Martial law was not enacted via self-coup.

Martial Law was written into the Constitution by a billionaire Oligarch and his corrupt friends, specifically so he could leverage the fighting in the Donbas to secure his position indefinitely.

The Ukrainian executive did not wake up one nice morning, realize it had some kewl powers and thought let’s enact martial law

He needed an excuse to consolidate power, just like every other successful dictator.

Given that the Roman Republic lasted for something like 480 years

Half a millennia of near endless military conquests and civil wars. What’s not to love?

Why is martial law currently in effect buddy?

Because your liberal reformists consolidated enormous powers in the executive branch. Again.

You keep giving governments the ability to end elections and entrench themselves indefinitely. That’s exactly what it will do, every time.

But your absolute confidence that it hasn’t happened

Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Proof

Romans extraordinarily appointed someone to have full authority to resolve a specific problem, such as when a serious threat the the state was present.

And how’d that work out?

The Ukrainian constitution says no elections while war.

While in a state of martial law. A constitution re-written as recently as 2015, the year following Ukrainian Oligarch Petro Poroshenko’s ascension to power.

You’re witnessing the end stages of the collapse of democracy in the country under a set of rules authorized barely a decade ago.

You think he’s chromosome-testing every trafficked woman on his private jets?

I don’t think it matters in any meaningful way. You’re pointing to court gossip like it affects national policy.

I bet Putin has video of Trump banging a guy

This is such a bizarre take, given that we have mountains of compromat released through the Epstein files, plus all his sex scandals dating back to the 1970s. None of them indicate that

a) He’s sexually attracted to men

or

b) Revealing any amount of his habitual pedophilia of women affects how he governs

Trump isn’t hard to control. Anyone and everyone with two shillings to rub together has been able to bribe him. But liberals need to believe he’s a closeted homosexual for some reason.

I mean, First Blood was loosely based on real-life World War II veteran Audie Murphy’s struggles with PTSD. And it was further informed by the deplorable treatment of protesters at the hands of local police and national guard - many of them returning veterans - during the Vietnam War. The original novel was intended to juxtapose this initial horrifying abuse of a homeless American veteran with the events happening half a world away by a US-sponsored dictatorship.

But reactionaries always forget the first film and fixate on the next four, because it lets Rambo embody the mythological special forces superhuman rather than the Vietcong revolutionary resisting imperial oppression.

Americans are bifurcated between “people who want to nuke Moscow” and “people who think Stepan Bandera didn’t go far enough”.

But just like with Vietnam, there’s vanishingly little compassion afforded anyone in the region. It’s all just “I hope more of the other team dies”

It’s called dictatorship

Zelensky eats out of his hand

I get European as a status symbol

All comes down to marketing. You think European products are a status symbol because LVMH spends enormous sums to convince you of their quality. American firms do the same thing in China.

I associate American goods with ruggedness, cool, or cheap.

Speaks to your media consumption habits. I’ve always associated American goods with hip hop and street art. But I’m also bombarded with images of kids in track suits and giant hair doing kick-flips while downing soda. Or bohemian-types rolling up to a drive through in a top-down convertible while belting out pop music.

But it’s all just image. None of it is material.

“They’re going to steal the elections so we cancelled them” will be Trump’s go-to in a couple of months.

Let’s hope

surrounded by people who whould absolutely love to acquire your position by all means

You think the third generational decedent of a national hero is going to be toppled by his most fiercely loyal family friends?

If the Kim family could have been pushed out by coup within the military, the CIA would have financed that shit 40 years ago.

The National Intelligence Service (NIS) said it took a “range of circumstances” into account including her increasingly prominent public presence at official events" in making this assessment.

Coup what shit? This speculation seven layers deep.

Tesla out spends them on marketing. And Chinese consumers continue to be as big a bunch of suckers for the All American Status Symbol as everyone else in the world.

Still won’t save them from other luxury EVs flooding the market. Or the repeated bad press they get when their shitty vehicles malfunction.

But you can carry a lot of water just by blasting people’s eyeballs with marketing material.

Love a permanent state of exception.

Concentration camps

Curious how no major mainstream publication is talking about this. Almost as though the major media outlets are complicit in keeping the President - a notorious cable news hog - in the dark.