Speaker 1: M uh love podcasts. I don't ship. Is that? Are
Speaker 1: we allowed to open a show that way? I don't know. Well,
Speaker 1: we did it, I'll let you do it. I didn't.
Speaker 1: God damn it. This is terrible the best I am.
Speaker 1: I am so sorry to everybody. Ye I have well
Speaker 1: as everyone can can hear now by by listening to
Speaker 1: the tremendous failure that has just occurred in everyone's earballs. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is Behind the Bastards, a podcast about bad people,
Speaker 1: namely me. And my guests today are Dan and Jordan's.
Speaker 1: That's us. If I if I just said Dan, or
Speaker 1: if I just said Jordan's, I would have to be
Speaker 1: more specific. But when I say Dan and Jordan's, I
Speaker 1: think everyone knows that it's it's the knowledge fight. Guys.
Speaker 1: Your identity has become subsumed into your podcast, so enjoy that.
Speaker 1: It was inevitable. Yeah, it was going to happen. I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people have taken to just calling
Speaker 1: us Jordan capital j capital d. Yeah, sort of a
Speaker 1: combined down. I feel like they could do better. Who could? Yeah,
Speaker 1: can you danger? Because it would have to be like
Speaker 1: Dan or something like that. But but Jorg Dan is
Speaker 1: like I feel like it's really just like giving like
Speaker 1: cloud to one name. But you're stressing that d pretty
Speaker 1: hard right in the middle, and I can appreciate that.
Speaker 1: I think it's I think it's great we're really getting
Speaker 1: into the weeds of this since they're solving it once
Speaker 1: and for all. You know, that's what people come here for,
Speaker 1: you know what. With explanation, I'll let you have it. Guys.
Speaker 1: All right, Jordan, are you ready to hear about some ship?
Speaker 1: You bet? Robert yea post your podcast? So you know
Speaker 1: what sucks many many many things? Uh? You know, I
Speaker 1: would say, broadly speaking, the right wing in America, the
Speaker 1: Republican Party, the looming uh fascist threat that has been
Speaker 1: slightly weed whacked back, but is still threatening to encroach
Speaker 1: uh and choke all of us to death uh forever.
Speaker 1: That Yeah, Engines and dragons monster. When you put it
Speaker 1: like that, it is basically a dungeons and dragons monster.
Speaker 1: So this episode is about e Gary Guy Gaxe. This
Speaker 1: episode is about so Gary Guy GaX invented dungeons and dragons.
Speaker 1: This episode is about the man who invented the modern
Speaker 1: Republican Party, by which I mean the Party of Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: by which I mean you know the fascists, and his
Speaker 1: name was Robert Welch. You guys know who Robert Welch is.
Speaker 1: I don't know who Robert Welch is. I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 1: gonna feign ignorance for about three quarters. You definitely look
Speaker 1: at me, and did you know about Robert Welch. The
Speaker 1: whole point of me is to not know about Robert. Well,
Speaker 1: you know him by a different name. Yeah, yeah, you
Speaker 1: you Jordan know him as the founder of the John
Speaker 1: Birch Society. Oh I do know him as the candy Man. Yes, Oh,
Speaker 1: I do know him as the candy Man. Oh shit, candy.
Speaker 1: So if you haven't heard of the John Birch Society,
Speaker 1: they're loosely speaking, why we got President Ronald Reagan, President
Speaker 1: Donald Trump, and the whole ecosystem of right wing grifters
Speaker 1: who make money off of convincing their fans that everybody
Speaker 1: on the left is part of a Marxist conspiracy, like
Speaker 1: the idea that Joe Biden is a is a Communist agent,
Speaker 1: which are are good friend of the pod Alex Jones
Speaker 1: brings up repeatedly, is a descendant of a John Birch
Speaker 1: Society talking point or at least a family of those
Speaker 1: talking points. So that's that's the guy we're talking about today,
Speaker 1: Bob Welch, founder the John Birch Society. Yeah, dude, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't, I don't. I think, first off,
Speaker 1: my my initial sign that he's not a good guy
Speaker 1: is you're talking about him. So that's that's a red
Speaker 1: flag right off the bat. And then Bob Welch, that's
Speaker 1: just a that's just a right wing name. That's just
Speaker 1: what it is. Yeah, Yeah, Bob Welch is is is
Speaker 1: you'd guess that he founded some sort of society that
Speaker 1: did something terrible. So Robert H. W. Welch Jr. Which,
Speaker 1: by God, the more thorough you are with the name,
Speaker 1: the worse it sounds. Was born on a farm. Why
Speaker 1: do all these jerks have the initials h W two? Yeah,
Speaker 1: he does, he does. He's got a real George Bush
Speaker 1: fibe going on, what the hell? Well, I mean, that's
Speaker 1: how the word white starts right in their world, white white, white.
Speaker 1: I think that's what it is. I think Robert quite Welch,
Speaker 1: that actually completely You might be right. So Whitey was
Speaker 1: born on a farm in Choen County, North Carolina, on
Speaker 1: December one, eighteen ninety nine. He was a brilliant child,
Speaker 1: some might even say a genius. He could read by
Speaker 1: age three, and he knew his multiplication tables by age four.
Speaker 1: By age seven, he was studying Latin, and at age
Speaker 1: twelve he enrolled in the University of North Carolina. He
Speaker 1: graduated at age sixteen. Uh, and yeah, everything that happens
Speaker 1: in the story should be taking his evidence for white
Speaker 1: child prodigy should be dosed with paint chips. I think
Speaker 1: that's yeah. I always feel like when I hear something
Speaker 1: like that, and I hear like someone new multiplication tables
Speaker 1: at four, I'd be like, who prove it? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: would say prove it. And and if you can prove
Speaker 1: that a kid is that smart, you gotta slow him
Speaker 1: down somehow. I would write to be able to quiz
Speaker 1: that four year old. I see how deep you're not
Speaker 1: to the table is? Yeah? And I think if you're
Speaker 1: a four year old with perfect knowledge of the multiplication tables,
Speaker 1: take them out of school for two years, don't let
Speaker 1: him read books, make them work on a farm. Did
Speaker 1: you write a Kurt Vonnegut short story at us? What
Speaker 1: just Happen? Look? Vonnegut was right. The problem is that
Speaker 1: people are too smart these two fast. Give them braces,
Speaker 1: take them down the notch. Yeah yeah, slow them down somehow,
Speaker 1: just you know, put blinders on the kid, feed him lead,
Speaker 1: whatever it takes, and then the versus true. If you're
Speaker 1: not good at something, give them steroids and ship give
Speaker 1: him all the drugs to make them smarter. I think
Speaker 1: everyone who can't do the multiplication tables by age four,
Speaker 1: mandatory steroids. Everyone who can illiterate farm in the Midwest.
Speaker 1: I like it. That's my deal. Society in charge of children, Okay,
Speaker 1: so uh yeah. Bobby Welch, child prodigy, entered the Naval
Speaker 1: Academy at Annapolis in nineteen seventeen, a year when nothing
Speaker 1: else of particular interest occurred. He resigned after just two
Speaker 1: years when he decided that a military career was not
Speaker 1: for him. Instead, he wanted to be a lawyer, so
Speaker 1: he enrolled in Harvard Law School, but this didn't wind
Speaker 1: up working out much better for him. Robert clashed regularly
Speaker 1: with his professor's, particularly the hilariously named Felix Frankfurter, who
Speaker 1: would grow up. It's a real guy, it's a real
Speaker 1: guy's name. He went on to become a Supreme Court justice.
Speaker 1: Of course, a lot of people have to overcome something
Speaker 1: in order to do something great. And I think being
Speaker 1: born with Felix, he had his handicap and it made
Speaker 1: him great. Yeah, Justice, hot dog. Yeah, because that's the hardest.
Speaker 1: If you want to be the hardest, it can be
Speaker 1: too for other people to laugh at you become a
Speaker 1: Supreme Court justice, because then everybody's got to be scared
Speaker 1: one way or the other. You're gonna terrify half the
Speaker 1: population if it pleases the hot dog. Oh god, oh god,
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry. Please don't take away my reproductive health care.
Speaker 1: In the case of Hines versus the United States, he's
Speaker 1: gonna have to recuse himself. He cannot. He could not
Speaker 1: rule on anything to do with the John Kerry campaign
Speaker 1: for that reason. Um Frankfurter was a liberal Supreme Court justice,
Speaker 1: which might explain why Robert Welch hated him so much.
Speaker 1: Welch's biography, which is quite a text, says that the
Speaker 1: young Robert Welch hated Felix Frankfurter because, quote, the young
Speaker 1: man from North Carolina recognized hogwash when he heard it,
Speaker 1: and a hogwash is spelled in all caps and also
Speaker 1: spelled out with like a like a dash in between
Speaker 1: each word. That's good, it's a fascinating publication. That's a
Speaker 1: that's a Canterbury Tales level of bullshit right there. Yeah, magnificent.
Speaker 1: Did someone who was with the John Birch Society right
Speaker 1: this biography? Yes? Absolutely, yeah, no, A thousands like the
Speaker 1: editorial style. It was written probably by Bob Welch. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Welch left Harvard just a year before he would have graduated.
Speaker 1: He decided that he'd learned enough and it was time
Speaker 1: to make a shipload of money. And this wonder kin
Speaker 1: had a specific plan for how he was going to
Speaker 1: get rich. The motherfucking candy business. Hell yeah, hell yeah,
Speaker 1: candies where the money is. Man. You know, that's the
Speaker 1: thing about candy. You get older, it stays appealing to
Speaker 1: people of the same age. I don't know why I
Speaker 1: tried to I don't know why I tried to Fast Times.
Speaker 1: Tried to Fast Times that one. So Bob's brilliant idea
Speaker 1: was something called the Papa Sucker. The Papa Sucker, the
Speaker 1: Papa Sucker. Yeah, speaking of Fast Times jokes, because it
Speaker 1: is what it sounds like. What would happen when your
Speaker 1: dad gets a blowjob. But it was actually a caramel
Speaker 1: lollipop designed to not melt in the summer heat. That's
Speaker 1: exactly like what would happen if your dad got a
Speaker 1: blowjob right there. I'm pretty sorry. Yeah, And like your
Speaker 1: dad's penis, it was filled with dangerous chemicals, which is
Speaker 1: why it didn't melt in the summer heat. Probably that's
Speaker 1: good stuff, not a good lying to keep. You take
Speaker 1: the rough with the smooth, as they say, dangerous chemicals.
Speaker 1: It's not melt especially when it comes to your dad's generals.
Speaker 1: You got to take the rough with when it comes
Speaker 1: to a Papa Sucker. Unfortunate, unfortunate. This is really gone
Speaker 1: on the rails, but they're not great rails. So despite
Speaker 1: the novelty of Bob Welch's Papa Sucker, his first business,
Speaker 1: named the Oxford Candy Company, did not go well. Uh.
Speaker 1: The cause seems to have again been the fact that
Speaker 1: Bob Welch did not play well with others. He had
Speaker 1: an increasing series of tins disagreements with his board of directors.
Speaker 1: They had a fight over what he described as their
Speaker 1: desire to reduce the quality of their products to improve profits,
Speaker 1: Welch quit and again walked away. So getting a bit
Speaker 1: of a theme, like everything all I want to do
Speaker 1: is tortured children for morality tales. Yeah, he just keeps
Speaker 1: getting into disagreements with people, be they his professors or
Speaker 1: his business partners, and then piecing the funk out. That's
Speaker 1: that's early life. Bob Welch not an easy guy to
Speaker 1: get along with, So he's also not an easy guy
Speaker 1: to dissuade from his sacred task of selling candy. Um.
Speaker 1: He set up another candy company, this one in Berlin,
Speaker 1: and money was tight because he had a couple of
Speaker 1: kids by this point, so he took a second job
Speaker 1: as a salesman for E. J. Brack and Sons, which
Speaker 1: was one of the largest candy companies in the world.
Speaker 1: They're the people who make candy corn, among other you know.
Speaker 1: Oh so they're evil too, Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. Their
Speaker 1: history's greatest monsters corn pumpkin. They make candy pumpkin's. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the candy corn substances in a bunch of different shapes.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, you mean the little pumpkins that are
Speaker 1: made out of candy corn. I do like the very
Speaker 1: specific term substance. Whatever it's made of which you don't
Speaker 1: know and neither. It's just a substance. Man tried to
Speaker 1: convince me that like, candy pumpkins are better like candy.
