The recent public defense of media censorship by the current Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission—an appointee from the Trump era—marks a chilling development in the ongoing campaign to recast American institutions in the image of authoritarian grievance. Justified under the pretext of combating “invidious ideology” associated with Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), the move signals a deeper ideological purge aimed not at restoring neutrality but at eliminating pluralism itself.
This defense of censorship, framed as a protection against ideological bias, in fact constitutes a stark betrayal of the First Amendment’s foundational commitments. Far from curbing excess, it institutionalizes a selective silencing of voices that challenge the dominant ethno-nationalist narrative increasingly embraced by Trump-aligned cultural warriors. It is not DEI that poses a threat to democratic cohesion, but rather the repressive apparatus now being assembled to discredit and dismantle it.
What is emerging is not policy, but performance—a spectacle of control designed to communicate power rather than to govern justly. In this, the parallels to the reign of Caligula are not accidental. The Roman emperor’s descent into theatrical cruelty and capricious edicts was not merely a symptom of madness but a deliberate assertion of dominance over law, decorum, and truth itself. Under Caligula, the empire was transformed into a stage upon which reality bent to the will of a singular, vindictive ego. Trumpism, in its media strategy and institutional manipulation, follows a similar logic: one that privileges loyalty over legitimacy, and spectacle over substance.
The FCC’s shift from regulatory independence to ideological enforcement exemplifies this logic. Rather than acting as a steward of public trust, the Commission is being repurposed as a gatekeeper of permissible narratives—an arbiter of who may speak and who must be silenced. The language of “protecting viewers” from divisive content serves as a smokescreen for restricting narratives that confront historical injustice, racial inequality, or structural exclusion.
If allowed to continue, such measures risk hollowing out the very idea of a democratic media ecosystem. In its place would emerge a curated domain of sanctioned speech, curated not for truth or civic health, but for the comfort of those in power. The result would not be national unity, but enforced conformity masquerading as patriotism.
This is not a return to law and order; it is a return to imperial whim. The question now is whether American institutions will continue to serve as instruments of democratic accountability, or whether they will become, like the Senate under Caligula, ornamental backdrops to a regime that no longer pretends to tolerate dissent.
To my brother Alberto, whose persistence sustained this reflection and made these pages possible.
*
By Ricardo Morin
July 29, 2025
Abstract
This essay examines the fragmentation of Venezuelan national identity amid a prolonged crisis of State failure. It argues that the collapse of institutional sovereignty, the entrenchment of foreign authoritarian influence, and the marginalization of native citizens from civic and economic life have not only hollowed out the republic but have also fractured the symbolic cohesion necessary for shared civic identity. Through a reasoned analysis of foreign entanglement, cultural displacement, and the moral cost of dispossession, the essay contends that Venezuelan identity has become a contested act of memory and resistance. The argument proceeds not from political activism but from a civic and ethical perspective on national dissolution.
Section I: Losing the Nation: Identity in a Failed State
National identity is not an abstraction. It is a lived sense of coherence that binds individuals to a shared history, a common language, and a civic project. In functional States, this identity is sustained by stable institutions of governance, the continuity of law, and the everyday experience of participation in a protected civic order. When a State collapses—through authoritarian control, institutional decay, and the disfigurement of sovereignty—its people do not merely lose services or rights. They begin to lose their place in the world.
As Michel Agier observes, “when institutions that once guaranteed rights, protection, and civic recognition collapse—such as courts, elections, or access to public services—citizens can become internally exiled: physically present, but stripped of belonging”—of any sense of inclusion.
This disintegration is not caused solely by economic collapse or political repression. It has been compounded by the regime’s calculated alignment with foreign authoritarian powers, which have embedded external interests deep within the nation’s economy and territorial administration. Through negotiated dependencies—whether in extractive industries, infrastructure, surveillance, or military cooperation—the Venezuelan State has relinquished control over strategic industries and assets. In doing so, it has not only compromised national sovereignty; it has reordered the social and cultural hierarchy of belonging.
As Louisa Loveluck has documented, these foreign enclaves operate as “parallel structures of control and privilege,” where loyalty to external powers displaces the traditional role of State industries such as in oil and mining resources (Loveluck, “Foreign Control and Local Collapse in Venezuela’s Border Zones,” The Washington Post, 2019).
According to David Smilde, this delegation of sovereign functions to authoritarian allies has transformed the State apparatus into an instrument of regime survival rather than a vehicle of national representation (Smilde, “The Military and Authoritarian Resilience in Venezuela,” Latin American Politics and Society, 2020).
