Ricardo F. Morín Restrictions Watercolor, oil sticks, Sumi ink, and correction fluid on paper. 14″ x 20″ 2005
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Ricardo F. Morín
January 12, 2026
Oakland Park, Fl.
This analysis addresses the operation of institutional constraint once electoral recalibration occurs; a separate diagnostic, “Temporal Asymmetry,” examines what can allow executive action to outrun institutional response prior to that point.
The United States congressional midterm elections scheduled for November 3, 2026 will determine control of all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 35 seats in the Senate. These elections function as institutional recalibration points designed to test whether executive authority remains subject to legislative constraint, as outlined in Ballotpedia’s overview of the 2026 U.S. congressional elections.
Historical analysis indicates that midterm elections frequently reduce the governing president’s congressional support, restoring oversight capacity through changes in committee leadership, subpoena authority, and budgetary control, as documented in Congressional Research Service analyses of midterm congressional turnover and oversight authority: a pattern also observed in summaries published by the Brookings Institution’s review of midterm patterns.
Executive governance relying on unilateral action through executive orders, discretionary enforcement, and loyalty-based appointments encounters constitutional counterweight through congressional oversight, which conditions authority rather than removing it.
Legislative control enables investigations, compels records, and slows executive initiatives through procedural review rather than unilateral momentum, reflecting constitutional design rather than personal intent.
Impeachment functions as a constitutional accountability mechanism rather than a criminal process. The House of Representatives holds exclusive authority to initiate impeachment in response to abuse of power or sustained impairment of constitutional governance, as clarified in the Congressional Research Service overview of impeachment.
The principal risk associated with the November 2026 midterms concerns normalization of executive action absent effective legislative oversight rather than suspension of elections or formal abolition of constitutional order.
Diminished oversight produces selective enforcement, institutional protection of incumbency, and substitution of political loyalty for procedural accountability, altering governance orientation while formal structures remain intact.
Prolonged absence of constraint reshapes party structure, shifting emphasis from policy formation toward incumbency protection, internal discipline, and defensive alignment.
Constitutional systems rarely fail abruptly. Institutional weakening advances through tolerance of exception and declining expectations. The November 2026 congressional midterm elections determine whether institutional correction resumes or executive insulation persists.
Political systems are often judged by the ideals they proclaim. Yet endurance rarely depends upon the elegance of principle alone. It depends upon whether ordinary disputes can be carried, day after day, through institutions that keep public life intelligible even when citizens do not agree.
Among critics across the political spectrum, democracy is often treated as an ideology. In that interpretation, democratic language appears indistinguishable from other doctrines that claim moral authority through appeals to equality, popular sovereignty, or the will of the people. Yet political thought has not understood democracy in a single way. At different moments it has been conceived as a doctrine expressing normative ideals, as a set of institutional procedures regulating the exercise of power, and as a political framework capable of sustaining plurality within a shared order. Each interpretation captures a dimension of democratic life. The difficulty arises when one of these dimensions is mistaken for the whole. Democracy does not endure because it advances a doctrine or perfects a mechanism. Its difficulty lies in the persistent effort to hold these dimensions together without reducing democratic governance to any single interpretation.
The interpretation of democracy as ideology arises from the language through which democratic ideals have historically been expressed. Appeals to equality, popular sovereignty, and the authority of the people carry a moral force that resembles the claims made by political doctrines. In public discourse these principles are frequently invoked to justify particular programs or to confer legitimacy upon political movements. A platform speech can borrow the vocabulary of rights while demanding uniformity. A banner can invoke the people while treating dissent as treachery. When democratic language is used in this manner it can appear indistinguishable from ideological persuasion. Critics therefore conclude that democracy itself functions as a doctrine competing with other systems of belief. Yet this interpretation rests upon a confusion between the ideals invoked in democratic rhetoric and the institutional structure through which democratic governance actually operates.
A second interpretation approaches democracy not as doctrine but as institutional procedure. In this view the defining features of democratic governance are the mechanisms through which authority is organized and restrained: representation, periodic elections, constitutional limits, and the possibility of peaceful political alternation. Democracy becomes identifiable less by the ideals it proclaims than by the procedures through which power is exercised and transferred. The most ordinary scenes illustrate this procedural character: a contested ballot is reviewed, a recount is ordered, a hearing is scheduled, and a ruling is issued that is binding even on those who dislike it. These arrangements establish a framework within which political conflict can occur without dissolving the continuity of the state. By emphasizing procedure rather than doctrine, this interpretation clarifies an essential dimension of democratic life. Yet procedural definitions alone do not fully explain why democratic systems remain difficult to sustain.
Institutional mechanisms describe how democratic systems operate, but they do not fully explain the conditions that allow those mechanisms to function. Elections and constitutions may persist even where the distribution of authority gradually narrows. Formal institutions can remain visible while their capacity to regulate power weakens. The change is often incremental and practical rather than dramatic: rules remain in print, but exceptions multiply; oversight exists, but deadlines slip; inquiries open, but findings are withheld; the vocabulary of accountability persists, but the public learns to expect delay. In such circumstances democratic procedure survives in appearance while democratic practice becomes increasingly constrained. The endurance of democratic institutions therefore depends on more than the existence of rules. It depends on a political environment capable of sustaining the disagreements those institutions were designed to manage.
A third interpretation approaches democracy from a different perspective. Rather than defining democracy through doctrine or institutional procedure alone, it understands democratic governance as a framework capable of sustaining plurality. Within democratic societies individuals and groups hold competing convictions about justice, authority, and the direction of public life. These differences are not temporary disagreements awaiting resolution. They represent enduring features of political life. Plurality in this sense is not simply the presence of diversity but a condition in which individuals appear to one another as distinct participants within a shared political world. The everyday evidence is familiar: a city council meeting where residents argue over zoning and taxes, a school board hearing where parents disagree about curriculum, a courtroom where opposing counsel present incompatible claims and still accept the same judgment as final for that case. Democratic institutions therefore do not eliminate conflict; they regulate its expression. They establish conditions under which diverse claims can coexist within a common political order. The difficulty of democracy lies precisely in this task of maintaining institutional continuity while allowing disagreement to persist.
Plurality introduces a persistent tension within democratic governance. A political system must preserve legal continuity while accommodating competing interpretations of public life. Institutions must remain stable enough to sustain authority, yet flexible enough to permit disagreement and political change. The balance required to maintain this equilibrium is inherently fragile. Democratic systems often appear unsettled not because they are failing, but because they operate within a field of claims that cannot be fully reconciled. The signs of health and strain can look similar from a distance: noisy debate, contested outcomes, changing majorities, and continuous scrutiny. The difference becomes visible in whether contestation remains inside shared procedures, and whether losing parties retain a credible path back into public life. This structural tension also clarifies why political systems organized around centralized authority encounter greater difficulty accommodating plurality.
Political systems organized around centralized authority approach plurality differently. Authoritarian forms of governance rely upon a final source of decision capable of resolving conflict through directive power. While such systems may tolerate limited diversity of opinion, their stability depends upon the presence of an authority able to determine the boundaries of acceptable disagreement. In practical terms the boundaries are enforced not only by decree but by predictable signals: which topics may be discussed without consequence, which questions are treated as disloyal, which associations are permitted to assemble, and which public claims are allowed to circulate. The persistence of open and competing claims therefore represents a structural challenge to authoritarian order. Where democratic systems attempt to regulate disagreement through institutional balance, authoritarian systems seek to contain or resolve disagreement through concentration of authority.
Despite this structural difference, authoritarian systems frequently adopt the vocabulary of democracy. References to the people, representation, and popular legitimacy appear even within political orders that do not sustain genuine plurality. Democratic language functions in these contexts as a source of symbolic legitimacy. The vocabulary signals participation and consent, even when the institutional conditions necessary to support those principles remain absent. Ambiguity in democratic language can itself become a form of accommodation. Citizens across the ideological spectrum may adopt expansive definitions of democratic ideals because such language allows their own convictions to appear universally justified while leaving competing interpretations unresolved. The pattern is recognizable: elections occur without credible competition; legislatures convene to affirm decisions already made; courts exist yet rarely contradict executive preference; newspapers publish, but certain subjects disappear from print. Democratic terminology may therefore coexist with political practices that limit or direct the scope of public disagreement.
The coexistence of democratic language with constrained political practice produces a recurring tension between institutional form and political function. Legal codes may continue to affirm representative authority and constitutional order while their application becomes selective, deferred, or postponed. Institutions remain formally intact, yet their capacity to regulate power gradually diminishes. This is often experienced by citizens as a change in expectation: procedures still exist, but outcomes become predictable; rules still apply, but not to everyone; hearings still occur, but decisions appear settled in advance. In such circumstances the outward architecture of democracy persists while the conditions necessary for sustaining plurality become increasingly limited.
Plurality therefore does more than describe the diversity of democratic societies. It explains why authority in democratic government cannot remain concentrated in a single locus but must instead be distributed across institutions capable of mediating competing claims.
Unlike earlier political forms organized around a single source of authority, democratic government distributes legitimacy across institutions capable of mediating competing claims.
The recurring tendency to treat democracy as an ideology arises from the prominence of its language and ideals. Yet democratic governance cannot be reduced either to doctrine or to institutional procedure alone. Its defining feature lies in sustaining a political order in which plurality remains visible and active within a shared world. Democratic institutions endure not because they eliminate disagreement, but because they preserve the space in which individuals can continue to appear to one another as participants in public life. Democracy therefore remains less a doctrine to be asserted than a political discipline sustained through institutions capable of regulating plurality without extinguishing it.
In an era in which human survival increasingly depends upon cooperation across societies, cultures, and political traditions, the capacity to mediate competing claims becomes more than a domestic institutional question. It becomes a condition for the stability of a shared world. Political systems that suppress plurality may impose temporary order, but they remain structurally limited in their ability to adapt to the scale and diversity of contemporary global challenges. Systems capable of sustaining plurality, by contrast, possess a greater capacity to integrate difference into a durable framework of cooperation. In this respect the institutional discipline of democratic governance corresponds not only to a political preference but to a practical requirement for sustaining a shared world.
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Ricardo F. Morín, March 5, 2026, Oakland Park, Florida
Ricardo F. Morín Buffalo Series, Nº 5 48″ x 56″ Oil on canvas 1979
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Our statements do not gain force through intensity. They acquire validity through what remains recognizable and verifiable. When that relation fails, an assertion loses clarity and no longer preserves sufficient relation to what it refers to.
A weak assertion loses relation to what it attempts to describe. It does not become recognizable as something verifiable. It remains unintegrated with the experience to which it alludes. This is not doubt, but indeterminacy : a condition in which an assertion no longer preserves sufficient relation to what it attempts to describe.
When everything intensifies at once, what should remain separate becomes confused. Clarity weakens because unequal assertions begin acquiring the same weight.
An assertion without consequence passes without leaving a trace; an intensified assertion dissolves into the same loss of clarity.
Under both conditions, conviction does not appear as a lack of will, but as the inability of an assertion to preserve sufficient relation to what it attempts to describe. Either an assertion does not become recognizable as verifiable, or it loses clarity when intensified without measure. Conviction does not appear separately from those conditions.
Limit does not restrict an assertion; it renders it verifiable. By separating what would otherwise become confused, it allows certain references to become recognizable again with clarity. An assertion may then preserve sufficient relation to the experience to which it alludes without depending upon intensification.
When that clarity is lost, judgment becomes disordered with it. The trivial acquires weight, and what matters no longer remains recognizable with sufficient clarity. Public life then reflects that condition : accumulated emphasis replaces clarity, and incompatible assertions begin acquiring the same weight.
What is near imposes itself without measure. What is distant loses all reference. Between the two, certain assertions no longer preserve sufficient clarity to remain recognizable as verifiable.
Conviction is not an act of will or a subjective adherence. It is the condition under which an assertion may remain recognizable and verifiable. When that condition fails, conviction becomes impossible, regardless of intensification.
For this reason, conviction is not a position, but a consequence of what remains recognizable and verifiable. Without this, different assertions disperse or accumulate until they lose sufficient relation to what they attempt to describe. With it, certain references may become recognizable again with clarity.
Distrust and dissatisfaction are not causes of this condition. They are incidental manifestations of a field in which certain assertions no longer remain recognizable and verifiable with sufficient clarity.
Preserving clarity within an assertion does not consist in restricting it, but in allowing it to preserve sufficient relation to the experience to which it alludes without depending upon intensification.
Ricardo F. Morín Triangulation Series Nº 35 13 ½” x 19” Oil on linen 2009
They had been there long enough that no one marked the beginning.
Paths crossed the land without boundary. Some were used often, others only when needed. No one asked who had first walked them. It was enough that they could be followed.
One morning, men arrived with papers.
They did not move through the paths. They stopped at certain points, unfolded documents, and read from them. The words were repeated more than once, as if their repetition secured something not yet established.
A line was drawn.
It did not follow the paths. It cut across them. Those who had walked freely now paused before crossing. Some stepped over it. Others waited. No one could say what would follow.
The men with the papers returned the next day.
They asked for names. They wrote them down. Some names were accepted without question. Others were repeated back differently, then recorded again. No one explained why.
A man who had crossed the line the day before was stopped.
He was told to return. He pointed to the path he had always used. The man with the paper looked at it, then at the line, and said nothing. After a moment, he gestured for him to step back.
The next day, another man crossed at the same place and was not stopped.
No one asked what had changed.
The line remained.
People adjusted their movements around it. Some avoided it. Others crossed only when watched. The paths did not disappear, but they were no longer followed in the same way.
The men with the papers continued to come and go.
Each time, they read the same words.
No one asked who had written them.
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Ricardo F. Morín, April 19, 2026, in a quiet waiting room.
“Geometric Allegory” digital painting 2023 by Ricardo Morin (American visual artist born in Venezuela–1954)
Ricardo F. Morín
January 13, 2026
Oakland Park, Fl.
Author’s Note
This installment continues an ongoing diagnostic examination of Venezuela’s political experience and focuses on the conditions under which authority, truth, and institutional responsibility become misaligned. It remains situated within a broader historical inquiry rather than a chronological account and attends to patterns that recur when power is preserved at the expense of governance.
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Chapter 15
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The Second Issue
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On Partial Truths and Repressive Anarchy
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Partial Truths
1
Politics as a competition among partial truths is relevant to understanding authoritarian dynamics. This concept suggests that political life is inherently pluralistic, with each perspective capturing a fragment of a larger, complex reality. In a healthy democracy, competing truths—reflecting the distinct values, needs, and experiences of various groups—engage in an open, constructive exchange. Under authoritarianism, however, a regime’s efforts to monopolize truth suppress the diverse voices essential to balanced political discourse.
2
In Venezuela, the government exerts tight control over information, delegitimizes dissent, and often brands opposition perspectives as fake or dangerous to the State. [1] This monopoly on truth distorts public discourse and prevents alternative viewpoints from challenging the regime’s narratives. Rather than fostering a platform for opposition, marginalized communities, and civil society, Venezuela’s political arena is reduced to a singular truth aligned with the interests of the regime and designed to solidify its power.
3
When politics is viewed as an ongoing negotiation among competing values, it becomes clear that the Venezuelan regime disrupts this process by discrediting opposition as subversive. The idea that power shapes knowledge further illuminates this dynamic: in Venezuela, State control over media and public information subjugates alternative narratives and creates an environment where only the regime’s version of truth prevails.
4
This suppression of pluralistic truths invalidates the foundation of democratic governance, which ideally relies on the coexistence and competition of diverse perspectives. By silencing dissent, the regime transforms politics into a monologue of State propaganda, intensifies authoritarian control—stripping citizens of their agency—, and ultimately undermines the democratic foundations necessary for a functioning society.
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Repressive Anarchy
5
Repressive anarchy reveals a profound contradiction within the structure of power, where the State simultaneously acts as an oppressive force and an agent of disorder. In Venezuela, this tension between repression and anarchy underscores a deeper philosophical conflict between the functions of authority and its dissolution. While traditional autocracies rely on centralized power to enforce order, repressive anarchy signifies the collapse of the State’s capacity to govern, even as it tightens its grip on political expression and dissent.
6
At the heart of repressive anarchy lies the paradox of control without effective governance. The State’s machinery is geared toward suppressing political freedoms, curtailing opposition, and eliminating pluralism, yet it simultaneously abandons its responsibility to maintain civil order or protect citizens from economic collapse, crime, and social decay. [2] This selective exercise of power exposes a hollow sovereignty, a State that projects authority through repression while neglecting its core duties, such as ensuring justice, security, and the rule of law. In practice, the State’s authority becomes repressive in form yet anarchic in outcome, creating a chaotic reality in which power exists without purpose.
