“Unmasking Disappointment: Series VII”

April 22, 2026

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“Geometric Allegory” digital painting *2023* by Ricardo Morin (American visual artist born in Venezuela–1954)

Ricardo F. Morín

January 12, 2026

Oakland Park, Fl

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Author’s Note

This installment examines how ideological labels, liberal, socialist, democratic, are deployed as instruments of alignment rather than as enforceable commitments. Venezuela is approached not as an exception, but as a case in which administrative practice, international positioning, and partisan abstraction converge to obscure responsibility. What follows traces how power is exercised through method rather than doctrine, how ideological language displaces accountability, and how clarity, rather than consensus, emerges as the first condition for recovery.

Chapter XIII

The Fifth Sign

The Pawned Republic

The Venezuelan economic crisis developed within a political environment in which control over foreign currency, public spending, and state revenues became increasingly concentrated in state-controlled allocation systems and off-budget fiscal mechanisms. After exchange controls were established in 2003, access to foreign currency was centrally allocated through state mechanisms such as CADIVI, and by 2013 even government authorities were publicly acknowledging fraud in the assignment of preferential currency, including allocations to shell companies. At the fiscal level, parallel funds such as FONDEN handled large sums outside meaningful parliamentary scrutiny, while public information on state spending and parafiscal funds became increasingly unavailable. Under these conditions, the diversion of public resources did not appear as isolated misconduct but as a recurring feature of governance in which formal procedures governing budget approval and reporting remained nominally in place while independent verification and public disclosure diminished. What emerged was not the failure of a declared doctrine, but the consolidation of an administrative method in which access to public resources depended less on transparent procedure than on the concentration of discretionary control.

Debates that frame socialism and capitalism as opposing economic systems mistake ideological language for operational reality. These terms describe beliefs about ownership and social purpose, not the concrete methods through which economies are administered. Economic stability arises instead from institutional practice: whether taxation is predictable, contracts are enforced without eDebates that oppose socialism to capitalism misidentify the operative field. These terms describe beliefs about ownership and social purpose; they do not describe how economies are administered. Economic stability does not follow from declared purpose but from enforceable limits on taxation, spending, and contract execution. It depends on whether taxation follows rule, whether contracts are enforced without exception, whether budgets are bounded by procedure, and whether authority is exercised within limits enforced through budget law, contract enforcement, and institutional oversight. Where these conditions are absent, ideological designation does not fail; it becomes irrelevant.xception, budgets are constrained by rule rather than urgency, and authority is exercised through procedure rather than discretion. A polity may describe itself as capitalist while permitting economic decisions to be redirected by political convenience, just as another may invoke socialist aims while maintaining disciplined fiscal administration and enforceable limits on power. The divergence in outcomes reflects not ideological virtue or failure, but the presence or absence of methodological constraint—a distinction that, once obscured, allows ideology to substitute for responsibility rather than to inform it.

As state procurement in sectors such as oil, infrastructure, and food imports became subject to political discretion, auditing functions weakened and oversight bodies lost operational independence. State-controlled revenues and contracts were increasingly used to redirect resources through discretionary allocation. Public authority ceased to function as a mediating structure and became an object of appropriation. The result was not episodic corruption but a stable arrangement in which diversion operated as an expected outcome of governance.

The mechanism did not explain action; it displaced its examination. Ideological language did not clarify operations; it rendered them inaccessible. Official discourse invoking class struggle and anti-imperialism shifted public attention away from currency allocation, public spending, and procurement practices toward symbolic political conflict. These appeals replaced the examination of procedures with narratives of opposition that carried no capacity for control.

This substitution extended beyond the national sphere. Governments identifying with liberal or democratic traditions supported sanctions presented as instruments of pressure. In practice, these measures intensified economic hardship without altering the internal configuration of power. ^[1] At the same time, states maintaining political and economic alignment with the Venezuelan government, including China, Russia, and Cuba, tolerated the weakening of electoral oversight, judicial independence, and legislative authority and framed inaction as fidelity to principle. ^[2] Across these positions, ideological designation did not guide action. It concealed a convergence: measures that weakened society without altering authority, and positions that preserved authority without regard to how it was exercised.

What is presented as a divide between opposing systems resolves, in operation, into a convergence of practices. External pressure that weakens a population without altering authority, and external tolerance that preserves authority without regard to institutional dismantling, produce the same condition: the isolation of society from judicial, electoral, and legislative means of contesting authority.

Within that condition, the population is not situated between competing models of governance. It is rendered instrumental to positions that do not operate upon the mechanisms that sustain or constrain power. The language of alignment, whether in the form of solidarity, neutrality, or caution, does not alter this configuration when it remains detached from the procedures through which authority is exercised. ^[3]

Where accountability is not enforced, other forms of organization take hold. Criminal and informal economic networks operating without judicial or regulatory enforcement expand into the space left unregulated. Their growth does not require ideological justification; it follows from the absence of enforceable limits. ^[4] What is described as crisis does not begin with collapse. It begins when constraint is withdrawn from the exercise of power and remains withdrawn without consequence.

Endnotes on Chapter XIII

[1] Francisco Rodríguez and Jeffrey Sachs, “Economic Sanctions as Collective Punishment: The Case of Venezuela,” The Lancet 393, no. 10178 (2019): 2584–2591; Center for Economic and Policy Research, “Sanctions in Venezuela: Economic and Humanitarian Impacts,” 2019.

[2] R. Evan Ellis, “The Maduro Regime’s Foreign Backers: China, Russia, Iran, and Cuba,” Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), November 6, 2020; United Nations Human Rights Council, “Report on the Situation of Human Rights in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela,” 2022.

[3] Javier Corrales, “Democratic Backsliding Through Electoral Irregularities: The Case of Venezuela,” Perspectives on Politics 18, no. 2 (2020): 311–327.

[4] Insight Crime, “Venezuela’s Criminal Landscape: A Country of Collusion,” 2021; Transparency International, “Venezuela: Corruption Perceptions Index,” 2022.

Chapter XIV

The First Issue

Resisting Partisan Control: Civil Society’s Stance in Venezuela

Democratic life is not secured by a single principle but by the interaction of distinct forms: pluralism, partisanship, nonpartisanship, and antipartisanship. These forms do not resolve into unity. They define how authority is organized, contested, and limited within institutions such as parties, courts, and legislatures.

Pluralism establishes the condition under which difference can appear without being suppressed. Its function is to ensure that multiple positions can enter public space without requiring prior alignment. Where institutions fail to protect participation through electoral access and legal safeguards, participation contracts and representation narrows.

Partisanship organizes competition through structured alignment. Its function depends on a limit: that allegiance to a party does not supersede adherence to the rules governing the contest itself. When that limit dissolves, competition persists in form while its constraints disappear.

Nonpartisanship suspends alignment in order to preserve procedure. Its role is not neutrality in the abstract, but the maintenance of conditions under which decisions remain accountable to rule rather than to affiliation.

Antipartisanship emerges when these arrangements fail. It rejects parties as vehicles of representation, but in doing so it removes the structures through which accountability is exercised. Where this rejection becomes programmatic, it does not remove power. It removes the structures that limit it, leaving power to concentrate without opposition.

In Venezuela, antipartisanship became a governing strategy through the delegitimization of established parties and the centralization of authority in the executive. Public disillusionment with established parties enabled the rise of a singular political alternative that did not operate outside institutions but reorganized them. Institutional limits were recast as impediments, and their removal was presented as restoration. What was removed, however, was not obstruction but constraint. ^[1]

Under Chávez, this method extended through the redirection of state resources. Oil revenues were deployed to secure political alignment across sectors. Access to state-distributed resources increasingly depended on political alignment, particularly through government programs and public employment, establishing dependence in place of institutional trust. Under Maduro, this structure persisted under contraction: as resources diminished, the requirement of alignment intensified while preserving the same operational logic.

Clientelist practices were not introduced but expanded and centralized. What had been dispersed became systemic. Programs such as the Misiones Bolivarianas, funded through oil revenues and administered through state-aligned structures, illustrate this transformation. Their stated function was social provision; their operation linked access to political identification. In programs such as Barrio Adentro, healthcare delivery was administered through structures coordinated with the governing apparatus. ^[2]Benefits did not follow need alone, but alignment.

Policies of expropriation and currency control further restricted independent economic activity. By reallocating assets through administrative decision, these measures reduced the space within which alternative forms of organization could emerge. Economic contraction followed as a consequence of constrained operation.

The weakening of institutional structures displaced rather than eliminated organized activity. Civil society organizations assumed roles in legal defense, human rights documentation, and service provision where State institutions failed to operate consistently.

Organizations such as Provea, Foro Penal, and Transparencia Venezuela document violations, provide legal defense, and maintain records of administrative conduct. Electoral observation organizations document voting conditions and irregularities despite legal and operational restrictions. Community-based structures such as Mesas Técnicas de Agua coordinate access to basic services such as water supply in the absence of reliable State provision. These activities maintain a verifiable link between documented actions and their consequences, between public claims and records, and between authority and its legal limits. Where institutions no longer secure these relations, they are sustained through practice.

These formations do not constitute an alternative system of governance. They operate within limits imposed upon them, and their continuity remains contingent. Legislative measures increasing oversight of non-governmental organizations have further reduced their operational space.

What persists is not a program but a set of practices that maintain a verifiable link between action and consequence, authority and limit, and decision and verification. Where these relations are sustained, even in restricted form, the possibility of reconstruction remains.

Democratic recovery does not begin with alignment or design. It begins with the reestablishment of constraint upon power and the restoration of procedures through which actions can be examined and limited. Where these conditions are absent, declarations of principle do not fail; they do not operate.

Endnotes on Chapter XIV

[1] Javier Corrales and Michael Penfold, Dragon in the Tropics: Hugo Chávez and the Political Economy of Revolution in Venezuela (Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 2011), 19–24, 30–34.

[2] “Barrio Adentro: Complementariedad entre Cuba y Venezuela,” YouTube video, https://youtu.be/y8GXPozsSWQ.

Tags: Authoritarianism, Civil Society, Democratic Backsliding, ideology, Political Accountability, Sanctions, Unmasking Disappointment, Venezuela
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“Who Feeds Hatred?”

April 15, 2026

Ricardo F. Morín
***Triangulation II***
22″ x 30″
Body color, sanguine, sepia, and white out on paper
2008

Societies rarely recognize when language begins to prepare the conditions for hatred. Long before violence appears, speech has already changed how people see what is in front of them. A group is no longer described by what it does, but by what it is made to stand for: a “threat,” an “invasion,” a “corruption.” Description yields to designation.

In “Language, Judgment, and Freedom of Conscience: On the Architecture of an Intellectual Position,” I examined how freedom of conscience depends on a steady link between what is seen, what is said, and how it is judged. That link is not sustained by itself. Seeing something does not ensure naming it precisely, and naming it does not ensure judging it clearly. When that link breaks, language stops following experience and begins to direct it. Words no longer come after what happens; they tell people in advance what they are supposed to see, think, or conclude. In that shift, the ability to judge for oneself begins to weaken, long before courts are bypassed or rights are set aside.

Once perception is shaped in advance, judgment no longer moves on its own. Hostility no longer appears as a break but as something already contained in the way things are said. A neighbor becomes “one of them.” A disagreement becomes “an attack.”

Societies speak easily about hatred, yet rarely ask where it begins. When violence becomes visible, the instinct is to find someone to blame. The tyrant appears sufficient. Yet this explanation soothes more than it explains. It confines wrongdoing to individuals while leaving intact what made it possible: repeated phrases, accepted labels, words no longer questioned.

A distinction is required. To see clearly is not to hate. To name brutality is not resentment but clarity. To say “this act destroys a life” remains a description. Hatred begins when the person is reduced to what must be removed. Whoever speaks in that way adopts the same language he claims to reject.

Ideologies that organize hostility do not arise in isolation. They differ in name but share a simple rule: people define who they are by pushing others out. Where this rule governs how people define themselves, human worth no longer serves as a shared measure. Public life divides between those who belong and those who do not. Nazism in Europe, Chavismo in Venezuela, the MAGA movement in the United States, and forms of theocracy show how entire populations come to speak of others as enemies and to treat that division as necessary for order or purity.

What appears in Trump is not new. It is what no longer needs to disguise itself.

Once this way of speaking is taken up and repeated, it does not remain confined to leaders or doctrine. It spreads. Some repeat it because they believe it. Others repeat it to avoid trouble, to fit in, or to protect themselves. Language changes. Words stop pointing to people and begin to assign them a place. The adversary becomes a threat; the threat becomes someone to despise. A person is no longer called by name but by a label: “illegal,” “traitor,” “infidel,” “enemy.”

Another confusion follows. In the name of understanding, some begin to describe those who defend such ideas as misunderstood or wounded. This posture appears balanced, yet it shifts attention toward those who exercise power and away from those who live under it.

This confusion rests on a deeper habit of thought. Violence is often explained by pointing to personal wounds or exclusion. There is truth in this. Yet when applied everywhere, it removes responsibility. Everyone is vulnerable. Not everyone participates in organized harm. That requires decisions, repeated words, and people willing to act on them.

The difference between ethics and moralizing appears here. Moralizing sorts people into good and bad. Ethics looks at what allows certain actions to take place and spread. It does not turn the adversary into a monster, but it does not excuse what is done.

Those who suffer the consequences rarely appear in these arguments. They do not belong to factions or slogans. They are those who must live with what others decide: the family forced to move, the worker shut out, the person who learns to remain silent.

The question, then, cannot be answered by pointing to a tyrant. Hatred is fed when people accept the lowering of language, treat humiliation as normal, and allow their judgment to be replaced by ready-made explanations.

At that point, hatred no longer appears exceptional. It becomes a habit. It repeats itself in ordinary speech: “that is how things work,” “everyone does it,” “we have no choice,” “we were forced,” “it is for the nation.” It appears in the language of order and protection: “to restore order,” “for your safety,” and in the steady stirring of fear: fear of losing place, fear of difference, fear of those seen as outsiders, even in societies shaped by mixture.

These expressions do not simply describe what is happening. They shape how it is understood. They make exclusion seem reasonable. What once required justification begins to sound like common sense.

When this way of speaking settles in, hostility no longer needs to be defended. It becomes expected, repeated, routine. Responsibility does not vanish through denial; it fades through repetition: through explanations that excuse and fears no one stops to question.

This is how hatred continues: not only through those who declare it, but through those who repeat it, accept it, or let it pass without objection.

The question remains.

Who feeds hatred?

Ricardo F. Morín, March 16, 2026, Oakland Park, Florida.

Tags: civic ethics, democracy, exclusion, hatred, identity politics, ideology, political-language, public discourse, responsibility, social psychology
Posted in Political Philosophy, Civic Ethics, Language and Consciousness, Democratic Culture, Social Analysis | Leave a Comment »

“The Grammar of Emotional Mimicry”

April 15, 2026

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Ricardo Morín
**Infinity One**: **The Grammar of Emotional Mimicry**
60″x 37″
Oil on linen
2005

Public life today is shaped less by ideas than by emotional cues. People respond not to the content of arguments but to the register in which those arguments are delivered. Tone becomes substance; affect becomes authority. The substitution of emotional cues for argument is not accidental. It reflects a deeper cultural grammar in which individuals learn to recognize themselves not through reasoning but through emotional likeness. The most resonant voice is not the most coherent one but the one that mirrors the emotional state of the crowd. I call this phenomenon the grammar of emotional mimicry.

The press plays a central role in reinforcing this grammar. Modern media does not function as a platform for the slow work of thought; it functions as a marketplace of sentiment. Editors select, frame, and circulate stories on the basis of emotional traction rather than intellectual clarity. A confession of anguish is treated as insight. A display of distress is treated as truth. The media’s primary currency is resonance, measured not by accuracy but by the intensity of feeling it can evoke. It simply reflects the incentives of an attention economy.

Prominent authors or celebrities are often given expansive platforms to articulate personal grievances that contain little conceptual grounding. A statement such as “there is no closure for innocent suffering unless the universe holds someone accountable” is presented as a courageous moral reflection. Yet the premise collapses at first contact: suffering is not distributed according to desert, and nature does not adjudicate innocence. Still, these are emotionally potent narratives because the marketplace rewards vulnerability, not reasoning.

This pattern of selection and reward parallels the emotional logic of populism. Followers of political figures often identify with leaders not because they share material circumstances or policy interests but because they recognize themselves in the emotional posture the leader performs. This is evident in the movement surrounding Donald Trump. His supporters do not mimic his ideas; they mimic his emotional volatility, his sense of grievance, and his theatrical defiance. He becomes a projection surface for the emotional life of the crowd. In return, he mirrors their turbulence. This is mimicry in both directions.

The convergence between media dynamics and populist dynamics is not accidental. Both rely on the same grammar: emotional resonance as a substitute for coherence. Trump’s appeal depends on this alignment between emotional expression and public response. The press amplifies his volatility because it generates spectacle; the public interprets the spectacle as authenticity; and authenticity is misread as truth. What appears most authentic is often least reliable as a guide to truth. The cycle continues because repetition and amplification do not depend on coherence. Indeed, incoherence strengthens the bond, because it signals freedom from the constraints of disciplined thought—constraints that many interpret as elitist or oppressive.

This grammar does not operate only in politics. It shapes cultural life more broadly. Cultural production increasingly privileges emotional exposure over disciplined expression. Works are evaluated on the basis of how effectively they simulate immediate sentiment, not on how clearly they illuminate experience. The result is a narrowing of public imagination: nuance becomes difficult to sustain, and reflection is displaced by emotive shorthand. This environment favors individuals who narrate their emotions vividly, regardless of whether their interpretations withstand scrutiny.

The consequences for civic life are considerable. When emotional mimicry becomes the dominant mode of engagement, disagreement becomes impossible to navigate. Individuals no longer encounter differences in judgment; they encounter differences in emotional identity. To critique an argument becomes an attack on the person’s emotional legitimacy. Public conversation becomes a contest of grievances rather than an exchange of ideas. The result is a brittle social sphere in which the loudest emotional frequency defines the terms of debate.

This shift also erodes the distinction between witness and participant. By seeking emotional stories, the press becomes a participant in the very dynamics it reports. It reinforces the emotional scripts people already inhabit. It privileges personal turmoil as evidence of moral depth. It treats spectacle as substance. In doing so, it trains the public to internalize emotional performance as the primary mode of communication. The media does not merely reflect emotional mimicry; it makes it a habitual form of expression.

Today’s emotional grammar differs in scale and function. Selection, repetition, and amplification now operate continuously, reducing complex experience to a narrow range of signals—grievance, resentment, and confession. As these signals circulate, attention is captured by intensity rather than guided by coherence. This is not a moral collapse; it is a failure in how attention is directed and sustained in public life.

The challenge is not to suppress emotion but to restore proportion. Emotional life is essential to human experience, but it cannot serve as a universal grammar for public reasoning. A culture that communicates primarily through emotional mimicry loses its ability to distinguish perception from projection. It becomes reactive rather than reflective. To recover clarity, we must once again separate the vividness of emotion from the validity of thought. Only then can public life recover the depth it has traded for resonance.

Ricardo F Morín, November, 2025, Oakland Park, Florida

Tags: civic reasoning, cultural analysis, emotional mimicry, emotional resonance, media criticism, politics and emotion, populism, press dynamics, public discourse, sentiment culture
Posted in Culture, Politics, Media, Contemporary Essays, Public Life | Leave a Comment »

“Morakami Gardens”

April 10, 2026

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In memory of Andreina

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Bamboo grove, rippling in the wind. Inhaled and exhaled.

I walk through a pillared tunnel of vines, the fronds of a palm tree stirring above.

Curving forms—Karesansui.

An usher passes, seeking its name

I fall through a monument to discard.

As on a chessboard.

I see you. Yonder.

A staircase into the garden.

An abode where I sat beside you, no more.

I am contained by yellow caution tape.

Three benches against a screen of leaves.

Your burial is here with me.

The bonsais you adored.

A pearly smile murmurs in the sky.

My guardian says: watch your step.

Says we have much to do.

And I let them pass.

Bamboo grove, breathing.

Karesansui, yellow tape, three benches—she is gone.

And I let them pass.

Ricardo F. Morín, April 10, 2026, Oakland Park, Florida

Tags: Japanese gardens, Karesansui, mourning, pattern, Perception, Presence, release, Stillness
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“Unmasking Disappointment: Series VI”

April 8, 2026

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Author’s Note:

This installment concludes Chapter XII, “The Fourth Sign.” It presents §§ 26–34 under the heading The Asymmetry of Sanctions, examining the unequal application and effects of external economic and political measures in the broader context established by the preceding sections on Autocracy and Venezuela.

Ricardo F. Morín, December 29, 2026, Oakland Park, Fl

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Chapter XII: Part 3

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The Asymmetry of Sanctions

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Sanctions are often employed as a diplomatic tool to weaken autocratic regimes. Yet, their use reveals a deeper asymmetry in the struggle between democratic accountability and authoritarian resilience. According to data from the V-Dem Institute, nearly 72% of the world’s population now lives under autocratic rule—the highest proportion since 1978. This reality reframes sanctions not as exceptional measures against isolated regimes, but as policies deployed within a global order where autocracy has become the prevailing form of governance.

On one hand, sanctions aim to isolate autocracies economically and politically. On the other hand, regimes like Nicolás Maduro’s have demonstrated remarkable adaptability in the face of such measures. Such regimes’ endurance exposes the limitations of tools designed for a world in which democracy was presumed dominant.

27a

Subsequent developments, including the removal of Nicolás Maduro from power, alter the immediate object toward which sanctions were directed but do not resolve the structural conditions examined here. The networks of authority, the institutional arrangements, and the external alliances that sustained his rule have not been dissolved by his departure. What is observed in this case is not the endurance of a single figure, but the persistence of a governing structure capable of adaptation beyond him.

Maduro has formed adversarial alliances to circumvent external pressure and maintain his rule. By invoking themes of sovereignty and resistance against Western influence, he has turned isolation into a narrative of defiance.

This narrative serves as a foundation for partnerships with other autocratic States, including Russia, China, Cuba, Iran, and Turkey. ^[43]^{[44][45][46][47]} Driven by pragmatic interests rather than strict ideological alignment, these alliances enable Venezuela to mitigate the intended effects of sanctions.

The result is a paradox: while sanctions aim to weaken autocracies, they unintentionally contribute to their resilience. Reliance on alternative alliances allows regimes like Maduro’s to access resources, military aid, and political support, which in turn shields them from severe economic disruption and international scrutiny. In a world where the majority of the world’s population now lives under autocratic rule, the logic of isolation loses its potency; it becomes a misreading of the global balance itself.

In this way, sanctions contribute to the persistence of autocracy. Regimes like Maduro’s exploit their isolation to present themselves as defenders of national sovereignty and resistance to global hegemony. ^[48] This dynamic amplifies the concept of a multipolar world order. As global power shifts away from unipolar dominance, regimes like Maduro’s find new avenues to thrive.

By framing their cooperation as resistance to Western dominance, authoritarian regimes justify their alliances under the banner of multipolarity. This strategic repositioning does more than circumvent sanctions—it actively reshapes the global order. As these regimes expand their influence, they undermine democratic norms by replacing them with a system in which power is consolidated without external accountability.

This shift is not confined to regimes like Maduro’s: it reflects a broader trend in which authoritarianism gains ground by exploiting ideological fractures within democratic societies. Across Europe and Asia, nationalist and right-wing movements increasingly echo Kremlin-aligned narratives to amplify skepticism toward Western institutions. The rise of such forces in countries like Hungary, Italy, and India is not merely a domestic shift—it signals an alignment with a global framework where sovereignty is invoked not to empower citizens, but to insulate leaders from accountability.

Contrary to the argument that authoritarianism is solely a reaction to U.S. hegemony, its expansion demonstrates an independent momentum, one that persists regardless of American intervention. China and Russia do not seek to challenge the U.S. in pursuit of a more equitable world order; they aim to consolidate their power free from external constraints. In this landscape, the traditional ideological divide between left and right becomes secondary to a more fundamental struggle—the contest between concentrated power and democratic resilience. Whether under the guise of populism or nationalism, the objective remains the same: to undermine institutional checks and to consolidate power without sufficient accountability. ^[49]

Endnotes—Chapter XII: Part 3

§ 29

[43] In 2019, Russia’s State-owned Rosneft handled 70% of Venezuela’s crude oil exports and circumvented U.S. sanctions. Russia also supplied military equipment and training to bolster Maduro’s control over the armed forces.
[44] China’s involvement includes joint oil ventures in the Orinoco Belt, infrastructure projects like the Tinaco-Anaco railway project, and housing initiatives (Great Housing Mission). Despite operational challenges, these investments highlight China’s strategic interest in Venezuela’s energy sector.
[45] According to the Brookings Institution, Cuba and Venezuela have maintained close political and strategic ties, particularly during the Chávez and Maduro administrations. This relationship has extended beyond diplomatic and economic cooperation to include security and intelligence collaboration. Cuban institutions have provided training, advisory support, and technical expertise to Venezuelan military and security forces: 1). Dirección de Inteligencia(DI, a.k.a G2) [1961]: The Intelligence Directorate, also known as G2, has been involved in providing intelligence training and support to Venezuelan security forces, particularly in surveillance and national security operations. 2). Comité de Defensa de la Revolución(CDR) [1960]: The Committee for the Defense of the Revolution, created in Cuba, focused on grassroots mobilization and surveillance. Its activities extended to Venezuela, where it contributed to internal security and the promotion of political ideology. 3). Brigada Especial Nacional(BEN) del Ministerio del Interior (a.k.a.Avispas Negras or“Boinas Negras”) [1986]: The National Special Brigade, known as Black Wasps or Black Berets, has been involved in specialized military and security training; it has provided high-level tactical training to Venezuelan military and security personnel.
[46] Iran has aided Venezuela through energy and military cooperation, providing refined fuel and technical support for Venezuela’s oil industry. Barter agreements and drone technology exchanges underscore their deepening alliance.
[47] Turkey facilitated Venezuela’s gold trade, enabling Maduro to bypass sanctions. This trade, involving $900 million in 2018, has drawn criticism for its opacity and links to illegal mining in the Arco Minero region.