Speaker 1: Corn sucks, but candy pumpkins are good like No, it's
Speaker 1: just more. It's the same. It's a larger piece of
Speaker 1: the same terrible candies, just a ball. You know, it
Speaker 1: is great. I have this, there's this. So the person
Speaker 1: I lived with for a while is a is a
Speaker 1: Chinese national, and she introduced me to this wonderful restaurant
Speaker 1: in Portland that's like a Chinese street food restaurant and
Speaker 1: have this dish that I've never had before that's just
Speaker 1: corn and fried batter and green onions and cilantro and
Speaker 1: it's fucking awesome. Oh it's so good, Like I don't
Speaker 1: know how it's it does sound good, incredible. But you
Speaker 1: know what, Bob Welch would really hate the idea of
Speaker 1: you living with a Chinese national. He would hate everything.
Speaker 1: As soon as I said Chinese, he would have started screaming,
Speaker 1: ever the mouth this mouth. Well, I don't know if
Speaker 1: I convinced him my friend was descended from Chang Kai check,
Speaker 1: he'd probably have been all right with that. He was
Speaker 1: a big chang head as that was all around. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be that would be mouse sedgenation. Mao, Dan
Speaker 1: are running. I feel like you had that one in
Speaker 1: your head for years and then you hardened it into
Speaker 1: a joke about Chang Kai check because if only I'm
Speaker 1: tortured by new versions of that same shitty joke all day.
Speaker 1: Jordan's made that joke fifteen times on the podcast. I've
Speaker 1: just edited out every time. Yeah, you're wise to do that. So. Uh.
Speaker 1: This second candy company didn't work very well because it
Speaker 1: was the Great Depression and people didn't have disposable income
Speaker 1: for candy. Probably was a bad time to start a
Speaker 1: candy business. Uh, and his his new company fell apart
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty three. Fortunately, Bras was still making money
Speaker 1: and he was doing well enough as a salesman that
Speaker 1: they took him on as a full time employee, which
Speaker 1: kept him afloat for the next year or so. In
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty four, he started his third candy company, the
Speaker 1: Midwest Candy Company of Attica, Indiana. Uh And unfortunately his
Speaker 1: candy was as bad as his company's name, and Welch's
Speaker 1: third enterprise failed. So he said, how's that doing. Was
Speaker 1: he still selling the papa suckers? No, he he had
Speaker 1: to give the leave the Papa sucker behind when he
Speaker 1: had a fight with his business partners. So all the
Speaker 1: papa suckers that are getting sold, yeah, they're keeping the loss.
Speaker 1: That's the worst loss right there. He's not getting a
Speaker 1: dime from any of the papas that are getting sucked
Speaker 1: these days, which is a real shame. So, yeah, three
Speaker 1: failed candy companies. In a ninety five Bob Welch files
Speaker 1: for bankruptcy, which is, you know, pretty on brand for him.
Speaker 1: It's the financial equivalent of like running away when you
Speaker 1: get into an argument. So so far everything scans. He
Speaker 1: returns to Boston and he gets a job working for
Speaker 1: his younger brother, who was also in the candy business
Speaker 1: and a lot more successful than his older brother. The
Speaker 1: James O. Welch company was a success, and this is
Speaker 1: what finally brought Robert Welch the wealth he desired. He
Speaker 1: was made VP in charge of sales and advertising, and
Speaker 1: as the company grew, this meant Roberts spent years traveling
Speaker 1: across the country to offices in Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Houston,
Speaker 1: Los Angeles and Seattle. Now a wealthy man, he began
Speaker 1: racking up positions on government boards, the Boston Chamber of Commerce,
Speaker 1: the Cambridge Chamber of Commerce, and eventually a role as
Speaker 1: a national counselor for the US Chamber of Commerce. Is
Speaker 1: anything thats you into a right wing lunatic more than
Speaker 1: getting rich off of somebody else's work? Yeah, especially your
Speaker 1: brother's work. Yeah right, a regular right wing thing? Is
Speaker 1: that how they all get to where they are ahead? Sorry?
Speaker 1: Just he takes a lot of credit for the company's success,
Speaker 1: but judging by the fact that he had three failed
Speaker 1: candy companies and only succeeded when he latched onto his brothers,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna guess the James was the talent and the
Speaker 1: family might be the case. Yeah, if I recall correctly.
Speaker 1: Didn't they make some like pretty like memorable candies? Yeah? No,
Speaker 1: the James O. Welch Company has made some some of
Speaker 1: the all time great candies. Uh they all sound weird
Speaker 1: when yeah, and some sort of weird sugary rope thing.
Speaker 1: I don't know, like they made a bunch of candy candy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not like it's not like the god fearing modern
Speaker 1: candy that we have today. It was all strange and
Speaker 1: terrifying and involved four pounds little nibbles, those little so
Speaker 1: you can't even sell kids something with horror in the name.
Speaker 1: Now it's just social justice warriors. Yeah, cancel cultures, run
Speaker 1: them buck And now we can't have our horehound candy.
Speaker 1: Why can't I buy a fox stick today? Why can't
Speaker 1: I go to any candy shop I want to and
Speaker 1: buy a fox stand. I wanted a fox, a fox
Speaker 1: stick and a Papa sucker. Come on, So, I just
Speaker 1: like it's sugar Mama's Sugar Mama's Jesus way to be
Speaker 1: a misogynist day. But I think, but isn't like sugar
Speaker 1: Daddy and sugar Baby aren't sugar. They have junior Mints,
Speaker 1: sugar Daddies, sugar babies, sugar Mama's Welch is fudge, welch
Speaker 1: is Freppe and pom poms. Wow. I finally understand the
Speaker 1: popularity of incest porn on the Internet. I think it
Speaker 1: all comes from there. It's all the Papa suckers and
Speaker 1: the sugar model starts there. I see it. It's all
Speaker 1: made making sense. Now, Yeah, you know you say that
Speaker 1: Jordan's It makes the Welch company motto suck on a
Speaker 1: Mama make a lot more sense. Yeah, that does sound right.
Speaker 1: That that all is starting to scan now. So, like
Speaker 1: all men who get rich through a mixture of blind
Speaker 1: luck and family ties, Robert Welch decided to write a book.
Speaker 1: The Road to Salesmanship was about exactly the book you'd
Speaker 1: guessed that it was. I found a copy of it
Speaker 1: on Amazon today for three ninety nine and the product
Speaker 1: description text is wonderful. Uh, just gonna read you the
Speaker 1: Amazon description text, which is a little bit off the
Speaker 1: beaten path, but it it's quite funny. The Road to
Speaker 1: Salesmanship Brackets Pamphlet Robert Welch Robert not capitalized, Welch capitalized
Speaker 1: ninety one raring out of print, Collector's item limited available.
Speaker 1: The Road to Salesmanship Pamphlet and Brackets by Robert Welch,
Speaker 1: this time capitalized. This is a document and then new
Speaker 1: sentence that was written by the founder of the John
Speaker 1: Birch Society, but written decades before he founded the John
Speaker 1: Bridge Society. Now they start calling the John Bridge Society.
Speaker 1: This is not about the John Bridge Society or any projects.
Speaker 1: Rinciples of the john Bridge Society. This is a unique
Speaker 1: look at the early thoughts of Robert Welch, long before
Speaker 1: he founded the john Bridge Society. And I enjoyed that.
Speaker 1: M hm. So I looked through the book a bit.
Speaker 1: I found it online. There's also a free copy. Don't
Speaker 1: don't pay Amazon for this fucking book, um, so I
Speaker 1: I and don't read it also it's not worth reading.
Speaker 1: But I skimmed a couple of chapters just to see
Speaker 1: if there was anything entertaining about it, because I was
Speaker 1: hoping that like it was filled with I don't know,
Speaker 1: a bunch of crypto fascist nonsense, and it's it's it's
Speaker 1: even too boring for that. It seemed to have been
Speaker 1: mostly folksy and anecdotes about his sales experience and in
Speaker 1: inoffensive advice on how to sell stuff. He does start
Speaker 1: the he does. I enjoyed that He starts the book
Speaker 1: by noting that unlike like loser jobs like bricklaying and lumberjacking,
Speaker 1: being a salesman is a true profession, like being a doctor. Specifically,
Speaker 1: throw ship on brick layers and lumberjacks. Any idiot can
Speaker 1: do those jobs selling ship. That's hard. Salesman do occupy
Speaker 1: the same rarefied territory as doctors nowadays. You know, you
Speaker 1: think about a used car salesman, you're like, that guy
Speaker 1: is a surgeon the same level of quality. Yeah, just
Speaker 1: a used body salesman. I mean you think when the
Speaker 1: coronavirus first hit, our first responders were the doctors, the nurses,
Speaker 1: and the candy salesman. Yeah. Absolutely. Also, I really do
Speaker 1: think the candy sells itself. Yeah. I don't know, it
Speaker 1: doesn't take much. I'm not impressed by a candy salesman.
Speaker 1: I mean, as long as it's not a disastrously gross candy,
Speaker 1: or as long as it's not called the Papa Sucker. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it'll be all right. You're gonna be all right.
Speaker 1: Eminem's ever needed an ad campaign, yeah, because they absolutely have.
Speaker 1: But it's just they had a long one every Christmas,
Speaker 1: great ad campaign, but they didn't need them. They would
Speaker 1: have sold their chocolate with or without them. Yeah. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: I think the only job that Robert Welch did was
Speaker 1: was the Papa Sucker. Suck on your Papa, Oh boy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't expect us to go down anyway for this episode.
Speaker 1: Apparently he ends the book on a series of final
Speaker 1: don'ts for Salesman, which include and these are. The actual
Speaker 1: text of all of these is more boring than you'd expect.
Speaker 1: But the don't there funny a knife can have two edges.
Speaker 1: Everybody knows that drum is hollow. People rent offices to
Speaker 1: do business in remember the future, and professors belong in classrooms. Wait,
Speaker 1: those are the don't Those are the don'ts. So don't professor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: don't be unless you're unless you're in a classroom. Don't
Speaker 1: teach people about candy when you're trying to sell to
Speaker 1: That's a good point. Oh, I get you now, especially
Speaker 1: don't be a liberal candy prefersior. Oh, you can't do that.
Speaker 1: They like to imagine that the knife has two edges.
Speaker 1: Thing is is a reference to the many knife fights
Speaker 1: that candy salesman got into in the nineties. Wouldn't surprise
Speaker 1: my brutal business is dangerous work. You saw what happened
Speaker 1: to the Augustus gloup Kid. Yeah, and that that Robin
Speaker 1: Williams movie The Candy Man. So the impression that I
Speaker 1: got from my limited reading of this book is that
Speaker 1: young Bob Welch was something of a pampus know at all, um,
Speaker 1: but I got no hint that he was particularly unhinged
Speaker 1: or unreasonable, like it's not there's nothing like like. There's
Speaker 1: no hints as to what he became in the book.
Speaker 1: He just seems like kind of a dick um, which
Speaker 1: I guess is one hint, but not not much of
Speaker 1: one compared to what happens next. So, during World War Two,
Speaker 1: Welch served on the War Production Board. If it seems
Speaker 1: odd to you that a candy man would be appointed
Speaker 1: to help manage national military production during a global battle
Speaker 1: for survival of democracy, yes, yes it does, but that
Speaker 1: is what happened. Uh bullets, But Eminem's yeah, just another
Speaker 1: kind of Papa sucker. We have a long history of
Speaker 1: giving people jobs are not qualified for in this country.
Speaker 1: It's it's a creative strength. So, as a result of
Speaker 1: his work in the War Production Board, Welch spent more
Speaker 1: and more time in Washington, d c. During the forties.
Speaker 1: He also became chairman of the National Confectioners Association's Washington Committee.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seven, he received the candy industry's highest honor,
Speaker 1: the Kettle Award, from Candy Industry Magazine. So he's really
Speaker 1: he's arrived. You can't top the kettle award if you're
Speaker 1: a candy man for for for what did he receive
Speaker 1: this award forgetting all those kids to suck on their
Speaker 1: papa's But I mean, like high sales. Was he a
Speaker 1: good candy creator? Was he just around win World War Two?