7
This condition challenges classical notions of power and governance. In political theory, the State derives its legitimacy from the social contract, a mutual obligation between the governing and the governed. [3] When a State prioritizes repression over administration, it dissolves this contract and replaces trust with fear. Repressive anarchy suggests that when power is severed from its foundational responsibilities, it becomes both self-perpetuating and self-destructive, reducing the State to a coercive mechanism rather than a force for societal good.
8
This duality calls into question the Hobbesian assumption that authoritarianism naturally ensures order.[4] In Venezuela, the centralization of power under Nicolás Maduro has not produced stability but rather resulted in a breakdown of government functions and the State’s ability to govern. Unchecked power has not led to unity or security but to fragmentation and chaos; repression, rather than compensating for the State’s failures, exacerbates them, accelerates societal disintegration, and fosters its own insecurity.
9
Repressive anarchy also reshapes the relationship between fear and freedom. In such systems, fear is not merely a tool of control but a pervasive condition that governs how individuals relate to both the State and one another. [5] Fear restricts political participation, crushes avenues for public discourse, and undermines the possibility of genuine freedom. In this way, repressive anarchy represents not only a failure of governance but also a moral failure, as both individuals and society become burdened under the weight of relentless repression.
10
Ultimately, repressive anarchy confronts political philosophy with a contradiction that defies conventional solutions. It exposes the limits of coercive power and the inherent vulnerability of autocratic regimes to self-destruction. More importantly, it underscores the need to reconcile authority with effective governance—not as instruments of mere repression, but as ethical systems that uphold the dignity and welfare of the people. The Venezuelan experience demonstrates that when power is severed from both governance and moral responsibility, it fails to impose order and instead breeds institutionally induced chaos that resists international sanctions or punitive measures.[6]
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Endnotes, Chapter XV
§2
[1] Reporters Without Borders, World Press Freedom Index 2024: Venezuela, Paris, 2024, https://rsf.org/en/country/venezuela; Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2024: Venezuela, Washington, DC, 2024, https://freedomhouse.org/country/venezuela/freedom-world/2024; United Nations Human Rights Council, Report of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, A/HRC/57/CRP.5, Geneva, 2024.
§6
[2] Corrales, Javier and Penfold, Michael, Dragon in the Tropics: Hugo Chávez and the Political Economy of Revolution in Venezuela (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2011); InSight Crime, Venezuela: A Country Run by Criminal Networks, Bogotá, 2023, https://insightcrime.org; United Nations Development Programme, Governance Indicators: Venezuela Country Profile, New York, 2023.
§7
[3] O’Donnell, Guillermo “Delegative Democracy,” Journal of Democracy 5, no. 1 (1994): 55–69. (Foundational framework for understanding regimes that retain electoral form while hollowing institutional responsibility.)
§8
[4] Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan (1651; Kindle ed.), chap. 17, loc. 103; United Nations Development Programme, “Governance Indicators: Venezuela Country Profile,” New York, 2023.
§9
[5] Arendt, Hannah, The Origins of Totalitarianism, New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1951).
In a world confronting systemic threats—pandemics, war, environmental instability—the distortion of democratic language by authoritarian regimes introduces a secondary danger: the displacement of shared standards by which political reality is evaluated. When democratic terms are preserved rhetorically but emptied institutionally, they no longer clarify global challenges; they obscure them. [1] Under such conditions, the problem is not merely the absence of democracy, but the misuse of its vocabulary.
2
Within this context, democracy may be examined not as an aspiration, but as a set of operative conditions by which authority is constrained and legitimacy is measured. These conditions do not function symbolically; they function diagnostically. Where they are absent, substituted, or selectively applied, democratic form persists while democratic substance is rendered inoperative.
3
Among these conditions are the rule of law; free and verifiable elections; the protection of civil liberties and human rights; the separation of powers; judicial independence; sustained civic participation; governmental responsiveness; minority protections; transparency and accountability; and the peaceful transfer of power. These are not abstract ideals but necessary conditions. [1] These conditions may be suspended, distorted, or replaced by forms that imitate them without functioning.Governance persists as appearance and thereby operates as subterfuge, while democracy no longer operates.
4
In Venezuela, the disjunction between democratic language and authoritarian operation has become a defining feature of political life. Over the past quarter-century, authority has been progressively centralized within a single-party framework, reinforced by military participation and institutional capture. [2] Although electoral and constitutional forms have been retained, their constraining functions have been neutralized, contributing to sustained loss of institutional capacity across political, social, and economic domains.
5
The judiciary illustrates this substitution with particular clarity. Rather than operating as an independent arbiter, it has increasingly functioned as an administrative extension of executive power; it has legitimized arbitrary detention, restricted political participation, and normalized repression through procedural means. [3] As such, the mechanisms of the judiciary are used to authorize repression rather than to constrain power.
6
When courts align with executive authority rather than constrain it, civic participation and political representation cease to function. Elections, legal claims, and public challenge may continue in form, but they no longer permit citizens to influence power or secure redress.
Endnotes, Chapter XVI
§1-§3
[1]Rosanvallon, Pierre, Counter-Democracy: Politics in an Age of Distrust, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Urbinati, Nadia, Democracy Disfigured: Opinion, Truth, and the People, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014.
§4
[2] International Crisis Group, “Venezuela: The Rise of a Militarized State,” Brussels, 2022; Organization of American States, “Report on the Situation in Venezuela,” Washington, 2023.
§5
[3] Foro Penal, “Political Prisoners in Venezuela: Annual Report 2025,” Caracas, 2025; United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, “Opinion No. 44/2023 (Venezuela),” Geneva, 2023; Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, “Democratic Institutions, Rule of Law, and Human Rights in Venezuela,” Washington, DC, 2024.
Could it be safe to take a shower between 7 and 8 am?
He will take his morning medication just before the shower.
It is 43 degrees Fahrenheit outside, rising to 64 by the time he arrives at Penn Medicine in University City.
He considers scheduling an Uber for 11:45 am; his husband will say it is too early.
It’s 7:05. He hears his husband making the beds in the next room. He goes to shower.
His husband asks whether he would be up to taking a ride tomorrow, the day before departure.
He says he would decide based on how he felt.
Each choice has required assessment.
Two bowel movements. A familiar pattern, a sense of incomplete evacuation. An anti-diarrheal may be needed.
Not diarrhea. An accelerated colon.
He does not exceed 2 mg unless it becomes continuous.
Propulsion. Heartburn. Hiatal hernia. Micro-aspirations. They do not occur separately, especially while recovering from a respiratory infection.
It’s 8:40 am. Three hours before the Uber arrives.
Would a warm compress help?
His husband hears him cough and asks if he wants tea.
The N95 mask was used recently at the ER. The new ones are in the carry-on. Is it necessary to look for them?
His husband helps. He will keep a mask for the flight to London. It is reassuring, even in business class.
Should he take a nasal cleanser on the cruise to the British Isles?
He switches shoes. Cold feet persist. No marked improvement.
With an hour and a half before leaving, better not to wear shoes. Wool slippers instead. Cold feet persist. He will decide on the spot before leaving: the clogs.
The interior temperature is 66 degrees with the humidifier on.
He is dressed warmly, but the air feels nippy.
He does not turn up the heat.
He turns off the humidifier, rests his feet over the yoga bolster, and covers them with a blanket.
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Scene Two: Monday Afternoon
When he spoke to the physician, she asked, in a friendly tone, how often he visited his family in Venezuela. He said he would not assume she was unfamiliar with Venezuela. For over three decades, it had not been safe for him to return.*
She stated that his resilience was a testament to how far HIV treatment had advanced. He did not respond immediately. When he did, he was not entirely sure whether medication or sheer DNA disposition had protected him from opportunistic infections, though he had developed full AIDS.
She was eager to know who he was. At the same time, he detected a degree of vulnerability in her: a young, enthusiastic virologist, a mother of seven months.
He asked about the baby’s name. She shared it. She said the child was struggling to walk and that the intensity of it felt overwhelming.
When he brought up his infectious disease doctor before moving from New York to Florida, he mentioned that both she and her husband were HIV positive. She had treated him for twenty-five years. Her care was not only clinical. It was also informed by lived knowledge, though she never made it the center of her care. He held that knowledge as a standard to meet.
The physician widened her eyes. She said she knows this was her first child and that much lay ahead; right now it felt demanding. He said she will eventually look back on this time with affection. She completed his sentence.
What he is now talking about is not diagnostic, analytic, or logical. It is something else.
Before they part, she says she looks forward to learning from him. He quips: learning from each other.
The physician led the consultation from the moment she stated her objectives. She said she wanted to show herself and hoped he would do the same. It was unusual. She was poised, centered. He had not experienced this kind of rapport before. Was it his letter of introduction? The way he had organized his clinical history and his team of caregivers?
Afterward, his husband asks whether she is the right fit. He answers with hesitation. Her eagerness repeats itself. Time will tell.
He wonders whether his husband sees himself reflected in his responses, and about his own perception, whether there is intent behind it.
Shortly after they return home, his husband comes to him. He wants to hug and kiss him, pleased with how it went. He says, “we did it; we are now safe to travel with everything in the right place.” Then he returns seconds later to tell him it was because of his generosity.
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Scene Three: Monday Night
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After he left the office of the infectious disease doctor at Penn Medicine, and before returning home past 4 pm, he was hungry. They stopped at the hospital cafeteria, where he had chicken noodle soup loaded with condiments, more than he would normally have.
The soup was saltier than his preference.
When he took the first spoonful, his throat and esophageal sphincter contracted, and he paused.
He remembered that small sips, spaced a few minutes apart, were necessary. After a few sips, he reached a level of comfort that allowed him to finish the soup.
They walked outside, and by the main entrance he ordered an Uber back home. He arrived just in time to consider the next meal after the soup.
He had two consecutive meals without heartburn.
He had been weighed at 126 pounds. He had lost six to eight pounds since contracting a viral infection.
At 9:34 pm, he was watching a movie about bodies living with severe disabilities.
His rib cage felt as if it were pressing on his liver.
He had been dealing with a medication-induced fatty liver and elevated enzymes.
He realized that liver failure is possible, though he had been a long-term HIV survivor without ever facing a major opportunistic infection, even when he experienced wasting syndrome thirty years ago and had only thirty-four T cells.
He cannot account for his good fortune, but he knows he has it.
Ricardo F. Morín
April 29, 2026
Bala Cynwyd, Pa
Video portrait set to a Piazzolla tango composition. Mixed media drawing rendered in Maya. Red and black figure study with rotating fields; hair and flame introduced in sequence, drawing from a classical descent motif.
It may be enough that we do not turn away from what stands before us, even when it exceeds what we believe we can endure. What lies ahead is not lessened by our hesitation. If there is any measure left to us, it is in seeing what is there without withdrawing from it. Let it not pass unnoticed. In facing what we fear, something in us has already given way, though we continue as if it had not. Still, something must hold, even where we cannot name it.
Let it not be said that we did not see what we became. No tyranny stands apart from those who allow it to stand. What prevails does so not by force alone, but through what remains unexamined in each of us. If there is anything to be undone, it does not begin elsewhere. It begins in the refusal to see what we are when we turn away. If there is mercy, it is not in judgment, but in the possibility that one might still face what has been done without turning from it.
We do not stand outside this. What we condemn is not separate from us. If we fail, it is not only through action, but through what we leave unexamined. Indifference does not remain contained. It spreads, quietly, until nothing resists it. What we become in that condition is not imposed. It is allowed. And in that allowance, something essential gives way.
Before it is too late, there is only this: to see what is there, within and without, without division. Not in parts, not in sequence, but all at once. To see it without turning it into something else. In that seeing, there is no method, no progression, no assurance. Only the fact of it. And where that fact is seen without distortion, something acts, not as decision, but as the ending of what cannot continue once it is fully seen.
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Ricardo F. Morín, recast from 2014, April 25, 2026, Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania.
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
“Geometric Allegory” digital painting 2023 by Ricardo Morin (American visual artist born in Venezuela–1954)
*
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
*
10
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.
11
The country’s political trajectory has been profoundly shaped by its enduring history of military rule. Since independence in 1811, twenty-fivemilitary 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]
12
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.
13
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]
14
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.
15
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]
16
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]
17
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]
18
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 Urrutiaas the unified opposition candidate. [32]
19
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]
20
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]
21
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.
22
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.
23
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.
24
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 CorruptionPerceptions Index Venezuela scored 13 out of 100 and was positioned as one of the most corrupt nations globally. [41]
25
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.
[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.
[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
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
[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.
[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.
[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.
[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.
[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.
The documentary “Melania” unfolds within the ceremonial landscape surrounding Donald Trump’s return to the presidency. Melania Trump’s voice carries the narrative thread. She begins with an account of inheritance. She credits her mother’s strength and devotion to family with shaping the person she has become. She presents that inheritance as the ground of her public role.
That account of her origin is set within settings that unfold its meaning. At St. Patrick’s Cathedral a priest offers his blessing. The moment enters the language of national ceremony. Melania declares that she will use her influence and power to defend those in need. She links that promise to the discipline that guided her earlier career in Paris and Milan, where high personal standards first shaped her ambitions.
From the cathedral the narrative moves to the transfer of authority. President Joe Biden and Jill Biden escort Donald Trump and Melania Trump toward the White House. The procession advances through the familiar choreography of inauguration.
At that moment a reporter breaks through the press line and shouts a question: “Will America survive the next president?” Its resonance lends the sequence an unexpected candor.
The narrative then returns to Melania’s voice as she enters the Capitol’s Rotunda. She describes the moment as the meeting point between national history and her own journey as an immigrant. She speaks of rights that must be protected and of a humanity shared across different origins.
As the ceremony moves toward the swearing of the presidential oath to the Constitution, Jill Biden remains centered in the camera’s view until Trump’s daughter Tiffany steps forward and blocks her from sight.
Donald Trump then takes the oath. He announces that a golden age begins immediately. He promises national flourishing, international respect, and the restoration of impartial justice under constitutional rule. He names peace and unity as the marks of his future legacy.
Although the production bears Melania’s name, the material before the camera consists of ceremony, prepared language, and public display. Under such conditions a portrait cannot reveal a private figure. It records the symbolic role assigned to her within the spectacle surrounding Trump’s return to power.
Donald Trump tells her that she looks like a movie star. The camera returns to her face. The attempt to soften her beauty does not succeed. Her eyes narrow. The line of her mouth tightens into a strain that refuses the ease of a ceremonial smile.
The recurring presence of stiletto shoes of approximately twelve centimeters becomes part of the visual composition. The effect suggests an effort to augment physical presence in a setting where stature is already symbolically constructed.
Seen in the second year of Trump’s second term, the promises heard throughout the documentary: constitutional fidelity, respect for rights, pride in the immigrant’s contribution to national life, and the assurance that plurality remains united within one civic community, stand in contrast with the conduct of governance that followed.
The montage preserves more than a portrait of Melania Trump. Ceremony frames power with language drawn from inheritance, constitutional duty, and civic unity. When events test the promises attached to that language, the ceremony remains while the substance weakens.
Beauty, piety, and patriotic symbolism stand in the foreground of the ceremony and lend the moment dignity and continuity. When the record of governing enters the frame, those same elements remain after the promises attached to them have failed. The documentary leaves the image of the surface on which those promises were written.
*
Epilogue
*
The documentary does not construct a language capable of recognizing its own artifice. The ceremony remains at the level of presentation. It does not become conscious representation.
Artistic precedents in the documentary genre and in the exercise of governmental power have shown that power can be exposed through its own theatricality. When that language is established, the spectacle becomes legible as construction. Artifice no longer conceals itself and becomes part of the meaning.
Here the opposite occurs. The staging, the wardrobe, the choreography, and the discourse are presented without distance. There is no register that allows them to be observed as construction. The result is not an interpretation of power, but its reiteration.
The very condition of the the work contributes to this result. It is a commissioned production. Its cost, at approximately forty eight million dollars, intensifies the presentation of the surface without expanding the field of language.
That condition alters the meaning of what is seen. The ceremony retains its forms, but loses the capacity to produce awareness of itself. Language continues to assert legitimacy, but does not reach the point of examining it.
The production, without intending to do so, exposes this limitation. It does not reveal the artifice of power. It shows, instead, a form of power that lacks the language necessary to recognize itself as artifice.