§ 31

[48] Aníbal Pérez-Liñán and Scott Mainwaring, Democracies and Dictatorships in Latin America: Emergence, Survival, and Fall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 183-87, 199-202.

§ 34

[49] Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die (New York: Crown, 2018), 212-15.

Tags: accountability, asymmetry, civilian impact, economic sanctions, geopolitical pressure, international power
Posted in Authoritarianism, Populism, Political Power, Executive Power, Charismatic Leadership, Political Myth, Democratic Breakdown, Venezuelan Politics | Leave a Comment »

“The Measure of Self”

March 28, 2026

Young people grow up hearing a language of promise. School principals, teachers, and commencement speakers present the civic language of freedom, equal worth, and opportunity in classrooms, school assemblies, and commencement ceremonies. Young people enter life expecting that dignity belongs to them not by achievement but by right.

The world in which adolescents grow up reveals another measure of value. Universities select applicants. Employers choose candidates. Newspapers, screens, and social media present visible distinction as a standard of value. In this environment value becomes linked less to the fact of being alive than to results obtained: grades, admission, income, recognition. Public language affirms equal dignity and opportunity, while everyday life rewards distinction.

The consequences of this tension in adolescence cannot be reduced to a single cause. Yet the statistics describing adolescent suicide provide an observable point from which to examine the pressures affecting young lives. In the United States, suicide ranks among the leading causes of death for those between fifteen and nineteen years of age. Thousands of adolescents take their own lives each year. Similar figures appear in other countries whose laws and public speech affirm freedom and dignity. These figures do not reveal the thoughts of any single adolescent, yet they show that many young people reach a point at which life appears closed to them.

Each suicide carries its own history. Parents search for reasons in school pressure, humiliation, loneliness, or despair that no one recognized in time. Physicians prescribe medicine. Counselors offer guidance. These efforts help some adolescents and fail to reach others. The continued rise of these deaths directs attention to the world in which adolescents grow up.

From early childhood many students learn that recognition follows visible success. Teachers and schools praise the highest scores and celebrate the strongest performers. Young people watch classmates receive awards and admission letters while others receive neither. Under such conditions adolescents begin to measure their own lives against the success of others.

The acquisitive and ostentatious character of contemporary life becomes visible on screens, in the media, and across social networks. In them, mastery and social status predominate. Young people learn to present themselves as exceptional before they come to know themselves, and they learn not only to observe these images but also to reproduce them. The surrounding culture celebrates achievement while leaving little room for hesitation or failure, even though both belong to the passage into adulthood.

Failure forms part of learning, and discovery begins with uncertainty. That understanding arises from repeated observation across history and from the process of discovery itself. Within that process, error is gradually set aside until what is intelligible and comprehensible comes into view. Yet the surrounding environment continues to place visible honor on success. The young therefore encounter two messages at once: encouragement to endure failure and a public display that celebrates achievement.

Within this environment the work of forming human relations grows difficult. Friendships break. Intimate relations begin with uncertainty. Sexual experience rarely matches the images that circulate in public view. These difficulties belong to the slow formation of adult life. Yet the contrast between public images of fulfillment and the experience of life can lead some adolescents to judge themselves as failures.

The judgment of value does not remain external. It becomes shame. Shame seeks concealment. An adolescent who carries shame may continue to appear among friends, classmates, and family while inwardly withdrawing. Recognition promises to confirm value, yet it awakens a need for worth that cannot be founded by recognition itself. Beneath that shame lies another absence: the absence of self-love. Without some measure of regard for one’s own existence, recognition from others becomes the only source of worth, and failure becomes a verdict upon the self.

Family expectations may deepen this burden. Parents often transmit hopes formed by their own experience. They may believe that success will protect their children from the difficulties they themselves encountered. When the achievements of the young appear to confirm the sacrifices or aspirations of earlier generations, the pressure can grow heavier than a simple wish for well-being.

Communication surrounds young people with images and activity. An adolescent may sit among many signals and still face distress alone. Social encounters become occasions for display rather than opportunities for trust to form through time. The adolescent appears present in social life while carrying a sense of emptiness. When the language of dignity no longer corresponds to the experience of life, the public words themselves begin to lose their meaning.

Adolescence does not create this condition; adolescence reveals it. Many adults live under the same pressure to prove worth through success and recognition. Work, family, and routine allow life to continue, yet the sense of insufficiency does not always disappear. Some carry it for decades. Adolescents encounter the condition before such supports take hold. Some confront it before they possess the strength required to bear it.

This condition does not belong to the present alone. Records from earlier centuries describe the same despair, the same shame, and the same act of self-destruction among the young. The forms surrounding life have changed across time. Religious authority once imposed its judgments. Family honor and inherited status placed other burdens on the young. Human vulnerability has remained constant even as the surrounding environment has changed.

The question does not lie in whether despair among the young is new. The question lies in how the conditions of the present shape that vulnerability within a society that speaks often of dignity and opportunity yet still produces circumstances in which some young people come to believe that life offers no place for them.

A society may create conditions that intensify despair, shame, and pressure. Those conditions deserve examination and criticism. Yet the act of ending one’s life cannot be assigned to others in the same way that those conditions can be examined collectively.

Over time many people come to recognize a difficult distinction: to feel another person’s pain deeply is not the same as bearing responsibility for their choice. One may carry empathy, grief, and even a lingering sense of connection to that suffering without having been the agent of the act itself.

When deaths accumulate in this way, observers turn to specialized language in search of explanation. Academic terms attempt to describe the problem through categories and theories. Such language may organize discussion, yet the words themselves do not remove the fact that thousands of adolescents take their own lives each year. The numbers remain visible without the help of technical vocabulary.

Ricardo F. Morín, March 12, 2026, Kissimmee, Florida

Tags: cultural pressure, Dignity, education, modern society, public language, recognition, self-worth, Shame, social expectations, youth
Posted in Essays, Civic Culture, Social Observation | Leave a Comment »

“Unmasking Disappointment: Series V”

March 25, 2026

*

Author’s Note

This installment continues Chapter XII, “The Fourth Sign,” following the initial discussion of Autocracy (§§ 1–9). It focuses on Venezuela, examining §§ 10–25 in which the earlier framework is applied to a specific national case. The chapter concludes in a separate installment devoted to The Asymmetry of Sanctions (§§ 26–34).

Ricardo F. Morín, December 26, 2025, Oakland Park, Florida.

*

Chapter XII: Part 2

*

Venezuela

*

To grasp the practical implications of autocracy and its concentration of power, I defer to Rafael Arráiz Lucca’s book, Venezuela: 1830 a nuestros días: Breve historia política [2016]. Here, Arráiz Lucca provides a comprehensive history of Venezuela from independence to today. ^[1] He covers political, economic, and social changes that have shaped the nation. He explores early struggles and the rise of military strongmen, and has treated Hugo Chávez’s rise to power, his ideology, and the effects of his policies on society. He has also examined the continuing influence of Chávez under Nicolás Maduro. In his view, both Chávez and Maduro have exemplified regimes that have centralized power and suppressed dissent.

The country’s political trajectory has been profoundly shaped by its enduring history of military rule. Since independence in 1811, twenty-five military officers have held the presidency, presided over 172 years of governance, and entrenched the military’s influence in the nation’s political fabric. ^[2] The transition to representative democracy in 1961 marked a significant shift, which ushered in thirty-eight-years of civilian-led stability under the Punto Fijo Pact (see Chapter XI). This civilian era, however, was not free from upheaval. The 1989 Caracazo riots, coupled with the failed coup attempt by Hugo Chávez in 1992, revealed the fragility of civilian democracy and the lingering appeal of military leadership in moments of crisis. ^[3]^[4]

The Caracazo riots and the subsequent repression had laid bare deep societal fractures that undermined confidence in civilian governance. For many, the chaos and disillusionment rekindled the perception of the military as a force of order and stability, a perception rooted in the nation’s long history of caudillo leadership. Chávez’s rise can be understood as a direct outgrowth of this historical legacy: a charismatic military figure presenting himself as the answer to the failures of civilian politics. The violent repression following the riots, coupled with the systemic inability to address the economic and social inequities they symbolized, paved the way for a return to autocratic tendencies, cloaked in populist rhetoric. This marked the beginning of a new authoritarian era, shaped not only by the fractures of the present but also by the shadows of the past.

The presidency of Hugo Chávez continued the tradition of authoritarianism that had been seen earlier during the regime of General Marcos Pérez Jiménez. ^[5] As in the era of Pérez Jiménez, Chávez relied on oil to finance his policies. ^[6]

For Hugo Chávez, “participatory democracy” aimed at empowering marginalized groups. He created community councils and social missions, which became instruments of his political control—the so-called Bolivarian ideology. Participation therein hinged on one’s loyalty to Chávez, which ultimately led to the marginalization of people opposed to his policies. His blend of populism and authoritarianism framed dissent as being unpatriotic and thus hindered national progress. This approach enabled him to undervalue the power of law; the legislative and judicial branches of government became dependent on the executive.

With the endorsement of Nicolás Maduro by Hugo Chávez in 2012, the country slid further into authoritarianism. ^[7] Opposition parties such as Vente Venezuela, Primero de Justicia, Un Nuevo Tiempo, and Voluntad Popular accused Chávez and Maduro of manipulating the Consejo Nacional Electoral. ^{[8][9][10][11]}^[12]

After the death of Chávez, Maduro faced similar accusations in the 2013 and 2018 elections. The Organization of American States, the Lima Group, the International Contact Group, and the Group of Seven concurred. ^[13][14][15] Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have also questioned his legitimacy. ^[16]^[17] One exception is the United Nations’ Security Council debate (press release SC/13719), which urged Venezuelans to resolve their crisis internally. ^[18][19]

Following Venezuela’s 2016 suspension from Mercosur, Latin American responses varied and then changed as political administrations changed. ^[20][21] Initially, Argentina favored the measures by the Organization of American States to apply diplomatic pressure on Venezuela and sought to address the political and humanitarian crises there. ^[22] It also recognized Juan Guaidó as the legitimate president, though in 2019, it changed and became an advocate for mediation. At first, Brazil recognized Guaidó and was for sanctions against the Venezuelan government, and then in 2023 asked for mediation. ^[23] Between 2018–22, Colombia accused the Maduro regime of drug trafficking and of giving support to the guerrilla groups, the National Liberation Army and the Revolutionary Armed Forces; Colombia broke diplomatic relations. ^[24] Later, in 2022, a new administration reopened diplomatic ties and promoted non-intervention. Chile has consistently urged sanctions against Maduro’s government, and even referred Venezuela to the International Criminal Court (ICC). ^[25][26] Peru expelled Venezuela’s ambassador: The immediate trigger for the expulsion was Venezuela’s Tribunal Supremo de Justicia’s move to dissolve the opposition-controlled Asamblea Nacional, which Peru saw as a step toward authoritarian control. ^[27] As all other members of the Lima Group did, Peru regularized the status of Venezuelan migrants. In the beginning, Mexico condemned the human rights abuses in Venezuela and called for the release of all political prisoners, but, in 2018, it shifted to a non-interventional approach and in 2022 offered mediation as the only recourse. ^[28]^[29]^[30]

Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, opposition leader María Corina Machado was disqualified after having won her coalition’s primary. ^[31] The Tribunal Supremo de Justicia based its decision on her alleged support of U.S. sanctions, supposed corruption, and accusations holding her responsible for losses related to the American subsidiary Citgo of the Venezuelan State-owned oil and natural gas company: Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA). Machado’s denial of access to the allegations against her was a blatant violation of due process. Her disqualification left Edmundo González Urrutia as the unified opposition candidate. ^[32]

Both campaigns engaged in tactics of intimidation. González’s coalition deployed 200,000 observers across 16,000 voting centers and Maduro’s administration intensified media censorship and repression. After Maduro declared victory, protests resulted in extrajudicial killings, arrests, and crackdowns on independent media. ^[33]

González’s coalition collaborated with international observers, including the Organization of American States, the European Union Electoral Observation Mission, the Carter Center, and the United States Mission to the United Nations, to monitor irregularities. ^{[34][35][36][37]} The government, however, withheld disaggregated voting data critical for audits—supposedly because the data had been hacked—and imposed travel restrictions on foreign observers. ^[38] The Carter Center criticized the elections for failing to meet international standards of transparency, fairness, and impartiality. ^[39]

Maduro accused both Machado and González of having incited unrest and announced investigations into the crimes of “usurpation of functions” and “military insurrection,” each carrying thirty-year prison sentences. On August 8, 2024, González left for Spain after the government had granted him safe passage.

To understand Venezuela’s political and institutional landscape, one must examine how global indices assess the state of its democracy. The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index, the Freedom House’s Global Freedom Index, and the Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index all provide distinct metrics illuminating Venezuela’s democratic decline under Nicolás Maduro.

The Democracy Index ranks countries with higher scores as more democratic. Freedom House and Transparency International diverge from this by using lower scores to indicate worse outcomes, with lower numbers signifying less freedom and higher corruption.

In the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index, Venezuela ranked as the least democratic country in South America in 2008; in 2022, it ranked 147th out of a total of 167 countries. ^[40] Likewise, in 2023, Freedom House’s Global Freedom Index finds that Venezuela scored low both as a democracy and high corruption, while in its Corruption Perceptions Index Venezuela scored 13 out of 100 and was positioned as one of the most corrupt nations globally. ^[41]

Additionally, a report by Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index for the period from 2012 to 2023 has highlighted the severe corruption to be found in Venezuela. ^[42] In its 2023 Corruption Perceptions Index, out of 180 countries, Venezuela received a score of 13 out of 100, ranking 177th. These indicators present a clear picture of Venezuelan authoritarianism and of the deterioration of its political landscape in recent years.

Endnotes

§ 10

[1] Rafael Arráiz Lucca, Venezuela: 1830 a nuestros días: Breve historia política. (Caracas: Editorial Alfa, 2016), 15-151, 212-37.

§ 11

[2] José Gregorio Petit Primera, ”Presidentes de Venezuela (1811-2012). Un análisis estadístico-descriptivo,” Revista Venezolana: Análisis de Coyuntura (Caracas: Universidad Central de Venezuela, XXII-1, 2016), 47-56.
[3] The Punto Fijo Pact was a political agreement signed by the three predominant political parties—Acción Democrática (AD), Comité de Organización Política Electoral Independiente (COPEI), and Unión Republicana Democrática (URD)—at the residence of Rafael Caldera (COPEI): Punto Fijo. The pact aimed to stabilize the country after the fall of dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez [1952-1958] by ensuring democratic alternation of power, institutional continuity, and preventing single-party rule. While it contributed to political stability and a peaceful transition to democracy, critics argue that it also entrenched elite dominance, marginalized smaller parties, and fostered systemic corruption. As a foundational element in Venezuela’s post-dictatorship political landscape, the agreement shaped the nation’s governance for decades. Its legacy, however, is marked by political divisions, as the pact’s structure increasingly excluded some groups and led to dissatisfaction among factions. This period reflects both the challenges and achievements of Venezuela’s efforts to establish a stable and inclusive democracy.
[4] Rafael Arráiz Lucca, “February 4, 1992: The Day Venezuelans Learned the Name ‘Hugo Chávez,” (Caracas Chronicles, February 04, 2019). https://www.caracaschronicles.com/2019/02/04/february-4-1992-the-day-venezuelans-learned-the-name-hugo-chavez/

§ 13

[5] Fredy Rincón Noriega, El Nuevo Ideal Nacional y los planes Económicos- Militares de Pérez Jiménez 1952-1957 (Caracas: Ediciones Centauro, 1981)–Kindle Edition
Judith Ewell, The Indictment of a Dictator: The Extradition and Trial of Marcos Perez (College Station: A&M University Press, 1981).
[6] Both leaders have employed centralized power and state control over resources, though their approaches differed. Pérez Jiménez emphasized technocratic and infrastructural development. His policies, as outlined in the Nuevo Ideal Nacional, focused on large-scale construction projects and urban modernization. These initiatives promoted economic growth, but their benefit was directed towards the middle and upper classes. Chávez, on the other hand, pursued a blend of populism and socialism aimed at redistributing oil wealth through extensive social programs for the poor. These policies increased the State’s dependence on oil revenues and left the country vulnerable to market fluctuations.

§ 15

[7] Margarita López Maya, “The Venezuelan Caracazo of 1989 : Popular
Protest and Institutional Weakness,” (Latin American Studies: Cambridge University Press, 2003) 35, 117–137. DOI : 10.1017/S0022216X02006673 P https://margaritalopezmaya.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/venezuelan_caracazo_of_1989_popular_protest_and_institutional_weakness-1.pdf
Javier Corrales, “Chapter 12: Venezuela’s Autocratization, 1999-2021: Variations in Temporalities, Party Systems, and Institutional Controls.”PDF extracted from Archon Fung, et al, When Democracy Breaks: Studies in Democratic Erosion and Collapse,from Ancient Athens to the Present Day (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023). https://tobinproject.org/sites/default/files/assets/Chapter%2012%20-%20Venezuela%20-%20Corrales.pdf
[8] “Biography: Maria Corina Machado, National Coordinator, Vente Venezuela” (Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs, Maurice R. Greenberg World Fellows Program, 2009. https://worldfellows.yale.edu/person/maria-corina-machado/
[9] Raul Castillo, “There Once Was a Party: Primero Justicia,” Caracas Chronicles, January 13, 2022. https://www.caracaschronicles.com/2022/01/13/there-once-was-a-party-primero-justicia/
[10] Braulio Polanco, “There Once Was a Party: Un Nuevo Tiempo,”Caracas Chronicles, February 15, 2022. https://www.caracaschronicles.com/2022/02/15/there-once-was-a-party-un-nuevo-tiempo/
[11] Raúl Castillo, “There Once Was a Party: Voluntad Popular,”Caracas Chronicles, September 8, 2022. https://www.caracaschronicles.com/2022/09/08/there-once-was-a-party-voluntad-popular/
[12] The Consejo Nacional Electoral, responsible for overseeing elections in Venezuela, has faced long-standing accusations of partisanship and favoritism. Opposition groups (Vente Venezuela, Primero de Justicia, Un Nuevo Tiempo, Voluntad Popular) have alleged that Chávez and Maduro appointed to it only members who favored the ruling party. For an analysis of the Consejo Nacional Electoral’s role in reinforcing authoritarianism, see Javier Corrales: Autocracy Rising: How Venezuela Transitioned to Authoritarianism (Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 2023), 3, 28. Also see Jennifer L. McCoy and David J. Myers, The Unraveling of Representative Democracy in Venezuela (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 276-80, 293-96.

§ 16

[13] The Lima Group, formed in August 2017, includes: Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Guyana, and St. Lucia.
[14] The International Contact Group (the European Union, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Uruguay) advocates for credible elections and have voiced concerns about the Consejo Nacional Electoral’s impartiality.
[15] Group of Seven (G7)–Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States–has condemned electoral irregularities in Venezuela and called for independent oversight. Allegations of voter registration manipulation by the Consejo Nacional Electoral, has heightened suspicions of vote tampering.
[16] Venezuela’s Humanitarian Crisis: Severe Medical and Food Shortages, Inadequate and Repressive Government Response, Human Rights Watch, October 24, 2016. https://www.hrw.org/report/2016/10/24/venezuelas-humanitarian-crisis/severe-medical-and-food-shortages-inadequate-and
[17] “Venezuela: New research shows how calculated repression by Maduro government could constitute the crime against humanity of persecution,” Amnesty International, February 10, 2022. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/02/venezuela-calculated-repression-maduro-government/
[18] “Venezuelans Must Resolve Crisis Themselves, Security Council Delegates Agree while Differing over Legitimacy of Contending Parties. Briefing on Weekend Incidents Biased, Says Foreign Minister as Speakers for United States, Russian Federation Exchange Barbs,” United Nations: Meetings Coverage and Press Releases, 8472nd Meeting, SC/13719, February 26, 2019. https://press.un.org/en/2019/sc13719.doc.htm
[19] In February 2019, a United Nations Security Council Report debated whether to supervise elections or mediate between Maduro’s government and the opposition. Ultimately, the Council upheld a non-interventionist approach while offering to mediate.

§ 17

[20] “Mercosur suspends Venezuela over trade and human rights,” BBC, December 2, 2016. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-38181198
[21] Mercosur (acronym for the Mercado Común del Sur or the Southern Common Market) is a regional trade bloc founded in 1991 by Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay (it later included Chile). Mercosur’s mission is to promote economic integration and free trade.
[22] “Integration in South America: A Brief Analysis of the MERCOSUR Case in Light of the European Experience,” The Yale Review of International Studies, July 23, 2018. https://yris.yira.org/column/integration-in-south-america-a-brief-analysis-of-the-mercosur-case-in-light-of-the-european-experience/
[23] Luis Ferreira Alvarez, “South America’s Political Rebalance: The Potential of a Mercosur-U.S. Free Trade Agreement,” Yale Journal of International Affairs, July 27, 2016. https://www.yalejournal.org/publications/south-americas-political-rebalance-the-potential-of-a-mercosur-us-free-trade-agreement
[24] Kelly Shen, et al, “Ripple Effect: How the Venezuelan Crisis is Impacting Colombia’s Economy and Foreign Relations,” The Huntsman Program in International Studies and Business, March 24, 2020. https://huntsman.upenn.edu/news/ripple-effect-how-the-venezuelan-crisis-is-impacting-colombias-economy-and-foreign-relations/
[25] “The Current Situation in Venezuela: A USIP Fact Sheet,” The United States Institute of Peace, February 18, 2022. https://www.usip.org/publications/2022/02/current-situation-venezuela
[26] “Venezuela I: Situation in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela I,” International Criminal Court, February 2018. https://www.icc-cpi.int/venezuela-i
[27] “Venezuela Breaks Diplomatic Relations With Peru,” TeleSur, July 31, 2024. https://www.telesurenglish.net/venezuela-breaks-diplomatic-relations-with-peru/
[28] “Ariela Ruiz Caro, “The Mexico Dialogue on Venezuela and the End of the Lima Group,” MIRA, Feminisms and Democracy (promoting analysis and solidarity in Latin America),.September 16, 2021. https://www.americas.org/the-mexico-dialogue-on-venezuela-and-the-end-of-the-lima-group/
[29] EEAS Press Team, “Venezuela: Joint Statement on Venezuela Negotiations in Mexico,” European Union, External Action, November 26, 2022. https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/venezuela-joint-statement-venezuela-negotiations-mexico_en
[30].- Mexico has mediated between Nicolás Maduro’s government and the opposition after the July 28, 2024 presidential election results, with support from Brazil and Colombia.

§ 18

[31] Vivian Sequera, “Who is Maria Corina Machado, Venezuela opposition leader?,” Reuters, Caracas, July 25, 2024. https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/maria-corina-machado-venezuela-opposition-candidate-turned-cheerleader-in-chief-2024-07-25/
[32] Félix Seijas Rodríguez, “Venezuela’s Electoral Landscape Favors the Opposition,” Americas Quarterly, July 25, 2024. https://americasquarterly.org/article/venezuelas-electoral-landscape-favors-the-opposition/

§ 19

[33] Foro Penal’s “Special Report on Political Repression in Venezuela,” covering July to September 2024. 1. October 2024 Data: “As of September 30, 2024, the number of political prisoners in Venezuela was 1,905.” https://foropenal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/FP_REPORTE-JUL_AGO_SEP_-Ingles-2024_2401201-comprimido.pdf
January 2025 Data: In early January 2025, Foro Penal reported 83 new political arrests.” Source: HuffPost article titled “El chavismo llama a la oposición a ‘trabajar’ con Maduro, mientras crece la represión: 83 arrestos ‘políticos’ en 2025.” https://www.huffingtonpost.es/global/el-chavismo-llama-oposicion-trabajar-maduro-crece-represion-83-arrestos-politicos-2025.html

§ 20

[34] Remarks by Ambassador Francisco O. Mora, “OAS Adopts Resolution on the Situation in Venezuela,” U.S. Mission to the Organization of American States, August 16, 2024. https://usoas.usmission.gov/oas-adopts-resolution-on-the-situation-in-venezuela/
[35] “Venezuela: Statement by the High Representative on behalf of the EU on post-election developments,” Council of The European Union, August 4, 2024. https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2024/08/04/venezuela-statement-by-the-high-representative-on-behalf-of-the-eu/
[36] “Carter Center Statement on Venezuela Election,” Carter Center, July 30, 2024. https://www.cartercenter.org/news/pr/2024/venezuela-073024.html
[37] “Joint Statement on the Venezuela Elections,” United States Mission to the United Nations, September 12, 2024. https://usun.usmission.gov/joint-statement-on-the-venezuela-elections/
[38].- Disaggregated election results enhance transparency by enabling cross-checking against aggregated totals. This method reveals potential errors, facilitates audits, and highlights regional irregularities, strengthening the legitimacy of electoral outcomes.
[39].- The Organization of American States has criticized Maduro’s government for failing to produce verification of election results.

