Echo Chamber Page 12

  All this time, I thought Peter was using two-faced statements and our own social media echo chambers to manipulate public opinion.

  He was doing something much worse.

  15

  July 3, 2020

  The next morning, I head to the Jack Morton Auditorium on the George Washington University campus, just a few blocks from the TV studio where Alan Takigawa interrogated me.

  All night, my mind raced with possibilities. How is it possible that Bird and Uncle Hippon got different position papers from our site?

  As I walk into the modern glass and brick building, a young woman approaches me holding a reporter's notebook.

  "April Burnside," she says. She looks even younger than Alan did.

  "Hello."

  "Can I ask you some questions? I'm from the student paper."

  "Sure, but we'll have to talk while we walk. I'm here to meet someone named Beatrice Nance. She arranged the debate hall for us and I'm here to check it out."

  A white-haired woman appears from behind a large double-door and introduces herself as Betty Nance.

  She opens the door to the meeting room. "Like I said in the email, you can stay here all day if you like. There are no other reservations on the books. Our crew will arrive about four hours before the debate on the fourth to check the sound."

  "Thank you," I say. "I won't need anything. Just wanted to get a feel for the space. I haven't seen it in person yet."

  She flips on a dozen light switches and the hall is illuminated dimly across the seats with much brighter lights on the stage. I'm immediately reminded of the presentation room on the Colton Industries campus, except this room is much bigger. Seating around 250, it's designed like a movie theater, with cushy interlocking chairs and a large stage that can be set up in any manner. Right now it's covered in folding tables from a previous event, but by the time our debate begins it will be set up with six podiums.

  Betty gestures toward the stage. "I have some tasks to attend to, but you can wander around and get a feel for the space. Behind the stage you'll find a small office you can use, and a staging area. Wifi password is 'Colonials' with a capital C."

  "Thank you," I say.

  "The Colonials are our mascot," April says.

  "You want to ask me a few questions now?"

  "This is a huge story. Changing democracy and all. I—"

  From the doorway, Betty interrupts. "I don't see what's wrong with the Democrats and Republicans." I can tell she's been biting her tongue. "Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, Franklin Roosevelt was a Democrat. One saved the Union, one saved the world in World War Two. Don't see why we can't just keep things the way they've been."

  I've long tired of this argument, and my response reflects it. "Do you know who the Republican president before Lincoln was? Nobody. He got elected because people in 1860 didn't want to keep things the way they'd been." My smile is the epitome of politeness.

  She rolls her eyes, turns, and walks away.

  I approach the stage, then take the five steps onto it. April is on my heels, taking notes.

  The room is cold, but it will warm up when it's filled with people. The stage lighting is nice. Bright but not blinding, with good lines of sight to the whole room from the entire front of the stage.

  After checking the area behind the main stage, I sit in a small breakout room as April snaps photos on her camera phone.

  When she stops, I ask, "So, are you a registered user of the site?"

  "Yeah, it's kinda cool. That's why I asked my editor to get assigned to this event."

  "What do you usually write about?"

  "I don't write. This is actually my first time reporting for the school paper."

  "Your first time?"

  "I run the website, usually. We're not a large paper."

  "What made you want to cover the debate?"

  "I'm a double major. Political science and computer science. I study voter data, things like that. Is now a good time to ask you a few background questions for the piece?"

  "Sure, but...no, I want to go first on the questions." I put my feet up on the desk. "If you have a website, say, the student paper…what's it called?"

  "The GW Hatchet."

  "Your student paper is called The Hatchet?"

  "Yup."

  "So, you run the website for The Hatchet. Say you want it to appear differently in two different time zones. So—and I'm just making up an example here—let's say you want users who access your site from the campus to see a story about a building closure on the front page, but users who are off campus, for whom that information wouldn't be useful, to see a story about the football team's big win. Is that possible to set up?"

  "Sure, we have a static homepage, but we could do that."

  "A static homepage meaning it doesn't change?"

  "Right. Pages can be set up to appear the same to everyone, or be different based on a number of factors."

  "How hard is it? I mean, what level of computer expert would you need to set that up?"

  She giggles in a way that makes me feel incredibly old. "I learned that in high school. You just have different versions of the site based on a user's IP address. Why do you ask?"

  There's no way I'm going to tell her the truth, but I won't tell an outright lie to a teenaged reporter, so I ignore the question. "One more thing. What if I wanted to show a different version of the same article to different users? Or a different headline? Like say there's a story about an alumnus winning the Nobel Prize or something. Is it possible to have the same article with two different headlines, and to show the different headlines to different users based on their age, their location, their religion, stuff like that?"

  "Sure, but we don't do that. We don't collect that type of information about our readers. If we did, that would be easy. Assuming users were logging on from registered accounts, we could feed different versions of stories to different users based on their account information. Again, that's high school level stuff. Just like your weather app can tell you the weather by using your location, a site can remember any information you tell it. Or, since most data collection is hidden, I should say a site can remember any information you allow it to have."

