speaker 1: Fuck the concept of federal aid to education, and funck

457
00:26:31,080 --> 00:26:34,359
Speaker 1: federal housing. Um he was really ahead. Doesn't know how

458
00:26:34,400 --> 00:26:37,080
Speaker 1: to ground how to grow the candy business. You make

459
00:26:37,200 --> 00:26:41,600
Speaker 1: dental care free for everyone, candy goes out of the roof,

460
00:26:41,720 --> 00:26:45,080
Speaker 1: Come on, man, and the long term business strategy. That's

461
00:26:45,080 --> 00:26:47,200
Speaker 1: actually a good plan. I think it is. It is

462
00:26:47,280 --> 00:26:52,080
Speaker 1: and if all those don't have to pay Jesus, you

463
00:26:52,200 --> 00:26:54,320
Speaker 1: get a second kettle for that you give, you give

464
00:26:54,359 --> 00:26:56,600
Speaker 1: poor families their rent for free, They're going to buy

465
00:26:56,640 --> 00:27:00,639
Speaker 1: a lot more candy for those kids. True still is

466
00:27:00,720 --> 00:27:04,840
Speaker 1: right about education being a real barrier to the candy industry.

467
00:27:04,880 --> 00:27:06,480
Speaker 1: Though you want people as dumb as hell if you

468
00:27:06,480 --> 00:27:09,440
Speaker 1: want to meet in enough candy. Any kind of nutritional

469
00:27:09,520 --> 00:27:11,960
Speaker 1: information in schools is going to be a hindrance. Yeah,

470
00:27:13,280 --> 00:27:15,800
Speaker 1: So from the late nineteen forties it was kind of

471
00:27:15,880 --> 00:27:18,080
Speaker 1: clear the guy that Bob Wolk was going to turn into.

472
00:27:18,280 --> 00:27:20,720
Speaker 1: In a speech in May nineteen forty nine, he argued

473
00:27:20,760 --> 00:27:22,760
Speaker 1: that it was no secret that there was a war

474
00:27:22,960 --> 00:27:27,000
Speaker 1: going on in the United States between collectivism and individualism.

475
00:27:27,800 --> 00:27:30,200
Speaker 1: He described this war as occurring on many fronts. In

476
00:27:30,240 --> 00:27:32,600
Speaker 1: the field of commerce and industry, the battle is between

477
00:27:32,760 --> 00:27:36,280
Speaker 1: free enterprise and state socialism, he said. In politics, it

478
00:27:36,400 --> 00:27:38,720
Speaker 1: is between the people's ownership of the government and the

479
00:27:38,800 --> 00:27:42,320
Speaker 1: government's ownership of the people. In sociology, it is between

480
00:27:42,400 --> 00:27:46,160
Speaker 1: self reliance and dependence on a welfare state. In international relations,

481
00:27:46,240 --> 00:27:49,080
Speaker 1: it is between a brutally aggressive tyranny and the remains

482
00:27:49,160 --> 00:27:53,720
Speaker 1: of an independent civilization. So that's I wish, I wish

483
00:27:53,840 --> 00:27:56,320
Speaker 1: rich people would just be like, I want more money,

484
00:27:56,560 --> 00:27:58,760
Speaker 1: Like I would at least be able to engage with that.

485
00:27:58,880 --> 00:28:02,200
Speaker 1: But that's a whole longest of fake bullshit. Leave me alone,

486
00:28:02,320 --> 00:28:04,680
Speaker 1: just say you want more money. And what's what's impressive

487
00:28:04,680 --> 00:28:06,800
Speaker 1: about it is that it's the exact same rhetoric that

488
00:28:06,880 --> 00:28:10,160
Speaker 1: you hear out of the like mainstream Republican Party today.

489
00:28:10,480 --> 00:28:14,520
Speaker 1: So like like we which really uh, like the thing

490
00:28:14,600 --> 00:28:16,880
Speaker 1: that he predicted more than anything was like the way

491
00:28:17,000 --> 00:28:20,680
Speaker 1: to kind of frame this battle, um, but because like, yeah,

492
00:28:20,760 --> 00:28:23,560
Speaker 1: that there's a fight between in the in this period,

493
00:28:23,600 --> 00:28:26,119
Speaker 1: the like the late nineteen forties and fifties, when like

494
00:28:26,480 --> 00:28:29,040
Speaker 1: the government has just finished a long stint of cracking

495
00:28:29,119 --> 00:28:33,159
Speaker 1: down brutally on left wing organizing, defining like this is

496
00:28:33,200 --> 00:28:36,080
Speaker 1: a battle between free enterprise and state socialism, Like that

497
00:28:36,160 --> 00:28:37,840
Speaker 1: was the thing he was doing, was was not just

498
00:28:37,920 --> 00:28:40,760
Speaker 1: attacking socialism, which Americans have done for a while, but

499
00:28:40,880 --> 00:28:44,920
Speaker 1: defining like the mainstream Democratic Party as socialists and refusing

500
00:28:44,960 --> 00:28:47,720
Speaker 1: to deviate from that line. Like that was really kind

501
00:28:47,720 --> 00:28:52,160
Speaker 1: of one of Welsh's big innovations. Branding your enemies as

502
00:28:52,200 --> 00:28:56,240
Speaker 1: opposed to yourself. Yeah, and also the idea that no,

503
00:28:56,400 --> 00:28:58,800
Speaker 1: we're we're not. This is not you know, politics is

504
00:28:58,840 --> 00:29:01,880
Speaker 1: not some sort of grand bait between you know, two

505
00:29:01,960 --> 00:29:04,840
Speaker 1: sides with different opinions on how things might work, trying

506
00:29:04,880 --> 00:29:06,880
Speaker 1: to figure out the way to make a better society.

507
00:29:07,280 --> 00:29:10,680
Speaker 1: It is a It is a fight between tyranny, uh

508
00:29:10,880 --> 00:29:13,320
Speaker 1: and any hope of survival, and like the other side

509
00:29:13,480 --> 00:29:17,000
Speaker 1: is nothing but pure tyranny, evil stuff. Yeah, Like like

510
00:29:17,160 --> 00:29:21,440
Speaker 1: our ahead of the Federal Elections Commission said, yeah, it

511
00:29:21,560 --> 00:29:25,200
Speaker 1: fucking rules. Yeah. Well described the battle between liberals and

512
00:29:25,240 --> 00:29:28,200
Speaker 1: conservatives in the United States as a war that would

513
00:29:28,240 --> 00:29:31,120
Speaker 1: determine whether we are going to leave our children and

514
00:29:31,200 --> 00:29:33,240
Speaker 1: our grandchildren a world at least as good as the

515
00:29:33,280 --> 00:29:35,400
Speaker 1: one we have inherited, or one that has already plunged

516
00:29:35,440 --> 00:29:38,800
Speaker 1: into the incipient shambles of a new dark Ages. So

517
00:29:39,000 --> 00:29:41,480
Speaker 1: he was right in the inverse, I suppose. Yeah, I

518
00:29:41,520 --> 00:29:44,600
Speaker 1: mean he did help bring us into a new dark Ages. Um,

519
00:29:45,440 --> 00:29:48,920
Speaker 1: so good on you, Bob. You know who else is

520
00:29:48,920 --> 00:29:55,760
Speaker 1: going to bring us into a new dark age? CBS? Yeah,

521
00:29:55,880 --> 00:29:58,240
Speaker 1: I mean they're gonna try, but they're gonna do it

522
00:29:58,320 --> 00:30:00,320
Speaker 1: with the help of the products and services that's support

523
00:30:00,360 --> 00:30:06,200
Speaker 1: this podcast. I made no sense that our products and

524
00:30:06,200 --> 00:30:07,960
Speaker 1: services are going to plunge the world into a new

525
00:30:08,040 --> 00:30:11,080
Speaker 1: dark age. Know that they're going to help CBS do it.

526
00:30:12,320 --> 00:30:16,680
Speaker 1: I think they might. Is it a mask singer on CBS?

527
00:30:18,400 --> 00:30:21,720
Speaker 1: Who is the masking? Do they have the same masked

528
00:30:21,760 --> 00:30:24,320
Speaker 1: singer every time? Absolutely not. The whole point is guessing

529
00:30:24,400 --> 00:30:27,800
Speaker 1: who's behind the mask? Okay, I've never seen it. They

530
00:30:27,840 --> 00:30:30,200
Speaker 1: have celebrities and costumes and then they sing and then

531
00:30:30,240 --> 00:30:33,320
Speaker 1: a panel of Judge's gas who's behind the mask? All right,

532
00:30:33,360 --> 00:30:35,360
Speaker 1: Well that's worse than Bill Gates and Rashida Jones. At

533
00:30:35,400 --> 00:30:37,760
Speaker 1: least Sarah Palin was on it. Of course she was.

534
00:30:38,000 --> 00:30:40,560
Speaker 1: Never mind, it's today only second to Bill Gates and

535
00:30:40,640 --> 00:30:49,560
Speaker 1: Rashida Jones. We're back and we're talking about the masked

536
00:30:49,640 --> 00:30:52,719
Speaker 1: singer and how it's almost certainly evidence that the United

537
00:30:52,760 --> 00:30:55,880
Speaker 1: States has in fact slid into a new dark age

538
00:30:56,240 --> 00:31:02,360
Speaker 1: through which there is no escape. Doctor Drew was on it. Yeah. See,

539
00:31:02,560 --> 00:31:05,120
Speaker 1: that's the kind of thing like if if aliens came

540
00:31:05,200 --> 00:31:07,920
Speaker 1: down and I had to like defend the continued existence

541
00:31:07,960 --> 00:31:10,000
Speaker 1: of human civilization, I think I could do a pretty

542
00:31:10,040 --> 00:31:12,040
Speaker 1: good job. Until they brought up clips from that show,

543
00:31:12,560 --> 00:31:14,480
Speaker 1: Like I think I could defend us from like war

544
00:31:14,600 --> 00:31:17,600
Speaker 1: crimes charges and stuff, but not not that. Here's this

545
00:31:17,680 --> 00:31:20,800
Speaker 1: guy who's on the radio giving medical advice to teams

546
00:31:20,920 --> 00:31:24,120
Speaker 1: for twenty years. Uh, he's dressed like a hippopotamus, singing

547
00:31:24,160 --> 00:31:27,160
Speaker 1: a song poorly. Yeah, you know what, you know what,

548
00:31:27,440 --> 00:31:29,400
Speaker 1: what are you going to use? A virus? Big lasers? Like,

549
00:31:29,760 --> 00:31:32,280
Speaker 1: just just just do it, just be quick about it.

550
00:31:33,160 --> 00:31:36,400
Speaker 1: If the first questions Aliens ask is, was Sean Spicer

551
00:31:36,520 --> 00:31:38,720
Speaker 1: a good dancer? We're gonna be in real trouble there.

552
00:31:39,000 --> 00:31:41,920
Speaker 1: But you know who wasn't on the mask singer Sean

553
00:31:41,960 --> 00:31:46,720
Speaker 1: Spicer Robert Welch. Ye, Bob Welch was not, although he

554
00:31:46,760 --> 00:31:50,040
Speaker 1: would have hated that show and called it evidence of

555
00:31:50,080 --> 00:31:54,280
Speaker 1: a communist conspiracy. So Bob Welch's appetite had been, you know,

556
00:31:54,440 --> 00:31:57,760
Speaker 1: pretty sufficiently stirred by the nineteen fifties, and again he had,

557
00:31:58,600 --> 00:32:00,160
Speaker 1: you know, he'd kind of climbed his high as the

558
00:32:00,200 --> 00:32:02,080
Speaker 1: candy industry would get him. So like what you see

559
00:32:02,120 --> 00:32:05,080
Speaker 1: in the late forties is he reaches the heights that

560
00:32:05,160 --> 00:32:08,240
Speaker 1: a candy man can hit and he immediately starts screaming

561
00:32:08,280 --> 00:32:11,720
Speaker 1: about how communists are going to have infiltrated the Democratic

562
00:32:11,760 --> 00:32:15,520
Speaker 1: Party and are going to destroy democracy. Um like a

563
00:32:15,600 --> 00:32:20,160
Speaker 1: normal career check. Yeah. Yeah. The problem is that eminem

564
00:32:20,240 --> 00:32:23,800
Speaker 1: Mars was run by Marxist collectivists. Yeah, I assume it

565
00:32:23,840 --> 00:32:25,520
Speaker 1: was because he didn't have a Wonka vater. You know,

566
00:32:25,600 --> 00:32:28,960
Speaker 1: he could only go, I'm gonna make so many more

567
00:32:29,160 --> 00:32:33,280
Speaker 1: fucking Willy Wonker reference. Oh it's not just I do

568
00:32:33,400 --> 00:32:35,640
Speaker 1: not have trouble seeing Bob Welch is a lot like

569
00:32:35,840 --> 00:32:38,440
Speaker 1: Willie Wonka, to be honest, because I think they both

570
00:32:38,520 --> 00:32:42,200
Speaker 1: believe business owners should be able to kill children. Yeah,

571
00:32:42,320 --> 00:32:49,920
Speaker 1: I agree, and enslaved people. Yes, he is so Bob Welch.

572
00:32:50,120 --> 00:32:53,040
Speaker 1: You know, in the nineteen fifties starts getting way more

573
00:32:53,200 --> 00:32:56,440
Speaker 1: into politics. Now it's it's unclear precisely when his terror

574
00:32:56,480 --> 00:32:59,040
Speaker 1: if the left began. Again. When you read this guy's background,

575
00:32:59,480 --> 00:33:01,480
Speaker 1: the stuff that wasn't just written by the Jahn Birch

576
00:33:01,560 --> 00:33:04,400
Speaker 1: Society decades later, it kind of comes out of left field,

577
00:33:04,440 --> 00:33:06,920
Speaker 1: like he's just a candy man, and then boom, he's

578
00:33:06,920 --> 00:33:10,760
Speaker 1: screaming about the New Dark Ages. But however it started,

579
00:33:10,800 --> 00:33:13,120
Speaker 1: it was in full form by July of nineteen fifty

580
00:33:13,200 --> 00:33:15,360
Speaker 1: when he wrote this in a fundraising letter for a

581
00:33:15,440 --> 00:33:20,240
Speaker 1: politician quote. The strategy of the socialists divide and conquer,

582
00:33:20,440 --> 00:33:23,040
Speaker 1: call all businessmen crooks so that nobody will speak up

583
00:33:23,080 --> 00:33:26,400
Speaker 1: for them, and strangle them with controls and taxation. Brib

584
00:33:26,520 --> 00:33:28,640
Speaker 1: all the farmers with their own money into a selfish

585
00:33:28,680 --> 00:33:31,760
Speaker 1: pressure group for more bribes. Infiltrate the labor unions and

586
00:33:31,840 --> 00:33:35,480
Speaker 1: convert them into political tools. Discredit the medical profession until

587
00:33:35,480 --> 00:33:38,479
Speaker 1: the rest of the public clamors for government medicine. Attack

588
00:33:38,520 --> 00:33:41,560
Speaker 1: every segment of our population with tactics with which alienate

589
00:33:41,640 --> 00:33:44,200
Speaker 1: the support of all other segments. The forces on the

590
00:33:44,320 --> 00:33:47,280
Speaker 1: socialist side amount to a vast conspiracy to change our

591
00:33:47,320 --> 00:33:52,800
Speaker 1: political and economic system. Wow, your face changed, It was

592
00:33:52,840 --> 00:33:59,840
Speaker 1: almost you went deep into that channel, Bob Dark there's

593
00:33:59,840 --> 00:34:02,800
Speaker 1: a odd I love. They're including the idea that socialists

594
00:34:02,800 --> 00:34:05,360
Speaker 1: were going to discredit the medical profession in order to

595
00:34:05,440 --> 00:34:10,960
Speaker 1: convince people to demand government medicine. It's like, No, what

596
00:34:11,120 --> 00:34:14,040
Speaker 1: discredited the medical profession was people going to the e

597
00:34:14,320 --> 00:34:16,799
Speaker 1: er and getting a forty dollar bill for a three

598
00:34:16,840 --> 00:34:20,520
Speaker 1: hour visit. Uh, I'll do it. Yeah, there are two

599
00:34:20,560 --> 00:34:24,880
Speaker 1: ways to go on on that thought process. There. So,

600
00:34:25,680 --> 00:34:27,839
Speaker 1: this was the first time Bob Well used the word

601
00:34:27,920 --> 00:34:30,279
Speaker 1: conspiracy in a public statement, and it would not be

602
00:34:30,400 --> 00:34:34,000
Speaker 1: the last. Tragically, wich is increasingly unhinged. Rants about socialism

603
00:34:34,040 --> 00:34:37,040
Speaker 1: did not translate into success at the ballot box, probably

604
00:34:37,080 --> 00:34:39,600
Speaker 1: because a lot of Americans in nineteen fifty had directly

605
00:34:39,680 --> 00:34:44,239
Speaker 1: and recently benefited from massive social welfare projects. Really really,

606
00:34:44,320 --> 00:34:47,000
Speaker 1: that's when you actually feel the effects of government working

607
00:34:47,160 --> 00:34:49,360
Speaker 1: for you, and you're like, oh, maybe this isn't an

608
00:34:49,400 --> 00:34:52,520
Speaker 1: evil thing, you know, And then yeah, but millions of

609
00:34:52,600 --> 00:34:56,200
Speaker 1: us didn't starve because of the civilian conservation, you know, project.

