JUST A BUCK, TRY YOUR LUCK: Yes, Newsweek Really DID Say That Out Loud…

Did you take the red pill of the blue pill?

If you took the red pill, you would be forced to live in the real world where things are messy, the truth is hard to swallow, and you are condemned to live in freedom with all its pains and pleasures.

If you take the blue pill, you can live in blissful ignorance of the fact that you are a slave totally manipulated by people indifferent to your well-being and your fate.

Newsweek chose the blue pill.

Ukraine is Schrödinger’s democracy. As long as we don’t measure whether Zelenskyy is democratically supported by his population, we can pretend that he is the legitimately elected leader of a democratic regime.

Zelenskyy was legitimately elected, but his term was to have expired last year. He is currently empowered by martial law to remain in power, and implicitly by the fact that the US government pays all Ukraine’s bills, including the salaries of the government, the budget for the military, the pensions, the media, the…everything. Zelenskyy is an American satrap.

I am not saying that to insult Zelenskyy. It is simply a fact. You may even think it is a good thing, and I certainly think that the current situation is at least better than having Putin own the whole damn country.

But this is not “democracy.” Any argument that it is is a joke.

To be fair, Newsweek did admit in 2023: “Ukraine Sure Doesn’t Look Like a Democracy Anymore.”

Democracies do not ban opposition parties. The fact that so many such parties ever existed says something about the level of opposition faced by the Ukrainian nationalist government that came to power after the 2014 revolution. Then in May of 2022, the Ukrainian parliament passed a law formally banning all these parties. President Volodymyr Zelensky signed the law. The list included the Opposition Platform for Life, which had held fully 10 percent of the seats in parliament. Among the 11 banned parties are the Socialist Party of Ukraine, the Progressive Socialist Party of the Ukraine, the Union of Left Forces, and the Communist Party of Ukraine.

Democracies do not ban elections, but Ukraine has put the democratic process itself on hold since declaring martial law in 2022. This hiatus was supposed to be temporary, but it has been repeatedly extended, most recently in July 2023. As a result of that vote in the Ukrainian parliament, where all opposition parties have been removed, the parliamentary elections scheduled for last month were canceled. Presidential elections were scheduled for March 2024, but under current rules they too will not be held, and Zelensky has stated that “now is not the time for elections.”

Like Ron Burgundy and the teleprompter, the editors at the zombie post-Washington Post Newsweek will seemingly run anything its writers put into WordPress.

Related: I don’t care, Volodymyr: J.D. Vance Warns Zelensky Over ‘Disgraceful’ Public Attacks on Trump, Confirms Ukrainian Elections Are Now U.S. Policy.

Elections in Ukraine are now U.S. policy, with Vance making it clear that Zelensky must submit to a democratic mandate if he wants continued legitimacy. “Certainly, that would give him the strongest position, Raheem,” Vance said when asked if elections were necessary. “And I think that it’s a little rich for some of our European friends to attack Donald Trump for suggesting that Ukraine should have elections when they say that this is a war for democracy. How can you attack elections when your entire framing for the war in Ukraine is that it’s a war for democracy? I just think it’s ridiculous. And, of course, the United States had a civil war. We had an election in, of course, at the, at the end of as scheduled. You know, Churchill found out that he lost. As I understand it, he found out that he lost the British election at Potsdam.”

Vance, fresh from his European trip, where he lectured European leaders on free speech and matters of conscience, hit them again in our exclusive interview for their hypocrisy on democracy, questioning their insistence on blocking elections.

“The idea that you cannot have elections in the midst of a war is, I think, kind of a preposterous idea. And the President has made very clear that he thinks that should happen. So, you know, that is, that is American policy. And I think it’s. It’s pretty simple and straightforward.”

Indeed.