§ 24

[40] “Venezuela,” Economist Intelligence Unit, Democratic Index, 2012-23. http://country.eiu.com/Default.aspx?country=Venezuela
[41] “Venezuela,” Freedom House, Global Freedom Index, 2020-24. https://freedomhouse.org/country/venezuela

§ 25

[42] “Our Work In Venezuela,” Transparency International, Corruption Perceptions Index, 2012-23. https://www.transparency.org/en/countries/venezuela

Tags: authoritarian governance, constitutional crisis, executive power, institutional decay, legal exemption, Venezuela
Posted in Ethics, Authority, Disapppointment, Judgment | Leave a Comment »

“The Logic of Extraction”

March 18, 2026

Ricardo F. Morín
***Triangulation Series Nº 2***
37″ x 60″ x 2″
Oil on linen
2006

Modern societies describe progress through a vocabulary of invention and expansion. Yet the consequences often observed in economic life arise from institutional arrangements that precede the innovations themselves.

New technologies appear as discoveries; markets appear as opportunities; growth appears as the natural result of human ingenuity. This language creates an image of development that emphasizes creativity while it conceals a more durable structure beneath it. Governments, legal authorities, and commercial institutions rarely begin systems of economic growth with invention alone. They begin when institutions convert conditions that once belonged to shared human life into resources that can be owned, measured, and exchanged.

Land becomes property; labor becomes wage labor; knowledge becomes data. Rivers that once supplied water freely to surrounding communities now appear in financial markets as tradable assets. Each transformation enlarges the field of economic activity because it reorganizes what was previously common. The narrative of progress celebrates the innovation that follows this conversion; yet the expansion often depends first on the extraction that made the innovation possible. Economic development therefore unfolds through a recurring institutional act: the conversion of shared conditions into organized systems of ownership.

2

The first large transformation occurred when land and labor entered modern economic systems as commodities. Earlier societies cultivated land and organized work through local obligations, customary rights, and communal practices. Modern economies introduced a different arrangement. Legal systems defined land as transferable property; this definition allowed estates, plantations, and industrial sites to circulate within markets.

Industrial production also required a stable supply of labor that could be measured and compensated in monetary terms. Wage contracts fulfilled that requirement. Workers exchanged hours of effort for income; employers calculated production through predictable units of labor.

This institutional reorganization created the foundation of industrial growth. Factories and commercial agriculture did not rely only on machinery; they relied on legal and economic systems that converted land and labor into inputs capable of sustaining continuous production. The Industrial Revolution therefore expanded not only through invention but also through the systematic reorganization of human and natural resources into economic instruments.

3

Industrial expansion soon demanded resources that extended beyond land and labor alone. Factories required concentrated sources of power capable of sustaining mechanical production on a large scale. Coal supplied the first solution; petroleum followed with even greater efficiency.

Extraction industries emerged to supply these fuels. Mining companies developed technologies that could remove coal from deep geological layers; oil firms drilled wells that reached reservoirs beneath land and sea. Railways, pipelines, and shipping routes connected these extraction sites to industrial centers.

Governments and corporations secured access to these resources through territorial agreements, drilling concessions, and strategic alliances that protected shipping routes and energy infrastructure. Industrial powers negotiated drilling rights and controlled shipping corridors that carried fuel across oceans to factories and cities. These arrangements tied distant territories to the energy demands of expanding industrial societies. Energy became the substance that sustained industrial economies; control of energy flows became a measure of geopolitical influence. Economic expansion therefore depended not only on technical invention but also on the ability of States to organize and protect systems of resource extraction across national boundaries.

4

The late twentieth century introduced a transformation that appeared to depart from this material pattern. Digital networks created environments where human activity could be recorded, stored, and analyzed. Companies that operated these networks soon recognized that the information generated through everyday interaction possessed economic value.

Search queries, online purchases, social exchanges, location signals, and browsing histories formed detailed records of behavior. Digital platforms developed algorithms that could process these records and identify patterns within them. Advertising systems used those patterns to match products with likely consumers; businesses purchased access to those predictions because they sought to increase sales.

Individuals who search for information, communicate with friends, or move through cities rarely perceive that these ordinary actions generate the data streams that sustain digital markets. These systems appear impersonal, yet they remain human constructions. Engineers design the platforms, legislators authorize the legal frameworks that permit data collection, and investors finance the infrastructure that organizes this information into profit. The authority of the system therefore rests on decisions made by identifiable actors who participate in its operation. Human behavior becomes a measurable resource within the digital economy, and everyday activity enters systems of calculation that transform ordinary experience into economic input.

5

Artificial intelligence extends this informational system into a new domain. Machine learning systems require vast collections of language, images, and recorded activity. Developers assemble these materials through large data sets that gather written expression, visual material, and behavioral traces from many sources.

Newspapers, books, photographs, academic research, and online conversations become training material for these systems. Computational processes analyze these materials and adjust internal parameters until recognizable patterns of language or perception emerge. The resulting models appear to generate knowledge independently; yet their structure depends on the human expressions that formed the training material.

Collective intellectual activity therefore becomes the substance from which artificial intelligence systems derive their capabilities. Firms that control these systems own the architecture through which this knowledge becomes computational intelligence. Human creativity remains the origin; proprietary systems govern access to the resulting capabilities.

6

The apparent immateriality of this digital environment conceals a substantial physical foundation. Computation requires hardware that conducts electricity, stores information, and performs complex calculations. These devices depend on minerals extracted from the earth.

Copper carries electrical current through circuits and transmission lines. Lithium and cobalt stabilize batteries that power portable systems. Rare earth elements create magnets that operate within turbines and electronic components. Silicon forms the basis of semiconductor fabrication.

Mining operations extract these materials from geological deposits; refining facilities separate and process them into usable forms; manufacturing plants assemble them into processors, memory systems, and data centers. The digital economy therefore rests on a chain of material production that extends from mineral extraction to computational infrastructure.

States compete intensely within this system because control of mineral supply chains influences technological capacity. Countries rich in copper, lithium, and rare earth elements negotiate new partnerships with industrial powers that require these materials. Technological development therefore reconnects digital innovation with the geopolitical realities of resource extraction.

7

Systems built on extraction rarely present themselves through that language. Advocates of each technological era often describe development as an inevitable progression that no society can alter. Industrialization carried that description; petroleum dependence carried it as well; digital expansion repeated the same claim. Phrases such as “the digital future cannot be stopped” or “artificial intelligence will transform everything” present technological systems as unavoidable outcomes.

This description performs an important function. When a system appears inevitable, criticism of its structure loses urgency. Public discussion shifts from examining how institutions organize resources toward adjusting to the system those institutions have already created.

Citizens repeat these expressions in public discussion and private conversation; by doing so they reinforce the appearance that technological systems operate beyond human choice. This repetition relieves individuals of the burden of questioning the structures that govern economic life and allows systems of extraction to continue without sustained scrutiny. Yet technological systems do not arise independently of political decision. Governments establish property rights, regulate industries, and authorize investment structures. Firms design platforms, infrastructure, and markets that channel resources into systems of production. The narrative of inevitability obscures these arrangements. It encourages societies to accept technological systems as natural developments rather than as institutions shaped by deliberate choices.

8

The historical sequence reveals a recurring pattern. Each stage of modern growth identifies conditions of life that institutions can reorganize into economic resources. Land, labor, energy, information, and knowledge have entered this sequence in successive eras.

These resources originate within the shared environment of human society and the natural world. Communities cultivate land; workers apply skill and effort; generations contribute knowledge and expression. Economic institutions establish mechanisms that reorganize these shared conditions into systems of ownership. Property law assigns control over land; industrial infrastructure organizes labor and energy; digital platforms collect behavioral information; computational systems assemble human knowledge into proprietary models.

The tension within this process becomes visible when the resource cannot plausibly be described as private in origin. Water offers the clearest example. No individual produces it, and every society depends on it. Yet financial and legal systems increasingly treat access to water as an asset that can be owned, traded, or controlled through investment structures. When institutions transform a resource so obviously common into a vehicle of ownership, the separation between origin and control becomes unmistakable.

Economic institutions do not operate apart from political authority. States establish the legal frameworks that transform common resources into systems of ownership and production. Through those frameworks, governments grant access to land, energy, information, and technological infrastructure. These arrangements generate wealth for firms and investors who operate within them; they also strengthen the strategic position of the States that oversee those systems.

Political communities therefore confront a difficult responsibility. They must decide whether the resources that sustain collective life remain subject to public authority or become instruments of concentrated ownership.

Governments often treat common resources not only as foundations of economic activity but also as instruments of geopolitical advantage. Rival States compete to secure control over these resources and the industries that depend on them. Ideological disputes accompany this competition; yet the underlying structure remains similar across competing systems. Prosperity and influence arise from institutions that convert common resources into concentrated forms of wealth and authority.

Modern societies continue to pursue innovation and expansion; the history of their development shows that growth has repeatedly depended on this conversion. Progress expands production and knowledge; yet it often detaches ownership from the common resources that made that expansion possible. The enduring question is whether societies can pursue advancement while maintaining alignment between the resources that belong to all and the systems that govern their use.

Ricardo F. Morín, March 10, 2026, Oakland Park, Florida.

Tags: artificial intelligence, common resources, data extraction, digital economy, Economic governance, economic history, energy geopolitics, extraction systems, global supply chains, industrial development, infrastructure systems, institutional analysis, knowledge as resource, ownership structures, Political economy, property regimes, public vs private goods, resource commodification, State power, technological inevitability
Posted in Political Economy, Institutional Analysis, Economic History, Technology and Society, Digital Economy, Artificial Intelligence, Energy and Resources, Global Systems, Public Policy, Governance and Power | Leave a Comment »

“Unmasking Disappointment: Series II”

January 21, 2026

*

Author’s Note

Reflections from previous chapters eventually lead to a more historical inquiry, in which the following archive, Chronicles of Hugo Chávez, becomes another lens through which I approach the Venezuelan experience.

Ricardo F. Morín, December 12, 2025, Oakland Park, Florida.

Chapter VI

Chronicles of Hugo Chávez

Hugo Chávez, who spearheaded the Bolivarian Revolution, was born on July 28, 1954, in Sabaneta, Venezuela. He died on March 5, 2013, at 4:25 p.m. VET (8:55 p.m. UTC) in Caracas, at the age of 58. As the leader of the revolution, Chávez left a discernible imprint on Venezuela’s political history. To reconstruct this history is to revisit a landscape whose consequences continue to shape Venezuelan life.

At the core of Chavismo lies a deliberate fusion of nationalism, centralized power, and military involvement in politics. This fusion shaped his vision for a new Venezuela, one that would be fiercely independent and proudly socialist.

_{Hugo Chávez at age 11, sixth grade, 1965 (Photo: Reuters)}.

Hugo Chávez’s childhood was spent in a small town in Los Llanos, in the northwestern state of Barinas. This region has a history of indigenous chiefdoms (i.e., “leaderships,” “dominions,” or “rules”) dating back to pre-Columbian times. ^[1] Chávez was the second of six brothers, and his parents struggled to provide for the large family. As a result, he and his older brother Adán were sent to live with their paternal grandmother, Rosa Inés, in the city of Barinas. After her death, Chávez honored his grandmother’s memory with a poem; it concludes with a stanza that reveals the depth of their bond:

Entonces, / abrirías tus brazos/ y me abrazarías/ cual tiempo de infante/ y me arrullarías/ con tu tierno canto/ y me llevarías/ por otros lugares/ a lanzar un grito/ que nunca se apague. ^[2]

[Author’s translation: Then, / you would open your arms / and draw me in / as if returned to childhood / and you would steady me / with your tender voice / and you would carry me / to other places / to release a cry / that would not be extinguished].

In his second year of high school, Chávez encountered two influential teachers, José Esteban Ruiz Guevara and Douglas Ignacio Bravo Mora, both of whom provided guidance outside the regular curriculum. ^[3][4] They introduced Chávez to Marxism-Leninism as a theoretical framework, sparking his fascination with the Cuban Revolution and its principles—a turning point more visible in retrospect than it could have been in the moment.

At 17, Chávez enrolled in the Academia Militar de Venezuela at Fuerte Tiuna in Caracas, where he hoped to balance military training with his passion for baseball. He dreamed of becoming a left-handed pitcher, but his abilities did not match his ambition. Despite his initial lack of interest in military life, Chávez persisted in his training, graduating from the academy in 1975 near the bottom of his class.

Chávez’s military career began as a second lieutenant; he was tasked with capturing leftist guerrillas. As he pursued them, he found himself identifying with their cause and believed they fought for a better life. But by 1977, Chávez was prepared to abandon his military career and join the guerrillas. Seeking guidance, he turned to his brother Adán, who persuaded him to remain in the military by insisting, “We need you there.” ^[5] Chávez now felt a sense of purpose and understood his mission as a calling. In 1982, he and his closest military associates formed the Bolivarian Revolutionary Movement-200: they aimed to spread their interpretation of Marxism within the armed forces and ultimately hoped to stage a coup d’état. ^[6]

On February 4, 1992, Lieutenant Chávez and his military allies launched a revolt against the government of President Carlos Andrés Pérez. Their rebellion, however, was swiftly quashed. Surrounded and outnumbered, Chávez surrendered at the Cuartel de la Montaña, the military history museum in Caracas, near the presidential palace, on the condition that he be allowed to address his companions via television. He urged them to lay down their arms and to avoid further bloodshed. He proclaimed, « Compañeros, lamentablemente por ahora los objetivos que nos planteamos no fueron logrados . . . » [Author’s translation: “Comrades, unfortunately, our objectives have not been achieved… yet,”].^[7] The broadcast marked the beginning of his political ascent. His words resonated across the nation and sowed the seeds of his political future.

**_{Chávez announces his arrest on national television and urges insurgent troops to surrender}.**

In 1994, newly elected President Rafael Caldera Rodríguez pardoned him. ^[8] With this second chance, Chávez founded the Movimiento V República (MVR) in 1997 and rallied like-minded socialists to his cause. ^[9] Through a campaign centered on populist appeals, he secured an electoral victory at age 44.

In his first year as President, Chávez enjoyed an 80% approval rating. His policies sought to eradicate corruption in the government, to expand social programs for the poor, and to redistribute national wealth. Jorge Olavarría de Tezanos Pinto, initially a supporter, emerged by the end of the elections as a prominent voice of the opposition. Olavarría accused Chávez of undermining Venezuela’s democracy through his appointment of military officers to governmental positions. ^[10] At the same time, Chávez was drafting a new constitution, which allowed him to place military officers in all branches of government. The new constitution, ratified on December 15, 1999, paved the way for the “mega elections” of 2000, in which Chávez secured a term of six years. Although his party failed to gain full control of the Asamblea Nacional (National Assembly), it passed laws by decree through the mechanism of the Leyes Habilitantes (Enabling Laws). ^[11][12] Meanwhile, Chávez initiated reforms to reorganize the State‘s institutional structure, but the constitution’s requirements were not met. The appointment of judges to the new Corte Suprema de Justicia [CSJ] was carried out without rigor and raised concerns about its legitimacy and competence. Cecilia Sosa Gómez, the outgoing Corte Suprema de Justicia president, declared the rule of law “buried” and the court “self-dissolved.” ^[13][14]

Although some Venezuelans saw Chávez as a refreshing alternative to the country’s unstable democratic system, which had been dominated by three parties since 1958, many others expressed concern as the Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV) consolidated power and became the sole governing party. ^[15] Legislative and executive powers were increasingly centralized, and the narrowing of judicial guarantees limited citizens’ participation in the democratic process. Chávez’s close ties with Fidel Castro and his desire to model Venezuela after Cuba’s system—dubbed VeneCuba—raised alarm. ^[16] He silenced independent radio broadcasters, and he antagonized the United States and other Western nations. Instead, he strengthened ties with Iraq, Iran, and Libya. Meanwhile, domestically, his approval rating had plummeted to 30%, and anti-Chávez demonstrations became a regular occurrence.

On April 11, 2002, a massive demonstration of more than a million people converged on the presidential palace to demand President Chávez’s resignation. The protest turned violent when agents of the National Guard and masked paramilitaries opened fire on the demonstrators. ^[17] The tragic event—the Puente Llaguno massacre—sparked a military uprising that led to Chávez’s arrest and to the installation of a transitional government under Pedro Francisco Carmona Estanga. ^[18] Carmona’s leadership, however, was short-lived; he swiftly suspended the Constitution, dissolved the Asamblea Nacional and the Corte Suprema, and dismissed various officials. Within forty-eight hours, the army withdrew its support for Carmona. The vice president, Diosdado Cabello Rondón, was reinstated as president and promptly restored Chávez to power. ^[19]

The failed coup d’état enabled Chávez to purge his inner circle and to intensify his conflict with the opposition. In December 2002, Venezuela’s opposition retaliated with a nationwide strike aimed at forcing Chávez’s resignation. The strike targeted the state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA), which generated roughly 80% of the country’s export revenues. ^[20] Chávez responded by dismissing its 38,000 employees and replacing them with loyalists. By February 2003, the strike had dissipated, and Chávez had once again secured control over the country’s oil revenues.

From 2003 to 2004, the opposition launched a referendum to oust Chávez as president, but soaring oil revenues, which financed social programs, bolstered Chávez’s support among lower-income sectors. ^[21] By the end of 2004, his popularity had rebounded, and the referendum was soundly defeated. In December 2005, the opposition boycotted the elections to the National Assembly and protested against the Consejo Nacional Electoral (National Electoral Council) (CNE). ^[22] As anticipated in view of the opposition boycott, Chávez’s coalition capitalized on the absence of an effective opposition and strengthened its grip on the Assembly. ^[23] By that point, legislative control rested almost entirely with Chávez’s coalition. What followed was not a departure from this trajectory, but its extension through formal policy.

In December 2006, Chávez secured a third presidential term, a victory that expanded the scope of executive initiative. He nationalized key industries—gold, electricity, telecommunications, gas, steel, mining, agriculture, and banking—along with numerous smaller entities. ^[24]^[25]^{[26][27][28][29]} Chávez also introduced a package of constitutional amendments designed to expand the powers of the executive and to extend its control over the Banco Central de Venezuela (BCV). In a controversial move, he unilaterally altered property rights and allowed the state to seize private real estate without judicial oversight. Furthermore, he proposed becoming president for life. In December 2007, however, the National Assembly narrowly rejected the package of sweeping reforms.

In February 2009, Chávez reintroduced his controversial proposals and succeeded in advancing them. Following strategic counsel from Cuba, he escalated the crackdown on dissent. ^[30] He ordered the arrest of elected opponents and shut down all private television stations.

In June 2011, Chávez announced that he would undergo surgery in Cuba to remove a tumor, a development that sparked confusion and concern throughout the country. ^[31] As his health came under increasing scrutiny, more voters began to question his fitness for office. Yet, in 2012, despite his fragile health, Chávez campaigned against Henrique Capriles and secured a surprise presidential victory. ^[32]

^{Chávez during the electoral campaign in February 2012}.

In December 2012, Chávez underwent his fourth surgery in Cuba. Before departing Venezuela, he announced his plan for transition and designated Vice President Nicolás Maduro as his successor, alongside a powerful troika that included Diosdado Cabello [military chief] and Rafael Darío Ramírez Carreño [administrator of PDVSA]. ^[33][34][35] Following the surgery, Chávez was transferred on December 11 to the Hospital Militar Universitario Dr. Carlos Arvelo (attached to the Universidad Militar Bolivariana de Venezuela, or UMBV) in Caracas, where he remained incommunicado, further fueling speculation and rumors. Some government officials dismissed reports of assassination, while others, including former Attorney General Luisa Ortega Díaz, claimed he had already died on December 28. ^[36] Maduro’s cabinet vehemently refuted these allegations and insisted that no crime had been committed. Amidst the uncertainty, Maduro asked the National Assembly to postpone the inauguration indefinitely. This further intensified political tensions.

The National Assembly acquiesced to Maduro and voted to postpone the inauguration. Chávez succumbed to his illness on March 5. His body was embalmed in three separate stages without benefit of autopsy, which further fueled suspicions and conspiracy theories. Thirty days later, Maduro entered office amid sustained political uncertainty. ^[37] The implications of this transition extend beyond chronology; they shape the conditions examined in the chapters that follow in this series, which comprises 19 chapters, miscellaneous rubrics, and an appendix.

Endnotes:

§ 2

[1] Charles S. Spencer and Elsa M. Redmond, Prehispanic Causeways and Regional Politics in the Llanos of Barinas, Venezuela (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). Abstract: “…relacionados con la dinámica política de la organización cacical durante la fase Gaván Tardía.” Published in Latin American Antiquity, vol. 9, no. 2 (June 1998): 95-110. https://doi.org/10.2307/971989

[2] Rosa Miriam Elizalde y Luis Báez, Chávez Nuestro, (La Habana: Casa Editora Abril, 2007), 367-369. https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BzEKs4usYkReRVdWSG5LQkFYQ3c/edit?pli=1&resourcekey=0-yHaK7-YkA47nelVs-7JuBQ

§ 3

[3] “The Hugo Chávez Show,” PBS Front Line, November 19, 2008. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/hugochavez/etc/ex2.html

[4] L’Atelier des Archive, “Interview du révolutionnaire: Douglas Bravo au Venezuela [circa 1960]” (Transcript: “… conceptos injuriosos en contra de la revolución cubana …” [timestamp 1;11-14]), YouTube, October 14, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cx2D5VM8VM

§ 5

[5] “Hugo Chavez Interview,”YouTube, transcript excerpt and time stamp unavailable: Original quote in Spanish (translated by the author): “. . . , if not, maybe I’ll leave the Army, no, you can’t leave, Adam told me so, no, we need you there, but who needs me?” Retrieved October 12, 2023.

[6] Dario Azzellini and Gregory Wilpert, “Venezuela, MBR–200 and the Military Uprisings of 1992,”in The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest (Wiley 2009). https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/9781405198073.wbierp1525

§ 6

[7] “Declarations in a Nationwide Government-Mandated Broadcast,” BancoAgrícolaVe, YouTube, February 4, 1992. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QqaR1ZjldE

§ 7

[8] Maxwell A. Cameron and Flavie Major, “Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez: Savior or Threat to Democracy?,” Latin American Research Review, vol. 36, no. 3, (2001): 255-266. https://www.proquest.com/docview/218146430?sourcetype=Scholarly%20Journals

[9] Gustavo Coronel, “Corruption, Mismanagement, and Abuse of Power in Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela,” Center for Global Liberty & Prosperity: Development Policy Analysis, no. 2 (CATO Institute, November 27, 2006). https://www.issuelab.org/resources/2539/2539.pdf.

§ 8

[10] “Jorge Olavarría Ante El Congreso Bicameral [July 5,1999],” YouTube. https://youtu.be/_OkqNn8VF-Y?si=Cvuh4Vk391_0Pnut . Accessed January 9, 2025.