Speaker 1: Why did he get this award? He's honestly, I think
Speaker 1: ink and this is this isn't written anywhere, but reading
Speaker 1: between the lines from everything I read about his his
Speaker 1: earlier life, I think his real talent was that he
Speaker 1: was very good at getting other rich businessman to like him.
Speaker 1: And I like, that's why you'll notice the thing that
Speaker 1: he really does best. He wasn't a particularly good business
Speaker 1: owner or candy salesman, but he was great at being
Speaker 1: on the board of big candy industry companies because rich
Speaker 1: guys liked him. It's like, I think that was his
Speaker 1: talent that I'll take you a long way in America. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean. The analog is like people who get a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff through networking, Like maybe not they're intrinsic skills.
Speaker 1: They might get more gigs or shows or stuff because
Speaker 1: of the ability to schmooz and stuff. And Robert Welsh was.
Speaker 1: From everything I could tell, it seems like he was
Speaker 1: pretty pretty good at that. That's how you get a cattle. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's how you get a cattle. You get you get
Speaker 1: a cattle. Nobody's trying to take the Man's Cattle Award. Sure,
Speaker 1: he fucking brought us closer to fascism than any other
Speaker 1: living or any other American he's ever lived. But he
Speaker 1: won that kettle. Here in the kettle I allowed. Did
Speaker 1: you know the weekend is freaking out because he didn't
Speaker 1: get the kettle? Do you know that Tom Hanks won
Speaker 1: kettle two years in a row, both of them for
Speaker 1: his Forrest Gump life is like a box of chocolates.
Speaker 1: That was the best thing that ever happened to the candy.
Speaker 1: And okay, you're right, we need we pulled throughout the
Speaker 1: next year the Academy award two years in a row.
Speaker 1: Cattle two years in a row. Very impressive. All right,
Speaker 1: all right? I thought it was because of Philadelphia, but
Speaker 1: he doubt he eats Reese's peanut butter cups in Philadelphia.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's true. Yeah, that Tom Hanks
Speaker 1: is actually the only man to get the egot k yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So Welch's real gift seems to have been in organizing
Speaker 1: people in businesses. He had a genius for managing teams
Speaker 1: and forgetting again rich people to like him. In nineteen fifty,
Speaker 1: he was appointed to the board of directors for the
Speaker 1: National Association of manufact Jurors. He held this job for
Speaker 1: a while and through it was in regular contact with
Speaker 1: wealthy and powerful people in a bunch of different industries.
Speaker 1: And is at this point that I'm going to start
Speaker 1: quoting from the World of the John Birch Society by D. J. Malloy,
Speaker 1: which is a real fun book about a bunch of
Speaker 1: terrible ship Welch first became involved in politics in nineteen
Speaker 1: forty six, when he volunteered to work on Republican Robert
Speaker 1: Bradford's successful campaign to become governor of Massachusetts. He was
Speaker 1: appointed vice chairman of the state's Republican Finance Committee. Two
Speaker 1: years later, in nineteen forty nine, Welch went a major
Speaker 1: step further, however, when he announced his intention to become
Speaker 1: the next Lieutenant governor of the Bay State. Like many
Speaker 1: other conservatives and businessmen of the time, reducing government interference
Speaker 1: in the economy, and turning back the creeping collectivism of
Speaker 1: Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal were among Welch's principal concerns,
Speaker 1: as he made clear in an interview with Courtney Sheldon
Speaker 1: of the Christian Science Monitor on the eve of the election.
Speaker 1: Our first and most important job, Welch explained, is to
Speaker 1: keep us from going any further than we have already
Speaker 1: gone in the extension of government ownership of business, operation
Speaker 1: of business, interference with business, control of business, and control
Speaker 1: of the details of our daily living. He was also
Speaker 1: very strongly opposed, he said, to socialized medicine at the
Speaker 1: national or state level, to federal aid to education in
Speaker 1: any shape, manner, or form, and to federal housing plans.
Speaker 1: So nineteen forties, Bob Welch is like, not only funck
Speaker 1: the New Deal, fuck the concept of state paid healthcare,
Speaker 1: Fuck the concept of federal aid to education, and funck
Speaker 1: federal housing. Um he was really ahead. Doesn't know how
Speaker 1: to ground how to grow the candy business. You make
Speaker 1: dental care free for everyone, candy goes out of the roof,
Speaker 1: Come on, man, and the long term business strategy. That's
Speaker 1: actually a good plan. I think it is. It is
Speaker 1: and if all those don't have to pay Jesus, you
Speaker 1: get a second kettle for that you give, you give
Speaker 1: poor families their rent for free, They're going to buy
Speaker 1: a lot more candy for those kids. True still is
Speaker 1: right about education being a real barrier to the candy industry.
Speaker 1: Though you want people as dumb as hell if you
Speaker 1: want to meet in enough candy. Any kind of nutritional
Speaker 1: information in schools is going to be a hindrance. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So from the late nineteen forties it was kind of
Speaker 1: clear the guy that Bob Wolk was going to turn into.
Speaker 1: In a speech in May nineteen forty nine, he argued
Speaker 1: that it was no secret that there was a war
Speaker 1: going on in the United States between collectivism and individualism.
Speaker 1: He described this war as occurring on many fronts. In
Speaker 1: the field of commerce and industry, the battle is between
Speaker 1: free enterprise and state socialism, he said. In politics, it
Speaker 1: is between the people's ownership of the government and the
Speaker 1: government's ownership of the people. In sociology, it is between
Speaker 1: self reliance and dependence on a welfare state. In international relations,
Speaker 1: it is between a brutally aggressive tyranny and the remains
Speaker 1: of an independent civilization. So that's I wish, I wish
Speaker 1: rich people would just be like, I want more money,
Speaker 1: Like I would at least be able to engage with that.
Speaker 1: But that's a whole longest of fake bullshit. Leave me alone,
Speaker 1: just say you want more money. And what's what's impressive
Speaker 1: about it is that it's the exact same rhetoric that
Speaker 1: you hear out of the like mainstream Republican Party today.
Speaker 1: So like like we which really uh, like the thing
Speaker 1: that he predicted more than anything was like the way
Speaker 1: to kind of frame this battle, um, but because like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that there's a fight between in the in this period,
Speaker 1: the like the late nineteen forties and fifties, when like
Speaker 1: the government has just finished a long stint of cracking
Speaker 1: down brutally on left wing organizing, defining like this is
Speaker 1: a battle between free enterprise and state socialism, Like that
Speaker 1: was the thing he was doing, was was not just
Speaker 1: attacking socialism, which Americans have done for a while, but
Speaker 1: defining like the mainstream Democratic Party as socialists and refusing
Speaker 1: to deviate from that line. Like that was really kind
Speaker 1: of one of Welsh's big innovations. Branding your enemies as
Speaker 1: opposed to yourself. Yeah, and also the idea that no,
Speaker 1: we're we're not. This is not you know, politics is
Speaker 1: not some sort of grand bait between you know, two
Speaker 1: sides with different opinions on how things might work, trying
Speaker 1: to figure out the way to make a better society.
Speaker 1: It is a It is a fight between tyranny, uh
Speaker 1: and any hope of survival, and like the other side
Speaker 1: is nothing but pure tyranny, evil stuff. Yeah, Like like
Speaker 1: our ahead of the Federal Elections Commission said, yeah, it
Speaker 1: fucking rules. Yeah. Well described the battle between liberals and
Speaker 1: conservatives in the United States as a war that would
Speaker 1: determine whether we are going to leave our children and
Speaker 1: our grandchildren a world at least as good as the
Speaker 1: one we have inherited, or one that has already plunged
Speaker 1: into the incipient shambles of a new dark Ages. So
Speaker 1: he was right in the inverse, I suppose. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean he did help bring us into a new dark Ages. Um,
Speaker 1: so good on you, Bob. You know who else is
Speaker 1: going to bring us into a new dark age? CBS? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean they're gonna try, but they're gonna do it
Speaker 1: with the help of the products and services that's support
Speaker 1: this podcast. I made no sense that our products and
Speaker 1: services are going to plunge the world into a new
Speaker 1: dark age. Know that they're going to help CBS do it.
Speaker 1: I think they might. Is it a mask singer on CBS?
Speaker 1: Who is the masking? Do they have the same masked
Speaker 1: singer every time? Absolutely not. The whole point is guessing
Speaker 1: who's behind the mask? Okay, I've never seen it. They
Speaker 1: have celebrities and costumes and then they sing and then
Speaker 1: a panel of Judge's gas who's behind the mask? All right,
Speaker 1: Well that's worse than Bill Gates and Rashida Jones. At
Speaker 1: least Sarah Palin was on it. Of course she was.
Speaker 1: Never mind, it's today only second to Bill Gates and
Speaker 1: Rashida Jones. We're back and we're talking about the masked
Speaker 1: singer and how it's almost certainly evidence that the United
Speaker 1: States has in fact slid into a new dark age
Speaker 1: through which there is no escape. Doctor Drew was on it. Yeah. See,
Speaker 1: that's the kind of thing like if if aliens came
Speaker 1: down and I had to like defend the continued existence
Speaker 1: of human civilization, I think I could do a pretty
Speaker 1: good job. Until they brought up clips from that show,
Speaker 1: Like I think I could defend us from like war
Speaker 1: crimes charges and stuff, but not not that. Here's this
Speaker 1: guy who's on the radio giving medical advice to teams
Speaker 1: for twenty years. Uh, he's dressed like a hippopotamus, singing
Speaker 1: a song poorly. Yeah, you know what, you know what,
Speaker 1: what are you going to use? A virus? Big lasers? Like,
Speaker 1: just just just do it, just be quick about it.
Speaker 1: If the first questions Aliens ask is, was Sean Spicer
Speaker 1: a good dancer? We're gonna be in real trouble there.
Speaker 1: But you know who wasn't on the mask singer Sean
Speaker 1: Spicer Robert Welch. Ye, Bob Welch was not, although he
Speaker 1: would have hated that show and called it evidence of
Speaker 1: a communist conspiracy. So Bob Welch's appetite had been, you know,
Speaker 1: pretty sufficiently stirred by the nineteen fifties, and again he had,
Speaker 1: you know, he'd kind of climbed his high as the
Speaker 1: candy industry would get him. So like what you see
Speaker 1: in the late forties is he reaches the heights that
Speaker 1: a candy man can hit and he immediately starts screaming
Speaker 1: about how communists are going to have infiltrated the Democratic
Speaker 1: Party and are going to destroy democracy. Um like a
Speaker 1: normal career check. Yeah. Yeah. The problem is that eminem
Speaker 1: Mars was run by Marxist collectivists. Yeah, I assume it
Speaker 1: was because he didn't have a Wonka vater. You know,
Speaker 1: he could only go, I'm gonna make so many more
Speaker 1: fucking Willy Wonker reference. Oh it's not just I do
Speaker 1: not have trouble seeing Bob Welch is a lot like
Speaker 1: Willie Wonka, to be honest, because I think they both
Speaker 1: believe business owners should be able to kill children. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree, and enslaved people. Yes, he is so Bob Welch.
