The Deluge, page 22
“Sure, there could be cute outfits,” Rekia assured her. “Why not?”
“From my understanding, socialist countries tend not to have cute outfits. Also, every day I get to see how Kate dresses.” And she went back to typing.
Liza designed our logo, blue flames conflagrating against a black background. It was a trip when I began seeing that image on social media profiles or graffitied onto a wall or tattooed on someone’s arm.
We were just kids trying to find something that worked. The trajectories of the two major political parties shaped much of our lobbying experience, the Republicans in wounded disarray, trying to rebuild their party while frequently staving off primary challenges from suburban neo-Nazis, the Democrats playing a perpetual game of three-card monte, releasing aspirational platforms and progressive wish lists while mostly doing the bidding of Wall Street, Big Tech, and the military–national security–industrial complex.
There was a great deal of excitement when Joanna Hogan took office, but that dissipated as her schizophrenic presidency advanced and Green New Deal aspirations died quickly. The memes of Hogan’s face and blond bob photoshopped onto a former WWF star’s body as she appeared to tear apart yellow spandex swarmed, and Democrats spent a full week rejoicing at that eye-rolling moment in the last debate of ’24 when she told her Republican opponent, “Eat your vitamins and say your prayers because next thing you know I’ll be hanging curtains in the White House.” But Kate knew who Hogan was as a president before Hogan probably did, and the former governor had no appetite for confronting the coal and gas interests she’d gotten comfortable with in the Missouri statehouse. In public, Kate struck as respectful a tone as she could manage, but in private, she despised Hogan.
At first we were ignored, mostly meeting with low-level aides and science advisors. But then a few key House Democrats began to coalesce around FBF’s policy ideas. Joy LaFray of Oregon began backing the “shock collar” while Tracy Aamanzaihou of the Clean Energy Labor Coalition publicly pronounced FBF “the insurgents the movement needs.” Then Vanity Fair called.
Following Moniza’s article, there was nary a podcast, talk show, or Slapdish worlde that didn’t want Kate. She was a natural in any format, attractive but accessible, playful but passionate. She delivered her galvanic message with a smile and her armpit hair showing. Even when things got testy, as they did on Colbert when she challenged the show’s sponsorship arrangements, she was too agile to lose either host or audience.
“Okay, but how do I change anything, Kate!” Colbert cried, after she’d rattled off a dire assessment of the world’s overheating oceans and their falling pH levels. “I’m just a guy with a television show, and if I tell people to turn off their air-conditioning, Fox News will be mad at me.”
“I’ll tell you what you can do, first and foremost, is drop your sponsorships from oil and gas companies. Tell them you won’t accept their advertising, no matter how much money they throw at you.”
Colbert threw the camera a comedic Uh-oh. The happy-go-lucky We’re working on algae fuels, we swear! advertising had just preceded Kate’s segment. Kate shot the audience a quick, wry glance, and there were uneasy titters as she launched in.
“These fossil-fuel companies are creating the conditions for mass planetary extinction and then funding a political force to stall action on it. Our grandchildren will look at Chevron and Exxon ads the way you and I look at swastikas.” Colbert began objecting to that, but Kate talked over him, practically snatching the entire show for herself. “No, no—see, this is why you should go back to the Comedy Central days and forget this ‘reasonable shill for the center-left’ persona.”
And with that small joke, Colbert couldn’t help but laugh, and Kate took her moment. “I know that sounds hyperbolic, but those are the facts. That is what is happening. People ask what they can do, but usually they are in a position to do something, they just don’t want to see it. Now this industry, oil and gas, has been going state by state for a decade, passing laws essentially making resistance to their operations illegal. They’re codifying the illegality of our speech, assembly, and dissent. So, what shows like yours and sports leagues that claim to care about Black lives and any other powerful person can do is stop accepting money for their propaganda. And if they want to keep passing laws to make our speech and assembly and resistance illegal—then fuck it, man. Make me an outlaw.”
Without even trying, she forged these clips that surged across the internet. Fox News raged that she would compare patriotic American companies to Nazis. Our allies despaired that Kate had tripped so easily over Godwin’s law and invoked the laziest analogy. Even Coral was unhappy with her: “What happened to creating on-ramps to the movement?” they wondered sharply. But that clip lived on, and within a month it wasn’t just Colbert dropping those sponsorships. Even the New York Times was forced to confront its advertising arrangements with Big Oil.
