Disappearing

 While I was reading it— yes, while I was scrolling down— Heather Cox Richardson's post about Cory Booker flashed off my screen. Poof! It was gone.

I went to her Facebook page, scrolled down, and the most recent item of hers that showed up was from March 25th.

A friend had reposted the commentary, and I could read it there and on Substack, but even when I clicked on the link from the repost, the post was not accessible.

Before you all tell me “but I can see it!”— let me add that yesterday, when other people couldn’t see her posts, it took longer for them to be “disappeared” for me. This censorship thing doesn’t happen neatly. (How apropos!)

In any case, if Facebook can do this, any carrier can. Please make sure you have your writings and creations backed up OFF the cloud. Have hard copies when possible.

This goes to the heart of another matter: the government’s use of nongovernmental communication structures. Our earlier legislators knew the importance of archival record and precedent. Apparently, so does Mr. Trump; one of his first moves was to fire the head archivist of our good land.

Archives keep us honesty and just. Courts have stenographers mapping out every spoken word. Speakers are asked whether they want to be on or off the record. Formal meetings have agendas and notes. I used lots of these for putting together my dissertation!

In the earliest days of email, I was concerned about the ephemeral nature of these correspondences. Unlike my boxes and boxes of penpal letters, these ones existed only on a fleeting screen.

For a while, I printed every one. Gradually, I became more comfortable with the medium and more complacent. I am sorry to say that I lost all the emails from my grandparents (there weren’t that many, but they were precious) when I migrated away from Juno. Now, I barely print anything.

In the earlier days of email, at the beginning of business accounts, I didn’t understand why it was important to keep the two accounts separate. I prided myself on being genuine as a teacher and not having a separate teaching persona. It didn’t make sense to use multiple accounts! In my naïveté, I blundered and now I understand more about work/life balance and about professionalism.

Government workers— politicians— have legal responsibilities to keep accurate documentation of their actions. This is the fiber of the American society. We look back to the past to find our way forward, using formal methods to make amendments when the need arises. Watergate was about the destruction of these records. More recently, both Biden and Trump (in varying degrees) made headlines for removing documents that belonged to the USA and not to them. We expect our leaders to honor the record laws…and all laws, for that matter.

It has come out in the past few days that the Trump administration has been using Signal for government business. Besides this medium’s high level of encryption, which could be beneficial, it also has great ease in full erasure. The leaked military conversation from last week is now gone from Signal and only exists in screenshots. We know about it only thanks to a journalist upstander.

I would be remiss if I didn’t also add that Trump made it to the presidency in 2020 partially because he lambasted Hillary Clinton for using private email. It isn’t surprising that he and his lackeys are using private communication tools. When you are doing something illegal, you don’t want it to be on the record. You want to have control of when it disappears.

Heather Cox Richardson is a brilliant and generous history professor who has given daily reports and weekly teleconferences that have an immense following. She is able to put current events into a historical context. Let’s just say this: she is not happy about the current situation.

The post that disappeared was mostly quotations from Cory Booker’s heroic speechathon. It did not go against any Terms and Contracts. It just criticized the government, and we know whose side Meta lies on.

What’s most scary is that it is not just writing that is disappearing. People are beginning to disappear too. Just think of that poor legal immigrant father who is now mistakenly in a Salvadoran prison due to overly vigorous Immigration enforcement.

Keep records, keep in contact, and look out for one another!