McEuen had done some other things of note. She’d figured out that there was something called the Brown Act, “a sunshine law” that allowed her to install her own journalist, with a video camera, in the empty hearing chamber. And she had somehow persuaded Carlos Zapata to come to a hearing.
Zapata had been the turning point — the moment Pontes realized that this particular wildfire would likely not be contained. Zapata had never come to a public hearing. He, like McEuen, had no previous interest in politics. But he was a former officer in the U.S. Marine Corps, the current owner of the Palomino Room bar and restaurant, and a persuasive character. On Aug. 11, he’d marched into the board chamber and, in the tone of a tough high school football coach addressing his players after a blown game, threatened to start a war. “Right now we’re being peaceful,” he said, “but it’s not going to be peaceful much longer. I went to war for this country. I’ve seen the ugliest, dirtiest parts of humanity. I’ve been in combat. And I never want to go back again. But I’m telling you what—I will, to save this country. If it has to be against our own citizens, it will happen.” He also called Covid-19 “the greatest hoax ever perpetuated on the American people.”
Zapata’s short speech was videotaped and up on YouTube the next day. Forty-eight hours later, Ben Shapiro was sharing it on social media and Alex Jones was calling Zapata to invite him on his show. Inside of two weeks, the video had 20 million views and Zapata was a right-wing icon, with offers to speak at giant rallies across the nation.
The whole thing carried a special punch because Carlos Zapata hadn’t been looking for attention. When Elissa McEuen first asked him to come to the hearing, Zapata had refused. “I’m not a meeting guy,” he said afterward. “I only went because I thought we were going to storm the building. When I saw it was just speeches, I was out of there.” But McEuen had grabbed him and told him he needed to take his three minutes to say something. “I didn’t know I was going to give that speech until 27 seconds before I gave that speech,” said Zapata. When the video went up on YouTube, he was actually a bit miffed and asked his sister to take down the post. “I’m a super-private person,” he said. “I was talking just to them.”
By then it was too late. Well-armed men now drive from Idaho and Nevada to eat at Zapata’s jam-packed restaurant. He’s had nights when 1,000 people have showed up and he’s had to walk down a long line and explain to them why he can’t feed them all. “They say things like, ‘I’m just happy to be a part of this,’” he told me. “If my customers come into my restaurant and my bartender is wearing a mask, they’re leaving. If I say the word, there’s 100,000 people here.”
There was, Matt Pontes pointed out, only the loosest connection between the constraints on people’s freedom and their level of outrage about them. Until last week, Shasta had fewer cases of Covid-19, and fewer restrictions on daily life, than all but a couple of California counties. The big water park is closed. The churches need to meet outside. The schools must decide whether to be live or virtual. Carlos Zapata is upset but his restaurant is running as if the novel coronavirus never jumped from bats into people.
But that is about to change: Shasta County’s Covid numbers are now spiking. “In a week we’ll have gone from two a day to 100 a day,” said Pontes. The virus is now loose in a church congregation and a nursing home. The likely effect, Pontes thinks, will be an increase in local outrage, after the state imposes tighter restrictions.
Just how many people will need to die before minds change is a question Pontes ponders. After all, 200,000 American deaths have been insufficient to create a shared American reality. Only weeks ago, one of the loudest protestors in Shasta County, a businessman who had refused to take steps to prevent the spread of the disease, had watched his mother die of Covid. In that moment, a political opinion was challenged by a fact; one of them needed to be altered. The man called the coroner and demanded that the county change the cause of death.
Michael Lewis is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. His books include Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, Liar’s Poker and The Fifth Risk. He also has a podcast called “Against the Rules.”