610
00:34:56,200 --> 00:34:59,279
Speaker 1: I don't think that's a bad conspiracy, to be honest. Yeah,

611
00:34:59,800 --> 00:35:02,160
Speaker 1: is the conspiracy that we didn't starve to death during

612
00:35:02,200 --> 00:35:07,120
Speaker 1: the depression? Because I like that. Yeah, Yeah, that was

613
00:35:07,120 --> 00:35:10,640
Speaker 1: a good one. Yeah. So yeah. He lost the race

614
00:35:10,680 --> 00:35:12,560
Speaker 1: for Lieutenant governor by a margin of more than a

615
00:35:12,680 --> 00:35:15,239
Speaker 1: hundred thousand votes, which in nineteen fifty was like most

616
00:35:15,320 --> 00:35:20,200
Speaker 1: of the country. Yeah with the question, Yeah, so it

617
00:35:20,360 --> 00:35:23,719
Speaker 1: was not a close election. Still, it is worth noting

618
00:35:23,800 --> 00:35:26,759
Speaker 1: that nearly sixty thou Americans had cast their votes for

619
00:35:26,880 --> 00:35:30,480
Speaker 1: Bob Welch and his giant left wing conspiracy. After his defeat,

620
00:35:30,520 --> 00:35:32,800
Speaker 1: he wrote about his hopes that this corps of supporters

621
00:35:32,840 --> 00:35:36,400
Speaker 1: would in the next year's grow into quote a far stronger,

622
00:35:36,520 --> 00:35:39,359
Speaker 1: more militant, and more effective force of political strength than

623
00:35:39,400 --> 00:35:43,520
Speaker 1: other campaigns to come. He insisted, this crusade has just

624
00:35:43,719 --> 00:35:46,239
Speaker 1: started because it's always a good thing when right wing

625
00:35:46,280 --> 00:35:48,880
Speaker 1: idealogues describe what they're doing as a crusade. That that

626
00:35:48,960 --> 00:35:52,239
Speaker 1: always it really gets it really gets white men all

627
00:35:52,360 --> 00:35:54,560
Speaker 1: hot and bothered whenever you give him the opportunity to

628
00:35:54,600 --> 00:35:58,040
Speaker 1: go on a crusade against anybody who's not a white man.

629
00:35:58,160 --> 00:36:01,399
Speaker 1: So that I mean, you know, my mom, Jordan's ABC baby,

630
00:36:01,440 --> 00:36:04,200
Speaker 1: always be a crusadan. That's what you gotta do. If

631
00:36:04,239 --> 00:36:18,640
Speaker 1: I'm not, it's yeah, okay. So Welch tried his hand

632
00:36:18,680 --> 00:36:21,000
Speaker 1: at politics again two years later when he attempted to

633
00:36:21,040 --> 00:36:24,440
Speaker 1: be elected as a delegate for Senator Robert Taft's run

634
00:36:24,600 --> 00:36:27,440
Speaker 1: for president. Yall, remember when Bob Taft ran for president,

635
00:36:31,760 --> 00:36:35,240
Speaker 1: William Howard, you are thinking about the first Taft, although

636
00:36:35,280 --> 00:36:38,279
Speaker 1: I assumed they were both would have had problems with

637
00:36:38,360 --> 00:36:41,680
Speaker 1: the White House bathtubs. No, this was this was Taft

638
00:36:41,760 --> 00:36:45,040
Speaker 1: the sequel, or the attempted sequel to taft Um, And

639
00:36:45,239 --> 00:36:48,200
Speaker 1: like most sequels, it was not as good as the

640
00:36:48,280 --> 00:36:54,240
Speaker 1: original to teot Domes. Okay, Uh, so Taft was actually

641
00:36:54,400 --> 00:36:57,360
Speaker 1: running to the right of Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was

642
00:36:57,360 --> 00:37:00,160
Speaker 1: also running for president at that time. Um. And at

643
00:37:00,239 --> 00:37:04,680
Speaker 1: that point, for you know, understandable reasons, Dwight Eisenhower was

644
00:37:04,800 --> 00:37:07,560
Speaker 1: probably one of the most beloved men on the entire planet.

645
00:37:08,000 --> 00:37:11,480
Speaker 1: The whole highway thing. He hadn't done the highways yet,

646
00:37:11,560 --> 00:37:16,080
Speaker 1: but he had helped beat the Nazis. Um he was

647
00:37:16,880 --> 00:37:20,480
Speaker 1: for me lately, that's what I'm asking, Okay, he was

648
00:37:20,600 --> 00:37:23,360
Speaker 1: even Eisenhower at this point was even actually pretty popular

649
00:37:23,440 --> 00:37:26,520
Speaker 1: with a lot of Soviets, including Marshall Zukov, the most

650
00:37:26,600 --> 00:37:29,759
Speaker 1: prominent commander of Soviet forces during World War Two. Um.

651
00:37:30,320 --> 00:37:32,800
Speaker 1: It's actually, it's actually kind of a fun story that

652
00:37:33,440 --> 00:37:37,640
Speaker 1: Marshall Zukov, who again is like the main Soviet general

653
00:37:37,680 --> 00:37:40,320
Speaker 1: who beat the Nazis, Like he and Eisenhower were like

654
00:37:40,480 --> 00:37:43,000
Speaker 1: real good buddies, and Eisenhower gave him a tackle box

655
00:37:43,040 --> 00:37:45,520
Speaker 1: filled with a bunch of hand carved fishing lures, and

656
00:37:45,640 --> 00:37:47,879
Speaker 1: Zukov kept it with him until the day he died.

657
00:37:47,960 --> 00:37:50,319
Speaker 1: It was right next to him when he died. Really,

658
00:37:50,480 --> 00:37:54,360
Speaker 1: that's very cute, Yeah, isn't that. Yeah. I mean, admittedly,

659
00:37:54,400 --> 00:37:56,880
Speaker 1: both guys are responsible for the deaths of millions, so

660
00:37:57,000 --> 00:38:02,120
Speaker 1: there is yeah. Also but hen that's fair, that's fair,

661
00:38:02,480 --> 00:38:08,640
Speaker 1: and other people. But as funny, if Zukov didn't fish, yeah,

662
00:38:09,239 --> 00:38:14,360
Speaker 1: he just really loved them Luis. Yeah, it's very thoughtful.

663
00:38:14,600 --> 00:38:17,560
Speaker 1: So anyway, the fact that Eisenhower was, despite being a

664
00:38:17,600 --> 00:38:21,160
Speaker 1: pretty hardcore Cold warrior himself, capable of seeing communists as

665
00:38:21,280 --> 00:38:25,439
Speaker 1: human beings, enraged Bob Welch. And Bob Welch was further

666
00:38:25,600 --> 00:38:28,440
Speaker 1: enraged by the fact that Eisenhower supported taxing people to

667
00:38:28,520 --> 00:38:30,680
Speaker 1: spend money on things that would benefit the public good

668
00:38:31,120 --> 00:38:38,399
Speaker 1: like highways. Back to Bob Welch was Marxism. I don't

669
00:38:38,400 --> 00:38:44,000
Speaker 1: need roads. Yeah, you gotta think all all all rich

670
00:38:44,080 --> 00:38:48,080
Speaker 1: people are basically like, uh, Doc Brown, like, we don't

671
00:38:48,160 --> 00:38:53,440
Speaker 1: need roads. Yeah, exactly where we're going. We just all

672
00:38:53,680 --> 00:38:55,880
Speaker 1: just dirgibles for the rich and everyone else as a

673
00:38:55,960 --> 00:39:00,360
Speaker 1: mud farmer. That's the glorious dream of Bob Welch. I

674
00:39:00,520 --> 00:39:04,759
Speaker 1: do like any alternate universe where dirigibles factor heavily in

675
00:39:04,880 --> 00:39:08,440
Speaker 1: the future, I love it. I can't. I can't imagine

676
00:39:08,520 --> 00:39:11,200
Speaker 1: Bob Welch getting his way and they're not being thousands

677
00:39:11,239 --> 00:39:15,640
Speaker 1: of dirigibles and giant mechanical spiders. Oh yeah, yeah, you're

678
00:39:15,680 --> 00:39:18,879
Speaker 1: gonna have some yeah yeah. Yeah. So obviously Ike won

679
00:39:19,440 --> 00:39:22,920
Speaker 1: that election. He's kind of hard to beat. Again, if

680
00:39:22,960 --> 00:39:25,840
Speaker 1: you really want to win an election, beat the Nazis,

681
00:39:26,160 --> 00:39:31,520
Speaker 1: it'll do. Yeah. If Biden, If Biden defeats the Nazis,

682
00:39:31,680 --> 00:39:34,520
Speaker 1: I will vote for him a second time. First, if

683
00:39:34,600 --> 00:39:38,279
Speaker 1: Biden had if Biden had sacked Hitler's Berlin, yeah, I

684
00:39:38,400 --> 00:39:40,279
Speaker 1: think people would have he would have he would have

685
00:39:40,360 --> 00:39:44,640
Speaker 1: had a more commanding lead. What Hitler's Berlin in South Carolina? Now,

686
00:39:44,760 --> 00:39:49,360
Speaker 1: is that where it's out or yeah? Uh So the

687
00:39:49,480 --> 00:39:52,680
Speaker 1: final delegate count in that uh in that convention between

688
00:39:52,760 --> 00:39:55,560
Speaker 1: Eisenhower and Taft was a blowout, eight hundred and forty

689
00:39:55,600 --> 00:39:58,920
Speaker 1: five to two eight um most so. Again the final

690
00:39:59,000 --> 00:40:01,800
Speaker 1: one not particular close, but the first count of delegates

691
00:40:01,840 --> 00:40:04,759
Speaker 1: had been much narrower, with five nine for Eisenhower and

692
00:40:04,800 --> 00:40:07,680
Speaker 1: five hundred for Taft. It was a contentious and ugly

693
00:40:08,160 --> 00:40:12,200
Speaker 1: uh contest between the two men. Um. Eisenhower's people accused

694
00:40:12,239 --> 00:40:14,920
Speaker 1: tafts people of stealing delegates. There were a number of

695
00:40:15,040 --> 00:40:17,040
Speaker 1: different votes before they got to the final count, and

696
00:40:17,040 --> 00:40:19,360
Speaker 1: there were ugly floor fights, and while I did prevail

697
00:40:19,440 --> 00:40:21,680
Speaker 1: clearly in the end, a lot of Taft supporters were

698
00:40:21,760 --> 00:40:24,320
Speaker 1: left feeling that they'd been cheated. There was kind of

699
00:40:24,360 --> 00:40:26,759
Speaker 1: a stop the steel thing, and Bob Welch was like

700
00:40:26,880 --> 00:40:30,160
Speaker 1: the main architect of it. Um was Roger Stone like

701
00:40:30,280 --> 00:40:32,920
Speaker 1: a baby. Yeah, I mean I think he was a

702
00:40:33,000 --> 00:40:42,799
Speaker 1: baby at the time. Yeah, yeah, first, yeah, you can

703
00:40:42,880 --> 00:40:45,520
Speaker 1: kind of honestly, the best, like the best way to

704
00:40:45,640 --> 00:40:47,920
Speaker 1: describe it might be it seems sort of like what

705
00:40:48,000 --> 00:40:50,160
Speaker 1: happened with Bernie Sanders in two thousand and sixteen, at

706
00:40:50,200 --> 00:40:52,759
Speaker 1: least in terms of how his his supporters felt. You

707
00:40:52,880 --> 00:40:54,960
Speaker 1: had this like candidate who had a strong base of

708
00:40:55,040 --> 00:40:58,920
Speaker 1: fanatical supporters who were like, the party leadership has fucked

709
00:40:59,000 --> 00:41:02,359
Speaker 1: us out of of winning. And that's probably the case.

710
00:41:02,480 --> 00:41:06,600
Speaker 1: It does seem like the Republican Party leadership like tipped

711
00:41:06,640 --> 00:41:10,680
Speaker 1: the scale for Eisenhower at the same time, hard to

712
00:41:10,800 --> 00:41:18,600
Speaker 1: imagine Taft doing better than Eisenhower at the time. Robert Welch,

713
00:41:18,640 --> 00:41:21,800
Speaker 1: who was infuriated, called it the dirtiest deal in American

714
00:41:21,880 --> 00:41:29,239
Speaker 1: political history, A new one, yeah, a famous deal that

715
00:41:29,320 --> 00:41:33,080
Speaker 1: he was mad about not long ago. Nothing made him

716
00:41:33,120 --> 00:41:39,680
Speaker 1: angrier than Taft getting screwed, Robert. That's a Papa sucker

717
00:41:39,760 --> 00:41:42,200
Speaker 1: for you. The Bernie Sanders of not wanting people to

718
00:41:42,320 --> 00:41:47,800
Speaker 1: have healthcare. So Eisenhower went on to electorally pants his

719
00:41:47,840 --> 00:41:51,000
Speaker 1: Democratic challenger in one of the most overwhelming landslides in

720
00:41:51,040 --> 00:41:55,399
Speaker 1: the US political history. Eisenhower's vice president, Richard Nixon, would

721
00:41:55,400 --> 00:41:57,560
Speaker 1: go on to do absolutely nothing of note, but that

722
00:41:57,760 --> 00:42:01,600
Speaker 1: is that was ix pp. Most Americans were fine with

723
00:42:01,760 --> 00:42:04,120
Speaker 1: more or less everything that went on, And really the

724
00:42:04,160 --> 00:42:07,360
Speaker 1: whole fight over Taft being you know, cheated out of

725
00:42:07,600 --> 00:42:12,040
Speaker 1: the nomination didn't did not become a major national story.

726
00:42:12,480 --> 00:42:14,840
Speaker 1: The early nineteen fifties were a time of broad political

727
00:42:14,920 --> 00:42:19,200
Speaker 1: consensus among the nation's white supermajority. Uh So, like again,

728
00:42:19,280 --> 00:42:23,240
Speaker 1: people were pretty happy. The Eisenhower years are generally referred

729
00:42:23,239 --> 00:42:25,759
Speaker 1: to by again white folks as like a golden era

730
00:42:25,840 --> 00:42:30,400
Speaker 1: in America. Um, because most we get to eat alone, right, guys,

731
00:42:30,480 --> 00:42:32,520
Speaker 1: we all get to eat alone. This is pretty great.

732
00:42:32,560 --> 00:42:35,440
Speaker 1: I love this country. We get to buy terrible houses

733
00:42:35,480 --> 00:42:37,879
Speaker 1: in the suburbs. You know, look like me, You look

734
00:42:37,960 --> 00:42:40,000
Speaker 1: like me, You look like me. This place is great.

735
00:42:40,040 --> 00:42:42,480
Speaker 1: I just love this club. I just bought a house

736
00:42:42,560 --> 00:42:48,759
Speaker 1: for eleven dollars and I got a negative four percent loan.

737
00:42:49,640 --> 00:42:55,279
Speaker 1: They're paying this house for buying this house. Yeah, I

738
00:42:55,400 --> 00:42:59,359
Speaker 1: accidentally fell landed on a fucking uh. What's the what's

739
00:42:59,400 --> 00:43:01,480
Speaker 1: the thing that people don't get anymore that they used

740
00:43:01,480 --> 00:43:07,080
Speaker 1: to get pension? I forgot what pensions were because they

741
00:43:07,120 --> 00:43:11,080
Speaker 1: don't exist anymore for most of us unless you're a cop.

