Attack on The Capitol! (but not the one you're thinking of.)

We heard him say, “What in the Hell…” I cannot emphasize enough how shocking this shoving match among thirty political dissidents was to us and the capital security force. Dear God, what innocence we still had to lose.

Attack on The Capitol! (but not the one you're thinking of.)

 I didn’t realize I was on C-SPAN until the pushing match began.

I had followed a girl to D.C. Julia had graduated from college in St. Louis and gotten a job at the Laogai Research Foundation in Washington. The Laogai is the Chinese version of the Gulag, where they send their political prisoners. I, being directionless and in love, had tagged along. And I was excited about going to D.C.—I had always had a passing interest in politics and was intrigued to see how it all worked. So, when she told me she had to sit in on a hearing of the House Subcommittee on Human Rights and asked if I wanted to come, I thought, Great!

Things looked bad almost from the start. This was a hearing on prison conditions in China, and the people testifying were all Chinese political dissidents. There were about thirty seats in the chamber, but only seven Representatives actually bothered to show up. Everyone settled in, the hearing began, and the dissidents started giving their testimony. At this point, the seven Representatives began doing everything except paying attention. They wrote notes, doodled, talked to their aides. One guy—Rohrabacher, according to the nameplate—just stared into the upper left-hand corner with his mouth slightly open. He was so intent on that spot that I found myself looking over my shoulder, trying to figure out what had his attention. There was nothing there. The people at the tables were giving graphic accounts of the worst years of their lives, and this guy seemed to be asleep with his eyes open.

He suddenly snapped to when he was recognized to speak. He was from California, and as soon as he heard his name, he perked up and started talking. He came off like a pudgy, red-faced, dim-witted version of Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. After seeming to hear nothing anyone had said, he suddenly began slamming his fist on the desk and shouting, “B’dah! B’Dah! Those Red Chinese! I tell ya, they’re just plain evil, I tell ya, Evil!

But discount Jimmy Stewart had it on the rest of them, because at least he was actually on topic. Julia explained to me that each of the Congresspeople had certain talking points they wanted on the record, and it didn’t matter what the witnesses said—they wanted it known that they had said this other thing when campaign time came around. To this end, the Representative from American Samoa, when recognized to speak, literally just said the word “China” and then launched into a screed about the importance of Indigenous rights in some unspecified parts of the Pacific Islands.

Eventually, someone I knew got up to testify—Wei Jingsheng, who spoke no English. Another acquaintance, David, was translating. Nancy Pelosi asked Wei a question, and Wei began his answer. He gave the first half of his answer, and David translated. Then he began the second half. The whole time Wei was talking, Pelosi leaned forward in her seat, with her lip kind of riding up on her teeth and her eyes lit up like a very excited Chihuahua. Before David could translate the second half of Wei’s answer, she jumped in. She launched into a litany of talking points, clichés, and pat statements about human rights. I asked Julia if Wei’s full answer would be translated for the record, and she said, “No.”

This went on for hours. And if there’s anything more disillusioning than seeing how the sausage is made, it’s seeing how a lot of sausage is made. I stared at my lap, wondering how far off the fall of Western civilization could possibly be, when I heard the chamber door open. I turned and looked. A guy who was sort of dressed like Robert DeNiro in the early scenes in Taxi Driver, just a touch of military surplus but not enough to be concerning yet, came in with some friends. But more than DeNiro, he actually resembled an East Asian Steve Martin, he had salt-and-pepper hair swept to the side, like during Martin’s King Tut era. He and his friends gathered at the back wall and he crossed his arms.

I should say now that this was in the year 1999. This was before 9/11, before the attack on the capitol, before the rot at the heart of the global order had been reduced to tweet sized chunks you could idly peruse on the subway. So, minimal armed security on Capitol Hil. This was still the people’s house and the people were welcome to walk on in.

At this point, a guy from the Tiananmen revolt was testifying to the only Representative who seemed to give a shit—Chris Smith, from one of the Carolinas, who was the chair. Everyone else had gone back to doodling, staring, or drooling. Chris Smith and the Tiananmen guy were actually having a lively exchange. Then, out of nowhere, Steve Martin started shouting in Mandarin. The Tiananmen guy turned around and shouted back. Also in Mandarin. Martin shouted louder. Julia spoke the language, so I looked to her. Steve Martin, she said, was another dissident from an ethnic minority in China, and he had just called the Tiananmen guy a Communist spy. I looked at her again, and she kind of waved it off. “They all call each other spies. Soviet dissidents did the same thing.”

Chris Smith started banging his gavel and calling for order, but that only got more people shouting in Chinese. Then Steve Martin said something short and blunt, and I was pretty sure I had just learned the Mandarin word for “bitch.” That’s when the place exploded. People jumped up, shouting back and forth in Chinese. They started climbing over chairs and getting in each other’s faces. The whole room went nuts. Smith pounded away with his little hammer.

The other Representatives just stood up and exited through the back. Like, “Oh, looks like it’s lunchtime.” Smith actually made his way down to the floor of the chamber, but by that time everyone was ignoring him entirely.

Then Julia grabbed me and pointed to a table set up in the aisle with stacks of paper. That was also where people were gathering for the fistfights. She said, “I need to get those papers for our files. I need you to stand over me while I get them.” I was so screw-balled by the scene that I was thrilled to be given a direct order. I started shoving people out of the way. They were so intent on whoever they had decided to accuse of being a Communist patsy that they didn’t even notice. They just popped back up like those punching dolls with the round weighted base and went right back at it.

I got Julia over to the table and stood there with my arms crossed while she collected the papers. That’s when Steve Martin and the Tiananmen guy finally converged. They had fought their way through the melee and now stood on either side of me, using me as a barrier while they shouted and shoved at each other. Each of them was in one of my ears, screaming Chinese insults. Finally, I couldn’t take any more. I raised both hands and shouted as loud as I could, “JUST STOP!” And they did. They each stared at me for a long second, like they were seeing me for the first time. Then they went right back to screaming and pushing each other.

I was just totally defeated. I crossed my arms and stared straight ahead—and when I did, I realized I was looking directly into the lens of a TV camera. That’s when it hit me: I was on C-SPAN. If anyone was watching C-SPAN at that moment, then I had personally become, for that poor lone soul sitting in the dark watching channel 406, a living symbol of all the failures of democracy.

Julia said she had what she needed, and we could go, so I turned toward the doors and started shoving anyone between us and the exits. I was a human snowplow. As we got to the door and out into the hall, a Capitol Hill policeman was arriving, his eyes were wide, and as we passed, we heard him say, “What in the Hell…” I cannot emphasize enough how shocking this shoving match among thirty political dissidents was to us and the capital security force. Dear God, what innocence we still had to lose.