History is something I’m concerned about losing. There are various sources for history: contemporaneous news; government documents; and personal records, such as journals, letters, and photos.
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| image found here |
But sources change more easily when they’re digital, not
physical. We don’t have a physical newspaper coming to the house anymore.
Online sources are subject to online availability. They say that anything you
put up on the internet, on social media for example, is forever. But they also
delete the Twitter account of the President of the United States for saying
things they don’t like. All the President’s direct communications to the American
people, all that history is gone—unless someone archived it along the way.
The Epoch Times did a very long (I think 16 hours)
livestream on January 6th, past midnight, and YouTube didn’t allow
it to publish. [That is possibly only for length, not content, although
yesterday YouTube demonetized all Epoch Times channels. YouTube so far provides
the best livestream features, but The Epoch Times company can no
longer make money through YouTube, and this does appear to be for not sharing
YouTube’s opinions.] I watched several hours live, but when I went back to
rewatch interviews and events, I couldn’t. Some of them were reproduced
individually on The Epoch Times website, but some of what I wanted is
gone. History as recorded was lost.
I was never on Twitter, but I often saw tweets reproduced on
other social media. Among these were President Trump’s tweeted short videos on
the afternoon of January 6th, calling for peace. I saved two on Facebook to refer to later, and also a brief recap of that same
announcement by press secretary Kayleigh McEnany; even though these were separate
from Twitter, they were removed by Facebook. People have tried telling me the
President congratulated the bad guys on breaching the capitol; I never saw any
such thing.* He only addressed the good people—the million of his supporters who
remained peaceful and outside, whom he told to go home in peace. The thing that
was against Twitter’s “community standards” was his claim that the election was
stolen, not a call for or a support of violence. If there was an additional
communication, it wasn’t included in the impeachment documents, and I have not
been able to find it captured elsewhere.
What I’m saying is, contemporaneous digital news is both impermanent
and unreliable.
Government documents are only available when the government
allows them to be. If you know already that something probably exists, you can
do a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to get it. That can be
time-consuming, possibly costly (for photocopies), and dependent on government’s
willingness.
As for personal records, this generation is less likely than
past generations to keep physical personal records, printed photos, and
handwritten letters. Even journals tend to be kept online. What of the many
people who use social media as their personal record? All those baby
milestones. All the cute things their kids say and do. They are dependent on
your keeping an account—which we learn now is totally at the discretion of Big
Tech. There are ways to archive your account. Check for videos online showing
you how. I’ve done it. But the result was an unreadable file, no photos or
images. I don’t know how to use that in any meaningful way.
Most of us by now know to back up our computers. But what
happens if you lose access to your cloud account? It’s like having your house
burn down along with all your memorabilia.
This is to say, history is something that has to be intentionally
preserved. And that isn’t as easy as it used to be. Today I’m intentionally
preserving a few US history details for future reference.
A Facebook friend put up a collection of items yesterday,
just to mark where we are at this point in history. I thought these were good
to remember:
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Gasoline is currently $2.11 per gallon in Texas.
·
Interest rates are 2.25% for a 30-year mortgage.
·
The stock market closed at 31,094, though we
have been fighting COVID for 11 months.
·
We have not had any new wars or conflicts in the
last 4 years.
·
ISIS and N Korea have been quiet.
·
The housing market is the strongest it has been
in years. Homes have appreciated at an unbelievable rate and sell well.
·
Peace deals in the Middle East were signed by 4
countries.
·
Unemployment sits at 6.7% in spite of COVID.
·
Gold $1849 / Silver $25.21 / Platinum $1,109.91.
That will give us a benchmark in the future.
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| President Donald J. Trump, giving his farewell speech on January 19, 2021 screenshot from C-SPAN |
Along those lines, President Trump gave two speeches this
week, recounting the accomplishments of his administration. This list is mostly
from the transcript of Tuesday's speech, with some slight editing:
·
We passed the largest package of tax cuts and
reforms in American history.
·
We slashed more job-killing regulations than any
administration had ever done before.
·
We fixed our broken trade deals:
o withdrew
from the horrible Trans-Pacific Partnership.
o withdrew
from the impossible Paris Climate Accord.
o renegotiated
the one-sided South Korea deal.
o replaced
NAFTA with the groundbreaking USMCA—that’s Mexico and Canada.
o imposed
historic and monumental tariffs on China; made a great new deal with China.
·
After COVID hit here and around the world, America
outperformed other countries economically because of our incredible economy that
we built.
·
We also unlocked our energy resources and became
the world’s number-one producer of oil and natural gas by far.
·
We reignited America’s job creation and achieved
record-low unemployment for African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian
Americans, women—almost everyone.
·
Incomes soared, wages boomed, the American Dream
was restored, and millions were lifted from poverty in just a few short years.
·
The stock market set one record after another,
with 148 stock market highs during this short period of time.
o boosted
the retirements and pensions of hardworking citizens.
o 401(k)s
are at a level they’ve never been at before, both before and after the
pandemic.
·
We rebuilt the American manufacturing base,
opened up thousands of new factories, and brought back the beautiful phrase:
“Made in the USA.”
·
We doubled the child tax credit and signed the
largest-ever expansion of funding for childcare and development.
