Flint's White Backlash: George Wallace, Don Williamson & Trump #20039

0:11 Hey there, this is Arthur Busch speaking, host of Radio Free Flint. I'd like to bring some new information to your attention. We now have a website at www.radiofreeflint.media. Please go to our website. You can play every one of these episodes, look at some of the things we've done in the past, you can learn more about our guests. We have information and links to websites, articles, and so on. And we'd also like to bring your attention to a way that you can support our website. We have what they call a call to action button on the on the homepage of uh www.radiofreeflint.media.

0:52 And you can uh give us 99 cents a month if you'd like. But we'd appreciate some support to offset our expenses if you could. We'd greatly appreciate it. Take care. Here's our episode. Thanks for listening. So today, you know, much is made today about the lawless attitude displayed by President Donald Trump. Well, he, of course, was endorsed by many of the uh Dixieland subdivision bubas as part of his political base, which he eked out a victory in Michigan narrowly.

1:36 That's the political base he tries to cultivate. President Trump Schtick is irreverent, boorish, and uncouth. He seems to not give a damn about good manners, our American traditions, or even our cultural customs. Trump is also a billionaire, supposedly. The Dixieland Bubba's love of reverent rich people. This love of John Belushi type millionaires has nothing to do with ideology. To people who are mad at everything, the notion that you can be without boundaries and say and do outrageous things is kind of appealing.

2:18 The Flint electorate has supported some eye-raising versions of crazy in politics. Flint had the Donald before the Donald, the one who was in the White House, came to power. Donald J. Williamson, that is, a half a billionaire who was elected Flint mayor in 2002 and again in 2007. Mayor Williamson was convicted of a felony while a young man for a pattern of buying automobiles using bad checks. He was the anti-politician.

3:00 He wore a hard hat full of flag decals and union stickers, and he was proclaiming that he was gonna make Flint great again. He could be charming as hell. He had an eighth-grade education, never used a computer, and had perhaps $500 million in the bank. There is more. Imagine this crazy scenario. Old white rich guy runs for Mayor Flint, a city comprised of a majority of black people and a solid base of 40% white hillbillies. He's an outcast of Southern Michigan's high society and its economic elite.

3:44 This candidate for public office conspicuously flashes his enormous wealth, gives out $20 bills to those stopping by his auto his wife's GM auto dealership if they pick up his campaign literature. He was a longtime Palm Beach, Florida resident, owning a magnificent Palm Beach mansion, just one block from Donald Trump's Merrill Largo. That's in Palm Beach as well. This fat guy, this rich white fat guy, owned a championship golf course, by the way, in Davison, Michigan.

4:27 He ran a company called, and it's appropriately named, The Colonels, the largest American OEM and aftermarket manufacturer of bumpers and truck bedliners in America. The rich old white guy businessman perfects the use of the lawsuit as an economic weapon to win in business and in politics. Don't do it his way, go to court and see what happens. His appeal is directed at the Bubas in my subdivision and across the Midwest, all while taking the role of Mr. Smith goes to Washington.

5:09 The rich old white guy says he's gonna run the city of Flint like a business. Bingo. The Michigan Democratic Party opposed Donald Williamson's election as Flint Mayor because he made contributions to the election of George W. Bush. Starting to sound a little familiar. Mayor Williamson was elected anyway, not just once but twice. His amazing and unexpected victories, of course, dumbfounded the elites of Flint and the political class. Everyone was surprised except the Bubas of the Dixieland subdivision in Flint, Michigan.

5:52 Just as an aside, once Donald Williamson took a dump truck full of pig manure, dumped it on a UAW picket line out in Owasso, Michigan. They were picketing his parts plant, where he made uh bumpers for automobiles, brand new automobiles. Pig shit on the picket line was a way to show contempt for one or more institutions that Dixieland Bubba feels has betrayed him and his family. The Williamsons later hired a popular UAW vice president, responsible for UAW General Motors labor negotiations, to work for his wife's auto dealership.