  I keep my face expressionless, but the phrase allow it to have bounces around my head. "So, wait...let's say your site did have data on your users, how would you get it?"

  "Well, for example, you know how some websites have a 'Log in with Facebook' option?"

  "Yeah."

  "It makes it easier to log into a site because most people leave Facebook open all the time. What most people don't know is that when they click 'Agree' they usually give the new site access to all sorts of Facebook data, all sorts of…"

  I tune her out as my mind flashes on the quiz I took on the train. "Which Ameritocracy Candidate Are You Destined to Marry?"

  From the quiz it bounces off a hundred other online quizzes I've taken, a hundred other preferences I've stated through comments, likes, and shares. Through a million tiny actions I've done online, each leaving a little more information about me.

  "I have to go." My response is unintentionally abrupt and I pray she doesn't read the panic on my face. "I'm very sorry I…just remembered something."

  I race from the meeting hall, emerging into the heat as I head toward the shade of a nearby tree.

  April confirmed the realization that hit me after reading Bird's text. Peter isn't only saying different things to different audiences in his public events. He really has different versions of his positions on the Ameritocracy homepage.

  Problem is, I don't know anything more than that, and the person who does dresses like Murphy Brown and may be certifiable.

  Before I flew to D.C., I asked our new tech wizard "Leslie" how to contact her while I was away. She installed an app on my phone called TrueSecret, explaining to me that it was the most secure way to send and receive messages on a mobile phone or, as she called it, "That $800 CIA tracking device you carry in your purse."


  She has no cellphone, but receives messages on a web-based TrueSecret app she accesses on a laptop she claimed was "Encrypted nine ways from Tuesday."

  When I open the app for the first time, Smedley-Was-Right is my only contact. I assume that's Leslie, and I type a message.

  Different people are getting different versions of our website based on location, or previous clicks, or other data. Or something. I don't know how. It affects Peter's page, at least.

  Is that possible? What's going on? Please check the code relating to...everything. Check everything. And contact me as soon as possible.

  I attach two photos—the screenshot from Bird and the screenshot from Uncle Hippon.

  I press send and watch as the text dissolves in an odd but beautiful digital swirl.

  16

  I'm in a daze, but the best thing I can do until I hear back from Leslie is to follow the plan I had when I started the day. That means three stops at three different candidate events around Washington, D.C.

  From the campus, I walk to a large park where Marlon Dixon's event, an interfaith religious rally, is already in progress.

  Over the past month, Dixon tried desperately to improve his standing with women, to overcome the damage done by stories about the shooting that knocked him out of our top spot.

  Initially, he was hit from both the left and the right, but the stories from the left did the most damage. He didn't lose a lot of support among loyal fans, but new liberal voters who joined Ameritocracy after the stories broke have avoided him, opting for Justine Hall and Maria Ortiz Morales.

  When the stories about Dixon's response to the shooting faded, new stories appeared. And the new stories had legs because they weren't just meme-based nonsense. Instead, they took on Dixon's opposition to abortion. Cheap shots are one thing, but his pro-life position puts him at odds with many of his voters on a genuine issue.

  For the last week, Dixon drove around Washington, D.C., handing out condoms outside of schools and speaking with women's groups from the left, right, and center of the political spectrum. He spoke with every pro-choice group that would meet with him, trying to explain that his pro-life position—the only position he holds that's typically associated with the political right—isn't a reason to oppose him.

  Hence, the condoms.

  As I stand on the perimeter of a large crowd, Dixon explains his position for the hundredth time this week. "I believe that only God himself has the right to create and destroy life. That's why I oppose both abortion and the death penalty.

  "I also believe that teenagers are going to have sex. The evidence on that particular question is quite clear." For a man with absolute moral conviction, he knows when to pause for an audience laugh, and that's definitely one.

  When the laughter dies, he continues. "That's why over the last seven days I've visited every! single! public! school! in the District of Columbia, handing out condoms to young people. Unlike many fellow Christians, I want to decrease the number of abortions that take place in this country by any means necessary. And the evidence is clear on that topic as well. Making safe abortions illegal, or even more difficult to obtain, doesn't decrease the number of abortions. It increases the number of unsafe abortions.

  "The best way to eliminate abortion is safe sex education. Period.

  "Safe sex empowers women, and, as president, that's what I'll preach. At the same time, I won't shirk my responsibility as a moral leader, which is to say that I believe abortion to be an absolute wrong. But a president isn't a king. The president's beliefs don't dictate the law of the land. As a Texan and a lifelong Dallas Cowboys fan, I believe the San Francisco 49ers should be banned from the NFL, their fans jailed and shunned by the good people of the world."

  A longer audience laugh, which Dixon greets with a lovable just-kidding-y'all smile.

  "If I proposed such a law as president, and if it passed Congress because the California delegation somehow failed to show up, I know the Supreme Court would rule it unconstitutional! And, to be serious for a minute, the Court has already ruled on this issue. Roe v. Wade is the law of the land, and you know what it says? It says that one man, president or not, cannot make that moral decision for every citizen. I don't have, and as president could not have, the power to order anyone to keep or end any pregnancy. I am a man of deep faith, I've never made a secret of that. But in America we draw a firm line between our faith and our law, we always have, and I will not now, nor will I ever, violate that fundamental principle."

