I'll admit right off that I know little about the Birchers. As far as my gwud-thinking relatives in Seattle and California are concerned, John Birch Society rhymes with Flat Earth Society. But then, they probably know even less about it than I do. Fact is, I've never met a Bircher, or at least none of them have identified as such to me. Until now.
When all hell was breaking loose in the height of the plandemic, circa 2020, Alan and his wife Terri formed a group I'll just call the Monday Night Patriots. I joined as soon as I found out about them. In a word, they were all about freedom, so you can guess their stance on the covid madness, government overreach, blue-state insanity, etc. I was wary at first because how can you call yourself a patriot and schedule your meetings precisely at Monday Night Football time? My contributions to the group were arranging a talk/Q&A with the great Dr. Annie Bukacek from Kalispell, and some work with their fledgling newsletter. Well, that group is largely still around under a new name, minus some old and plus some new members. Alan discovered that the John Birch Society was a good fit, so he decided to make a JBS chapter out of the patriot group. I was away for 2 ½ years, and I'm not a member, but I might mosey on down one of these Monday nights to see what it's all about. What have I got to lose? I'm already a tin-foil hatter as far as my family is concerned. To remain in good standing, the Seattle crowd demands disbelief in God and adoration of St. Fauci and I tend toward the opposite. I think I mentioned that uncle Bob accused me of borderline child abuse and wrecking my daughter for life by helping her get into a small, rural, pronouns-free Christian college, instead of a place like UW or Berkeley, or some other Nose-Ring U within the woke-belt.
The other day Lukas and I had Alan over to film him (and also Terri, briefly) for a project we're working on called Family Histories. It's simple: Grandma Bess or Uncle Joe come to our studio and I interview them for an hour or two and Lukas and I put together a nicely edited video and burn it to CD and voila, the stories of the family patriarchs and matriarchs are preserved for posterity. Alan was a test run. The beta version had the wrong lighting so I invited him back to do a shorter cut. What to talk about? More personal stories would have been fine as Alan has hundreds of them, but Terri said, “Ask him about John Birch!”
And so I did. In ten minutes you hardly have time to delve deep, and Alan is new to the organization, so he'll be the first to admit that his pitch needs perfecting, but at least we got something on tape. I decided to get it started with a goofy dramatization. So click the above picture to watch the 10 minute video, “Here comes the Bircher!”
Run for the Hills!