[11] Mario J. García-Serra, “The ‘Enabling Law’: The Demise of the Separation of Powers in Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela,” University of Miami Inter-American Law Review, vol.32, no. 2, (Spring – Summer, 2001): 265-293. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40176554

[12] “Venezuela: Chávez Allies Pack Supreme Court,” Human Rights Watch, December 13, 2004. https://www.hrw.org/news/2004/12/13/venezuela-chavez-allies-pack-supreme-court

[13] “Top Venezuelan judge resigns,” BBC News, August 25, 1999. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/429304.stm

[14] “Suprema Injusticia: ‘These are corrupt judges,” Organización Transparencia Venezuela. https://supremainjusticia.org/cecilia-sosa-gomez-these-are-corrupt-judges/

§ 9

[15] “United Socialist Party of Venezuela,” PSUV. http://www.psuv.org.ve/

[16] “Venezuela and Cuba, ‘VeneCuba,’ a single nation,” The Economist, February 11, 2010. https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2010/02/11/venecuba-a-single-nation

§ 10

[17] “Photographs reveal the truth about Puente Llaguno massacre,” April 11, 2002, YouTube. https://youtu.be/NvP7cL-7KL4?si=cUpMAv0myAWH5UWP

[18] “Pedro Carmona Estanga cuenta su verdad 21 años después,” El Nacional de Venezuela. https://www.elnacional.com/opinion/pedro-carmona-estanga-cuenta-su-verdad-21-anos-despues/

[19] “Diosdado Cabello Rondón:Narcotics Rewards Program: Wanted,” U.S. Department of State. https://www.state.gov/bureau-of-international-narcotics-and-law-enforcement-affairs/releases/2025/01/diosdado-cabello-rondon

§ 11

[20] Marc Lifsher, “Venezuela Strike Paralyzes State Oil Monopoly PdVSA,” Wall Street Journal, December 6, 2002. https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1039101526679054593

§ 12

[21] “Socialism with Cheap Oil,” The Economist, December 30, 2008. https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2008/12/30/socialism-with-cheap-oil

[22] “Venezuela: Increased Threats to Free Elections; New Electoral Body Puts Reforms at Risk,” Human Rights Watch, June 22, 2023 7:00AM. https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/06/22/venezuela-increased-threats-free-elections

[23] Juan Forero, “Chávez Grip Tightens as Rivals Boycott Vote,” The New York Times, December 5, 2005. https://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/05/world/americas/chavezs-grip-tightens-as-rivals-boycott-vote.html?referringSource=articleShare

§ 13

[24] Louise Egan, “Chavez to nationalize Venezuelan gold industry,” Reuters, August 17, 2011, 2:40 PM. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-gold/chavez-to-nationalize-venezuelan-gold-industry-idUSTRE77G53L20110817/

[25] Juan Forero, “Chavez Eyes Nationalized Electrical, Telcom Firms,” Reuters, January 9, 2007, 6:00 AM ET. https://www.npr.org/2007/01/09/6759012/chavez-eyes-nationalized-electrical-telcom-firms

[26] James Suggett, “Venezuela Nationalizes Gas Plant and Steel Companies, Pledges Worker Control,” Venezuelanalysis, May 23, 2009. https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/4464/

[27] David Brunnstrom, “Factbox: Venezuela’s nationalizations under Chavez,” Reuters, October 7, 2012, 10:51 PM. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-election-nationalizations/factbox-venezuelas-nationalizations-under-chavez-idUSBRE89701X20121008/

[28] Frank Jack Daniel–Analysis–, “Food, farms the new target for Venezuela’s Chavez,” Reuters, March 5, 2009, 6:06 PM EST. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-chavez-analysis-sb/food-farms-the-new-target-for-venezuelas-chavez-idUSTRE5246OO20090305/

[29] Daniel Cancel, “Chavez Says He Has No Problem Nationalizing Banks,” Bloomberg, November 29, 2009, 15:02 GMT-5. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2009-11-29/chavez-says-he-has-no-problem-nationalizing-banks

§ 14

[30] Angus Berwick, “Special Report: How Cuba taught Venezuela to quash military dissent,” Reuters, August 22, 2019, 8:22 AM ET. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-cuba-military-specialreport/special-report-how-cuba-taught-venezuela-to-quash-military-dissent-idUSKCN1VC1BX/

§ 15

[31] Robert Zeliger, Passport: “Hugo Chavez’s medical mystery,” Foreign Policy, June 24, 2011, 10:20 PM. https://foreignpolicy.com/2011/06/24/hugo-chavezs-medical-mystery/

[32] Juan Forero, “Hugo Chavez Beats Henrique Capriles,” The Washington Post, October 7, 2012. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/venezuelans-flood-polls-for-historic-election-to-decide-if-hugo-chavez-remains-in-power/2012/10/07/d77c461c-10c8-11e2-9a39-1f5a7f6fe945_story.html

§ 16

[33] Bryan Winter and Ana Flor, “Exclusive: Brazil wants Venezuela election if Chavez dies – sources,” Reuters, January 14, 2013, 9:12 PM EST, updated 12 years ago. https://www.reuters.com/article/cnews-us-venezuela-chavez-brazil-idCABRE90D12320130114/

[34] “Venezuela National Assembly chief: Diosdado Cabello,” BBC News, March 5, 2013. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-20750536

[35] “Rafael Darío Ramírez Carreño of Venezuela Chair of Fourth Committee,” United Nations, BIO/5031*-GA/SPD/630; 25 September 2017. https://press.un.org/en/2017/bio5031.doc.htm

[36] Ludmila Vinogradoff, “La exfiscal Ortega confirma que Chávez murió dos meses antes de la fecha anunciada,” ABCInternacional, actualizado Julio 16, 2018, 12:44 https://www.abc.es/internacional/abci-confirman-chavez-murio-meses-antes-fecha-anunciada-201807132021_noticia.html?ref=https://www.google.com/

§ 17

[37] “Cuerpo de Chávez fue tratado tres veces para ser conservado: … intervenido con inyecciones de formol para que pudiera ser velado,” El Nacional De Venezuela – Gda, Enero 27, 2024, 05:50, actualizado Marzo 22, 2013, 20:51. https://www.eltiempo.com/amp/archivo/documento/CMS-12708339

Tags: Authoritarianism, autocracy, Chavismo, democracy, governance, Hugo Chávez, Identity, Latin America, Memory, political analysis, political history, Ricardo Morin, Unmasking Disappointment, Venezuela
Posted in Authoritarianism, Populism, Political Power, Executive Power, Charismatic Leadership, Political Myth, Democratic Breakdown, Venezuelan Politics | Leave a Comment »

“Eschatology”

January 11, 2026

Civilizations periodically describe their present as uniquely perilous. Such claims are rarely grounded in historical comparison or institutional analysis. They arise instead from a failure of scale: the inability to distinguish disruption from collapse, uncertainty from termination, and incoherence from apocalypse.

Moments of genuine civilizational danger are not hypothetical. The Black Death removed a third of Europe’s population. The Thirty Years’ War devastated entire regions. The twentieth century combined industrialized warfare, genocide, and the advent of nuclear annihilation. These events did not require prophetic language to be understood as catastrophic. Their magnitude was measurable. Their effects were material. Their causes were traceable.

Apocalyptic rhetoric appears not when danger is greatest, but when comprehension falters. It converts uncertainty into moral drama. When political processes appear opaque, when outcomes resist prediction, and when authority behaves without an intelligible pattern, explanation withdraws. In its place enters eschatology: a narrative that simplifies complexity, assigns absolute blame, and promises closure.

The figure of the Antichrist belongs to this register. It is not an analytical category. It is a symbolic condensation of fear. By locating total danger in a single person, eschatological thinking relieves societies of the obligation to examine institutions, incentives, and limits. It replaces causal inquiry with revelation.

Such framing also distorts responsibility. Civilizations do not disintegrate because of individuals alone. They deteriorate through cumulative failures of governance, adaptation, and legitimacy. These processes unfold unevenly, often reversibly, and without finality. They do not announce themselves with signs. They do not culminate on schedule.

Eschatology thrives where explanation retreats. It offers emotional certainty where analysis requires patience. It persuades by promising an end to ambiguity, not by clarifying causes. By transforming political disorder into cosmic struggle, it diverts attention away from conditions that can be examined and toward myths that cannot be corrected.

The danger of apocalyptic thinking is not that it exaggerates risk, but that it misdirects attention. It trains citizens to search for omens rather than causes, villains rather than conditions, destiny rather than decisions. In doing so, it deepens the very helplessness it claims to describe.

What the present requires is not prophecy, but proportion. Not moral theater, but discernment. Not the language of revelation, but the discipline of understanding how power operates, where it fails, and how it can be constrained.

Where explanation returns, superstition recedes. Where clarity is restored, apocalypse no longer functions as an explanation.

Ricardo F. Morín, January 11, 2026, Oakland Park, Florida.

Tags: apocalyptic rhetoric, cultural misrecognition, diagnostic analysis, eschatology, historical proportion, moral panic, political superstition
Posted in Political analysis, Cultural critique, Political culture, History of ideas, Contemporary discourse | Leave a Comment »

“Portrait of a President: Series III”

January 9, 2026

Ricardo F. Morín

January 7, 2026

Oakland Park, Fl

The present moment does not register as a crisis of ideology, but as a crisis of sequence. What is being tested is not the content of declared principles, but the order in which authority, review, and justification are made to occur. Decisions are advanced before the conditions that would ordinarily authorize them have been articulated, and coherence is asked to follow action rather than govern it. This inversion does not abolish law, institutions, or legitimacy. It displaces them. What once determined whether action should proceed now intervenes after action has already been declared.

In Venezuela, this inversion becomes visible through the widening separation between legitimacy and enforceable authority. Electoral victory, moral credibility, and international recognition continue to exist, but they no longer determine who is treated as operable. Engagement instead centers on those capable of compelling compliance in the present tense. Authority is identified not through mandate, but through continuity with the administrative, financial, and coercive mechanisms that currently exert control. The effect is not confusion but selection. Those able to deliver immediate outcomes are elevated as interlocutors regardless of ethical record, while those whose legitimacy lacks immediate enforcement capacity are bypassed.

This preference has been articulated through assessment rather than implication. Reporting on a classified briefing presented to Donald Trump indicates that U.S. intelligence concluded that figures drawn from within the existing Maduro apparatus were best positioned to assume control if Maduro were removed. Vice President Delcy Rodríguez was identified not because of democratic standing or public credibility, but because of her continuity with the administrative, financial, and extractive mechanisms that continue to function within Venezuela. Her experience overseeing the oil sector and engaging directly with commercial actors was treated as evidence of reliability in practice rather than legitimacy in principle. What was evaluated was not character, but enforceability. Criminal implication did not disqualify; it indicated command of the systems through which compliance could be compelled. Opposition figures whose authority derived from electoral legitimacy but lacked immediate control over those mechanisms were treated as non-operable. The selection privileged negotiability under pressure.

This mode of selection is not confined to a single theater or moment. It recurs wherever authority is exercised ahead of coordination. Operability outweighs normative qualification. Authority is derived from the capacity to transact, enforce, and stabilize outcomes in compressed timeframes. Legitimacy is acknowledged but does not determine engagement. What governs is the ability to act now and to absorb consequence later.

The same inversion appears in Ukraine under different conditions. Public declarations affecting military assistance, diplomatic posture, and negotiation have been issued without prior coordination with allies or institutions tasked with planning and review. These statements do not clarify direction in advance; they compel response after the fact. Allies recalibrate commitments once consequences are already in motion. Planning follows assertion. Coordination adjusts to announcement. The question is not whether support exists, but whether its terms are introduced before or after the processes that would ordinarily govern them.

This ordering is also visible within the American system itself. On multiple occasions over several years, Donald Trump has acted on the basis of assurances issued by Vladimir Putin despite the existence of contrary assessments produced by U.S. intelligence agencies. Those institutions were not dismantled or silenced. Briefings continued. Analysis persisted. What changed was their position in time. Intelligence no longer governed whether action proceeded; it reconciled itself to commitments already made. Verification trailed assertion. Agencies designed to anticipate risk were required to manage consequences they had not authorized.

Once this ordering becomes perceptible, it does not remain confined to decision-makers. Institutions, allies, and adversaries adjust their behavior accordingly. Diplomatic actors treat public declarations as operative even when their durability is uncertain. Agencies tasked with planning model scenarios around positions that may shift without notice. Allies hesitate between waiting for clarification and acting to protect their own exposure. Adversaries are instructed not by declared policy, but by the demonstrated sequence: that commitments may precede review, that reversals may follow assertion, and that coherence cannot be assumed in advance.

What emerges is not paralysis, but recalibration. Systems continue to function by absorbing volatility as a standing condition. Stability is no longer produced by predictability, but by the capacity to adjust rapidly to decisions introduced before their governing terms have been settled. This adaptation does not resolve the inversion; it normalizes it. Governance continues, but its coordinating force weakens. Motion persists without measure.

The consequence of this pattern bears directly on how authority and legitimacy relate to one another. Legitimacy continues to be articulated through elections, alliances, and formal acknowledgment. Authority, however, is exercised through immediacy—through the ability to set terms in motion that others must then accommodate. This does not negate legitimacy; it sidelines it. Authority no longer requires justification in order to operate. Legitimacy survives as language, while authority consolidates through sequence.

When authority is exercised independently of legitimacy, governance may still function, but it ceases to persuade. Decisions are carried forward not because they are accepted, but because they are already underway. Review becomes accommodation. Law becomes explanation after action rather than guidance before it. The danger here is not lawlessness, but displacement. Constraint remains formally intact while losing its capacity to govern timing.

This condition does not resolve into immediate collapse. It endures. Constitutional systems assume cooperation without being able to compel it in advance. They rely on restraint exercised voluntarily, sequentially, and often against immediate interest. When that restraint falters, institutions remain standing but lose coordinating force. Authority fills the gap left by cooperation, often in the name of continuity. What persists is governance without convergence, power without persuasion, and action without settled measure.

Tags: authority vs legitimacy, donald-trump, executive sequencing, foreign intervention, geopolitical coherence, institutional displacement, intelligence assessment, technocracy
Posted in Political Analysis, Executive Power, U.S. Foreign Policy, Venezuela, Ukraine, Governance, Contemporary History | Leave a Comment »

“Unmasking Disappointment: Series I”

January 7, 2026

*

To my parents

*

Acknowledgements

~

I wish to acknowledge Billy Bussell Thompson for his meticulous editorial guidance. His feedback sharpened the structure, precision, and internal discipline of this work.

Preface

“Unmasking Disappointment” follows a line of inquiry present throughout my work: the examination of identity, memory, and the relations that emerge when life unfolds across cultural boundaries. Although I have lived outside Venezuela for more than five decades and became a naturalized citizen of the United States twenty-four years ago, my relationship to the country of my birth remains a persistent point of reference. The distance between these conditions—belonging and removal—forms the backdrop against which this narrative takes shape.

This work belongs to a broader autobiographical project that gathers experiences, observations, and questions accumulated over time. While personal in origin, it does not proceed as confession or memoir. Its method is sequential rather than expressive: individual exposure is situated within historical forces and political structures that have shaped Venezuelan life across generations. The intention is not to reconcile these tensions, but to render them visible through recurrence, record, and consequence.

“Series I” introduces the first thematic clusters of this inquiry. The episodes assembled here do not advance a single thesis, nor do they aim at resolution. They trace points of friction where private experience intersects with public power, and where political narratives exert pressure on ordinary life. Across these encounters, patterns emerge—not as abstractions, but as conditions that alter how authority is exercised, how responsibility is displaced, and how agency is constrained.

The chapters that follow examine the pressures produced by systemic inequality and trace contemporary Venezuelan conditions back to their historical formation. Autocratic rule and popular consent appear not as opposing forces, but as elements that increasingly entangle and weaken one another. Within this entanglement, truth does not disappear; it becomes less evenly accessible and more readily displaced by narrative.

When public discourse is shaped by propaganda and misinformation, authoritarian structures gain resilience. Recovering truth under such conditions does not resolve political conflict, but it clarifies the limits within which political life operates. Agency emerges not as an ideal, but as a condition sustained—or undermined—through practice and consequence.

This work does not propose deterministic explanations or simple remedies. It proceeds by accumulation, drawing attention to patterns that persist despite changing circumstances. What it asks of the reader is not agreement, but attention: to evidence, to sequence, and to the conditions under which political freedom may be meaningfully exercised.

Writing from Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania, and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, I remain aware of the distance between the environments in which this work is composed and the conditions it examines. That distance does not confer authority; it imposes responsibility.

Ricardo Federico Morín
Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania, January 21, 2025

*

Chapter I – A Written Language.
Chapter II – Our Recklessness.
Chapter III – Point of View.
Chapter IV – A Dialogue.
Chapter V – Abstract.
Chapter VI – Chronicles of Hugo Chávez (§§ I-XVII).
Chapter VII – The Allegorical Mode.
Chapter VIII – The Ideal Government and the Power of Virtue.
Chapter IX – The First Sign: On Political and Social Resentment.
Chapter X – The Second Sign: The Solid Pillar of Power: The Military Forces.
Chapter XI – The Third Sign: The Asymmetry of Political Parties.
Chapter XII – The Fourth Sign: Autocracy (§§ 1-9): Venezuela (§§ 10-23), The Asymmetry of Sanctions (§§ 24-32).
Chapter XIII – The Fifth Sign: The Pawned Republic.
Chapter XIV – The First Issue: Partisanship, Non-partisanship, and Antipartisanship.
Chapter XV – The Second Issue: On Partial Truths and Repressive Anarchy.
Chapter XVI – The Third Issue: The Clarion of Democracy.
Chapter XVII – The Fourth Issue: On Human Rights.
Chapter XVIII – The Fifth Issue: On the Nature of Violence.
Chapter XIX – The Ultimate Issue: About the Deliverance of Injustice.
Acknowledgments.
Epilogue.
PostScript.
Appendix: Author’s Note, Prefatory Note. A). Venezuelan Constitutions [1811-1999], Branches, and Departments of Government. B) Evolution of Political Parties: 1840-2024. C) Laws Enacted by the Asamblea Nacional. D) Clarificatory Note on Domestic Coercion, Foreign Presence, and Intervention.
Bibliography.

Chapter I

A Written Language

Stability is often sought where it cannot be secured. Experience has shown this repeatedly. Even careful intentions tend to draw one into uncertain terrain, where understanding lags behind consequence. At the desk, as late-afternoon light reaches the page, writing assumes a practical function: it becomes a means of ordering what would otherwise remain unsettled. The act does not resolve vulnerability, but it records it. Whether time alters such conditions remains uncertain; what can be done is to give them form.

What follows moves from the conditions of writing to the conditions it must confront.

*

Chapter II

*

Our Recklessness

~

“Our painful struggle to deal with the politics of climate change is surely also a product of the strange standoff between science and political thinking.” — Hannah Arendt: The Human Condition: Being and Time [1958], Kindle Book, 159.

*

The COVID pandemic and the 2023 Canadian wildfires, among other recent events, have made visible conditions that were already in place. These events did not introduce new vulnerabilities as much as they revealed the extent to which existing systems depend on economic incentives and political habits that privilege extraction over preservation. During the period when smoke from the fires reached the northeastern United States, daylight in parts of Pennsylvania was visibly altered and registered the reach of events unfolding at a considerable distance. Such occurrences do not stand apart from prevailing economic arrangements; they coincide with a model that treats natural conditions as commodities and absorbs their degradation as an external cost.

The fires in California in 2025, like those that spread across Canada in 2023, do not present themselves as isolated occurrences. They form part of a sequence shaped by environmental neglect, political inertia, and sustained industrial expansion. Conditions such as desertification, resource scarcity, and population displacement no longer appear solely as projected outcomes; they are increasingly registered as present circumstances. Scientific assessments indicate that these patterns are likely to intensify in the absence of structural change. ^_[1]^_[2]^_[3] What is brought into view, over time, is not a singular failure but a system that continues to operate according to priorities that favor immediate yield over long-term continuity.

The question of balance does not arise solely as a technical problem. It emerges within a moral and political field shaped by prevailing economic assumptions. The treatment of nature—and more recently of artificial intelligence—as a commodity reflects a trajectory in which matters of shared survival are increasingly translated into market terms. Under such conditions, considerations that once belonged to collective responsibility are recast as variables within systems of calculation.

Such patterns place increasing strain on conditions necessary for collective survival. Responses to these conditions vary and range from indifference to urgency, though urgency does not invariably produce clarity. What becomes apparent, across repeated instances, is a tendency for crisis to recur without sustained adjustment. This recurrence parallels the political histories examined in the chapters that follow, where warning and consequence frequently fail to align.

Endnotes—Chapter II

[1] Derek P. Tittensor, et al, “Integrating climate adaptation and biodiversity conservation in the global ocean” (Science Advances: 27 Nov 2019), Vol 5, Issue 11 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aay9969: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aay9969
[2] “Hugo Graeme, “Migration, Development and Environment”, № 35 (Geneva: International Organization for Migration [IOM] November 2008): https://publications.iom.int/system/files/pdf/mrs_35_1.pdf
[3] World Bank Group, “Climate Change Could Force 216 Million People to Migrate Within Their Own Countries by 2050” (Washington: World Bank Group, September 13, 2021): https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2021/09/13/climate-change-could-force-216-million-people-to-migrate-within-their-own-countries-by-2050

Chapter III

Point of View

Conversations with my editor, Billy Bussell Thompson, have accompanied the development of this work over time. His attention to research method and to the structure of argument has contributed to the clarification of its scope and direction. These exchanges, often conducted at a distance and without ceremony, formed part of the process through which the present narrative took shape. After an extended period of uncertainty regarding how to approach the subject of Hugo Chávez, the contours of Unmasking Disappointment gradually emerged.

Hugo Chávez entered national political life as a leader whose authority was exercised in opposition to political liberalism. ^[1] While his public discourse emphasized alignment with the poor, the material benefits of power accumulated within a narrow circle. ^[2] Over the course of his tenure, democratic institutions in Venezuela experienced progressive weakening, and governance assumed increasingly authoritarian forms. These developments become more legible when situated within the historical record and examined through documented practice rather than rhetorical claim.

The events that followed Chávez’s rule are marked by disorder and unresolved consequence. Their persistence draws attention to questions of historical accountability and collective responsibility that remain unsettled. Examining the record of autocratic leadership—its ambitions as well as its failures—provides a means of approaching the problem of justice in Venezuela without presuming resolution. Through this examination, enduring tensions come into view as conditions to be understood rather than conclusions to be reached.

Endnotes—Chapter III

[1] The term caudillo originates in Spanish and has historically been used to describe a leader who exercises concentrated political and military authority. In the Venezuelan context, the term carries particular resonance and refers to figures associated with the post-independence period of the nineteenth century. Such leaders tended to consolidate power through a combination of personal authority, allegiance from armed factions, and the promise—whether substantive or rhetorical—of maintaining order under conditions of instability. While some were regarded as defenders of local or national causes, others became associated with practices that facilitated authoritarian governance and weakened institutional structures. The concept of the caudillo continues to function within Venezuelan political culture as a descriptive category applied to leadership forms that combine popular support with concentrated power.

[2] Nicholas Casey, “Jet, Horses and Bribes: How a Venezuelan Official Became a Billionaire” (New York Times, Nov. 23, 2018): https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/23/world/americas/venezuela-andrade-corruption-bribes.html; Vanessa Buschschlüter, “Venezuela corruption: Hugo Chávez’s nurse guilty of money laundering” (BBC, December 14, 2022): https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-63971269; Pete D’Amato, “Being the ex-President’s daughter pays off: Hugo Chavez’s ambassador daughter is Venezuela’s richest woman” (Miami Daily Mail, August 10, 2015): https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3192933/Hugo-Chavez-s-ambassador-daughter-Venezuela-s-richest-woman-according-new-report.html; U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York, “Former Venezuelan Official Hugo Armando Carvajal Barrios Extradited To The United States On Narco-Terrorism, Firearms, And Drug Trafficking Charges” (July 19, 2023): https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/former-venezuelan-official-hugo-armando-carvajal-barrios-extradited-united-states; Brian Ellsworth and Mayela Armas, “Special Report: Why the military still stands by Venezuela’s beleaguered president” (Reuters: June 28, 2019): https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-military-specialreport/special-report-why-the-military-still-stands-by-venezuelas-beleaguered-president-idUSKCN1TT1O4/

*

Chapter IV

*

A Dialogue

*

A series of conversations between BBT and the author accompanied the examination of Venezuelan politics and history developed in this section. These exchanges formed a transitional space in which reflection gave way to historical inquiry, allowing questions of interpretation, responsibility, and record to be addressed through dialogue rather than exposition.

—RFM: “My writing has been concerned with the evolution of Venezuela’s political landscape, with particular attention to the emergence of authoritarian forms of rule. The focus has been less on abstract doctrine than on how specific policies translated into everyday conditions for ordinary Venezuelans.”

—BBT: “Examining how authoritarian leadership shapes political conditions is necessary, though the term itself is often contested and applied unevenly. In Chávez’s case, the use of propaganda was not exceptional in form, but it was consistently employed as an instrument of governance. How did official narratives during his tenure circulate, and what effects did they have on public perception over time?”

—RFM: “Propaganda is not unique to Chávez; it functions as a recurring instrument across political systems. In Venezuela, official media regularly attributed economic hardship to external interference rather than to domestic policy decisions. At the same time, material conditions deteriorated, with shortages emerging from economic mismanagement and later compounded by external restrictions. Opposition groups also circulated counter-narratives, which in turn elicited responses from the State. These exchanges unfolded within a historical context shaped by civil conflict and Cold War alignments, and produced a fragmented informational environment. Within that environment, responsibility for economic decline was frequently displaced, while public perception was managed through repetition rather than resolution. The social and economic reforms invoked in justification did not, over time, yield the reductions in poverty and inequality that had been promised.”

—BBT: “To render Venezuela’s political conditions with some accuracy, attention must be given to how ordinary citizens encountered these dynamics in daily life. How were such conditions navigated in practice, particularly where political discourse intersected with immediate economic necessity?”

—RFM: “The economic collapse that followed the decline of the oil-based model intensified poverty and placed sustained pressure on public services. Examined in sequence, this period shows how colonial legacies and authoritarian practices converged in the formation of Chavismo. Episodes such as the 1989 riots known as El Caracazo registered widespread disaffection with established parties and democratic institutions. Under such conditions, the demands of securing basic necessities frequently outweighed engagement with abstract political principles.”

—BBT: “Clarity in narrative depends in part on recognizing the assumptions that guide interpretation. When these assumptions are made explicit and examined, the account becomes less directive and more accessible, allowing readers to follow the record without being steered toward a predetermined position.”

—RFM: “No narrative proceeds without interpretation, including this one. Writing provides a means of approaching Venezuela’s history—its colonial formation, episodes of authoritarian rule, and periods of political disruption—without foreclosing alternative readings. A coherent account need not be exhaustive; it remains open insofar as it attends to implication and consequence rather than resolution.”

—BBT: “The exchange itself underscores the importance of careful narration when approaching Venezuela’s political and social record. Attending to multiple viewpoints does not resolve complexity, but it allows a more coherent account to emerge without reducing that history to a single explanatory frame.”

The exchange marked a transition from reflective inquiry to historical record.

*

Chapter V

*

Abstract

*

This section examines the sequence through which the political project articulated under Hugo Chávez assumed autocratic form. Rather than attributing this outcome to a single cause, the inquiry proceeds by tracing how leadership decisions unfolded within a convergence of historical conditions, institutional arrangements, economic pressures, and geopolitical alignments. The account does not begin from conclusion, but from record.

2
Attention remains on how authority was exercised and how its effects registered within Venezuelan society. Historical circumstance, institutional design, and external influence are examined not to simplify the record, but to make visible the interdependencies through which power consolidated over time. What emerges is not an explanatory thesis, but a configuration whose coherence can be assessed only through sustained attention to sequence and consequence.

