Weekly “what are you reading” Thread #33

I'm reading two books, Stand Up For America, and Hear Me Out, by George C. Wallace. Although I'm probably a moderate on the chud scale, I find it interesting that these people, who were once so influential over American life, have functionally no voice in history. I make it a point to read books by unpopular people, and to determine what their contribution was as opposed to PhD's looking at history with an axe to grind...

Anyhow, the book's prose leaves something to be desired, neither book is well written as either an autobiography or as a blueprint for America. It could be said that the books were for the campaign faithful, and perhaps only were meant to be read by layman. For the historical value, they're well worth reading. In a sense, Wallace predicts his own assassination attempt in a roundabout way, and also speaks of the radicalization of the black community against the white one. He also predicts that rich people would and have cornered influence from Washington to dismantle their way of life, and that if left unchecked would destroy regular, honest, God-fearing people. And he was right about that.

He did have a coherent voice on policy where you could hear it in the books. He was against the war in Vietnam in terms of putting troops on the ground. He didn't like Vietnam because of the aimless objectives in the war, and his opposition to Vietnam made him very popular, even in places like California. He also predicted that the Civil Rights Act would be used as a pretext in some years to abridge rights of white people and create unaccountable standards for white students and university goers while holding no one else to those standards.

Wallace of course would later go on to recant his views on race after he was shot during his presidential run by Arthur Bremmer, who is still alive. Bremmer had no reason to do it, and in fact was campaigning for Wallace up until a few months before he shot the governor.

Anyhow, the books are no longer in print, so I'm sure at some point this will be lost to time. But it is creepy to see that Wallace and his ilk could see the future, but LBJ, Nixon, Reagan all missed that crystal ball reading. Not that it matters, and not that I'd have it happen any other way. Just makes you think.

I'll ping !historychads on this one.