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I shared your piece with a therapist friend who sees politics through the lens of addiction and recovery. The following comments are his.

I respect Snyder's argument for the addictive nature of voter suppression. I share in your admiration for his perspective and insight…For me the core addiction in our society is the use of violence in its many forms to serve in the toxic cause of obtaining and maintaining materialistic power and dominance. It’s the stubbornly irrational adherence to the “zero sum game” worldview and “might makes right” and “survival of the fittest” perversion of Darwinian thought. Voter suppression is a form of violence. So is poverty. So is segregation (which may be re-emerging in a new and ugly way with the attitudes by some toward transexual people). And homelessness. And gaslighting. And, and, and….One way or another, violence always dehumanizes both the recipient and the perpetrator. Which I believe generates shame in both and thus the need to numb the pain by whatever means available. Because some relief is better than none. The more the pain is anesthetized via toxic methods the more shame is piled on. To me, that’s the viciousness of the addiction cycle. Maybe what I’m calling materialistic power/dominance is a rough definition of the Biblical term Mammon. Richard Rohr calls it “the System.” I think it’s what’s leftover for us once we exclude spirituality from our concept of Reality. I believe that recovery is the most natural and rational response to any addiction process. On a societal level, I think it’s when and where the pain of the unsustainable addiction-fantasy falls apart. Hitting bottom. Sometimes lots of bottoms. Columbine was one. So was Sandy Hook. And Parkland. The killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd were bottoms. And the recent mass murders in Atlanta and Boulder. We will continue to hit bottom as a nation until we “get it” and start to actually let go of our national fairy tales of “exceptionalism” and being the “essential nation” in the world. I have come see that stuff as just a massive ego trip…Recovery is about getting honest with ourselves. Really honest. It’s about embracing humility so we can stop humiliating ourselves. We humiliate ourselves as a nation when we keep perpetrating injustice allegedly in the “name of the law.” We hide behind our BS just like anyone caught in their world of addiction.

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Where I live, I have a local paper so besides being up on the local news and politics, I have the opportunity to write letters to the editor and I take advantage of it. Where I live there are people in the whole political spectrum, so the paper gets a large variety of opinions. I think people having more local news might be one way to get rid of this addiction. Professor Snyder has pointed out that one of the biggest problems in our Country is the lack of local news, I.e., death of local independent newspapers. I recently wrote a letter to the White House and my Congressmen about this issue. I’m trying to find a way to communicate with one of the wealthy folks who seem to care about democracy to see if they could use some of their millions to help with the news gap.

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I agree that voter suppression is at its core racist. Unscrupulous Republicans in leadership positions are turning it into a drug for those who are fearful of a future where the majority population is not white. The people Republican leadership appeal to are also fearful about their status in society. The racial bias has left these people with the idea that a person of color must have lower status and this is how they justify that some people don’t deserve the same freedoms/privileges. I am not sure how we can combat this. I do offer support to ACLU, SPLC, and the League of Women Voters because I think there is strength in combatting some of these issues through groups like that who litigate, point out hate, and promote fair voting. Another thing is that where I live, I have a local paper so I am better attuned to my city and state politics

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From a friend about the Georgia voting rights bill: The GOP's new law excluded some of the most extreme proposals to restrict voting such as measures to eliminate automatic voter registration and the ability of voters under age 65 to vote by mail without an excuse, and it includes a few provisions that could expand voting access, but a far larger number of measures restrict access to voting and give Republicans greater partisan control over election administration itself. I have the list of changes but will not list them here.

One of the provisions removes the Secretary of State from chairing the State Board of Elections replacing him with a legislative appointee as chair. I guess they are getting back at Raffensberger for running an honest election.

Black voter advocates have launched a federal lawsuit to contest the most restrictive parts of the Bill. I have a special interest in Georgia as I wrote letters to Democrats

in DeKalb County for the special election. I also support Stacy Abrams’ Fair Fight. Abrams is an amazing organizer and worked miracles in Georgia. I hear she is planning to run for Governor.

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Voter suppression is vile. Having said that, we should understand the context, at least in a presidential election, which makes it vile. There is no U.S. Constitutional right to vote for a U.S. president that is until a state allows an individual to vote for its electors. It follows that there is no national presidential election, but rather fifty individual state elections for electors which vote for President (and Vice President). Since all fifty states allow people to vote for its presidential electors the voter suppression issue is extremely relevant in our perceived democracy (although historically the U.S. is more of a plutocracy). Timothy’s argument, as always, is compelling and makes sense. Republicans and Democrats at one time or another argued the counterintuitive and, by definition, unpopular notion that a one man/one vote system is nonsense (at least for president (yes, and not using the word nonsense)). As H.L. Mencken (probably a racist) once said “On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned my a downright moron.” Many Republicans support the subtleties of voter suppression based on beliefs that, for them, mimic Mencken’s belief and rouse humor from his famous remark (It made more sense to me when Trump was elected). If we collectively want a purer democracy and, more importantly, understand what wanting a democracy actual means, then we need to eliminate the electoral college. Of course, eliminating the electoral college would be very difficult since no matter if via compact (I.e., eliminating the electoral college’s effect) or via Amendment would require certain states to lose extant voting power. Georgia’s election reform law which, when referenced by Republicans will, undoubtedly and euphemistically, include the word “integrity” needs to be understood for what it is, voter suppression. Of course, not all elections are for president and voter suppression for any election may be designed to ultimately support a one party system thereby eliminating democracy from the equation. In Georgia, it appears that a Republican legislature and Governor are designing a system to keep themselves in office while taking advantage of the state’s ability to govern how Presidential electors are elected by the people (still subject to the U.S. Constitution’s XV Amendment). This intent, to me, is what is vile.

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If political racism can be compared to an addiction, then reading DuBois's "The Souls of White Folk" and "Of Work and Wealth," both from *Darkwater,* might provide insight into how one gets "hooked."

No doubt this derives as well from the political and economic Slave Power whose infernal habits of thought and behavior carry on quite serenely in their pursuit of happiness.

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I have been thinking of them as being brainwashed into the trump cult. Addiction works too. I’m not sure our democracy will be able to withstand them “hitting bottom” and reclaiming their brains.

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While the metaphor of addiction works here, it doesn’t align with our current medical models of substance use disorders. i think most people would give you the poetic license, since you aren’t writing about SUD, though perhaps not all.

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founding

Spot on! The addiction to voter suppression is an evil one. “The forces of evil are well funded and determined”- Sen Raphael Warnock

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I don't see it as an addiction. I view it as a plan orchestrated to serve the dominant party and the white supremacist world view. It's not that the evil can't help themselves--it is that they know precisely what they are doing and are doubling down on the plan because it is effective for their aims.

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