Is Dallas Woodhouse Crazy?

Prop-toting vote suppressor Dallas Woodhouse

Well the year of 2016 is coming to a close, and while time usually seems to move quicker as one gets older, the presidential election season made this year seem longer than it was.

As far is this blog is concerned, it's been a while since I've given out a Rockwell Award so given that the film awards season is underway,
it seems fitting to close out the year by giving one out.

A certain orange-haired egomaniac might seem the obvious choice.

But I'm going with Dallas Woodhouse, the executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party whose actions, words and beliefs best emobdy the spirit of the Rockwell Award.

As some of you may recall, the Rockwell Award is named for George Lincoln Rockwell, the founder of the American Nazi Party.

Rockwell was a man whom the BBC called "the American Hitler" who inspired many in the modern American white supremacist movement, including former KKK grand wizard David Duke.

If any one person best embodies the Republican Party's willingness to actively seek to suppress the ability of people of color, students and the elderly to vote, it's Dallas Woodhouse.

As the Raleigh News Observer reported, (mute your computer if you click that link, there's a really annoying poker ad that plays when you open the link) back in August Woodhouse made headlines when he emailed GOP members of North Carolina's county election boards and encouraged them to "make party line changes to early voting" by using their authority to limit hours when African-Americans, college students and the elderly tend to vote.

Woodhouse shows off his Christmas present 

Now Woodhouse isn't soley responsible for all the reprehensible voter suppression tactics being used by Republicans in NC.

The GOP state legislature passed a law back in 2013 that took aim at early voting hours and Sunday voting hours when many blacks in NC tend to vote.
 
But his overt efforts to specifically use measures to target black folks in order to deny them access to the poles is straight out of the Reconstruction era, and reflective of unbalanced borderline zeal with which he does it.

If you've ever heard him in interviews he tries to justify his illegal voter suppression tactics by using the common GOP tactic of fanning the flames of hysteria over voter fraud that's statistically proven to almost never take place.


As the News Observer reported even his own brother took to Twitter (mute your computer!) to call Dallas Woodhouse's voter suppression tactics "blatantly racist and completely disgusting."

Now I've never met Dallas Woodhouse personally, so I don't really know what motivates him to make it his life's mission to make it harder for black people in North Carolina to vote.

If I had to guess I'd say he's probably just one of these "alt-right" conservatives whose irrational white supremacist ideology permeates everything they do; to the exclusion of reason, sanity, decency and morality.

Maybe he's just crazy.

Recently on NPR I heard an interesting interview with Sander L. Gilman and James M. Thomas, co-authors of "Are Racists Crazy?", a book published in 2016 that traces the roots of the scientific theory that racism is in fact, a form of insanity - a mental illness.

Their book is based, in part, on the results of a 2012 study conducted by scientists at Oxford University who conducted a clinical trial that showed that the use of the drug Propranoldol (a beta-blocker commonly prescribed for blood pressure) had the effect of curbing racial bias in those who took it.

If that's the case then maybe Woodhouse (and many others in the U.S.) need to start taking it.

Anyway that's it for now, I've got to get ready and change to head out for New Year's Eve; I'm heading over to my friend Geoff the Economist's house to ring in the new year with good friends, good food and of course, a beverage or two.

Thanks again for checking out the blog, have a safe and happy new years and I hope to see you back here in 2017.

-CG

Rev. Barber Gets Deep On Conservative Dogma

Rev William Barber leads a Moral Monday protest in NC

It was just about four weeks ago that a three-judge panel of the federal appeals court unanimously ruled that the restrictive voter ID laws passed by the hyper-conservative Republican-dominated North Carolina state legislature back in 2013 were intentionally discriminatory against African-Americans and purposefully designed not to protect voter integrity but to repress voter turnout among black citizens.



A hard fought victory fueled in no small part by public pressure and outrage.

A win not only for the citizens of North Carolina and the basic principle of American Democracy, but also for the thousands of people who took part in the peaceful Moral Monday demonstrations led by the Reverend Doctor William Barber, II, President of the NC chapter of the NAACP and ardent social activist (pictured above, center, in black).

A man who has emerged as one of the most important grass roots leaders of the progressive movement since the 2010 elections swept a wave of extremist conservative Republicans into Congress, governor's mansions and state legislatures across the country.

In the wake of Republicans (including a number of Tea Party zealots) seizing a majority in the NC state legislature in 2013, they cut taxes on the wealthiest residents, slashed unemployment benefits for people still struggling to gain a foothold in a still-recovering economy, blocked a Medicaid expansion that would have helped over 500,000 North Carolinians gain access to health care through the Affordable Care Act, cut state funding for education, and passed some of the most archaic voter restriction laws seen since the Jim Crow era.