742
00:43:11,200 --> 00:43:16,960
Speaker 1: So yeah, again, most Americans, at least most of the Americans,

743
00:43:17,120 --> 00:43:19,600
Speaker 1: who again were white and thus the kind of people

744
00:43:19,600 --> 00:43:21,840
Speaker 1: who got asked about things at that time. We're pretty

745
00:43:21,840 --> 00:43:25,720
Speaker 1: happy with Eisenhower's victory, but not Bob Welch. Taft's defeat

746
00:43:25,840 --> 00:43:28,400
Speaker 1: was something of a black pill for him, convincing him

747
00:43:28,440 --> 00:43:31,359
Speaker 1: that party politics was hopeless and that party politics could

748
00:43:31,400 --> 00:43:34,080
Speaker 1: never save the United States from the looming specter of communism.

749
00:43:34,960 --> 00:43:37,400
Speaker 1: Nineteen fifty two was also the year that Welch published

750
00:43:37,480 --> 00:43:40,640
Speaker 1: his first political book, May God Forgive Us, which is

751
00:43:40,960 --> 00:43:43,359
Speaker 1: solid title give it to the Man, you know, Yeah,

752
00:43:44,080 --> 00:43:46,600
Speaker 1: that's that's sinners. Sinners in the hands of an angry

753
00:43:46,640 --> 00:43:48,680
Speaker 1: God was already taken at that point, I believe, so

754
00:43:49,080 --> 00:43:51,440
Speaker 1: he couldn't use that one. His first book is basically

755
00:43:51,520 --> 00:43:56,080
Speaker 1: the title is like it's too late. Yeah, you're fucked ship, Sophie.

756
00:43:56,239 --> 00:43:59,120
Speaker 1: Remind remember, remind me to pitch You're fucked to I

757
00:43:59,120 --> 00:44:02,320
Speaker 1: don't know, penguinners. Somebody figure out. We'll figure out what

758
00:44:02,400 --> 00:44:05,040
Speaker 1: it's about. Later on the Art of rat Fucking his

759
00:44:05,640 --> 00:44:12,880
Speaker 1: salesmanship book Zen In the Art of rat Fucking, a

760
00:44:13,000 --> 00:44:18,000
Speaker 1: Guide for hard nosed Buddhist political Operators. I would read

761
00:44:18,080 --> 00:44:23,399
Speaker 1: that book. That actually sounds great fun, that does so fun. Yeah,

762
00:44:23,960 --> 00:44:30,080
Speaker 1: so what one hand? Rat fucking? So may God forgive

763
00:44:30,160 --> 00:44:33,480
Speaker 1: us was a full throated condemnation of US foreign policy

764
00:44:33,520 --> 00:44:36,760
Speaker 1: in Asia, which Welch saw as the government basically handing

765
00:44:36,800 --> 00:44:39,719
Speaker 1: an entire continent over to the commies. He blamed it

766
00:44:39,800 --> 00:44:43,520
Speaker 1: on the quote almost unbelievable combination of trickery, chicanery, and

767
00:44:43,640 --> 00:44:46,960
Speaker 1: treason of the Harry Truman administration. Truman, as far as

768
00:44:47,000 --> 00:44:50,759
Speaker 1: Welch was concerned, was basically a Communist. Now, the fact

769
00:44:50,800 --> 00:44:53,600
Speaker 1: that Harry Truman had literally dropped two Adam bombs in

770
00:44:53,760 --> 00:44:56,960
Speaker 1: order to scare the Soviet Union didn't seem to change

771
00:44:57,160 --> 00:45:00,680
Speaker 1: Welch's political calculus at all. He was a communist far left.

772
00:45:00,719 --> 00:45:04,160
Speaker 1: For me, it was an act man. Can't see through

773
00:45:04,200 --> 00:45:06,880
Speaker 1: the bullshit. It was actually the deep state who launched

774
00:45:06,920 --> 00:45:10,360
Speaker 1: those nuclear bombs. So Truman was, no, don't do it.

775
00:45:11,040 --> 00:45:14,880
Speaker 1: He was a hardcore Trotskyist. Yeah, yeah, it was Peter

776
00:45:15,120 --> 00:45:22,480
Speaker 1: Struck actually dropped their nukes, if I recall correct. So

777
00:45:22,840 --> 00:45:25,400
Speaker 1: Bobby was most distraught by what he saw as the

778
00:45:25,440 --> 00:45:28,799
Speaker 1: abandonment of nationalist warlord Chang Kai check to communist war

779
00:45:28,880 --> 00:45:31,880
Speaker 1: lord mousey tongue. Uh, that's that's where we get our

780
00:45:32,239 --> 00:45:35,279
Speaker 1: Chang Kai Check reference. I always love to have some

781
00:45:35,440 --> 00:45:38,040
Speaker 1: good I like to throw in some red meat for

782
00:45:38,120 --> 00:45:42,520
Speaker 1: the Chang gang you know. Yeah, universal basic income. Yeah,

783
00:45:42,719 --> 00:45:44,920
Speaker 1: the whole thing. Yeah, Mauser C ninety six is that

784
00:45:45,000 --> 00:45:50,239
Speaker 1: firep slugs all the good Chinese warlord stuff. So it

785
00:45:50,400 --> 00:45:53,080
Speaker 1: was during the research for this book that Welch first

786
00:45:53,120 --> 00:45:55,480
Speaker 1: came across a name that would come to define the

787
00:45:55,560 --> 00:45:59,799
Speaker 1: rest of his lives work, John Birch. You'll know who

788
00:45:59,840 --> 00:46:03,080
Speaker 1: the actual John Birch was. He does. He explained it

789
00:46:03,160 --> 00:46:05,920
Speaker 1: to me, and I'm I'm so good at remembering exactly

790
00:46:06,000 --> 00:46:09,759
Speaker 1: where the original forgotten. Yeah. I do know one thing

791
00:46:09,840 --> 00:46:13,680
Speaker 1: about him, which you will almost certainly say here very shortly. Well,

792
00:46:13,920 --> 00:46:16,040
Speaker 1: I actually don't think I think he's bluffing. I think

793
00:46:16,080 --> 00:46:18,120
Speaker 1: Jordan's bluffing. I will tell you. I will tell you this.

794
00:46:18,320 --> 00:46:20,400
Speaker 1: What's the one thing you know I know that I

795
00:46:20,520 --> 00:46:25,080
Speaker 1: remember specifically from you is, according to his friend John Birch,

796
00:46:25,120 --> 00:46:28,279
Speaker 1: would have hated the John. Yes, yeah, that is what

797
00:46:28,400 --> 00:46:31,719
Speaker 1: I does. Seem fair, although there's debate about that, but

798
00:46:32,520 --> 00:46:35,560
Speaker 1: that is one account that you can find for sure. Okay,

799
00:46:35,680 --> 00:46:37,360
Speaker 1: we'll talk about his life and you can tell me

800
00:46:37,440 --> 00:46:39,360
Speaker 1: how you think after that. Okay, So there's one thing

801
00:46:39,760 --> 00:46:44,600
Speaker 1: skimmed about John Burt. Okay, skimmed is even generally. Yeah,

802
00:46:44,719 --> 00:46:47,520
Speaker 1: there's one thing that you overheard about John Burt. She

803
00:46:47,560 --> 00:46:53,200
Speaker 1: didn't happen to remember hearing this information. And now you

804
00:46:53,280 --> 00:46:56,719
Speaker 1: understand my knowledge base. Yes, So the actual John Burch

805
00:46:56,840 --> 00:46:59,200
Speaker 1: was born in India in nineteen eighteen to parents who

806
00:46:59,200 --> 00:47:01,480
Speaker 1: are Christian mission areas in a three year mission trip

807
00:47:01,560 --> 00:47:05,480
Speaker 1: that ended in frustration and disappointment, presumably because most of

808
00:47:05,520 --> 00:47:07,120
Speaker 1: the people they met were fine with the gods they

809
00:47:07,120 --> 00:47:11,120
Speaker 1: already had. Atlantic writer Thomas Mallon notes that quote evangelical

810
00:47:11,239 --> 00:47:14,120
Speaker 1: zeal conflicted with the more material progress being pursued by

811
00:47:14,160 --> 00:47:18,400
Speaker 1: the missionary Sam Higginbottom, their boss at the Allahabad Agricultural Institute,

812
00:47:18,760 --> 00:47:21,759
Speaker 1: In other words, John Burch's parents wanted to be like,

813
00:47:22,120 --> 00:47:25,160
Speaker 1: you know, Super Jesus e with people, and their boss

814
00:47:25,239 --> 00:47:27,680
Speaker 1: was more about improving people's material needs and hoping that

815
00:47:27,760 --> 00:47:30,000
Speaker 1: inspired them to find Christ. So they got tired of

816
00:47:30,040 --> 00:47:32,480
Speaker 1: that we should give you food, and the other guys like,

817
00:47:32,560 --> 00:47:34,040
Speaker 1: what if we told him they were going to hell?

818
00:47:34,239 --> 00:47:36,360
Speaker 1: That would we work to right? What if food was

819
00:47:36,440 --> 00:47:42,200
Speaker 1: contingent the accepting Christ. Yeah, So the guy who cared

820
00:47:42,200 --> 00:47:44,759
Speaker 1: about helping people stayed in India helping people, and the

821
00:47:44,840 --> 00:47:48,080
Speaker 1: Birch family moved back to Georgia. So that's where John

822
00:47:48,160 --> 00:47:49,600
Speaker 1: was born in India, but he grew up in Georgia,

823
00:47:49,640 --> 00:47:51,720
Speaker 1: and it would be fair to describe him as growing

824
00:47:51,800 --> 00:47:54,600
Speaker 1: up a religious fundamentalist, Like he was not just a

825
00:47:54,719 --> 00:47:58,319
Speaker 1: religious man, but by the standards of the time, a fundamentalist.

826
00:47:58,840 --> 00:48:01,279
Speaker 1: He went to Mercer Universe City and was described by

827
00:48:01,360 --> 00:48:05,040
Speaker 1: a biographer later in life as obstinate, passionate, and headstrong.

828
00:48:05,239 --> 00:48:07,560
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote from the Atlantic here. He hat the

829
00:48:07,600 --> 00:48:14,280
Speaker 1: most professor Felix Frankfurt. The most notable state side episode

830
00:48:14,320 --> 00:48:17,080
Speaker 1: of his brief life involved participating in a thirteen member

831
00:48:17,160 --> 00:48:20,880
Speaker 1: student group against five professors whose theological views they deemed heretical.

832
00:48:21,239 --> 00:48:24,400
Speaker 1: The accusing students were decided minority on the Baptist campus,

833
00:48:24,520 --> 00:48:26,880
Speaker 1: and charges against the faculty were dismissed after a ten

834
00:48:26,960 --> 00:48:29,440
Speaker 1: hour hearing. Birch went on to graduate at the top

835
00:48:29,520 --> 00:48:31,799
Speaker 1: of his class, but found himself shunned by a portion

836
00:48:31,880 --> 00:48:33,799
Speaker 1: of its members. He began to feel that he had

837
00:48:33,840 --> 00:48:36,240
Speaker 1: been used, provoked into the fight by some of Macon's

838
00:48:36,280 --> 00:48:40,400
Speaker 1: towny Baptist ministers. So again, he's very hard core religious

839
00:48:40,440 --> 00:48:42,520
Speaker 1: and is like willing to accuse a bunch of professors

840
00:48:42,560 --> 00:48:45,520
Speaker 1: of heresy. But then after the whole situation shakes out,

841
00:48:45,560 --> 00:48:47,880
Speaker 1: he starts to feel as if he's been manipulated by

842
00:48:48,000 --> 00:48:49,880
Speaker 1: like ministers in the area, and he kind of like

843
00:48:49,960 --> 00:48:52,680
Speaker 1: he kind of has an awakening. And after this point

844
00:48:52,800 --> 00:48:57,160
Speaker 1: most degree became less extreme religiously, Like it seems to

845
00:48:57,239 --> 00:48:59,600
Speaker 1: have realized he was being manipulated. Why do I feel

846
00:48:59,640 --> 00:49:02,560
Speaker 1: like two percent of that debate was entirely about whether

847
00:49:02,640 --> 00:49:07,160
Speaker 1: or not Jews were people, Like, yeah, right, there was

848
00:49:07,239 --> 00:49:13,320
Speaker 1: a j Q in that. Yeah. So yeah, John was

849
00:49:13,520 --> 00:49:15,560
Speaker 1: smart enough to realize he'd been manipulated, and he left

850
00:49:15,600 --> 00:49:18,160
Speaker 1: that school. He went to a Bible institute next run

851
00:49:18,280 --> 00:49:21,520
Speaker 1: by a popular evangelical radio preacher who suggested that Burt

852
00:49:21,600 --> 00:49:24,799
Speaker 1: should travel to China as an evangelist. John arrived there

853
00:49:24,880 --> 00:49:26,840
Speaker 1: in September of nineteen forty, in the middle of a

854
00:49:26,960 --> 00:49:29,800
Speaker 1: long and almost impossibly bloody war between China and Japan

855
00:49:29,920 --> 00:49:31,960
Speaker 1: and a civil war in China. It was a rough

856
00:49:32,080 --> 00:49:36,440
Speaker 1: fucking place to be in, not an easy time to

857
00:49:36,520 --> 00:49:41,160
Speaker 1: be anywhere really in China. Um So John actually traveled

858
00:49:41,239 --> 00:49:44,080
Speaker 1: closer to the danger and moved almost two hundred miles

859
00:49:44,160 --> 00:49:46,360
Speaker 1: from where he had initially moved in China to the

860
00:49:46,440 --> 00:49:48,640
Speaker 1: city of shang Grau, which was very close to the

861
00:49:48,719 --> 00:49:51,680
Speaker 1: front line. Now, while he was a foreigner in China

862
00:49:51,760 --> 00:49:54,279
Speaker 1: to sell people on Christianity, it does seem like he

863
00:49:54,400 --> 00:49:56,719
Speaker 1: legitimately fell in love with the culture. He learned to

864
00:49:56,760 --> 00:49:59,160
Speaker 1: speak fluent Mandarin in just a year, which is not

865
00:49:59,360 --> 00:50:03,280
Speaker 1: something you would Yeah, he's he's really very gifted with languages.

866
00:50:03,920 --> 00:50:06,120
Speaker 1: Um and yeah, that's probably not the kind of thing

867
00:50:06,200 --> 00:50:09,440
Speaker 1: you do if you didn't have some appreciation for the culture. Uh.

868
00:50:09,520 --> 00:50:13,040
Speaker 1: The Atlantic notes that this exceeded to tell them their

869
00:50:13,080 --> 00:50:18,600
Speaker 1: dirty commies. That's what I need to tell them, their commies. Um. Yeah.

870
00:50:18,680 --> 00:50:21,880
Speaker 1: It's also noted by his biographer that he recognized his

871
00:50:21,920 --> 00:50:24,520
Speaker 1: own racial prejudice, which was obviously a product of growing

872
00:50:24,600 --> 00:50:27,400
Speaker 1: up white and Georgia. She was struggling to overcome it

873
00:50:27,480 --> 00:50:29,480
Speaker 1: in the nineteen forties. So it seems like a guy

874
00:50:29,560 --> 00:50:32,480
Speaker 1: who like grew up in a pretty regressive background, but

875
00:50:32,680 --> 00:50:37,359
Speaker 1: was making significant strides to be a better person, open

876
00:50:37,440 --> 00:50:40,560
Speaker 1: to new ideas and new people and new cultures. Definitely

877
00:50:40,600 --> 00:50:43,680
Speaker 1: not a villain, would be fair to say. By nineteen

878
00:50:43,719 --> 00:50:46,200
Speaker 1: forty two, Birch had become discouraged by the bureaucracy of

879
00:50:46,239 --> 00:50:48,719
Speaker 1: the missionary effort in China, feeling as if it distracted

880
00:50:48,719 --> 00:50:51,080
Speaker 1: from the more important work of providing meaningful aid for

881
00:50:51,160 --> 00:50:53,880
Speaker 1: a nation that was riven by war and starvation. He

882
00:50:54,000 --> 00:50:56,239
Speaker 1: volunteered to serve in the U. S. Military mission to

883
00:50:56,360 --> 00:50:58,680
Speaker 1: China as a chaplain. Before he got an answer, he

884
00:50:58,719 --> 00:51:01,200
Speaker 1: wound up helping to rescue of me Dolittle's raiders who

885
00:51:01,200 --> 00:51:03,600
Speaker 1: had just bombed civilians in Tokyo is revenge for Pearl

886
00:51:03,640 --> 00:51:07,280
Speaker 1: Harbor and had landed in China. As Birch's biographer notes, quote,

887
00:51:07,400 --> 00:51:09,799
Speaker 1: they saw a gaunt Western man with several days growth

888
00:51:09,840 --> 00:51:12,440
Speaker 1: of beard, and one of the airman exclaimed, well, Jesus Christ.