6:42 What the hell the Union officials' work was is a mystery to everyone. Not long after that, Mayor Williamson bought the UAW Local 599 headquarters, magnificent building. That was after the Buick City factory was closed, and he turned it into a senior citizen and nightclub for retired UAW workers, many of whom were hillbillies as well. Go figure that one out. The lesson I gleaned from this bizarre reality show was that the Dixieland Subdivision Bubba was really pissed off.

7:26 He wanted to get even with all those in cahoots with the corporate elite and the union bosses. In Bubba's eyes, they were doing magic disappearing acts with their factory jobs. In America today, politicians can still win elections the old fashioned way. They just buy it. What is what is the common denominator between the Bubba's of Dixieland Subdivision and a billionaire? It's all about the attitude. Tell Bubba that the president just raised his taxes, then reduced his unemployment insurance, and won't lift a finger to fix the poison water coming out of his kitchen sink, and he's already all over that.

8:12 Pure logic no longer applies. Dixie Land Bubba figures nothing is ever gonna change anyway, so he might just as well use his voice for entertainment value. In Michigan in 2016, Bubba voted to create a miraculous shit show in the White House for the next four years. As I have pointed out, history has a way of repeating itself. In 1968, Michigan Bubas loved the governor. That was the governor of Alabama, George Wallace.

8:54 George Wallace ran for president as a third party candidate then. Just kidding on that one. He did form a party called the American Independent Party, and he picked the general note no less as his running mate. Wallace won the Electoral College votes of five southern states, making it possible for Richard Nixon to squeak out a victory over Hubert Humphrey. Michigan Hillbillies loved the governor George Wallace.

9:39 When I was fourteen years old, and in my neighborhood where I was the paper boy, those Wallace signs were everywhere near my Dixieland home. Townships adjacent to the city of Flint where Southern people migrated to work for General Motors and the auto factories were nicknamed Bertucky and Little Missouri. Hubert Humphrey squeaked out a close victory over Nixon in Michigan, but it wasn't enough. It took twenty years before another Democrat running for president won Michigan's electoral votes. Wallace coined the campaign slogan, there's not a dime's worth of difference between the Republicans and the Democrats.

10:27 Believe me when I say, I'm not making this stuff up. Back then, the governor was peddling hate, segregation, and white victimization. That sound familiar? Wallace even came close to selecting Colonel Harlan Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame. Well, in my house, Southern Fried Chicken was for Sunday dinner, and that was the very best. Can you imagine if Colonel Sanders had actually got to be the vice president in the and on a Sunday what would happen at the White House?

11:18 In 1972, the governor tried again, that is George Wallace, this time winning the Michigan Democratic presidential primary. He went mainstream. It is near genius that a shock jock politician can build a political base upon a bunch of Dixieland subdivision bubas. You know, the same bubbas who have a rap sheet consisting of 14 traffic violations like reckless driving, drag racing, open intoxicants in a vehicle, and domestic violence, not forgetting to mention a couple of drunk driving raps. In my opinion, the seeds planted by George Wallace in the state of Michigan with its large southern migrant population giving rise to the shocking results in the 2016 presidential election was nothing more than amazing.

12:16 You see, Bubba doesn't expect anything anymore that the American government can actually do something to help him and his family. He gave up on that idea in Flint when in June 29, 1999, General Motors then closed and then completely leveled the Buick City Auto Factory. That was one of the largest automobile complexes in the world, employing 28,000 auto workers in 1999. Buick City had been around since 1909. My grandfather came to Flint from Kentucky to work at Buick City.

12:59 At the time of its closing, UAW workers made the highest quality automobile in the world. Its primary motto, the Buick Le Saber, had just won Car of the Year. When Bubba sorts out permanently closing factories, he figures the world has gone nuts. In his mind, the rich elites don't respect the shop worker anymore. Greed has now triumphed over patriotism as well as over the welfare of a large number of hard working Americans. From Bubba's point of view, he lost his stake and place in the order of things and not just Dixieland subdivision, but in America.

13:49 How do you get even with the elites who advocate making cars in Mexico or China and shutting down most of the factories, auto factories in Flint? The billionaire corporate globalists don't run for public office, so they can't get them out of office by simply voting. Seems obvious to Bubba that the corporate class has corrupted and seduced the people in elected office. Taking Bubba's way of thinking, it's so natural to take his franchise and vote for the fuck you party candidate. Because that is just what Bubba feels about America and the suits that run it.