·
We joined with the private sector to secure
commitments to train more than 16 million American workers for the jobs of
tomorrow.
·
We produced not one, but two COVID-19 vaccines
with record-breaking speed, and more will quickly follow. They call it a
“medical miracle.”
·
When the virus took its brutal toll on the
world’s economy, we launched the fastest economic recovery our country has ever
seen.
o We
passed nearly $4 trillion in economic relief,
o saved
or supported over 50 million jobs,
o and
slashed the unemployment rate in half.
·
We created choice and transparency in healthcare.
·
We stood up to Big Pharma, especially in our
effort to get favored-nations clauses added, which will give us the lowest
prescription drug prices anywhere in the world.
·
We passed:
o VA
Choice,
o VA
Accountability,
o Right
to Try,
o and
landmark criminal justice reform.
·
We confirmed three new justices of the United
States Supreme Court.
·
We appointed nearly 300 federal judges to
interpret our Constitution as written.
·
We achieved the most secure border in US
history.
·
We have given our brave border agents and heroic
ICE officers the tools they need to do their jobs better than they have ever
done before, and to enforce our laws and keep America safe.
o This
includes historic agreements with Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador,
o along
with more than 450 miles of powerful new wall.
·
We restored American strength at home and
American leadership abroad. The world respects us again.
·
We reclaimed our sovereignty by standing up for
America at the United Nations and withdrawing from the one-sided global deals
that never served our interests.
o NATO
countries are now paying hundreds of billions of dollars more. We were paying
the cost for the world. Now the world is helping us.
·
With nearly $3 trillion, we fully rebuilt the
American military.
o We
launched the first new branch of the United States Armed Forces in 75 years:
the Space Force.
o American
astronauts returned to space on American rockets for the first time in many,
many years.
·
We revitalized our alliances and rallied the
nations of the world to stand up to China like never before.
·
We obliterated the ISIS caliphate and ended the
wretched life of its founder and leader, al Baghdadi.
·
We stood up to the oppressive Iranian regime and
killed the world’s top terrorist, Iranian butcher Qasem Soleimani.
· We recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.
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| President Trump, signing the Abraham Accords Reuters photo found here |
·
We achieved a series of historic peace deals in
the Middle East. The Abraham Accords opened the doors to a future of peace and
harmony, not violence and bloodshed.
·
We are bringing our soldiers home.
·
I am especially proud to be the first President
in decades who has started no new wars.
·
We have reasserted the sacred idea that, in
America, the government answers to the people.
o Our
allegiance is not to special interests, corporations, or global entities;
o It’s
to our children, our citizens, and to our nation itself.
He summarizes with this:
This, I hope, will be our greatest legacy: Together, we put
the American people back in charge of our country. We restored self-government.
We restored the idea that in America no one is forgotten, because everyone
matters and everyone has a voice. We fought for the principle that every
citizen is entitled to equal dignity, equal treatment, and equal rights because
we are all made equal by God.
There was plenty of time before the election, and also
since, to heighten awareness of the dangers we’re in. Biden is starting out by
doing when he threatened to do. On day one:
·
He killed 50,000 jobs by rescinding federal
permits for the Keystone Pipeline.
·
He forces women and girls to accept biological
males in their bathrooms, dressing rooms, and private spaces.
·
He will, by executive order, place us under
control of the Paris Climate Accord—as Obama did, without congressional
approval as required for a treaty—even though we have outperformed the
agreement while not subjecting ourselves to economic hardships it unfairly
imposes on the US but not on nations like China.
·
He plans a 100-day mask mandate and economic
shutdown in response to COVID—even though most people already wear masks,
socially distance, and suffer from business closures and limitations—none of
which have stopped the spread of the virus.
·
He plans to unilaterally implement DACA, without
regard to eligibility.
·
He will impose “diversity training” in
government agencies.
·
He cancelled contracts for constructing the
border wall.
·
He got rid of the 1776 project to teach actual
American history and our founding.
Look through the list. Find one that benefits the American
people. Find one that ought to even be considered constitutional.
That’s just a partial day-one glimpse of what is to come, which
includes rewriting history, stopping free speech, and “cleansing” America of
opposing views (defined in this newspeak** as “unity”).
The records, if we can keep them, will show each and every
one of his policies leading away from freedom and toward tyranny, away from
prosperity and toward poverty, and away from civilization and toward savagery.
Being able to say “we told you so” in the wake of the
tremendous loss of our constitutional republic is not what we freedom lovers would
call satisfying. But, one thing we know from history is that God is in control.
And we know how His story ends. I am looking forward to that Great day***—which it
will be for us—rather than the Dreadful day that it is likely to be for the
tyrants and their enablers.
__________________
* Twitter has admitted the words do not incite violence or speak of violence; the claim, "The President's statements can be mobilized by different audiences, including to incite violence." As Daniel Oliver, Jr., explains in a commentary, "In other words, they admit that there's no incitement in the tweets themselves, but Trump may be removed from the public square because of how other might reasonably or unreasonably react." That standard is so arbitrary as to be simply censorship at the whim of the Big Tech provider.
** Refers to George Orwell's book 1984, in which the prevailing government statement was put out daily, called newspeak, and previous words were disposed of, instantly rewriting history.
*** Malachi 4:5 "before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord."
