by Nell Zink
On the wall where earlier had roved the bear, there loomed a soupy black sky from which coalesced something resembling the eye of Sauron. It looked down at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach before shifting its gaze, in a flash of white lightning, to the street-level facade of Trump Tower. A voice said, “There’s one privilege Donald Trump’s money shouldn’t be able to buy. The right to abuse a little boy until that boy’s injuries—”
At a nod from the deputy campaign manager, the social media czar pulled the plug on the projector and the bright rectangle on the wall vanished. The voice kept speaking (“or a little girl, a beloved daughter whose parents turned their backs on her for one split second”), but it was drowned out by the loudly repeated, “Stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it,” of the deputy campaign manager.
“This is Russian-style character assassination,” the social media czar said.
“No shit, Sherlock,” Bull replied. “Character assassination works.”
“I meant that negatively.”
“We’re at a strategic disadvantage. They don’t have to buy this kind of story. Their media exist to promote it. Ours will debunk it. So it’s going to cost us some money. The fifth law of thermodynamics is that Republicans have more money than Democrats, so we need to be effective. Lucky for us, redistricting has left us with maybe forty contested congressional districts and ten swing states. I say fuck the fifty-state strategy. We’re not spreading our ads around. We’re dosing them precisely.”
“I’m disappointed in you,” the deputy campaign manager said. “No campaign in history has ever stooped to this level. You’d better not show this to anybody else or raise money on it. I’ll get an injunction. We have better things to do than watch this kind of garbage. We have work to do.”
“You don’t want to be sending out canvassers before the earth is well and truly salted,” Bull said. “I’m frankly afraid of what getting out the vote could do this year.”
“Mr. Gooch,” the spokesperson said, “I think you need to get yourself out and leave the vote the hell alone.”
“Take a minute to think about it.”
“How about two minutes to leave the building?”
“Well, then,” he said. “Thank you for your time.”
He gathered up his things and thanked them. He was glad to have said his piece. At least he had tried. No one was looking at him. Even the communications director lowered her eyes.
FLORA GOT AN E-MAIL FROM JILL STEIN’S CAMPAIGN HEADQUARTERS, INVITING HER TO interview for a job. There was no link to an online application form or even a request for a résumé. It was a headhunting letter. The person wanted to know when she might have time to conduct an exploratory interview.
Joyfully she hesitated. It might be better to work on a winning campaign for sheriff than a losing one for president.
Third-party presidential runs were guaranteed hopeless. Ross Perot had walked away with a fifth of the electorate in 1992—the year she was born—but technically he’d been an independent, not a third-party candidate. He had been able to outpoll Mickey Mouse only by buying time on TV. Stein was clearly fated to lose, if getting 1 percent of the vote can be called losing. She might be planning to call it victory. Flora wasn’t familiar with the details of Green goal-setting for the presidential campaign. She realized that would be a good question to ask at the interview. She wrote back saying she’d be happy to meet, at the campaign’s convenience.
A week later she took a long lunch and went to Stein’s national headquarters. Elaine explained that she was looking for someone not tied to D.C. “It’s not a fund-raising job,” she added. “We do that online. You can depend on people who have money to be online. But until internet access is a human right, we need a strong ground game to get people registered to vote.”
“But I’d be happy to integrate corporate outreach into my goal-setting,” Flora said. “There are so many billionaires getting rich off the sustainable development goals. I mean the ethanol and biodiesel industries, and the sharing economy companies, and Elon Musk and all those guys. We have carte blanche to work with them since Citizens United, right?”
As she said it, it suddenly hit her how the social structure of social media—in which billions of peons tithe their innermost data to billionaires—influenced her conception of what it meant to be a citizen. The strained expression of faux charismatic excitability vanished from her face, leaving a mature and skeptical look.
“We don’t do any corporate development,” Elaine said. “There’s no corporation in the world without dirty hands, and they can’t vote. At least not yet. We try to keep it under twenty-five dollars.”
