Did you take the red pill or 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.

There are concerns that the Ukrainian president could be voted out of office if the country holds an election. https://t.co/7ZudoHmKZf

— Newsweek (@Newsweek) February 19, 2025

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. 

USAID funded the vast majority of 'independent' media in Ukraine. What American taxpayers don't realize is that their money went to suppressing the truth.

Wild reporting here by @TanyaLukyanova_ in @thefp:https://t.co/7zp7WQguWE

— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) February 19, 2025

Now, I don't know whether Vladimir Zelenskyy would win an election in Ukraine if it were held today, and neither does anybody else. I wouldn't rule it out, although as the Free Press article linked above shows, the news we are getting out of the country is paid propaganda funded by USAID. None of it is real.

Zelenskyy has goon squads kidnapping and torturing people to make them go to the front. He is arresting and beating reporters for telling people this. Using our tax dollars. Our tax dollars are being used to suppress that fact because the transnational elite wants that war to go on seemingly forever. 

It is within the realm of possibility that some people in Ukraine might object to that and want a different leader or even want the killing to stop. An election might give us insight into this question, you might think. 

But, as Newsweek points out, "there are concerns that the Ukrainian president might be voted out of office if the country holds an election."

So I guess that the best path forward to preserve democracy there shouldn't be an election. 

If you took the blue pill, this makes perfect sense. The only way to preserve democracy is to ensure that the technocrats who know better get to decide everything and the proles be told what to do. 

If you take the red pill, you are forced to deal with reality. Putin is a bad guy. Zelenskyy is an American puppet. Ukraine is a money laundering operation for the transnational elite. Nobody's hands are clean. 

I don't hate Zelenskyy. He is what he is, and if I had to choose between him and Putin, I would choose him. But really, if we are going to debate how best to resolve the Ukraine war, let's put all the cards on the table. This is not a war for democracy. Ukraine is not some pristine example of a free people fighting for truth, justice, and the American way. 

This is a proxy war between empires, and over a million people have died for basically nothing. Putin lost in the first weeks of the war when he failed to take Kyiv. Everything since has been mindless bloodletting. 

Crimea is gone and has been for a decade. The eastern provinces will not be retaken. $300 billion has flowed into Ukraine, and the frontlines have barely budged. Nobody has a plan to win, and I am pretty sure that's just fine with the people pushing for forever war. 

Newsweek and our elites are "concerned" that people might have a say in their future. That they might vote to end the dying and destruction. 

I am concerned that they don't have a say right now.