The result is a deep psychological rupture. Arjun Appadurai describes this condition as a form of “identity disanchoring,” in which cultural detachment renders citizens unable to recognize themselves in their historical present (Modernity at Large, 1996).
When a nation’s institutions no longer reflect its people, and when its future is shaped by foreign imperatives, Venezuelanness becomes less a civic reality and more a memory under siege. What is lost is not only territorial—it is existential. Hannah Arendt warned of this condition with stark clarity: the loss of the right to have rights begins when one no longer belongs to a political community capable of guaranteeing them security (The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951).
Section II: Authoritarian Alliances and Economic Infiltration
Venezuela’s transformation into a failed State has not occurred in isolation. Its authoritarian trajectory has been reinforced by a calculated strategy of international alignment with other regimes operating outside the norms of democratic accountability. These alliances—chiefly with Cuba, Russia, China, Iran, and Turkey—have provided the Maduro regime not only with political legitimacy and technical support, but have also enabled the gradual outsourcing of national functions and resources to foreign control (cf. Ellis 2018, 49–56).
These alliances are transactional: the Venezuelan State forfeits sovereignty in exchange for survival. Chinese loans secured by oil reserves, Russian stakes in energy infrastructure, Cuban intelligence operations embedded in the military and civil apparatus, and Iranian ventures in mining and logistics have together displaced native Venezuelans from critical sectors of the economy (cf. Trinkunas 2015, 3–6; Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018, 197–198).
In parallel, private and informal business networks—often tied to these foreign interests—have taken root in local markets, at times displacing or outperforming historical domestic producers. This economic infiltration has a dual effect. It distorts the allocation of national resources, diverting wealth and opportunity away from the general population toward a narrow class of regime beneficiaries and their foreign patrons (cf. Corrales 2020, 212–215). And it reconfigures the geography of power: entire regions, especially those rich in oil, minerals, or strategic positions, have come under the functional control of external actors or militias under foreign protection (cf. Romero 2021, 88–91).
In such contexts, Venezuelans do not merely feel excluded from their economy; they experience it as something alien—managed, exploited, and secured by those whose loyalties lie elsewhere. The result is a corrosive alienation. A population that once saw itself as a beneficiary of a national project now confronts the reality of an extractive system in which their labor, land, and culture are no longer valued on their own terms. The economy ceases to be a platform for collective progress and becomes a zone of foreign extraction, protected by repression and organized through impunity (cf. Loveluck and Dehghan 2020; López Maya 2022).
In this environment, the question of identity becomes inseparable from the loss of agency. To be Venezuelan under such conditions is to be subordinated within one’s own country.
Section III: Cultural and Social Displacement
The dissolution of identity in a failed State extends beyond political and economic structures; it reaches into the cultural and social fabric of everyday life. In Venezuela, the displacement of native citizens is not always physical—though mass emigration has marked the national experience. The institutions, customs, and even public spaces that once embodied a shared civic identity are being emptied out, repurposed, or replaced by structures that no longer reflect Venezuelan values or priorities [cf. Salas 2019, 45–47].
Public education, for instance—once a source of national pride and social mobility—has been systematically dismantled. In its place, ideological indoctrination and partisan loyalty have become criteria for access and advancement [cf. Human Rights Watch 2021]. The result is not only the degradation of knowledge and opportunity but even the politicization of childhood itself. Similarly, cultural production—formerly diverse, expressive, and regionally vibrant—has withered under censorship, economic collapse, and the withdrawal of public support for the arts [cf. Ávila 2020, 119–124].
What remains is either trivialized as propaganda or silenced altogether. The result is a cultural silence, where shared narratives are undermined and the cultural life of the nation is reduced to slogans and spectacle. Meanwhile, the influx of foreign interests and their social infrastructure—contract workers, commercial complexes, private security, parallel institutions—has introduced new cultural norms and loyalties into local environments, particularly in border areas and resource-rich zones [cf. Rodríguez and Ortega 2023].
These changes are often subtle: signage in unfamiliar languages, imported goods replacing local ones, new patterns of exclusion in access to services or employment. But over time, they alter the character of a place, displacing not only people but the meanings those places once held. This form of displacement is disorienting because it operates within everyday life. It renders Venezuelans strangers in their own markets, their own schools, their own land. It unravels the mutual recognition that makes coexistence possible.