Speaker 1: You know, in the nineteen fifties starts getting way more
Speaker 1: into politics. Now it's it's unclear precisely when his terror
Speaker 1: if the left began. Again. When you read this guy's background,
Speaker 1: the stuff that wasn't just written by the Jahn Birch
Speaker 1: Society decades later, it kind of comes out of left field,
Speaker 1: like he's just a candy man, and then boom, he's
Speaker 1: screaming about the New Dark Ages. But however it started,
Speaker 1: it was in full form by July of nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: when he wrote this in a fundraising letter for a
Speaker 1: politician quote. The strategy of the socialists divide and conquer,
Speaker 1: call all businessmen crooks so that nobody will speak up
Speaker 1: for them, and strangle them with controls and taxation. Brib
Speaker 1: all the farmers with their own money into a selfish
Speaker 1: pressure group for more bribes. Infiltrate the labor unions and
Speaker 1: convert them into political tools. Discredit the medical profession until
Speaker 1: the rest of the public clamors for government medicine. Attack
Speaker 1: every segment of our population with tactics with which alienate
Speaker 1: the support of all other segments. The forces on the
Speaker 1: socialist side amount to a vast conspiracy to change our
Speaker 1: political and economic system. Wow, your face changed, It was
Speaker 1: almost you went deep into that channel, Bob Dark there's
Speaker 1: a odd I love. They're including the idea that socialists
Speaker 1: were going to discredit the medical profession in order to
Speaker 1: convince people to demand government medicine. It's like, No, what
Speaker 1: discredited the medical profession was people going to the e
Speaker 1: er and getting a forty dollar bill for a three
Speaker 1: hour visit. Uh, I'll do it. Yeah, there are two
Speaker 1: ways to go on on that thought process. There. So,
Speaker 1: this was the first time Bob Well used the word
Speaker 1: conspiracy in a public statement, and it would not be
Speaker 1: the last. Tragically, wich is increasingly unhinged. Rants about socialism
Speaker 1: did not translate into success at the ballot box, probably
Speaker 1: because a lot of Americans in nineteen fifty had directly
Speaker 1: and recently benefited from massive social welfare projects. Really really,
Speaker 1: that's when you actually feel the effects of government working
Speaker 1: for you, and you're like, oh, maybe this isn't an
Speaker 1: evil thing, you know, And then yeah, but millions of
Speaker 1: us didn't starve because of the civilian conservation, you know, project.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's a bad conspiracy, to be honest. Yeah,
Speaker 1: is the conspiracy that we didn't starve to death during
Speaker 1: the depression? Because I like that. Yeah, Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: a good one. Yeah. So yeah. He lost the race
Speaker 1: for Lieutenant governor by a margin of more than a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand votes, which in nineteen fifty was like most
Speaker 1: of the country. Yeah with the question, Yeah, so it
Speaker 1: was not a close election. Still, it is worth noting
Speaker 1: that nearly sixty thou Americans had cast their votes for
Speaker 1: Bob Welch and his giant left wing conspiracy. After his defeat,
Speaker 1: he wrote about his hopes that this corps of supporters
Speaker 1: would in the next year's grow into quote a far stronger,
Speaker 1: more militant, and more effective force of political strength than
Speaker 1: other campaigns to come. He insisted, this crusade has just
Speaker 1: started because it's always a good thing when right wing
Speaker 1: idealogues describe what they're doing as a crusade. That that
Speaker 1: always it really gets it really gets white men all
Speaker 1: hot and bothered whenever you give him the opportunity to
Speaker 1: go on a crusade against anybody who's not a white man.
Speaker 1: So that I mean, you know, my mom, Jordan's ABC baby,
Speaker 1: always be a crusadan. That's what you gotta do. If
Speaker 1: I'm not, it's yeah, okay. So Welch tried his hand
Speaker 1: at politics again two years later when he attempted to
Speaker 1: be elected as a delegate for Senator Robert Taft's run
Speaker 1: for president. Yall, remember when Bob Taft ran for president,
Speaker 1: William Howard, you are thinking about the first Taft, although
Speaker 1: I assumed they were both would have had problems with
Speaker 1: the White House bathtubs. No, this was this was Taft
Speaker 1: the sequel, or the attempted sequel to taft Um, And
Speaker 1: like most sequels, it was not as good as the
Speaker 1: original to teot Domes. Okay, Uh, so Taft was actually
Speaker 1: running to the right of Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was
Speaker 1: also running for president at that time. Um. And at
Speaker 1: that point, for you know, understandable reasons, Dwight Eisenhower was
Speaker 1: probably one of the most beloved men on the entire planet.
Speaker 1: The whole highway thing. He hadn't done the highways yet,
Speaker 1: but he had helped beat the Nazis. Um he was
Speaker 1: for me lately, that's what I'm asking, Okay, he was
Speaker 1: even Eisenhower at this point was even actually pretty popular
Speaker 1: with a lot of Soviets, including Marshall Zukov, the most
Speaker 1: prominent commander of Soviet forces during World War Two. Um.
Speaker 1: It's actually, it's actually kind of a fun story that
Speaker 1: Marshall Zukov, who again is like the main Soviet general
Speaker 1: who beat the Nazis, Like he and Eisenhower were like
Speaker 1: real good buddies, and Eisenhower gave him a tackle box
Speaker 1: filled with a bunch of hand carved fishing lures, and
Speaker 1: Zukov kept it with him until the day he died.
Speaker 1: It was right next to him when he died. Really,
Speaker 1: that's very cute, Yeah, isn't that. Yeah. I mean, admittedly,
Speaker 1: both guys are responsible for the deaths of millions, so
Speaker 1: there is yeah. Also but hen that's fair, that's fair,
Speaker 1: and other people. But as funny, if Zukov didn't fish, yeah,
Speaker 1: he just really loved them Luis. Yeah, it's very thoughtful.
Speaker 1: So anyway, the fact that Eisenhower was, despite being a
Speaker 1: pretty hardcore Cold warrior himself, capable of seeing communists as
Speaker 1: human beings, enraged Bob Welch. And Bob Welch was further
Speaker 1: enraged by the fact that Eisenhower supported taxing people to
Speaker 1: spend money on things that would benefit the public good
Speaker 1: like highways. Back to Bob Welch was Marxism. I don't
Speaker 1: need roads. Yeah, you gotta think all all all rich
Speaker 1: people are basically like, uh, Doc Brown, like, we don't
Speaker 1: need roads. Yeah, exactly where we're going. We just all
Speaker 1: just dirgibles for the rich and everyone else as a
Speaker 1: mud farmer. That's the glorious dream of Bob Welch. I
Speaker 1: do like any alternate universe where dirigibles factor heavily in
Speaker 1: the future, I love it. I can't. I can't imagine
Speaker 1: Bob Welch getting his way and they're not being thousands
Speaker 1: of dirigibles and giant mechanical spiders. Oh yeah, yeah, you're
Speaker 1: gonna have some yeah yeah. Yeah. So obviously Ike won
Speaker 1: that election. He's kind of hard to beat. Again, if
Speaker 1: you really want to win an election, beat the Nazis,
Speaker 1: it'll do. Yeah. If Biden, If Biden defeats the Nazis,
Speaker 1: I will vote for him a second time. First, if
Speaker 1: Biden had if Biden had sacked Hitler's Berlin, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think people would have he would have he would have
Speaker 1: had a more commanding lead. What Hitler's Berlin in South Carolina? Now,
Speaker 1: is that where it's out or yeah? Uh So the
Speaker 1: final delegate count in that uh in that convention between
Speaker 1: Eisenhower and Taft was a blowout, eight hundred and forty
Speaker 1: five to two eight um most so. Again the final
Speaker 1: one not particular close, but the first count of delegates
Speaker 1: had been much narrower, with five nine for Eisenhower and
Speaker 1: five hundred for Taft. It was a contentious and ugly
Speaker 1: uh contest between the two men. Um. Eisenhower's people accused
Speaker 1: tafts people of stealing delegates. There were a number of
Speaker 1: different votes before they got to the final count, and
Speaker 1: there were ugly floor fights, and while I did prevail
Speaker 1: clearly in the end, a lot of Taft supporters were
Speaker 1: left feeling that they'd been cheated. There was kind of
Speaker 1: a stop the steel thing, and Bob Welch was like
Speaker 1: the main architect of it. Um was Roger Stone like
Speaker 1: a baby. Yeah, I mean I think he was a
Speaker 1: baby at the time. Yeah, yeah, first, yeah, you can
Speaker 1: kind of honestly, the best, like the best way to
Speaker 1: describe it might be it seems sort of like what
Speaker 1: happened with Bernie Sanders in two thousand and sixteen, at
Speaker 1: least in terms of how his his supporters felt. You
Speaker 1: had this like candidate who had a strong base of
Speaker 1: fanatical supporters who were like, the party leadership has fucked
Speaker 1: us out of of winning. And that's probably the case.
Speaker 1: It does seem like the Republican Party leadership like tipped
Speaker 1: the scale for Eisenhower at the same time, hard to
Speaker 1: imagine Taft doing better than Eisenhower at the time. Robert Welch,
Speaker 1: who was infuriated, called it the dirtiest deal in American
Speaker 1: political history, A new one, yeah, a famous deal that
Speaker 1: he was mad about not long ago. Nothing made him
Speaker 1: angrier than Taft getting screwed, Robert. That's a Papa sucker
Speaker 1: for you. The Bernie Sanders of not wanting people to
Speaker 1: have healthcare. So Eisenhower went on to electorally pants his
Speaker 1: Democratic challenger in one of the most overwhelming landslides in
Speaker 1: the US political history. Eisenhower's vice president, Richard Nixon, would
Speaker 1: go on to do absolutely nothing of note, but that
Speaker 1: is that was ix pp. Most Americans were fine with
Speaker 1: more or less everything that went on, And really the
Speaker 1: whole fight over Taft being you know, cheated out of
Speaker 1: the nomination didn't did not become a major national story.
Speaker 1: The early nineteen fifties were a time of broad political
Speaker 1: consensus among the nation's white supermajority. Uh So, like again,
Speaker 1: people were pretty happy. The Eisenhower years are generally referred
Speaker 1: to by again white folks as like a golden era
Speaker 1: in America. Um, because most we get to eat alone, right, guys,
Speaker 1: we all get to eat alone. This is pretty great.
Speaker 1: I love this country. We get to buy terrible houses
Speaker 1: in the suburbs. You know, look like me, You look
Speaker 1: like me, You look like me. This place is great.
Speaker 1: I just love this club. I just bought a house
Speaker 1: for eleven dollars and I got a negative four percent loan.
Speaker 1: They're paying this house for buying this house. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: accidentally fell landed on a fucking uh. What's the what's
Speaker 1: the thing that people don't get anymore that they used
Speaker 1: to get pension? I forgot what pensions were because they
Speaker 1: don't exist anymore for most of us unless you're a cop.
Speaker 1: So yeah, again, most Americans, at least most of the Americans,
Speaker 1: who again were white and thus the kind of people
Speaker 1: who got asked about things at that time. We're pretty
Speaker 1: happy with Eisenhower's victory, but not Bob Welch. Taft's defeat
Speaker 1: was something of a black pill for him, convincing him
Speaker 1: that party politics was hopeless and that party politics could
Speaker 1: never save the United States from the looming specter of communism.
Speaker 1: Nineteen fifty two was also the year that Welch published
Speaker 1: his first political book, May God Forgive Us, which is
Speaker 1: solid title give it to the Man, you know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's sinners. Sinners in the hands of an angry
Speaker 1: God was already taken at that point, I believe, so
Speaker 1: he couldn't use that one. His first book is basically
Speaker 1: the title is like it's too late. Yeah, you're fucked ship, Sophie.
Speaker 1: Remind remember, remind me to pitch You're fucked to I
Speaker 1: don't know, penguinners. Somebody figure out. We'll figure out what
Speaker 1: it's about. Later on the Art of rat Fucking his
Speaker 1: salesmanship book Zen In the Art of rat Fucking, a
Speaker 1: Guide for hard nosed Buddhist political Operators. I would read
Speaker 1: that book. That actually sounds great fun, that does so fun. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so what one hand? Rat fucking? So may God forgive
Speaker 1: us was a full throated condemnation of US foreign policy
Speaker 1: in Asia, which Welch saw as the government basically handing
Speaker 1: an entire continent over to the commies. He blamed it
Speaker 1: on the quote almost unbelievable combination of trickery, chicanery, and
Speaker 1: treason of the Harry Truman administration. Truman, as far as
Speaker 1: Welch was concerned, was basically a Communist. Now, the fact
Speaker 1: that Harry Truman had literally dropped two Adam bombs in
Speaker 1: order to scare the Soviet Union didn't seem to change
Speaker 1: Welch's political calculus at all. He was a communist far left.
Speaker 1: For me, it was an act man. Can't see through
Speaker 1: the bullshit. It was actually the deep state who launched
Speaker 1: those nuclear bombs. So Truman was, no, don't do it.