*
Ricardo F. Morín, March 10, 2026, Oakland Park, Florida
Ricardo F. Morín Irrationality, Propaganda, and Tribalism CGI 2026
1. A political claim ordinarily enters public life through institutions. A law is debated, enacted, interpreted, contested. A speech is delivered from a known office, before a defined audience, subject to reply and record. Authority, in these cases, arises from responsibility and constraint.
2. The text examined here satisfies none of these conditions.
3. The text attributes to an unnamed broadcast the power to alter legal status. The text presents a speaker not as a citizen who speaks, but as a conscience that pronounces. The text declares effects that no statute, no executive order, and no court possesses the authority to produce. The text announces national assent in the absence of any forum capable of granting assent.
4. No enactment appears. No interpretation occurs. No review is possible.
5. Nothing in this sequence is argued. Nothing in this sequence is demonstrated. Nothing in this sequence is capable of verification.
6. Authority is not derived from office, law, or responsibility. Authority is assigned by narrative arrangement.
7. The speaker is granted moral standing by recognition alone. The law is displaced by spectacle. The audience is positioned as witness to a verdict that precedes deliberation. Silence is treated as confirmation. Stillness is treated as consent.
8. What appears as denunciation functions as substitution.
9. The place of institutions is occupied by a voice. The place of argument is occupied by proclamation. The place of judgment is occupied by reaction.
10. The result is not persuasion. The result is conversion.
11. Citizens are not addressed as agents capable of contesting claims. Citizens are addressed as spectators invited to receive a moral scene whose meaning has been fixed in advance.
12. When invented testimony is received as political record, the boundary between event and wish disappears. When spectacle is treated as verdict, correction loses authority. When conscience is produced as performance, no institution remains capable of constraining conscience.
13. This is not misinformation in the ordinary sense.
14. This phenomenon is the replacement of judgment by fabricated authority.
15. Authority ordinarily attaches to an office before authority attaches to a voice, because office supplies the limits under which speech can claim consequence. A court exists, so a judge speaks. A chamber exists, so a legislator speaks. An administration exists, so an executive speaks. In each case standing precedes utterance, and the public can locate responsibility by locating the forum in which the claim is made.
16. The text examined here reverses that order. The text presents a voice whose standing is not grounded in any office that can be named, any jurisdiction that can be defined, or any forum that can be recognized. No delegation is stated. No mandate is visible. No responsibility is assumed. Yet the voice speaks as if entitled to pronounce on matters whose force depends, in ordinary civic life, on enactment, interpretation, and review.
17. This reversal matters because office establishes the scope under which a claim may operate, jurisdiction fixes the reach of effects, and procedure subjects both scope and reach to contest and record. A claim that arises through these constraints can be challenged because standing can be challenged. The claim here does not arise through constraint; the claim arises through reception. Standing depends on recognition rather than jurisdiction, and recognition is not a civic category that admits examination.
18. One can dispute a mandate. One can deny a court’s jurisdiction. One can invoke procedure and require reply. Recognition offers no equivalent instrument. Recognition confers authority without specifying scope, and recognition allows a voice to present itself as conscience without accepting the obligations that make conscience accountable in public life.
19. The effect is not merely that a voice speaks outside office. The effect is that the role of office is replaced. In a system where standing precedes speech, speech can be limited because the forum can be limited. In a system where standing follows speech, speech expands until something external imposes a boundary.
20. The text relies on no such boundary. The text presents moral standing as complete at the moment of utterance, and the text treats reception as confirmation. The audience is positioned less as a public capable of contest than as a witness to a pronouncement whose authority is presumed rather than earned.
21. In that arrangement the claim to speak carries consequence without jurisdiction, and authority appears where no institution can be identified as a source of authority.
22. Authority that does not arise from office cannot rely on procedure. Procedure requires forum. Forum requires jurisdiction. Jurisdiction requires mandate. None is present here.
23. The claim therefore does not proceed by sequence. The claim proceeds without premises, without grounds, and without anticipation of reply. The statement does not argue. The statement announces.
24. What would ordinarily require enactment is declared complete. What would ordinarily require interpretation is pronounced settled. What would ordinarily require review is presented as final. Verdict precedes forum.
25. This reversal alters the function of speech itself. Speech no longer seeks assent through reasoning. Speech produces assent by declaration. Judgment no longer follows deliberation. Judgment is installed before deliberation can occur.
26. Once proclamation is received as verdict, proof becomes irrelevant.
27. Once argument is removed from the sequence, assent no longer arises from judgment. Assent arises from recognition. The claim does not ask to be examined. The claim asks to be received. The force of the claim depends less on what the claim establishes than on whom the claim addresses.
28. The audience is not invited to consider whether the verdict follows from law, or whether the authority invoked possesses standing to pronounce. The audience is invited to recognize the audience in the verdict.
29. This shift alters the function of agreement. In deliberative settings, assent follows contest. One accepts a conclusion because one has weighed a claim against alternatives. Here, assent precedes any such weighing. The verdict arrives already formed, and reception supplies confirmation.
30. Agreement no longer signals conviction, but affiliation, a posture defined less by conviction than by position.
31. Recognition, in this arrangement, performs the work that argument once performed. To accept the claim is to affirm membership in a moral position already defined. The verdict does not bind because the verdict is correct. The verdict binds because the verdict identifies.
32. Those who receive the verdict do not do so as judges of coherence, but as participants in the posture the verdict confers. The claim succeeds not by persuading opponents, but by consolidating those already disposed to accept the claim.
33. This function explains the absence of procedure. Deliberation would introduce fracture. Contest would introduce differentiation. Review would expose divergence. None serves the purpose at hand.
34. The claim therefore bypasses every stage at which disagreement could appear. The claim offers instead a completed judgment whose primary effect is to sort recognition from refusal.
35. The result is not belief in the ordinary sense, but affiliation, a posture defined less by conviction than by position. To assent is to take position within a moral alignment whose boundaries are drawn by reception itself. Those who accept are confirmed. Those who hesitate are marked.
36. Authority, in this form, does not govern through law. Authority governs through identification.
37. Once standing is conferred by reception, the remaining limits cannot hold.
38. Once authority is produced in this manner, substitution becomes unavoidable. In this arrangement office yields to presence, jurisdiction yields to recognition, procedure yields to proclamation, and judgment yields to reaction, until no limit remains capable of arresting the expansion that follows.
39. Each replacement removes a limit. Each replacement widens scope. Each replacement dissolves responsibility.
40. What remains is a form of authority that cannot be contested because no forum remains in which contest can occur.
41. The consequence for citizenship follows directly. A citizen ordinarily participates in judgment by weighing claims, contesting standing, and invoking procedure. Here, that role disappears. The citizen is no longer positioned as a participant in deliberation. The citizen is positioned as a recipient of verdict.
42. Agency yields to reception, judgment yields to alignment, and responsibility yields to loyalty, until disagreement itself can no longer appear as a civic act.
43. In this posture disagreement ceases to be a civic act. Disagreement becomes a breach of affiliation. Hesitation becomes disloyalty. Correction becomes defection.
44. Once judgment is displaced in this way, repair becomes impossible. Correction presupposes a forum. Review presupposes jurisdiction. Reply presupposes standing. None remains available.
45. A verdict that arrives without forum cannot be recalled to contest. An authority that arises without office cannot be subjected to review. A claim that governs through recognition alone cannot be corrected without threatening membership itself.
46. The persistence of fabrication follows not from confusion, but from function. Fabrication endures because fabrication stabilizes alignment. Fabrication circulates because fabrication confirms position. Fabrication resists correction because correction would dissolve the posture fabrication sustains.
47. Authority, once detached from office and constraint, does not disappear. Authority reappears in altered form. Verdict is separated from forum. Conscience is separated from responsibility. Assent is separated from deliberation.
48. What remains is a claim to govern without jurisdiction.
49. This is not the corruption of judgment. This is displacement.
50. Judgment is no longer exercised. Judgment is produced.
*
Ricardo F. Morín, January 21, 2026, Oakland Park, Florida.
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
~
1
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).
2
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].
3
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.
4
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.
5
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]
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.
7
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.
8
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‘sinstitutional 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]
9
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.
10
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]
11
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.
12
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.
13
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.
14
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.
15
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.
16
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 inaugurationindefinitely. This further intensified political tensions.
17
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
[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.
[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.
[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
[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
Ricardo Morín Portrait of a President 14 x 20 inches Watercolor, sumi ink, crayon on paper 2003
*
Author’s Note
This essay continues an inquiry begun in “Portrait of a President: A Diagnostic Essay on Power, Posture, and Historical Pattern,” where patterns of executive behavior were examined through observable action rather than declared intent. The present text shifts that inquiry from description to procedure and takes a recent executive order on artificial intelligence as a case through which decisions are advanced, reviewed, and sustained.
It follows The Arithmetic of Progress, which considers how contemporary narratives of advancement often detach calculation from consequence. Read in sequence, that essay establishes the broader conditions under which claims of inevitability and efficiency gain force; the present text examines how such claims operate within the executive process itself.
The essay also builds upon Governing by Exception: The American Executive, published earlier this year, which examined how exceptional measures become normalized within the modern presidency. Where that essay focused on the expansion of executive discretion, the present text examines the procedural consequences that follow when exception becomes routine.
This essay further stands in relation to Convergence by Design or Consequence? On Trump, Putin, and the Veiled Axis from Kyiv to Caracas, which addressed alignment among contemporary autocracies at the geopolitical level. Here, the focus moves inward, toward domestic executive procedure, to consider how similar methods of authority can emerge without explicit coordination or ideological declaration.
Each essay approaches the same problem from a different register—exception, calculation, procedure, and alignment—without requiring continuity of title or theme.
This essay occupies the center of that sequence of essays. Throughout the analysis, action designates executive action as it bears upon the other branches of the American government. It begins from an observation about executive ordering under conditions of urgency and traces how constitutional constraint may be displaced in practice without being formally abolished.
Ricardo F. Morín
November 2025
Oakland Park, Florida
*
Procedural Dislocation and the Rhetoric of Dominance
I
The recent executive order framing artificial intelligence as a matter of “global dominance” offers a useful example on procedural dislocation and the rhetoric of dominance. Agreement with its stated aims is not required for the executive order to warrant examination. Its relevance does not lie in what it promises to achieve, but in the manner in which it propels decisions forward before the terms under which they should be evaluated have been configured.
Artificial intelligence enters this discussion not as a technical subject, but as a context in which executive action is presented as urgent. The order proceeds on the assumption that speed and centralized direction are necessary for success. As a result, decisions advance before existing forms of review, coordination, and regulatory formation have had an opportunity to shape their terms.
This ordering is significant. When presidential authority is asserted first, deliberation is relegated to constrained conditions. Institutional review—understood here as the pre-action criteria, thresholds, and sequencing through which decisions are ordinarily authorized—ceases to determine whether executive action should proceed and instead adjusts to action already underway. Once this sequence is fixed, subsequent forms of participation—whether arising from agencies, advisory bodies, or constitutional institutioins—may temper implementation without necessarily altering the direction of presidential decrees.
This essay treats the order as an instance of that ordering. It examines what follows when urgency governs the timing of decisions and broad assertions of purpose begin to do work normally performed by review, coordination, and rulemaking.
II
Executive decisions determine direction within the executive domain; executive action commits that determination to institutional consequence.
When decisions are taken prior to sustained review, the order of evaluation is reversed. Procedural review (as a condition of pre-authorization) no longer governs whether executive action is authorized, but instead becomes a step anticipated after executive action has already been set in motion. This inversion of review and authorization alters how responsibility is distributed within the executive process.
In this sequence, articulated criteria are deferred rather than established. Judicial review exists, but typically occurs after implementation, once policies have already taken effect. Congressional checks exist, but depend on coordination, timing, and political alignment that narratives of urgency actively compress, displace, and bypass. Constitutional remedies exist, but operate on temporal horizons incompatible with accelerated executive action. Standards by which a decision might be assessed—scope, limits, benchmarks, or conditions for revision—remain undefined at the moment of execution. The absence of articulated criteria is presented as provisional, even as executive action proceeds as though those criteria were already settled.
This analysis does not proceed from the assumption that constitutional checks are absent.Without articulated criteria, no stable reference exists against which a decision can be evaluated, adjusted, or halted. Review becomes reactive, tasked with accommodating decisions rather than testing their premises.
This sequence also alters the role of institutional participation. Agencies and advisory bodies are positioned to respond within post-implementation review rather than to contribute to the formation of the decision itself. Their involvement shifts from deliberation to implementation, narrowing the space for substantive input.
What emerges is not the elimination of review. Constraints remain formally intact, but no longer determine whether executive action proceeds; they intervene only after its action has already begun.
The result is not the elimination of constraint, but its displacement: mechanisms—designed to govern whether executive action should proceed—are repositioned to manage action already set in motion. Constitutional checks remain operative only after executive action has been set in motion, rather than governing whether that action may proceed.
III
Federal preemption is asserted before a substitute structure exists. In this case, state-level regulatory activity is set aside even though no comprehensive federal framework has yet been established to take its place. Rule by decree is asserted in advance of the mechanisms that would ordinarily support, coordinate, or limit executive action.
This is not a question of constitutional supremacy. The constitutional framework governing federal preemption state law is well established even as its application remains contested. The issue is one of sequence. Preemption typically displaces existing regulation by replacing it with a defined alternative through which responsibility, oversight, and accountability are reassigned. When that replacement is absent, displacement produces a gap rather than a transition.
This sequence reorders the role of the states. Rather than serving as sites of coordination, experimentation, or interim governance, they are treated primarily as sources of friction. Their regulatory efforts are characterized as interference even though no structure has been offered to absorb the regulatory functions being displaced.
The result of this ordeering is a form of authority exercised in advance of the institutional support required to sustain it. Preemption operates as assertion rather than as arrangement. The question that follows is not whether authority exists, but how the executive authority is expected to function once exercised without the structures that normally sustain it.
IV
The executive order invokes a global race of dominance as a justification for urgency. This reference is introduced without specification of its participants, scope, or criteria and is presented as a condition rather than as a claim requiring articulation or examination.
Because the race is not defined, it cannot be procedurally evaluated. No benchmarks are offered by which advancement or delay might be measured, and no temporal horizon is established against which executive actions might be paced. Yet the invocation is treated as decisive.
Once invoked, this global framing reshapes the timing and sequence of domestic review and coordination. Internal processes of review, coordination, and federal balance are measured against an externally asserted tempo. Procedural safeguards begin to appear as liabilities, not because they have failed, but because they operate at a pace deemed incompatible with the asserted race.
In this way, the invocation of a global race does not specify what is at stake; instead, the invocation of global competition relocates the timing of decision-making to an externally asserted pace. The absence of specification enables acceleration.
The significance of this procedural reordering lies not in whether global competition exists, but in how its invocation alters internal sequence within the American executive. An external reference is imported as a procedural rationale and allows executive decisions to advance ahead of sustained review and articulated structure.
V
Alongside external competitive framing, internal pressure also alters when and how executive decisions move forward. This pressure arises from private actors with concentrated financial exposure to the development and deployment of artificial intelligence technologies. Their investments depend on acceleration, scale, and limited regulatory constraint.
These actors do not require coordination to exert influence. Their interests converge structurally. Delays associated with sustained review, layered oversight, or decentralized regulation introduce uncertainty into investment horizons. Acceleration, by contrast, stabilizes expectations and preserves potential revenue.
Such pressure operates prior to public deliberation. It is expressed through advisory roles, policy consultations, and formal lobbying mechanisms that exist outside the sequence of open review. The influence is not illicit; it is institutionalized. What distinguishes this influence is its timing and asymmetry.
Because these interests are not fully disclosed within the formal record of decision-making and review, their effects appear indirect. Yet they shape the conditions under which urgency is framed as necessity and executive preemption as inevitability. The absence of articulated criteria does not impede this process; it facilitates it by keeping outcomes flexible while direction remains fixed.
External competition supplies a rationale for acceleration, while the pressure of internal investment sustains it. In this way, procedural dislocation is reinforced from within the executive sequence itself. Together, they create an executive environment in which acceleration is continuously justified even as institutional review and the structures of substitution remain deferred.
VI
What follows marks a shift not in policy substance, but in how executive action is oriented once procedural guidance no longer governs its timing.
When decisions continue to advance without articulated criteria or substitution structures, language begins to assume functions ordinarily carried by procedural guidance. By procedural guidance, this analysis refers to the articulated criteria, review thresholds, institutional sequencing, and substitution structures through which decisions are ordinarily evaluated, revised, or withheld before executive action proceeds. Instead, executive orders are used to frame executive action and to supply orientation where procedural guidance is missing.