She could describe the situation with such magnetism, simplicity, conviction, doom, and hope. Before I met her, I’m sure I never thought about the issue for longer than thirty seconds, and if I did, figured it was still an open debate. Then I started to do my due diligence. It’s difficult to describe what happened to me during that time. I came home to the person I loved, we adopted a timid little Australian cattle dog we both adored and named it Dizzy, I congratulated my sister on her wedding plans, I chipped balls at the Langston Golf Course and felt that little glow of accomplishment when they dropped right—yet looming over all of it now was this monolith of dread. This dark pillar was overwhelming, painful to confront; it began to nag at me absently all the time. Because even the people who do understand the science, who are maximally frightened, they’re in denial as well. When I first heard of the “climate Robin Hoods” blowing up pipelines on the plains, I wondered what kind of lunacy it took to do that, but really, I was the mad one. I’d lived my whole life thinking nothing about this. I hadn’t realized that the natural cycles of the earth warming and cooling were laughably insufficient explanations, like saying your house fire began because of the arrival of spring. I didn’t know that scientists could easily trace the carbon produced by human fossil-fuel burning in the atmosphere or the truly horrifying changes that befell the planet when carbon concentrations had been this high in the past. I hadn’t understood the speed at which it was all occurring, that in just a single human lifetime we were precipitating changes that had before taken hundreds of thousands of years. Because once you’ve taken that journey and understand the alarmingly simple science, you can’t unknow it. For a while, I stopped sleeping. I’d lie awake staring at the ceiling and a despair would come over me. I’d reach for Kate, who fell asleep instantaneously whenever she felt like, and I would grip her, stuff my face in her thick, fragrant hair, and imagine our children, what kind of frightening, disintegrating civilization they would be born into.
* * *
Kate and I were supposed to leave for North Carolina that Monday, but first she called a meeting to discuss the offer from Senators Mackowski and Fitzpatrick. We were spending Halloween at my parents’ house on the coast even though it was a week out from a landmark election we’d been working toward for upwards of a decade. My mom, who treated Halloween with more reverence than Christmas, badly wanted the whole family there and twisted both our arms until we agreed.
The Mackowski-Fitzpatrick offer required urgency. Not that any of us really knew what to make of it, but it was tantalizing: the potential for a Republican president to shatter the stalemate and pass a comprehensive climate agenda.
“Now that Randall’s pummeling Hogan on the issue,” said Tom, “man, I think it’s fucking time. Mary’s practically reading our press releases at this point. Let’s do it. Let’s endorse.”
I could tell Tom had felt gung ho since leaving the meeting, and now with a dip puffing out his lower lip, buzzed from the nicotine, he was humming like a tuning fork.
“This is a huge last-second shift,” warned Rekia. “We’ve always intended to stay neutral.”
“Look, the polls are what they are. Jo is a lame duck already. Tell ’em, Sand.”
Sandeep Goswami was a Georgetown poli sci major who’d interned with us for three years. He’d taken the semester off to work grueling hours for Liza. Tall and handsome with a thick unibrow, he had a kind of dazzled face, like he was always half-amused to be in the middle of all this. Sandeep had taken on the thankless task of monitoring every poll, model, and betting market for every race all the way down to public utility commissioner in Arizona. Other than the core brain trust of me, Coral, Liza, Rekia, and Tom, he was the only “minion” Kate invited to this highly classified meeting. He laughed now as the spotlight fell on him.
“Ha, sure, stick me with this—umm…” He rubbed a healthy five-o’clock shadow. “It’s like you say, Tom, the polls are what they are. Eight years of Democrats in the White House, and Jo is the least popular incumbent since Carter. She’d have to run the table. But that’s all I’m really willing to say.”
Kate leaned against my desk with her arms crossed, looking pensive and overcaffeinated. “What’s the advantage of an endorsement then?”
“The advantage,” said Tom, “is riding the wave of momentum, only looking like we caused the momentum with this bombshell October Surprise.”
“Excuse me,” said Liza, pointing to the wall where the Machado quote was engulfed by her blue flames. “We did cause this. I drew that, and the politics people were like, ‘Oh hey, climate-climate, carbon-carbon.’ ”
“But if the polls are wrong, and Jo pulls it out, we still have to work with her.” Coral was A. C. Slatering their chair, arms resting on the back. “It would poison the well with her forever.”
Liza said, “I feel like the well may have been poisoned when Kate called her the ‘drone-assassin-in-chief with a vagina.’ Call me crazy.”
Tom was not without reason for his passion. He’d long been adamant that it had been Hogan herself who’d given Vanity Fair the “toxic cunt” line about Kate. Tom now threw his arms overhead.
“Fuck this woman! Hogan won’t even fucking meet with us! She pours our ass from vial to vial, and I’m sick of being in a fucking test tube listening to her excuses. She made her career by busting challenges on her left flank—remind me why we aren’t trying to defeat her outright?”
“Tom, my dude, take a breath,” said Kate. She pushed herself up to sit on my desk.
“We don’t know that we can trust Randall any more than Hogan—or at all,” said Rekia. “Green Trident or not, her caucus does not want a climate bill—”
“She’s a Black woman tackling the issue, Rek, what is your prob—”
“Who will be in charge of a caucus with legit white supremacists.”
Then Tom and Rekia were at it. Tom often groused about Rekia in an uneasy-making way, saying she suffered from “social justice warrior apophenia,” and Rekia obviously had her issues with Tom. They clashed frequently about the Outposts, mostly because Rek viewed lobbying public utility commissions as a waste of time compared to energizing voters of color, who she thought we often ignored with our strategies. This once came to a head when a photo went up on the website of our Ohio outpost featuring no people of color (there was one Latino guy, but Rek called him “white-passing,” and Tom’s head nearly exploded). This infamous meltdown between the two of them became office lore. As the argument escalated now, I tried to calm everyone’s nerves.