“I’m a digital native—” Flora began, meaning to apologize for the way, as a powerless pseudo-citizen, she naturally sought allies from among the billionaire class.
Elaine interrupted. “That’s terrific but irrelevant for this job. We’re planning a speaking tour of college campuses with an array of poets and progressive singer-songwriters and whomever else we can drum up. The idea isn’t to reach out to students. We can get them for free over social media. It’s to get our supporters fired up, so they go forth out of their silos and multiply. Get them active. It’s a young movement. We need to expand the base.”
“I’ve never actually done grassroots fieldwork.”
“Well, then it’s time you tried.”
Elaine smiled a gentle, ironic smile, and Flora realized that the job was hers for the taking. Since winning, for Greens, wasn’t an option, there was no need for her to display winning qualities. Her task was to embody certain principles and speak truth to the powerless. The fate of the world was not in play, nor was her personal integrity. Her job was to be herself. The feeling was liberating, emancipatory.
“The logistics are challenging,” Elaine warned. “The events are simulcast on internet radio using the college radio stations’ equipment, and you have to set it up with them individually. You’ll be working alone.”
“Is any of the liaison work done? You know it’s almost finals already, and colleges close for the summer. Student organizations won’t be staffed. This job is literally not doable before September. What do you want me to do right now?”
“We’ll keep you busy. We have a national convention coming up in Houston. Ever been to Houston? They have terrific victuals down on the bayou.”
Flora asked about the salary. Elaine named a figure that was slightly above minimum wage. It wouldn’t have covered rent for an adult living alone, much less food. Yet it was generous, given that many people volunteer full-time on political campaigns in speculative hope of spoils jobs after the victory. She was living with her grandparents, who fed her every night. She could afford to say yes.
She would sit in an office in Washington, booking caterers and audiovisual equipment, printing name tags, and reserving hotel rooms until the convention, put out fires in Houston—lost luggage, food allergies, that sort of thing—and, as a reward, bathe in the adoration of left-wing students. She asked for time to decide, but only as a pro forma power move. She knew she wasn’t fooling Elaine.
WHEN SHE SAW BULL ON SATURDAY, SHE ASKED HIM WHAT HE THOUGHT. THEY WERE splitting a bottle of red wine on an empty stomach while cooking. She phrased it, “Since there’s a lot at stake”—seldom had she been so conscious of how little her actions mattered, but she knew they were important to him—“I hesitate to join the Stein campaign without checking in with you first. What do you really think of us Greens?”
“I love you with all my heart,” he said. “You’re voters. If we can stop you from voting Green, you’re a force to be reckoned with.”
“Don’t make fun of me to my face,” she said.
“There’s nothing at stake,” he said. “After the Senate refused to consider Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, which was the most lawless and contemptible ploy I’ve seen in my life—it wasn’t even politics; it’s like they took their ball and went home—well, it was clear to me then that we need mass mobilization of no
nvoters to keep every branch of government from going Republican. Greens aren’t nonvoters, so you’re not doing anybody any harm. It’s a fine sandbox for you to gain some experience.”
“You don’t think a strong Green showing could move the debate to the left?”
“What debate?”
“The public discourse? The Overton window?”
“Do you mean the lunatic fringe yanking its own chain, or the little space in the middle where claims go when they’re too bland to get anybody’s attention?”
“People discourse in real life, Bull! You should talk to some of the Greens I know. They’re really, really thoughtful and smart. They win conversations all the time.”
“And I’m sure, for them, politics is about social equity and distributive justice. But tell me where they went to school, that they even know what those words mean. I’m sure they must have very diverse backgrounds. Harvard, Princeton, Dartmouth—”
“Not even close. You must be thinking of the Berniecrats.”