889
00:51:12,680 --> 00:51:15,480
Speaker 1: The missionary replied, that's an awfully good name, but I

890
00:51:15,600 --> 00:51:19,520
Speaker 1: am not. He so to him, all right, a little,

891
00:51:19,680 --> 00:51:25,479
Speaker 1: you little clever bastard, shut just say God, you gotta

892
00:51:25,600 --> 00:51:28,799
Speaker 1: you gotta, you gotta, you gotta throw out something good there.

893
00:51:28,800 --> 00:51:30,400
Speaker 1: You gotta have it like I would have gone with,

894
00:51:30,520 --> 00:51:32,600
Speaker 1: that's my dad's name. That's the way you do that.

895
00:51:34,600 --> 00:51:38,120
Speaker 1: That would have been a funnier remark if only John

896
00:51:38,200 --> 00:51:41,800
Speaker 1: Burch had done more stand up sets, if only Jordan

897
00:51:41,880 --> 00:51:44,600
Speaker 1: was around back then to do punch up yea on

898
00:51:44,840 --> 00:51:50,560
Speaker 1: social responses. One note, John, one note, Let's take it

899
00:51:50,640 --> 00:51:52,640
Speaker 1: one more time. Let's take it from the top. You

900
00:51:52,719 --> 00:51:56,000
Speaker 1: can't imagine if you were him giving that response that

901
00:51:56,320 --> 00:51:59,759
Speaker 1: like what seventy years later some dicks would be like

902
00:52:00,120 --> 00:52:02,919
Speaker 1: arguing about whether or not it was funny on a podcast. Yeah,

903
00:52:02,960 --> 00:52:05,040
Speaker 1: I I imagine I would. I would like that. I

904
00:52:05,080 --> 00:52:07,000
Speaker 1: would like seventy years from now somebody to be like,

905
00:52:07,280 --> 00:52:09,680
Speaker 1: it's pretty good that one time, that's worth of life.

906
00:52:09,719 --> 00:52:12,000
Speaker 1: That one time Jordan's responded to someone saying hi to

907
00:52:12,080 --> 00:52:18,319
Speaker 1: him was not funny enough. There seventy years from now,

908
00:52:18,520 --> 00:52:21,200
Speaker 1: behind behind the bastards where they just go through old

909
00:52:21,239 --> 00:52:25,120
Speaker 1: episodes of my podcast and punch it up, correct my mispronunciations.

910
00:52:25,640 --> 00:52:28,480
Speaker 1: But you know what, it will be funny. Still, you're

911
00:52:28,480 --> 00:52:32,680
Speaker 1: a great transition. Not to most people. Capitalism is not

912
00:52:32,680 --> 00:52:37,719
Speaker 1: gonna last that long. Nothing's gonna last that long. But

913
00:52:37,800 --> 00:52:41,600
Speaker 1: you do need to do another. Okay, here's a product.

914
00:52:48,560 --> 00:52:54,360
Speaker 1: We're back that was a good one. Hey, what do

915
00:52:54,440 --> 00:52:56,719
Speaker 1: you what do you? I don't need I don't need

916
00:52:56,760 --> 00:53:01,480
Speaker 1: this ship. I don't need don't need this. Seventy years

917
00:53:01,520 --> 00:53:03,440
Speaker 1: from now, people are going to be like Robert was

918
00:53:03,560 --> 00:53:05,880
Speaker 1: really being bullied by Sophie that one time when he

919
00:53:05,920 --> 00:53:10,200
Speaker 1: talked about the John Birch Society that was most noteworthy

920
00:53:10,360 --> 00:53:12,960
Speaker 1: thing that happened before World War Three. Let's give them

921
00:53:13,040 --> 00:53:16,840
Speaker 1: notes on it, even though none of them survived the

922
00:53:16,920 --> 00:53:24,399
Speaker 1: initial nuclear exchange. Anyway, I'll start the Robert Evans Society. Yeah,

923
00:53:24,520 --> 00:53:27,200
Speaker 1: I'm gonna wind up being the first victim of space communism.

924
00:53:27,440 --> 00:53:31,080
Speaker 1: So Birch would go on to play a minor role

925
00:53:31,120 --> 00:53:33,440
Speaker 1: in helping do Little's raiders escape. He was commissioned in

926
00:53:33,480 --> 00:53:35,640
Speaker 1: the military, and he worked in the military for a

927
00:53:35,680 --> 00:53:38,040
Speaker 1: few years. And you know, at this point US military

928
00:53:38,120 --> 00:53:40,920
Speaker 1: mission in China. Broadly speaking on the right side of

929
00:53:41,000 --> 00:53:43,560
Speaker 1: things because they're against Japan who was killing millions and

930
00:53:43,640 --> 00:53:47,320
Speaker 1: millions and millions of people. So yeah, he's he's not

931
00:53:47,480 --> 00:53:51,359
Speaker 1: a completely unproblematic guy, but not a bad guy. Uh

932
00:53:51,520 --> 00:53:53,600
Speaker 1: And yeah, his goal after leaving the service was to

933
00:53:53,640 --> 00:53:55,720
Speaker 1: do more missionary work. He was going to move to Tibet,

934
00:53:55,880 --> 00:53:58,600
Speaker 1: but he never got the chance to do that. Birch

935
00:53:58,719 --> 00:54:01,319
Speaker 1: was physically and mentally wreck both from a terrible war

936
00:54:01,480 --> 00:54:04,720
Speaker 1: and from repeated doubts of malaria. He got his final

937
00:54:04,800 --> 00:54:07,560
Speaker 1: military assignment in August, which was just after the Japanese

938
00:54:07,560 --> 00:54:11,360
Speaker 1: surrender was announced. And you know that, like when Japan surrendered,

939
00:54:11,600 --> 00:54:14,919
Speaker 1: the Chinese nationalists in the Chinese Communist forces started fighting again,

940
00:54:15,320 --> 00:54:17,400
Speaker 1: and Birch was with the U. S. Military Unit and

941
00:54:17,440 --> 00:54:20,080
Speaker 1: again sick, and everyone who was round up the time

942
00:54:20,120 --> 00:54:22,480
Speaker 1: notes that he was like showing increased signs of paranoia.

943
00:54:22,560 --> 00:54:24,920
Speaker 1: He was going through PTSD. He was not in a

944
00:54:25,080 --> 00:54:30,160
Speaker 1: good mental place. And the group he didn't have hydroxychloroquin.

945
00:54:30,800 --> 00:54:34,080
Speaker 1: Yeah that that actually would have helped because it's an

946
00:54:34,080 --> 00:54:39,279
Speaker 1: anti malaria um so Virch's party. The guys he was with,

947
00:54:39,400 --> 00:54:41,040
Speaker 1: like the U. S. Military Unit, who's with ran into

948
00:54:41,080 --> 00:54:44,600
Speaker 1: a group of Communist soldiers and they ordered the Americans

949
00:54:44,640 --> 00:54:47,560
Speaker 1: to disarm. Birch got angry and insulted people, and like,

950
00:54:47,840 --> 00:54:50,279
Speaker 1: we don't exactly know what happened, but there was a

951
00:54:50,440 --> 00:54:53,360
Speaker 1: fight and Birch was shot dead. So if he had

952
00:54:53,440 --> 00:54:56,080
Speaker 1: never learned Chinese, he wouldn't have been able to piss

953
00:54:56,160 --> 00:54:58,640
Speaker 1: him off as much. Yeah, the the lesson here is

954
00:54:58,719 --> 00:55:02,440
Speaker 1: never learned another another language, you will get murdered in

955
00:55:02,520 --> 00:55:04,799
Speaker 1: a field in China by red army soldier. I think

956
00:55:04,840 --> 00:55:06,560
Speaker 1: That's what I think. That's what I'm gonna take away

957
00:55:06,600 --> 00:55:09,719
Speaker 1: from this. Yeah, quit, quit your Spanish lessons today and

958
00:55:09,840 --> 00:55:12,520
Speaker 1: save your own life. This podcast is not brought to

959
00:55:12,560 --> 00:55:18,400
Speaker 1: you by Duo Lingo. Yeah, so, uh, Mause Dong actually

960
00:55:18,440 --> 00:55:21,880
Speaker 1: apologized for the killing of John Birch to an American

961
00:55:21,960 --> 00:55:23,800
Speaker 1: general who was like in charge of the US mission

962
00:55:23,840 --> 00:55:27,560
Speaker 1: in the country at the time. Um, but mal kind

963
00:55:27,600 --> 00:55:29,759
Speaker 1: of walked away from that meeting really angry because the

964
00:55:29,800 --> 00:55:32,239
Speaker 1: American general seemed to be insistent that he could be

965
00:55:32,280 --> 00:55:34,480
Speaker 1: should be able to send American troops anywhere inside of

966
00:55:34,560 --> 00:55:37,360
Speaker 1: China without like informing the Chinese ahead of times. So

967
00:55:37,680 --> 00:55:39,359
Speaker 1: it was a whole it was a whole big deal

968
00:55:39,520 --> 00:55:42,040
Speaker 1: and it. It just kind of seems like a tragedy.

969
00:55:42,239 --> 00:55:45,240
Speaker 1: Like Birch that probably was being a dick but also

970
00:55:45,760 --> 00:55:48,920
Speaker 1: was sick and struggling with PTSD and doesn't seem to

971
00:55:48,960 --> 00:55:50,440
Speaker 1: have been a bad guy. It's just a bummer. It's

972
00:55:50,520 --> 00:55:54,600
Speaker 1: you know, the war. That war sucks. Yeah, Um, it

973
00:55:54,640 --> 00:55:57,600
Speaker 1: would be fair to call him a complicated man, but yeah,

974
00:55:57,719 --> 00:56:00,319
Speaker 1: definitely not a villain in death, though his like a see,

975
00:56:00,440 --> 00:56:04,000
Speaker 1: was really really simplified thanks in large part to Robert Welch.

976
00:56:04,680 --> 00:56:08,440
Speaker 1: He turned John Birch into a symbol because to Robert Welch,

977
00:56:08,640 --> 00:56:11,920
Speaker 1: John Birch was the first American to die fighting Communism,

978
00:56:12,120 --> 00:56:14,720
Speaker 1: even though he hadn't really been fighting Communism. That actually

979
00:56:14,800 --> 00:56:18,279
Speaker 1: been like broadly speaking, trying to help China and they

980
00:56:18,360 --> 00:56:20,719
Speaker 1: just got new an argument with some Communist soldiers and

981
00:56:21,160 --> 00:56:25,120
Speaker 1: everyone was probably drinking. He was trying to apply nuance

982
00:56:25,200 --> 00:56:28,080
Speaker 1: to a situation where there's only good guys and bad guys,

983
00:56:28,120 --> 00:56:31,719
Speaker 1: and how dare you ever consider the bad guy's human beings?

984
00:56:31,800 --> 00:56:35,800
Speaker 1: That's crazy? Yeah, yeah, Welch does not see any nuance

985
00:56:35,880 --> 00:56:38,319
Speaker 1: in this. To him, John Birch is a martyr who

986
00:56:38,440 --> 00:56:42,200
Speaker 1: like gave his life to destroy communism. Um, and yeah,

987
00:56:42,239 --> 00:56:44,960
Speaker 1: he starts turning him into basically like the John the

988
00:56:45,000 --> 00:56:48,160
Speaker 1: Baptist of capitalism. Like that's that's kind of Bob Welch's

989
00:56:48,239 --> 00:56:52,879
Speaker 1: goal here, Um, which, yeah, I don't. I never knew

990
00:56:53,000 --> 00:56:55,439
Speaker 1: John Birch, obviously because he died decades before my birth.

991
00:56:55,520 --> 00:56:56,880
Speaker 1: But reading about the guy, you kind of get the

992
00:56:56,920 --> 00:56:59,200
Speaker 1: feeling he'd be a little bit bummed. Yeah, you know

993
00:56:59,239 --> 00:57:02,440
Speaker 1: who else didn't him? Fucking Robert Welch. And Robert Welch

994
00:57:02,520 --> 00:57:05,279
Speaker 1: did not know him though, not even a little bit.

995
00:57:06,560 --> 00:57:09,400
Speaker 1: In nine, Welch started work on what would become one

996
00:57:09,440 --> 00:57:13,400
Speaker 1: of his most consequential books, The Politician. He was inspired

997
00:57:13,480 --> 00:57:15,200
Speaker 1: to write it during a car ride in New York

998
00:57:15,239 --> 00:57:17,400
Speaker 1: with a friend. Basically, he's in a car with a

999
00:57:17,440 --> 00:57:19,280
Speaker 1: buddy of his. They're on like a driving to New York,

1000
00:57:19,320 --> 00:57:22,120
Speaker 1: and he starts ranting about Dwight Eisenhower and talking about

1001
00:57:22,160 --> 00:57:25,760
Speaker 1: how he's a Communist agent. And after hours of this

1002
00:57:26,120 --> 00:57:28,440
Speaker 1: one has to assume his friend is like, Hey, why

1003
00:57:28,480 --> 00:57:30,240
Speaker 1: don't you like shut the funk up and just write

1004
00:57:30,240 --> 00:57:33,200
Speaker 1: a book about this. That's every time I've been on

1005
00:57:33,280 --> 00:57:37,200
Speaker 1: the road as a comic. You know, you should write

1006
00:57:37,200 --> 00:57:39,800
Speaker 1: a book which is a classy way of saying please

1007
00:57:39,800 --> 00:57:45,000
Speaker 1: stop talking. Um, Welch does not take this as a

1008
00:57:45,040 --> 00:57:47,560
Speaker 1: classy way of saying please stop talking, and he actually

1009
00:57:47,680 --> 00:57:51,160
Speaker 1: writes a book. Um. I don't think please stop talking

1010
00:57:51,280 --> 00:57:53,600
Speaker 1: is something he respected very much as a as a

1011
00:57:53,680 --> 00:57:57,000
Speaker 1: way of life. Not a real please guy nor a

1012
00:57:57,120 --> 00:58:00,840
Speaker 1: stop guy. Is the decision to write this book. Yeah,

1013
00:58:00,880 --> 00:58:04,960
Speaker 1: it's not a great I guess the Leviathan was taken,

1014
00:58:05,040 --> 00:58:07,640
Speaker 1: so he had to go with the politician. And may

1015
00:58:07,680 --> 00:58:11,080
Speaker 1: God forgive us was already I've already been taken. May

1016
00:58:11,120 --> 00:58:17,720
Speaker 1: God forgive us again. May God forgive us? Yeah, may

1017
00:58:17,800 --> 00:58:21,919
Speaker 1: God forgive us five She's all being forgiven by God.

1018
00:58:26,720 --> 00:58:36,760
Speaker 1: May we be forgiven? Tokyo drift. It's fun. So Welch started,

1019
00:58:37,120 --> 00:58:39,000
Speaker 1: you know. So he has this conversation with a friend.

1020
00:58:39,040 --> 00:58:41,640
Speaker 1: He's like, just write a fucking book about Eisenhower the Communist.

1021
00:58:41,720 --> 00:58:44,400
Speaker 1: So Welch starts by writing a letter which outlines his

1022
00:58:44,440 --> 00:58:46,840
Speaker 1: feelings on Eisenhower, and he revises it over the years.

