“Some dystopian psyops shit,” said Rekia.
Liza huffed. She wore a white kerchief around her neck, a black top, tan leather pants, and high-top Nikes, because she dressed hip even for the midnight meetings. “Think about how many times you two have exploded at each other,” Liza said, bugging her eyes at Rekia and Tom. The two of them had just had a blowout the day before, during which Rekia accused him of having a problem with Black women and Tom snapped, “I don’t have a problem with Black women, I have a problem with stupid Black women.” Rekia demanded he be fired, and Tom said he couldn’t be fired because he quit, and we all spent the rest of the day trying to calm them down.
Liza went on. “I wouldn’t be surprised if analytical models understand you two have tension and exploit that.”
Rekia and Tom exchanged a begrudgingly kind look and then went back to icing each other. I tentatively raised my hand to ask how many threats we were getting day to day.
“Unfathomable volumes,” Liza warned. “Trust me, Matty, you don’t want to look at any of it.”
After she said that, I couldn’t help myself. I stayed in the office all night, sifting through just one week’s worth of the messages Liza’s team had flagged and forwarded to the FBI. Certain phrases come back to me all the time:
Morris is going to die slow with dicks in her ass and mouth and eye sockets
Stuff a bottle in her pussy and smash it 2a thousand pieces cunt
You’re going to regret your life, you evil slut. God is coming back
Lynch the nigger bitch
Cut her titttties off
Me n my crew will fuck her to death slow and painful
I closed my eyes at night, unable to sleep, and those images would linger for hours.
The town halls didn’t even make the news anymore, all of them so full of cranks and crazies screaming into the microphone, occasionally unable to stop themselves from issuing death threats right then and there. Gun sales went through the roof. People burned President Randall in effigy. The major corporations of the day, of course, disavowed stirring the pot on this rhetoric, but the money flowed from these interests through intermediaries, all the way down to front organizations and unheard-of vitamin companies that advertised exclusively on Renaissance.
But in the end, the tipping point might not have been the right-wing fury or the astroturf group calling themselves the BIPOC-GND, which marshalled hundreds of thousands of social media posts claiming that the legislation ignored voices of color while appearing not to have one operational human being involved in the organization. It might not have been the venom and confusion. It might just have been a savvy Montana senator, a Democrat, who saw the perfect opening.
When Victor Love arrived on the political scene, he seemed an unremarkable politician even if the media had a bit of a love affair. A gay veteran who’d fought in Afghanistan and Iraq before starting his own military contracting business, which he built into a private security empire, he was a “reformed Republican,” extremely handsome, and quick on his feet. He had, as Kate put it, “Hot dad energy. Like you’re fourteen and meet your friend’s father, and you’re like, ‘I totally would.’ ”
Love had a scar on his cheek from battle. He wore a turquoise bolo tie. He had a dashing husband with a blinding smile. Love exuded centrist reasonableness, which only meant that he was a foot-dragger, one of the senators who drove us crazy with their hemming and hawing. Still, he blindsided us after the Ohio River Massacre, when he held a press conference to say:
“If we do not address this country’s security concerns, whether that’s radical eco-terrorists, Islamists, or white supremacists, if we do not address the humanitarian crisis at the southern border, if we do not address the concerns raised by the coalitions of Black, Indigenous, and people of color, then I walk away from the bill, and I feel as though many of my fellow Democrats will follow.”
It was a deft tap dance, attacking a Republican president from the right while hippie-punching his own party and walking the line on intersectional platitudes. His resistance would only stiffen from there.
As Cy Fitzpatrick told me in the days following his colleague’s revolt, “Vic Love is exactly the reason I can’t wait to die and get out of this place. Guy’s been on the scene for all of a sneeze, and he’s already throwing elbows.” Cy beckoned me closer. His breath reeked of onion. “You tell that booty of yours, Kate, to watch this guy. He’s a snake in the grass.”
I relayed Cy’s warning to Kate, but by then it was already too late. Defections in the Republican ranks had begun, and nervous Democrats from carbon-intensive states looked over their shoulder at Vic Love’s early poll numbers against Randall and found their feet cold as well. When the Senate adjourned for the August recess without taking a vote, a sense of doom descended. Where Mary Randall had been steadfast in her 2030 State of the Union, jutting her finger at the sky and boldly challenging Congress, “This is our moment. This is how history changes. Those who step forward will be remembered for their courage and those who miss this opportunity will know the scorn of their descendants,” now her tune was changing. In press conferences and interviews, she slowly began backing away from the bill. In a Fox News interview, she promised, “This bill will never raise energy prices, it will not threaten jobs, and it will not threaten small businesses.”
“But what about a company in Ohio that manufactures equipment for natural gas producers?” asked Peter Doocy. “How can you say that to the workers in this company?”
“It will not threaten them,” she said. Her eyes were cold stones. “Their livelihoods will be safe.”
I never understood how she and her inner circle didn’t see how craven she looked in these moments. Then in late September, the midterms little more than a month away, we got word from Ash al-Hasan that there would be a vote on PRIRA in the Senate.
“Wait, what?” Kate demanded. As we were increasingly shunned, abandoned, and finally vilified by those who’d championed our cause, Ash had remained our ally and our last conduit to what was happening behind closed doors. By the time Kate hung up with him, the whole office had gathered around her. “These fucking rumors are true. They’re taking the Syracuse-Love version of the bill straight to a vote.”
At her worst, Kate could make me feel like I was vanishing before my own eyes. She passed by me in the offices that night, eyes locked on her phone, and her arm caught me in the rib. I imagined my body briefly turning to dense smoke, which she simply passed through.
Later that night, I found Kate, Rekia, and Tom in our drab conference room. Everyone else had gone home. Tom’s face was stitched tight with rage but not surprise. Rekia had a sob stuck halfway up her chest, and when I came in, she put a hand to her breast and sucked a little wind.
“Guess we did get them to vote on something in the end,” said Tom. He held a Rubik’s Cube, clicking the blocks around, the muscles of his forearms tense as he worked the colors. “We all might be in a gulag by the end of next month, is what they’re voting on.”
“Tom,” I warned him. “Not now, man.”
“We should have a response planned,” said Rekia. “Get people in the streets.”
Kate stood and, as if I emitted an anti-magnetism, seemed to just want to be in any room besides the one I was in. “They want me on MSNBC,” she said. Then she went about turning me to smoke.
Knowing I shouldn’t follow, I stood there dumbly.
“I’m the fucking sucker,” Tom said as he tweaked the sides of the toy.