“How could they do this to us? These men in Washington. It’s a crime. Unforgivable. Evil.”

Stephanie’s attention was also now sucked into the TV, where the silver triangle was flitting about over the desert—the most compelling piece of film she had ever seen. The camera would occasionally return to the smiling faces of the men from Washington. Politicians. Military. Bureaucrats. Some of them looked quite old—the functionaries who hatched this enormous lie, who nurtured it, kept it going year after year. Stephanie grew up in D.C. Her family had lived there since slave days. Her mother grew up in a row house and could see the Capitol dome when sitting on the fence in the backlot. Stephanie knew better than to be surprised by the perfidy of these men, or to expect retribution. Her answer to Dee’s question came slow, without taking her eyes off the screen. 

“They’re going to dazzle us with bullshit until we forget about that part.”