1023
00:58:46,920 --> 00:58:49,440
Speaker 1: In nineteen fifty six and again in nineteen eight and

1024
00:58:49,520 --> 00:58:51,960
Speaker 1: basically every year he sends out a new draft of

1025
00:58:52,040 --> 00:58:53,960
Speaker 1: this letter to anyone who would listen to him, and

1026
00:58:54,120 --> 00:58:56,560
Speaker 1: he calls it a letter, but by the third revision

1027
00:58:56,640 --> 00:58:59,840
Speaker 1: it was eighty thousand words long, which you might know.

1028
00:59:00,040 --> 00:59:02,160
Speaker 1: This is not a lever a letter. Did he just

1029
00:59:02,360 --> 00:59:08,240
Speaker 1: write I want more money, over and over and over again. Yeah,

1030
00:59:08,800 --> 00:59:10,960
Speaker 1: though about what he wrote, I feel like some of

1031
00:59:11,080 --> 00:59:14,000
Speaker 1: my relatives, like holiday letters, might end up being about

1032
00:59:14,080 --> 00:59:17,600
Speaker 1: that long. I feel like I don't have word counts

1033
00:59:17,640 --> 00:59:20,960
Speaker 1: on it. But if they feel would see there was

1034
00:59:20,960 --> 00:59:23,000
Speaker 1: at least one recipe in there, right, there had to

1035
00:59:23,040 --> 00:59:28,240
Speaker 1: be one recipe for Papa suckers to make a good

1036
00:59:28,240 --> 00:59:32,840
Speaker 1: old fashioned I mean, I would be really angry if

1037
00:59:32,840 --> 00:59:34,680
Speaker 1: any of my friends are loved one sent me an

1038
00:59:34,720 --> 00:59:40,240
Speaker 1: eighty thousand word letter like that one. I would happily

1039
00:59:40,320 --> 00:59:42,040
Speaker 1: get that one. Other than a letter that I was

1040
00:59:42,080 --> 00:59:45,200
Speaker 1: supposed to actually read. I mean I would read it.

1041
00:59:45,280 --> 00:59:47,640
Speaker 1: That's why it goes in the garbage. Thanks for sending

1042
00:59:47,680 --> 00:59:52,120
Speaker 1: me that letter. That's great letter. Yeah exactly, dear uncle,

1043
00:59:52,280 --> 00:59:54,320
Speaker 1: I have thrown your letter in the trash. Thank you

1044
00:59:54,480 --> 01:00:00,200
Speaker 1: for sending me such a heavy package. Uh so yeah. Um.

1045
01:00:01,080 --> 01:00:03,400
Speaker 1: Since by the third revision it was more than eighty

1046
01:00:03,440 --> 01:00:05,960
Speaker 1: thousand words long, Welsh decided to start calling it a

1047
01:00:06,040 --> 01:00:09,400
Speaker 1: book The Politician, as he titled It became the underground

1048
01:00:09,520 --> 01:00:12,360
Speaker 1: secret text of what became a small cult like following

1049
01:00:12,400 --> 01:00:15,640
Speaker 1: of friends and admirers who increasingly believed that Bob Welch

1050
01:00:15,760 --> 01:00:19,080
Speaker 1: was something of a prophet. In February of nineteen fifty six,

1051
01:00:19,160 --> 01:00:23,320
Speaker 1: Welch launched his first magazine, One Man's Opinion. He later

1052
01:00:23,440 --> 01:00:28,200
Speaker 1: renamed it American Opinion, which really like actually reveals a

1053
01:00:28,240 --> 01:00:31,880
Speaker 1: lot about his thought process, Like I think this, No

1054
01:00:32,280 --> 01:00:37,400
Speaker 1: America thinks this. That that idea of the subjective actually

1055
01:00:37,520 --> 01:00:41,640
Speaker 1: being the objective. Yeah, yeah, that's how the artist thinks.

1056
01:00:42,200 --> 01:00:46,480
Speaker 1: Yeah it is. It is pretty telling. So he left

1057
01:00:46,520 --> 01:00:49,040
Speaker 1: the Welch Company at the start of nineteen fifty seven

1058
01:00:49,120 --> 01:00:52,000
Speaker 1: and began preparations to turn his circle of followers into

1059
01:00:52,040 --> 01:00:55,320
Speaker 1: a formal political advocacy group. Now, by this point, Welch

1060
01:00:55,400 --> 01:00:58,200
Speaker 1: was convinced not just that Eisenhower was a crooked politician,

1061
01:00:58,480 --> 01:01:01,040
Speaker 1: but that he was a secret comunist agent in the

1062
01:01:01,120 --> 01:01:04,480
Speaker 1: White House, Like that that Eisenhower was actually a communist

1063
01:01:04,600 --> 01:01:08,360
Speaker 1: and was was attempting to manipulate the United States into

1064
01:01:08,480 --> 01:01:11,600
Speaker 1: socialism from the White House. So crazy that that stuff

1065
01:01:11,680 --> 01:01:15,280
Speaker 1: used to happen in the past. Yeah, it's just like

1066
01:01:15,440 --> 01:01:18,040
Speaker 1: it's just like how could you be in that headspace

1067
01:01:18,080 --> 01:01:24,760
Speaker 1: where something like that happens. It's crazy. Imagine looking imagine

1068
01:01:24,840 --> 01:01:28,560
Speaker 1: looking at Dwight Eisenhower and being so far right that

1069
01:01:28,640 --> 01:01:36,400
Speaker 1: you're like that fucking Marxist. Imagine looking at Biden. Yeah. Yeah,

1070
01:01:36,680 --> 01:01:39,320
Speaker 1: Like he's the kind of person who, like everyone is

1071
01:01:39,360 --> 01:01:41,120
Speaker 1: a Marxist if they don't think he should be able

1072
01:01:41,120 --> 01:01:44,400
Speaker 1: to skeet shoot with poor people like that's that's that's

1073
01:01:44,480 --> 01:01:48,280
Speaker 1: Bob Welch's politics in a nutshell. Um. Yeah. And Welch

1074
01:01:48,360 --> 01:01:50,680
Speaker 1: wasn't just convinced that Ike was a communist. He believed

1075
01:01:50,720 --> 01:01:53,920
Speaker 1: that the majority of both the Republican and Democratic parties,

1076
01:01:53,960 --> 01:01:56,160
Speaker 1: most of their elected leaders at least, were communists and

1077
01:01:56,200 --> 01:02:01,080
Speaker 1: communists sympathizers. So, uh, Bob Welch, in order to kind

1078
01:02:01,120 --> 01:02:05,400
Speaker 1: of uh spread this warning about encroaching communism, turned to

1079
01:02:05,480 --> 01:02:08,520
Speaker 1: the massive rolodex of wealthy industrial magnates that he built

1080
01:02:08,560 --> 01:02:11,200
Speaker 1: up over years in the candy world. He invited all

1081
01:02:11,240 --> 01:02:14,280
Speaker 1: of these guys to a hotel in suburban Indianapolis in

1082
01:02:14,360 --> 01:02:16,680
Speaker 1: December of nineteen fifty eight, and he asked them to

1083
01:02:16,760 --> 01:02:19,280
Speaker 1: stay for two days. He didn't tell them what it

1084
01:02:19,360 --> 01:02:21,360
Speaker 1: was about or why he was inviting them to a

1085
01:02:21,440 --> 01:02:25,080
Speaker 1: hotel for two days. Um, and gentlemen, it is a

1086
01:02:25,240 --> 01:02:28,280
Speaker 1: murder mystery. He kind of. He just said it was

1087
01:02:28,320 --> 01:02:31,840
Speaker 1: a matter of utmost importance. So he's very cloak and dagger,

1088
01:02:32,040 --> 01:02:35,040
Speaker 1: very secretive and of like the seventeen guys that Bob

1089
01:02:35,120 --> 01:02:37,520
Speaker 1: Welch invites, eleven of them show up to see what

1090
01:02:37,600 --> 01:02:39,480
Speaker 1: he has to say. And I'm gonna quote from politics,

1091
01:02:39,680 --> 01:02:44,680
Speaker 1: real cool characters among those eleven. Yeah, Yes, at least

1092
01:02:44,760 --> 01:02:50,320
Speaker 1: one Bastard's pot alumni. Yeah. After exchanging firm handshakes in

1093
01:02:50,360 --> 01:02:53,000
Speaker 1: the breakfast room of a sprawling Tudor style house in

1094
01:02:53,040 --> 01:02:56,080
Speaker 1: the Tony Meridian Park neighborhood, Welch explained why he had

1095
01:02:56,080 --> 01:02:59,280
Speaker 1: brought this group together. The United States faced an existential

1096
01:02:59,320 --> 01:03:02,920
Speaker 1: threat from an international communist conspiracy hatched by an amoral

1097
01:03:03,120 --> 01:03:07,280
Speaker 1: gang of sophisticated criminals. The power hungry, god hating government

1098
01:03:07,360 --> 01:03:11,480
Speaker 1: worshippers had infiltrated newsrooms, public schools, legislative chambers, and houses

1099
01:03:11,520 --> 01:03:14,480
Speaker 1: of worship. They were frighteningly close to total victory. Welch

1100
01:03:14,560 --> 01:03:17,600
Speaker 1: felt it in his gut. These cunning megalomaniacs seek to

1101
01:03:17,640 --> 01:03:20,440
Speaker 1: make themselves the absolute rulers of a human race of

1102
01:03:20,640 --> 01:03:24,400
Speaker 1: enslaved robots in which every civilized trait has been destroyed.

1103
01:03:24,840 --> 01:03:27,800
Speaker 1: Welch wrote in the Blue Book of the John Birch Society,

1104
01:03:27,880 --> 01:03:31,280
Speaker 1: the organization's founding history, that would really sound unhinged to

1105
01:03:31,320 --> 01:03:35,640
Speaker 1: me if he weren't proven one correct on every point there, right, Yeah,

1106
01:03:36,080 --> 01:03:37,360
Speaker 1: I mean I think you got it. I think you

1107
01:03:37,480 --> 01:03:40,760
Speaker 1: nailed it. There's definitely a group of cunning megalomaniacs who

1108
01:03:40,760 --> 01:03:43,040
Speaker 1: seek to make themselves the absolute rulers of a human

1109
01:03:43,160 --> 01:03:47,560
Speaker 1: race reduced to robotics servitude. But you know, it's Jeff Visas,

1110
01:03:48,920 --> 01:03:52,760
Speaker 1: it's Peter Yeah, yeah, these guys who would have been

1111
01:03:52,800 --> 01:03:58,160
Speaker 1: in the John Society exactly. Yes. So the chosen few

1112
01:03:58,200 --> 01:04:00,760
Speaker 1: gathered here would form the vanguard of a new political movement,

1113
01:04:00,840 --> 01:04:03,760
Speaker 1: an army of brave American patriots dedicated to preserving the

1114
01:04:03,840 --> 01:04:07,640
Speaker 1: country's Christian and constitutional foundations. Welch christened the group the

1115
01:04:07,720 --> 01:04:11,400
Speaker 1: John Birch Society, named in memory of a US soldier. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

1116
01:04:11,400 --> 01:04:14,040
Speaker 1: you know the guy. Um Yeah. And their goal at

1117
01:04:14,080 --> 01:04:18,120
Speaker 1: the beginning was destroying the quote Communist conspiracy, or at

1118
01:04:18,160 --> 01:04:20,800
Speaker 1: least breaking its grip on our government and shouting its

1119
01:04:20,880 --> 01:04:24,600
Speaker 1: power within the United States. So I love I love

1120
01:04:24,680 --> 01:04:27,560
Speaker 1: guys who are like, oh, there's a conspiracy to kill everybody,

1121
01:04:27,680 --> 01:04:30,680
Speaker 1: and then they create what is essentially the Knights Templar, Like,

1122
01:04:30,760 --> 01:04:33,720
Speaker 1: what are we doing? There's a conspiracy? We have to

1123
01:04:33,800 --> 01:04:36,600
Speaker 1: create a conspiracy to fight We're gonna be a secretive

1124
01:04:36,600 --> 01:04:40,400
Speaker 1: group of crusaders fighting against communism. What's what's weird and

1125
01:04:40,440 --> 01:04:43,360
Speaker 1: conspiratory about that? It's the same thing you hear now, Like,

1126
01:04:43,680 --> 01:04:45,560
Speaker 1: you know, there's a there's a coup going on in

1127
01:04:45,640 --> 01:04:47,840
Speaker 1: our government, so we have to form a counter coup,

1128
01:04:47,960 --> 01:04:50,080
Speaker 1: of course, and then they're going to form a counter

1129
01:04:50,240 --> 01:04:53,080
Speaker 1: counter coup against our counter coup. Yeah, yeah, it's like,

1130
01:04:53,160 --> 01:04:54,680
Speaker 1: what what are we even doing? This is just like

1131
01:04:54,720 --> 01:04:57,520
Speaker 1: one of those dolls inside a doll or an onion. Well,

1132
01:04:57,560 --> 01:04:59,520
Speaker 1: it's just it's one of the most effective ways if

1133
01:04:59,520 --> 01:05:02,480
Speaker 1: you're trying convince people to do something that's blatantly evil

1134
01:05:02,520 --> 01:05:04,400
Speaker 1: and horrible, the best way to do it is to

1135
01:05:04,480 --> 01:05:07,000
Speaker 1: convince them that the people you're going to be harming

1136
01:05:07,160 --> 01:05:10,240
Speaker 1: are doing the same thing to you. That's the like

1137
01:05:10,320 --> 01:05:13,160
Speaker 1: we should have martial law because Biden's gonna put in

1138
01:05:13,240 --> 01:05:17,240
Speaker 1: martial law, or like that trailer park was going to

1139
01:05:17,360 --> 01:05:19,880
Speaker 1: gear up in their Forerunners and drive through my neighborhood

1140
01:05:19,960 --> 01:05:22,200
Speaker 1: firing out the window. So I have to get in

1141
01:05:22,280 --> 01:05:25,240
Speaker 1: my Forerunner and drive through their trailer park shooting into trailers.

1142
01:05:25,600 --> 01:05:30,640
Speaker 1: There's no other option. They forced me into it also,

1143
01:05:30,720 --> 01:05:34,480
Speaker 1: by the way. Yeah, so all eleven of the rich

1144
01:05:34,600 --> 01:05:37,520
Speaker 1: dudes that Welch invited to his meeting became founding members

1145
01:05:37,520 --> 01:05:39,800
Speaker 1: of the John Birch Society. We're gonna talk about these guys.

1146
01:05:39,880 --> 01:05:41,600
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, We're gonna talk about these guys a little bit.

1147
01:05:42,000 --> 01:05:44,720
Speaker 1: One of them was T Coleman, Andrew's former commissioner of

1148
01:05:44,760 --> 01:05:47,800
Speaker 1: the I R S. Another was the personal aid former

1149
01:05:47,840 --> 01:05:50,680
Speaker 1: personal aid for General Douglas MacArthur, who attempted to nuke

1150
01:05:50,800 --> 01:05:55,440
Speaker 1: both China and North Korea. Um, good guy. And another

1151
01:05:55,480 --> 01:05:58,400
Speaker 1: of them was Fred Coke founder father, father, while and

1152
01:05:58,560 --> 01:06:02,480
Speaker 1: founder of the infamous Coke bro There's yeah, yeah, those

1153
01:06:02,480 --> 01:06:04,240
Speaker 1: are those are the three that I found worth naming.

1154
01:06:04,320 --> 01:06:08,560
Speaker 1: There's but Revelo p Oliver wasn't he there too? I think? So?

1155
01:06:08,840 --> 01:06:11,280
Speaker 1: Who's Revelo p Oliver? You know that you know these people?

