As one anonymous aphorist once joked, for the first time in history, you can say out loud, "this guy is a complete idiot," and everyone immediately knows who you’re talking about.
His stupidity is eerily reminiscent of the General Secretaries of the Communist Party in my country—men who clawed their way to power through sheer servility to the Soviets. The key requirement? An intellect so limited that they would never ask difficult questions or, heaven forbid, form independent opinions.
Dear Americans,
I have almost become accustomed to writing these pieces as letters from a woman who spent her formative years under totalitarian rule. I address you as a nation whose greatest historical weakness has been its overconfidence. I write to you as someone from a small but wealthy country—one whose natural talent and riches have been repeatedly plundered and devastated by a nation that utterly lacks self-confidence. Yes, I’m talking about the Russians.
I write to you because they occupied our country for 60 years. They stole everything of value, crushed our spirit, taught us to drink like animals, and robbed us of faith in ourselves and the future.
Look at these two pictures! This is one of our most beautiful cities in Southern Bohemia: Cesky Krumlov. This is how it looked during the Soviet occupation. And the latter is the face of the city today.
If you asked anyone else from the so-called Eastern Bloc, they would tell you a similar story. The only nation that found the strength to resist is Ukraine. Their culture is far older than Russia’s, and unlike the Russians—who compensate for their deep-seated insecurity with military conquest—the Ukrainians have no shortage of self-confidence. In this, they are much closer to you than we are. They are brave and proud of their identity.
By now, I don’t even find it necessary anymore to express shock on social media every time that idiot confuses transgenic mice (genetically engineered for lab testing) with transgender mice (because it starts with trans, and that’s a dirty prefix, isn’t it?). From the very beginning—before dementia had set in and before Adderall and cocaine had taken their toll—we in Eastern Europe suspected he was a ruler of the Soviet mold: a cruel idiot.
We know these types well. Their low self-esteem, combined with a lack of intellect and an insatiable hunger for power, makes them easy to recognize. Most of our communist leaders fit this exact profile. Their congresses were filled with long mandatory standing ovations, no matter how idiotic the General Secretary’s speech was. Red carnations were handed out afterward, and lower-ranking officials delivered obsequious speeches. Opposition was not tolerated—neither in words nor in actions. Part of this political culture was the practice of collective persuasion. Those who hadn’t yet mastered the art of sycophancy, those who made the mistake of using the wrong phrase or failing to anticipate the supreme leader’s sensitivities, learned to adjust quickly. A common phrase used to reprogram dissenters was: You’re looking at it the wrong way, comrade. You have the wrong perspective—let me tell you how our Soviet brothers see it.
Our Soviet brothers excelled at sadism, political assassinations, blackmail, and threats so well that people learned to "see things the right way" rather quickly. That’s exactly what came to mind yesterday when I saw Mike Johnson frantically clapping and nodding along, his face filled with forced enthusiasm.
At first, you resist. You can’t wrap your head around Soviet logic. You try to keep your composure in front of your wife and neighbors. But then, something inside you breaks. Your expression hardens. You get better at the theater. Eventually, you even start to enjoy it in a perverse way. Hey, you idiots, I’ve figured out how to play this game. Over time, you take pride in your own cynicism, because you realize that cynicism provides a substitute worldview—it straightens your broken spine.
If you had visited the post-Soviet bloc in the 1990s, you would have seen such deep-rooted cynicism and distrust among our nations that you might have hesitated before admitting us to NATO. Cynicism is a liver spot on the face of a subjugated nation
And now, it’s happening to you.
Mike Johnson is already proud to give a standing ovation to the feeble-minded man in the Brown House.
And in time, that cynicism will spread downward. The more people realize that it’s a method of survival, the longer totalitarianism will last.
about author
Alex Alvarova is Czech-Canadian author and communication expert.
A recognized authority in political marketing and public relations, a sought-after seminar leader, facilitator, podcaster and public speaker. In 2017 she wrote The Industry of Lies, a non-fiction work that introduces, outlines and fully supports a core concept: Russia used the 2013 presidential election in the Czech Republic as a trial run to perfect its hybrid-warfare aggression for altering the outcome of the 2016 US Presidential elections. In 2021, she published Feeding The Demons: The conquerors of America, a political thriller on behavioral propaganda. She wrote numerous expert articles on political marketing and algorithmic propaganda. Together with her co-host, expert on social media algorithms, Josef Holy, she hosts a czech podcast called Canaries In The Net, on algorithmic propaganda and AI.
Excellent article. As an old American public school teacher, I had a Swedish immigrant grandfather & Norwegian immigrant grandmother who left their relatively poor nations c. 1900 & 1911 as teens w their families to America. Their relatives, esp. in Norway, when their letters weren't pilfered by the Nazis during Occupation, told of the horrors they endured. Swedish relatives of my grandfather were so anxious after Norway was occupied, they just feared they'd be next. I grew up during the 1960s & 70s & we studied the Soviet Bloc in HS & in college. My father was a young WW2 Army 1st Lt. who led his unit w others to liberate Nazi Death Camps at the end of the War. He witnessed the atrocities as a 25-yr old man. The Croatian Camp, right over the Austrian border was the most horrific he told me when I was studying The Holocaust in HS Adv Senior World History.
Patterns of this authoritarian behavior is still with us & has now taken root in the USA. My heart is broken. How can we not make comparisons to History? So much Russian disinformation pushed by FOX News & the rise of money grubbing RW social media trolls not interested in the damage to our Nation.
Tragic. Now we have utter idiots in charge of the rest of us.
I have a friend who grew up in communist Poland , she sometimes wish she stayed there after seeing what unregulated capitalism has done to the United States. And how Poland is becoming a more people friendly government after it shed communism. She thinks this country is getting more like a communist dictatorship in the guise of capitalism.