When communities no longer share a common point of reference—whether legal, linguistic, or moral—they lose the cohesion needed to sustain identity as something lived and affirmed. The rupture is not dramatic; it is slow, cumulative, and deeply damaging [cf. Arendt 1951, 302–306]. In such a context, cultural resilience becomes increasingly difficult to sustain. Identity, once reinforced by public participation and pride in collective achievement, begins to retreat into nostalgia or fracture along lines of class, exile, or ideological survival. It becomes reactive rather than generative—something to defend rather than to build.
Section IV: Dignity and the Struggle to Belong
“Venezuela: Freedom in the World 2024” by Freedom House offers updated empirical data and analytical context regarding the decline of political rights and civil liberties in Venezuela, with particular attention to authoritarian consolidation and State control.
At the heart of national identity lies the human need for dignity: the certainty that one’s life is acknowledged, one’s labor valued, and one’s voice able to contribute to a shared future. In today’s Venezuela, that dignity has been systematically undermined. The collapse of institutions, the degradation of public life, and the influence of foreign entanglements distorting the national economy have created a climate in which the average citizen no longer feels seen or protected by their country. This is not merely a political failure, but a fracture in the ethical foundation of the nation. As Emmanuel Levinas warned, “dignity is not a legal category but the response of the face of the other, who calls and obliges us” (Levinas 1982).
When a government no longer rules on behalf of its people, but rather to ensure its own permanence and serve external patrons, civic inclusion becomes conditional. Loyalty is demanded, not earned. Dissent is criminalized, not heard. Citizenship, far from offering protection, becomes a liability. In such a system, dignity is not merely denied—it is redefined through fear, dependency, and silence. Here, Hannah Arendt’s warning comes to pass: “the loss of human rights begins when the right to have rights is lost” (Arendt 1951).
This leaves Venezuelans—both within and beyond the country—suspended between dispossession and resistance. Many continue to fight for what remains: organizing locally, teaching despite educational collapse, feeding neighbors in the absence of public services, safeguarding memory in the face of propaganda. These acts are heroic, but they also respond to abandonment. They attest to the resilience of the people, but also to the void where the State should be.
For those in exile, the loss is often twofold: the loss of a physical home and the loss of a living context. Cultural reference points no longer match daily experience. One’s accent becomes a marker of displacement. The passport becomes a barrier more than a right. And yet, exile can also sharpen awareness of what has been lost—and what must be preserved. Thus, identity persists not through affirmation of a functioning nation, but through refusal to forget one. In the words of Edward Said, “exile is not simply a condition of loss, but a critical way of being in the world” (Said 2000).
Even so, dignity requires more than memory. It requires restoration: of institutions, of justice, of a civic space where Venezuelans may once again participate as equals. Until such restoration is possible, the struggle to belong will continue to define Venezuelan identity—not as a static inheritance, but as a sustained refusal to surrender what remains of the nation’s moral core.
Section V: A Word for the Dispossessed
To speak of dispossession is to name not only what has been taken but also what continues to be denied: the right to shape one’s future within a framework of justice, belonging, and shared meaning. In Venezuela, dispossession has unfolded through a deliberate dismantling of sovereignty—first by internal corruption, then by foreign entanglement. What remains is a scattered people, a fragmented territory, and an identity under immense pressure. As Achille Mbembe has noted, “dispossession acts not only upon bodies but also upon the collective imaginaries that sustain life in common” (Mbembe 2016).
And yet, dispossession is not the end of identity. The absence of a functional State does not erase a nation’s moral memory. The language, traditions, civic values, and aspirations that once shaped Venezuelan life have not vanished: they have been driven underground, carried into exile, or preserved in the hearts of those who remember. “Language is the house of being,” said Heidegger, and where it is kept alive, a form of belonging endures (Heidegger 1959).
The task now is not only to resist, but to rebuild: to articulate a vision of Venezuelanness that rejects both cynicism and forgetfulness.
This cannot be done through nostalgia alone. Nor can it be deferred to future generations without commitment. It begins with the refusal to normalize what is not normal: the foreign occupation of national resources, the criminalization of dissent, the denial of opportunity, the devaluation of citizenship. It continues in the quiet labor of preserving language, history, and dignity wherever that remains possible—whether in classrooms, in exile, or through the written word. And it gains strength through solidarity: among those who stayed, those who left, and those who bear both destinies.
Under these conditions, Venezuelan identity is not a fixed inheritance but an act of resistance. It is the assertion that dignity is not negotiable, and that a people cannot be permanently replaced by alliances of convenience and control. The recovery of the nation will take time and may require forms not yet imagined. But it will depend, above all, on the preservation of civic spirit—one that knows what has been lost and refuses to let it be forgotten.