1156
01:06:13,160 --> 01:06:16,320
Speaker 1: He was. He was a guy who ended up inspiring

1157
01:06:16,400 --> 01:06:21,800
Speaker 1: William Luther Pierce writing his his works. Oh Jesus Christ. Yeah,

1158
01:06:21,880 --> 01:06:25,440
Speaker 1: he became a big fascist guy. I think he was

1159
01:06:25,480 --> 01:06:27,760
Speaker 1: there at that first he was one of the founding members. Yep,

1160
01:06:27,800 --> 01:06:29,800
Speaker 1: you're right, you're right, you're right. He's a he's a

1161
01:06:29,920 --> 01:06:34,760
Speaker 1: real thinker of the crypto early fascist Oh yeah, classics

1162
01:06:34,800 --> 01:06:37,560
Speaker 1: professor from the University of Illinois found it. Yeah, and

1163
01:06:37,960 --> 01:06:42,400
Speaker 1: one of the Holocaust denial movements leading lights. What a

1164
01:06:42,520 --> 01:06:46,840
Speaker 1: great meeting to have been a fly on that wall. Cool,

1165
01:06:47,040 --> 01:06:50,600
Speaker 1: cool people. A lot of a lot of real casual

1166
01:06:50,720 --> 01:06:55,640
Speaker 1: anti Semitism, like like a collection of actual like demons,

1167
01:06:56,400 --> 01:06:58,680
Speaker 1: not in the way that you like demonize like you,

1168
01:06:59,200 --> 01:07:01,080
Speaker 1: not in the way you do manize your enemies and

1169
01:07:01,160 --> 01:07:04,480
Speaker 1: all that stuff. Those guys, even if you're like broadly

1170
01:07:04,640 --> 01:07:07,040
Speaker 1: in agreement with what they believe, you should look at

1171
01:07:07,080 --> 01:07:09,400
Speaker 1: that meeting and go get the funk away from me.

1172
01:07:09,520 --> 01:07:12,120
Speaker 1: You guys are terrif. The ripples are almost astounding even

1173
01:07:12,200 --> 01:07:15,439
Speaker 1: just thinking about like the the idea that Fred Koke,

1174
01:07:15,600 --> 01:07:18,120
Speaker 1: the father of the Koch Brothers, is in the same

1175
01:07:18,240 --> 01:07:22,880
Speaker 1: room with Reveal op Oliver, who like inspired and helped

1176
01:07:22,960 --> 01:07:26,880
Speaker 1: facilitate the writing of the Turner Diaries. Yeah, it's just insane.

1177
01:07:27,040 --> 01:07:30,800
Speaker 1: It's insane the tendrils. It makes sense, though, because one

1178
01:07:30,880 --> 01:07:32,840
Speaker 1: of the fun things to do with the far right

1179
01:07:33,000 --> 01:07:35,360
Speaker 1: and with the normal right is to play like the

1180
01:07:35,440 --> 01:07:38,840
Speaker 1: Kevin Bacon game with the Turner diaries, Like how how

1181
01:07:39,080 --> 01:07:41,720
Speaker 1: like how? How? How can you tie back a Republican

1182
01:07:41,800 --> 01:07:46,800
Speaker 1: politician to the Turner diaries generally less than four steps? Um? Yeah,

1183
01:07:48,280 --> 01:07:52,040
Speaker 1: thanks to the Koke Brothers. Hey, good guys, Good guys.

1184
01:07:52,320 --> 01:07:58,640
Speaker 1: At least they apologize later on. Yeah, God, I want

1185
01:07:58,680 --> 01:08:00,800
Speaker 1: to I want to funk up the world badly enough,

1186
01:08:01,000 --> 01:08:02,840
Speaker 1: but also be in a position where I can just

1187
01:08:02,920 --> 01:08:06,360
Speaker 1: be like Oopsy Tootles. Hey, guys, I'm gonna I'm gonna

1188
01:08:06,400 --> 01:08:09,120
Speaker 1: be honest. This one's on me. My bad, My bad.

1189
01:08:10,040 --> 01:08:12,240
Speaker 1: You know, big enough a man to admit when I've

1190
01:08:12,280 --> 01:08:14,800
Speaker 1: destroyed the entire world, and this is that time for me.

1191
01:08:15,040 --> 01:08:18,800
Speaker 1: I fumbled. Yeah, Hey, we all make mistakes. We all

1192
01:08:18,840 --> 01:08:22,680
Speaker 1: make mistakes. One for three. One for three is the

1193
01:08:22,760 --> 01:08:26,040
Speaker 1: best baseball players. In order to make this right, I

1194
01:08:26,120 --> 01:08:28,680
Speaker 1: have purchased a Poe Buddy's Nerfect shirt and I wear

1195
01:08:28,720 --> 01:08:33,759
Speaker 1: it for the next four days. Anyway. Sorry to everyone

1196
01:08:33,760 --> 01:08:40,040
Speaker 1: who's lost leved ones. So from the beginning, Welch patterned

1197
01:08:40,200 --> 01:08:43,639
Speaker 1: the John Birch Society off of the revolutionary communist movements.

1198
01:08:43,640 --> 01:08:46,360
Speaker 1: He's so despised, which is again another like so you're

1199
01:08:46,400 --> 01:08:49,679
Speaker 1: saying these people are like the the epitome of all evil,

1200
01:08:49,800 --> 01:08:54,200
Speaker 1: and you're also deliberately framing your group out of after

1201
01:08:54,280 --> 01:08:57,639
Speaker 1: them like scared because they're good at it. They are

1202
01:08:57,760 --> 01:09:01,280
Speaker 1: good at it, like obviously Alex Alex and Alex Jones.

1203
01:09:01,520 --> 01:09:02,760
Speaker 1: I don't know if you know this. We do a

1204
01:09:02,800 --> 01:09:06,840
Speaker 1: little bit about him, uh he uh. He just put

1205
01:09:06,920 --> 01:09:08,760
Speaker 1: out like, hey, what we need to do is get

1206
01:09:08,760 --> 01:09:11,720
Speaker 1: all the truck drivers together and let them strike in

1207
01:09:11,840 --> 01:09:17,040
Speaker 1: a unified front. And you're like, do you not hate unionization?

1208
01:09:17,400 --> 01:09:20,040
Speaker 1: Now you want to use withholding of labors and means

1209
01:09:20,120 --> 01:09:25,680
Speaker 1: of political action interest there's nothing wrong with that? Not

1210
01:09:25,920 --> 01:09:29,639
Speaker 1: well for us, yeah, him, there's something wrong, yes, yeah,

1211
01:09:29,760 --> 01:09:31,880
Speaker 1: Like you shouldn't be. It's the same thing with like

1212
01:09:32,040 --> 01:09:36,920
Speaker 1: police unions. It's like you people use fire hoses on

1213
01:09:37,040 --> 01:09:43,120
Speaker 1: striking workers. You don't get to unionized. Like so from

1214
01:09:43,200 --> 01:09:46,120
Speaker 1: the beginning, Welch patterned the John Yeah, he patterned them

1215
01:09:46,120 --> 01:09:49,240
Speaker 1: off of revolutionary communist movements. Uh. In his initial like

1216
01:09:49,320 --> 01:09:51,720
Speaker 1: founding documents, Welch wrote that he wanted the John Birch

1217
01:09:51,800 --> 01:09:55,960
Speaker 1: Society to be a monolithic body operating under completely authoritative

1218
01:09:56,000 --> 01:09:58,800
Speaker 1: control at all levels. In other words, he would be

1219
01:09:58,880 --> 01:10:01,000
Speaker 1: the MAO or the style and of his own counter

1220
01:10:01,120 --> 01:10:04,880
Speaker 1: communist movement. The Society would be organized into cells of

1221
01:10:05,000 --> 01:10:08,120
Speaker 1: ten to twenty members, formed after the revolutionary cadres that

1222
01:10:08,160 --> 01:10:11,080
Speaker 1: were common in underground communist movements, Like you read about

1223
01:10:11,120 --> 01:10:13,600
Speaker 1: the Khmer Rouge and like the founding of that, And

1224
01:10:13,680 --> 01:10:16,680
Speaker 1: it's like the same basic organizational strategy as you're trying

1225
01:10:16,720 --> 01:10:20,400
Speaker 1: to avoid, like infiltration, and it works. Yeah, yeah, I

1226
01:10:20,439 --> 01:10:22,600
Speaker 1: mean it is. Yeah, it works pretty well. There's a

1227
01:10:22,640 --> 01:10:25,040
Speaker 1: reason he patterns off of this, even though it is ironic.

1228
01:10:25,400 --> 01:10:28,280
Speaker 1: Welch informed his followers that he had considered a republican

1229
01:10:28,360 --> 01:10:31,080
Speaker 1: form of organization for their society, but that while it

1230
01:10:31,200 --> 01:10:35,479
Speaker 1: had certain attractions and advantages under certain favorable conditions, it

1231
01:10:35,880 --> 01:10:41,360
Speaker 1: failed under quote less happy circumstances. The United States, Welch insisted,

1232
01:10:41,560 --> 01:10:44,200
Speaker 1: was beset by less happy circumstances, and the extent of

1233
01:10:44,280 --> 01:10:48,160
Speaker 1: socialist infiltration in American society made any republican system open

1234
01:10:48,240 --> 01:10:52,679
Speaker 1: to infiltration, distortion, and disruption. Robert Welch was, in short,

1235
01:10:52,720 --> 01:10:56,519
Speaker 1: creating an underground fascist political party. His disdain for anything

1236
01:10:56,600 --> 01:10:59,439
Speaker 1: that even smacked of democracy was quite clear. Welch told

1237
01:10:59,520 --> 01:11:02,719
Speaker 1: his follower is that democracy was quote merely a deceptive phrase,

1238
01:11:02,960 --> 01:11:06,960
Speaker 1: a weapon of demagoguery, and a perennial fraud. So I

1239
01:11:07,320 --> 01:11:10,960
Speaker 1: want more and I don't want people to be able

1240
01:11:11,000 --> 01:11:13,320
Speaker 1: to vote that I should give more money. Yeah, I

1241
01:11:13,400 --> 01:11:15,000
Speaker 1: do not want people to be able to vote for

1242
01:11:15,160 --> 01:11:20,880
Speaker 1: anything really, because they will vote for socialism. Yeah. I

1243
01:11:20,920 --> 01:11:23,519
Speaker 1: mean it's the same ship that you see today. It's

1244
01:11:23,600 --> 01:11:26,160
Speaker 1: there's nothing new here. Uh, well it was new here

1245
01:11:26,200 --> 01:11:28,040
Speaker 1: that like, that's what's interesting about this is that he

1246
01:11:28,200 --> 01:11:31,600
Speaker 1: was like, like, now we have it's shocking to a

1247
01:11:31,680 --> 01:11:33,679
Speaker 1: lot of people that we have all these mainstream elected

1248
01:11:33,720 --> 01:11:38,559
Speaker 1: Republicans saying openly like we're not a democracy. Democracy is bad.

1249
01:11:39,080 --> 01:11:42,040
Speaker 1: We don't want democracy when there's this much socialism going around.

1250
01:11:42,080 --> 01:11:45,520
Speaker 1: If you let people choose things, they'll choose dangerous socialism.

1251
01:11:45,840 --> 01:11:49,200
Speaker 1: And Bob Welch was the guy fucking sixty years before

1252
01:11:49,280 --> 01:11:51,400
Speaker 1: that who was being like, this is exactly the way

1253
01:11:51,479 --> 01:11:54,920
Speaker 1: we should be framing things. That question is do you

1254
01:11:55,000 --> 01:11:57,200
Speaker 1: think he is he a believer? Do you know what

1255
01:11:57,280 --> 01:11:59,760
Speaker 1: I'm Yeah, I think so he is he's not the

1256
01:12:00,080 --> 01:12:02,439
Speaker 1: same kind of right wing grifter we're used to seeing

1257
01:12:02,479 --> 01:12:05,479
Speaker 1: all over the place. I don't think he's a grifter.

1258
01:12:06,200 --> 01:12:08,040
Speaker 1: I don't think he's a grifter. He's already rich for

1259
01:12:08,160 --> 01:12:12,040
Speaker 1: one thing, and yeah, well, like rich people don't continue

1260
01:12:12,080 --> 01:12:14,160
Speaker 1: the grift. I think there is an element of a

1261
01:12:14,200 --> 01:12:16,960
Speaker 1: grift in what he's doing, but he's not. He's not.

1262
01:12:17,360 --> 01:12:19,679
Speaker 1: It seems to be like there's a grit, isn't the focus.

1263
01:12:19,720 --> 01:12:22,479
Speaker 1: There's people who serve the scam and then there are

1264
01:12:22,520 --> 01:12:25,599
Speaker 1: people who are like, no, his ideological. I think he's

1265
01:12:25,640 --> 01:12:27,800
Speaker 1: more on that side. Well, all right, I think he's

1266
01:12:27,840 --> 01:12:30,439
Speaker 1: an ideologue. I think he believes in what he's doing

1267
01:12:32,080 --> 01:12:36,040
Speaker 1: reasons Well, of course, don't don't worry about that. He's not.

1268
01:12:36,280 --> 01:12:39,200
Speaker 1: He's not just in it for the money, right. He

1269
01:12:39,240 --> 01:12:41,120
Speaker 1: wouldn't be doing this if it was just to sell

1270
01:12:41,320 --> 01:12:45,680
Speaker 1: like pills, pills. He's not a pill guy. Um. So

1271
01:12:46,000 --> 01:12:47,880
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote now from the World of the John

1272
01:12:47,920 --> 01:12:50,920
Speaker 1: Birch Society by D. J. Malloy. Quote. All in all,

1273
01:12:51,000 --> 01:12:53,560
Speaker 1: it was a hierarchical structure derived not just from the

1274
01:12:53,600 --> 01:12:55,519
Speaker 1: many years Whilch had spent in the world of business,

1275
01:12:55,600 --> 01:12:59,280
Speaker 1: but also from his openly, if perhaps surprisingly expressed admiration

1276
01:12:59,360 --> 01:13:02,720
Speaker 1: for the organist national tactics of his communist foes, acknowledging

1277
01:13:02,760 --> 01:13:05,519
Speaker 1: the similarity between Lennon's notion of the Dedicated Few and

1278
01:13:05,560 --> 01:13:07,479
Speaker 1: his own plans with the John Birch Society. In the

1279
01:13:07,560 --> 01:13:11,040
Speaker 1: Blue Book, for example, the always capitalized founder explained that

1280
01:13:11,200 --> 01:13:14,360
Speaker 1: he was willing to draw on all successful human experience

1281
01:13:14,400 --> 01:13:17,360
Speaker 1: in organizational matters, so long as it does not involve

1282
01:13:17,400 --> 01:13:20,040
Speaker 1: any sacrifice of morality in the means used to achieve

1283
01:13:20,080 --> 01:13:22,880
Speaker 1: an end. If I'm if I'm in that room, I'm like,

1284
01:13:23,160 --> 01:13:26,040
Speaker 1: he's going to be removing people from pictures pretty soon. Yeah,

1285
01:13:26,120 --> 01:13:30,360
Speaker 1: he's he's gonna be erasing us from history. I don't.

1286
01:13:30,400 --> 01:13:32,559
Speaker 1: I don't trust that guy. He's going to be relying

1287
01:13:32,680 --> 01:13:37,280
Speaker 1: on everyone's wife to some letters to people while the

1288
01:13:37,360 --> 01:13:42,960
Speaker 1: men get drunk and yell about commies. So membership is

1289
01:13:43,040 --> 01:13:46,160
Speaker 1: one of the Dedicated Few was not free. Monthly dues

1290
01:13:46,200 --> 01:13:48,639
Speaker 1: were twenty four dollars from men and twelve dollars for women,

1291
01:13:48,720 --> 01:13:52,799
Speaker 1: which probably says something unfortunate. Life memberships cost a thousand dollars.

1292
01:13:52,920 --> 01:13:55,679
Speaker 1: There were monthly chapter meetings for the first two years

1293
01:13:55,720 --> 01:13:58,439
Speaker 1: of the John Birch Society. Things went along smoothly enough.

1294
01:13:58,560 --> 01:14:01,000
Speaker 1: Word of the Society was past to mouth, and cells

1295
01:14:01,040 --> 01:14:04,000
Speaker 1: of Birches sprang up all around the nation. Welch addressed

1296
01:14:04,040 --> 01:14:06,960
Speaker 1: them all monthly in the Society's bulletin, which he wrote

1297
01:14:07,040 --> 01:14:09,479
Speaker 1: every word of It was not always easy to get

1298
01:14:09,520 --> 01:14:11,960
Speaker 1: freedom loving Americans to sign up for an organization that

1299
01:14:12,080 --> 01:14:16,760
Speaker 1: was fundamentally undemocratic, monolithic, and authoritarian instructure. Welch spent a

1300
01:14:16,840 --> 01:14:18,640
Speaker 1: lot of his time explaining to members why such a

1301
01:14:18,680 --> 01:14:21,840
Speaker 1: strict and unbending hierarchy was necessary. He told them that

1302
01:14:21,920 --> 01:14:25,360
Speaker 1: the US was a shoreline of beautiful houses threatened by

1303
01:14:25,400 --> 01:14:28,880
Speaker 1: a rising flood. You can assume the floods non white people.

