The events of the past few weeks would have fit in with 1980s U.S.S.R.
Growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, the Soviet Union was the biggest fear we had. It was assumed that every Soviet soldier looked like Dolph Lundgren from Rocky IV. We also assumed that every day the Soviet Union thought how it could bomb the US out of existence. The USSR was the epitome of evil in our eyes, and its formal demise in 1991 was considered to be a great historical event.
In that period, one would not have imagined that communist groupthink and lies would become so prevalent in the United States. But what we have witnessed in the past few weeks could have come from a Soviet propaganda film or Pravda article.
*A former president was nearly assassinated. Our modern-day Pravdas, the purveyors of information, made the event disappear. From Google and Facebook, with their billions of users, one would never have known that an attempt on Donald Trump’s life had been made. Google got rid of the search term “Donald Trump assassination” while Facebook made the iconic picture of the indomitable former president under the American flag vanish. When caught, Facebook performed its standard shtick, claiming that the removal of the picture was “an error”.
In the Soviet Union, information was very closely controlled. One could not say a word against Stalin until Kruschev formally denounced him and his policy of gulags and murder. Information from outside the USSR was very hard to come by, and at all times, the regime’s enemies were portrayed in a negative light. The US was always presented as a bellicose colonialist, while the Soviets were described as peace-loving people.
*A bloodless coup led to Joe Biden’s ouster from the 2024 presidential race. The events appear to involve Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and other aging leaders of the party threatening Biden with his immediate 25th Amendment ouster as president if he did not agree to end his run for president. The recipient of 14 million primary votes quit and threw his lot with his vice president, a person who has never received a single primary vote in her favor.
Nikita Kruschev went one weekend to his dacha, only to find upon his return that Leonid Breshnev had maneuvered him out of his job as the leader of the politburo. Kruschev’s son recounted his father throwing his briefcase and swearing like a true Russian after he realized that a coup against him had worked and that he was no longer the leader of the USSR.
*The press has turned on a dime to tell us how amazing, wonderful, incredible, and brilliant Kamala Harris is. Her relationships that got her into politics are forgotten as are her tasks like “border czar” where she failed miserably. Her unintelligible word salads are now portrayed as brilliant speeches, beyond the understanding of mere mortals like us. The press has done everything to build up the empty resume of the current Democratic nominee.
The Soviet press invariably spoke in glowing terms about the current leader. A butcher like Stalin or a more pragmatic statesman like Gorbachev always had the press’ backing to stress how incredibly smart and talented the state leader was. Enemies of the state were treated like Donald Trump—denounced and accused of every failing and crime imaginable. The press’ role in keeping the communists in power cannot be overstated.
*The situation for many Americans is getting worse. Whether due to continued high inflation or illegal aliens destroying towns and cities, Americans' lives are worse today than they once were. Most people asked if their lives are better today than they were four years ago answer in the negative.
The Soviet economy was infamous for its lack of everything. I saw one video of Gorbachev begging the people to give him time with his “reforms”; their comment was that there was nothing in the stores to buy. Bread lines were common, and I once heard one fellow speak of traveling with his mother to a city two hours away by bus: there, they had meat, and his mother took him there to buy some. As they used to say, “They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work.”
*The head of the FBI wondered in front of Congress if Donald Trump had been hit by a bullet or some shrapnel from say a teleprompter. The same FBI routinely arrests conservative citizens, from those who pray near abortion clinics to those who walked through the Capitol on January 6th, 2021 but did no damage. Even those outside of the Capitol building on that day have been harassed. The FBI has become the personal Stasi of the Democratic leadership.
The similar three-lettered KGB existed to torment the regime’s political enemies. From nocturnal knocks on the door to people being bundled into moving cars on the streets of Moscow, the KGB and its predecessor NKVD were the muscle to keep an unpopular, unrepresentative and unsuccessful government in power. As the Christopher Wray of that period, Lavrentiy Beria, said, “Show me the man, and I’ll show you his crime.”
The Vapors had a song, Turning Japanese. I think that today’s America might just start singing Turning Soviet.