Existing comment:
11 MINUTES
On November 2, 2017, at 6:49 P.M., ET, President Trump's Twitter account vanished. The mysterious deactivation lasted only until 7:00pm, but that was all it took to shatter a nation.
The day had begun like any other. In our nation's capital, citizens walked briskly across the Mall, their collars pulled up against the cold autumn wind as they gazed into a pale blue sky. We assume it was pale and blue. We couldn't really figure out how to google what the weather was like that day. But the probable seasonally appropriate chill in the air mirrored a greater chill to come. As the news spread around the world, disbelief turned to confusion, then shock, then dinner. By the time @realDonaldTrump was reactivated at 7:00 P.M., a disoriented America had stumbled untethered to its president for the better part of a quarter-hour.
We will never know for sure who or what caused Trump's account to go dark. One theory holds that a departing Twitter employee shut it down on his last day at work, since multiple sources identified him and he confirmed the story himself. But others suggest that we must look deeper, to man's aeons-old impulse to seek comfort in the shadows of ignorance. In this interpretation, we all are guilty, both in a moral sense and under all applicable state and federal laws.
The lasting tragedy of the Great Deactivation is that we will never know the damage's true extent. What tweetable thoughts crossed Donald Trump's mind? What transformative ideas or hot, fresh insults might have changed the course of world affairs? That wisdom is lost forever, because the sad fact is, during those terrible 11 minutes, Trump could compose no tweets. None.
#NoneEleven. |