1304
01:14:29,200 --> 01:14:31,960
Speaker 1: The Birches in their ilk were lonesome boys with brooms

1305
01:14:32,080 --> 01:14:34,719
Speaker 1: trying to sweep it back. What they needed, Welch insisted,

1306
01:14:34,840 --> 01:14:37,960
Speaker 1: was a dynamic boss to get them organized by barking this.

1307
01:14:38,640 --> 01:14:40,920
Speaker 1: This is again from one of his writings. This is

1308
01:14:41,000 --> 01:14:42,680
Speaker 1: like so he's like, he's describing like the US as

1309
01:14:42,680 --> 01:14:44,960
Speaker 1: a bunch of beautiful houses and there's this flood threatening it,

1310
01:14:45,040 --> 01:14:49,120
Speaker 1: and were brooms beating it back. And all those boys

1311
01:14:49,240 --> 01:14:51,639
Speaker 1: need is a boss who's willing to shout this, hey,

1312
01:14:51,760 --> 01:14:54,600
Speaker 1: you guys, all of you drop those pretty brooms. You

1313
01:14:54,720 --> 01:14:57,160
Speaker 1: fellows down there on the end, start running for empty bags.

1314
01:14:57,240 --> 01:14:59,280
Speaker 1: You fellows in those next two groups, start filling those

1315
01:14:59,280 --> 01:15:01,320
Speaker 1: bags with sam And you men here, all of you

1316
01:15:01,439 --> 01:15:03,760
Speaker 1: start looking those bags of sand to put on this wall.

1317
01:15:03,880 --> 01:15:06,960
Speaker 1: The communists have busted up so badly. You fellows over there,

1318
01:15:07,040 --> 01:15:09,040
Speaker 1: all of you get the heaviest clubs you can find.

1319
01:15:09,120 --> 01:15:11,000
Speaker 1: Spread yourselves out along the whole length of this wall,

1320
01:15:11,040 --> 01:15:13,840
Speaker 1: and don't hesitate to break the heads of any saboteurs

1321
01:15:13,880 --> 01:15:16,200
Speaker 1: you find monkeying with it. Don't even hesitate to break

1322
01:15:16,240 --> 01:15:18,000
Speaker 1: the heads of those you find creeping towards the wall

1323
01:15:18,040 --> 01:15:22,439
Speaker 1: if you were sure of their evil intentions. So is

1324
01:15:22,479 --> 01:15:24,720
Speaker 1: set up perfectly, and it's the best country that has

1325
01:15:24,720 --> 01:15:28,640
Speaker 1: ever existed. But there are circumstances that are happening right

1326
01:15:28,680 --> 01:15:31,840
Speaker 1: now that really we need a dictator. Yeah, I'm afraid.

1327
01:15:31,880 --> 01:15:34,599
Speaker 1: So there's just nothing. It's just it's impossible to avoid

1328
01:15:34,600 --> 01:15:38,599
Speaker 1: the circumstantial. We need a dictator, otherwise people are gonna

1329
01:15:38,680 --> 01:15:41,479
Speaker 1: spend all their time swinging brooms and not beating people

1330
01:15:41,560 --> 01:15:46,240
Speaker 1: in the head making sandbags. I find it fun that

1331
01:15:46,320 --> 01:15:48,920
Speaker 1: this starts as like a metaphor for trying to organize

1332
01:15:48,960 --> 01:15:51,760
Speaker 1: people to deal with what is presumably like a tsunami

1333
01:15:51,920 --> 01:15:55,360
Speaker 1: or a flood condition, and instead turns into beating communists

1334
01:15:55,400 --> 01:16:00,760
Speaker 1: with sticks. There's a flood coming, punch the water. Don't

1335
01:16:00,760 --> 01:16:04,960
Speaker 1: do anything to help it. I mean, every year or

1336
01:16:05,040 --> 01:16:06,760
Speaker 1: so I go out to the coast and get into

1337
01:16:06,800 --> 01:16:09,160
Speaker 1: a fight with the ocean, and I I think that's

1338
01:16:09,160 --> 01:16:11,920
Speaker 1: why we have not had a major tsunami on the

1339
01:16:12,320 --> 01:16:14,840
Speaker 1: West coast of the United States and years I just

1340
01:16:14,880 --> 01:16:16,720
Speaker 1: get drunk and scream, you think you're bigger than that

1341
01:16:16,760 --> 01:16:18,439
Speaker 1: because of me. I beat the ship out of the ocean.

1342
01:16:18,479 --> 01:16:21,360
Speaker 1: Every couple of years. Georgian has seen me. Sophie Jordan

1343
01:16:21,479 --> 01:16:25,960
Speaker 1: does talk like you have to if you don't, if

1344
01:16:26,000 --> 01:16:28,240
Speaker 1: you don't, like, if you don't stand up to bodies

1345
01:16:28,280 --> 01:16:32,760
Speaker 1: of water, they're gonna walk all over you. Literally, we're

1346
01:16:32,760 --> 01:16:39,960
Speaker 1: all nodding like very stoic nods. Fight the ocean. That

1347
01:16:40,040 --> 01:16:42,200
Speaker 1: could go into the that could go in the don'ts

1348
01:16:42,240 --> 01:16:45,280
Speaker 1: of the art of salesmanship right there, I think, yeah,

1349
01:16:45,280 --> 01:16:47,920
Speaker 1: I would have started John Birch Society. That's just themed

1350
01:16:47,960 --> 01:16:51,400
Speaker 1: at getting people to fight the ocean. Fight various forms

1351
01:16:51,439 --> 01:16:59,360
Speaker 1: of nature yeah, well mostly oceans, punch trees. All of

1352
01:16:59,439 --> 01:17:01,880
Speaker 1: what Birch was preaching was good enough to earn his

1353
01:17:02,000 --> 01:17:05,320
Speaker 1: society the membership of one of my favorite Bastards Pod characters,

1354
01:17:05,680 --> 01:17:09,600
Speaker 1: Philish Laughly. She and her husband some guy joined in

1355
01:17:09,720 --> 01:17:14,200
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty nine. Uh so, yeah, that's Goodishly, I thought

1356
01:17:14,280 --> 01:17:18,800
Speaker 1: Jordan was going to bark at that. Yeah close. Not

1357
01:17:18,920 --> 01:17:22,760
Speaker 1: a schlaer as as we used to call ourselves, not

1358
01:17:22,880 --> 01:17:26,920
Speaker 1: on the schlaugh squad. So that same year, same year

1359
01:17:26,960 --> 01:17:29,400
Speaker 1: Schlaughlely and her husband joined the John Birch Society, Robert

1360
01:17:29,439 --> 01:17:32,599
Speaker 1: Welch launched a crusade to recall newly installed Supreme Court

1361
01:17:32,680 --> 01:17:35,840
Speaker 1: Justice Earl Warren. Justice Warren was a liberal who had

1362
01:17:35,840 --> 01:17:39,160
Speaker 1: written the majority opinion for a decision that overruled state

1363
01:17:39,200 --> 01:17:42,160
Speaker 1: and local segregation laws. We're talking brown versus the Board

1364
01:17:42,160 --> 01:17:46,000
Speaker 1: of Education here, um. Robert Welch did not like Brown

1365
01:17:46,120 --> 01:17:50,240
Speaker 1: versus the Board of Education? Why not not wild about

1366
01:17:50,280 --> 01:17:51,880
Speaker 1: the fact that black people got to go to the

1367
01:17:51,920 --> 01:17:55,000
Speaker 1: same schools as white people now and Welch's eyes, Earl

1368
01:17:55,040 --> 01:17:58,040
Speaker 1: Warren's opinion on this case meant that he was a communist.

1369
01:17:58,560 --> 01:18:01,519
Speaker 1: Welch insisted in letters that Warren had violated his oath,

1370
01:18:01,720 --> 01:18:04,280
Speaker 1: and he harangued his most gifted followers to turn the

1371
01:18:04,400 --> 01:18:08,000
Speaker 1: effort to recall the justice into a movement. Privately, Welsh

1372
01:18:08,040 --> 01:18:12,160
Speaker 1: wrote that frankly, with the left wing control now so strong, insidious,

1373
01:18:12,160 --> 01:18:15,120
Speaker 1: and ubiquitous in Washington, I am not deceiving myself that

1374
01:18:15,200 --> 01:18:17,760
Speaker 1: we have very much chance of really bringing about the

1375
01:18:17,800 --> 01:18:20,519
Speaker 1: impeachment of Earl Warren. Although we might, but I don't

1376
01:18:20,560 --> 01:18:22,960
Speaker 1: think that is really as important as dramatizing to the

1377
01:18:23,000 --> 01:18:25,439
Speaker 1: whole country where he stands, where the Supreme Court now

1378
01:18:25,560 --> 01:18:28,120
Speaker 1: constituted under him, stands, and how important it is to

1379
01:18:28,160 --> 01:18:30,160
Speaker 1: face the facts about the road we are now traveling

1380
01:18:30,200 --> 01:18:33,639
Speaker 1: on so fast. So that's really interesting to me because

1381
01:18:33,680 --> 01:18:37,120
Speaker 1: in all of his public like publications he makes it

1382
01:18:37,200 --> 01:18:39,479
Speaker 1: clear that this is a real effort to recall Earl Warren,

1383
01:18:39,520 --> 01:18:40,800
Speaker 1: and I think we have a real shot and we're

1384
01:18:40,800 --> 01:18:42,320
Speaker 1: going to get this guy out of the Supreme Court.

1385
01:18:42,360 --> 01:18:44,439
Speaker 1: And his private letters he's like, we're never going to

1386
01:18:44,560 --> 01:18:47,519
Speaker 1: do this. It's all about making people angry. It's about

1387
01:18:47,560 --> 01:18:50,599
Speaker 1: the rhetoric. It's about the idea of the fight, yeah,

1388
01:18:51,680 --> 01:18:54,360
Speaker 1: which is not like anything else that's happened since no

1389
01:18:56,479 --> 01:18:59,280
Speaker 1: A lot of size on this episode when he passed

1390
01:18:59,360 --> 01:19:04,680
Speaker 1: in the future compared Trailblazer. Yeah, so you get a

1391
01:19:04,720 --> 01:19:07,240
Speaker 1: feel for Bob Welch by reading his letters. I'm gonna

1392
01:19:07,439 --> 01:19:09,080
Speaker 1: read you now an excerpt from when he sent to

1393
01:19:09,160 --> 01:19:11,439
Speaker 1: T Coleman Andrews, who's the former commissioner of the I

1394
01:19:11,600 --> 01:19:17,120
Speaker 1: R S let her start with I mean kind of.

1395
01:19:17,280 --> 01:19:20,120
Speaker 1: It begins with yeah, that's what I hear out of

1396
01:19:20,200 --> 01:19:23,599
Speaker 1: all of his writings. The letter begins with Welch's regret

1397
01:19:23,680 --> 01:19:26,400
Speaker 1: that Andrews turned down an opportunity to spearhead the effort

1398
01:19:26,720 --> 01:19:29,360
Speaker 1: against what Welch refers to in all caps as the

1399
01:19:29,520 --> 01:19:32,920
Speaker 1: movement to impeach Earl Warren. He calls it that in

1400
01:19:33,000 --> 01:19:35,640
Speaker 1: all caps every time he types about it. He's a

1401
01:19:35,720 --> 01:19:38,480
Speaker 1: caps guy, So you do well on Twitter. Is Frankfurter

1402
01:19:38,680 --> 01:19:41,080
Speaker 1: not on the Supreme Court anymore? Or I think he's

1403
01:19:41,120 --> 01:19:42,960
Speaker 1: dead at this point? Okay, I was gonna say, because

1404
01:19:42,960 --> 01:19:45,040
Speaker 1: you gotta go for him first, you know, he's your guy.

1405
01:19:46,080 --> 01:19:48,439
Speaker 1: So uh yeah. He starts the letter by being like,

1406
01:19:48,520 --> 01:19:49,840
Speaker 1: it's a bummer that you don't want to help me

1407
01:19:49,880 --> 01:19:53,040
Speaker 1: impeach Earl Warren. He goes on to discuss gathering storms

1408
01:19:53,120 --> 01:19:54,920
Speaker 1: in the South, which is a reference to the Civil

1409
01:19:55,000 --> 01:19:58,479
Speaker 1: rights movement, which Bob Welch stated he thought was directly

1410
01:19:58,640 --> 01:20:02,479
Speaker 1: caused by the Communist party. Quote if blood does flow there,

1411
01:20:02,520 --> 01:20:05,040
Speaker 1: which I agree is entirely likely, it will definitely be

1412
01:20:05,160 --> 01:20:08,160
Speaker 1: because the Communists planned it that way. They have schemed

1413
01:20:08,240 --> 01:20:10,280
Speaker 1: for so long to be in position to fan little

1414
01:20:10,320 --> 01:20:13,080
Speaker 1: fires of civil disorder into a huge conflagration of civil

1415
01:20:13,120 --> 01:20:15,600
Speaker 1: war if and when they need such a horror in

1416
01:20:15,680 --> 01:20:18,360
Speaker 1: their moves to take us over. And John Birch, though

1417
01:20:18,400 --> 01:20:20,800
Speaker 1: a minister devoted to peace, was entirely ready to fight

1418
01:20:20,880 --> 01:20:24,320
Speaker 1: for a cause which he considered worthy of sacrifice. So

1419
01:20:24,840 --> 01:20:29,040
Speaker 1: devoted to peace, devoted to piece. This guy something, well,

1420
01:20:29,120 --> 01:20:31,640
Speaker 1: he's he's referring to John Birch, who he did not

1421
01:20:32,200 --> 01:20:34,719
Speaker 1: in saying that, like, we have to be like John Birch,

1422
01:20:34,760 --> 01:20:37,240
Speaker 1: who was devoted to piece but was willing to get

1423
01:20:37,280 --> 01:20:40,479
Speaker 1: into a drunken argument with communists soldiers get shot to death.

1424
01:20:40,760 --> 01:20:43,200
Speaker 1: That sounds like most right wing heroes, like Colonel Travis

1425
01:20:43,280 --> 01:20:46,400
Speaker 1: he was a drunk. I don't know that he was drunk.

1426
01:20:46,439 --> 01:20:48,120
Speaker 1: He may just have been drunk on malaria. I'm just

1427
01:20:48,200 --> 01:20:51,719
Speaker 1: assuming everyone in the forties was wasted at all times.

1428
01:20:51,840 --> 01:20:55,120
Speaker 1: That's a good idea. John Birch hated Earl Warrant. That

1429
01:20:55,280 --> 01:20:58,560
Speaker 1: is actually a little known fact that I found that

1430
01:20:58,640 --> 01:21:04,840
Speaker 1: in the right. This up nonsense. Yeah, so uh. Welch

1431
01:21:04,960 --> 01:21:07,400
Speaker 1: portrayed the John Birch Society's work not as part as

1432
01:21:07,439 --> 01:21:09,799
Speaker 1: an activism but as an attempt to unite all Americans

1433
01:21:09,920 --> 01:21:12,880
Speaker 1: under an anti communist banner. In the nineteen sixty issue

1434
01:21:12,880 --> 01:21:15,439
Speaker 1: of The Bulletin, he wrote, it is of vital importance

1435
01:21:15,479 --> 01:21:17,840
Speaker 1: to the communists to split Americans into all kinds of

1436
01:21:17,920 --> 01:21:21,040
Speaker 1: groups snarling at each other. And so he said, the

1437
01:21:21,120 --> 01:21:23,880
Speaker 1: Society would not seek to split up Americans. We are

1438
01:21:23,920 --> 01:21:28,479
Speaker 1: fighting communists period, nobody else. They put people into all

1439
01:21:28,560 --> 01:21:30,840
Speaker 1: these groups, and I don't think that we should have

1440
01:21:31,280 --> 01:21:38,000
Speaker 1: black people, Jewish people, Chinese people, liberals, the LGBTQ community.

