surprise in the narrative
Nope the first arc is the blackswords men arc, where Griffith is explicitly named as the enemy of guts, and guts is extremely vengeful towards griffith the reader/watcher does know that something is going bad was going to happen. The Golden Age arc is just kinda written so good that most people forget/suppress it.
Its kinda like the red wedding, where is a LOT of foreshadowing (very blatant via prophecy), but more so even because its actually a very large flashback.
The sharp rock was used to try to off himself before he found the fate-drawn fell for it again behelit and because he was at his lowest point he activated it-
Or the Guano Islands Act. Like the us was formed and immediately had a foreign military adventure in north africa and then did the Monroe-doctrine together with the UK. How much more empire do you want? Maybe its about actually annexing land instead.
Its more neoliberal rot and ex-socialists countries trying to seem more attractive to investors than the current war tbh.
I mean Japan is stagnating for a while and "dying out" perfect breeding ground for fascism.
The far right turn is going to be the trend for the kids these days, huh.
Thats because kids rebel against the neoliberal hollow anti-narrative hegemonical culture ubiquitous since the 1980s. Sadly since social liberals appropriated so much social justice language - it too became seen as elitist. Not only do young people seek community, stability, and prospects for the future, they also find it much easier to accept far right recruitment (which has much more structural power behind it, AND actually had a long-term plan to restore its prevalence) because they make them "feel bad" by telling them to work on their biases & isms. Punching down seems also far more doable than destroying a global empire.
Though I do think the 90% is faked.
Amongst most of the former allies yes.
Ukrainian Nazis believe thats actually the plan.
Ever since Kurzgesagt did that whack video about SK is dying11!!!1 they actual do now - of course its more pogging at the "literally cyperpunk 2077" vibes. Most libs have evolved into pro-antitrust laws and bringing back mom & pop shops, while venerating the neo-yeoman imagery of the humble bussiness owner making his coin in the "land of opportunity".
Ironically this is a very old ideological tendency present in america and which national imagery bernhard sanders evoked.
before the mass recruitment since the start of the hot war for example were primarily russian-first language speakers
Before the war barely anyone outside the very far west of Ukraine spoke Ukrainian as a first language, even nowadays most rapid ukrainian refugees still speak russian as their first language and actually have to learn ukrainian. Using language/reported ethnicity will not give you a clear picture of how people in eastern and southern ukraine feel (like Bad Empanada claiming that because 60% something of Donbass called itself ukrainian in 2001, that means evul ruzzia is doing colonialism, mind you there is the legacy of the Ukrainian SSR and opposed to that is the NAFO SS Galicia based Ukraine and both sides use "Ukrainian" as identifier).
It would be annexed by north korea, as it should have been.