“All I know is democracy is about choosing the lesser of two evils, because three evils is too many. Bernie Sanders isn’t not third party, but he’s third—what the fuck is he? Third leg?” He laughed at his own joke. “The soi-disant socialist from the all-white state! That old windbag should get off our barricade. We’re trying to run a class struggle here, and he’s raising up a left populist movement of nonvoters. Somebody should tell him we’re never going to have ninety-nine percent turnout like in the Soviet Union.”
“He has tons of working-class support,” Flora said. “People who want jobs rebuilding our nation’s crumbling infrastructure.”
“Great. The Greens take the altruists, Bernie takes the youth and everybody who wants a job, and the Democrats take the lame, the halt, the blind, and single mothers.”
“Who’s ‘the halt’?” She poured herself more wine.
“Only the halt can say for sure,” Bull said. “Hillary’s even been kissing up to illegal immigrants, the most powerful voting bloc there is, God help us.”
“Well, Trump says they’re taking over.”
“He’s not wrong. They’re killing the European welfare states.”
“I think he means they vote.”
“You’d think if he’s so goddamn sure they vote, he’d treat them a little nicer.”
“Can Standing Rock Sioux vote?” Native American opposition to a planned oil pipeline in South Dakota was a major issue for Greens.
“Reservation Indians have been citizens for a hundred years. If you’re asking whether they vote, that’s a different question. It’s always a different question.”
“Well, do they?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care. They’re a flyspeck minority and not too well liked since they got casino gambling. Go to work for Jill Stein. The Democratic Party can divide and conquer itself without her help. You’ll be a bigger fish in a smaller pond. That’ll help you crawl out when it dries up.”
BACK IN CLEVELAND PARK ON SUNDAY NIGHT, FLORA MADE HERSELF A CUP OF TEA AND betrayed her career plans to her parents on the phone. The three-way call was enabled by the five extensions on their landline.
“Wow,” Pam said. “Are you running a temperature?”
“Don’t worry. We’re not going to spoil the election. The GOP has no chance.”
“A major party always has a chance,” Daniel said, “because your typical voter goes into the booth and flips a coin. Why not work for a party that’s trying to split the Republican vote instead?”
“Like who? The Nazis?”
“The Libertarians.”
“You’d love that! You’d never give me a hard time if I was working for them!”
“I take it back,” he said. “Now I’m visualizing these Ayn Rand–freak biker dudes with lobotomy scars asking you to help repopulate after the race war goes nuclear.”
“Don’t worry. I won’t consent to anything until I see their supplies of canned goods. I’m not an idiot.”
Pam said, “With your agricultural expertise, after the nuclear race war, you’ll be a hot commodity.”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “We’ll run out of hybrid seed within two years and end up moving north to follow the great caribou herds.”
“That’s why it’s imperative that oil exploration cease in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge,” Daniel said. “So we can eat reindeer burgers after the apocalypse.”
“I’ll bring that up at the next meeting,” she said. “We’re always trying to brainstorm positive claims.”
XXII.
Flora spent her summer weekdays answering the campaign’s office phone. She monitored the Slack channel and WhatsApp. She patiently responded to high-level policy recommendations from potential voters and facilitated mutual contact among those with similar desires, hoping they would spur each other to find outside help.
Occasionally her faith in the party’s principled tactics wavered. For instance, every time the Green vice presidential candidate said that the United States was “a corrupt, degenerate, white supremacist monstrosity.” Was that supposed to be a viral meme? Did he really expect people to pick that up and run with it?
She had her finger not on America’s pulse, but on the veins where deoxygenated blood drained back from its overworked extremities. On Facebook, she saw friends’ upbeat descriptions of what it was like to work for Clinton. Volunteers competed to rise in a hierarchy that gave them incremental access to knowledge of the campaign’s aims, faithful adepts of a cult whose dogmata were known only to its priests. Greens were the exoteric, democratic, chaotic, weary avant-garde. All their beliefs were on display, and all were under attack.
