The Dems’ Potemkin Villages

In politics and economics, a Potemkin village is a construction (literal or figurative) whose purpose is to provide an external façade to a situation, thereby disguising or hiding an undesirable reality. Named after a Russian statesman and nobleman who lived during the reign of Catherine the Great, Potemkin was one of Catherine’s lovers and wanted to impress her when she toured Crimean lands that Potemkin had helped to conquer. He therefore set up fake “villages” including enthusiastic hired “peasants” lining the road to greet the nobility. A more modern example in Soviet Russia was the presentation of Soviet prisons to foreign visitors as models for humane treatment of the prison population, when in fact the real prisons were anything but. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago provides convincing evidence of how horrible the Soviet prisons really were.

Today’s Democrats have constructed numerous Potemkin villages – from Barack Obama’s Greek columns meant to elevate him as the country’s savior, to selling Joe Biden as a moderate uniter, to Kamala Harris’s makeover from failed and unpopular vice president to desirable presidential candidate, and many others. Given their utter lack of transparency and propensity to blame Republicans and Trump in particular for every mistake or failure, it’s no longer a stretch to view Democrats as a Marxist party bent on the same one-party rule that dominated the old Soviet Union and illegitimately dominates Venezuela today. In such a situation, the party in power becomes increasingly bold in lying about their accomplishments and the supposed evils their opposition represents. For instance, Biden’s outrageous claim that the inflation rate was 9 percent when he took office – demonstrably false by a long shot, but only challenged in the mainstream press when they worked with the party to force him out the reelection door. Add to that his current efforts to change the composition and governing of the Supreme Court, simply because they’ve made a few rulings against his wishes. 

The Dems’ mantra of Trump being an “existential threat to democracy” echoes false threats of “American imperialism” by the Soviets to justify their takeover and domination of Eastern Europe after World War II, and Fidel Castro’s meddling in South and Central American affairs to promote Communist takeovers. And currently, social media is working hand-in-glove with the political leaders to promote Harris and all things Democrat this election season, while dismissing or lying about the Trump/Vance ticket. For instance, Google has eliminated the Trump assassination attempt from its search engine, which is a chilling indicator that finding out more truth about this ugly blot on our recent history is verboten in the eyes of those who govern us.

When in a situation where a political movement or party is planning or engaging in a hostile takeover, those desiring ultimate power count on the gullibility of the public and their reluctance to believe that the party is acting with malevolent intent. I’ve noticed that some conservative commentators, like Clay Travis and Buck Sexton, have taken off the gloves and call the Democrats what they are – modern-day Marxists bent on one-party rule. And although Trump has invited some of the criticism directed at him as a “wannabe” dictator by quotes that are interpreted as such, I’ve no doubt that if Ron DeSantis was the nominee, much of the same invective would be trained on him. It isn’t just that the “mainstream” press is in the tank for Democrats – it’s that they no longer try to hide their contempt for any conservative or Republican position. But they also repeat with gusto the apparent marching orders from the powers-that-be on what each day’s talking points and buzzwords will be. And each pro-Democrat network will unashamedly and arrogantly spout identical lies and buzzwords designed to make the Dems look good and Republicans look evil and out-of-touch by comparison. It seems like those who watch CNN and MSNBC regularly would take notice of this practice and wonder why the language at both networks is word-for-word identical, regardless of whose mouth it comes from. Shouldn’t there be at least some minor differences in the language used to create the idea, however falsely, that there is some independent thought going on?

I would recommend everyone reference Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, since the rules provide a template for much of what today’s Democrats put into practice – for example, finding a target (Trump) and personalizing and polarizing the target through relentless lies, exaggerations, and accusations that the target is doing the evil things that the Alinskyites themselves are engaging in. Reading through his 13 rules, it’s uncanny how much today’s Democrats have put these rules to use in advancing their agenda. This is what we conservatives are up against, and it’s truly frightening only if we allow them to stay on the offensive.