White Whale: Part II

December 13, 2017

Times change, but people don’t. That’s been true from the very beginning.
–Rep. Chris Stewart, “Redefining Joy in the Last Days”

The morning after, I decided to buy a dozen bagels for the office. It seemed a necessary act of retribution, like an apology—not specifically to my coworkers but to someone. It was the same feeling I might have if I do wrong by my girlfriend and know I at least need to buy her flowers. Except instead of flowers I bought bagels, and instead of an aggrieved girlfriend I suppose I had the world to woo back into my good graces.

The morning before, I wondered if I had done enough or if everything would work out regardless. I munched on the idea of taking the day off work, heading up to one of the local college campuses and frantically asking around if everyone planned on voting that day. I googled ways to volunteer for get-out-the-vote initiatives at the last minute, but it turns out that’s something I should’ve googled a few months ago.

So I bought bagels. That was Step One, or Step Alpha, or whatever comes after doing nothing but before doing something. Then comes the next first step: Step Two. And that’s where I struggled.

But I wasn’t alone. As is the case after any election, some members of that elite, bipartisan class (one might call them the Privileged Oppressed) threatened to move out of the country. Other folks with a diametric audacity decided they’d dig in and run for office. Neither of those options seemed like a rational Step Two, nor did they seem like things a writer would do—if I’m going to play along with the idea that what I do is write, then my role is neither disenfranchisement nor engagement, but something else to the middle and to the side. I am a “witness,” as writer James Baldwin ambivalently classifies himself in his unfinished book, “Remember This House.”

I was not responsible for raising money,
for deciding how to use it.
I was not responsible for strategy controlling
prayer meetings, marches, petitions,
voting registration drives.
I saw the sheriffs, the deputies, the storm troopers
more or less in passing.
I was never in town to stay.
This was sometimes hard on my morale,
but I had to accept, as time wore on,
that part of my responsibility—as a witness—
was to move as largely and as freely as possible,
to write the story, and to get it out.

So I went looking for a story to write and get out. At first, I went looking at town hall meetings. I wanted to witness those diligent citizens of our yet-democratic collective, those actors with a nobler sense of purpose and justice than my own, as they placed their well-contemplated concerns directly at the feet of the mighty. Foolishly, and perhaps selfishly, I wanted those citizens to find quick success in their aims, as if showing up was the only work to be done.

I went to Rep. Jason Chaffetz’s town hall on February 9 in Cottonwood Heights, Utah, where far more people lingered outside the ill-equipped venue than were allowed inside. Chaffetz was the chair of the House Oversight Committee, a congressional committee that has broad authority to investigate governmental improprieties like conflicts of interest or obstructions of justice. Between stray shouts and relentless booing, the raucous audience repeatedly chanted,  “Do your job.” Chaffetz lasted less than an hour on stage and less than a couple months in Congress after that: he announced his imminent resignation on April 19 as if to say, “Do my job? No thanks.”

The town hall attendees achieved a public shaming—a national embarrassment for Chaffetz. (He would later claim, without evidence, that paid protestors riled the crowd.) While it may have been an emotionally satisfying result for the angry mobs, the afterglow effect was that every Republican member of Congress began to second-guess when, or where, or if having a town hall meeting back home was worth the risk of humiliation. Satisfaction quickly turned to frustration when Utah’s other members of Congress hedged on holding public meetings anywhere near Salt Lake City, where a Chaffetzian blowout was most likely.

A group of activists organized a “Town Hall for All” on February 24, inviting Utah’s entire federal delegation. None of the six lawmakers showed up, but hundreds of constituents still packed themselves into a high school auditorium on a Friday night to hoot and chant and boo. One by one, those diligent citizens came onstage and asked questions as though their elected federal officials were present to answer them. The crowd cheered enthusiastically for the pithiest questions. At times it felt more like theater than activism.

I met and interviewed several attendees at the event. I made a point of talking to people who shared my congressman, Rep. Chris Stewart. I asked them what issues concerned them most: climate change, campaign finance, geopolitical stability, immigration, and corruption were among the responses. But more importantly, I wanted to know what they thought Stewart’s role was in addressing those concerns. In the spirit of that night’s town hall event, everyone I talked to told me that Stewart needed to do a better job of listening to his constituents.

“The biggest issue I see is that he hasn’t shown up to a town hall in which he was requested to come,” Darnell, a University of Utah student, said.

Darnell’s friend Natalie admitted to me that she just recently learned who her representative was. She explained that she had “googled” him about a month prior: “Just because I knew these town halls were happening, and everyone was like, ‘Oh Chaffetz this and Orrin Hatch.’ So I was like, ‘Oh, I wonder who mine is.’ And I hadn’t really—I didn’t know.” Step Two for Natalie was attending this town hall and organizing an advocacy group with Darnell.

Stewart, my man in Congress, would eventually answer the call of his vociferous constituents and hold a town hall meeting in Salt Lake City on March 31. Once again, an aggravated hoard of Utahns piled into a high school auditorium to roast their most direct representative in Washington. I recently rewatched the first half of that town hall on Facebook. I cringed at the lived emotion it evoked from when I attended almost nine months ago, an emotion I would describe as a mixture of frustration and embarrassment. Throughout the hourlong event, Stewart was heckled and booed incessantly, and he taunted his constituents in kind. Many of the audience members’ questions were posed in expectation of the crowd’s congratulatory applause, while Stewart often provided circumspect or even antagonistic replies.

“So my question is,” one citizen asked, “are you supporting the Trump budget, which will take our taxpayer money—Mexico’s not paying for our wall, we will be paying for our wall—will you take our money and build a wall and continue separating families, instead of supporting healthcare and instead of supporting our public lands, will you support the budget from the Trump administration that’s going to use our money for those purposes?”

After the cheering subsided, Stewart attempted to give a nuanced response about the history of presidential budgets and immigration reform amidst shouts of, “Answer the question!” When he came to the end of his answer, the audience was characteristically displeased.

“Are you asking if I support the wall?” Stewart posed. “Well, of course I do.” This prompted perhaps the loudest jeers of the evening. Evidently, the audience was anti-wall.

As a witness, my morale was shot. The story I wanted to get out, the one about a thoughtful citizenry reinitiating their zest for civic discourse, was not the story that I found. Instead I was floating in a torrential sea of inarticulate rage where shipwrecked sailors cursed at the iceberg they hit. Everything that mattered before, now mattered more, and if we didn’t scream loud enough and angrily enough, no one would save us. “Answer the question! Call your representative! Sign this petition! Fill out this form! Donate here! Retweet! Do your job! Do your job! Do! Your! Job!”

I know we can do better, you and I. My job is to be a witness. Write the story, and get it out. But maybe there’s a better story to tell.

You probably wouldn’t know this unless you googled him, but Chris Stewart is a writer, too. In fact he was a writer well before he was a congressman. If anyone could understand my predicament, it would be Chris Stewart the writer. What if I read one of his books and tried to connect with him in a different way: as two men of letters?

In “White Whale: Part III,”  I read  Stewart’s 20-year-old debut novel, “Shattered Bone,” about a Russian spy who infiltrates the U.S. government and almost starts a nuclear war. Then I talk to Stewart about it.