Posted on 08/25/2026 4:53:02 AM PDT by Ciaphas Cain
The ad begins with a poor Russian peon, bundled up for the harsh winter, cautiously asking a stern sentry about what he is guarding.
“Is toilet paper.”
“Is good?”
“Is cheap,” replies the soldier.
The word spreads down the ranks of the people standing in line at the store. “Cheap toilet paper!” they say in astonished turn. One gets his hands on some: it bends and folds, as if it’s not toilet “paper” at all but lengths of semi-raw wood pulp.
For some reason that television commercial from the mid-’80s has come to mind quite a lot lately. It was played for laughs. But it was based in a very tragic reality, one that most people in the free world readily grasped. The Soviet citizenry, for all of the power that their government boasted of having, were utterly miserable. Toilet paper and nearly every comfort enjoyed by their Western counterparts were in dire shortage. Including food in its usually sumptuous variety.
How we laughed at the sight of all those people, in lines stretching out the building and down the block, waiting to get inside GUM—Moscow’s biggest department store—because rumor had hit the street that a shipment of canned potatoes or new stockings had come in.
For all of the fear of World War III that many of us in America harbored, we also understood fully well that “they” were in fact quite a pathetic lot. The Soviet people wanted for canned goods and toilet paper, but it was an open secret that their leadership abounded in such luxuries and more. They were a people who nobody in their right mind would ever dare dream of emulating. How did the Russians get into such dire straits to begin with, anyway?
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
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Nice piece.
If I were you I would be preparing outlines on communism for the opening of Cuba, if that happens we will get a fresh raw look into communism with video and interviews with Cubans with shortages, decayed buildings and all the rest on the evening news, it will be a great opportunity for anti-communist writers to be putting out articles with good effect when the images are fresh and new and current.
Experience
Education
By definition, young people have limited experience and an incomplete education.
WHAT on earth can any one of them tell ME about making political choices??
Loved it. We are wholly simpatico on this...not that I needed to read your article to know that.
"...“But it will be different this time! It hasn’t been tried correctly!” That’s been the rationale for bringing about socialism since the beginning. And the Millennials, the Alphas, whoever the youngsters are, they simply don’t understand that it has been tried. Many times. It has never succeeded. More than a hundred million dead people can attest that communism … all socialism really … is a monstrous failure...."
You hit the nail on the head with this essay, and specifically with this paragraph above.
Socialism (which is only an inconvenient yet temporary stop on the way to full communism, as admitted openly and factually by both Marx and Lenin) is a con game.
It is the political expression of a perpetual motion machine and a Ponzi scheme. Interestingly, it is more like a Ponzi scheme, in that everyone who gets in early on it expects to be part of the ruling class, and that is often true.
What they don't say in comparison to a Ponzi scheme is that unlike a Ponzi scheme, many of the ones who get in on the top not only have their money taken away and are ejected from the inner circle, they often get a bullet in the neck as part of their Faustian Bargain.
Of course, in extending this comparison, none of the Useful Idiots and Full Suckers ever get any money to begin with, so they not only lose money they had, many of them also gratuitously get a bullet to the neck for their trouble...just because.
Excellent essay-well done, FRiend!
He related a shopping experience he had while in East Germany or stationed in Russia, I do not recall which.
A shipment of Italian dress shoes came to the local Government Market. People were amazed lined up and they bought them even if they could not find any their size. They would then hold it as something to trade or barter.
The shoes worked well until it rained. He said that you would be walking down the rainy street and you would see the soggy sole of a shoe. A little further you would see another one.
Some unscrupulous Italian company sold a shipment of stylish shoes that were intended to be sold to Undertakers and displayed on the feet of the dead at their funerals. All the soles were made of cardboard with a nice finished surface. Wear them in the rain and they melted off.
You only have things like this where the central support of Communism, the controlled economy, fails due to lack of foresight, lack of basic materials, lack of production facilities, and of trained workers.
Communism is Idealistic and shiny, but in reality its all external, like these shoes, a basic necessity, a system that falls apart when actually used.
Young people today are seeing half million dollar homes they'll never be able to afford, cars (even used) priced through roof, astronomical utility bills... Meanwhile, Shaniqua, Jarpreet, Achmed, and Abuelita are getting free housing (Section 8), free medical care (Medicaid), free food (SNAP, WIC), free walking around money (TANF, EBT), zero interest small business loans, college scholarships, bus passes, and an endless number of other government gibs that us normies don't even know about.
And here we are, older Gen-X'ers, "Communism is bad. Just work harder!"
Thank you :-)
Thank you for those very kind words :-)
That’s a great story. I’m going to remember that one.
I agree, crush them, do not give them the least wiggle room. Communism is evil, it is a souless system that kills.
Also can not overlook the dying to be kind mindset they have been immersed in. Overdrive empathy, overriding their survival instincts.
It mentions Madmani. As long as that name is brought into the essay you might mention that other great evil growing like a cancer on American land: Islam.
Tell me, do writers do outlines of articles when they think an event is in the near future, so that they will already have much of the research and preparation done, for example a sudden collapse of and opening up of Cuba?
True...Growing up, I have a friend whose family escape Cuba in 2012 and we had a friend who came from Haiti. They are even more Conservative than I am...
That might be the subject of the next piece that I write.
I can’t speak for most other writers but for me, there is often an “outline” of sorts percolating in my mind. When such an occasion warrants fully composing an essay about it, much of the work is already done. But I rarely write it out.
My interest in Communism and how it insinuates it into free societies has been an amateur historical interest of mine, particularly the era from 1925 to 1955.
I dictate books for Libriox, a depository for free audiobook recordings on books that have no copyright protection, and "The Naked Communist" by W. Cleon Skousen is one of those. Link to Download: Direct Librivox download Link to "The Naked Communist
I started a thread on it at: LINK TO FREE REPUBLIC THREAD: Free Audiobook Available for Download: "The Naked Communist" by W. Cleon Skousen
It is one of the best books on this subject, having been written contemporaneously with the active threat at the time, but I suspect you know of it.
It deals in great depth with the con game that is Socialism (Communism) and right up your alley.
Yes-I am currently listening to “Suicidal Empathy” by Gad Saad...VERY relevant.
No kidding.
I had a boss whose wife came over from Cuba when she was 12 (back in the early Sixties...I thought maybe 1962 before the missile crisis) and my gosh, the level of bitter and dark hate she felt for Cuban Communists was remarkable.
She was extremely conservative, and the mention of Fidel Castro’s name was enough to make her nearly spit on the floor in her own house.
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