In this context, words such as “dominance,” “necessity,” or “leadership” do not operate primarily as descriptions. Such terms establish direction without specification. The function of such terms is to move decisions forward while leaving objectives, limits, and measures unresolved.
This enlargement of language alters how executive action is understood. Rather than clarifying what is being done and under what conditions, language organizes attention around procedural momentum. Movement itself becomes the priority, even as the grounds for evaluation remain unsettled.
The effect is cumulative over time. As reliance on rhetorical framing increases, fewer procedural markers remain available to slow, revise, or redirect executive action. Language begins to carry responsibilities normally handled by review and specification.
At this stage, language has not displaced explanation entirely, but it has begun to exceed it. This language continues to refer to policy, yet it now performs additional work by sustaining executive action in the absence of settled procedural support.
VII
Requests for specification no longer lead to articulated criteria or review mechanisms, but to restatement of the original framing. Explanation gives way to emphasis, and emphasis to repetition, without resolving the underlying procedural gaps.
As language begins to carry responsibilities normally handled by review and specification, its relationship to explanation changes. Statements initially intended to orient understanding become reference points that are repeated rather than examined.
Over time, this pattern reduces the capacity to pause, reconsider, or revise decisions already underway. When language is relied upon to sustain action, revisiting its premises becomes more difficult. Adjustment appears as retreat, and reconsideration as delay, even though no settled standards have been articulated.
The effect of this rhetorical substitution is not overt resistance to review, but a narrowing of the scope of review. Review persists formally, yet review is increasingly tasked with accommodating decisions already advanced. The space for questioning sequence, authority, or criteria contracts without being explicitly closed.
At this point, language no longer merely advances executive action; it begins to shield it. Decisions remain explainable in broad terms, but they become less accessible to sustained examination. What has changed is not transparency, but the conditions under which clarification can still occur.
VIII
This section traces the consequences of earlier procedural substitutions by showing how evaluative reference points disappear even as executive action continues.
Outcomes are projected but not specified. Means are deployed but not measured against stable standards. A shared point of reference by which both means and outcomes might be assessed is absent. When decisions are taken prior to sustained review and sustained by rhetorical framing rather than articulated criteria, the available bases for judging decisions narrow.
In such conditions, projected outcomes can no longer function as checks on present executive action. Projected benefits remain abstract, deferred, or contingent on future clarification. Without defined benchmarks or review mechanisms, outcomes function more as justification than as objects of evaluation.
This places increased weight on the process. When ends remain indeterminate, procedural sequence becomes the only available measure of legitimacy. If that sequence is dislocated, no basis remains for distinguishing provisional executive action from settled direction.
Appeals to necessity gain prominence under these conditions. These appeals bridge the gap between uncertain means and unspecified ends by asserting inevitability. Yet inevitability does not supply measure; it advances executive action while deferring assessment.
What results is the suspension of evaluation, as judgment is deferred to outcomes that have not yet been defined. Executive means proceed without reference to ends that can be examined and leave evaluation suspended rather than resolved.
IX
The significance of what follows lies not in escalation or collapse, but in the capacity of this governing pattern to persist without triggering a formal breakdown.
Viewed through the preceding sequence, the executive order appears less as a response to a technological challenge than as an expression of how presidential authority now operates. In this sequence, constitutional constraint persists formally while losing its capacity to govern presidential timing. What defines this mode of operation is not declared ambition, but the exercise of executive authority in advance of settled structure, review, and measure.
Despite the suspension of procedural evaluation, executive action continues to advance and stabilize as a governing pattern. Executive action advances without stable criteria, and evaluation follows rather than guides it. Rhetorical framing sustains continuity once authorization, specification, and review no longer govern the initiation of action, and inevitability substitutes for articulation.
Under these conditions, governance retains motion but loses procedural reference. Decisions remain intelligible in broad terms, yet increasingly difficult to assess, revise, or halt.
Rather than resolving into crisis, the condition persists through executive assertion rather than procedural sequence. Executive authority continues to function, but it does so with fewer internal points of correction.
The significance of this condition lies not in its novelty, but in its durability. When procedural dislocation becomes a stable feature of executive action, it reshapes how legitimacy is understood and how accountability can be exercised. What is produced is not exception, but a normalized way of proceeding.
X
A constitutional order presumes cooperation without being able to compel it in advance. Law establishes procedures, thresholds, and divisions of authority, but it cannot secure the disposition of the actors who must inhabit those roles. The responsibility for cooperation is therefore placed precisely at the point where predictability can no longer be secured—human judgment, ambition, fear, calculation, fatigue, pride. This is not a failure of law as text; it is a condition of law as lived structure.
Seen this way, instability is not an aberration introduced by bad actors alone. It is an ever-present possibility generated by the fact that constitutional systems rely on restraint exercised voluntarily, sequentially, and often against immediate interest. Where cooperation falters, procedures remain formally intact yet lose operational force in practice. Law persists on paper while its coordinating capacity weakens over time.
This is why the problem traced throughout this essay is ultimately ethical rather than moralistic. It does not ask who is right or wrong, but what can reasonably be expected of human agents operating under pressure, asymmetry, and incomplete trust. Constitutional governance assumes a minimum ethic of reciprocity—an agreement to wait, to contest, to defer, to revise. When that ethic fails to be sustained, the system does not collapse at once; it persists in a condition where coordination no longer governs action. The authority of the Executive fills the gap left by cooperation, often in the name of continuity.
This explains why displacement proves durable, why restraint remains fragile, and why systems can continue to function even as their ethical foundations lose sustaining force. The irony sustained here is not pessimistic; it is lucid as an end to the inquiry.
Cooperative frameworks are always provisional. They exist in tension with mistrust, strategic defection, and shifting circumstance. They are never resolved, only renegotiated. The ethical fact is not that mistrust appears, but that governance must function despite it.
*
Pre-Procedural Conditions of Dislocation
*
Political responsibility begins before governance does. It precedes programs, slogans, and institutional choreography. Long before authority is exercised, it is entrusted, and in that act a judgment is already made—not about policy detail, but about temperament, restraint, and capacity for self-limitation.
The ethical center of leadership is not revealed through ambition or rhetorical promise, but through signs that are immediately legible: flexibility without opportunism, firmness without domination, caution without paralysis. These qualities are visible almost at once, often within moments of exposure. To miss them is not a failure of intelligence, but of attention.
This responsibility cannot be displaced onto institutions after the fact. Nor can it be excused by urgency, fatigue, or personal grievance. Once authority is conferred, law is required to manage what has already been authorized, even when correction becomes costly or delayed. No procedural safeguard can fully compensate for ethical indifference at the moment of selection.
Political systems do not deteriorate solely because of those who govern. They also reflect the standards—explicit or tacit—by which leaders are chosen. Collective well-being depends less on promised outcomes than on the character permitted to command. In this sense, leadership is not imposed upon a society. It is recognized, accepted, and sustained by it.
This essay is the second part of a trilogy that examines certainty, doubt, and ambivalence as conditions shaping our understanding of reality. It turns to doubt as both discipline and burden: a practice that unsettles claims of knowledge yet makes understanding possible. Here doubt is not treated as weakness but as a necessary stance within human communication. Its value lies not in closure but in keeping open the fragile line between appearance and reality. The trilogy begins with The Colors of Certainty and concludes with When All We Know Is Borrowed.
The Discipline of Doubt
Skepticism and doubt are often spoken of as if they were the same, yet they differ in essential ways. Skepticism inclines toward distrust: it assumes claims are false until proven otherwise. Doubt, by contrast, does not begin with rejection. It suspends judgment, while it withholds both assent and denial, so that questions may unfold. Skepticism closes inquiry prematurely; doubt preserves its possibility. Properly understood, inquiry belongs not to belief or disbelief, but to doubt.
This distinction matters because inquiry rarely follows a direct path to certainty. More often it is layered, restless, and incomplete. Consider the case of medicine. A patient may receive a troubling diagnosis and consult several physicians, while each offers a different prognosis. One may be more hopeful, another more guarded, yet none entirely conclusive. The temptation in such circumstances is to cling to the most reassuring answer or to dismiss all of them as unreliable. Both impulses distort the situation. Inquiry requires another path: to compare, to weigh, to test, and ultimately to accept that certainty may not be attainable. In this recognition, doubt demonstrates its discipline: it sustains investigation without promising resolution and teaches that the absence of finality is not failure but the condition for continued understanding.
Even within medicine itself, leaders recognize this tension. Abraham Verghese, together with other Stanford scholars, has pointed out that barely half of what is taught in medical schools proves directly relevant to diagnosis; the rest is speculative or unfounded. This observation does not aim to discredit medical education but rather to underline the need for a method that privileges verification over uncritical repetition. Clinical diagnosis, therefore, does not rest on an accumulation of certainties but on the constant practice of disciplined doubt: to question, to discard what is irrelevant, and to hold what is provisional while seeking greater precision.
History provides another vivid lesson in the figure of Galileo Galilei. When he trained his telescope on the night sky in 1609, he observed four moons orbiting Jupiter and phases of Venus that could only be explained if the planet circled the sun. These discoveries contradicted the Ptolemaic system, which for centuries had fixed the earth at the center of creation. Belief demanded obedience to tradition; skepticism might have dismissed all inherited knowledge as corrupt. Galileo’s path was different. He measured, documented, and published, while he knew that evidence had to be weighed rather than simply asserted or denied. The cost of this doubt was severe: interrogation, censorship, and house arrest. Yet it was precisely his refusal to assent too quickly—his suspension of judgment until the evidence was overwhelming—that made inquiry possible. Galileo shows how doubt can preserve the conditions of knowledge even under the heaviest pressure to believe.
Literature offers a parallel insight. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the young prince is confronted by the ghost of his murdered father, who demands vengeance. To believe would be to accept the apparition’s word at once and to kill the king without hesitation. To be skeptical would be to dismiss the ghost as hallucination or trickery. Hamlet does neither. He allows doubt to govern his response. He tests the ghost’s claim by staging a play that mirrors the supposed crime, as he watches the king’s reaction for confirmation. Hamlet’s refusal to act on belief alone, and his unwillingness to dismiss the ghost outright, illustrates the discipline of doubt. His tragedy lies not in doubting, but in stretching doubt beyond proportion, until hesitation itself consumes action. Shakespeare makes clear that inquiry requires balance: enough doubt to test what is claimed, enough resolve to act when evidence has spoken.
The demands of public life make the difference equally clear. In the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, citizens were asked to place immediate trust in official pronouncements or, conversely, to dismiss them as deliberate falsehoods. Belief led some to cling uncritically to each reassurance, however inconsistent; skepticism led others to reject all guidance as propaganda. Doubt offered another course: to ask what evidence supported the claims, to weigh early reports against later studies, and to accept that knowledge was provisional and evolving. The uncertainty was uncomfortable, but it was also the only honest response to a rapidly changing reality.
A similar pattern emerged after the September 11 attacks. Governments urged populations to choose: either support military intervention or stand accused of disloyalty. Belief accepted the justification for war at face value; skepticism dismissed all official claims as manipulation. Doubt, however, asked what evidence existed for weapons of mass destruction, what interests shaped the rush to invasion, and what alternatives were excluded from consideration. To doubt in such circumstances was not disloyalty but responsibility: the attempt to withhold assent until claims could be verified. These examples show that doubt is not passivity. It is the active discipline of testing what is said against what can be known: to resist the lure of premature closure.
Verification requires precisely this suspension: not the comfort of belief, nor the dismissal of skepticism, but the discipline of lingering within uncertainty long enough for proof to take shape. One might say that verification becomes possible only when belief is held in abeyance. Belief craves closure, skepticism assumes falsehood, but doubt stills the mind in the interval—where truth may draw near without the illusion of possession.
The same principle extends to the temptations of success and recognition. Success and fame resemble ashes: the hollow remains of a fire once bright but now extinguished, incapable of offering true joy to an inquiring mind. Ashes evoke a flame that once burned but has spent itself. So it is with fame: when the applause fades, only residue lingers. Belief, too, provides temporary shelter, yet it grows brittle when never tested. Recognition and conviction alike promise permanence, yet both prove fragile. A mind intent on inquiry cannot find rest in them. It requires something less visible, more enduring: the refusal to define itself too quickly, the discipline of anonymity.
Anonymity here does not mean retreat from the world. It means withholding assertion or purpose until knowledge has ripened. To declare too swiftly what one is—or what one knows—is to foreclose discovery. By necessity, the inquiring mind remains anonymous. It resists capture by labels or the scaffolding of recognition. Its openness is its strength. It stays attuned to what has not yet been revealed.
Our present age makes such discipline all the more urgent. Technology hastens every demand for certainty: headlines must be immediate, opinions instantaneous, identities reduced to profiles and tags. Social media thrives on belief asserted and repeated, rarely on doubt considered and tested. Algorithms reward speed and outrage, punishing hesitation as weakness and contradiction as betrayal. To cultivate doubt and anonymity is therefore a form of resistance. It shelters the subtlety of thought from the pressure of velocity and spectacle. It refuses to allow inquiry to be diminished into slogans or certainty compressed into catchphrases.
The discipline of doubt teaches that truth is never possessed, only pursued. Success, fame, and belief may glitter briefly, but they collapse into ashes. What endures is the quiet labor of questioning, the patience of remaining undefined until knowledge gathers form. To believe is to settle into residue; to doubt is to stand within the living fire. To question is to stir the flame; to believe is to collect the ashes.
*
** Cover Design:
Ricardo Morín: Newsprint Series Nº 2 (2006). 51″ × 65″. Ink, white-out, and blotted oil paint on newsprint. From the Triangulation series.
Annotated Bibliography
Arendt, Hannah: Between Past and Future. New York: Viking Press, 1961. (Arendt examines the importance of thinking without absolute supports and illuminates how the discipline of doubt resists political and social certainties).
Bauman, Zygmunt: Liquid Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000. (Bauman describes the fluidity and precariousness of certainties in modern life and reinforces the idea of doubt as a condition in the face of contemporary volatility).
Berlin, Isaiah: The Crooked Timber of Humanity. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991. (Berlin analyzes the pluralism of values and the impossibility of single certainties and supports the need to live with unresolved tensions).
Bitbol-Hespériès, Annie: Descartes’ Natural Philosophy. New York: Routledge, 2023. (Bitbol-Hespériès examines how Cartesian natural philosophy emerges from a constant exercise of methodical doubt; she offers a contemporary reading that links science and metaphysics in Descartes’ thought).
Han, Byung-Chul: In the Swarm: Digital Prospects. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2017. (Han critiques the pressure of transparency and digital acceleration; he provides insights into how technology disfigures the patience required for doubt).
Han, Byung-Chul: The Disappearance of Rituals. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2020. (Han explores how digital society weakens spaces of repetition and anticipation to highlight the urgency of recovering anonymity and slowness in inquiry).
Croskerry, Pat, Cosby, Karen S., Graber, Mark, and Singh, Hardeep, eds.: Diagnosis: Interpreting the Shadows. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2017. (Croskerry, Cosby, Graber, and Singh address the cognitive complexity of diagnostic reasoning: they show how uncertainty is inherent in clinical practice and how disciplined doubt can reduce diagnostic error).
Elstein, Arthur S., and Schwartz, Alan: Clinical Problem Solving and Diagnostic Decision Making: Selective Review of the Cognitive Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. (A landmark study in medical decision-making, it shows how diagnostic reasoning is less about static knowledge and more about methodical doubt and verification).
Finocchiaro, Maurice: Retrying Galileo, 1633–1992. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. (Finocchiaro explores the trials and historical reinterpretations of Galileo’s case; he shows how scientific doubt clashed with religious authority and how it has been re-evaluated in modernity).
Gaukroger, Stephen: Descartes: An Intellectual Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. (An intellectual biography that situates Descartes in the cultural context of the seventeenth century and illuminates how Cartesian doubt was also a strategy against religious and scientific tensions).
Garber, Daniel: Descartes Embodied: Reading Cartesian Philosophy through Cartesian Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. (Garber analyzes the close relationship between Descartes’ science and his philosophical method and underscores how scientific practice reinforced the discipline of doubt).
Graber, Mark L., Gordon D. Schiff, and Hardeep Singh: The Patient and the Diagnosis: Navigating Clinical Uncertainty. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. (Graber explores how physicians manage uncertainty and emphasizes that precision in diagnosis emerges from structured methods rather than unquestioned knowledge).
Machamer, Peter, ed.: The Cambridge Companion to Galileo. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. (In this collection of updated essays presenting Galileo’s work from historical, philosophical, and political perspectives, Machamer illuminates how empirical doubt transformed cosmology).