14:33 What Bubba has not figured out just yet is that the United States Supreme Court, which does its work behind closed doors, has taken a lot of 5-4 votes in favor of giving the rich and powerful the government they buy. And what the United States Supreme Court and the major political parties haven't figured out yet is that this barrage of pro-corporate decisions are effectively cutting the umbilical cord for hundreds of thousands of disaffected rust bucket workers to the American economic and political system. Thus, the revolutionary fuck you mindset taken to the polls by thousands of Dixieland subdivision bubas across the Midwest, along with others, so victimized and aggrieved, will eventually have consequences for the political stability of America.

15:30 History does repeat itself. In 1932, Flynn electors sent the first Democratic Party congressman to Washington, D.C., Andrew Jackson Transu, a local lawyer who was sent to vote for President Roosevelt's New Deal. Not long after being rebuffed on the legislation that would rebalance the power equation between corporations and labor, President Franklin Roosevelt proposed to pack the United States Supreme Court by expanding its members. That threat was enough to cajole the court for approval of the National Labor Relations Act, which passed in the bulk of the New Deal Economic Rescue Package as well.

16:21 There's much talk today in the halls of Congress to expand the U.S. Supreme Court after the 2020 elections if the Democrats recapture a majority of the U.S. Senate and the United States Presidency. Many Supreme Court decisions, such as Citizens United, in which the United States Supreme Court licensed the buying of politicians by legalizing unlimited spending on political campaigns, they equated these corporations with real persons like Dixieland Bubba. They eviscerated any real influence Bubba and his fellow Flintstones may have had to use a political system to protect their economic interests.

17:08 Basically, Dixieland Bubba doesn't sweat the small details of the US Supreme Court opinions. Dixieland Bubba is pretty intuitive when it comes to people stealing his lunch pail. So along comes a guy like Donald Trump, who wears the same blue suit and red tie every day. He swears a bit, tells the elites they are sleepy and dumb, eats hamburgers every meal, looks and acts like Mad Magazine's Alfredy Newman, treats women like Hugh Hefner a Playboy, and you get a match made in heaven. How the hell can anyone compete with Hugh Hefner and a guy who says fuck you about any important anyone important, all while claiming to be a victim of everything?

17:56 And Bubba loves it. The competition soon realizes that Bubba is really pissed off. Somehow they gotta relate. So game, set, match, off with the red ties, get the television cameras to film the embattled politicians eating a pepperoni pizza at Flint's Sicily Pizzeria right there at the gateway to Dixieland Subdivision. Then get a hard hat with American flag decals pasted on it along with a Union logo, and there you go. Made in America. If that don't work, just take the suit coat off because it doesn't really match the hard hat.

18:43 Perhaps a baseball cap with a fuck GM on the front. That might work. Bubba will really like that one. Donald Trump only needed 78,000 Bubas to win the Electoral College. That was in 2016. And you and I are sitting in our gilded sun trenched palaces saying, What the hell is this? Absolutely amazing. Figuring out how Bubba thinks and feels is not all that difficult. It doesn't require a six pack of Paps Blue Ribbon, the greasy pizza, and your ironed out Levi blue jeans to understand Bubba.

19:24 His pickup truck just got taken back by Chase Bank. His modest Dixieland subdivision house is being foreclosed. The wife was diagnosed with breast cancer, and they don't have the good Blue Cross health care plan any longer. That too went the way of his job on the slow train to Mexico. So clearly, Bubba doesn't relate to billionaires either. He's not in the mood to hear about impeachment or about who spies on whom and who is trying to piss. Higher on the fire hydrant, Washington, D.C. It is whiskey time for Bubba, so if you want to get Bubba out of the stupor, it will take something more tangible than a shot at Kessler's whiskey and a pepperoni pizza.

20:14 Bubba wants a cure for all that ails him, and he needs it desperately now. When it comes to politics, Bubba is no longer a team player. He doesn't care if it's a socialist or a corrupt capitalist that delivers the goods. Thank you for listening. Take care.