  Dixon is attempting to walk a fine line in this speech. Clearly, he hopes to win back liberal voters and women. Nonetheless, he's unable and unwilling to reverse his position on abortion, which for many voters is an immediate dealbreaker.

  After leading for months, he's fallen to number seven in our rankings, outside the top six who will make it to the debate stage. Early on, this was Dixon's race to lose. Then Robert Mast happened, then DB, then the shooting. And now Peter.

  As compelling as he is, I doubt he can walk the line he's attempting to walk.

  I stay another hour as a steady stream of rabbis, imams, pastors, and even an archbishop take the stage, speaking on a range of issues. As someone who's often accused of making everything about himself, Dixon has done an excellent job centering men and women of all faiths in dialogue. It's an impressive array of religious minds, and I respect both the effort it took to get them all on one stage and the unity of the message they present.

  Once the speeches are over, I catch the first taxi across town, to Beverly Johnson's event, a rally outside the D.C. offices of the NRA.

  A conservative on most issues and a hunter herself—her recipe for venison stew sounds amazing—Johnson has taken a strong stand for gun control.

  Though supporting the general right to bear arms, over the last month she's argued for longer waiting periods and raising the minimum purchasing age to twenty-one at the federal level.

  This won her support from moderates and women, but pushed some of her supporters to Tanner Futch, the only Second Amendment absolutist left in the competition.

  Her crowd is not what I expected.

  Her main voter demographic is married women age 35-70, but the crowd consists of hundreds of teenagers and a mere handful of people old enough to vote. They fill the sidewalks and pour into the street, a block of which has been shut down.

  I quickly learn that many of the young attendees are survivors of school shootings.

  Signs and placards are everywhere:

  Protect the Kids

  It's Not Left and Right, It's Life and Death

  The Only Thing Easier to Buy Than a Gun is a U.S. Congressman

  The Bullets Missed Me—Your Laws Won't

  Our Blood, Your Hands

  Johnson stands on the front steps of a nondescript office building, flanked by her husband and six adopted children. Usually a reserved speaker, calm and soft-spoken, she's more animated than I've ever seen her. Without a podium, she paces the steps, her red hair blowing in the warm breeze, speaking into a hand-held microphone.

  "I'm the proud owner of a Mossberg Patriot hunting rifle. Last year I took down an eight-point buck, and my family lived on the meat for three months. Venison jerky, venison stew, ground venison pasties. I strongly support the Second Amendment and—"

  She's interrupted by a smattering of boos from students who likely expected a harsher tone about guns.

  "Let me finish," she says smoothly. "Let me finish. Like I said, I'm a gun owner, but I firmly believe that it needs to be more difficult for people to buy guns. It needs to be more difficult for young people to buy guns. It needs to be more difficult—much more difficult—for people with violent histories or severe mental health issues to buy guns.

  "If you've followed my Ameritocracy campaign up to this point, you know that education has been my main issue. If kids don't feel safe in school, nothing else matters. If kids are sitting in algebra class wondering when someone will bust through the door with an AR-15, n
othing else matters.

  "Today we call for the NRA and Congress to support a bill currently stalled in committee. H.R. 6733—The Student Protection Act—that would create a national background check law and would raise the minimum age to twenty-one."

  She paces the steps as polite applause rises from the crowd.

  "Will this solve gun violence in America? Of course not. But we need to start somewhere…" She inhales deeply before trumpeting, "We need to start today. I used to be a member of the NRA. No more. They don't represent their members, they're a lobbying organization for the manufacturers, and they don't even bother hiding it anymore. At every turn they've fought against common sense gun reforms, and today we join together here to say enough!"

  With that, Johnson introduces the first speaker, a survivor of the 1999 shooting at Columbine. He's followed by students present at the Virginia Tech massacre, Sandy Hook, and Stoneman Douglas. The speakers are moving, each sharing personal stories of the days their schools were attacked, their classmates shot dead for no reason.

  I'm distracted, though. I keep checking my phone for a note from Leslie, which takes a while because the TrueSecret app doesn't provide push notifications. To open the app, I have to type in a password and use the thumbprint recognition system each time.

  And each time, there's no response.

  Unable to wait, I step away from Johnson's rally and call the office.

  An intern answers and, despite multiple attempts, can't get Leslie to come to the phone.

  All I learn is that she's been working all day without a break and "has a crazy look in her eyes."

  Since she's talking about Leslie, the "crazy look in her eyes" doesn't surprise me. The fact that she won't come to the phone is far more concerning.

  My final event of the day is Maria Ortiz Morales' controversially-titled rally: Veterans Against Purple Hearts.

  It's being held in front of the Vietnam Women's Memorial, where a statue stands a short walk south of the famous wall and reflecting pool that make up the main Vietnam Memorial.