Speaker 1: He was a hardcore Trotskyist. Yeah, yeah, it was Peter
Speaker 1: Struck actually dropped their nukes, if I recall correct. So
Speaker 1: Bobby was most distraught by what he saw as the
Speaker 1: abandonment of nationalist warlord Chang Kai check to communist war
Speaker 1: lord mousey tongue. Uh, that's that's where we get our
Speaker 1: Chang Kai Check reference. I always love to have some
Speaker 1: good I like to throw in some red meat for
Speaker 1: the Chang gang you know. Yeah, universal basic income. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the whole thing. Yeah, Mauser C ninety six is that
Speaker 1: firep slugs all the good Chinese warlord stuff. So it
Speaker 1: was during the research for this book that Welch first
Speaker 1: came across a name that would come to define the
Speaker 1: rest of his lives work, John Birch. You'll know who
Speaker 1: the actual John Birch was. He does. He explained it
Speaker 1: to me, and I'm I'm so good at remembering exactly
Speaker 1: where the original forgotten. Yeah. I do know one thing
Speaker 1: about him, which you will almost certainly say here very shortly. Well,
Speaker 1: I actually don't think I think he's bluffing. I think
Speaker 1: Jordan's bluffing. I will tell you. I will tell you this.
Speaker 1: What's the one thing you know I know that I
Speaker 1: remember specifically from you is, according to his friend John Birch,
Speaker 1: would have hated the John. Yes, yeah, that is what
Speaker 1: I does. Seem fair, although there's debate about that, but
Speaker 1: that is one account that you can find for sure. Okay,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about his life and you can tell me
Speaker 1: how you think after that. Okay, So there's one thing
Speaker 1: skimmed about John Burt. Okay, skimmed is even generally. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's one thing that you overheard about John Burt. She
Speaker 1: didn't happen to remember hearing this information. And now you
Speaker 1: understand my knowledge base. Yes, So the actual John Burch
Speaker 1: was born in India in nineteen eighteen to parents who
Speaker 1: are Christian mission areas in a three year mission trip
Speaker 1: that ended in frustration and disappointment, presumably because most of
Speaker 1: the people they met were fine with the gods they
Speaker 1: already had. Atlantic writer Thomas Mallon notes that quote evangelical
Speaker 1: zeal conflicted with the more material progress being pursued by
Speaker 1: the missionary Sam Higginbottom, their boss at the Allahabad Agricultural Institute,
Speaker 1: In other words, John Burch's parents wanted to be like,
Speaker 1: you know, Super Jesus e with people, and their boss
Speaker 1: was more about improving people's material needs and hoping that
Speaker 1: inspired them to find Christ. So they got tired of
Speaker 1: that we should give you food, and the other guys like,
Speaker 1: what if we told him they were going to hell?
Speaker 1: That would we work to right? What if food was
Speaker 1: contingent the accepting Christ. Yeah, So the guy who cared
Speaker 1: about helping people stayed in India helping people, and the
Speaker 1: Birch family moved back to Georgia. So that's where John
Speaker 1: was born in India, but he grew up in Georgia,
Speaker 1: and it would be fair to describe him as growing
Speaker 1: up a religious fundamentalist, Like he was not just a
Speaker 1: religious man, but by the standards of the time, a fundamentalist.
Speaker 1: He went to Mercer Universe City and was described by
Speaker 1: a biographer later in life as obstinate, passionate, and headstrong.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote from the Atlantic here. He hat the
Speaker 1: most professor Felix Frankfurt. The most notable state side episode
Speaker 1: of his brief life involved participating in a thirteen member
Speaker 1: student group against five professors whose theological views they deemed heretical.
Speaker 1: The accusing students were decided minority on the Baptist campus,
Speaker 1: and charges against the faculty were dismissed after a ten
Speaker 1: hour hearing. Birch went on to graduate at the top
Speaker 1: of his class, but found himself shunned by a portion
Speaker 1: of its members. He began to feel that he had
Speaker 1: been used, provoked into the fight by some of Macon's
Speaker 1: towny Baptist ministers. So again, he's very hard core religious
Speaker 1: and is like willing to accuse a bunch of professors
Speaker 1: of heresy. But then after the whole situation shakes out,
Speaker 1: he starts to feel as if he's been manipulated by
Speaker 1: like ministers in the area, and he kind of like
Speaker 1: he kind of has an awakening. And after this point
Speaker 1: most degree became less extreme religiously, Like it seems to
Speaker 1: have realized he was being manipulated. Why do I feel
Speaker 1: like two percent of that debate was entirely about whether
Speaker 1: or not Jews were people, Like, yeah, right, there was
Speaker 1: a j Q in that. Yeah. So yeah, John was
Speaker 1: smart enough to realize he'd been manipulated, and he left
Speaker 1: that school. He went to a Bible institute next run
Speaker 1: by a popular evangelical radio preacher who suggested that Burt
Speaker 1: should travel to China as an evangelist. John arrived there
Speaker 1: in September of nineteen forty, in the middle of a
Speaker 1: long and almost impossibly bloody war between China and Japan
Speaker 1: and a civil war in China. It was a rough
Speaker 1: fucking place to be in, not an easy time to
Speaker 1: be anywhere really in China. Um So John actually traveled
Speaker 1: closer to the danger and moved almost two hundred miles
Speaker 1: from where he had initially moved in China to the
Speaker 1: city of shang Grau, which was very close to the
Speaker 1: front line. Now, while he was a foreigner in China
Speaker 1: to sell people on Christianity, it does seem like he
Speaker 1: legitimately fell in love with the culture. He learned to
Speaker 1: speak fluent Mandarin in just a year, which is not
Speaker 1: something you would Yeah, he's he's really very gifted with languages.
Speaker 1: Um and yeah, that's probably not the kind of thing
Speaker 1: you do if you didn't have some appreciation for the culture. Uh.
Speaker 1: The Atlantic notes that this exceeded to tell them their
Speaker 1: dirty commies. That's what I need to tell them, their commies. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's also noted by his biographer that he recognized his
Speaker 1: own racial prejudice, which was obviously a product of growing
Speaker 1: up white and Georgia. She was struggling to overcome it
Speaker 1: in the nineteen forties. So it seems like a guy
Speaker 1: who like grew up in a pretty regressive background, but
Speaker 1: was making significant strides to be a better person, open
Speaker 1: to new ideas and new people and new cultures. Definitely
Speaker 1: not a villain, would be fair to say. By nineteen
Speaker 1: forty two, Birch had become discouraged by the bureaucracy of
Speaker 1: the missionary effort in China, feeling as if it distracted
Speaker 1: from the more important work of providing meaningful aid for
Speaker 1: a nation that was riven by war and starvation. He
Speaker 1: volunteered to serve in the U. S. Military mission to
Speaker 1: China as a chaplain. Before he got an answer, he
Speaker 1: wound up helping to rescue of me Dolittle's raiders who
Speaker 1: had just bombed civilians in Tokyo is revenge for Pearl
Speaker 1: Harbor and had landed in China. As Birch's biographer notes, quote,
Speaker 1: they saw a gaunt Western man with several days growth
Speaker 1: of beard, and one of the airman exclaimed, well, Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: The missionary replied, that's an awfully good name, but I
Speaker 1: am not. He so to him, all right, a little,
Speaker 1: you little clever bastard, shut just say God, you gotta
Speaker 1: you gotta, you gotta, you gotta throw out something good there.
Speaker 1: You gotta have it like I would have gone with,
Speaker 1: that's my dad's name. That's the way you do that.
Speaker 1: That would have been a funnier remark if only John
Speaker 1: Burch had done more stand up sets, if only Jordan
Speaker 1: was around back then to do punch up yea on
Speaker 1: social responses. One note, John, one note, Let's take it
Speaker 1: one more time. Let's take it from the top. You
Speaker 1: can't imagine if you were him giving that response that
Speaker 1: like what seventy years later some dicks would be like
Speaker 1: arguing about whether or not it was funny on a podcast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I I imagine I would. I would like that. I
Speaker 1: would like seventy years from now somebody to be like,
Speaker 1: it's pretty good that one time, that's worth of life.
Speaker 1: That one time Jordan's responded to someone saying hi to
Speaker 1: him was not funny enough. There seventy years from now,
Speaker 1: behind behind the bastards where they just go through old
Speaker 1: episodes of my podcast and punch it up, correct my mispronunciations.
Speaker 1: But you know what, it will be funny. Still, you're
Speaker 1: a great transition. Not to most people. Capitalism is not
Speaker 1: gonna last that long. Nothing's gonna last that long. But
Speaker 1: you do need to do another. Okay, here's a product.
Speaker 1: We're back that was a good one. Hey, what do
Speaker 1: you what do you? I don't need I don't need
Speaker 1: this ship. I don't need don't need this. Seventy years
Speaker 1: from now, people are going to be like Robert was
Speaker 1: really being bullied by Sophie that one time when he
Speaker 1: talked about the John Birch Society that was most noteworthy
Speaker 1: thing that happened before World War Three. Let's give them
Speaker 1: notes on it, even though none of them survived the
Speaker 1: initial nuclear exchange. Anyway, I'll start the Robert Evans Society. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna wind up being the first victim of space communism.
Speaker 1: So Birch would go on to play a minor role
Speaker 1: in helping do Little's raiders escape. He was commissioned in
Speaker 1: the military, and he worked in the military for a
Speaker 1: few years. And you know, at this point US military
Speaker 1: mission in China. Broadly speaking on the right side of
Speaker 1: things because they're against Japan who was killing millions and
Speaker 1: millions and millions of people. So yeah, he's he's not
Speaker 1: a completely unproblematic guy, but not a bad guy. Uh
Speaker 1: And yeah, his goal after leaving the service was to
Speaker 1: do more missionary work. He was going to move to Tibet,
Speaker 1: but he never got the chance to do that. Birch
Speaker 1: was physically and mentally wreck both from a terrible war
Speaker 1: and from repeated doubts of malaria. He got his final
Speaker 1: military assignment in August, which was just after the Japanese
Speaker 1: surrender was announced. And you know that, like when Japan surrendered,
Speaker 1: the Chinese nationalists in the Chinese Communist forces started fighting again,
Speaker 1: and Birch was with the U. S. Military Unit and
Speaker 1: again sick, and everyone who was round up the time
Speaker 1: notes that he was like showing increased signs of paranoia.
Speaker 1: He was going through PTSD. He was not in a
Speaker 1: good mental place. And the group he didn't have hydroxychloroquin.
Speaker 1: Yeah that that actually would have helped because it's an
Speaker 1: anti malaria um so Virch's party. The guys he was with,
Speaker 1: like the U. S. Military Unit, who's with ran into
Speaker 1: a group of Communist soldiers and they ordered the Americans
Speaker 1: to disarm. Birch got angry and insulted people, and like,
Speaker 1: we don't exactly know what happened, but there was a
Speaker 1: fight and Birch was shot dead. So if he had
Speaker 1: never learned Chinese, he wouldn't have been able to piss
Speaker 1: him off as much. Yeah, the the lesson here is
Speaker 1: never learned another another language, you will get murdered in
Speaker 1: a field in China by red army soldier. I think
Speaker 1: That's what I think. That's what I'm gonna take away
Speaker 1: from this. Yeah, quit, quit your Spanish lessons today and
Speaker 1: save your own life. This podcast is not brought to
Speaker 1: you by Duo Lingo. Yeah, so, uh, Mause Dong actually
Speaker 1: apologized for the killing of John Birch to an American
Speaker 1: general who was like in charge of the US mission
Speaker 1: in the country at the time. Um, but mal kind
Speaker 1: of walked away from that meeting really angry because the
Speaker 1: American general seemed to be insistent that he could be
Speaker 1: should be able to send American troops anywhere inside of
Speaker 1: China without like informing the Chinese ahead of times. So
Speaker 1: it was a whole it was a whole big deal
Speaker 1: and it. It just kind of seems like a tragedy.
Speaker 1: Like Birch that probably was being a dick but also
Speaker 1: was sick and struggling with PTSD and doesn't seem to
Speaker 1: have been a bad guy. It's just a bummer. It's
Speaker 1: you know, the war. That war sucks. Yeah, Um, it
Speaker 1: would be fair to call him a complicated man, but yeah,
Speaker 1: definitely not a villain in death, though his like a see,
Speaker 1: was really really simplified thanks in large part to Robert Welch.
Speaker 1: He turned John Birch into a symbol because to Robert Welch,
Speaker 1: John Birch was the first American to die fighting Communism,
Speaker 1: even though he hadn't really been fighting Communism. That actually
Speaker 1: been like broadly speaking, trying to help China and they
Speaker 1: just got new an argument with some Communist soldiers and
Speaker 1: everyone was probably drinking. He was trying to apply nuance
Speaker 1: to a situation where there's only good guys and bad guys,
Speaker 1: and how dare you ever consider the bad guy's human beings?