1441
01:21:38,000 --> 01:21:40,040
Speaker 1: I don't think we should have any of those people

1442
01:21:40,160 --> 01:21:43,040
Speaker 1: those specific groups that I have chosen to deny as

1443
01:21:43,160 --> 01:21:47,360
Speaker 1: people see left as evil. Yeah, they're defighting us by

1444
01:21:47,400 --> 01:21:50,599
Speaker 1: allowing people who aren't like me to exist. Yeah exactly.

1445
01:21:51,680 --> 01:21:55,760
Speaker 1: So um yeah. Welch by the mid nineteen fifties had

1446
01:21:55,800 --> 01:21:59,439
Speaker 1: grown increasingly convinced that the entire US government was basically

1447
01:21:59,520 --> 01:22:01,400
Speaker 1: Communist all the way down. And one of the main

1448
01:22:01,479 --> 01:22:05,200
Speaker 1: triggers for this was when Congress voted to censure Senator

1449
01:22:05,280 --> 01:22:09,479
Speaker 1: Joe McCarthy in nineteen fifty four. Um, so he like time,

1450
01:22:09,560 --> 01:22:13,639
Speaker 1: by the way, right right on time. Yeah, they got

1451
01:22:13,680 --> 01:22:17,920
Speaker 1: to him quick. So yeah. And because Eisenhower was a

1452
01:22:17,960 --> 01:22:20,880
Speaker 1: big part of finally censuring Joe McCarthy after letting Joe

1453
01:22:20,960 --> 01:22:24,479
Speaker 1: McCarthy be Joe McCarthy for years. Uh, Welch, you know,

1454
01:22:24,640 --> 01:22:26,519
Speaker 1: I saw this as more evidence that Ike was a

1455
01:22:26,600 --> 01:22:32,960
Speaker 1: secret communist. Is kind of on the wall. Yeah, there

1456
01:22:34,560 --> 01:22:37,479
Speaker 1: he after just two whole red scares he stepped in.

1457
01:22:40,320 --> 01:22:43,800
Speaker 1: So the politician Welch's book about Ike remained largely a

1458
01:22:43,880 --> 01:22:47,439
Speaker 1: secret work. He circulated it among his most loyal inner circle.

1459
01:22:47,520 --> 01:22:49,360
Speaker 1: He handed it out to like leaders in the movement,

1460
01:22:49,400 --> 01:22:51,320
Speaker 1: but regular members didn't get to know. It was kind

1461
01:22:51,320 --> 01:22:53,599
Speaker 1: of like they're Zeno. Like when you get high enough

1462
01:22:53,640 --> 01:22:55,720
Speaker 1: up in the Birch Society, you learned that Eisenhower is

1463
01:22:55,720 --> 01:23:00,240
Speaker 1: a communist. Um, Welch noted about his book and one

1464
01:23:00,280 --> 01:23:03,320
Speaker 1: private letter quote are rather extreme. Precautions with regards to

1465
01:23:03,400 --> 01:23:05,479
Speaker 1: this document are not due to any worry on my part.

1466
01:23:05,520 --> 01:23:07,560
Speaker 1: As to what might happen to myself, But many of

1467
01:23:07,640 --> 01:23:10,000
Speaker 1: my best informed friends feel that having the manuscript get

1468
01:23:10,080 --> 01:23:11,920
Speaker 1: into the wrong hands at the present time might do

1469
01:23:12,160 --> 01:23:15,320
Speaker 1: far more damage than good to the whole anti communist cause. Yeah,

1470
01:23:15,360 --> 01:23:17,800
Speaker 1: it's it's it's Alex Jones, I mean, and Alex Jones,

1471
01:23:17,960 --> 01:23:20,640
Speaker 1: as a little bit of a spoiler, was grew up

1472
01:23:20,720 --> 01:23:24,800
Speaker 1: on John Birch material, so not a kwinkie dink So

1473
01:23:25,400 --> 01:23:27,800
Speaker 1: for the Bircher rank and file, Eisenhower was just a

1474
01:23:27,840 --> 01:23:30,719
Speaker 1: crooked politician who was much too friendly with foreign leaders.

1475
01:23:31,040 --> 01:23:33,599
Speaker 1: At one point in nineteen sixty, Ike agreed to attend

1476
01:23:33,640 --> 01:23:37,000
Speaker 1: a summit with Nikita Krushchev, British Prime Minister Harold McMillan,

1477
01:23:37,080 --> 01:23:40,320
Speaker 1: and French President Charles de gaul Welch considered all three

1478
01:23:40,360 --> 01:23:43,240
Speaker 1: of these men to be card kerry and communists, which

1479
01:23:43,680 --> 01:23:49,959
Speaker 1: just fair. With Khrushchev, I'll say that, yeah, famous communist

1480
01:23:50,120 --> 01:23:55,920
Speaker 1: Charles all right, Yeah, didn't he do rituals and dance?

1481
01:23:56,080 --> 01:23:58,840
Speaker 1: And I don't know, I can't remember. I mean, he

1482
01:23:59,000 --> 01:24:01,200
Speaker 1: was pretty problematic in a lot of ways himself, but

1483
01:24:01,320 --> 01:24:05,920
Speaker 1: communist is not an accurate was a very problem Yeah,

1484
01:24:06,720 --> 01:24:10,280
Speaker 1: so was McMillan. For that matter. Um. Yeah, So Welch

1485
01:24:10,360 --> 01:24:12,439
Speaker 1: considered again all these guys to be communists, and he

1486
01:24:12,520 --> 01:24:15,519
Speaker 1: had the John Birch Society send a heavily publicized message

1487
01:24:15,560 --> 01:24:19,559
Speaker 1: to President Eisenhower. If you go, don't come back. Um.

1488
01:24:19,720 --> 01:24:24,760
Speaker 1: The slogan was sent out in a blizzard. Yeah, you

1489
01:24:24,880 --> 01:24:29,480
Speaker 1: will be exiled, yeah for hanging out with famous communist

1490
01:24:29,680 --> 01:24:33,880
Speaker 1: Charles de gaul If you go. What a great threat.

1491
01:24:33,920 --> 01:24:35,840
Speaker 1: If you go to that meeting, the conference room will

1492
01:24:35,880 --> 01:24:39,800
Speaker 1: be your elbow. So the slogan was sent out in

1493
01:24:39,840 --> 01:24:42,760
Speaker 1: a blizzard of postcards, letters, and telegrams, and within the

1494
01:24:42,840 --> 01:24:45,879
Speaker 1: society it was actually quite controversial, since many normal Birchers

1495
01:24:45,920 --> 01:24:49,360
Speaker 1: were not as a rational as the group's founder. Nationwide,

1496
01:24:49,439 --> 01:24:53,720
Speaker 1: it sparked curiosity for this strange, semi underground organization. One

1497
01:24:53,840 --> 01:24:57,559
Speaker 1: curious individual was Jack Mabley, an investigative reporter and columnist

1498
01:24:57,640 --> 01:25:02,200
Speaker 1: for the Chicago Daily News. So, hey, hometown here out. Yeah,

1499
01:25:02,800 --> 01:25:06,439
Speaker 1: maybe a technically candyman is a hometown hero for Chicago too,

1500
01:25:06,520 --> 01:25:10,800
Speaker 1: But that's different both hometown heroes to Chicagoans. It's the

1501
01:25:10,880 --> 01:25:17,080
Speaker 1: only way to stop a bad Chicago Chicago. Uh so, yeah,

1502
01:25:17,560 --> 01:25:20,439
Speaker 1: maybe starts looking into the John Birch Society. He went,

1503
01:25:20,720 --> 01:25:23,240
Speaker 1: he like kind of finangles his way into attending a meeting,

1504
01:25:23,280 --> 01:25:25,519
Speaker 1: and he talks with a number of its members, and

1505
01:25:25,600 --> 01:25:27,640
Speaker 1: by hook and by crook, he comes into possession of

1506
01:25:27,680 --> 01:25:31,720
Speaker 1: a copy of The Politician. Uh yeah, so it's it's

1507
01:25:31,760 --> 01:25:33,920
Speaker 1: made its way out of the society's inner circle and

1508
01:25:34,000 --> 01:25:37,719
Speaker 1: into the hands of a journalist. Now, unfortunately Robert Welch's

1509
01:25:37,760 --> 01:25:41,519
Speaker 1: prophecies are come true. Yeah, people are going to know

1510
01:25:41,600 --> 01:25:45,200
Speaker 1: what they're crazy. I'm gonna quote now from DJ Malloy's

1511
01:25:45,200 --> 01:25:48,000
Speaker 1: book on the John Birch Society, writing about Mayble's you know,

1512
01:25:48,360 --> 01:25:52,759
Speaker 1: the article he writes about The Politician. Quote, this fantastic document,

1513
01:25:52,840 --> 01:25:56,760
Speaker 1: maybe reported accuses President Eisenhower of treason. It flatly calls

1514
01:25:56,840 --> 01:25:59,080
Speaker 1: him a communist, and for three d and two pages

1515
01:25:59,080 --> 01:26:01,800
Speaker 1: attempts to document at the charge. And he provided an

1516
01:26:01,840 --> 01:26:03,880
Speaker 1: exact quote from the book to prove his claim, one

1517
01:26:03,920 --> 01:26:05,960
Speaker 1: that would haunt Welch in the Birch Society for years

1518
01:26:06,000 --> 01:26:09,439
Speaker 1: to come, but which was mysteriously although understandably absent when

1519
01:26:09,439 --> 01:26:12,240
Speaker 1: the book was officially published in nineteen sixty three. It

1520
01:26:12,479 --> 01:26:15,679
Speaker 1: was well, I too think that Milton Eisenhower, the President's brother,

1521
01:26:15,760 --> 01:26:18,080
Speaker 1: is a communist and has been for thirty years. This

1522
01:26:18,200 --> 01:26:21,400
Speaker 1: opinion is based largely on general circumstances of his conduct.

1523
01:26:21,600 --> 01:26:24,000
Speaker 1: But my firm belief that Dwight Eisenhower is a dedicated,

1524
01:26:24,040 --> 01:26:27,000
Speaker 1: conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy is based on an

1525
01:26:27,040 --> 01:26:30,080
Speaker 1: accumulation of detailed evidence so extensive and so palpable. But

1526
01:26:30,200 --> 01:26:32,160
Speaker 1: it seems to me to put this conviction beyond any

1527
01:26:32,200 --> 01:26:36,120
Speaker 1: reasonable doubt through some violation of confidence. Someone who had

1528
01:26:36,120 --> 01:26:38,080
Speaker 1: been sent the letter in nineteen fifty eight had passed

1529
01:26:38,120 --> 01:26:40,800
Speaker 1: on to Mablee, and the journalist had naturally selected for

1530
01:26:40,960 --> 01:26:43,720
Speaker 1: quotation the most extreme statements he could find, without the

1531
01:26:43,800 --> 01:26:46,719
Speaker 1: benefit of any explanation or modifying import of the context

1532
01:26:46,800 --> 01:26:51,680
Speaker 1: around them. Violation. He's like, hey, can I take a

1533
01:26:51,720 --> 01:26:56,439
Speaker 1: look at your copy of that? Yeah, sure, violation. Well

1534
01:26:56,520 --> 01:26:58,360
Speaker 1: it's like and and I love the idea that that's

1535
01:26:58,360 --> 01:27:00,439
Speaker 1: out of context. Yeah, that's the thing they gets, that

1536
01:27:00,560 --> 01:27:03,280
Speaker 1: thing people say about like Jordan Peterson and Alex Jones

1537
01:27:03,360 --> 01:27:05,360
Speaker 1: like that. The defenses they always make is that you're

1538
01:27:05,400 --> 01:27:08,160
Speaker 1: just taking us out of context. Um, and that's what

1539
01:27:08,360 --> 01:27:11,000
Speaker 1: fucking Welch in the John Birch Society do with this document.

1540
01:27:11,040 --> 01:27:12,720
Speaker 1: They claimed that he was like, well, I said, I

1541
01:27:12,800 --> 01:27:15,920
Speaker 1: didn't say that Eisenhower was a communist agent. I said

1542
01:27:15,960 --> 01:27:19,080
Speaker 1: that I thought he was based on evidence that i'd seen.

1543
01:27:19,400 --> 01:27:24,680
Speaker 1: That's different saying he's a communist. Yeah. The rest of

1544
01:27:24,720 --> 01:27:27,960
Speaker 1: those eight thousand words are the stone cold dead to

1545
01:27:28,160 --> 01:27:33,080
Speaker 1: rights evidence that's journalist quote unquote is not taking into

1546
01:27:33,120 --> 01:27:40,280
Speaker 1: account and that is really malpractice exactly. Yeah, So most

1547
01:27:40,360 --> 01:27:43,000
Speaker 1: people did not buy Welch's defense. In fact, a Saturday

1548
01:27:43,040 --> 01:27:45,240
Speaker 1: Evening Post reporter who wrote about the John Society in

1549
01:27:45,280 --> 01:27:48,200
Speaker 1: nineteen seven stated that it's members spent most of their

1550
01:27:48,280 --> 01:27:53,000
Speaker 1: time talking to outsiders answering questions about Welch's Communist Eisenhower conspiracy.

1551
01:27:53,080 --> 01:27:55,720
Speaker 1: So like this kind of dominates the public perception. They

1552
01:27:55,840 --> 01:27:57,320
Speaker 1: become a bit of a joke to a lot of

1553
01:27:57,360 --> 01:28:05,280
Speaker 1: Americans because you know, it's ridiculous. Yeah, they got their revenge,

1554
01:28:05,360 --> 01:28:09,160
Speaker 1: didn't they. So this did not stop the John Birch Society,

1555
01:28:09,200 --> 01:28:10,920
Speaker 1: although it did draw attention to the group for the

1556
01:28:11,000 --> 01:28:13,439
Speaker 1: first time. This may have helped as much as it harmed.

1557
01:28:13,560 --> 01:28:15,880
Speaker 1: Tens of thousands of Americans continued to flock to the

1558
01:28:15,960 --> 01:28:19,479
Speaker 1: John Birch Society, eventually growing to ninety five thousand members

1559
01:28:19,520 --> 01:28:22,880
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty five. Welch's stated goal was a million

1560
01:28:22,960 --> 01:28:25,960
Speaker 1: American Bircher's, and as the nineteen sixties got rolling, it

1561
01:28:26,080 --> 01:28:29,400
Speaker 1: looked like he might actually achieve it. And that's part

1562
01:28:29,479 --> 01:28:33,000
Speaker 1: one of the John Birch Society. What a Dick an

1563
01:28:33,040 --> 01:28:38,840
Speaker 1: erotic novel. I don't think he's a good guy. No,

1564
01:28:41,120 --> 01:28:44,080
Speaker 1: I think he sucks and I think so and I

1565
01:28:44,200 --> 01:28:47,920
Speaker 1: need a papa sucker at least soothed me. Gonna go

1566
01:28:48,040 --> 01:28:49,880
Speaker 1: suck on a papa while we take a quick break.

1567
01:28:49,920 --> 01:28:51,720
Speaker 1: You guys want to plug your plug ables before we

1568
01:28:51,880 --> 01:28:56,120
Speaker 1: roll out. We got a podcast. Think people can find

1569
01:28:56,200 --> 01:28:58,280
Speaker 1: that you wrote a book. I did write a book.

1570
01:28:58,479 --> 01:29:00,800
Speaker 1: You always have to remind me to actually tell people that.

1571
01:29:01,560 --> 01:29:03,760
Speaker 1: It's the Quiet Part Loud. You can get it at

1572
01:29:03,760 --> 01:29:06,120
Speaker 1: the Quiet Part loud dot com. That's where for free

1573
01:29:07,040 --> 01:29:09,759
Speaker 1: check out Knowledge Fight, check out the Quiet Part Loud,

1574
01:29:10,320 --> 01:29:12,680
Speaker 1: and check out nothing else. If you do anything else

1575
01:29:12,760 --> 01:29:15,479
Speaker 1: on the internet, you have you have offended and harmed

1576
01:29:15,560 --> 01:29:18,960
Speaker 1: me personally and I and my forthcoming for vengeance. Uh,

1577
01:29:20,920 --> 01:29:27,240
Speaker 1: God doesn't need to forgive us. God what my podcast

1578
01:29:27,720 --> 01:29:27,960
Speaker 1: out