Tags: autocracy, civic responsibility, Cultural Distance, Democratic institutions, exile, History, Hugo Chávez, Human Rights, Identity, Memory, migration, political analysis, Social Inequality, Venezuela
Posted in Autobiographical Essays, Venezuelan Politics, Identity and Memory, Civic Reflection, Contemporary History, On the Nature of Perception and Human Interconnectedness | Leave a Comment »

“Ritual: A Philosophy of Necessity”

September 20, 2025

Ricardo Morín
***New York Series, Nº 5***
54″ x 84″
Oil on canvas
1992

Preface

This essay seeks to define rituals without reliance on metaphors, abstractions, or moral judgments. The method of this essay begins with etymology, then traces its biological foundation, and follows the extension of ritual into human conduct. Ritual is treated as repetition with form, carried out by necessity to contain forces uncontrollable by command or intention.

The analysis will distinguish ritual from belief and superstition. Belief attributes power beyond immediate function. Superstition arises when belief assigns causality where none exists. Ritual is not a belief, but only a procedure. Its function is to regulate life through ordered repetition.

The chapters that follow address the principal domains in which ritual operates. In sexuality, ritual prevents destabilization by giving desire a form through which it can move without collapse. In distrust, friendship, enmity, and love, ritual contains states that resist control and makes them livable. In governance, ritual holds ideological differences within limits that preserve continuity of community.

Ritual is necessary for existence. It does not eliminate instinct, emotion, or conflict. It gives them form and allows life to continue without disintegration. This necessity is not external, but generated by life itself. Where forces exceed control, ritual provides order.

Ricardo Morin. September 12, 2025, Bala Cynwyd, Pa.

The word ritual comes from the Latin ritus (a prescribed act performed in an ordered manner). Its essence is repetition. To speak of ritual is not to speak of tradition or abstraction, but of a necessity carried out for primal longing.

The biological basis of ritual is clear. In many species, conflictive instinctive drives are contained by repeated actions which reduce uncertainty. Birds perform dances before mating. Wolves display submission to prevent attack. Primates groom one another to ease tension. These actions do not alter the external world. They do not ensure mating, nor prevent danger, nor eliminate aggression. They work by regulating behavior in ways preventing destabilization. They arise from necessity: without them, reproduction, survival, or cohesion could be placed at risk.

Human conduct extends this biological principle. The handshake is a repeated act signaling non-aggression between strangers. A funeral orders grief into sequence and allows the bereaved to endure loss. A meal shared among people affirms cooperation and reduces the possibility of conflict. Not one of these actions are effective because of a belief in causality. They are effective because they are the product of repetition and recognition within the group. They are necessary because without them, mistrust, grief, or rivalry would remain uncontained.

Instinct and emotion generate uncontrolled command or intention. Repetition gives them form without elimination. Herein lies the necessity: life produces forces beyond control, and ritual provides their procedure without collapse. Thus further inquiry rests here.

Belief begins where an act or event is taken to hold power beyond its immediate function. To believe is to attribute meaning not evident in the act itself. Belief provides orientation, but also creates vulnerability.

From belief grows superstition. Superstition occurs when a gesture, a sign, or an accident is taken to determine good or bad luck. Breaking glass is said to bring harm. A number is said to bring luck. The act or sign is given power it does not possess. Superstition is belief that’s misdirected. It relies on the conviction that external hidden forces govern external events and become accessible through signs and gestures.

Ritual does not depend on belief that an act can change fate or invoke hidden power. Its effectiveness does not rest on what is imagined but on what is enacted. A handshake obviates mistrust because it is repetition and recognition, not because of its magic. A funeral allows provides ordered sequence and allows grief, but it does not alter death. A meal shares cooperation through its mutuality, not because it calls luck.

The distinction is exact. If ritual is the form, desire is the current that moves within it. Religious traditions have often cast desire as a deficit, a disorder, or a temptation to be repressed. But desire is neither deficit nor disorder; it is vitality itself: an energy that presses toward expression. Ritual does not restrict this force; restriction belongs to fear and suffering. Ritual contains fear and keeps excess within the limits of endurance and necessity. Fasting, for example, does not abolish hunger but holds it in rhythm; it makes appetite a measure rather than a punishment. By contrast, a prohibition that denies the legitimacy of desire transforms vitality into anxiety altogether. In this way, ritual and desire are not opposed but interdependent: the former is the channel, the latter the stream.

III

Sexual drive is pervasive in human life. Left without form, it destabilizes both the individual and the community. Its power lies in persistence. Command cannot dismiss desire. Desire presses for expression. Every culture has developed rituals to contain and to regulate it.

Yet the grounds of sexual ritual are not repression but replication. Nurture marks the human condition from birth: in lactation, nurture consists in being fed, held, and sustained through another’s body. In this original state, intimacy secures survival. Later, desire repeats the structure. The quest for union is both a return to that first condition of dependence and a transformation of it into adulthood. Sexual ritual prolongs that first experience: it carries within it the imprint of nurture. It is not a matter of shame or judgment, but of continuity.

Courtship is the model. Repeated gestures mark the approach to intimacy. Ceremonies (words, gifts, dances) structure the encounter. Desire is not eliminated, but gives form to sexuality and allows it to proceed without immediate conflict. Marriage extends the process and establishes rules for its conduct within a recognizable frame. Ritual transforms a disruptive force into a relation that can be carried within order.

Different cultural examples exemplify the variety of this process. In Japan, tea ceremonies and formal visits have structured the first stages of marital negotiation. In Victorian England, the presence of chaperones functioned as a mode of surveillance and set boundaries for courtship. Among the Navajo in North America, the Kinaaldá ceremony marks a girl’s transition into womanhood and links individual desire and fertility with the continuation of the community. In each case, ritual does not extinguish instinct but channels it into social life.

When desire cannot be enacted without risk, individuals turn to patterned acts that provide release without collapse. Monastic traditions across cultures developed rituals of celibacy, which are supported by prayer, fasting, and other disciplines, containing sexual force. In everyday life, other people turn to imagery (fantasy, dream, or artistic representation) and stage symbolically acts they long for but cannot realize. Still others establish habits (exercise, meditation, or creative work) that redirect sexual energy into manageable outlets. Longing, however, is not erased. Its structure makes sure that desire moves within set limits without becoming overwhelming.

Obsession arises when desire remains unresolved and intrudes upon thought; it repeats itself without relief and it threatens stability. Ritual is a way to contain obsession. Through repetition, it acknowledges the force and gives it shape. Though not eliminated, it has boundaries.

Ritual in the sphere of sexuality is not an option but a necessity. It provides form where instinct would exceed measure.

Reason alone does not govern human beings. Emotional states persist in ways that resist control. Distrust, friendship, enmity, and love cannot be removed by decree or maintained by thought. Each requires ritual to provide continuity and containment.

Words alone cannot erase suspicion. Distrust is one of the most persistent of these states. Suspicion cannot be erased by emotion. Suspicion lingers and destabilizes interaction. Ritual reduces its scope. A greeting, an oath, or a contract are ceremonial acts repeated across encounters; they establish a minimum ground on which cooperation can occur. These acts do not eliminate suspicion, but they allow engagement to proceed in spite of it.

Friendship depends on feelings, but feelings without form fade. Ritual gives duration to friendship. Shared meals, recurring visits, exchanges of favors, and so forth, are patterned acts that affirm a relation. By themselves, they do not create friendship, but without them friendship weakens. Rituals sustain that which cannot be commanded—the persistence of trust and attachment across time.

Enmity is no less powerful. Unbounded hostility escalates until destruction follows. Rituals channel hostility into limited form: a duel, a contest, a formal debate—each provides a frame in which enmity can be expressed without collapse. Even in war, treaties operate as ritual forms that restrict violence to recognizable limits. Without them, conflict loses proportion.

Love in itself is unstable. It begins in impulse and only lasts with repetition. Daily gestures, renewed promises, anniversaries, and continuous acts of care provide a form to sustain it. These rituals do not guarantee permanence, but they give a structure to love within which it can endure. Without these rituals, love dissipates.

In all these states, ritual serves the same function. It gives order where the force cannot be controlled directly. It does not remove distrust, friendship, sexuality, enmity, or love. It makes them livable.

Governance is the state where human forces are amplified by scale. Distrust, enmity, and competing loyalties appear not only among individuals but among groups. Ideological differences cannot be eliminated; they can be managed. Ritual provides the procedure by which this is done.

One example is Parliamentary procedure. Debate, order of speaking, and voting are repeated acts that permit conflict to be expressed without dissolution. The forms themselves do not create agreement. They provide limits within which disagreement can persist.

Civic ceremonies perform a related function. Inaugurations, public oaths, and national commemorations do not change political conditions in of themselves. Their repetition affirms the continuity of authority and gives recognition to transitions of power. The acts are symbolic only in appearance; their real function is procedural stability.

Elections are more direct. They do not remove ideological division. They provide a repeated method for channeling conflict into outcomes recognizable by opposing sides. Without elections, or when their results are not acknowledged, division tends toward rupture.

Ritual is necessity. Governance depends on it. Across species, ritual arises from the need to manage forces that exceed direct control. Human conduct continues this principle.

In ancient Athens, the assembly and the use of the lot allowed opposition to be expressed without dissolving civic order. Later, parliaments and councils provided ritual structures for negotiation between absolute monarchs and subjects. In modern democracies, constitutions and electoral cycles maintain continuity by repeating forms that regulate the transfer of power. When such rituals fail, the outcome is predictable. Governance is a ritual that makes ideological differences livable. Without ritual, politics reduces itself to domination and resistance, a cycle that cannot sustain order.

Annotated Bibliography

Arendt, Hannah: On Revolution. New York: Viking, 1963. (Arendt emphasizes the role of civic procedures in sustaining governance; this underlies Chapter V’s claim that ritual makes ideological difference livable.)

Douglas, Mary: Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge, 1966. (Douglas’s work on ritual boundaries informs Chapter IV’s discussion of distrust, enmity, and the management of instability through repeated acts.)

Durkheim, Émile: The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. New York: Free Press, 1995. (Durkheim argues that ritual is the foundation of social cohesion, an idea reflected in Chapter I’s claim that rituals regulate behavior and prevent destabilization.)

Freud, Sigmund: Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. New York: Basic Books, 2000. (Freud’s psychoanalytic discussion of sexual drive and obsession parallels Chapter III’s treatment of private rituals and the containment of unresolved desire.)

Geertz, Clifford: The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, 1973. (Geertz treats ritual as “models of” and “models for” reality; his ethnographic analysis supports the essay’s extension of ritual from sexuality to governance in Chapters IV and V.)

Habermas, Jürgen: Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996. (Habermas shows how ritualized procedures in discourse and law preserve governance under conflict; his thesis supports the essay’s treatment of parliamentary debate and elections.)

Jung, Carl Gustav: Symbols of Transformation. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956. (Jung traces how instinctual drives, especially sexuality, become ritualized in both individual psychology and collective culture; his analysis complements Chapter III.)

Turner, Victor: The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Chicago: Aldine, 1969. (Turner’s analysis of liminality informs Chapter III and IV, where sexuality, friendship, and enmity are shown to require ritual frames to carry disruptive forces without collapse.)

Tags: anthropology, containment, culture, desire, human condition, I’m ritual, morality, religion, restriction, sexuality, vitality
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“The Colors of Certainty”

August 23, 2025

Author’s Note:

This essay is the first part of a trilogy that explores how human beings approach reality through certainty, doubt, and ambivalence. It begins with certainty—how the desire for stability drives thought and belief, even when what appears secure is already open to change. Though written from personal inquiry, its scope is broader: the question of certainty concerns not one life but the fragile conditions of shared reality. The trilogy continues with The Discipline of Doubt and concludes with When All We Know Is Borrowed.

Ricardo Morín, Bala Cynwyd, Pa. August 23, 2025

The Colors of Certainty

We live in an age unsettled by division. The subtleties of thought that once allowed us to pause, to weigh, and to distinguish are increasingly swept aside by the demand for immediate clarity. Everything is urged toward opposites: yes or no, ally or enemy, awake or asleep. The pace of public life, accelerated by technology and amplified by conflict, leaves little patience for nuance. Contradiction, which once signaled the restless work of an honest mind, is now treated as treachery. In this atmosphere, to admit complexity is to risk mistrust, and even the smallest hesitation is judged as weakness. We are asked, again and again, to define ourselves as though identity were a single stroke, not a layered drawing made across time.

Symbols flourish in such a climate while they reduce complexity into consumable images. Few have proven more enduring than the pill metaphors drawn from The Matrix film. When it appeared in 1999, the scene of choosing between a red pill and a blue pill was a cinematic device, which dramatized the tension between reality and illusion. Its influence grew gradually, as the film became a generational touchstone. Over the decades that followed, the pills slipped into online communities and political rhetoric only to harden into modes of thought that now shape how we imagine truth and the identity of belonging. To take the red pill became a declaration of awakening, access to hidden truths. To take the blue pill was to be mocked for complacency. Eventually the darker black pill emerged into both despair and fatalism embraced as destiny.

Once this logic takes hold, the world itself is reduced to a theater of absolutes. Disagreement becomes disloyalty, and belonging is measured not by shared life but by categorical allegiance. I have felt this even in conversations with people I have known for decades. In one such exchange, I remarked that I was appalled by Noam Chomsky’s recent habit, even in his nineties, of opposing Western hegemony over Russia as though that stance could excuse the war in Ukraine. Yet in another context, I expressed admiration for Chomsky’s earlier work on linguistic relevance in science four decades ago, which continues to illuminate how language shapes knowledge. To my interlocutor, these two statements seemed incompatible, as if they could not both be true. The expectation was that my judgment had to be seamless: either I rejected Chomsky entirely or endorsed him wholly.

Why must one justify such distinctions, as though every judgment were required to form a single line of allegiance? The contexts are not the same—one belongs to the 1980s, another to the present; one to the realm of linguistics, another to geopolitics. Yet in today’s climate, the demand for congruence is relentless. It reflects the pill logic that has seeped into our speech and habits of thought: one is either awake or asleep, aligned or opposed, consistent across every domain or untrustworthy in all.

That same craving for certainty also gave us Infowars—the radio podcast. Founded in 1999, the very year The Matrix was released, it became a commercial theater of the red pill metaphor. Infowars thrived on dramatizing crisis, telling its audience that elites, governments, or hidden forces manipulated events at every turn. What institutions explained as complexity, Infowars simplified into betrayal. The clarity it offered was intoxicating: good versus evil, freedom versus tyranny, awake versus deceived. It was not simply ideas being sold, but certainty itself—packaged with survival kits, supplements, and slogans. In seeking to liberate its audience from illusion, Infowars created a new one, offering not understanding but a permanent performance of awakening.

The narrowing of discourse is not only about politics and ideology, but it also extends to who is permitted to speak. I was reminded of this in a private exchange, where writing itself was dismissed as the work of an “armchair liberal” or a “limousine socialist.” According to this view, only those directly scarred by battle may speak of war, only those who have suffered prejudice firsthand may give voice to injustice, and to write as an observer is to mock the reality of struggle. It is a charge meant to discredit, as though the act of “fighting with a keyboard” were less real than hand combat in a bloodied field. Yet such suspicion denies what writing has always been: a means of bearing witness, of preserving memory, of shaping the conversation through which societies recognize themselves. The pen has never replaced experience, but it has always transformed it into something shareable and durable. To demand firsthand suffering as the sole qualification for speech is to reduce witness to autobiography and to strip dialogue of the breadth that comes when voices join from different vantage points.

Another difficulty lies in language itself. Writers who seek precision—who stretch language to its sharpest edge—often find that what emerges are metaphors. Even when grounded in substantiated terms, description requires figures of thought, images, and analogies that can never be wholly exact. The question is how precise language can ever be. Even the most brilliant minds struggle with definitions, because in their best formulations they remain presumptive theories. To acknowledge this is not to diminish language but to recognize that our dependence on tropes is not weakness but necessity. Story lines and metaphors are the bridges of comprehension, without which complexity would dissolve into noise. To lean on metaphor is not necessarily to abandon truth but to approach it by way of what can be shared.

What began as a film’s conceit has become a method of thinking, and in many ways a prison. The Matrix offered its audience a vision of awakening through choice, but our culture has taken that image and turned it into a grid of loyalties, where every stance is measured by whether one has swallowed the right capsule. Infowars amplified this posture; it dramatized the hunger for certainty until conspiracy became a substitute for thought. Suspicion of the writer’s position narrowed it further while it mocked reflection as inauthentic and demanded that speech bear the scars of direct experience before it could count as legitimate. And beneath it all lies the frailty of language itself: its inability to define with absolute precision, its reliance on metaphors that shape the very realities they describe.

To speak today of red pills, blue pills, or black pills is not only to reference a film or a subculture; it is to acknowledge the grip of a society that prefers binaries to dialogue, antagonism to complexity, performance to reflection. To resist that grip is to remember that thought is not a pill to be swallowed but a conversation to be carried, a conversation sustained in the fragile medium of language itself. However uncertain, however provisional, it is in that ongoing act of speaking and listening that culture remains alive—where friendship can endure, where witness can be honored, and where the truths no single color can contain still find their voice.

About the cover image:

Newsprint Series Nº 9, 2006, by Ricardo Morín (47” × 74”): Translucent dyes, ink, white-out, and blotted oil paint on newsprint.

This image belongs to a series that transforms fragments of printed matter into layered fields of color and erasure, this piece speaks to the instability of certainty itself. The pigments veil and expose in turns, while the newsprint beneath reminds us that truth is mediated, provisional, and never free of interpretation. As with language in the essay, meaning emerges only through contrast, through what resists containment.

Annotated Bibliography

Cialdini, Robert B. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. New York: Harper Business, 2006. (A classic study in behavioral psychology showing how persuasion exploits binary choices and authority cues, useful for understanding the appeal of pill metaphors and the certainty promised by conspiracy movements.)

Lakoff, George, and Johnson, Mark: Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. (A foundational text on metaphor in cognition and language, relevant to the essay’s argument that even the most precise use of language depends on tropes and figurative structures for human comprehension.)

Marwick, Alice, and Lewis, Rebecca: Media Manipulation and Disinformation Online. New York: Data & Society Research Institute, 2017. (This analytical report documents how conspiracy narratives spread through online ecosystems; it highlights the role of platforms in amplifying symbolic binaries such as “red pill” awakening.)

Pew Research Center: “Public Trust in Government: 1958–2023”. Washington: Pew Research Center, 2023. (Presents longitudinal data on the decay of institutional trust in the United States and offers a data-driven context for why audiences turned to alternative voices such as Infowars.)

Southern Poverty Law Center: “Male Supremacy”. Montgomery: SPLC, 2019. (A report classifying the Incel subculture and related groups within the larger “male supremacist ecosystem,” cited in connection to the black pill ideology and its links to violence.)

Sunstein, Cass R., and Vermeule, Adrian: Conspiracy Theories and Other Dangerous Ideas. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014. (This book explores why conspiracy theories flourish and frames them as efforts to create certainty in moments of social disorientation. It is highly relevant to the discussion of Infowars as a commercial theater of the red pill metaphor.)

Taguieff, Pierre-André: The New Culture Wars. Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2020. (This book is a political-philosophical treatment of identity politics and binary antagonisms in Western democracies: it offers a perspective on how pill metaphors entered the broader theater of culture wars.)

Tversky, Amos, and Kahneman, Daniel: Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. (A landmark in cognitive science explaining why people reduce complex realities into simplified binaries; it anchors the essay’s meditation on the lure of certainty.)

Tags: binaries, black pill, blue pill, conspiracy, culture, culture wars, discourse, Identity, Infowars, language, metaphor, red pill, The Matrix, writing
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“The Shared Shadow of History”

August 12, 2025

To the memory we all inherit—capable of bridging distances, yet more often deepening them.



By Ricardo Morin

August 12, 2025, Rochester, NY

Across cultures, rituals are both vessels of history and instruments of adaptation. They carry the weight of collective memory while responding to the shifting conditions of the present, negotiating between inherited forms and the realities in which they are practiced.

At a recent wedding within a centuries-old tradition, two family members—a rabbi and a woman—shared officiating duties, blending contemporary adaptations into the ceremony. The shared roles, gestures, and blessings revealed how continuity and innovation can inhabit the same space, weaving together memory and renewal.

Such occasions unfold within atmospheres shaped as much by public discourse as by personal heritage. They demonstrate how ceremonies are never static: they are marked by the echoes of the past, yet reshaped by the urges and hopes of the present.

This interplay between the ceremonial and the political is far from unique. Diasporas across the world have long balanced the preservation of essential forms with the incorporation of new influences. My own ancestry traces to communities that, over generations, retained elements of earlier practices while integrating into new surroundings—a trajectory familiar to many shaped by migration and the pressures of assimilation.

The enduring question, visible in ceremonies from many cultures, is whether customs survive best when they hold firmly to inherited forms or when they adapt to welcome diversity and safeguard the integrity of others. As with many legacies, history will answer in due course.

Annotated Bibliography

Anderson, Benedict: Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 2006. (In this influential work, Anderson examines how shared cultural narratives and rituals create a sense of belonging across dispersed populations. He explores how communities sustain identity across generations, offering context for understanding the persistence of tradition within diasporas.)

Gerber, Jane S.: The Jews of Spain: A History of the Sephardic Experience. New York: Free Press, 1992. (Gerber traces the history of Sephardic Jewry from medieval Spain through the diaspora, detailing how cultural and religious traditions adapted to new environments. She provides an accessible account of resilience in the face of displacement and persecution.)

Hobsbawm, Eric, and Ranger, Terence eds.: The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. (Hobsbawm and Ranger compile studies on how traditions are often consciously constructed or adapted to serve contemporary needs. Their analysis invites readers to consider how ritual continuity is shaped by changing political and social contexts.)

Sorkin, David: Jewish Emancipation: A History Across Five Centuries. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019. (Sorkin presents a broad historical account of Jewish emancipation movements in Europe and beyond, showing how shifts in political and cultural climates influenced religious practice and identity formation.)

Todorov, Tzvetan: The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other. New York: Harper & Row, 1984. (Todorov explores how cultures define themselves in relation to the “other,” with attention to encounters between Europe and the Americas. His work illuminates how cross-cultural contact reshapes both identity and tradition.)

Tags: collective memory, Cultural heritage, Cultural reflections, Diaspora voices, historical memory, Intercultural dialogue, Ritual and tradition, Shared history, Tradition and change, Unity in diversity
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“The Unmaking of a Nation”

July 29, 2025

To my brother Alberto, whose persistence sustained this reflection and made these pages possible.

By Ricardo Morin

July 29, 2025

Abstract

This essay examines the fragmentation of Venezuelan national identity amid a prolonged crisis of State failure. It argues that the collapse of institutional sovereignty, the entrenchment of foreign authoritarian influence, and the marginalization of native citizens from civic and economic life have not only hollowed out the republic but have also fractured the symbolic cohesion necessary for shared civic identity. Through a reasoned analysis of foreign entanglement, cultural displacement, and the moral cost of dispossession, the essay contends that Venezuelan identity has become a contested act of memory and resistance. The argument proceeds not from political activism but from a civic and ethical perspective on national dissolution.

Section I: Losing the Nation: Identity in a Failed State

National identity is not an abstraction. It is a lived sense of coherence that binds individuals to a shared history, a common language, and a civic project. In functional States, this identity is sustained by stable institutions of governance, the continuity of law, and the everyday experience of participation in a protected civic order. When a State collapses—through authoritarian control, institutional decay, and the disfigurement of sovereignty—its people do not merely lose services or rights. They begin to lose their place in the world.

As Michel Agier observes, “when institutions that once guaranteed rights, protection, and civic recognition collapse—such as courts, elections, or access to public services—citizens can become internally exiled: physically present, but stripped of belonging”—of any sense of inclusion.

This disintegration is not caused solely by economic collapse or political repression. It has been compounded by the regime’s calculated alignment with foreign authoritarian powers, which have embedded external interests deep within the nation’s economy and territorial administration. Through negotiated dependencies—whether in extractive industries, infrastructure, surveillance, or military cooperation—the Venezuelan State has relinquished control over strategic industries and assets. In doing so, it has not only compromised national sovereignty; it has reordered the social and cultural hierarchy of belonging.

As Louisa Loveluck has documented, these foreign enclaves operate as “parallel structures of control and privilege,” where loyalty to external powers displaces the traditional role of State industries such as in oil and mining resources (Loveluck, “Foreign Control and Local Collapse in Venezuela’s Border Zones,” The Washington Post, 2019).

According to David Smilde, this delegation of sovereign functions to authoritarian allies has transformed the State apparatus into an instrument of regime survival rather than a vehicle of national representation (Smilde, “The Military and Authoritarian Resilience in Venezuela,” Latin American Politics and Society, 2020).

The result is a deep psychological rupture. Arjun Appadurai describes this condition as a form of “identity disanchoring,” in which cultural detachment renders citizens unable to recognize themselves in their historical present (Modernity at Large, 1996).

When a nation’s institutions no longer reflect its people, and when its future is shaped by foreign imperatives, Venezuelanness becomes less a civic reality and more a memory under siege. What is lost is not only territorial—it is existential. Hannah Arendt warned of this condition with stark clarity: the loss of the right to have rights begins when one no longer belongs to a political community capable of guaranteeing them security (The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951).

Section II: Authoritarian Alliances and Economic Infiltration

Venezuela’s transformation into a failed State has not occurred in isolation. Its authoritarian trajectory has been reinforced by a calculated strategy of international alignment with other regimes operating outside the norms of democratic accountability. These alliances—chiefly with Cuba, Russia, China, Iran, and Turkey—have provided the Maduro regime not only with political legitimacy and technical support, but have also enabled the gradual outsourcing of national functions and resources to foreign control (cf. Ellis 2018, 49–56).