Nussbaum, Martha: Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013. (Nussbaum examines how liberal institutions can responsibly cultivate public emotions—such as love, tolerance, and solidarity. Her arguments enrich the section of the essay on civic-life, which shows how emotional cultivation, beyond belief or skepticism, supports societal inquiry).
Popkin, Richard: The History of Scepticism: From Savonarola to Bayle. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. (In this historical study of skepticism, Popkin shows how skepticism evolved between radical distrust and the discipline of inquiry).
Shakespeare, William: Hamlet. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. (This play offers a literary embodiment of doubt as an ambivalent force: it functions both as the engine of inquiry and the risk of paralysis).
Shea, William, and Artigas, Mariano : Galileo in Rome: The Rise and Fall of a Troublesome Genius. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. (An accessible and well-documented narrative of Galileo’s conflict with the Church; it illustrates how persistence in verifying doubt had vital and political consequences).
Verghese, Abraham, Saint, Sanjay, and Cooke, Molly: “Critical Analysis of the ‘One Half of Medical Education Is Wrong’ Maxim.” Academic Medicine 86, no. 4 (2011): 419–423. (Authored by Stanford-affiliated leaders in medical education, the report argues that much of medical teaching lacks direct relevance to diagnostic accuracy and underscores the necessity of disciplined doubt and re-evaluation).
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.
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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.)
Ricardo Morin Sonata Series Each 30″x 22″= 60″h x 66″ overall Watercolor on paper 2003
The Whittington chime, though rooted in the specific historical and ecclesiastical context of St. Mary-le-Bow in London, speaks in a language far broader than its origins. Every fifteen minutes, its melody punctuates the passage of time—not with dominance or insistence, but with a sequence of tones that seem to lean toward attentiveness rather than control. It does not call; it invites. Its fourfold phrasing unfolds with the day and carves it gently into intervals of awareness.
The hour does not ask to be heard.
It leans, it yields, it breathes.
In four phrases, time steps into its own shadow—
Not to rule, but to be received.
The first phrase is sparse and anticipatory. It announces nothing—yet it creates space for something to begin. The second phrase, slightly more confident, suggests that the shape of what’s coming may already be present in what has been. The third phrase swells with fullness, as though recognizing that something unspoken has come to form. And the fourth does not repeat or resolve—it releases. A soft culmination, an unforced closure. Nothing more is needed.
Four phrases like footprints.
Not forward, but inward.
The last does not complete the first—
It simply continues without demand.
Time is neither summoned nor announced—it is welcomed in silence. The melody performs a quiet orienting function. It makes no claims, prescribes no doctrine, and excludes no one. It requires attention, not belief. It passes through space and enters those who allow it, and in doing so, it reveals time not as a line to be followed, but as a vessel to be filled.
There is no message, only rhythm.
No doctrine, only form.
Not a path to walk,
But a shape to inhabit.
This surrender—this subtle willingness to listen—is not weakness, nor is it a form of passivity. It is a kind of interior readiness, a posture of faith in what does not insist upon itself. As one hears the chime at a distance—through open window, across an empty street, or at the center of a sleepless night—it becomes clear that regularity is not rigidity. It is a form of grounding, a pulse that reminds us of something more than measurement: the possibility that rhythm itself is a form of remembering.
Some things endure not because they hold us fast—
But because they return.
Each return is a soft petition:
Are you listening now?
To be transformed by time, the vessel must remain open. And openness is not emptiness in the deficient sense, but the fullness of a receptivity that listens before it responds. There are patterns here, but they do not bind. They unfold. Each phrase in the chime allows what came before to echo—faintly, without repetition—and then continues without imitation. It does not search for novelty, nor does it cling to what has passed.
It simply arrives.
An echo does not ask for an answer.
It waits until the shape of silence
Begins to sing it back.
In this way, the melody becomes an offering. And if there is meaning to be found in its intervals, it is not imposed from without. It is disclosed in the act of listening. Each person who hears it becomes part of its form, not by adding to it, but by receiving it. And in receiving, they are also shaped.
Some questions do not seek reply.
They seek a place to rest.
They carry their answers folded within—
Waiting only to be heard.
We often think of arrival as the end of something—as the completion of a search. But perhaps it is not the final step that matters most. Perhaps what matters is the quiet unfolding that prepares us to meet it. The chime does not deliver anything. It accompanies. It affirms that movement can be gentle, that order can serve grace, and that meaning is not attained, but awakened …
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).
… 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.
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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.)
Ricardo Morin Infinity 6 12” x 15” Oil and ink on linen 2005
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Abstract
This reflective essay reconsiders the thought of Jiddu Krishnamurti through the lens of aging and evolving philosophical expectations. While Krishnamurti’s teachings once offered inspiration and a path toward inner freedom, they now appear to dissolve into rhetorical mysticism and incoherence. The essay critiques his rejection of “intellectual understanding” and analyzes the contradictions inherent in his style of spiritual discourse. It argues for the necessity of rational clarity, especially in later stages of life when discernment becomes more valuable than inspiration alone. This shift is presented not as a betrayal of earlier insight, but as its maturation.
“Listening Beyond the Trance: Reassessing Krishnamurti in Later Life”
In my forties and fifties, I found great inspiration in the thought of Jiddu Krishnamurti. His emphasis on freedom from authority, his critique of systems, and his call to radical self-awareness spoke directly to a part of me that sought liberation from inherited dogmas and psychological conditioning. He offered, or seemed to offer, a clarity beyond tradition—a voice that felt both universal and personal.
But now, in my seventies, I find myself rereading his words with a different ear. What once felt revelatory now strikes me as elusive, at times incoherent. A recent passage shared by the Krishnamurti Foundation, drawn from a 1962 public talk in New Delhi, crystallized this shift for me:
“There is no such thing as intellectual understanding; you really only mean that you hear the words, and the words have some meaning similar to your own, and that similarity you call understanding, intellectual agreement. There is no such thing as intellectual agreement – either you understand or do not understand. To understand deeply, with all your being, you have to listen”.
This line of thinking—expressed in varied forms across his oeuvre—once felt like an invitation to presence. Now, I hear it differently: as a kind of rhetorical mysticism that dismisses the very faculties we depend on to make meaning. The claim that “there is no such thing as intellectual understanding” is not merely provocative; it is self-undermining. If words cannot convey meaning through reason, then why speak? Why write? Why gather an audience at all?
Krishnamurti’s sharp dichotomy between “intellectual” and “real” understanding collapses under scrutiny. Intellectual reflection is not merely passive recognition of familiar ideas. It is the groundwork of discernment—of logic, dialogue, and ethical clarity. To discard it is to unravel the very possibility of communication. What he seems to offer instead is a kind of pure, undefinable receptivity—“listening with all your being”—a state left vague, idealized, and unexamined.
This tendency is not unique to Krishnamurti. It is a feature of a broader strand of Indian and global spiritual discourse that wraps itself in the aura of wisdom while resisting the discipline of logic. It blurs the line between paradox and nonsense, invoking transcendence but offering no clear ground. What results is not insight but opacity.
None of this erases what Krishnamurti once offered me. His call to question, to observe without prejudice, helped me unlearn many habits of thought. But inspiration and clarity are not the same. The mind that once needed liberation may later need precision.
We change. What moves us at one stage of life may lose its grip as our questions evolve. That does not make earlier experiences false—it simply means that our standards grow. In listening now, I want something more than the echo of profundity. I want coherence. I want meaning that can stand up to thought.
Krishnamurti taught me to listen. That lesson remains. But now, I listen not only with receptivity—but with reason, with discernment, and with the quiet courage to call abstraction what it is.
*
by Ricardo Morín July 2025
Annotated Bibliography:
Krishnamurti, Jiddu: The First and Last Freedom. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1954. (A collection of early talks that established Krishnamurti’s core ideas; includes his foundational argument against psychological authority and tradition.)
———: Commentaries on Living, First Series. Madras: Krishnamurti Foundation India, 1956. (Brief philosophical dialogues drawn from real encounters; written in prose that oscillates between clarity and metaphysical opacity.)
———: The Awakening of Intelligence. New York: Harper & Row, 1973. (A comprehensive transcript of public discussions and interviews where Krishnamurti expands his rejection of intellectual systems and explores “pure observation.”)
———: The Wholeness of Life. London: Victor Gollancz, 1978. (A late-career synthesis that juxtaposes technological anxiety with inward freedom; his critique of organized thought becomes more abstract here.)
———: Krishnamurti to Himself: His Last Journal. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1987. (Dictated reflections shortly before his death; his rejection of analysis deepens and borders on mysticism, with lyrical but imprecise language.)
———: The Ending of Time: Where Philosophy and Physics Meet. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985. (Conversations with physicist David Bohm; illustrative of Krishnamurti’s dismissal of conventional logic even when in dialogue with a scientist.)
Murti, T. R. V.: The Central Philosophy of Buddhism: A Study of the Mādhyamika System. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1955. (A key work in Buddhist philosophical reasoning; useful contrast to Krishnamurti in that it pursues dialectical rigor rather than mystical generality.)
Ganeri, Jonardon: Philosophy in Classical India: The Proper Work of Reason. London: Routledge, 2001. (Challenges the stereotype that Indian thought is mystical or anti-rational; highlights traditions that value analysis and inference over insight alone.)
Nussbaum, Martha C.: Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997. (Advocates for clarity, rational argument, and intellectual pluralism; offers a counterpoint to Krishnamurti’s anti-intellectualism.)
McGinn, Colin: The Making of a Philosopher: My Journey Through Twentieth-Century Philosophy. New York: HarperCollins, 2002. (A memoir that models the philosophical maturation process; echoes the author’s own shift from inspiration to the pursuit of clarity.)
There are wounds that remain because we have not yet forged a moral consensus:
“…E pluribus unum”
Participants carrying American flags in the Selma to Montgomery civil rights march, Alabama, 1965. Photograph by Peter Pettus; gelatin silver print (reprint from 1999–2000). Archival public domain image courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division.
A stark visual of power confronting protest—where public dissent meets State’s militarization, June 2025. Photo by Spencer Platt / Getty Images via NPR.
The image underscores a defining moment in our civic life: when expressions of dissent are met not with dialogue but with the politicization of militarized force on behalf the executive’s brand. It echoes a troubling pattern—where calls for justice and inclusion are conflated as partisan threats, and the defense of plurality is treated as provocation.
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There is a deepening divide in our country—one intensified by the 2025 return of the Trump administration and the M.A.G.A. movement’s project to “reform” America by disrupting the constitutional principles that have long undergirded our democracy. This movement has emboldened some to claim they are under siege—particularly by Black Americans—whom they accuse of harboring irrational hatred. Yet this accusation ignores a deeper truth: those who make it often refuse to confront their own complicity in the conditions that produce widespread suffering and rightful indignation. They see themselves as blameless while dismissing the lived experience of others.
This dissonance reveals a persistent tribalism—a complex masked as patriotism, often directed at marginalized communities. It demeans empathy and stifles accountability.
Dissent, however, is the lifeblood of democracy. And while we may cherish this nation—its landscapes, its cultural richness, and its founding ideals—we must also confront the unfinished work of justice. To celebrate the Constitution while ignoring the legacy of slavery, segregation, and systemic inequity is to cheapen both our history and our future.
Nowhere is this more evident than in our criminal justice system. The need for reform is no longer a partisan position; it is a moral imperative. Communities of color remain disproportionately targeted, criminalized, and subjected to violence under the guise of law and order. Police departments across the country have repeatedly failed in their duty to protect those most vulnerable—those left behind by lack of opportunity, education, and support. When these conditions are met not with compassion but with brutality, we witness the most abhorrent face of cruelty.
One may love this country profoundly, but such love must be active—committed to fairness, not nostalgia. Justice and equality are not rewards for silence; they are the birthright of all who live here.
The Black Lives Matter movement is not a threat to American values; it is a call to fulfill them. It is not hatred to protest injustice. Hatred lies in silencing dissent, in trampling the rights of others while claiming moral high ground. Time and again, those in power have distanced themselves from the oppressed, especially those stripped of political voice or voting rights. This indifference persists until solidarity becomes unavoidable.
To relativize the murder of young Black men—or to remain silent—betrays a refusal to understand the long arc of racism in America. Gestures of inclusion cannot substitute for truth. Real justice requires not half-measures, but fullhearted resolve.
And now, that same machinery of suppression is turning with renewed force against immigrants, against LGBTQ Americans, and against the very principle of diversity.
—as demonstrated by the unnecessary militarization of one square mile Los Angeles in June 2025, where localized protests were amplified by the federal government as if they were a national insurrection—
The mobilization of troops to suppress peaceful protests—replacing law enforcement with military assault—, the criminalization of migrants seeking refuge, and the push to roll back gay rights—these are not isolated policies. They are symptoms of the same moral aberration of the executive branch as a political brand: the fear of plurality.
This fear has now targeted Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives themselves. These programs, born out of civil rights struggles and meant to remedy historical exclusion, have become scapegoats. DEI is not a threat to merit; it is a framework for justice. It is not a matter of political orthodoxy, but about ensuring access, visibility, and dignity for those long marginalized. The opposition to DEI is not a neutral debate—it is a calculated attempt to suppress the very plurality that gives meaning to democracy.
—Often it reduces that plurality to a caricature. In partisan circles, the term “woke” has been weaponized to dismiss any effort toward inclusion or redress as absurd, elitist, or dangerous. What began as a call to remain alert to injustice has been twisted into a tool of mockery—less an argument than a reflex, deployed not to clarify but to silence.Yet justice does not lose its urgency because it is ridiculed.
Banning DEI offices, defunding inclusion efforts, or labeling diversity work as ideological indoctrination reflects not strength, but fear. Such actions undermine the foundational values of liberty and justice, replacing inclusive citizenship with enforced conformity.
The desire to reverse LGBTQ rights, to demonize racial justice movements, and to silence DEI are all parts of one piece. These are not isolated grievances; they are expressions of an intolerant worldview seeking dominance through exclusion—echoes of McCarthyism, the early 1950s campaign led by Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose televised accusations of communist infiltration turned suspicion into a weapon and captivated a fearful nation. These are not the marks of a strong republic, but the signs of a fearful and weakened society.
And yet, the Republican majority in Congress—those enabling Trump and embracing the politics of M.A.G.A. disruption—has further deepened the moral deficit—cut taxes for billionaires and dismantled the nation’s social and political infrastructure. They have fueled inflation through aggressive foreign tariffs and pursued a global posture that increases instability, all in service of enriching a narrow class of oligarchs at the expense of the common good.
To love this country is to reject that fear and the brittle cowardice that sustains it. To love our nation is to defend and embrace its pluralism. To love it is to confront its contradictions—not with cynicism, but with resolve.
We are not a perfect union, but we are still a union. The path forward is not backward. It begins where justice lives: in the search for truth, in compassion, in courage.
~
PostScript
Project 2025 and the Machinery of Conformity
Among the clearest examples of how fear of plurality has been codified into political strategy is Project 2025—an ambitious blueprint for restructuring the U.S. federal government, advanced by The Heritage Foundation and now actively endorsed by the Trump administration. Though its architects invoke the language of liberty and constitutional reform, its underlying goal is not democratic renewal but ideological consolidation.
Project 2025 does not merely aim to reduce government. It seeks to dismantle the administrative State, eliminate civil service protections, and replace career public servants with partisan loyalists. Under the guise of “draining the swamp,” it proposes a purge—not to restore constitutional balance, but to empower a narrow executive elite. This is not conservatism in any meaningful sense. It is executive authoritarianism draped in populist garb.
Even its rhetoric of “taking back the country” belies its intent: not to restore pluralist democracy, but to impose uniformity—cultural, political, and moral. DEI initiatives are to be dismantled, public education reshaped to reflect a singular ideology, and dissent within the government neutralized. These are not reforms; they are instruments of control.
Such a project is not an aberration but a culmination: the weaponization of nostalgia, grievance, and fear into policy. And what it reveals is a deep contradiction—that those who most loudly invoke the Constitution now seek to rewrite it in practice, replacing the promise of We the People with the dominion of We alone.
This was not theoretical when we arrived in the Capitol Hill neighborhood earlier this week. Outside the Heritage Foundation’s headquarters, we encountered a protest in full confrontation—two factions opposed, one defending reproductive rights, the other cloaking rage in the language of moral authority. The louder of the two, a group of conservative mothers, shouted not in debate but in contempt—hurling not argument, but condemnation at the very idea of moral disagreement.
It was not a defense of life. It was a campaign to control how others live.
