The Signal App Magic Trick

The Art of Turning Something Into Nothing

*This post is written in response to a recent chilling essay about the Trump administration’s destruction of the Freedom of Information Act—which appeared on the website: Closer To The Edge, and was entitled, “NOTHING TO FOIA HERE”.

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…Project 2025 (the plan for destroying democracy) was something all politicians of consequence, both Dems and Repubs, knew about; but it’s existence didn't seem to make much of a dent when the Democrats made a big deal about it during the recent (now seemingly ancient) presidential election campaign. Project 2525—the voting public seemed to think it was all just knee-jerk liberal hysteria or Trump Derangement Syndrome (typically a sure sign of normalcy). At the very least, Project 2025—and the Democrats’ repetitive reference to it—seemed BORING because it contained a whole lot of real printed facts (yawn). And as Trump knows better than anyone, more voters prefer him and his assorted jesters' vaudeville acts than anything resembling actual reality...

The impending death of FOIA was/is part of a much larger, well-thought-out authoritarian plan. As a perfect example, the recent—and apparently common—use of the Signal App for high-level government conversations is a symbol of how it all works. Signal has a self-destruct function. You can program any conversation to disappear in a couple of hours or a couple of weeks; the point being that once it goes, no matter how crazy or illegal the discussion/chat might have been, it’s gone forever, “I never said that—prove it!” You can’t because it’s been erased.

FOIA was always based on the commonly accepted understanding that when a citizen or media group requested information from their government, their government was bound to supply it. How cute! How quaint! What a charming, if ridiculous, relic from the past!

This assumption—that our government should keep records and produce them when asked—was always, like the very existence of democracy itself, a fragile concept/enterprise; it always required a constantly renewing focus by American citizens for it all to work.
If, as in The-Year-of-Our-Trump 2025, most Americans are obsessed with—and fatally diverted by—one of the thousand grinning heads of the Great Entertainment Monster (especially as personified by Trump) then then the theft of all their rights (like the destruction of FOIA) will just seem like another flashy TV show or videogame ... When Trump lectured Zelensky and told him that he didn't have the cards he needed to negotiate, Zelensky said, "I'm not playing cards."

The more I hear about all this, the more I marvel at how much Trump resembles Hitler. Hitler, too, and Goebbels, his minister of "information,” knew that bread and circuses (our modern podcasts, videogames, and TV shows) would hypnotize the masses of low-information voters—turn them into mobs of malleable, screaming fools.
(Now I hear that Trump wants a full military parade on his birthday—replete with artillery pieces and tanks, goose-stepping troops and jets flying overhead! What are the odds that he gets it?)

To the point; Hitler also instructed his inner circle not to keep records of his conversations. He, like Trump—like any mob boss—took it for granted that they all knew what he wanted and would carry out his wishes—expressed or unexpressed—without having to ask. Trump, famously, said that he had NO IDEA what Project 2025 was; maybe he didn't—the instinct to destroy freedom and democracy probably just came naturally to him; and besides, he doesn't read anything longer than a tweet.

Here's a final thought... In the beginning Hitler worried that there would be a record of his criminal plans because he was still concerned that the world, if they knew what he was up to, would band together and stop him. But he stopped worrying when he had successfully gotten away with the destruction of German democracy, built up his army and watched as Europe caved into everything he asked; then he was free to invade the rest of Europe and carry out the mass-murder of tens of millions of people. Maybe Trump and his nasty crew of thieves and liars are still worried that the public will hold them to account for their criminal excesses; that the press is still doing its job, that the midterms actually mean something, that the courts still might retain any legitimacy, that there’s still a sense of shame or responsibility… But—as is increasingly obvious—the time is fast approaching when Trump and his gang will cease to worry about violating the rules of American Democracy.