These alliances are transactional: the Venezuelan State forfeits sovereignty in exchange for survival. Chinese loans secured by oil reserves, Russian stakes in energy infrastructure, Cuban intelligence operations embedded in the military and civil apparatus, and Iranian ventures in mining and logistics have together displaced native Venezuelans from critical sectors of the economy (cf. Trinkunas 2015, 3–6; Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018, 197–198).

In parallel, private and informal business networks—often tied to these foreign interests—have taken root in local markets, at times displacing or outperforming historical domestic producers. This economic infiltration has a dual effect. It distorts the allocation of national resources, diverting wealth and opportunity away from the general population toward a narrow class of regime beneficiaries and their foreign patrons (cf. Corrales 2020, 212–215). And it reconfigures the geography of power: entire regions, especially those rich in oil, minerals, or strategic positions, have come under the functional control of external actors or militias under foreign protection (cf. Romero 2021, 88–91).

In such contexts, Venezuelans do not merely feel excluded from their economy; they experience it as something alien—managed, exploited, and secured by those whose loyalties lie elsewhere. The result is a corrosive alienation. A population that once saw itself as a beneficiary of a national project now confronts the reality of an extractive system in which their labor, land, and culture are no longer valued on their own terms. The economy ceases to be a platform for collective progress and becomes a zone of foreign extraction, protected by repression and organized through impunity (cf. Loveluck and Dehghan 2020; López Maya 2022).

In this environment, the question of identity becomes inseparable from the loss of agency. To be Venezuelan under such conditions is to be subordinated within one’s own country.

Section III: Cultural and Social Displacement

The dissolution of identity in a failed State extends beyond political and economic structures; it reaches into the cultural and social fabric of everyday life. In Venezuela, the displacement of native citizens is not always physical—though mass emigration has marked the national experience. The institutions, customs, and even public spaces that once embodied a shared civic identity are being emptied out, repurposed, or replaced by structures that no longer reflect Venezuelan values or priorities [cf. Salas 2019, 45–47].

Public education, for instance—once a source of national pride and social mobility—has been systematically dismantled. In its place, ideological indoctrination and partisan loyalty have become criteria for access and advancement [cf. Human Rights Watch 2021]. The result is not only the degradation of knowledge and opportunity but even the politicization of childhood itself. Similarly, cultural production—formerly diverse, expressive, and regionally vibrant—has withered under censorship, economic collapse, and the withdrawal of public support for the arts [cf. Ávila 2020, 119–124].

What remains is either trivialized as propaganda or silenced altogether. The result is a cultural silence, where shared narratives are undermined and the cultural life of the nation is reduced to slogans and spectacle. Meanwhile, the influx of foreign interests and their social infrastructure—contract workers, commercial complexes, private security, parallel institutions—has introduced new cultural norms and loyalties into local environments, particularly in border areas and resource-rich zones [cf. Rodríguez and Ortega 2023].

These changes are often subtle: signage in unfamiliar languages, imported goods replacing local ones, new patterns of exclusion in access to services or employment. But over time, they alter the character of a place, displacing not only people but the meanings those places once held. This form of displacement is disorienting because it operates within everyday life. It renders Venezuelans strangers in their own markets, their own schools, their own land. It unravels the mutual recognition that makes coexistence possible.

When communities no longer share a common point of reference—whether legal, linguistic, or moral—they lose the cohesion needed to sustain identity as something lived and affirmed. The rupture is not dramatic; it is slow, cumulative, and deeply damaging [cf. Arendt 1951, 302–306]. In such a context, cultural resilience becomes increasingly difficult to sustain. Identity, once reinforced by public participation and pride in collective achievement, begins to retreat into nostalgia or fracture along lines of class, exile, or ideological survival. It becomes reactive rather than generative—something to defend rather than to build.

Section IV: Dignity and the Struggle to Belong

“Venezuela: Freedom in the World 2024” by Freedom House offers updated empirical data and analytical context regarding the decline of political rights and civil liberties in Venezuela, with particular attention to authoritarian consolidation and State control.

At the heart of national identity lies the human need for dignity: the certainty that one’s life is acknowledged, one’s labor valued, and one’s voice able to contribute to a shared future. In today’s Venezuela, that dignity has been systematically undermined. The collapse of institutions, the degradation of public life, and the influence of foreign entanglements distorting the national economy have created a climate in which the average citizen no longer feels seen or protected by their country. This is not merely a political failure, but a fracture in the ethical foundation of the nation. As Emmanuel Levinas warned, “dignity is not a legal category but the response of the face of the other, who calls and obliges us” (Levinas 1982).

When a government no longer rules on behalf of its people, but rather to ensure its own permanence and serve external patrons, civic inclusion becomes conditional. Loyalty is demanded, not earned. Dissent is criminalized, not heard. Citizenship, far from offering protection, becomes a liability. In such a system, dignity is not merely denied—it is redefined through fear, dependency, and silence. Here, Hannah Arendt’s warning comes to pass: “the loss of human rights begins when the right to have rights is lost” (Arendt 1951).

This leaves Venezuelans—both within and beyond the country—suspended between dispossession and resistance. Many continue to fight for what remains: organizing locally, teaching despite educational collapse, feeding neighbors in the absence of public services, safeguarding memory in the face of propaganda. These acts are heroic, but they also respond to abandonment. They attest to the resilience of the people, but also to the void where the State should be.

For those in exile, the loss is often twofold: the loss of a physical home and the loss of a living context. Cultural reference points no longer match daily experience. One’s accent becomes a marker of displacement. The passport becomes a barrier more than a right. And yet, exile can also sharpen awareness of what has been lost—and what must be preserved. Thus, identity persists not through affirmation of a functioning nation, but through refusal to forget one. In the words of Edward Said, “exile is not simply a condition of loss, but a critical way of being in the world” (Said 2000).

Even so, dignity requires more than memory. It requires restoration: of institutions, of justice, of a civic space where Venezuelans may once again participate as equals. Until such restoration is possible, the struggle to belong will continue to define Venezuelan identity—not as a static inheritance, but as a sustained refusal to surrender what remains of the nation’s moral core.

Section V: A Word for the Dispossessed

To speak of dispossession is to name not only what has been taken but also what continues to be denied: the right to shape one’s future within a framework of justice, belonging, and shared meaning. In Venezuela, dispossession has unfolded through a deliberate dismantling of sovereignty—first by internal corruption, then by foreign entanglement. What remains is a scattered people, a fragmented territory, and an identity under immense pressure. As Achille Mbembe has noted, “dispossession acts not only upon bodies but also upon the collective imaginaries that sustain life in common” (Mbembe 2016).

And yet, dispossession is not the end of identity. The absence of a functional State does not erase a nation’s moral memory. The language, traditions, civic values, and aspirations that once shaped Venezuelan life have not vanished: they have been driven underground, carried into exile, or preserved in the hearts of those who remember. “Language is the house of being,” said Heidegger, and where it is kept alive, a form of belonging endures (Heidegger 1959).

The task now is not only to resist, but to rebuild: to articulate a vision of Venezuelanness that rejects both cynicism and forgetfulness.

This cannot be done through nostalgia alone. Nor can it be deferred to future generations without commitment. It begins with the refusal to normalize what is not normal: the foreign occupation of national resources, the criminalization of dissent, the denial of opportunity, the devaluation of citizenship. It continues in the quiet labor of preserving language, history, and dignity wherever that remains possible—whether in classrooms, in exile, or through the written word. And it gains strength through solidarity: among those who stayed, those who left, and those who bear both destinies.

Under these conditions, Venezuelan identity is not a fixed inheritance but an act of resistance. It is the assertion that dignity is not negotiable, and that a people cannot be permanently replaced by alliances of convenience and control. The recovery of the nation will take time and may require forms not yet imagined. But it will depend, above all, on the preservation of civic spirit—one that knows what has been lost and refuses to let it be forgotten.

Epilogue
*

As Venezuela’s history unfolds in waves, the struggle between unity and fragmentation, idealism and authority, repeats itself—not only in the corridors of power but also in the private lives of those who live with its consequences. Power, in its many forms, tests the very fabric of the nation, yet the quest for balance remains elusive. Venezuela remains gripped by a profound humanitarian crisis, with millions deprived of basic healthcare and nutrition, according to the “World Report 2024” by Human Rights Watch. [1] The country now has the highest rate of undernourishment in South America, with 66% of its population in need of humanitarian aid and 65% having irreversibly lost their means of livelihood. Despite repeated promises of reform and amnesty, entrenched power structures have prevented meaningful change and perpetuated what is widely regarded as an authoritarian and corrupt regime. External interventions, primarily diplomatic and economic sanctions, have been frequent, yet they have failed to compel any substantive transformation.

Political theory once held that the spread of democracy would secure peace among nations. [2] The ordeal for Venezuelans suggests the converse: peace recedes where democracy is hollowed into the temporality of chaos. Although such theories do not directly address the persistence of autocracies, the Venezuelan case highlights how regimes strengthened by internal control and by strategic autocratic alliances with external powers can withstand both internal unrest and external pressure.

In Venezuela, theoretical insights find concrete expression in how democratic institutions—elections, legislatures, and courts—are repurposed to entrench authoritarian control. Through staged electoral processes, constrained legislatures, and politicized judiciaries, these regimes suppress dissent, manage perception, and deflect external accountability. Legitimacy transforms from a mandate of the people into a mechanism for the endurance of autocratic power.

While the path forward remains uncertain, the crisis is no longer merely political—it is systemic, embedded in the very fabric of Venezuela’s history. The resolution of this crisis requires more than political turnover or external intervention; it requires an acknowledgment of the historical inheritance that has shaped the nation’s mistrust and dysfunction. The foundations of governance have long been built on conflicting forces, and any potential for change begins with an awareness of this legacy. A coordinated strategy that integrates economic support, diplomatic engagement, and grassroots democratic movements may provide short-term relief, but it cannot resolve what is ingrained. True transformation requires a cultural reckoning—an internal shift in consciousness that confronts the very forces that have enabled autocratic rule. Yet without a profound internal unity—a cultural awakening capable of overcoming centuries of inherent contradictions—the possibility of such transformation may remain distant, though not extinguished.

*

Endnotes:

^[1] “Venezuela: Events of 2023,” Human Rights Watch. https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2024/country-chapters/venezuela

^[2] Azar Gat, “The Democratic Peace Theory Reframed,” World Politics (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, Vol. 58, No. 1, October 2005, 73-100. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40060125
Robert Longley, “What Is the Democratic Peace Theory? Definition and Examples,” ThoughtCo, January 2, 2022. https://www.thoughtco.com/democratic-peace-theory-4769410

Annotated Bibliography

Améry, Jean: At the Mind’s Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and Its Realities. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980. (A philosophical and existential reflection on suffering, exile, and the loss of belonging. The essay draws on his idea that there is no greater violence than being stripped of a place in the world to return to, which becomes a moral axis in the Venezuela of the exodus.)

Appadurai, Arjun: Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. (Appadurai introduces the concept of “identity disanchoring” to describe the cultural unmooring brought about by globalization, which disrupts symbolic continuity between past and present. He is cited to explain the subjective rupture in contexts of cultural loss and displacement.)

Arendt, Hannah: The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1951. (Foundational study on rootlessness, denationalization, and the right to have rights. Her conceptualization of stateless refugees directly informs the argument about the loss of belonging as a form of ontological expulsion.)

Ávila, Rafael: La cultura sitiada: Arte, política y silencio en Venezuela. Caracas: Editorial Alfa, 2020. (Ávila examines how censorship, economic precariousness, and institutional control have drastically reduced independent artistic production in Venezuela. He is cited to support the claim that cultural diversity has been replaced by an expression conditioned by power and subsistence.)

Corrales, Javier: Autocracy Rising: How Venezuela’s Authoritarian Leaders Consolidated Power. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2020. (Corrales explains how regime elites have concentrated economic control through informal networks, enabling foreign-backed oligarchies to displace domestic economic actors. Used to support the claim that foreign patrons and loyalists now dominate Venezuelan resource flows.)

Ellis, R. Evan: Transnational Organized Crime in Latin America and the Caribbean. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018. (Ellis provides a comprehensive mapping of how foreign actors—especially from Cuba, Russia, and China—embed themselves in the Venezuelan state. Cited to explain the strategic outsourcing of sovereignty to non-democratic allies.)

Gessen, Masha: Surviving Autocracy. New York: Riverhead Books, 2020. (Though centered on the United States, this book articulates general patterns of autocratic behavior—such as the distortion of language, the hollowing of institutions, and the disorientation of those governed—which also apply to the Venezuelan case.)

Heidegger, Martin: Unterwegs zur Sprache. Pfullingen: Neske, 1959. (Includes the well-known phrase “Language is the house of being,” which is cited to emphasize the relationship between linguistic continuity and existential belonging.)

Human Rights Watch: “Venezuela’s Humanitarian Emergency: Large-Scale UN Response Needed to Address Health and Food Crisis.” New York: Human Rights Watch, 2019. (H.R.W. detailed report linking the collapse of public services with violations of basic rights and national dignity, highlighting how the humanitarian crisis contributes to the dissolution of identity.)

Levinas, Emmanuel: Totalité et infini: Essai sur l’extériorité. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1961. (Levinas’s ethics of alterity, centered on responsibility toward the irreducible other, underlies the essay’s argument for a politics founded on dignity, not on state identity or calculated reciprocity.)

Levitsky, Steven, and Ziblatt, Daniel: How Democracies Die. Nueva York: Crown Publishing Group, 2018. (Levitsky and Ziblatt offer a framework for understanding democratic degradation via institutional capture and foreign alignment. It is referenced to underline the transactional nature of Venezuela’s external alliances.)

López Maya, Margarita: “Economía extractiva y soberanía en disputa: el Arco Minero del Orinoco.” Revista Venezolana de Ciencia Política 45 (2022): 34–49. (López Maya analyzes how mining zones have become semi-autonomous territories controlled by militias and foreign interests, supporting the essay’s argument on geographic alienation and economic fragmentation.)

Loveluck, Louisa: “The Collapse of a Nation: Venezuela’s Descent into Authoritarianism.” The Washington Post, July 2020. (Journalistic synthesis of Venezuela’s structural collapse, including firsthand accounts of economic alienation and the psychological cost of state abandonment.)

Loveluck, Louisa, and Dehghan, Saeed Kamali: “Venezuela Hands Over Control of Key Assets to Foreign Backers.” The Washington Post, 2020. (Loveluck’s and Dehghan’s investigative report documents the privatization and foreign management of strategic Venezuelan sectors. Their report is cited to demonstrate how national industries have been subordinated to external control.)

Mbembe, Achille. Politiques de l’inimitié. Paris: La Découverte, 2016. (Mbembe explores the politics of enmity and the mechanisms of dispossession in late modernity. Quoted to highlight how structural violence targets both material life and the collective imagination.)

Rodríguez, Luis, y Ortega, Daniela: Colonización contemporánea: transformaciones culturales en las zonas extractivas de Venezuela. Mérida: Editorial de la Universidad de los Andes, 2023. (An ethnographic study on the sociocultural effects of foreign investment in mining and border regions, including the introduction of new hierarchies, codes of coexistence, and parallel organizational forms. It is cited to support the argument about the transformation of cultural norms and community loyalties.)

Romero, Carlos A.: “Geopolítica, militarización y relaciones internacionales del chavismo.” Nueva Sociedad 293 (2021): 82–94. (Romero traces how foreign alliances have militarized border zones and reinforced internal authoritarianism. Used to support the claim that power has shifted toward actors whose loyalties lie beyond Venezuela.)

Roth, Kenneth: The Fight for Rights: Human Dignity and the Struggle Against Authoritarianism. New York: W. W. Norton, 2022. (Roth examines the moral and civic foundations of dignity, providing context for the argument that Venezuelan identity must now be preserved through resistance rather than state recognition.)

Said, Edward W.: Reflections on Exile and Other Essays. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000. (Said explores the experience of exile as an existential and critical condition, beyond mere uprootedness. Cited to support the idea that Venezuelan identity in the diaspora endures not through the affirmation of a functioning nation, but through the refusal to forget.)

Salas, Miguel: Arquitectura y desposesión: Espacios públicos y crisis urbana en Venezuela. Caracas: Editorial Punto Cero, 2019. (Salas examines the transformation of public architecture and space in the context of political and social collapse in Venezuela. Cited to support the idea that shared civic structures are being stripped of their symbolic and communal function.)

Schmitt, Carl: The Concept of the Political. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. (Theoretical reference on sovereignty, useful for understanding how the Venezuelan regime defines enemies and allies not through legality but through loyalty, thereby reshaping the very meaning of citizenship.)

Shklar, Judith: American Citizenship: The Quest for Inclusion. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991. (Shklar examines how political and social exclusion has shaped the meaning of citizenship in the United States. The essay takes up her premise that to be a citizen implies not only legal rights, but effective belonging and recognized dignity.)

Smilde, David: “Participation, Politics, and Culture in Twenty-First Century Venezuela.” Latin American Research Review 52, no. 1 (2017): 157–65. (Analyzes the cultural impact of political polarization and exclusion in Venezuela, and how identity is formed in contested civic spaces.)

Trinkunas, Harold A.: “Venezuela’s Defense Sector and Civil-Military Relations.” Washington: Brookings Institution Working Paper, 2015. (Trinkunas examines the entrenchment of Cuban and Russian influence in the Venezuelan military. Cited to explain the redefinition of sovereignty under foreign advisory presence.)

*

Tags: Authoritarianism, civil resistance, collective memory, Dictatorship, Dignity, exile, failed state, Human Rights, migration, national identity., political essay, sovereignty, territorial loss, Venezuela, Venezuelan culture
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“The Case for an Independent Treasury”

July 27, 2025

Ricardo Morin
An Embroidered Question
CGI
2025

To the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System—in recognition of the ongoing challenge of aligning institutional independence with public responsibility.

By Ricardo Morin

July 27, 2025

Abstract

This essay examines the conceptual validity of an independent treasury, free from executive control and governed by long-term, nonpartisan economic reasoning. It argues that the alignment of fiscal institutions with short-term political leadership creates structural risks that compromise transparency, sustainability, and public trust. By contrast, an autonomous treasury—operating within clear legal mandates and guided by professional expertise—can promote fiscal stability and integrity while preserving essential democratic oversight. The analysis rejects both executive subordination and technocratic absolutism, and proposes a balanced institutional model in which independence functions as a form of principled restraint. This concept, as developed in the essay, refers to the structured and lawful limitation of authority in pursuit of long-term public interest—discipline rooted not in detachment, but in ethics, transparency, and legality. This framework, abstracted from any specific national context, is intended to apply broadly to the theory and design of sound fiscal governance.

The Case for an Independent Treasury

The question of how a treasury should be structured—whether subordinated to political leadership or operating autonomously—raises fundamental concerns about institutional integrity, fiscal responsibility, and democratic accountability. While treasuries are often housed within executive power, there is a strong theoretical case for granting such institutions political independence. A treasury removed from direct control of governing administrations and guided instead by economic expertise, long-term reasoning, and publicly defined mandates can provide a more stable and ethically sound foundation for fiscal policy.

At the heart of this argument is the fact that fiscal decisions—such as setting tax levels, allocating public spending, and managing debt—extend far beyond the timeline of electoral cycles or political terms. When treasury operations are subject to short-term political priorities, fiscal policy risks being distorted by opportunism—through unsustainable tax cuts, politically timed spending increases, or the concealment of uncomfortable debt projections. These distortions undermine both the credibility of fiscal governance and the long-term stability that supports public trust and financial soundness.

A common set of distortions includes election-cycle spending surges that prioritize immediate electoral gains over lasting fiscal balance; strategic underreporting or reclassification of deficits to hide true fiscal conditions; and biased tax enforcement, where tax authorities selectively target or protect groups based on political motives. Such behaviors not only threaten fiscal sustainability but also weaken the treasury’s role as a neutral guardian of public resources.

Principled restraint is key to addressing these challenges. This concept refers to a structured commitment to ethical limits and responsible governance. It is a form of authority that binds itself willingly to the public interest, resisting both political capture and technocratic arrogance. Principled restraint is not the absence of power, but its disciplined and transparent exercise, grounded in law, deliberation, and long-term accountability. It affirms the treasury’s role as a steward of the public good across political transitions and economic cycles.

An autonomous treasury, governed by clear statutes and staffed by nonpartisan experts, can anchor fiscal management to long-term goals such as sustainability, fairness, and generational equity. Its purpose is not to replace democratic decision-making but to ensure that such decisions are carried out with consistency, impartiality, and professional skill. Just as some institutions responsible for macroeconomic stability are insulated from immediate political pressures, so too might a treasury—especially in functions like forecasting, revenue collection, and debt issuance.

The credibility of an independent treasury extends beyond its internal workings. Reliable and professionally managed fiscal behavior builds confidence among citizens, investors, and institutions. When financial governance is free from sudden reversals or partisan manipulation, it fosters trust and encourages long-term investment. Independence also helps prevent the politicization of fiscal enforcement, reducing the temptation to use taxation or regulations as tools of political favor or retaliation.

However, institutional independence is not without risks. Fiscal decisions are not merely technical; they are moral and distributive, touching on societal values, justice, and competing visions of the common good. Shielding these decisions entirely from democratic debate risks technocratic overreach, ideological rigidity, or disconnect from lived realities. Expertise alone cannot legitimize choices that affect livelihoods and social priorities.

The solution is not absolute independence but a careful balance between insulation and accountability. A treasury designed for long-term neutrality must be bound by clear mandates, subject to transparent review, and accountable through publicly visible processes. Its leadership should be appointed through pluralistic methods that reduce capture by any one faction, and its actions should undergo open reporting, independent audits, and legal oversight. Protected from arbitrary dismissal or short-term interference, it must still answer ultimately to the legal and ethical framework established by society through its representative institutions.

Moreover, any institutional design must include mechanisms for coordinated emergency response. No treasury, however independent, should be structurally paralyzed in times of acute crisis. Temporary protocols for collaboration with political authorities—limited by law and time—ensure that flexibility does not compromise integrity.

Ultimately, the case for an independent treasury rests not only on technical competence but on maintaining civic trust. When fiscal governance is shaped by rules rather than impulses, by analysis rather than improvisation, and by impartial stewardship rather than partisan interest, it becomes a stabilizing force in public life. The institutional form must embody a dual commitment: to professional expertise and democratic legitimacy. Independence, in this sense, is not isolation but principled restraint—a structured commitment to ethical limits and responsible governance. It is the disciplined and transparent use of power, grounded in law, public deliberation, and long-term accountability. This discipline protects the treasury’s role as steward of the public good across political changes and economic cycles.

Any society seeking to secure the long-term integrity of its public finances must confront the structural incentives shaping its treasury. If fiscal authority remains vulnerable to fleeting political agendas, sustainability will always be precarious. But if that authority drifts too far from public input, it risks losing the legitimacy it depends on. The challenge is to build institutions that are durable without becoming unresponsive, disciplined without becoming opaque, and independent without giving up accountability.

Annotated Bibliography

Blyth, Mark: Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013 (Blyth explains how austerity, often framed as a technical necessity, has historically served as a political tool to restructure economic power. His analysis is crucial to understanding why an independent treasury should not be conceived as a default promoter of restrictive policy but as an institution committed to fiscal sustainability with social responsibility).

Brunner, Roger: “Independent Fiscal Authorities: A Comparative Analysis”. Public Finance Quarterly 21 (4): 482–505. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1993 (Brunner offers a comparative analysis of different models of independent fiscal authorities. His study provides an empirical foundation for evaluating how institutional independence can be balanced with effective mechanisms of democratic accountability).

Goodhart, Charles, and Dimitrios Tsomocos: The Challenge of Fiscal Independence. London: CEPR Press, 2021 (This volume examines the conceptual and practical challenges of separating fiscal policy from short-term political pressures. Its contribution is key to supporting the argument that fiscal independence must be grounded in clearly defined limits and democratic legitimacy to avoid self-referential technocracy).

Lledó, Victor, and Teresa Ter-Minassian: “Fiscal Councils and Independent Fiscal Institutions”. Washington; IMF Working Paper WP/22/47. International Monetary Fund, 2022 (This IMF paper provides a detailed overview of independent fiscal institutions across multiple jurisdictions. It emphasizes that the effectiveness of such institutions depends not only on their legal design but also on their integration into transparent democratic processes).

Ooms, Thomas: “Fiscal Policy and the Risk of Politicization”. Journal of Economic Perspectives 32 (3): 75–92. Nashville: American Economic Association, 2018 (Ooms argues that the politicization of fiscal policy leads to significant distortions in resource allocation. His article supports the idea that a structurally protected treasury can reduce the risk of decisions driven by partisan interests).

Stiglitz, Joseph E.: Economics of the Public Sector. New York: W. W. Norton, 2000 (This classic textbook offers a comprehensive framework on public sector economics. Stiglitz’s discussion of market failures and the role of institutions provides a solid theoretical foundation for justifying the careful design of a treasury with structural independence and public accountability).

Wehner, Joachim: Legislatures and the Budget Process: The Myth of Fiscal Control. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010 (Wehner challenges the presumption that legislatures exercise effective control over public budgets. His work suggests that, given legislative weakness, strengthening the institutional role of the treasury may be necessary to ensure transparency and fiscal discipline).