Barber address thousands at a Moral Monday protest

Fueled by public outrage, Rev. Barber helped form a broad coalition of activists that crossed religious, ethnic, socio-economic and racial boundaries.

Between April of 2013 and November of 2014 the Moral Mondays movement held over 200 different events in 54 different counties across NC.

It's no surprise he lead this non-violent protest movement which also spread to other American cities.


With a deep grasp of policy issues and an almost encyclopedic knowledge of the history of slavery, the Jim Crow era and the civil rights movement in America, he brings a calm, quiet authority when he speaks on matters related to the spiritual responsibility to respond to progressive social issues that strikes me as reminiscent of Dr. King.

Earlier this morning Barber, who was an imposing and inspirational presence at the Moral Mondays protests outside the state house in Raleigh, NC, was the focus of a segment on The Brian Lehrer Show to discuss the evolution of the Republican party into a platform that uses code words to embrace discrimination and extremist dogma that divide the nation, and justifies the suppression of some citizen's Constitutional right to vote as an acceptable national political tactic.

If you heard Rev. Barber speak during the recent Democratic National Convention, then you know that his intelligence, knowledge and deep commitment to a link between spiritual beliefs and practices and social justice makes him a formidable and charismatic speaker.

Click the link above to hear his interview with Brian Lehrer this morning if you've never heard him.

Trump before his "black outreach" speech on Friday

He offered some piercing insight into how today's Republican party manipulates fact to intentionally present a distorted view of America to appeal to the lowest common denominator in American politics.

Rev. Barber noted that Donald Trump, in his recent "outreach" to black voters last Friday (in front of a largely white audience in Dimondale, Michigan), implored African-Americans to vote for him because:

"You're living in poverty, your schools are no good, 58% of your youth is unemployed - what the Hell do you have to loose?"

Trump's words reflect the kind of distorted, simplistic one-dimensional perspective of black America constantly peddled by Fox News and right wing media that's rooted in ingrained bias and inaccurate assumptions based on race - when he talks about blacks it's couched in the typically divisive "Us vs. Them" language used by conservatives; "your schools", "your youth" not "our".

His facts were, as usual for Trump, way off. For example, according to an examination of Trump's claims about black youth unemployment by Politifact.com, the actual unemployment rate for African-Americans ages 16 to 24 is actually just under 19% - that's still twice the rate for whites in the same age group, but it's nowhere near 58%.

As Rev. Barber noted, and as data from the Economic Policy Institute shows, approximately 27% of black Americans and 26% of Hispanics live in poverty (which is still unacceptably high) as opposed to 10% of whites.

What does poverty in America look like?

But that 10% of whites living in poverty actually dwarfs the number of blacks and Hispanics combined who live in poverty.

Yet Trump, like other Republicans, constantly paints poverty as an exclusively urban "black or Hispanic" issue.

Though the bulk of the 46 million people who lived in poverty in the U.S in 2010 were white, conservatives continually portray poor Americans as people of color or undocumented immigrants.

And remember, according to the EPI data cited above, in 2011 28% of U.S. workers earned poverty wages (under $11.06 an hour), so while conservatives relish wagging their fingers at the "idea" of lazy poor Americans hanging around waiting for government assistance, most Americans living in poverty are working poor - part of the 99% of Americans whose wages have remained stagnant for three decades.

So the empty kind of rhetoric Republicans use to try and appeal to minorities and the poor is simply lip service served up with smug hypocrisy that's actually targeted to more affluent white voters.

Economic inequality, wage stagnation and poor education are the biggest factors in people remaining stuck in poverty in America.

During his interview with Brian Lehrer, Rev. Barber wisely made the observation that Republicans, particularly Trump, make bold claims about wanting to help impoverished blacks, yet Republicans overwhelmingly oppose minimum wage guarantees, affordable health care, infrastructure spending and investment in public schools - the very  kinds of things most affected by government spending that could actually help lift people out of poverty and the kinds of programs that helped lift impoverished whites out of poverty in the 30's and 40's.

Perhaps the Republican need to wistfully look backwards to the 1950's as some kind of mythical golden age (Make America Great Again!) reflects their negatively distorted views of the poor, immigrants and people of color who exist here in the 21st century America of the present.

It's reassuring that people like Rev. William Barber have the moral clarity to see the truth; and the courage to demand that politicians elected to represent the people do the same.