In a New York Times article, “The American Abyss,” published just a few days after the Capitol attack of Jan. 6, Timothy Snyder brought remarkable clarity to viewing a then-fractured Republican Party. Even some true-red Republican leaders (Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy) made clear statements condemning the attacks, while others were either silent or used wording that showed tacit approval for them.
Snyder identified these two opposing factions as the “gamers” and the “breakers.” According to Snyder, the gamers try to maintain power by “gaming the system” through “constitutional obscurities, gerrymandering, and dark money” so they can win elections without a majority of voters, but they still want to function within a democratic system. (I see no shortage of Democratic gamers, either, well prepared to use every loophole and dark corner to gain and maintain power.)
The breakers, on the other hand, strive to “break the system and have power without democracy.” The attack on the Capitol was just such an attempt, even if it was poorly organized and executed in a military sense. Those physical “breakers” (of windows, doors, gates, and lives) were inspired by the electoral breakers (such as Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, 5 other senators and over 130 representatives) who voted that day to invalidate the voting system in place for more than two centuries of American democracy.
Since then, bills to restrict voting access have been filed in 43 states. After the most scrutinized election in history was certified as essentially free of voter fraud by Democrats and Republicans at the state and federal levels, as well as in state and federal courts, Republican efforts are a clear case of a solution searching for a problem. But the Republican “gamers” won’t give up, especially after their successes in redistricting after the 2010 Census yielded so many nearly invincible House seats.
But in this case, the attack on voting rights seeks to return us to a broken voting system which has plagued US democracy from its origins. Historically, we began with an exceptional vision: “all men are created equal” but only white, male property owners were equal enough to vote. The Civil War and the Amendments that followed created a more equal footing for a short time during Reconstruction in the South, allowing Black men to vote until the Jim Crow laws of the late 1800s made it nearly impossible and the Ku Klux Klan and others made it dangerous, even deadly.
Women forced their way into the process with the 19th Amendment in 1920 and their rights have survived many upheavals and opposition. But it took the epic Civil Rights struggle and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 for Blacks to regain the rights intended after the Civil War. As much as we love and honor America, the greatest country on earth, we have to admit that one of its founding principles — all men are created equal — has been an aspiration more than a fact. This is seen clearly in every facet of our lives: social, economic, and political.
It should be no surprise that so many of the “breakers” of Jan. 6 carried Confederate flags or showed white supremacist gear. Their goal of gaining “power without democracy” stems directly from the broken American voting system in place for so many years. Their quest is to return to a time when white men held all the power and could wield it in Congress and state houses as well as in back alleys and dark cotton fields to punish any that opposed them.
But when the current gamers support this attack on voting rights, it is not simply exploiting a loophole or using an end-around the system. Their backing strikes at the heart of our democracy and tries to take us back to a time some white people think of as simpler and more clear. It was simpler and more clear for most Blacks as well: their economic and societal place was clear (at the back of the bus), and the result of exercising their contested rights was often simple as well — a beating or a noose around their neck. It isn’t a time or place any American should want to revisit, and the attacks on voting rights unite the Republican “gamers and breakers” as they advance down that dark road.
Allen Woods is a freelance writer and author living in Greenfield. Comments are welcome here or at awoods2846@gmail.com.