What I witnessed outside the Heritage Foundation was no isolated outburst. It was the local manifestation of the national project unfolding within. The Foundation no longer merely comments on politics; it builds the scaffolding for an authoritarian turn already underway. In synchrony with the Trump administration—whether openly acknowledged or not—Heritage is not offering policy recommendations. It is designing a machinery of conformity.
This machinery does not tolerate pluralism. It redefines dissent as insubordination, diversity as decadence, and governance as loyalty to a singular will. It is not a restoration of constitutional order, but a calculated repudiation.
And what Project 2025 proposes is not mere administrative change. It is a blueprint for ideological capture: of language, of law, and of public life itself. It replaces We the People with a command from above: Only us.
This is the wound that will not heal—unless we confront it.
On the Way to Union Station
As we were leaving Capitol Hill, heading toward Union Station to return home to Pennsylvania, the streets were marked by the symbols of looming celebration. Barricades had gone up. Military vehicles lined the avenues.
Preparations were underway for a military parade featuring tanks, troops, and martial fanfare. Officially, it was to mark the U.S. Army’s 250th anniversary. But the timing—Saturday, June 14, Trump’s birthday—along with the pageantry and presidential framing, made it difficult to see the event as anything but an orchestrated spectacle. The symbolism blurred the line between honoring military service and appropriating it for personal glorification. It felt less like a birthday—and more like a coronation.
Crossing one of the barricaded intersections, a Black man in a sleek motorized wheelchair passed us on the right. Without prompting, he looked at us—two men walking together—and said with calm finality, “Beware, Judgment Day is coming soon.”
We said nothing. He kept rolling forward.
It was a quiet moment, but not a small one. A judgment—clearly moral, likely biblical—delivered without confrontation, but not without intention. It was an indictment, as casual as it was chilling. Even someone visibly vulnerable had absorbed and echoed the nation’s reflex toward condemnation. The extremes no longer live just in platforms and policies. They are seeping into the pavement.
I turned to my husband and asked, “How long can all this hatred last?”
He didn’t look away. “We may not live to see the end,” he said. “But it will pass.”
“New York Love Letters” was written in the aftermath of my younger sister’s death. In our early adulthood, as I confronted the certainty of dying from AIDS, I learned of her diagnosis of schizophrenia. Our lives became bonded through different forms of vulnerability and endurance. Her survival became inseparable from my own. Over time, I came to define part of myself through the emotional, intellectual, and material support I provided her. When she died at sixty-nine and I found myself stable at seventy-one, I experienced not only grief, but the loss of a role that had shaped my identity. It was at that moment that writing became a means of survival. What follows emerged from that necessity.
First Letter: How Did I End Up in Manhattan?
I lived in Manhattan from 1982 to 2021, though I hadn’t planned to stay. Initially, it was meant to be temporary—a waiting point before Jurek’s return. But then he told me he was staying in Berlin. His decision, not mine, anchored me in the city. And when I learned that death had taken him, grief replaced waiting, and Manhattan became something else—perhaps a substitute, perhaps a necessity.
We had admired each other. Our conversations shaped me, deepened my understanding of art, and reinforced the creative instincts that guided me. As in every meaningful relationship, our exchanges defined us. He had a profound sense of what high art was, and his perspective challenged me to see beyond my own. Even after he was gone, his influence remained, though absence is a poor companion for inspiration.
Still, I had to find my place within Manhattan—amid its creative currents, its relentless demands, and its contradictions.
My academic foundation had been in fine arts, and I was veering into theater, much as I had years earlier in Venezuela. During the time Jurek and I were together, I moved from the experimental environment of the Art Department at the State University of New York at Buffalo (Bethune Hall) to the world of theatrical conventions at the Yale School of Drama’s Design Department. In between, I traveled with Jurek through Europe and attended set design seminars at the Salzburg International School of Arts.
At Yale’s Design Department welcoming new students, the chairman referred to my arrival as being via Salzburg—a remark delivered amidst what seemed to me like convivial bemusement. It lingered with me for years—whether as admiration or something else, I never fully understood. Instead of questioning the observation, I shifted the conversation to Albert Spaulding Cook’s influence in Buffalo, whose writings had guided my decision to bridge fine arts and theater—shifting from my understanding of what art meant to me to Cook’s particular regard for the designer’s interpretative role in service of the playwright. The response from the group was quick—and revealing. A couple of professors reacted not to my objectives, but to the mention of Cook himself, as they questioned whether he had ever been in Buffalo. I knew perfectly well he had and chose not to argue. Soon enough, I sensed a quiet resistance to ideas that didn’t align with prevailing norms—perhaps a reflection of the school’s priorities, though I never fully determined where I stood within them. After my second year, the chairman inquired if I wished to continue.
For the three years of the Master’s program, I did not find the formal rigor I had expected, yet I stayed the course. My aspirations in the fine arts remained intact, but my footing in the world depended on my role as a set designer—expected to conform to an interpretative craft rather than pursue art on my own terms. The program emphasized adherence to established standards over the cultivation of new approaches, a structure that felt at odds with my own desire to elevate set design—transforming it into an art form capable of standing alongside the finer, more expressive arts rather than relegating it to a supporting role. The principal counselor, of course, would never have admitted this. Whether my approach unsettled him or simply diverged from his expectations, I could never be sure. But I remained guided by instinct rather than precedent, much as I had been drawn to fine arts in the first place. He remained in the position until his late eighties before he died. I sometimes wonder how our arguments sat with him over the years—if they ever did at all.
Second Letter: Ten Years Later.
In Manhattan, the roads of set design and painting intersected, but neither provided stability or clear success. Professional networks seemed in disarray. From Broadway (where I worked as a principal assistant) to the experimental stages of Off-Off-Broadway, the struggle remained the same. Both the personal and professional aspects I found unsettling. Also, these were the years marked by the AIDS crisis, a time that left an indelible mark on me. I navigated these years, though they left their mark.
Walking through the galleries and streets of Manhattan in the 1980s felt like navigating a maze with no exit. There was the buzz of new ideas and the promise of fortune, yet every corner led to another dead end, much like my work in set design. Broadway was a field of intense competition, and Off-Off-Broadway unfolded in forgotten warehouses. Every path and every encounter suggested possibility, but in practice few could sustain themselves within an environment defined by labor precarity, relentless intensity, and limited compensation.
The lack of opportunities to establish myself as a designer mirrored my exclusion from galleries. Both signified exclusion, the denial of a real chance to build a reputation. Some doors never opened, others slammed shut before I could step through. A well-known Broadway designer would often introduce me both as an associate and a great artist, but never allowed me to compete with him. The income I managed to secure was precarious at best. Competition was intense, often driven by commercial interest over cultural ones. In like manner, galleries were run by grifters eager to exploit talent, while artistic directors prioritized profit over innovation. The promise of stardom—even if fleeting—often proved to be unattainable. Survival dictated my choices and forced me to navigate my limitations rather than transcend them.
In a city that constantly reinvented itself, where the streets were painted with the colors of addiction and struggle, it seemed as though no one was ever whole. The fractured sidewalks beneath me reflected my own disjointed ambitions. There were days I couldn’t even recognize the neighborhoods I once called home. In places where life was reduced to survival—where crack vials littered the sidewalks and people stumbled through their days—how could I hope to thrive, let alone create something lasting?
Set design in the world of spectacle was arduous, and the pay was meager—yet I did it out of love for the craft. At one point, a clever producer remarked that enjoying my work as much as I did seemed incompatible with the notion of being compensated for it. Eventually, I turned to commercial design for security; I took on work in film documentaries and the toy industry. But even there, professionalism was no guarantee of respect or fairness. The same challenges persisted. The Actors Fund of America and Visual AIDS provided important support during difficult times; they offered a space to remember those lost and reflect on artistic struggles.
In the early years, Manhattan’s pulse beat through the night in the form of whispered secrets between strangers, drawn together by the need for touch that didn’t require commitment. There was a safety in that anonymity, and yet it was a hollow shield against what I truly sought—something beyond the next fleeting encounter, beyond the walls of a bar or an apartment rented for the night. It was a city where love seemed to evaporate the moment it took form, and independence felt more like isolation than freedom.
As I struggled in the professional world, I found that the absence of fulfillment in my work mirrored the absence of love in my personal life. Both were a reflection of a larger void I had yet to name. Instability extended beyond work. Friendships and love affairs unraveled just as easily. Many friends I had known and loved were lost to AIDS; and deepened my sense of isolation. More than any professional setback, it was the absence of love that left the deepest void. I continued to wrestle with questions of purpose, which remained unresolved after years of reflection. The search for answers became its own struggle—just as illusive as success in a world with high demands.
The smell of decay and the sounds of sirens were never far behind. In neighborhoods where homeless families lived in the shadows of once-glorious buildings, survival came at any cost—whether it was a desperate hand reaching for money or a corner turned into something darker. There was a coldness to the city’s march forward, as if everything was disposable. My art, my efforts, my desires—they all seemed to be tangled in that same vicious cycle of consumption and neglect.
Third Letter: When I Met BBT
BBT’s intellect and honesty shaped my life in ways I didn’t fully grasp at first. I found myself drawn to his company and sought the creative nourishment that seemed lacking elsewhere. At the time, I felt I could withstand the challenges I faced—my health, affected by AIDS, careers that had not fully developed, and relationships that lacked commitment or mutual understanding. Several friends, overwhelmed by their own battles, took their own lives. This period was made worse by a climate that felt stifling and unfulfilling. I still missed Jurek, who had chosen Berlin to die away from me. New York had shown me the complexities of love amidst significant challenges: Indeed, Manhattan was a difficult place to find love and afford a career in the arts, yet it excited me.
Billy kept me from withdrawing completely; he offered both intellectual companionship and a belief in my creative potential.
But it was not always a relationship without tension. At times, Billy’s insistence on structure seemed more a reflection of his own deep-rooted uncertainties than just a call for discipline. I began to see that in his attempts to push me toward mastery, he was navigating his own struggles with self-doubt. We were both in this together—each trying to prove something, not just to the world, but to ourselves. There were moments where I resisted his guidance, and there were moments he resisted mine, but that tension, though uncomfortable, became a part of what kept us connected. In these uncomfortable truths, I realized we weren’t adversaries, but rather fellow travelers, each trying to find our place in a world that didn’t always make sense.
Creativity was my anchor, a means of channeling my energy into something meaningful. In the worst of times, I still found solace in it: A brush against canvas, a sentence coming together—proof that creation, that life itself, was still possible. Painting had been my life companion, but when a mentor from my younger years recently set aside his brushes to write, I wondered:Why couldn’t I? Billy helped me recognize my potential as a writer, a path I had first considered in childhood while listening to my father dictate letters to his secretary. At sixteen, a grammarian told me I was not just a painter but had the potential for a unique voice, though he often struggled to grasp what I was trying to say.
Fourth Letter: The Dark Side
Fifty-one years of struggle and resilience as an immigrant shaped my perspective. My father once called one of my New York apartments unpleasant and vowed never to return. But in that same space, I found moments of connection amidst difficult circumstances.
That contrast never left me: What others saw as squalor, I experienced as a space of potential. Even in tough situations, love found a way to exist.
Manhattan, in its rawness, revealed to me the price of progress and the silence of those left behind. I, too, was a casualty of that silence, wandering through the streets in search of something to fill the spaces that had grown hollow. Manhattan was more than just a backdrop; it was both my adversary and my accomplice. It challenged and sustained me in equal measure. It shaped my struggles, but it also revealed moments of meaning, sometimes in unexpected ways.
Romance came in my forties, an attempt at finding commitment, but it didn’t resonate in the way I hoped. When my sense of autonomy was at risk, I preferred solitude. Silence settled between the walls—a quiet ritual of distance even from my own passions.
Fifth Letter: Validations and Assaults
I remember both validations and assaults, from familiar faces and strangers alike. Yet even in misunderstandings, in accidental encounters—regardless of their nature—I found meaning. I was learning from all of them.
At some point, I wrote a letter to a Cardinal, an attempt to articulate inequity versus victimization within our world. It was an exercise in verbal gymnastics, a way of deciphering the reality I inhabited. Later, I embedded this letter into a composite painting entitled INRI: Its header spelled it out in a collage of one-dollar bills, which I had secured permanently out of fear of defacement.
A museum invited me to take part in a major exhibit celebrating Artists in the Marketplace—but only if I replaced INRI with another painting, one inspired by a fax I had sent a Paris Newsweek correspondent. That fax was a reflection of my concerns—about art, about struggle, and about the very marketplace the exhibit aimed to showcase. The correspondent had replied with a postcard depicting an ancient Egyptian painting of a man being eaten by a mule. A curious response, but fitting in its own way, so i made it part of the painting.
However, I had already committed the Fax painting to a Midtown gallery. I declined the museum’s request unless they agreed to exhibit INRI instead. The museum’s curator hesitated, unable to fully grasp its meaning. In the end, I didn’t participate. Her welcoming remark at the opening was: “You are quite a trooper to attend”—as though showing up despite the situation was an act of perseverance. Yet, perhaps it wasn’t as trivial as it seemed.
Galleries, too, operated within their own opaque structures. They took work on consignment, claiming 40% of the sale price, yet seldom disclosed who the buyers were. One painting I sold vanished into anonymity, with only a vague assurance that it had been “placed well.” There was no contract for the buyer, no record of negotiation beyond a verbal agreement—an arrangement that often left artists vulnerable, dependent on the gallery’s discretion. Selling art, I learned, was as much about trust as it was about how to negotiate talent.
On a different occasion, when a gallery’s partners split they proposed taking my work to London for their new venture. How could I trust them?
There were other two incidents that came to mind, bringing both frustration and a sense of irony. A California production at the Queen’s Kaufman Studios displaced four of my largest format paintings, which I had offered to rent. A co-producer had initially remarked that my paintings appeared to be worth millions, yet the storage staff discarded them. Their negligence took over a year to be compensated with a meager portion of their value, after a prolonged dispute between appraisers. Then, a corporate art advisor sold one of my paintings and failed to pay me the full 60% of the agreed-upon amount. The same volunteer lawyer who represented me allowed her to pay in installments over a year. Yet, had it not been for these events, I would not have been able to cover the costs of experimental drugs not covered by insurance. At one point, my insurance was suspended due to a lack of union contracts, as I was working as a freelancer without union affiliation.
In later years, a gallery in Denmark took interest in signing me up for a two year contract that required producing 20 paintings per month and compensating only for the cost of materials. I said flatly: No, thank you, and the director felt offended at how I negotiated the terms.
Then, I brought 25 years of my paintings back to Venezuela, which are now in storage—though uncertain of their condition, I am willing to let my family sell them at any price, as long as the paintings survive—while the work that evolved 18 years later I sold at auction—starting at $1 a piece.
These moments may seem separate, yet I recognize their connection: My creative choices and my resistance to imposed conditions—were they simply acts of defiance, or did they reveal something deeper? How much of my struggle, my insistence on meaning, and my reluctance to compromise, was tied to the absence of love? Did the absence of love make compromise feel like self-betrayal? Or, how did love (or its absence), shape my perception of validation and rejection?—I still ponder.
Sixth Letter: The Pursuit of Love and Validation
If I have a unique vision as a visual artist, then the opportunities that slipped through my hands were never mine to hold. My hands had nothing to do with that conflict. It was my destiny.
The circuitous nature of experience—the way despondency transforms into art, how a fax of despair or a letter becomes a painting—reminds me that creation and loss have always been intertwined. Manhattan wasn’t just a backdrop; it provoked, shaped, and at times, even dictated meaning.
Much reflection on the past is nothing more than an exercise in futility. Destiny reminds us how determined our lives are by incomprehensible forces. Agency, with regard to what has already occurred, can feel like an illusion. We live in an age of disbelief and speculation, where distrust and conflagration cohabit with the hysteria of minds seeking certainty in uncertainty. For these minds, life becomes a tool of gossip and an affirmation of fear. These are minds of prejudice and selfishness, incapable of conceiving of a future that does not align with their own discomforts. It is a syndrome of obscurantism, where paranoia and reactionary fear prevail over reason. Epistemological confinement reinforces a state in which contradictions are dismissed rather than examined, and doubt is exploited as evidence of conspiracy. It is the rejection of complexity in favor of dogma, an attachment to certainty that turns ignorance into conviction and speculation into doctrine. We do not change the past by dissecting it—we only sharpen our awareness of how little control we had in the first place. Balancing uncertainty is a fool’s errand. The only grace of dignity left to us mortals is in accepting our limitations—not as defeat, but as clarity. There is no contradiction in that acceptance. If anything, it allows for a different kind of agency—not in altering what was, but in deciding how to exist within what remains.