Epilogue *
As Venezuela’s history unfolds in waves, the struggle between unity and fragmentation, idealism and authority, repeats itself—not only in the corridors of power but also in the private lives of those who live with its consequences. Power, in its many forms, tests the very fabric of the nation, yet the quest for balance remains elusive. Venezuela remains gripped by a profound humanitarian crisis, with millions deprived of basic healthcare and nutrition, according to the “World Report 2024” by Human Rights Watch. [1] The country now has the highest rate of undernourishment in South America, with 66% of its population in need of humanitarian aid and 65% having irreversibly lost their means of livelihood. Despite repeated promises of reform and amnesty, entrenched power structures have prevented meaningful change and perpetuated what is widely regarded as an authoritarian and corrupt regime. External interventions, primarily diplomatic and economic sanctions, have been frequent, yet they have failed to compel any substantive transformation.
Political theory once held that the spread of democracy would secure peace among nations. [2] The ordeal for Venezuelans suggests the converse: peace recedes where democracy is hollowed into the temporality of chaos. Although such theories do not directly address the persistence of autocracies, the Venezuelan case highlights how regimes strengthened by internal control and by strategic autocratic alliances with external powers can withstand both internal unrest and external pressure.
In Venezuela, theoretical insights find concrete expression in how democratic institutions—elections, legislatures, and courts—are repurposed to entrench authoritarian control. Through staged electoral processes, constrained legislatures, and politicized judiciaries, these regimes suppress dissent, manage perception, and deflect external accountability. Legitimacy transforms from a mandate of the people into a mechanism for the endurance of autocratic power.
While the path forward remains uncertain, the crisis is no longer merely political—it is systemic, embedded in the very fabric of Venezuela’s history. The resolution of this crisis requires more than political turnover or external intervention; it requires an acknowledgment of the historical inheritance that has shaped the nation’s mistrust and dysfunction. The foundations of governance have long been built on conflicting forces, and any potential for change begins with an awareness of this legacy. A coordinated strategy that integrates economic support, diplomatic engagement, and grassroots democratic movements may provide short-term relief, but it cannot resolve what is ingrained. True transformation requires a cultural reckoning—an internal shift in consciousness that confronts the very forces that have enabled autocratic rule. Yet without a profound internal unity—a cultural awakening capable of overcoming centuries of inherent contradictions—the possibility of such transformation may remain distant, though not extinguished.
[2] Azar Gat, “The Democratic Peace Theory Reframed,” World Politics (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, Vol. 58, No. 1, October 2005, 73-100.https://www.jstor.org/stable/40060125
Améry, Jean: At the Mind’s Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and Its Realities. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980. (A philosophical and existential reflection on suffering, exile, and the loss of belonging. The essay draws on his idea that there is no greater violence than being stripped of a place in the world to return to, which becomes a moral axis in the Venezuela of the exodus.)
Appadurai, Arjun: Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. (Appadurai introduces the concept of “identity disanchoring” to describe the cultural unmooring brought about by globalization, which disrupts symbolic continuity between past and present. He is cited to explain the subjective rupture in contexts of cultural loss and displacement.)
Arendt, Hannah: The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1951. (Foundational study on rootlessness, denationalization, and the right to have rights. Her conceptualization of stateless refugees directly informs the argument about the loss of belonging as a form of ontological expulsion.)
Ávila, Rafael: La cultura sitiada: Arte, política y silencio en Venezuela. Caracas: Editorial Alfa, 2020. (Ávila examines how censorship, economic precariousness, and institutional control have drastically reduced independent artistic production in Venezuela. He is cited to support the claim that cultural diversity has been replaced by an expression conditioned by power and subsistence.)
Corrales, Javier: Autocracy Rising: How Venezuela’s Authoritarian Leaders Consolidated Power. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2020. (Corrales explains how regime elites have concentrated economic control through informal networks, enabling foreign-backed oligarchies to displace domestic economic actors. Used to support the claim that foreign patrons and loyalists now dominate Venezuelan resource flows.)
Ellis, R. Evan: Transnational Organized Crime in Latin America and the Caribbean. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018. (Ellisprovides a comprehensive mapping of how foreign actors—especially from Cuba, Russia, and China—embed themselves in the Venezuelan state. Cited to explain the strategic outsourcing of sovereignty to non-democratic allies.)
Gessen, Masha: Surviving Autocracy. New York: Riverhead Books, 2020. (Though centered on the United States, this book articulates general patterns of autocratic behavior—such as the distortion of language, the hollowing of institutions, and the disorientation of those governed—which also apply to the Venezuelan case.)