Speaker 1: That's crazy? Yeah, yeah, Welch does not see any nuance
Speaker 1: in this. To him, John Birch is a martyr who
Speaker 1: like gave his life to destroy communism. Um, and yeah,
Speaker 1: he starts turning him into basically like the John the
Speaker 1: Baptist of capitalism. Like that's that's kind of Bob Welch's
Speaker 1: goal here, Um, which, yeah, I don't. I never knew
Speaker 1: John Birch, obviously because he died decades before my birth.
Speaker 1: But reading about the guy, you kind of get the
Speaker 1: feeling he'd be a little bit bummed. Yeah, you know
Speaker 1: who else didn't him? Fucking Robert Welch. And Robert Welch
Speaker 1: did not know him though, not even a little bit.
Speaker 1: In nine, Welch started work on what would become one
Speaker 1: of his most consequential books, The Politician. He was inspired
Speaker 1: to write it during a car ride in New York
Speaker 1: with a friend. Basically, he's in a car with a
Speaker 1: buddy of his. They're on like a driving to New York,
Speaker 1: and he starts ranting about Dwight Eisenhower and talking about
Speaker 1: how he's a Communist agent. And after hours of this
Speaker 1: one has to assume his friend is like, Hey, why
Speaker 1: don't you like shut the funk up and just write
Speaker 1: a book about this. That's every time I've been on
Speaker 1: the road as a comic. You know, you should write
Speaker 1: a book which is a classy way of saying please
Speaker 1: stop talking. Um, Welch does not take this as a
Speaker 1: classy way of saying please stop talking, and he actually
Speaker 1: writes a book. Um. I don't think please stop talking
Speaker 1: is something he respected very much as a as a
Speaker 1: way of life. Not a real please guy nor a
Speaker 1: stop guy. Is the decision to write this book. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not a great I guess the Leviathan was taken,
Speaker 1: so he had to go with the politician. And may
Speaker 1: God forgive us was already I've already been taken. May
Speaker 1: God forgive us again. May God forgive us? Yeah, may
Speaker 1: God forgive us five She's all being forgiven by God.
Speaker 1: May we be forgiven? Tokyo drift. It's fun. So Welch started,
Speaker 1: you know. So he has this conversation with a friend.
Speaker 1: He's like, just write a fucking book about Eisenhower the Communist.
Speaker 1: So Welch starts by writing a letter which outlines his
Speaker 1: feelings on Eisenhower, and he revises it over the years.
Speaker 1: In nineteen fifty six and again in nineteen eight and
Speaker 1: basically every year he sends out a new draft of
Speaker 1: this letter to anyone who would listen to him, and
Speaker 1: he calls it a letter, but by the third revision
Speaker 1: it was eighty thousand words long, which you might know.
Speaker 1: This is not a lever a letter. Did he just
Speaker 1: write I want more money, over and over and over again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: though about what he wrote, I feel like some of
Speaker 1: my relatives, like holiday letters, might end up being about
Speaker 1: that long. I feel like I don't have word counts
Speaker 1: on it. But if they feel would see there was
Speaker 1: at least one recipe in there, right, there had to
Speaker 1: be one recipe for Papa suckers to make a good
Speaker 1: old fashioned I mean, I would be really angry if
Speaker 1: any of my friends are loved one sent me an
Speaker 1: eighty thousand word letter like that one. I would happily
Speaker 1: get that one. Other than a letter that I was
Speaker 1: supposed to actually read. I mean I would read it.
Speaker 1: That's why it goes in the garbage. Thanks for sending
Speaker 1: me that letter. That's great letter. Yeah exactly, dear uncle,
Speaker 1: I have thrown your letter in the trash. Thank you
Speaker 1: for sending me such a heavy package. Uh so yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: Since by the third revision it was more than eighty
Speaker 1: thousand words long, Welsh decided to start calling it a
Speaker 1: book The Politician, as he titled It became the underground
Speaker 1: secret text of what became a small cult like following
Speaker 1: of friends and admirers who increasingly believed that Bob Welch
Speaker 1: was something of a prophet. In February of nineteen fifty six,
Speaker 1: Welch launched his first magazine, One Man's Opinion. He later
Speaker 1: renamed it American Opinion, which really like actually reveals a
Speaker 1: lot about his thought process, Like I think this, No
Speaker 1: America thinks this. That that idea of the subjective actually
Speaker 1: being the objective. Yeah, yeah, that's how the artist thinks.
Speaker 1: Yeah it is. It is pretty telling. So he left
Speaker 1: the Welch Company at the start of nineteen fifty seven
Speaker 1: and began preparations to turn his circle of followers into
Speaker 1: a formal political advocacy group. Now, by this point, Welch
Speaker 1: was convinced not just that Eisenhower was a crooked politician,
Speaker 1: but that he was a secret comunist agent in the
Speaker 1: White House, Like that that Eisenhower was actually a communist
Speaker 1: and was was attempting to manipulate the United States into
Speaker 1: socialism from the White House. So crazy that that stuff
Speaker 1: used to happen in the past. Yeah, it's just like
Speaker 1: it's just like how could you be in that headspace
Speaker 1: where something like that happens. It's crazy. Imagine looking imagine
Speaker 1: looking at Dwight Eisenhower and being so far right that
Speaker 1: you're like that fucking Marxist. Imagine looking at Biden. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like he's the kind of person who, like everyone is
Speaker 1: a Marxist if they don't think he should be able
Speaker 1: to skeet shoot with poor people like that's that's that's
Speaker 1: Bob Welch's politics in a nutshell. Um. Yeah. And Welch
Speaker 1: wasn't just convinced that Ike was a communist. He believed
Speaker 1: that the majority of both the Republican and Democratic parties,
Speaker 1: most of their elected leaders at least, were communists and
Speaker 1: communists sympathizers. So, uh, Bob Welch, in order to kind
Speaker 1: of uh spread this warning about encroaching communism, turned to
Speaker 1: the massive rolodex of wealthy industrial magnates that he built
Speaker 1: up over years in the candy world. He invited all
Speaker 1: of these guys to a hotel in suburban Indianapolis in
Speaker 1: December of nineteen fifty eight, and he asked them to
Speaker 1: stay for two days. He didn't tell them what it
Speaker 1: was about or why he was inviting them to a
Speaker 1: hotel for two days. Um, and gentlemen, it is a
Speaker 1: murder mystery. He kind of. He just said it was
Speaker 1: a matter of utmost importance. So he's very cloak and dagger,
Speaker 1: very secretive and of like the seventeen guys that Bob
Speaker 1: Welch invites, eleven of them show up to see what
Speaker 1: he has to say. And I'm gonna quote from politics,
Speaker 1: real cool characters among those eleven. Yeah, Yes, at least
Speaker 1: one Bastard's pot alumni. Yeah. After exchanging firm handshakes in
Speaker 1: the breakfast room of a sprawling Tudor style house in
Speaker 1: the Tony Meridian Park neighborhood, Welch explained why he had
Speaker 1: brought this group together. The United States faced an existential
Speaker 1: threat from an international communist conspiracy hatched by an amoral
Speaker 1: gang of sophisticated criminals. The power hungry, god hating government
Speaker 1: worshippers had infiltrated newsrooms, public schools, legislative chambers, and houses
Speaker 1: of worship. They were frighteningly close to total victory. Welch
Speaker 1: felt it in his gut. These cunning megalomaniacs seek to
Speaker 1: make themselves the absolute rulers of a human race of
Speaker 1: enslaved robots in which every civilized trait has been destroyed.
Speaker 1: Welch wrote in the Blue Book of the John Birch Society,
Speaker 1: the organization's founding history, that would really sound unhinged to
Speaker 1: me if he weren't proven one correct on every point there, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think you got it. I think you
Speaker 1: nailed it. There's definitely a group of cunning megalomaniacs who
Speaker 1: seek to make themselves the absolute rulers of a human
Speaker 1: race reduced to robotics servitude. But you know, it's Jeff Visas,
Speaker 1: it's Peter Yeah, yeah, these guys who would have been
Speaker 1: in the John Society exactly. Yes. So the chosen few
Speaker 1: gathered here would form the vanguard of a new political movement,
Speaker 1: an army of brave American patriots dedicated to preserving the
Speaker 1: country's Christian and constitutional foundations. Welch christened the group the
Speaker 1: John Birch Society, named in memory of a US soldier. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know the guy. Um Yeah. And their goal at
Speaker 1: the beginning was destroying the quote Communist conspiracy, or at
Speaker 1: least breaking its grip on our government and shouting its
Speaker 1: power within the United States. So I love I love
Speaker 1: guys who are like, oh, there's a conspiracy to kill everybody,
Speaker 1: and then they create what is essentially the Knights Templar, Like,
Speaker 1: what are we doing? There's a conspiracy? We have to
Speaker 1: create a conspiracy to fight We're gonna be a secretive
Speaker 1: group of crusaders fighting against communism. What's what's weird and
Speaker 1: conspiratory about that? It's the same thing you hear now, Like,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a there's a coup going on in
Speaker 1: our government, so we have to form a counter coup,
Speaker 1: of course, and then they're going to form a counter
Speaker 1: counter coup against our counter coup. Yeah, yeah, it's like,
Speaker 1: what what are we even doing? This is just like
Speaker 1: one of those dolls inside a doll or an onion. Well,
Speaker 1: it's just it's one of the most effective ways if
Speaker 1: you're trying convince people to do something that's blatantly evil
Speaker 1: and horrible, the best way to do it is to
Speaker 1: convince them that the people you're going to be harming
Speaker 1: are doing the same thing to you. That's the like
Speaker 1: we should have martial law because Biden's gonna put in
Speaker 1: martial law, or like that trailer park was going to
Speaker 1: gear up in their Forerunners and drive through my neighborhood
Speaker 1: firing out the window. So I have to get in
Speaker 1: my Forerunner and drive through their trailer park shooting into trailers.
Speaker 1: There's no other option. They forced me into it also,
Speaker 1: by the way. Yeah, so all eleven of the rich
Speaker 1: dudes that Welch invited to his meeting became founding members
Speaker 1: of the John Birch Society. We're gonna talk about these guys.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, We're gonna talk about these guys a little bit.
Speaker 1: One of them was T Coleman, Andrew's former commissioner of
Speaker 1: the I R S. Another was the personal aid former
Speaker 1: personal aid for General Douglas MacArthur, who attempted to nuke
Speaker 1: both China and North Korea. Um, good guy. And another
Speaker 1: of them was Fred Coke founder father, father, while and
Speaker 1: founder of the infamous Coke bro There's yeah, yeah, those
Speaker 1: are those are the three that I found worth naming.
Speaker 1: There's but Revelo p Oliver wasn't he there too? I think? So?
Speaker 1: Who's Revelo p Oliver? You know that you know these people?
Speaker 1: He was. He was a guy who ended up inspiring
Speaker 1: William Luther Pierce writing his his works. Oh Jesus Christ. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he became a big fascist guy. I think he was
Speaker 1: there at that first he was one of the founding members. Yep,
Speaker 1: you're right, you're right, you're right. He's a he's a
Speaker 1: real thinker of the crypto early fascist Oh yeah, classics
Speaker 1: professor from the University of Illinois found it. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: one of the Holocaust denial movements leading lights. What a
Speaker 1: great meeting to have been a fly on that wall. Cool,
Speaker 1: cool people. A lot of a lot of real casual
Speaker 1: anti Semitism, like like a collection of actual like demons,
Speaker 1: not in the way that you like demonize like you,
Speaker 1: not in the way you do manize your enemies and
Speaker 1: all that stuff. Those guys, even if you're like broadly
Speaker 1: in agreement with what they believe, you should look at
Speaker 1: that meeting and go get the funk away from me.
Speaker 1: You guys are terrif. The ripples are almost astounding even
Speaker 1: just thinking about like the the idea that Fred Koke,
Speaker 1: the father of the Koch Brothers, is in the same
Speaker 1: room with Reveal op Oliver, who like inspired and helped
Speaker 1: facilitate the writing of the Turner Diaries. Yeah, it's just insane.
Speaker 1: It's insane the tendrils. It makes sense, though, because one
Speaker 1: of the fun things to do with the far right
Speaker 1: and with the normal right is to play like the
Speaker 1: Kevin Bacon game with the Turner diaries, Like how how
Speaker 1: like how? How? How can you tie back a Republican
Speaker 1: politician to the Turner diaries generally less than four steps? Um? Yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks to the Koke Brothers. Hey, good guys, Good guys.