Tags: Budgetary discipline, Civic trust, Democratic accountability, Democratic institutions, Economic ethics, Economic governance, Fiscal independence, Fiscal policy, Independent treasury, Institutional reform, Political economy, Public finance, Structural responsibility, transparency, Treasury reform
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“The Withering of Culture: Goodness and Civility”

July 24, 2025

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Ricardo Morin
“The Void of a Symbol”
CGI
2025

To all that suffer

By Ricardo Morin

July 2025

Abstract

This essay examines the ethical decline at the heart of contemporary civic life and its consequences for culture. It argues that culture is not merely the preservation of artistic or intellectual forms, but the public expression of moral purpose. Drawing from Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition (1958)—in particular, her critique of the “worldlessness” of mass society—the essay traces how symbolic and institutional forms have become detached from ethical responsibility. In place of a culture grounded in shared moral commitments, it identifies the rise of anticulture: a spectacle-driven imitation of cultural life, stripped of civic responsibility and moral depth. Rejecting nostalgia, the essay calls for a cultural renewal based on solidarity, public compassion, and ethical engagement.

The Withering of Culture: Goodness and Civility

Culture’s crisis is a moral one before it is a political one.

A society’s cultural life is not sustained by museums, literature, or festivals alone. These may serve as symbols of identity or refinement, but culture, in its fullest sense, demands a deeper moral orientation. If goodness—understood as a commitment to the dignity of others—does not animate civic life, culture loses its grounding and becomes a decorative shell. It may preserve the language, symbols, and rituals of a healthy society, but without ethical vitality, these forms risk becoming performative—or even deceptive. What withers first in such decline is not expression but conscience—the inner faculty that gives culture its ethical weight.

The current state of American public life illustrates this decline. Public discourse has grown coarse. It is now common for political actors to brand their opponents not merely as mistaken, but as dangerous or depraved. During his first presidency—and again since returning to office—Donald Trump has labeled critics as “traitors,” “scum,” and “evil.” At rallies and across social media, he has referred to political adversaries as “vermin,” language historically used by authoritarian regimes to delegitimize opposition. The press has been repeatedly cast as “the enemy of the people,” a phrase long employed to undermine public accountability.

This style of politics has become normalized. In school board meetings, legislative chambers, and campaign platforms, elected officials accuse their counterparts of being “groomers,” “communists,” or “un-American”—language that transforms disagreement into moral condemnation. In 2023, when Republican Utah Governor Spencer Cox publicly supported protections for LGBTQ youth and called for civil dialogue, far-right commentators denounced him as a ‘Republican in name only’—a supposed traitor to conservative values. His appeal to empathy was interpreted not as strength of character but as political surrender. In such an environment, even measured gestures of respect are read as weakness—or worse, betrayal.

Conspiracy theories once relegated to fringe pamphlets now echo in congressional hearings. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has accused political opponents of orchestrating “Satanic rituals”, while Senator J.D. Vance suggested that cultural and academic elites pose an existential threat to the nation. In such an environment, political opposition is recast as moral deviance. The result is not merely polarization, but a systematic dismantling of the civic imagination.

What is promoted in this environment is not only a political ideology, but a form of power centered on the humiliation of others—a self-glorifying posture sustained by the denigration it requires. This type of leadership rests not on principle or public vision but on the glorification of one’s own image. It is a form of narcissistic power—not in clinical terms, but as the conversion of symbolic authority into a vehicle for grievance, personality cult, and systematic contempt for difference.

The consequences of this climate are not confined to rhetoric. In 2022, Paul Pelosi, the husband of then–Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, was attacked in their home by an intruder radicalized by online conspiracies. In 2025, Minnesota state senator Melissa Hortman and her husband were murdered by a man reportedly enraged by progressive legislative agendas. Around the same time, a lone assailant attacked attendees at a local Pride event, citing ideological grievances as justification. More recently, on September 10, 2025, the high profile influencer Charlie Kirk was assassinated by a young radical inflamed by the very rhetoric he opposed. These acts are not isolated tragedies. They reveal a civic landscape in which anger is not only normalized but weaponized. Dehumanizing discourse is not idle speech; it becomes license for violence.

Online platforms amplify these dynamics. What began as tools for connection have become engines of outrage. Algorithms on platforms like X (formerly Twitter) promote content that inflames rather than informs. Verbal take-downs, personal attacks, and tribal affirmations generate more engagement than thoughtfulness or restraint. The loudest voices—not the wisest—are the most amplified. As a result, cruelty is often rewarded as candor, and ridicule is mistaken for insight.

The effects are tangible. A mayor receives death threats for enforcing public health policies. A schoolteacher is harassed online for adopting inclusive language. A librarian resigns after refusing to censor materials that affirm pluralism. Columbia University pays over $200 million in penalties to the federal government under political pressure from the Trump administration—forced to signal partisan compliance in order to continue its cancer research. These are not anecdotal exceptions. They reveal a broader decline of democratic sensibility: a failure to recognize fellow citizens as worthy of care, dialogue, or even basic dignity.

Nowhere is this inversion of moral language more visible than in two of the most enduring national failures: the absence of universal healthcare and the unchecked circulation of firearms. In both, the language of freedom conceals the logic of profit. Insurance and weapons industries, fortified by investors and political patrons, convert dependency and fear into revenue while legislators invoke “choice” and “rights” as moral cover for their complicity. The result is a civic inversion: health and safety—once understood as the moral responsibilities of a just society—are administered as markets. When interest acquires the vocabulary of conscience, democracy begins to speak its own undoing.

Yet this crisis is frequently mischaracterized. To name it is not to indulge in nostalgia. The diagnosis does not propose a return to an idealized past, but instead demands a reckoning with the ethical foundations of culture itself. A society may build monuments, publish literature, and preserve archives—but if it no longer cultivates compassion, humility, and the habit of care, its culture has already begun to wither.

When Aaron Copland composed Fanfare for the Common Man in 1942, the phrase “the common man” carried a sense of moral optimism—the embodiment of democratic dignity, sacrifice, and inclusion. Today, detached from that wartime faith in shared purpose, the same title sounds almost ironic, as if questioning whether the “common man” still exists amid inequality, manipulated populism, and performative patriotism. What was once an anthem of unity now lingers as an echo of the ideal—equality, justice, and shared responsibility—and that echo reveals, beneath its noble resonance, a critique of how those virtues have been hollowed out and repurposed by demagogic politics and consumer spectacle. The fanfare no longer celebrates; it laments. It stands as an elegy for the loss of democratic sincerity masquerading as triumph, capturing with quiet precision the tension between moral aspiration and civic disillusionment.

This moral decay gives rise to what may be called anticulture: not the absence of cultural forms, but their inversion—their use as instruments of division, branding, or control. Anticulture offers performance without substance, heritage without responsibility, and visibility without ethical vision. It mimics meaning but does not generate it. Its language flatters rather than guides. Its stories entertain but do not bind.

When conviction forgets to breathe, it mistakes endurance for moral strength. In time, it becomes a ritual of loyalty to its own image. Aspiration, however, is the current that keeps conviction alive—the movement that returns it to conscience. Without conviction, aspiration drifts without form; without aspiration, conviction calcifies into creed. The moral imagination depends on their continual exchange: hope that remembers, and memory that still dares to imagine.

To rebuild culture is to recover its moral essence. It is not enough to preserve institutions, sponsor festivals, or fund the arts if the ethical spirit is neglected. Culture without goodness becomes hollow—easily co-opted by spectacle, tribalism, or power. Acts of public courage, the rehumanization of discourse, and the refusal to normalize contempt are not ornamental gestures; they are essential conditions for renewal. Like democracy, culture must be tended—not merely inherited or displayed. When culture mistakes approval for virtue, morality becomes a mirror for power. At its core, culture and goodness are not separate. Nurturing one gives life to the other. Where goodness falters, culture loses its vitality; where it is cultivated, culture may yet be renewed. The work of rehumanization is therefore never complete; it must remain a continual labor of conscience.

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Annotated Bibliography

Arendt, Hannah: The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958. (Arendt explores the distinction between labor, work, and action, offering a foundational critique of how modern life has eroded meaningful public engagement).

Bellah, Robert N., et al: Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. (This sociological study examines the tensions between individualism and civic responsibility in American culture).

Berman, Marshall: All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982. (Berman traces the psychological and cultural disorientation caused by modernity, especially in urban life).

Girard, René: Violence and the Sacred. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977. (Girard’s theory of mimetic desire and sacrificial violence clarifies how cultural forms can devolve into mechanisms of exclusion or aggression).

Lasch, Christopher: The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations. New York: W. W. Norton, 1979. (Lasch critiques the rise of therapeutic individualism and the erosion of civic virtue).

MacIntyre, Alasdair: After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981. (MacIntyre’s argument that modern moral discourse is fragmented and incoherent lays the philosophical groundwork for the essay).

Nussbaum, Martha C.: Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013. (Nussbaum argues that cultivating emotional capacities—such as compassion and solidarity—is essential for a just society).

Putnam, Robert D.: Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000. (Putnam presents a comprehensive study of declining civic engagement in the United States).

Sandel, Michael J.: What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012. (Sandel critiques the intrusion of market logic into spheres of life traditionally governed by ethical norms).

Taylor, Charles: A Secular Age. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007. (Taylor examines the moral and cultural consequences of secular modernity, particularly the fragmentation of shared meaning).

Tags: American society, civic responsibility, civility, compassion, cultural renewal, culture, democracy, ethics, goodness, moral decline, public life
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“The Delusion of Authority: …

July 21, 2025

… Power, Storytelling, and the Fear of Losing Significance“

By Ricardo Morin, July 2025

Ricardo Morin
***The Stilobato of Zeus Underwater***
CGI
2003

Abstract

This essay examines the human mind’s compulsion to invent stories—not merely to understand reality, but to replace it. It explores how narrative becomes a refuge from the void, a form of self-authorship that seeks both meaning and control. The tension between rational observation and imaginative projection is not a flaw in human reason, but a clue to our instability: we invent to matter, to belong, and to assert that we are more than we fear we might be. At its core, this is a reflection on the seductive authority of story—the way it offers not just identity but grandeur, not just comfort but a fragile illusion of power. Beneath every myth may lie the terror of nothingness—and the quiet hope that imagination might rescue us from the fear of a diminished understanding of our own importance.

The Delusion of Authority: Power, Storytelling, and the Fear of Losing Significance

We tell stories to make sense of life. That much seems obvious. But if we look a little deeper, we may find that the stories we tell—about ourselves, our beliefs, our traditions, even our suffering—aren’t just about sense-making. They’re about power. Not always power over others, but something more private and often more dangerous: the power to feel central, secure, and superior in a world that rarely offers those guarantees.

This need shows up in ways that often appear noble: tradition, loyalty, virtue, cultural pride, spiritual clarity. But beneath many of these lies a hunger to be more than we are. To matter more than we fear we do. To fix the feeling that we are not quite enough on our own.

We don’t like to think of this as a thirst for power. It sounds selfish. But in its quieter form, it’s not selfishness—it’s survival. It’s the need to look in the mirror and see someone real. To look at the world and feel part of a story that means something. And when we don’t feel that, we make one up.

Sometimes it takes the shape of tradition: the rituals, the mottos, the flags. These things give us the illusion that we are part of something lasting, something sacred. But often, what they really do is offer us borrowed certainty. We repeat what others have repeated before us, and in that repetition we feel safe. We mistake performance for truth. This is how belonging becomes obedience—and how ritual becomes a mask that hides the absence of real thought.

Sometimes it takes the shape of insight. We adopt the language of spiritual clarity or mystical knowing. We speak in riddles, or listen to those who do. But often, this too is about authority: the idea that we can bypass doubt and land in a place of higher understanding. When we hear phrases such as “listen with all your being,” or “intellectual understanding isn’t real understanding,” we are being invited to give up reason in exchange for what feels like truth. But the feeling of truth is not the same as the hard work of clarity.

And sometimes, this hunger for centrality shows up in identity. We claim pain, pride, or history as a kind of moral capital. We say “my people” as if that phrase explains everything. And maybe sometimes it does. But when identity becomes a shield against criticism or a weapon against others, it stops being about belonging and starts being about authority—about who gets to speak, who gets to be right, who gets to be seen.

Even reason itself is not immune. We use logic, not only to understand, but to protect ourselves from uncertainty. We argue not only to clarify, but also to win. And slowly, without noticing, we turn the pursuit of truth into a performance of control.

All of this is understandable. The world is confusing. The self is fragile. And deep down, most of us are terrified of being insignificant. We fear being one more nameless voice in the crowd. One more moment in time. One more life that ends and disappears.

So we reach for authority. If we can’t control life, maybe we can control meaning. If we can’t escape time, maybe we can tell a story that lasts. But this, too, is a delusion—one that leads to suffering, to isolation, and to conflict.

Because when everyone is the center of their own story, when every group insists on its own truth, when every insight claims to stand above question—no one listens. No one changes. And no one grows.

But what if we gave up the need to be right, to be central, to be superior?

What if we didn’t need to be grand in order to be real?

What if we could tell stories not to control reality, but to share it?

That would require something more difficult than intelligence. It would require humility. The willingness to be small. To be uncertain. To live without authority and still live meaningfully.

This isn’t easy. Everything in us pushes against it. But perhaps this is the only path that leads us out of performance and into presence. Out of delusion and into clarity. Not the clarity of slogans or doctrine, but the clarity of attention—of seeing without needing to rule over what is seen.

We don’t need to be gods. We don’t need to be heroes. We just need to be human—and to stop pretending that being human isn’t already enough.

Annotated Bibliography

Arendt, Hannah: The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1951. (A foundational study on how ideological certainty and group identity can undermine thought, clearing the way for emotional conformity and mass control.)

Beard, Mary: Twelve Caesars: Images of Power from the Ancient World to the Modern. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021. (Explores how images and stories of rulers are crafted to sustain the illusion of divine or inherited authority.)

Frankl, Viktor E.: Man’s Search for Meaning. Boston: Beacon Press, 2006. (Reflects on the will to meaning as a basic human drive, particularly under extreme suffering, showing how narrative can sustain dignity and life.)

Kermode, Frank: The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967. (Examines how people impose beginnings, middles, and ends on chaotic experience, seeking structure through storytelling.)

Nietzsche, Friedrich: On the Genealogy of Morality. Translated by Carol Diethe. Edited by Keith Ansell-Pearson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. (Argues that moral systems often arise from resentment and masked power struggles rather than pure virtue or reason.)

Oakeshott, Michael: Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1991. (Critiques the rationalist impulse to systematize human life, warning against overconfidence in reason’s ability to master reality.)

Todorov, Tzvetan: Facing the Extreme: Moral Life in the Concentration Camps. Translated by Arthur Denner and Abigail Pollack. New York: Metropolitan Books, 1996. (Offers insight into how identity and morality hold—or collapse—under conditions that strip away illusion, highlighting the limits of narrative.)

Wallace, David Foster: This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life. New York: Little, Brown, 2009. (A short meditation on how default thinking shapes our perception and how awareness—not authority—offers a path to freedom.)

Tags: authority, Belonging, Humility, Identity, illusion, meaning, narrative, power, self-deception, Storytelling
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“The Ritual of Belonging”

July 16, 2025

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Prefatory Note

The image that opens this essay was taken inside the Philadelphia Masonic Temple, a structure conceived as a civic interior of symbolic order. Along one of its grand corridors, the Latin phrase fide et fiducia: “by faith and trust” appears inscribed in gold within patterned walls and vaulted symmetry.

Such inscriptions are not decorative. They compress a worldview into phrase and placement. The words are not presented for examination. They are encountered as part of an already arranged environment. The setting does not argue for belief. It organizes the conditions under which belief appears appropriate.

In this way, the space becomes more than a container. It becomes a guide. It establishes rhythm, posture, and expectation. It suggests what is to be affirmed and how that affirmation is to be expressed.

This essay examines how such forms persist beyond architecture. It traces how belonging is cultivated through repetition, how virtue is performed through alignment, and how the appearance of shared meaning can displace the work required to sustain it.

The Ritual of Belonging

Group virtue rarely begins as doctrine. It begins as gesture.

A room rises when a signal is given. A phrase is recited in unison. A participant repeats words only partially considered, yet already familiar in cadence. Nothing appears coercive. Each act is small and easily justified. Yet repetition binds them. What is first performed becomes expected. What is expected becomes difficult to refuse.

Within such sequences, belonging precedes understanding. The individual does not first examine and then join. He joins and learns how to respond. The distinction between loyalty and obedience does not disappear. It is displaced as affirmation becomes easier than hesitation and faster than inquiry.

This structure is sustained not by force, but by arrangement. Organizations built on continuity rely on repeated forms to stabilize identity. Meetings open with familiar phrases. Gestures follow a fixed order. A participant who interrupts the sequence introduces delay. That delay is immediately visible. The cost of interruption becomes clear, while the cost of conformity remains diffuse. Under these conditions, agreement does not need to be imposed. It is selected.

Ritual serves a purpose. It binds individuals into shared time and recognition. Without it, no lasting association could persist. Yet the same mechanism that sustains cohesion also limits examination. What allows a group to hold together can also prevent it from asking what holds it.

The transition is gradual. A statement repeated for coordination becomes a statement repeated for reassurance. A value once examined becomes a value that no longer requires examination. The language remains intact. Terms such as duty, service, and honor continue to circulate. What changes is their relation to experience. They are no longer tested in use. They are confirmed in repetition.

At that point, belief no longer depends on recognition. It depends on alignment.

This pattern appears wherever the need for coherence exceeds the tolerance for uncertainty. In contemporary political life, it has taken a visible form in the rise of Trumpism. Large gatherings provide a clear sequence. A phrase is introduced from a stage. It is repeated immediately and without alteration. Repetition does not test the phrase. It confirms participation. A participant who withholds repetition marks himself at once, not through argument, but through absence.

Here, belonging is demonstrated through response.

The mechanism does not depend on content. It depends on sequence: signal, repetition, confirmation, exclusion. What matters is not what is said, but how quickly it is taken up and how visibly it is shared. Under these conditions, language shifts function. It ceases to describe and begins to designate. A person or group is named as a threat, an invasion, a corruption. Once designated, no further description is required. The designation organizes perception in advance.

The same sequence extends into digital systems. Language produced under conditions of speed, reward, and amplification becomes the material from which models are trained. Systems developed by entities such as OpenAI and Google do not originate these patterns. They inherit them. When the material on which they are trained is saturated with repetition, assertion, and emotional charge, the resulting systems reproduce those patterns with increasing fluency. The output appears coherent because it reflects what has already circulated.

In this feedback loop, expression is reinforced independently of verification.

The machine does not introduce distortion. It stabilizes what is already present and returns it in a more consistent form.

Under these conditions, identity is offered as resolution. The individual is placed within a narrative that assigns meaning and opposition in advance. Agreement produces recognition. Hesitation produces distance. Applause becomes a measurable signal. Silence becomes a visible deviation. The individual no longer asks whether a claim corresponds to experience. He registers whether it corresponds to the group.

Few of these changes are noticed while they occur. A statement that aligns with expectation is processed quickly. A statement that interrupts expectation requires time. Repetition produces familiarity. Familiarity produces confidence. Confidence is then taken as evidence.

This is not reducible to ignorance. It reflects a contraction in the willingness to remain uncertain. In many environments, to hesitate is to risk separation. To question is to delay the sequence. Under these conditions, the space in which judgment might form is reduced before it can be exercised.

A sequence can be traced. A phrase is repeated without examination. A participant receives approval. Another hesitates and is met with silence. The hesitation is registered. The next participant repeats the phrase without pause. The sequence continues. No rule has been stated. No command has been issued. Yet a boundary has been established. Over time, the boundary holds.

From such sequences, larger structures are assembled. Control does not begin as an external imposition. It emerges through the accumulation of ordinary acts that favor affirmation and discourage interruption. Each act remains defensible in isolation. Together, they produce a condition in which deviation carries a cost that affirmation does not.

For this reason, authoritarian forms can resemble their opposites. They borrow the language of continuity, the symbols of tradition, and the forms of collective pride. What distinguishes them is not their appearance, but the narrowing of permissible response. When only one form of affirmation remains viable, participation is no longer voluntary in substance, even if it appears voluntary in form.

Resistance cannot proceed by substitution. To replace one set of repeated phrases with another is to preserve the sequence. The interruption must occur before repetition. A phrase must be examined before it is spoken. A gesture must be understood before it is performed. This introduces delay. Delay introduces friction. Friction restores the conditions under which judgment can take place.

Such interruption carries a cost. It separates the individual from the immediate rewards of alignment. It exposes him to uncertainty without the assurance of agreement. Yet without this interruption, no distinction between belief and performance can be sustained.

No system organized around reflex can withstand sustained attention. Its continuity depends on the speed with which responses are produced and confirmed. When that speed is reduced, the sequence becomes visible. When the sequence becomes visible, it can no longer proceed without recognition.

Clarity does not arrive as declaration. It appears when repetition no longer satisfies, when approval no longer substitutes for recognition, and when the individual distinguishes between what is said and what is seen. At that point, belonging does not disappear. It changes condition. It no longer precedes understanding. It follows it.

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Tags: architecture, Authoritarianism, belief systems, collective identity, conformity, critical thought, ideological aesthetics, institutional power, performative loyalty, political psychology, ritual, spectacle, symbolic language, symbolism, Trumpism
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“The Allure of Amalfi: A Journey Through History“

February 7, 2025

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***Untitled Landscape***
22″ x 30″
Watercolors, charcoal, oil, white-out and ink on paper
2006

Prologue

This is not a historical account, but an invention, honest and emotional, a dream woven into the baroque folds of poetic prose. It is not a logical manifesto, but a sensuous invocation of a place that has haunted my imagination.

Ricardo F. Morín Tortolero,

March 12, 2026, Oakland Park, Florida

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Ulysses knew it as the land of the sirens, a place that, during the Middle Ages, would rise to become a great maritime empire. Protected at the foot of the imposing Mount Cerreto, the Duchy of Amalfi found refuge here, as if enveloped in the embrace of a chrysalis of ancestral muses.

The tragedy “The Duchess of Malfi” by John Webster, the realism of Henrik Ibsen, and the Gesamtkunstwerk of the much maligned Richard Wagner have echoed in the destiny of this legendary caryatid of pleasure perched above the Gulf of Salerno. Among the cliffs the thunderous dance of cascading mountains unfolds with magnificence. They seem to move to the rhythm of the Podalirio butterfly, recalling the less venerable Crusades, the cloisters, and the monasteries of earlier centuries. The mountains and the sea stacks still exhale the residue of a barbaric metamorphosis carved by innumerable civilizations. And yet today our restless gaze traces the origins of the past while discovering the seductive fragrance of la dolce vita.

Carved into a promontory at the edge of a precipice, between the villages of Cetara and Vietri, celebrated for their anchovies in oil and their multicolored ceramics, rises our magnificent hotel, the Cetus. In the chromatic cacophony of the rainbow and its rocky outcrops, the eternal compass guides the rowing regattas that wind along the coastline, navigating from south toward the northwest, from the Tyrrhenian Sea to the Ligurian Sea.

Nearby the Canneto River descends through the Valley of the Mills, where the whisper of the wind carries Renaissance ballads written upon the famed bambagina paper. As though we were turning back time, the fjords fold beneath a radiant sky touched by the delicate mist of cold winds. We hear the hum of bees and breathe the piercing aroma of sfusato lemons from Mount Etna, while limoncello releases its intoxicating golden essence. The depths of the peninsula exhale the taste and fragrance of its most captivating fruits.

So intense is the essence of the Amalfi Republic that it seems to sow lava into the turquoise waters and upon the promontories that for centuries protected it from collapse. We sing the Falalella beneath the twilight haze and drift along the shimmering coastline of Salerno, Positano, and Ravello, gently bathed by a cool drizzle. With the sway of life, crimson clouds mirror themselves in still waters, casting their glow upon the blue bay of Salerno.

Amalfi, jewel of Salerno, is framed by the region of Campania, where the majestic sanctuaries of Herculaneum and Paestum rise solemnly to greet us. From the ashes that once wove mythical times, the archaeological expeditions of eighteenth century Pompeii revealed, among many discoveries, ancient frescoes depicting the Cycle of the Roman Mysteries as well as the conquests of Alexander the Great.

The touch of ancestral hands still resonates through our senses. Sweet is the vision beneath the spring sun. It leaps from ravine to valley and swaying like a cascading stair until it reaches the ancient pier. There we had anchored, near the dock from which the great galleys once departed toward unknown lands. They, like my beloved and I, have departed as well, leaving behind the vision of the paradise of the sirens.

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Ricardo F. Morín, March 12, 2026, Oakland Park, Fl

Tags: amalfi-coast, art, Atrani, Capri, Cetara, Colbara, Conca dei Marini, Furore, Henrik Ibsen, History, Ischia, italy, John Webster, Maiori, Minori, Paestum, Pompeii, positano, Praiano, Ravello, Richard Wagner, S. Egidio del Monte Albino, Salerno, Scala, Short Story, Sorrento, The Amalfi Coast, The Maritime Republic of Amalfi [839 AD-1137 AD], the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli., Vietri Sul Mare
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“In Tenebris”

December 11, 2020

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—————————————————————

In memoriam José Galdino: my father.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful to Billy Bussell Thompson, PhD in Linguistics and Professor Emeritus at Hofstra University, for his attentive reading and for the intellectual and editorial exchange that accompanied my work over many years. I am equally grateful for the editorial subtlety and insight of my sister Bonnie Morín, playwright, producer, and director of the Madrid Method Workshop in Spain (https://www.metodomadrid.es/), and of her daughter Natalia Velarde (@nix.conbotas), graphic artist and author of fanzines. I also give thanks for a long-awaited reunion with Bonnie’s other daughter, my niece Camila Velarde, Licentiate in Philosophy and Letters, and choreographer. Finally, I thank my husband David Lowenberger, whose influence has been a constant in my life. His wisdom and perception helped guide the writing of this story.

