George Wallace Finally Made It To The White House
By Donald V. Watkins
©Copyrighted and Published on October 28, 2018
In 1968, Alabama Governor George Wallace ran in the United States presidential elections as the candidate for the American Independent Party. Wallace lost, but his ideological twin -- Donald J. Trump -- made it to the White House in January of 2017 as the 45th President of the United States.
Both men used hatred as a convenient political tool. Both men vilified people of color in the process. As a result, both men pandered to the worst instincts in Americans.
Both men were so-called “law and order” candidates. Both men promoted states rights on racial matters.
Both men courted rural white voters and blue-collar union workers, while demonizing non-white, Jewish, and Spanish-speaking Americans.
Both men claimed to be a “Nationalist,” which is today’s code word for white nationalism.
Wallace referred to Central American, South American, and African nations as “rat-hole” countries. Trump refers to them as “shithole” countries.
Both men demanded that European and Asian allies pay more for their defense.
Both men implied that they would use nuclear weapons to win wars against other nations.
In a now-famous reference to a protester that had lain down in front of President Lyndon B. Johnson's limousine the year before, Wallace stated, "I tell you when November comes, the first time they lie down in front of my limousine it'll be the last one they ever lay down in front of; their day is over!”
While campaigning for president, Trump encouraged supporters at his rallies to beat up protesters. He even pledged to pay the legal fees incurred for assaulting these protesters.
Wallace labeled political adversaries “punks . . . in diapers.” Trump calls them “dogs”, “pigs”, “rapists”, “criminals”, “lazy”, “fake”, “low IQ”, “mobs”, and “thugs.”
Both men made political targets out of Americans of color, Jews, gay Americans, major mainstream news organizations, and non-white immigrants from poor “shithole” countries.
On the campaign trail, Wallace often attacked the "pseudo-intellectual government, where a select, elite group have written guidelines in bureaus and court decisions, have spoken from some pulpits, some college campuses, some newspaper offices, looking down their noses at the average man on the street." Trump has tweaked and mimicked this theme.
Wallace never condemned mob violence against civil rights protesters. He said the protesters brought the violence upon themselves because they were “outside agitators” and “troublemakers.”
Last year, a violent group of neo-Nazi protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia took to the streets and chanted, “Jews will not replace us.” One of the Nazis murdered Heather Heyer, an innocent counter-protester. President Donald J. Trump quickly declared that there were “good” people among the neo-Nazi group.
Wallace was a 1960s-era flamethrower for racial divisiveness and anti-Semitism. Trump fulfills this role today.
Innocent Americans have died within our borders from the gratuitous hate speech spewed by Wallace and Trump. In Birmingham, four little girls died in the 1963 bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church because of Wallace’s scorching hate speech. Yesterday, 11 Jewish worshippers in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania were murdered in their synagogue because of Trump’s daily barrage of hate speech.
God punished George Wallace for the needless suffering he inflicted upon innocent men, women, and children who yearned to enjoy basic constitutional rights in Alabama. The man who stood in the door at The University of Alabama in 1963 to prevent African-Americans Vivian Malone and James A. Hood from registering as students, never stood again after May 15, 1972. That day, a 21-year-old busboy named Arthur Bremer fired on Wallace, paralyzing him for life. Thereafter, Wallace lived everyday in excruciating pain as a result of wounds suffered from Bremer's assassination attempt.
Donald J. Trump’s hate speech continues, for the moment. Like Wallace, Trump is now planning his own “Edmund Pettus Bridge” moment. It will occur at the Southern border in early November when a U.S.-bound caravan of 7,000 migrants from Central America reaches our border. Trump has already engaged in a steady stream of reckless hate speech to dehumanize these migrants.
Trump has also dispatched 2,700 military troops and federal law enforcement officials to the border to confront the unarmed men, women, and children in the caravan.
Rather than setting up adequate stations to accept and process their applications for political asylum, as required by U.S. law, Trump is preparing to inflict violence upon these migrants. George Wallace chose the same path when he ordered state troopers to brutally attack unarmed and peaceful civil rights marchers in 1965 at the base of the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
Donald J. Trump embodies all of the evil that possessed George Wallace’s mind and body. Trump delivers this evil from the White House in a manner that entertains his rabid political base. In doing so, Trump has unleashed the dogs of hatred in this country and they are running wild.
PHOTO: Alabama Governor George C. Wallace (left) and President Donald J. Trump (right).