Speaker 1: At least they apologize later on. Yeah, God, I want
Speaker 1: to I want to funk up the world badly enough,
Speaker 1: but also be in a position where I can just
Speaker 1: be like Oopsy Tootles. Hey, guys, I'm gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be honest. This one's on me. My bad, My bad.
Speaker 1: You know, big enough a man to admit when I've
Speaker 1: destroyed the entire world, and this is that time for me.
Speaker 1: I fumbled. Yeah, Hey, we all make mistakes. We all
Speaker 1: make mistakes. One for three. One for three is the
Speaker 1: best baseball players. In order to make this right, I
Speaker 1: have purchased a Poe Buddy's Nerfect shirt and I wear
Speaker 1: it for the next four days. Anyway. Sorry to everyone
Speaker 1: who's lost leved ones. So from the beginning, Welch patterned
Speaker 1: the John Birch Society off of the revolutionary communist movements.
Speaker 1: He's so despised, which is again another like so you're
Speaker 1: saying these people are like the the epitome of all evil,
Speaker 1: and you're also deliberately framing your group out of after
Speaker 1: them like scared because they're good at it. They are
Speaker 1: good at it, like obviously Alex Alex and Alex Jones.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you know this. We do a
Speaker 1: little bit about him, uh he uh. He just put
Speaker 1: out like, hey, what we need to do is get
Speaker 1: all the truck drivers together and let them strike in
Speaker 1: a unified front. And you're like, do you not hate unionization?
Speaker 1: Now you want to use withholding of labors and means
Speaker 1: of political action interest there's nothing wrong with that? Not
Speaker 1: well for us, yeah, him, there's something wrong, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: Like you shouldn't be. It's the same thing with like
Speaker 1: police unions. It's like you people use fire hoses on
Speaker 1: striking workers. You don't get to unionized. Like so from
Speaker 1: the beginning, Welch patterned the John Yeah, he patterned them
Speaker 1: off of revolutionary communist movements. Uh. In his initial like
Speaker 1: founding documents, Welch wrote that he wanted the John Birch
Speaker 1: Society to be a monolithic body operating under completely authoritative
Speaker 1: control at all levels. In other words, he would be
Speaker 1: the MAO or the style and of his own counter
Speaker 1: communist movement. The Society would be organized into cells of
Speaker 1: ten to twenty members, formed after the revolutionary cadres that
Speaker 1: were common in underground communist movements, Like you read about
Speaker 1: the Khmer Rouge and like the founding of that, And
Speaker 1: it's like the same basic organizational strategy as you're trying
Speaker 1: to avoid, like infiltration, and it works. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it is. Yeah, it works pretty well. There's a
Speaker 1: reason he patterns off of this, even though it is ironic.
Speaker 1: Welch informed his followers that he had considered a republican
Speaker 1: form of organization for their society, but that while it
Speaker 1: had certain attractions and advantages under certain favorable conditions, it
Speaker 1: failed under quote less happy circumstances. The United States, Welch insisted,
Speaker 1: was beset by less happy circumstances, and the extent of
Speaker 1: socialist infiltration in American society made any republican system open
Speaker 1: to infiltration, distortion, and disruption. Robert Welch was, in short,
Speaker 1: creating an underground fascist political party. His disdain for anything
Speaker 1: that even smacked of democracy was quite clear. Welch told
Speaker 1: his follower is that democracy was quote merely a deceptive phrase,
Speaker 1: a weapon of demagoguery, and a perennial fraud. So I
Speaker 1: want more and I don't want people to be able
Speaker 1: to vote that I should give more money. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: do not want people to be able to vote for
Speaker 1: anything really, because they will vote for socialism. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean it's the same ship that you see today. It's
Speaker 1: there's nothing new here. Uh, well it was new here
Speaker 1: that like, that's what's interesting about this is that he
Speaker 1: was like, like, now we have it's shocking to a
Speaker 1: lot of people that we have all these mainstream elected
Speaker 1: Republicans saying openly like we're not a democracy. Democracy is bad.
Speaker 1: We don't want democracy when there's this much socialism going around.
Speaker 1: If you let people choose things, they'll choose dangerous socialism.
Speaker 1: And Bob Welch was the guy fucking sixty years before
Speaker 1: that who was being like, this is exactly the way
Speaker 1: we should be framing things. That question is do you
Speaker 1: think he is he a believer? Do you know what
Speaker 1: I'm Yeah, I think so he is he's not the
Speaker 1: same kind of right wing grifter we're used to seeing
Speaker 1: all over the place. I don't think he's a grifter.
Speaker 1: I don't think he's a grifter. He's already rich for
Speaker 1: one thing, and yeah, well, like rich people don't continue
Speaker 1: the grift. I think there is an element of a
Speaker 1: grift in what he's doing, but he's not. He's not.
Speaker 1: It seems to be like there's a grit, isn't the focus.
Speaker 1: There's people who serve the scam and then there are
Speaker 1: people who are like, no, his ideological. I think he's
Speaker 1: more on that side. Well, all right, I think he's
Speaker 1: an ideologue. I think he believes in what he's doing
Speaker 1: reasons Well, of course, don't don't worry about that. He's not.
Speaker 1: He's not just in it for the money, right. He
Speaker 1: wouldn't be doing this if it was just to sell
Speaker 1: like pills, pills. He's not a pill guy. Um. So
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote now from the World of the John
Speaker 1: Birch Society by D. J. Malloy. Quote. All in all,
Speaker 1: it was a hierarchical structure derived not just from the
Speaker 1: many years Whilch had spent in the world of business,
Speaker 1: but also from his openly, if perhaps surprisingly expressed admiration
Speaker 1: for the organist national tactics of his communist foes, acknowledging
Speaker 1: the similarity between Lennon's notion of the Dedicated Few and
Speaker 1: his own plans with the John Birch Society. In the
Speaker 1: Blue Book, for example, the always capitalized founder explained that
Speaker 1: he was willing to draw on all successful human experience
Speaker 1: in organizational matters, so long as it does not involve
Speaker 1: any sacrifice of morality in the means used to achieve
Speaker 1: an end. If I'm if I'm in that room, I'm like,
Speaker 1: he's going to be removing people from pictures pretty soon. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's he's gonna be erasing us from history. I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't trust that guy. He's going to be relying
Speaker 1: on everyone's wife to some letters to people while the
Speaker 1: men get drunk and yell about commies. So membership is
Speaker 1: one of the Dedicated Few was not free. Monthly dues
Speaker 1: were twenty four dollars from men and twelve dollars for women,
Speaker 1: which probably says something unfortunate. Life memberships cost a thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: There were monthly chapter meetings for the first two years
Speaker 1: of the John Birch Society. Things went along smoothly enough.
Speaker 1: Word of the Society was past to mouth, and cells
Speaker 1: of Birches sprang up all around the nation. Welch addressed
Speaker 1: them all monthly in the Society's bulletin, which he wrote
Speaker 1: every word of It was not always easy to get
Speaker 1: freedom loving Americans to sign up for an organization that
Speaker 1: was fundamentally undemocratic, monolithic, and authoritarian instructure. Welch spent a
Speaker 1: lot of his time explaining to members why such a
Speaker 1: strict and unbending hierarchy was necessary. He told them that
Speaker 1: the US was a shoreline of beautiful houses threatened by
Speaker 1: a rising flood. You can assume the floods non white people.
Speaker 1: The Birches in their ilk were lonesome boys with brooms
Speaker 1: trying to sweep it back. What they needed, Welch insisted,
Speaker 1: was a dynamic boss to get them organized by barking this.
Speaker 1: This is again from one of his writings. This is
Speaker 1: like so he's like, he's describing like the US as
Speaker 1: a bunch of beautiful houses and there's this flood threatening it,
Speaker 1: and were brooms beating it back. And all those boys
Speaker 1: need is a boss who's willing to shout this, hey,
Speaker 1: you guys, all of you drop those pretty brooms. You
Speaker 1: fellows down there on the end, start running for empty bags.
Speaker 1: You fellows in those next two groups, start filling those
Speaker 1: bags with sam And you men here, all of you
Speaker 1: start looking those bags of sand to put on this wall.
Speaker 1: The communists have busted up so badly. You fellows over there,
Speaker 1: all of you get the heaviest clubs you can find.
Speaker 1: Spread yourselves out along the whole length of this wall,
Speaker 1: and don't hesitate to break the heads of any saboteurs
Speaker 1: you find monkeying with it. Don't even hesitate to break
Speaker 1: the heads of those you find creeping towards the wall
Speaker 1: if you were sure of their evil intentions. So is
Speaker 1: set up perfectly, and it's the best country that has
Speaker 1: ever existed. But there are circumstances that are happening right
Speaker 1: now that really we need a dictator. Yeah, I'm afraid.
Speaker 1: So there's just nothing. It's just it's impossible to avoid
Speaker 1: the circumstantial. We need a dictator, otherwise people are gonna
Speaker 1: spend all their time swinging brooms and not beating people
Speaker 1: in the head making sandbags. I find it fun that
Speaker 1: this starts as like a metaphor for trying to organize
Speaker 1: people to deal with what is presumably like a tsunami
Speaker 1: or a flood condition, and instead turns into beating communists
Speaker 1: with sticks. There's a flood coming, punch the water. Don't
Speaker 1: do anything to help it. I mean, every year or
Speaker 1: so I go out to the coast and get into
Speaker 1: a fight with the ocean, and I I think that's
Speaker 1: why we have not had a major tsunami on the
Speaker 1: West coast of the United States and years I just
Speaker 1: get drunk and scream, you think you're bigger than that
Speaker 1: because of me. I beat the ship out of the ocean.
Speaker 1: Every couple of years. Georgian has seen me. Sophie Jordan
Speaker 1: does talk like you have to if you don't, if
Speaker 1: you don't, like, if you don't stand up to bodies
Speaker 1: of water, they're gonna walk all over you. Literally, we're
Speaker 1: all nodding like very stoic nods. Fight the ocean. That
Speaker 1: could go into the that could go in the don'ts
Speaker 1: of the art of salesmanship right there, I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would have started John Birch Society. That's just themed
Speaker 1: at getting people to fight the ocean. Fight various forms
Speaker 1: of nature yeah, well mostly oceans, punch trees. All of
Speaker 1: what Birch was preaching was good enough to earn his
Speaker 1: society the membership of one of my favorite Bastards Pod characters,
Speaker 1: Philish Laughly. She and her husband some guy joined in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty nine. Uh so, yeah, that's Goodishly, I thought
Speaker 1: Jordan was going to bark at that. Yeah close. Not
Speaker 1: a schlaer as as we used to call ourselves, not
Speaker 1: on the schlaugh squad. So that same year, same year
Speaker 1: Schlaughlely and her husband joined the John Birch Society, Robert
Speaker 1: Welch launched a crusade to recall newly installed Supreme Court
Speaker 1: Justice Earl Warren. Justice Warren was a liberal who had
Speaker 1: written the majority opinion for a decision that overruled state
Speaker 1: and local segregation laws. We're talking brown versus the Board
Speaker 1: of Education here, um. Robert Welch did not like Brown
Speaker 1: versus the Board of Education? Why not not wild about
Speaker 1: the fact that black people got to go to the
Speaker 1: same schools as white people now and Welch's eyes, Earl
Speaker 1: Warren's opinion on this case meant that he was a communist.
Speaker 1: Welch insisted in letters that Warren had violated his oath,
Speaker 1: and he harangued his most gifted followers to turn the
Speaker 1: effort to recall the justice into a movement. Privately, Welsh
Speaker 1: wrote that frankly, with the left wing control now so strong, insidious,
Speaker 1: and ubiquitous in Washington, I am not deceiving myself that
Speaker 1: we have very much chance of really bringing about the
Speaker 1: impeachment of Earl Warren. Although we might, but I don't
Speaker 1: think that is really as important as dramatizing to the
Speaker 1: whole country where he stands, where the Supreme Court now
Speaker 1: constituted under him, stands, and how important it is to
Speaker 1: face the facts about the road we are now traveling
Speaker 1: on so fast. So that's really interesting to me because
Speaker 1: in all of his public like publications he makes it
Speaker 1: clear that this is a real effort to recall Earl Warren,
Speaker 1: and I think we have a real shot and we're
Speaker 1: going to get this guy out of the Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: And his private letters he's like, we're never going to
Speaker 1: do this. It's all about making people angry. It's about
Speaker 1: the rhetoric. It's about the idea of the fight, yeah,
Speaker 1: which is not like anything else that's happened since no
Speaker 1: A lot of size on this episode when he passed
Speaker 1: in the future compared Trailblazer. Yeah, so you get a
Speaker 1: feel for Bob Welch by reading his letters. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: read you now an excerpt from when he sent to
Speaker 1: T Coleman Andrews, who's the former commissioner of the I
Speaker 1: R S let her start with I mean kind of.
