In Stalin’s Russia there was something called the Great Soviet Encyclopedia. You couldn’t buy one. You could only access it in libraries, where your name was recorded. Also, it was loose-leaf. Periodically new pages were issued, and the old ones destroyed. The saying was that the future is known, it was the past that kept changing.

Say that Vladimir Kakapopoff was a powerful member of the Central Committee. He got a full page, listing his virtues and achievements. But then say he fell out of favor. They issued a new page, with only a paragraph for Kakapopoff, and the rest occupied by an article on Kazakhstan. Finally poor Kakapopoff was sent to Siberia and liquidated. The page now omitted all mention of him. He had quite literally disappeared, both physically and from memory.

But, you see, this took a great deal of printing, removing, and tearing up. I don’t know if they had shredders. How much Stalin would have loved modern technology. No need to print new pages and destroy the old ones. No worry that someone had kept some of the removed pages. Just order Google to change the entry.

Don’t want people to remember that Trump was shot in the head and came within 1 or 2 centimeters of having his brain splattered over the three front rows? Just tell Google to remove most references to the almost-assassination, and move those remaining to page two or three.

Don’t want people to remember that Kamala Harris was called the most liberal senator, even to the left of Bernie Sanders? Don’t want people to remember that she was called “border czar” for years? Don’t want people to recall she was a “prosecutor,” but in San Francisco, city of street crime, homelessness, and needles on the sidewalk. Tell Google to do the same. Works like a charm.

If you don’t know where you come from, you don’t know who you are. If you don’t know what happened, you don’t know what to do. You are a prisoner of the elite who control information. Now playing.