Ricardo F. Morin T., 21 February 2021

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PREFACE:

Choking On His Own Saliva

My father once told me how bleak his life would be if his identity were to disappear under the orthodoxy of religion. It was no accident that, in reaction to the pieties of five generations, he became a criminologist. For most of his life, he regarded the traditional stories of retribution, and the binary belief in reward and condemnation, as harmless fantasies, at least until they hardened into substitutes for inquiry. As a young man, he based his doctoral dissertation on those very premises. In the end, however, the convictions he had dismissed as delusional became his own.

I do not think a person must become fearful or destructive, except when the search for meaning hardens into attachment to fiction and leads to violence. Whether violence arises from retribution or from self-preservation, the only remedy lies in knowing the difference between fantasy and reality.

As I reflected on my father’s contradictions, I remembered what he told me when I was a child: that lying was a skill of survival. It allowed a person to hide, not necessarily out of moral weakness, but sometimes out of charity, or out of fear of being judged. For him, lying belonged to the making of a competent adult. It concealed imperfection and vulnerability. Yet if sincerity or honesty threatened his survival, it was because he preferred to invent a story rather than confront his ignorance and the limits of his own importance. Was it natural for him to hide behind lies, or was it an expression of his own arrogance? Perhaps he spent his life choking on his own saliva. He lived under the illusion that truth could be avoided, or that he could control the refusal to face it. Was this a fear of losing control? Was that one reason he could never understand himself? The mystery did not lie in self-examination, but in the fictionalizing of his own life, no differently from our forebears.

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Gangs of West Harlem

The Process

For the third time I was serving on jury duty. As on previous occasions, I introduced myself as a visual artist during the voir dire. This time the defense lawyer inquired if I was a portraitist. I reasoned to myself the question was intended to probe the degrees of observation a painter aspired to. I replied that my interest as a visual artist was in the conceptual processes of abstract art, no different from that of a portraitist or any other representational painter, seeking to observe and interpret the essence of a subject. What I chose to represent through abstraction or conception was just as concrete as that of a sitter for a portraitist.

The Rules

The trial concerned the murder of a fourteen-year-old boy, and I was selected juror number 12. Previously, I served in civil cases. In civil cases, the preponderance of the evidence is the determining principle. In a criminal trial, the ruling principle is the measure of reasonable doubt. The rules were cautionary and aimed to avoid bias on the part of the jury. In their deliberations jurors were to concentrate on the evidence presented and not on background. Also, jurors were not to share information with other people outside of their own forum. I did not know how my participation in a murder trial would affect me. The day after the trial began, juror number 11 was replaced by an alternate.

Testimony lasted 17 days. During that time our electronic devices, cell phones, laptops, and tablets were allowed. On the 18th day, when jury’s deliberations started, these devices were taken away from us. Before this, we had been permitted to speak on matters not related to the trial. We were a diverse group and had very little in common. During court hearings, we had been allowed to take notes while we sat in the jury box. After the days’ proceedings, our note pads were left on our respective seats. When deliberations began, we could take our pads back and forth between the jury box and the jury room. Only then, were we able to study our notes and refer to our observations. Only then could we begin to talk about the case with each other.

The Jurors

The foreman of the jury was an office manager, who felt comfortable in his role as moderator. His communication skills were excellent; even when he disagreed, his manner never expressed condescension. Some jurors were reticent and never voiced a judgment one way or the other. The youngest member of the jury did not find the witness of the crime unreliable. Other jurors were open minded. A teacher remained calm throughout; she listened to others before expressing her own views. Another juror was impatient about the length of the trial. She complained that she had a toddler to care for at home. Aside from myself, there were two other retirees, one of whom was a corporate lawyer, who reminded us of the distinction between civil and criminal cases. Reasonable doubt existed in varying degrees for every member of the jury, save for the youngest one.

The Defendant: In dubio pro reo

The defense lawyer had her client plead the fifth amendment. The accused gazed solicitously, with a kind of clawing eagerness. He looked seven years younger in his freshly starched white shirt and tie. His hair was a cropped Afro, and he had across his upper lip a straight mustache. His appearance had been arranged to suggest decency. Since the time of the murder, he has been a detainee at Rikers Island. Sitting barely 30 feet away from the jury, the accused bore a grin across his face whenever he looked towards the jurors. Some members of the jury interpreted his countenance as gloating. Others saw his expression as self-pity or abjection, even an attempt at winning us over. His grin, a kind of twisted grimace, was unflappable and even disturbing to us. By the end, however, we dismissed our apprehensions. It was impossible to know whether the accused was remorseful or just trying to beguile us. More important was the question of consistency. If doubt was to play a part in the case, it had to arise from the evidence. The crucial question was whether the accused had acted alone. Certainty had to come from the assessment of facts, and not be based on appearances.

The Prosecution

The prosecution charged the defendant with “first degree” murder. This implied premeditation with malice aforethought. The prosecution added two other charges: murder in the “second degree,” suggesting lack of premeditation. The third charge was for felony murder: death caused during the commission of a felony using an illegal weapon and with extreme indifference to human life. Rendering judgment on these charges rested on intent. Each member of the jury would have to reach an approximation of the truth, and no other reasonable explanation could explain the evidence presented at the trial. The verdict, of course, would have to be unanimous. Proof of the direct involvement of the accused was paramount. The evidence had to show the accused had committed the crime. Was the victim’s death the result of self-defense or was it deliberate? The question before the jury was whether there were circumstances outside the control of the accused. How did his instincts and fears come into play with his own actions. Could the jurors differentiate all of these aspects?

Testimonies

July’s weather was overbearingly hot. The air conditioning in the jury room was old and as inefficient as it was in the court room; the jury room was even more stifling than the courtroom, particularly between the long intervals of each day’s proceedings. The room was barely large enough for the long table and its 12 uncomfortable chairs. In this tight space it was almost impossible for the jurors to walk around, to go to the water-fountain, or even to the single restroom available. Lunch breaks were much appreciated. On the few days when there was a breeze, we could open the windows, but had to put up with street noise. In the court room, no such liberties were permitted

By the third week of the proceedings, the judge began standing with his arms folded against his hips. With a baffled face, he would turn around and stand behind his chair, his black robe half unfurled, and his necktie loosened. At times, he assumed what seemed to be a meditative expression with both arms folded over the back of the chair. Other times, he supported himself with one of his elbows over the back of the chair. One of his hands was placed against his chin, giving him a certain look of abandon. For me, this informality broke up the monotony of the case, as if it were helping him stay awake, and mollified the stultifying heat.

III

The aspects of this case had been under investigation for seven years. We, the jurors, were astonished at the lack of cohesion to the accusations. The statements by the witnesses in no way corresponded to the arguments made by the prosecutor. In fact, the prosecution’s case seemed to have lost its coherence. One wondered if there was any justification for this trial. The only merit to the case seemingly was using the authority of a jury trial to render a verdict, either for exoneration or conviction.

According to testimony given by the police, the crime resulted from two rival gangs. The gang members’ ages ranged from 12 to 40. The defendant’s lawyer provided their pictures to the jury. The pictures showed them in expensive clothing. Both groups seemed to be showing off, as if they were the source of the neighborhood’s pride. Each group had its own hand signs as mottoes. According to the police, on the night of the murder the two gangs fought over their territory for the peddling of drugs. The defendant became the prime suspect two years into the investigation. According to one of the detectives, the defendant sought to intimidate younger members of the opposing gang, as a means of establishing his own authority over them. The defendant’s motive was said to be an attempt to sooth his own anger for being “dissed.” The jury found these to be speculative. For us the only facts credible were those of the struggle between them.

The first eyewitness, aged 13 years at the time of the murder, was the centerpiece of the prosecution’s defense. He had been a close friend of the victim, and his proximity to the deed made him valuable. During the course of several days of testimony, two officers escorted him in dressed in an orange jumpsuit, both hands and ankles shackled. They removed only his handcuffs when he sat down on the stand. From the defendant’s attorney, we learned that he had been in custody for two years on a different murder charge. The defendant’s attorney asked him: Are you here today in exchange for lenience for the indictment you face? He thrust his arms and shoulders forward. His answers seemed evasive while the prosecution objected. The question was withdrawn, but the jury would not forget it. His hand partly covered his face, especially his eyes and nose. His head shifted from side to side. He pointed to the defendant, rubbed his chin, and accused him of being the killer. Yet, his manner was difficult to read and seemed manipulative. Obviously, he had not seen from where the bullet had come. His allegations sounded implausible, as if they had been rehearsed. He had an air of entitlement, exuding hatred. During the prosecution’s examination, he revealed his conversion to Islam, and stated he had become a better person by the teachings of the Prophet. For the jury, however, his demeanor was that of an unrepentant malefactor. His lack of doubt hinted at a life of crime, without a sense of any morality.

The prosecutor’s second witness spoke softly, yet his testimony seemed tentative. By his own account, he had been at the edges of the riotous horde. A circle had formed around the hooded individual and the victim. When questioned by the defense, he hesitated before admitting having seeing another armed buddy. But at the end, he relented. He recalled that other gang members had shot into the sky. He acknowledged that other guns had been used, thus accounting for multiple shells found by the police. The bullet, however, that pierced the victim’s heart was a mystery. The jury was at a loss as to what had gone on. Was it retaliation? Was it the shooter egging on accomplices? No answer was forthcoming, neither from this witness nor from the previous one.

VII

Even though the defense attorney tried to unravel the credibility of the prosecutor’s two eyewitnesses, she tripped over her own words. Not unnoticed was her assertion that the gunman might have carried a gun inside the pocket of his hoodie. Since no one had yet claimed to having seen him draw a gun, her attention to this matter seemed out of place. Was she trying to negate the hooded man’s innocence, while at the same time admitting to her client’s involvement? Jurors never understood her purpose, since the identity of the person in the hood had never been made clear. For the defendant her digression was inconsequential. But not for the jury because it augmented our doubts. Nevertheless, the defense attorney rebutted the evidence gathered by the police.

VIII

On the night of the murder, a pedestrian called the neighborhood foot patrol’s attention to a commotion on the street. The patrol did nothing until the police arrived in their cars and found the body of someone killed. The crowd around the victim had already dispersed and none of the neighbors willingly spoke of what they had seen. The jury was dismayed that the arrest warrant was issued two years after the event. The defense lawyer emphasized that, in the course of those two years, any witnesses’ recollection surely must have faded. She argued: “… just to be pointing a finger at an alleged culprit, out of a desire to seek closure, should not be deemed evidentiary in and of itself.”

The Evidence

We asked to see the video evidence before and after the shooting. Witnesses had stated that the defendant on the night of the murder had gone to a tenement looking for a gun, which was shared by all members of his gang. There were two cameras, both of which had restrictive angles of vision. The video was grainy: the product of low resolution security cameras. There was no sound and the imagery was choppy. The lobby camera showed someone descending the stairs to exit, wearing a baseball cap underneath a hoodie. Only his lips and chin were visible. The jury’s dilemma was how to identify the person. The woman with the child at home emphasized “…those features could have been any member of either gang.”

The crime took place at midnight. There was no traffic and the street was poorly lighted. For a second time, we examined the tape from the outside camera. We concentrated on the footage just before the shooting. It was murky and it showed the person in the hoodie stepping outside the building. The victim’s back was visible and his friend was behind him. There were several flashes of gun fire with one of them coming from next to the victim. A person in the hoodie faced the camera wielding a gun.

Ballistic evidence showed that the trajectory of the bullet came from a short distance before it entered the body of the victim. Maybe the shot came from the position of the hooded man but this was only a guess. More importantly, no guns were ever recovered and we still did not know who the gunman was. In summary, the testimonies, the analysis, and the written accounts were all useless to us.

The Community

Jurors were in agreement that the accounts given by the two gangs and the community were not to be trusted. The two gangs lived in two adjacent blocks. Drug infested, the community had become their victim. Solidarity showed itself as hostility. Assault not only on the street but at home was rife. Mothers, brothers, and sisters were commonly attacked. The death rate was high, which, in and of itself, was evidence that this community was sowing the seeds of its own destruction. Teenagers commonly stole and murdered. Only the rare adolescent was exempt. No social program could help. We, as jurors, were we only agents of retribution?

Blind Justice

From the first days of deliberation, the jurors were uncertain if the accused had taken any part at all. On our fourth day, the young woman who had been most adamant about the guilt of the accused began to waver. Most jurors still thought him to be innocent, but four remained unconvinced. The more jurors accepted their own limitations, the more difficult it became to form an opinion. The phrase blind justice turned piercingly poignant.

Unanimity

The majority argued with the four hold outs. Tensions rose with the thermometer. The heat of midday, the humidity, and the noise from the street became increasingly unbearable. With the windows closed, we turned on the anemic air conditioner and became more fearful than ever of not measuring up to the task. Our disagreements put us on edge and were nerve racking. Slowly we moved towards common ground. One by one, concessions were made. By the time of the third vote, the foreman hesitantly voted against conviction. There were still three jurors holding strongly for conviction. We gave ourselves a minute of silence before voting again. The decision was unanimous innocent. Surprisingly, had we presented a wrongful conviction, or had we derailed the case?

Announcing the Verdict

Jurors summoned the guard and handed him a yellow manila envelope with the verdict. After we had returned to the court room, the judge polled us individually. Indelibly imprinted on us was the murdered child’s mother’s face. From the start she had sat alone on the back left corner of the court room. Her sorrow contrasted sharply with the defendant’s family. I felt wary of these families’ reactions. I was deflated, even felt inadequate, indeed insignificant. Knowledge here was slippery.

An uproar reigned in the courtroom. The cries of the murdered child’s mother collided with the joy of the defendant’s family. Repeatedly, the judge admonished the room to be silent. He closed by thanking the jurors for their service, who were in a state of shock. Were we right or were we wrong?, I asked myself.

The Randomness of Truth

Chance dominated the jury’s participation. I recalled with fear my father’s imperative about hiding behind fiction as an instrument of self reliance.

The jury broke up. The judge stared at us with a smile as we climbed down to the exit. We walked to where we had deliberated and collected our belongings. We moved to an elevator at the opposite end of the courthouse. Below, the family of the acquitted man awaited us and, as we approached, they shouted their deafening thanks. Whatever had shaped that life remained unbroken.

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Epilogue

Ended the theater of misalliance, jurors, lawyers, and witnesses became actors in the absurd. Our verdict was uncertain. Loss of life, and life itself, stood foremost. Society seemed predetermined. Advantage and disadvantage stood in confrontation. What role do abandonment and darkness play in the human condition? I pondered. It just seems as if, under destiny, no one becomes an instrument of justice.

Ricardo F Morín T

Tags: Short Story
Posted in Judgement, On the Nature of Perception and Human Interconnectedness, On the Nature of Visual Art, Poetry | 1 Comment »

« Folie à Deux »

April 1, 2026

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Ricardo F. Morín
***Still Life***
22″ x 30″
Mixed media on paper
2000

A relation between two individuals may appear stable even when it rests on a false premise. A decision is put forward without support and accepted before it is tested. One speaks; the other adjusts. A claim is introduced and taken in without examination. When contradiction appears, it is set aside. The relation holds because one asserts and the other accepts. An account of two individuals may appear exceptional, but the relation it reveals is not confined to them.

A wider relation between individuals, sustained by excluding contradiction, does not require agreement. It requires direction and alignment. A statement is repeated as if it were already settled and is carried forward as something to maintain. A speaker states a position with certainty and without qualification, and others accept that certainty as evidence of its validity rather than examine the claim itself. A shared account sets what may be said; questioning it is excluded. A decision holds because it confirms what is already assumed. The relation continues without being questioned.

At what point does such a relation stop interpreting reality and begin to act in its place? Not when a false claim appears, but when the relation no longer allows it to be tested. As long as claims are tested, disagreement examined, and adjustment follows evidence, the relation remains open. The shift occurs when alignment replaces testing. A claim is carried forward before it is checked and no longer stands as something to be tested.

Contradiction no longer interrupts the relation. It is dismissed or set aside and does not enter the decision. What does not fit is excluded from what follows.

A claim holds because it repeats what has already been said. Affirmation arises within the relation itself. Correction becomes unlikely.

A decision formed within the relation is carried out beyond it without being checked, and a person who did not take part in forming it is required to comply. The effect on that person is not examined and is treated as secondary to keeping the claim in place. Each participant encounters the effect on the person subject to the decision. Each participant continues to act in accordance with the claim and sets that recognition aside in order to maintain alignment. The action continues before either law or ethics can take hold.

Decisions are then measured against what has already been affirmed rather than against what is present. Behavior proceeds without testing. Judgments form within closed circles of affirmation. In an investment partnership, a senior partner advances a thesis under time pressure and incomplete information, and others commit capital on the strength of that authority rather than on outside validation. Elsewhere, under unresolved uncertainty, in a clinical setting, available tests do not resolve the diagnosis, and a physician advances a working assumption; care proceeds on that basis as it is repeated and affirmed, while conflicting signs are set aside. What appears consistent within produces actions that do not fit the conditions they are meant to address.

A relation of this kind also defines responsibility in a limited way. Each participant attends to the other within the relation, but not to those affected by it. Agreement between participants does not extend to those who are subject to what the relation produces. Within the relation, nothing presents itself as a breach: the claim is affirmed, the decision follows, and alignment is maintained, so no point of interruption arises from which it could be judged. Responsibility would require that each participant consider how the claim and the decision affect those outside the relation and allow that effect to alter or halt what follows. Where that does not occur, responsibility remains contained within the relation, and those outside it are acted upon without their situation entering into the decision.

The difference between shared belief and shared distortion lies in whether the relation allows correction. Where contradiction can enter and be considered, the relation remains open. Where it is excluded, the relation closes.

The problem does not begin when a claim is false. It begins when the relation that sustains it no longer allows it to be tested.

Ricardo F. Morín, March 31, 2026, Oakland Park, Florida.

Tags: affirmation, alignment, authority, contradiction, decision-making, distortion, epistemic closure, evidence, false premise, interpersonal dynamics, judgment, Perception, responsibility, shared belief, testing
Posted in Philosophy, Social Relations, Epistemology, Ethics, Decision-Making, Responsibility, Perception | Leave a Comment »

“The Crypto Ladder”

April 1, 2026

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Ricardo Morín
**Still Twenty-three**: ***The Crypto Ladder***
Oil on linen & board
12″ x 15″ x 1/2″
2012

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Cryptocurrency claims independence from financial authority. In practice, tokens are bought, sold, and stored on centralized exchanges that control custody, execute trades, and process withdrawals. When participants leave their assets on these platforms, the exchange holds the private keys and manages access to funds. Control therefore shifts from regulated banks, which operate under capital requirements, liquidity rules, and continuous supervisory oversight, to private trading platforms that are incorporated in different jurisdictions and are subject to differing disclosure rules, reserve standards, and enforcement practices. The protections available to participants depend on the rules that apply in the jurisdiction where the platform operates.

Before public trading begins, access to newly issued tokens is limited to founders, private investors, or participants in early distribution rounds. Transactions during this stage occur within that restricted group, and prices reflect exchanges among those who received tokens prior to public trading.

When public trading opens, additional buyers gain access through exchanges. They compete to purchase the existing supply from those who received or acquired tokens prior to public trading. Because supply does not immediately expand, buyers increase their bids against one another. As bids rise, the market price increases.

When participants who acquired tokens earlier sell at the elevated market price created by competitive bidding, later buyers transfer capital through those purchases, and that capital becomes the profit realized by earlier sellers. The exchange of tokens at increasing prices depends on the expectation that other participants will continue to enter the market and accept those prices. This expectation is not produced by the transaction itself; it precedes it and is shared among participants. Under these conditions, value depends on the continued participation of others, and information about that participation is not distributed evenly among participants. Participants who obtain information about expected demand earlier than others are able to act before prices adjust, and this difference in timing affects how gains and losses are distributed.

Token systems can distribute supply broadly at issuance through public offerings or community allocations. Once trading begins, however, participants with greater capital can accumulate larger positions by purchasing from those with smaller positions. Over time, this accumulation concentrates supply within a smaller group. Participants who acquire positions earlier, or who can continue purchasing during periods of lower demand, come to control larger portions of supply than those who enter later or must sell under pressure.

If demand continues to exceed available supply, buyers increase their bids and prices rise. If demand declines and fewer buyers submit bids, the increase in price stops. When participants with large positions attempt to sell into a declining market, they submit large sell orders to the exchange. Those orders must match with buyers willing to purchase at the current price. If buyers submit bids at lower prices, sellers accept those lower bids in order to complete the trade. Each completed trade at a lower price becomes the new market price. As the quoted price falls, additional participants with open positions decide to sell in order to limit further loss. Those later sales occur at lower prices than earlier trades. Each completed sale alters the price available to others. Participants who exit earlier do so under different conditions than those who remain. The sequence of action changes the conditions of action for those who follow.

When requests for withdrawals exceed the cash or liquid assets an exchange holds, the platform restricts withdrawals or halts trading in order to slow the outflow. At that point, price formation no longer governs the system; access to liquidity does. When prices reverse and many customers attempt to withdraw funds at the same time, exchanges that lack sufficient immediately available assets cannot satisfy all requests simultaneously. Participants must wait, and access to funds depends on the exchange’s internal capacity rather than on individual account balances alone. Account balances continue to record claims, but the ability to act on those claims depends on the platform’s capacity to honor them.

Even when tokens are initially distributed across many wallets, trading activity can lead to uneven accumulation. Participants with larger capital reserves can buy during downturns and retain their positions through volatility. Participants with smaller positions may sell under financial pressure. Over repeated cycles, ownership can become concentrated despite dispersed beginnings.

Under these conditions, order of entry shapes distribution. Early participants accept uncertainty about whether demand will materialize. Later participants accept higher acquisition costs once demand has already raised prices. Gains and losses follow the sequence in which participants assume risk and provide capital.

Traditional banks and regulated stock exchanges operate under supervisory rules enforced by public authorities. Banks must maintain capital reserves to absorb losses and liquidity buffers to meet withdrawals. Public companies must disclose financial information so that investors can evaluate risk. In many jurisdictions, deposit insurance protects individual depositors up to defined limits. When institutions face systemic stress, central banks provide liquidity to prevent destabilization of the financial system.

Cryptocurrency markets do not uniformly operate under comparable requirements. Some exchanges publish limited financial information. Reserve practices are not standardized across platforms. Deposit insurance does not apply to token holdings. When an exchange becomes insolvent or mismanages assets, customers become unsecured creditors and bear losses directly. Their claims are not protected at the moment of stress, and recovery depends on liquidation processes that occur after access to funds has already been lost.

Participants who seek to avoid dependence on traditional financial institutions rely instead on trading platforms that combine custody, execution, and leverage services. When such platforms suspend withdrawals or fail, users have limited recourse. The location of authority changes, but reliance on intermediaries remains.

Order of entry continues to influence who gains and who loses. In regulated markets, capital requirements, clearing mechanisms, and deposit insurance absorb part of trading losses before they reach individual participants. In cryptocurrency markets, those stabilizing requirements do not uniformly apply. When prices fall, losses move directly from declining trade prices to individual account balances without an intermediary layer that cushions the decline.

Cryptocurrency technology continues to develop. Applications beyond speculative trading expand when protocols are adopted for payment processing, settlement, or other non speculative functions. However, as long as token prices depend on continued buyer participation and as long as ownership becomes concentrated through repeated trading cycles, sequence of entry influences distribution of gains and losses. Any reform that seeks broader participation would need to address how tokens are allocated at issuance, how exchanges manage custody and liquidity, and what protections apply when platforms fail.

Under these conditions, cryptocurrency does not constitute a substitute for banking or for stock markets in a strict institutional sense. The functions of custody, execution, and liquidity provision persist, but they are carried out under different conditions and without uniform frameworks of protection.

The structure described here does not remove authority from the system of exchange. It relocates authority. Banks operate under capital requirements, liquidity rules, and continuous public oversight. Trading platforms do not operate under comparable constraints. In regulated institutions, authority is exercised through rules that constrain institutional behavior before failure occurs; on trading platforms, authority is exercised through control over access, execution, and withdrawal at the moment participants seek to act. The location of authority changes, but authority remains.

The language of decentralization coexists with continued reliance on centralized exchanges for custody, liquidity, and rule enforcement. Participants deposit funds, accept platform terms, and depend on exchange decisions even as they describe the system as independent of institutional authority. Independence is asserted at the level of description, while dependence persists at the level of operation.

Ricardo F. Morín, February 27, 2026, Oakland Park, Florida.

Tags: asymmetry, cryptocurrency, hierarchy, incentive architecture, liquidity dependence, structural design
Posted in Political Economy, Civic Structure, Financial Systems, Ethical Analysis | Leave a Comment »

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Author’s Note

Chapter XIII

The Fifth Sign

The Pawned Republic

Chapter XIV

The First Issue

Resisting Partisan Control: Civil Society’s Stance in Venezuela

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Author’s Note:

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Chapter XII: Part 3

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The Asymmetry of Sanctions

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Author’s Note

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Chapter XII: Part 2

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Venezuela

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Author’s Note

Chapter VI

Chronicles of Hugo Chávez

Endnotes:

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To my parents

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Acknowledgements

Preface

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Table of Contents

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Chapter I

A Written Language

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Chapter II

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Our Recklessness

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Chapter III

Point of View

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Chapter IV

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A Dialogue

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Chapter V

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Abstract

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Preface

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Author’s Note:

The Colors of Certainty

About the cover image:

Annotated Bibliography

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