Speaker 1: It begins with yeah, that's what I hear out of
Speaker 1: all of his writings. The letter begins with Welch's regret
Speaker 1: that Andrews turned down an opportunity to spearhead the effort
Speaker 1: against what Welch refers to in all caps as the
Speaker 1: movement to impeach Earl Warren. He calls it that in
Speaker 1: all caps every time he types about it. He's a
Speaker 1: caps guy, So you do well on Twitter. Is Frankfurter
Speaker 1: not on the Supreme Court anymore? Or I think he's
Speaker 1: dead at this point? Okay, I was gonna say, because
Speaker 1: you gotta go for him first, you know, he's your guy.
Speaker 1: So uh yeah. He starts the letter by being like,
Speaker 1: it's a bummer that you don't want to help me
Speaker 1: impeach Earl Warren. He goes on to discuss gathering storms
Speaker 1: in the South, which is a reference to the Civil
Speaker 1: rights movement, which Bob Welch stated he thought was directly
Speaker 1: caused by the Communist party. Quote if blood does flow there,
Speaker 1: which I agree is entirely likely, it will definitely be
Speaker 1: because the Communists planned it that way. They have schemed
Speaker 1: for so long to be in position to fan little
Speaker 1: fires of civil disorder into a huge conflagration of civil
Speaker 1: war if and when they need such a horror in
Speaker 1: their moves to take us over. And John Birch, though
Speaker 1: a minister devoted to peace, was entirely ready to fight
Speaker 1: for a cause which he considered worthy of sacrifice. So
Speaker 1: devoted to peace, devoted to piece. This guy something, well,
Speaker 1: he's he's referring to John Birch, who he did not
Speaker 1: in saying that, like, we have to be like John Birch,
Speaker 1: who was devoted to piece but was willing to get
Speaker 1: into a drunken argument with communists soldiers get shot to death.
Speaker 1: That sounds like most right wing heroes, like Colonel Travis
Speaker 1: he was a drunk. I don't know that he was drunk.
Speaker 1: He may just have been drunk on malaria. I'm just
Speaker 1: assuming everyone in the forties was wasted at all times.
Speaker 1: That's a good idea. John Birch hated Earl Warrant. That
Speaker 1: is actually a little known fact that I found that
Speaker 1: in the right. This up nonsense. Yeah, so uh. Welch
Speaker 1: portrayed the John Birch Society's work not as part as
Speaker 1: an activism but as an attempt to unite all Americans
Speaker 1: under an anti communist banner. In the nineteen sixty issue
Speaker 1: of The Bulletin, he wrote, it is of vital importance
Speaker 1: to the communists to split Americans into all kinds of
Speaker 1: groups snarling at each other. And so he said, the
Speaker 1: Society would not seek to split up Americans. We are
Speaker 1: fighting communists period, nobody else. They put people into all
Speaker 1: these groups, and I don't think that we should have
Speaker 1: black people, Jewish people, Chinese people, liberals, the LGBTQ community.
Speaker 1: I don't think we should have any of those people
Speaker 1: those specific groups that I have chosen to deny as
Speaker 1: people see left as evil. Yeah, they're defighting us by
Speaker 1: allowing people who aren't like me to exist. Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: So um yeah. Welch by the mid nineteen fifties had
Speaker 1: grown increasingly convinced that the entire US government was basically
Speaker 1: Communist all the way down. And one of the main
Speaker 1: triggers for this was when Congress voted to censure Senator
Speaker 1: Joe McCarthy in nineteen fifty four. Um, so he like time,
Speaker 1: by the way, right right on time. Yeah, they got
Speaker 1: to him quick. So yeah. And because Eisenhower was a
Speaker 1: big part of finally censuring Joe McCarthy after letting Joe
Speaker 1: McCarthy be Joe McCarthy for years. Uh, Welch, you know,
Speaker 1: I saw this as more evidence that Ike was a
Speaker 1: secret communist. Is kind of on the wall. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: he after just two whole red scares he stepped in.
Speaker 1: So the politician Welch's book about Ike remained largely a
Speaker 1: secret work. He circulated it among his most loyal inner circle.
Speaker 1: He handed it out to like leaders in the movement,
Speaker 1: but regular members didn't get to know. It was kind
Speaker 1: of like they're Zeno. Like when you get high enough
Speaker 1: up in the Birch Society, you learned that Eisenhower is
Speaker 1: a communist. Um, Welch noted about his book and one
Speaker 1: private letter quote are rather extreme. Precautions with regards to
Speaker 1: this document are not due to any worry on my part.
Speaker 1: As to what might happen to myself, But many of
Speaker 1: my best informed friends feel that having the manuscript get
Speaker 1: into the wrong hands at the present time might do
Speaker 1: far more damage than good to the whole anti communist cause. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's Alex Jones, I mean, and Alex Jones,
Speaker 1: as a little bit of a spoiler, was grew up
Speaker 1: on John Birch material, so not a kwinkie dink So
Speaker 1: for the Bircher rank and file, Eisenhower was just a
Speaker 1: crooked politician who was much too friendly with foreign leaders.
Speaker 1: At one point in nineteen sixty, Ike agreed to attend
Speaker 1: a summit with Nikita Krushchev, British Prime Minister Harold McMillan,
Speaker 1: and French President Charles de gaul Welch considered all three
Speaker 1: of these men to be card kerry and communists, which
Speaker 1: just fair. With Khrushchev, I'll say that, yeah, famous communist
Speaker 1: Charles all right, Yeah, didn't he do rituals and dance?
Speaker 1: And I don't know, I can't remember. I mean, he
Speaker 1: was pretty problematic in a lot of ways himself, but
Speaker 1: communist is not an accurate was a very problem Yeah,
Speaker 1: so was McMillan. For that matter. Um. Yeah, So Welch
Speaker 1: considered again all these guys to be communists, and he
Speaker 1: had the John Birch Society send a heavily publicized message
Speaker 1: to President Eisenhower. If you go, don't come back. Um.
Speaker 1: The slogan was sent out in a blizzard. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: will be exiled, yeah for hanging out with famous communist
Speaker 1: Charles de gaul If you go. What a great threat.
Speaker 1: If you go to that meeting, the conference room will
Speaker 1: be your elbow. So the slogan was sent out in
Speaker 1: a blizzard of postcards, letters, and telegrams, and within the
Speaker 1: society it was actually quite controversial, since many normal Birchers
Speaker 1: were not as a rational as the group's founder. Nationwide,
Speaker 1: it sparked curiosity for this strange, semi underground organization. One
Speaker 1: curious individual was Jack Mabley, an investigative reporter and columnist
Speaker 1: for the Chicago Daily News. So, hey, hometown here out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe a technically candyman is a hometown hero for Chicago too,
Speaker 1: But that's different both hometown heroes to Chicagoans. It's the
Speaker 1: only way to stop a bad Chicago Chicago. Uh so, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe starts looking into the John Birch Society. He went,
Speaker 1: he like kind of finangles his way into attending a meeting,
Speaker 1: and he talks with a number of its members, and
Speaker 1: by hook and by crook, he comes into possession of
Speaker 1: a copy of The Politician. Uh yeah, so it's it's
Speaker 1: made its way out of the society's inner circle and
Speaker 1: into the hands of a journalist. Now, unfortunately Robert Welch's
Speaker 1: prophecies are come true. Yeah, people are going to know
Speaker 1: what they're crazy. I'm gonna quote now from DJ Malloy's
Speaker 1: book on the John Birch Society, writing about Mayble's you know,
Speaker 1: the article he writes about The Politician. Quote, this fantastic document,
Speaker 1: maybe reported accuses President Eisenhower of treason. It flatly calls
Speaker 1: him a communist, and for three d and two pages
Speaker 1: attempts to document at the charge. And he provided an
Speaker 1: exact quote from the book to prove his claim, one
Speaker 1: that would haunt Welch in the Birch Society for years
Speaker 1: to come, but which was mysteriously although understandably absent when
Speaker 1: the book was officially published in nineteen sixty three. It
Speaker 1: was well, I too think that Milton Eisenhower, the President's brother,
Speaker 1: is a communist and has been for thirty years. This
Speaker 1: opinion is based largely on general circumstances of his conduct.
Speaker 1: But my firm belief that Dwight Eisenhower is a dedicated,
Speaker 1: conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy is based on an
Speaker 1: accumulation of detailed evidence so extensive and so palpable. But
Speaker 1: it seems to me to put this conviction beyond any
Speaker 1: reasonable doubt through some violation of confidence. Someone who had
Speaker 1: been sent the letter in nineteen fifty eight had passed
Speaker 1: on to Mablee, and the journalist had naturally selected for
Speaker 1: quotation the most extreme statements he could find, without the
Speaker 1: benefit of any explanation or modifying import of the context
Speaker 1: around them. Violation. He's like, hey, can I take a
Speaker 1: look at your copy of that? Yeah, sure, violation. Well
Speaker 1: it's like and and I love the idea that that's
Speaker 1: out of context. Yeah, that's the thing they gets, that
Speaker 1: thing people say about like Jordan Peterson and Alex Jones
Speaker 1: like that. The defenses they always make is that you're
Speaker 1: just taking us out of context. Um, and that's what
Speaker 1: fucking Welch in the John Birch Society do with this document.
Speaker 1: They claimed that he was like, well, I said, I
Speaker 1: didn't say that Eisenhower was a communist agent. I said
Speaker 1: that I thought he was based on evidence that i'd seen.
Speaker 1: That's different saying he's a communist. Yeah. The rest of
Speaker 1: those eight thousand words are the stone cold dead to
Speaker 1: rights evidence that's journalist quote unquote is not taking into
Speaker 1: account and that is really malpractice exactly. Yeah, So most
Speaker 1: people did not buy Welch's defense. In fact, a Saturday
Speaker 1: Evening Post reporter who wrote about the John Society in
Speaker 1: nineteen seven stated that it's members spent most of their
Speaker 1: time talking to outsiders answering questions about Welch's Communist Eisenhower conspiracy.
Speaker 1: So like this kind of dominates the public perception. They
Speaker 1: become a bit of a joke to a lot of
Speaker 1: Americans because you know, it's ridiculous. Yeah, they got their revenge,
Speaker 1: didn't they. So this did not stop the John Birch Society,
Speaker 1: although it did draw attention to the group for the
Speaker 1: first time. This may have helped as much as it harmed.
Speaker 1: Tens of thousands of Americans continued to flock to the
Speaker 1: John Birch Society, eventually growing to ninety five thousand members
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty five. Welch's stated goal was a million
Speaker 1: American Bircher's, and as the nineteen sixties got rolling, it
Speaker 1: looked like he might actually achieve it. And that's part
Speaker 1: one of the John Birch Society. What a Dick an
Speaker 1: erotic novel. I don't think he's a good guy. No,
Speaker 1: I think he sucks and I think so and I
Speaker 1: need a papa sucker at least soothed me. Gonna go
Speaker 1: suck on a papa while we take a quick break.
Speaker 1: You guys want to plug your plug ables before we
Speaker 1: roll out. We got a podcast. Think people can find
Speaker 1: that you wrote a book. I did write a book.
Speaker 1: You always have to remind me to actually tell people that.
Speaker 1: It's the Quiet Part Loud. You can get it at
Speaker 1: the Quiet Part loud dot com. That's where for free
Speaker 1: check out Knowledge Fight, check out the Quiet Part Loud,
Speaker 1: and check out nothing else. If you do anything else
Speaker 1: on the internet, you have you have offended and harmed
Speaker 1: me personally and I and my forthcoming for vengeance. Uh,
Speaker 1: God doesn't need to forgive us. God what my podcast
Speaker 1: out