The Green National Convention was in early August at the University of Houston. She shared a foldout couch in a quadruple hotel room. Her role was that of concierge to a convention full of people whose accommodations didn’t have concierges. She worked fourteen-hour days and barely ate. Between emergencies, she listened in. The endorsement from Patch Adams embarrassed her, but not as much as patching in Julian Assange from the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Cornel West came on strong, but Ajamu Baraka made him look like a shy conformist. Nobody seemed able to stop ranting about Israeli war criminals. She listened in vain for a coherent stance on agricultural subsidies or renewable energy.
Her parents had often said to her, “The Left will eat itself,” or “The Left eats its own.” She told Bull on the phone, “They got it wrong. The Left will shoot itself. It used to be in the foot, but now it’s raising the gun to its head.”
He said, “The Left eats lead.”
The longest conversation she had in Houston was with an art historian she met standing in line at the on-campus Starbucks. The woman directed the university’s museum of Asian art. She described nouveau-riche collectors’ attempts to donate impossible artworks—the sixth bronze horse from a famous ancient Chinese set of five, that sort of thing—and archaeological finds so rare that (had they been genuine) no nation on Earth would have permitted their export. The collectors were reliably saddened to learn of their bamboozlement by forgers claiming to be smugglers. Laws were brittle. Chemistry could be faked. But the past could not be altered. The paper trail had the last word.
That night as Flora fell asleep, she daydreamed of retraining as an art historian. Her family was arty, after all, and valued authenticity. Scientists could be wrong without lying, and politicians could be right without telling the truth. Serving two foreign masters was wearing her down.
HER GRASSROOTS TOUR OF COLLEGES HIT NINE CITIES: CARLISLE, CHICAGO, KANSAS City, Oberlin, Lawrence, Albuquerque, Boulder, Eugene, and Las Vegas. Coasting on a half-million-dollar windfall from the Presidential Election Campaign Fund, the campaign paid for her to fly in steerage and rent subcompact cars.
Mere words cannot convey the fun she had in Albuquerque, Boulder, Oberlin, and Eugene. Kansas City was especially fascinating. Chicago was a mite stressful (Loyola, radical queer seminarians, long story) but over fast.
Las Vegas had a hydrological regime rigged to cause laughter in hell and the angriest environmentalists she’d ever seen. They took her to the Venetian for all-day breakfast, reminding her of her parents.
In Lawrence, the Green student association put on an outdoor festival. The weather was iffy—too windy for the tarps they put up to keep off the rain, so that the stage kept threatening to take off across the road—but ten local bands and crews presented thirty original tracks about wind power. There was even a folksinger with a short set about windbreaks. He had a cottonwood song and a blackthorn song. It was hard to say whether he made people want to vote, but he definitely drove them to the information tables.
Carlisle was weird. She suspected the campus had only one active party member. She was alone with him much of the time. She slept on his couch. He simpered adoringly. On parting, he gave her a white carnation in a used paper cup, on which he’d written, “Flora and Fauna Forever.”
She wondered whether he might not be an agent provocateur. Paying guys like him a few bucks to found campus Green organizations could smother the movement in its cradle. “This is a huge waste of time,” she told Bull on the phone. “What we need is a ballot that makes it easier to vote Green by accident.”
He said, “You’re learning. Now come home.”
SHE STOPPED BY BAND PRACTICE ON HER WAY AND FOUND HER MOTHER DOWNSTAIRS IN the store. The TV in Video Hit was tuned to Fox News. Victor and Pam were fighting over Trump. “How can you call him a moron?” Victor said. “Was NAFTA good for the American worker? Haven’t Han Chinese destroyed us by dumping their cheap products after WTO accession?”
“NAFTA moved jobs to Mexico, but all Trump ever talks about is Mexicans coming here. And the Chinese didn’t invent Walmart. It was the other way around.”
“He’s as liberal on your Democrat issues as crooked Hillary. He wants to keep Social Security and Medicare.”
“Not everybody’s retired, Victor!”