My story isn’t only about the pursuit of love but about what love—whether found, lost, or absent—left in its wake. Creativity was never separate from longing; it emerged from it, filled its voids, and, in some ways, became love’s most enduring form.
Perhaps these connections don’t need to be stated outright. They exist in the spaces between—between art and survival, between the lives I intersected with and those who vanished, between the city that bruised me and the city that made me.
Seventh Letter: David
When I finally met David, my husband, my life began to shift. We have now been together for twenty-five years, ten of them married. Before I met him, I had already resigned myself to the idea that being a couple was not possible. Then I discovered that he loved me truly and understood me with great depth. Without intending to, his love healed every emotional scar and freed me from obsession. His love allowed me to discover a stillness that I can return to in an instant—just as I always did before, but now we shared it. Even when challenged by life’s vicissitudes, I am assured of one thing: I am loved—loved in a pure, soulful way.
But love is not an act of erasure, nor is it simply the inverse of longing. The temptation to see my life in contrast—to say that struggle preceded love, that absence defined its arrival—feels, in some ways, like an illusion. Contrast can make meaning vivid, but it can also distort it. It can create division where there should be unity. I have learned that love does not invalidate the past; it reveals it in fuller detail. What came before was not an empty prelude to David’s presence. It was real, lived, and filled with its own weight.
My story isn’t a simple arc from darkness to light. It’s more like a series of echoes, where past and present constantly inform each other. The creative energy of silence—something I can return to in an instant—suggests a kind of equilibrium. It was always there, alongside my struggles. David’s love didn’t create it, but gave me the trust to fully inhabit it.
That distinction is crucial. If I were to define my happiness now in opposition to my past, I would be committing the same error that shaped much of my younger years—seeking meaning through contrast rather than through presence. The anchoring point I found in David’s love does not stand against what came before, but within it. Love does not negate struggle; it allows struggle to exist without consuming everything else.
Though the world is filled with imperfections and uncertainties, love transcends them—not as a counter-force, but as something capable of holding contradictions without dissolving them into opposites. Struggles don’t diminish the richness of one’s life; they give it texture, depth. And fulfillment, I now understand, is not found in simple resolutions but in the trust we cultivate. Love does not divide. It does not draw lines between before and after. It does not make meaning contingent upon contrast. Instead, it allows everything to exist at once, in the same breath.
My career in art and set design has followed its own path—one of persistence rather than mass recognition. My work has been exhibited, supported, and studied, but its true measure is in its endurance.
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Ricardo Federico Morín Tortolero
February 21, 2025; Oakland Park, Florida
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Author’s Note:
For those interested in the professional trajectory behind the experiences shared in New York Love Letters, the following Appendix provides a brief overview of my work in fine arts and set design.
Appendix
Fine Arts:Ricardo Morín, born in Venezuela (1954), has been exhibited in both solo and group shows, and has received support from Visual AIDS and the Venezuelan government. Morín has also collaborated on a multidisciplinary art/anthropology research project and worked as an adjunct professor at Pratt Institute. For more detailed information, visit https://ricardomorin.com/Bio.html
Set-Design:Ricardo Morín has worked as both principal set-design assistant for Broadway designers of musicals, dramas, and ballets and as an independent designer for various Off-Off Broadway plays and musicals.For more detailed information, visit https://ricardomorin.com/PDF/Theater-Resume.pdf
Pendular Ricardo Morín, Watercolor, and ink on paper 14” x 20″ 2003
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Prologue
The Quiet Turning
In the fading light of a world obsessed with spectacle, she endures—not as a relic of past sacrifices, but as a living, evolving force. The desire for attention has always been a double-edged sword in her life: both a demand imposed by a society fixated on appearances and a tool she has learned to wield with fierce determination. Every public gaze, every moment magnified by the glare of expectation, has shaped her journey and molded not only her destiny but also that of the visionary she helped nurture.
She does not merely recall the weight of expectation; she transforms it. Her life is not a static ledger of sacrifices but a dynamic chronicle of adaptation—of a woman whose responses shift with time, whose convictions evolve with every challenge, and whose internal conflicts are as fluid as the changing tides of public adulation. There were moments when the burden of spectacle pressed heavily upon her, yet she never allowed it to define her entirety. Instead, she learned to let the circumstances speak and allowed the ever-changing world to refine her purpose.
In a culture where every gesture is scrutinized and every act measured by its ability to capture the spotlight, she chose to forge an authenticity that defies constant performance. Amid the relentless pursuit of recognition, she discovered that resilience is not about enduring static hardships but about embracing change—to be both the guiding light when needed and the adaptable spirit who reinvents herself as life demands.
Her legacy is woven into the very fabric of the visionary’s rise, yet it is not confined to the ephemeral glow of public applause. It lives in the decisions yet to be made, in the quiet defiance against a world intent on reducing complex lives to mere performances. As the storm of public attention recedes, one truth remains: while the spectacle may return with renewed fervor, so too will her unyielding, ever-shifting light—ever responsive to the world, ever true to her evolving self.
~
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Chapter 1
The Origins of Strength
She was not born into privilege, nor was she shaped by an easy path. Strength, in her world, was not inherited—it was constructed, piece by piece, through necessity, through the quiet urgency of survival. The home she knew was one of expectations, where resilience was not a virtue but a requirement.
Her parents, figures of discipline and quiet ambition, did not speak of success in terms of indulgence or grandeur. They spoke of perseverance, of self-sufficiency, of the kind of fortitude that does not wait for the world’s permission. The values they instilled in her were not gentle reassurances but firm, unwavering truths: that beauty alone is fleeting, that intellect is a tool to be sharpened, that hard work is the currency of progress.
The first adversities she faced were not singular, dramatic upheavals, but the steady, relentless challenges of making oneself indispensable in a world that often overlooks those who do not demand attention. She learned early that admiration is conditional, that approval must be earned again and again, and that the only certainty lay in one’s ability to adapt.
Beyond the walls of her upbringing, the world around her was shifting. The socio-economic landscape offered few guarantees, especially for a woman determined to carve her own space. Success was not simply a matter of talent or intelligence—it was a performance, a negotiation, a test of endurance. The weight of expectation pressed upon her from all sides: to conform, to excel, to be both formidable and gracious, independent yet admired.
Yet, she did not recoil from these pressures; she absorbed them, studied them, and found within them a rhythm she could move to. While others saw obstacles, she saw opportunities to refine her instincts, to wield resilience not as a defense, but as a weapon. Every closed door was a lesson in persistence. Every rejection, a refinement of her strategy.
She did not yet know what shape her life would take, nor could she have predicted the enormity of the path ahead. But one truth had already taken root: survival was not enough. If she was to endure, she would do so on her own terms.
~
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Chapter 2
A Woman in a Man’s World
She learned quickly that talent alone was not enough. In a world where men dictated the terms of power, a woman had to be twice as prepared, twice as composed, twice as relentless. Her ambitions did not align neatly with the roles assigned to her—not the ones whispered by tradition, nor those imposed by an industry that measured a woman’s worth by the fleeting currency of youth and allure.
Her career was not handed to her; it was negotiated, fought for in spaces where her presence was tolerated but not welcomed. She had to navigate the subtle dismissals, the unspoken ceilings, the expectation that she should be grateful for whatever space she was allowed to occupy. To be assertive was to risk being labeled difficult. To be strategic was to be called calculating. And yet, to be anything less was to disappear.
But she would not disappear.
The spectacle was always present, shaping her choices as much as her ambitions. Visibility was power, and she understood that better than most. She learned to wield attention, to control the narrative before it controlled her. If she was to succeed in a man’s world, she had to become more than just competent—she had to be seen.
Yet, the gaze was fickle. It admired strength but punished defiance. It celebrated beauty but scorned aging. It permitted ambition, but only if it did not overshadow the ambitions of men. She walked this tightrope daily: she adjusted, adapted, and never allowed herself the luxury of complacency.
Independence was her quiet rebellion. Every choice she made—where she worked, whom she trusted, how she carried herself in a room—was a declaration. The tension between expectation and desire was relentless. The world wanted her to conform, to soften, to submit. But she had already seen what submission offered: silence, erasure, irrelevance.
So she carved her own space, one decision at a time. She played the part when necessary, and knew when to perform, when to retreat, when to push forward. But beneath the careful facade was a woman who refused to be reduced to an image.
She had become part of the spectacle, but she was also its master.
~
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Chapter 3
The Birth of a Titan
She did not set out to shape a legend. She set out to prepare a child for a world that did not bend easily, a world that would test him, discard him if he faltered. She had seen enough to know that brilliance alone was not enough—resilience was the true currency of survival. And so, she became both the architect and the adversary, the foundation upon which he would build and the force that would push him to withstand the weight of expectation.
Her guidance was a paradox: fiercely protective, yet unsparing. She did not indulge fragility, though she understood its presence. There were no idle comforts, no assurances that the world would be kind. Instead, she instilled an unshakable creed—one did not wait for permission to take up space; one carved it, owned it, refused to apologize for it.
But strength, once given, takes on a life of its own. She watched as he absorbed her lessons, sometimes with gratitude, sometimes with defiance. He was not a child who followed; he was one who questioned, who tested the limits of every rule, including hers. He did not always see the wisdom in her distance, the purpose behind her expectations. To him, love should have been softer, less conditional.
She knew better.
The spectacle had already begun to shape him, as it had shaped her. Attention became both validation and weapon, which sharpened his confidence and his restlessness. He saw the world not as something to navigate, but as something to master. And yet, she wondered—had she given him too much certainty? Had she fortified him so well that he no longer knew how to doubt, to hesitate, to seek counsel outside himself?
There were moments when she questioned. In the rare silences between them, in the brief flickers of vulnerability he quickly buried, she wondered if she had built not just a titan, but a fortress—one that would one day struggle to let anything in.
She told herself it was necessary. That the world had no use for the unprepared. That he would thank her in time.
And yet, as she watched him step further into the glare of the spectacle, as the weight of his own myth grew heavier, she could not shake the quiet thought that gnawed at the edges of her certainty:
Had she given him everything except the ability to stop?
~
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Chapter 4
Sacrifice and Distance
She had always known he would leave. It was, after all, what she had prepared him for—to move forward with unrelenting momentum, to step beyond the boundaries of what was known, to belong not to a single place or person, but to the vision that consumed him. And yet, knowing did not make it easier.
At first, the distance was practical, a byproduct of ambition. His world expanded at a pace hers could not match, each success widened the space between them. Conversations became brief, punctuated by time zones and obligations, his voice measured, always moving toward the next thing. He spoke in ideas, in projects, in revolutions yet to come. Rarely did he speak of himself.
But distance is rarely just physical. She saw it in the way he carried himself, in the careful detachment of his gaze when the cameras were on him. The spectacle had fully claimed him now—not just as an audience but as an identity. Attention was no longer something he sought; it was something he commanded, something he wielded. He had become larger than life, and in doing so, he had begun to shrink the parts of himself that did not serve the myth.
She recognized the toll, though he would never name it. The weight of scrutiny, the exhaustion of living up to a persona that left no room for hesitation, for frailty, for uncertainty. He was brilliant, polarizing, untouchable—an architect of impossible things. But he was also her son. And that was the one role he no longer had time to play.
She had always understood sacrifice. She had made her own, time and time again, choices that had cost her comfort, companionship, a quieter kind of life.But she had not anticipated this: the realization that her greatest success—his unshakable independence—had also made her dispensable.
She would not chase him. She had taught him to walk alone, and she would not contradict that lesson now. Instead, she watched from afar, her pride and her sorrow intertwined, knowing that he was too far gone to look back, but she still hoped—one day—he might.
~
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Chapter 5
Shadows and Echoes
She was no longer a presence in his world, but her shadow remained. It stretched across his decisions, his mannerisms, the unspoken rules he followed even as he pretended they were his own. She saw it in the way he carried himself in a room—how he mastered attention, held silence just long enough for discomfort to become intrigue. He had learned that from her.
Yet, influence is a slippery thing. Once released into the world, it takes on a life of its own; it bends and reshapes itself in ways the originator never intended. She wondered, at times, if he had misunderstood her lessons or if she had failed to articulate them well enough. Had she armed him with resilience or simply taught him to endure at any cost? Had she instilled vision or merely a hunger for dominance?
She had always believed in independence, in the power of carving one’s own path. But watching him now—uncompromising, relentless, willing to set fire to bridges before anyone could cross them—she questioned whether she had emphasized too much the need to stand apart, and not enough the importance of standing with.
And yet, despite his defiance, he could not fully sever what bound them. She glimpsed traces of her voice in his words, echoes of her own battles in the way he faced down adversaries. He may have long since left her behind, but he carried fragments of her wherever he went.
Still, influence is not ownership. She had shaped him, but she did not control him. The choices he made were his own, and she had no claim over them—neither the triumphs nor the failures. She could only watch, aware that what she had given him was both foundation and burden, a blueprint he had long since altered to fit a design only he could see.
And so, she did what all who shape the future must eventually do: she let go and knew that her presence in his life was no longer defined by proximity, but by the weight of what had already been left behind.
~
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Epilogue
The Silent Architect
She was never the one at center stage. That was never her role, never her desire. And yet, in the hushed spaces between history’s grand pronouncements, she remained—unseen but undeniable, a force imprinted on the architecture of a life that reshaped the world.
There is a certain power in being forgotten. The world rarely remembers the hands that steady the foundation, only the ones that raise the monument. But she had never needed recognition to know her presence endured. She saw it in the echoes of her words, in the contours of a mind sharpened by her lessons, in the restless ambition that had been, at least in part, her doing.
Yet power, she had learned, is not a gift—it is an affliction, a hunger that grows even as it devours. She had taught him to reach, to question, to never yield to the weight of convention. But had she, in doing so, unleashed something beyond even her understanding? He had become an architect of the future, but was he building a world of brilliance or ruin? Had she given him wings, or simply made him blind to the ground beneath him?
The burden of vision is that it rarely allows for stillness. She had spent her life in motion, forged her own path, and demanded her own place. But now, standing at the edges of a world that no longer looked back at her, she allowed herself a moment of pause. Not to claim victory, nor to lament what could not be undone, but simply to acknowledge what was.
Love and legacy are rarely pure. They are made of sacrifice and silence, of pride and regret, of truths that remain unspoken. She had played her part, and though the stage belonged to another, she knew the script still bore traces of her hand.
And so she stepped back, into the quiet. Not erased, not forgotten—simply unseen. The architect, no longer needed, but always present in the walls of what had been built.
~
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Author’s Note
This is a work of fiction. While inspired by the complexities of ambition, legacy, and the forces that shape extraordinary lives, the characters and events depicted are products of imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, alive or deceased, is purely coincidental. This story is not an account of any individual but rather an exploration of the universal tensions between sacrifice, power, and the silent architects behind great destinies.
Herta Lager Kane (1928-2021) was born in Vienna. With her family, she came to New York City in 1941–via Switzerland–fleeing Nazi persecution.
Herta began her education at the Fashion Institute of Technology and the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, School of Art and Architecture, before obtaining a B.F.A. in Graphic Design and an M.F.A. in Painting from the University at Buffalo.
Photo provided by Herta’s daughter Vivien Kane
Herta began her career as an adjunct professor of Painting in the University at Buffalo, and then spent most of her life as an associate professor of graphic design in the State University College at Buffalo. Herta’s paintings on the plasticity of geometric abstractions as well as her refined constructivist drawings have been exhibited at Buffalo’s Albright Knox Art Gallery, the Burchfield Penney Art Center, the Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, and various alternative local cooperatives dedicated to video research and development for theater and television.
In her work Herta searched for a new direction in the depiction of pictorial space, resulting from the great legacy of our mentor Seymour Drumlevitch. In her own words, Herta aspired to arrive at the power “… of a mystical ambiguity and elusiveness.”
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An Elegy
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Herta always had a generous warmth for and a profound insight into humanity. Even when we were most fragile, in our moments of trouble, we did not have to say much to assure each other that everything would be fine; even in silence, we supported one another with a sense of wonderment, at times even with great humor.
From the time when I first met Herta in 1975, as a painting instructor in the University at Buffalo, she shared her wealth of knowledge and always provided encouragement. She looked after my well-being until she was no longer able. Our friendship attested to the fact that no one has control over his destiny, though our love persisted beyond such boundaries.
Herta’s confidence—in the labors of becoming a visual artist and surviving the myriad uncertainties of a professional career—enabled my finding answers to managing whatever fate provided.
