Václav Havel’s The Memo is a biting, darkly comic satire of bureaucracy run amok. When a mysterious new language—Ptydepe—is imposed on an unsuspecting government office, chaos ensues as employees scramble to understand, implement, and justify its absurd logic. In this DOGE-ean farce, efficiency becomes a weapon, language is twisted into nonsense, and the very notion of communication is lost in translation. Written during Havel’s years under Czechoslovakia’s communist regime, The Memo skewers authoritarian control and the soul-crushing machinery of institutional power with wit, precision, and an unsettling resonance all to recognizable in Trump’s America.