When I see shit like this I'm painfully reminded of this article

How We Sold Soviet Union And Czechoslovakia For Plastic Shopping Bags

Both represented something essential in the Communist planning, a system that you were taught, by the Western propagandists, to hate.

Leningrad is one of the most stunning cities in the world, with some of the greatest museums, opera and ballet theatres, public spaces. In the past, it used to be the Russian capital.

Pilsen is tiny, with only 180.000 inhabitants. But when I was a kid, it counted with several excellent libraries, art cinemas, an opera house, avant-garde theatres, art galleries, research zoo, with things that could not be, as I realized later (when it was too late), found even in the U.S. cities of one million.

Life was good, meaningful. It was rich. Not rich in terms of money, but rich culturally, intellectually, and health-wise. To be young was fun, with knowledge free and easily accessible, with the culture at every corner, and sports for everyone. The pace was slow: plenty of time to think, learn, analyze.

But, it was also the height of the Cold War.

We were young, rebellious, and easy to manipulate. We were never satisfied with what we were given. We took for granted everything. At night, we were glued to our radio receivers, listening to the BBC, Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and other broadcasting services aiming at discrediting socialism and all countries which were fighting against Western imperialism.

Czech socialist industrial conglomerates were building, in solidarity, entire factories, from steel to sugar mills, in Asian, Middle East, and Africa. But we saw no glory in this because Western propaganda outlets were simply ridiculing such undertakings.

Our cinemas were showing masterpieces of Italian, French, Soviet, Japanese cinema. But we were told to demand junk from the U.S.

Music offering was great, from live to recorded. Almost all music was, actually, available although with some delay, in local stores or even on stage. What was not sold in our stores was nihilist rubbish. But that was precisely what we were told to desire. And we did desire it, and copied it with religious reverence, on our tape recorders. If something was not available, the Western media outlets were shouting that it is a gross violation of free speech.

They knew, and they still know now, how to manipulate young brains.

At some point, we were converted into young pessimists, criticizing everything in our countries, without comparing, without even a tiny bit of objectivity.

Does it sound familiar?

We were told, and we repeated: everything in the Soviet Union or Czechoslovakia was bad. Everything in the West was great. Yes, it was like some fundamentalist religion or mass-madness. Hardly anyone was immune. Actually, we were infected, we were sick, turned into idiots.

We were using public, socialist facilities, from libraries to theatres, subsidized cafes, to glorify West and smear our own nations. This is how we were indoctrinated, by Western radio and television stations, and by publications smuggled into the countries.

In those days, plastic shopping bags from the West became the status symbols! You know, those bags that you get in some cheap supermarkets or department stores.

When I think about it at a distance of several decades, I can hardly believe it: young educated boys and girls, proudly walking down the streets, exhibiting cheap plastic shopping bags, for which they paid a serious amount of money. Because they came from the West. Because they were symbolizing consumerism! Because we were told that consumerism is good.

In many ways, we were much freer than the West. I realized it when I first arrived in New York and saw how badly educated were local kids of my age, how shallow was their knowledge of the world. How little culture there was, in regular mid-sized North American cities.

Two wonderful countries which used to be my home were betrayed, literally sold for nothing, for pairs of designer jeans, and plastic shopping bags.