Not that it makes any difference now, but I still sometimes wonder if people knew then what was about to happen, would they have responded differently? Obviously we’ll never know. I like to believe they would have, but then I remember what America had transformed into by that point. Even if people had wanted to react, what could they have done? And when I do, it makes me … it makes me so very sad that young people will never understand or appreciate what was lost.

Wrightman waited only a few days before utilizing these new wartime powers. It was Trump who had initially attacked social media—Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, WeChat, and Pinterest—claiming they were being used against him by his political enemies. Without evidence he accused them of censoring right-wing posts—and naturally his followers believed him. In fact, the evidence is just the opposite: members of right-wing fringe groups actually had found each other on Facebook.

Wrightman understood the capabilities of media hubs to bring together people, reinforce their anger, and allow them to coordinate events. In this case, people who might oppose him. To prevent that from happening, with minimal public disclosure, Homeland Security alerted each of the social media platforms that the anti-American activities being planned on their sites constituted “a clear and present danger to public safety” and ordered them to “take any and all steps necessary” to prevent those activities. It was not a subtle threat: You censor your site or we will. There was no public announcement, but suddenly protest organizers saw posts removed or rejected.

I had long been active on all of those platforms; to me they were just as essential as reading the daily newspapers. RollingStone467@writerman—that’s me. More accurately, it was me. I didn’t post very often, although I did share funny animal videos when I thought people needed to see goats and giraffes bonding or a bear pushing a man in a wheelchair. I sent birthday and celebratory wishes and participated in Nats player debates, but as a journalist I kept my political opinions to myself. Well, actually myself and the almost million regular readers of the Pro. I barely noticed several “cyber-friends” disappearing. These were people I had been silently following because their opinions, whether or not I agreed with them, allowed me to get a sense of the public pulse. Suddenly they weren’t posting anymore. At the time I didn’t think much about it, but now I realize this was the first cyber-roundup.

(The good news was that, at least judging by the posts I did continue to receive, that the government did not think additional credit cards, Wrightman bobblehead dolls, or generic little blue pills posed a threat to the general order.)

As protests were successfully defused, White House surrogates continually reassured Americans that this “purely technical legislation” would not impact their daily lives—but would make them considerably safer. Proud grandmother-to-be Charisma Wrightman went on The View and told a dubious Whoopi that most Americans wouldn’t notice any differences, describing it as that kind of great deal in which you trade something you never use, “something that was up in the attic that you even forgot was there,” for a brand-new toaster oven. Then the panel bantered pleasantly about her first grandchild.