“You gotta admit, Randall is astonishing,” I said. Tom and Rekia stopped to look at me. “Imagine five years ago, a climate justice movement endorsing a Republican? This is an absolute historic opportunity.”
“But why does Mackowski want it?” said Coral.
“Because he’s a poser!” said Tom. “He burnishes this image of Nathan Bedford Mackowski, but Republicans want to put this faction of the party to sleep. Look at the way the RNC rejiggered the rules of the nominating process—to get Randall through and purge those hooting rebel-redneck Nazi fucks once and for all. We back Mary now, hard, and the movement will go with us. Then it’s an all-out sprint to pass our bill in the first hundred days. The Republican Party takes credit for saving the planet, Randall’s face goes up on Mount Rushmore, and everyone fucking wins.”
“Bipartisan Black women save the planet,” I said, nodding to Kate.
“Our neutrality to political personalities is a strength,” Rekia pleaded. “They will always come and go, and they can always betray the cause in the blink of an eye.” Rekia thrust her hand at Kate so hard that her earrings rattled. “Randall feels nice because she comes with that deceptive post-racial afterglow, and y’all feel like Kate here grew her in a vat for the movement and this moment. She’s proof of concept to you. That does not mean she’ll do what needs to be done, though.”
“Okay,” said Kate, hopping off the desk. “I’m wondering if we can make it through one meeting without referencing how Black or not Black I may be—”
I held up my hands. “I’m sorry, I meant that in an entirely jokey way…”
Liza had begun to paint her nails an amber color and shot me a look, No backpedaling now! Sandeep started to say something about the polling, but Rekia spoke over him.
“If we endorse her, do we put money behind her?” Rekia was now talking only to Kate, her voice rising. “I feel like I’m the only one pressing the brake pedal on this. Do we tell our supporters to not worry about reproductive rights or police brutality or Medicare for All or immigration detention or any of the other issues where Randall walks on the other side of the street? I just loved her speech telling Black mothers to take responsibility for their lives so they wouldn’t have to visit the abortion clinic.”
This was actually what I’d come to like about Rekia. That she could stir the pot over minutiae, there was no question, but she was so genuinely smart, tough, hardworking, and passionate; Kate had been right to hire her. Yet, in a reversal, as Rekia Reynolds grew on me, she began to grate on Kate. Their relationship was something of a black box. One day they’d be feeding off each other’s jokes, and in those moments, they’d seem as close as sisters. Then there were moments like this.
“Okay, Rek, take it down a few degrees.” Kate glared at her. “We’re just talking this through.”
“Like we talked through funding the next round of your Scientology-NXIVM centers? Or any of the other thirty thousand decisions that get made around here basically by you and you alone while you pretend there’s any kind of consensus-building or democratic input? We’re supposed to be building to action after the election, and you want all our financial operations working toward more vegetable gardens in Arkansas.”
“How is that relevant to Randall?” Kate demanded.
“Because, Kate, Mary Randall fits into your model. She benefits your vision. You want to have it every which way for every kind of audience. Traipse through the world like you’re a pretty little white gal, gather the eyeballs and accolades, the ease of movement, and then when it suits you, remind everyone that you’re a quarter Black and a dime Indigenous and collect yet more fawning.”
Kate slammed her heel back into my desk, a clap of metal thunder. “What the fuck does that have to do with anything?” Coral flinched. My eyes found the carpet. “Do you even have a fucking personality, Reynolds? Or is it all just pointless virtue signaling and identity politics down to your empty fucking core?”
And Kate stormed out of the office. We heard the door to the stairs crash open and slowly settle shut.
Liza blew on her nails to dry them. “So meeting adjourned, I guess?”
* * *
When we reached Nashville in late summer 2017, Kate left me at a honky-tonk bar. She didn’t answer her phone, and it took me an hour to track her down at a greasy spoon where she’d joined a group of drunk partygoers. I remember thinking, This is Day 3, and you’re planning on a life with this woman? I got to thinking about this selfish side of Kate. Eleven years later, I could still feel the desperation of that night, searching the karaoke bars of Nashville.
I found Rekia in her office. The lights were off. There were tears on her cheeks and embarrassment as well. She was so self-assured that it was unnerving to see her cry.
“I wanted to apologize, Rekia,” I began. “That was my fault. I thought I was making an innocuous comment, and it exploded into this—”
“It’s not your fault, Matt.” Those words were followed by half a sob. She collected herself. “I swear. I feel like I’m going to have a nervous breakdown.”
“When Kate gets these threats,” I tried to explain, “those people don’t think she’s white.”
They were worse and more frequent than ever. Recently, we’d gotten a deepfake video of Kate being assaulted by multiple men.
“Then why doesn’t she feel this?” Rekia shot back. “You say that, Matt, but she doesn’t feel what this decade has been. She thinks I’m the one who doesn’t get it, but her only plan ever is to make nice with people who think I’m less than human.”
“I don’t think that’s fair, Rek. But we’re all stressed and exhausted. So is Kate.”