Her humanity, dignity, and intelligence were a fountain of inspiration for all of us, who had the good fortune of knowing her. More than a mentor Herta became a loving and loyal friend. No one else could fill her place in my heart.
Herta and I had strong bonds. I owe her my standing, not only emotional maturity but also my intellectual development. Without her, I would be different; to her I owe the inspiration of authenticity and thoughtfulness.
R.F.M.
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In Memoriam Herta Lager Kane
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Destiny
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Fate and chance drew out of our tears a smile
and brought solace to our failures;
then we looked up after we'd sunk
with the confidence
of climbing back.
In loneliness
we found for ourselves company,
and in helping others, we were helped.
In our pursuit of the impossible good,
we came to know our failures.
In the brevity of each moment,
nothing seemed to fit for being possessed;
when we marveled at the great arc of time,
this never died,
even in the absence of hope.
The ups and downs from the goddesses, the three Moirai and Tyche,
in their dispensation of favors and troubles,
couldn’t keep us from moving on,
even if we met each other and were
hopelessly aware of our imperfections.
***
Ricardo F Morin, December 29, 2021, coauthored by Billy Bussell Thompson
Herta Kane, American artist born in Austria (1928-2021), work on paper entitled “Untitled”, Acrylic and collage on paper, 10 1/2″ x 10 1/2″. Gift of the Arts Development Services, Inc., 1978 to the Burchfield Penny Arts Center Collection, 1978. https://burchfieldpenney.org/art-and-artists/people/profile:herta-kane/
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
1
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.
2
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.
3
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.
4
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.
5
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?
6
Testimonies
I
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
II
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.
IV
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.
V
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.
VI
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.”
7
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.
8
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?
9
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.
10
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?
11
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.
12
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.
Series F Medium: Oil On Linen Size: 14 by 18 by 3/4 inches 2009
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Acknowledgments:
David Lowenberger,
Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986),
Carlo Giuseppe Soarés (1892–1976).
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Introduction
An artist’s Manifesto by Ricardo Morin: Viewing of his Jersey City art-studio where he engages with his paintings [2005-10]; some artworks are in progress and some are part of a recently finished hanging scroll series, entitled Metaphors of Silence. http://www.ricardomorin.com/
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Metaphors of Silence (2005–2010)
Studio Videography Transcript (Edited in Prose)
From 2005 to 2010, the work expands on questions dealing with perspective, synthesizing concepts of pictorial space and infinity that have been present over the years. Painterly abstraction and plasticity are allowed to express, both in form and in content, a kind of art that moves beyond a material world of signs.
The paintings reach toward the infinite, toward mystery, and toward the poetry present in each individual drama. Although situated within twentieth-century aesthetics, the work does not align itself with a specific historical movement or with a postmodernist agenda. Making art is approached as a fleshy product of human experiencing, a result of the maker’s own passion.
The idiosyncrasy of the individual, indivisible in nature and blind to causality, is held within an aesthetic frame that embraces all essences. The image appears as a residue: non-objective, timeless, and at times existential. It does not seek to explain experience. Rather, it manifests itself and invites interpretation from the observer.
The finished work stands on its own. The viewer may come away with the sense of a generative completeness, as if a universe were making and remaking itself.
“Metaphors of Silence” suggests that the verbalization of aesthetic reality implies its own ending. No matter how precise, words resist the magnitude of that reality. The actuality of art may remain unseen if it arises within a fragmented spirit, shaped by formulas, gratification, or condemnation.
Art is not sustained by the prejudices of the observer, nor by the need to attract attention through eccentric stimuli. It is found instead in the open space of silence, in the stillness of meditative contemplation, and in the freedom to observe without the control of the observer.
In that state of heightened attention, questions become unnecessary and responses diminish the act of observation. This aesthetic is not derived from accumulated experience, from association with the past, from the search for an audience, or from the demands of a prevailing market.
These currents are not governed by awareness or unawareness. They do not pursue fulfillment, nor do they arise from vanity or choice. They are manifestations common to all, defining what exists beyond ideas and words. They operate creatively without dependence on the noise of knowledge and remain outside measurement and classification.
Within that obscurity, a vital energy unfolds, moving beyond limitation and isolation. Creation appears as a process of awakening and renewal within every relation. To participate in the movement of life requires a continuous release from conditioning.
The creative act is not an accumulation of knowledge. The figure of the “creative genius” marks only a stage within the process of deconditioning, and it cannot become knowledge if confined to individuality. The eye, bound to duration, may seek moments of inspiration, but those moments do not constitute creation itself.
Creation occurs in that which reaches beyond the moment toward continuity.
In this relation to art, the aim is not self-fulfillment, but the expression of an underlying interconnectedness.
Ricardo F. Morin. November 24, 2010, Jersey City, NJ
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Metaphors of Silence (2005–2010) by Ricardo F. Morín
Studio Videography Raw Transcript
0:07
From 2005 to 2010, my work expands on questions dealing with perspective,
0:14
synthesizing concepts of pictorial space and infinity, something I have worked on over the years.
0:23
I have allowed painterly abstraction and plasticity to express, both in form and in content,
0:29
a kind of art that goes beyond a material world of signs.
0:38
My paintings reach for the infinite, the mystery, and the poetry in every man’s individual drama.
0:44
Though immersed in twentieth-century aesthetics,
0:52
I neither strive for a specific historical movement nor for the postmodernist agenda.
1:01
Simply, I look at making art as a fleshy product of human experiencing,
1:08
a resultant of the maker’s own passion.
1:15
Just as the idiosyncrasy of an individual, indivisible in nature, is blind to causality,
1:25
an aesthetic frame embraces all essences,
1:32
and the image is only the result or residue non-objective, timeless, or even existential.
1:40
In this sense, the image seeks not to explain what the meaning of experience is;
1:48
rather, the image manifests itself, provoking interpretation from the observer.
1:56
The finished work stands on its own.
2:06
The viewer comes away, I hope, with the sense of the work’s generative completeness,
2:15
of a universe making and remaking itself.
2:23
Metaphors of Silence.
2:31
The verbalization of an aesthetic reality implies its own death.
2:38
No matter how precise, the very accuracy of words resists the magnitude of that reality.
2:46
Seeing the actuality of art may never take place
2:53
if born in a spirit fragmented by the illusion of formulas,
3:01
immured by gratification or condemnation.
3:08
Art is not sustained by the avarice of a prejudiced observer,
3:16
nor is it derived from eccentric stimuli meant to draw attention to itself.
3:23
It is found in the open space of silence,
3:32
in the stillness of meditative contemplation,
3:40
in the freedom to observe without the control of the observer.
3:48
With heightened attention, questions become unnecessary,
3:56
and responses trivialize the act of observation.
4:03
This aesthetic is not the product of experience,
4:11
nor the association with the past,
4:19
nor the search for an audience,
4:27
nor the product of a prevailing market.
4:34
These currents are not aware or unaware;
4:43
they do not propagate fulfillment,
4:50
nor are they the product of egotistic or vain ritual.
4:57
They are manifestations common to all of us,
5:06
that which defines us beyond ideas and words,
5:14
that which operates creatively without dependence on the noise of knowledge,
5:23
that which is not suited to measurement or labels.
5:45
Within obscurity, a vital energy unfolds beyond isolation.
Creation is the awakening and renewal present in every relation.
If we are to join in the movement of life,
freeing ourselves from conditioning is a continuous creative process.
The creative genius is only a stage in the deconditioning of the self,
which cannot become true knowledge if confined within individuality.
The eye, bound to duration, may seek moments of inspiration,
but such moments are not part of the act of creation.
Creation belongs to that which reaches beyond the moment toward continuity.
In this relation to art, I do not seek self-fulfillment,
Digital Image created with Maya and Combustion Softwares
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It’s like a goat tied to a post, who can wander only the length of its tether
Jiddu Krishnamurti, 1986
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Anyone who aspires towards a career as a visual artist understands that the constraints for survival are questionable and that destiny often is one of the many factors that determines recognition. One’s mission is not about seeking recognition or even permanence, but about maturing and sharing one’s talent through exploration and inquiry. Congruency with one’s ancestry, identity, and oeuvre is not a matter of commercial interest for any given national identification. These elements are irreducible aspects of signification, undefined against perspectives concerning conventional pieties—imponderable manifestations of one’s existence: neither up to meeting others’ expectations, nor up to appointed entities and their economic models used as marketing ploys.
Succumbing to or courting this scheme is dangerous to artists and leads to alienation. Giving in promotes stagnation arising from these very institutionalized dictates. Such fashions segregate artists into a kind of regionalism and ideology, totally out of flux with the global community. Let me reflect on the raison d’être of any artist or, for that matter, of any human being; it must consist in a universal respect for dignity and freedom that cannot be sold, only shared. Let me underline that philanthropic societies that today yearn for an enforced authority through their wealth and through an enforced false sense of nationality and/or political or religious affiliation(s) are not only out of step with the transformative spirit of our times, but also with the globalized revolution taking placed in our culture, where the despotism of conventional borders and preconceived identities are lacking. This revolution is neither political nor economical; it is occurring within our very being, and it is the result of the change within ourselves of what is really important. We are dispensing with creative communities subjugated to a poisonous market place.We are dispensing with creative communities subjugated to a poisonous market place. [1] We have a new sensitivity and perception that will embrace cultural societies and producers alike. No simple answers arise; but we are growing in responsibility and self knowledge: we move to freedom and away from subjugation.
The art world includes actors who manufacture adversity in order to expand their reach and authority. Let me begin by addressing the frustration of visual-artists with dual nationalities, who sometimes suffer in the corral of Latin-American fundamentalism. Let me also question why their resulting frustrations are an order of business imposed by contemporary Medicis who seek to buy a parcel of history in the parochial institutionalization taking place inside these artists’ countries of origin. These merchants promote their wares by controlling, by and large, markets located abroad.
Certain philanthropic foundations—I speak especially of the Phelps-Cisneros—sell themselves to museums as influential and often Darwinian laboratories with their claims of heralding innovative programs focusing on Latin American issues and fostering its cultural heritage. The above cited institution takes its leadership from a wealthy socialite, and boasts about its founder, as an amalgamation of bourgeois society and contemporary scholarly erudition. Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, anthropologist amateuse and founder-—deeply attached to her own ideas—, sees herself as neoembodiment of the 19-c. bio-geographer, Alexander von Humboldt: a man whom the contemporary Simón Bolívar (the Latin-American revolutionary and freedom fighter) cited as the real discoverer of South America.
Such portrayals, however, never yield balanced visions of pluralism. Only by peeling through layers of hubristic poshness, can one expose the foundation’s wish to create a dialogue about contemporary art with an historic nucleus set in Venezuela. But this desire simply reflects an aberrant fundamentalism; a rigidity whose aims are the preservation of certain regional traditions, which coincide with the institution’s own acquisitions. Undeniably, the preponderance of these cultural investments represents past meaningful movements, i.e., Kinetic, Op, and other neo-geometric derivatives. These movements, needless to say, are complaisantly popular, relatively noncontroversial artifacts among the political élites in Venezuela–from outright dictatorships, to feeble democracies, up to the presently evolving kleptocracy of the Bolivarian State of Hugo Chavez. They define as well the reoccurring themes coming out of this base which have found worldwide exhibitions and critiques. Contemporary art within this context exemplifies, nevertheless, exclusively the demagoguery of the ruling class’ claiming a national identity as stimulating and not one of imposed, antiquated historicism. This marketing ploy impoverishes both spontaneity and the local culture itself!
[1] The mythomania of stardom by definition examines only the few. Complacency fuels scarcity of resources while alienating 90% of active artists and assigning value to market indices, thus staggering self-sustenance.
Ricardo F. Morín Buffalo Series, Nº 2 48″ x 48″ Oil on canvas 1978
At a town hall, one participant says, “They just don’t share our values.” Another replies at once, “That’s freedom of speech.” No one asks who “they” refers to. No one asks which values are meant. The discussion shifts. The reply becomes the center of the discussion.
A participant to the left says, “He can say it.” Across the table, another answers, “He shouldn’t say it.” A third repeats, “It’s freedom of speech.” No one restates the sentence in full. No one asks the speaker to name the values or to identify who is included in “they.” The words that gave rise to the discussion no longer guide it.
Someone tries to return to the sentence. “What do you mean by ‘they’?” The speaker does not answer. Another voice cuts in: “That’s freedom of speech.” The question does not hold. The discussion resumes from the reply.
Then one participant restates the earlier sentence: “They just don’t share our values.” Another replies: “That’s freedom of speech.” For a moment, the sentence and the reply are held together. No one determines whether the reply addresses what is said. No one asks whether the claim can be examined. The moment passes.
From that point on, each response addresses only that same reply. One insists on the right to speak. Another rejects the defense. No one asks the speaker to define “our values.” No one tests the claim that “they” do not share them. The sentence no longer directs the discussion. Those referred to as “they” are not named. They are set apart without being identified. The sentence rejects them without stating who they are.
The phrase is used to defend the speaker and to reject its use as justification. It does not return to the sentence. It allows each participant to take a position without clarifying what was said. Expression itself is treated as evidence of allegiance rather than as an invitation to examination.
At the end, the sentence remains unresolved: it is not examined, it is not sustained, it is not withdrawn. It is left behind. The rejection holds. The phrase remains in use, and the discussion continues from it.
Ricardo F. Morín Buffalo Series, Nº 7 36″ x 78″ Oil on canvas 1979
In a public forum, one participant says: “This country was built by people who came from other places and settled here over time.” Another responds: “People who enter without authorization must be expelled.” Both statements remain. No one relates them to one another.
A participant on one side says: “My parents came here and became citizens.” From the other side, someone responds: “The law must be applied.” A third asserts: “There must be order.” No one asks how those people were received at the time. The statements remain separate.
Someone returns to the earlier point: “How was the situation of those people determined when they arrived?” The interlocutor does not respond. Another voice responds: “People must come through the proper channel.” The question does not hold. The exchange continues from the response.
From that moment on, each intervention turns toward the application of the law. No one asks under what conditions that law is applied or to whom it extends. One insists on borders. Another rejects politics. No one asks how the situation of people is determined. No one asks how those present are classified. The initial statements remain. They are not related to one another.
Then one participant repeats the earlier claim: “This country was built by people who came from other places.” Another repeats: “People who enter without authorization must be expelled.” For a moment, both statements are held together. No one determines whether the same conditions apply to both. No one asks whether one statement limits or includes the other. The moment passes.
Those who arrived under earlier conditions and those now subject to controls can be named. The same terms are not used for both.
The phrases continue to appear. They serve to defend positions and to oppose them. They do not return to the initial statements. They allow each participant to adopt a position without relating them.
In the end, both statements remain: one is not examined against the other, neither is withdrawn. They are left in place. The separation is maintained. The exchange continues without relating them.
Ricardo F Morín Buffalo Series, Nº 3 32″ x 36″ Oil on canvas 1978
At a town hall, one participant says, “This policy removes access to public services—such as health coverage and housing assistance—for legal residents who have depended on them.” Another replies at once, “That’s what people voted for.” Everyone knows the subject is immigration. No one returns to what is being done. The exchange shifts. The reply becomes the center of the discussion.
In another exchange, someone says, “This measure authorizes the detention of individuals without a hearing while their status is reviewed.” The reply comes at once: “That’s what people voted for.” The sentence is not taken up. The exchange proceeds from the reply.
A participant to one side says, “It was decided through a vote.” Across the table, another answers, “That doesn’t justify what it does.” A third repeats, “That’s what people voted for.” No one restates the initial sentence in full. No one asks what the policy does. The words that gave rise to the discussion no longer guide it.
Someone tries to return to the sentence. “Which part of this was voted on?” The speaker does not answer. Another voice cuts in: “It reflects the will of the voters.” What is being done remains unexamined. The phrase remains in use, and the exchange continues from it.
Then one participant restates the earlier sentence in full: “This policy removes access to public services for legal residents.” Another replies: “That’s what people voted for.” For a moment, the sentence and the reply are held together. No one determines whether the vote addresses what is described. No one asks whether the reply accounts for the sentence. The moment passes.
From that point on, each response addresses only that same reply. One insists on the vote. Another rejects that defense. No one asks who loses access under the policy. No one asks how the change is carried out. The sentence no longer directs the exchange. Green card holders, recipients of deferred status, asylum applicants, and citizens by birth can be named, but they are not brought back into the exchange.
The phrase is used to defend the decision and to reject its use as justification. It does not return to the sentence. It allows each participant to take a position without clarifying what was said.
At the end, the sentence is not examined, sustained, or withdrawn. It is left behind, and what is being done is not examined.
Observations On Perception 