Heidegger, Martin: Unterwegs zur Sprache. Pfullingen: Neske, 1959. (Includes the well-known phrase “Language is the house of being,” which is cited to emphasize the relationship between linguistic continuity and existential belonging.)
Human Rights Watch: “Venezuela’s Humanitarian Emergency: Large-Scale UN Response Needed to Address Health and Food Crisis.” New York: Human Rights Watch, 2019. (H.R.W. detailed report linking the collapse of public services with violations of basic rights and national dignity, highlighting how the humanitarian crisis contributes to the dissolution of identity.)
Levinas, Emmanuel: Totalité et infini: Essai sur l’extériorité. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1961. (Levinas’s ethics of alterity, centered on responsibility toward the irreducible other, underlies the essay’s argument for a politics founded on dignity, not on state identity or calculated reciprocity.)
Levitsky, Steven, and Ziblatt, Daniel: How Democracies Die. Nueva York: Crown Publishing Group, 2018. (Levitsky and Ziblatt offer a framework for understanding democratic degradation via institutional capture and foreign alignment. It is referenced to underline the transactional nature of Venezuela’s external alliances.)
López Maya, Margarita: “Economía extractiva y soberanía en disputa: el Arco Minero del Orinoco.” Revista Venezolana de Ciencia Política 45 (2022): 34–49. (López Maya analyzes how mining zones have become semi-autonomous territories controlled by militias and foreign interests, supporting the essay’s argument on geographic alienation and economic fragmentation.)
Loveluck, Louisa: “The Collapse of a Nation: Venezuela’s Descent into Authoritarianism.” The Washington Post, July 2020. (Journalistic synthesis of Venezuela’s structural collapse, including firsthand accounts of economic alienation and the psychological cost of state abandonment.)
Loveluck, Louisa, and Dehghan, Saeed Kamali: “Venezuela Hands Over Control of Key Assets to Foreign Backers.” The Washington Post, 2020. (Loveluck’s and Dehghan’s investigative report documents the privatization and foreign management of strategic Venezuelan sectors. Their report is cited to demonstrate how national industries have been subordinated to external control.)
Mbembe, Achille. Politiques de l’inimitié. Paris: La Découverte, 2016. (Mbembe explores the politics of enmity and the mechanisms of dispossession in late modernity. Quoted to highlight how structural violence targets both material life and the collective imagination.)
Rodríguez, Luis, y Ortega, Daniela: Colonización contemporánea: transformaciones culturales en las zonas extractivas de Venezuela. Mérida: Editorial de la Universidad de los Andes, 2023. (An ethnographic study on the sociocultural effects of foreign investment in mining and border regions, including the introduction of new hierarchies, codes of coexistence, and parallel organizational forms. It is cited to support the argument about the transformation of cultural norms and community loyalties.)
Romero, Carlos A.: “Geopolítica, militarización y relaciones internacionales del chavismo.” Nueva Sociedad 293 (2021): 82–94. (Romero traces how foreign alliances have militarized border zones and reinforced internal authoritarianism. Used to support the claim that power has shifted toward actors whose loyalties lie beyond Venezuela.)
Roth, Kenneth: The Fight for Rights: Human Dignity and the Struggle Against Authoritarianism. New York: W. W. Norton, 2022. (Roth examines the moral and civic foundations of dignity, providing context for the argument that Venezuelan identity must now be preserved through resistance rather than state recognition.)
Said, Edward W.: Reflections on Exile and Other Essays. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000. (Said explores the experience of exile as an existential and critical condition, beyond mere uprootedness. Cited to support the idea that Venezuelan identity in the diaspora endures not through the affirmation of a functioning nation, but through the refusal to forget.)
Salas, Miguel: Arquitectura y desposesión: Espacios públicos y crisis urbana en Venezuela. Caracas: Editorial Punto Cero, 2019. (Salas examines the transformation of public architecture and space in the context of political and social collapse in Venezuela. Cited to support the idea that shared civic structures are being stripped of their symbolic and communal function.)
Schmitt, Carl: The Concept of the Political. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. (Theoretical reference on sovereignty, useful for understanding how the Venezuelan regime defines enemies and allies not through legality but through loyalty, thereby reshaping the very meaning of citizenship.)
Shklar, Judith: American Citizenship: The Quest for Inclusion. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991. (Shklar examines how political and social exclusion has shaped the meaning of citizenship in the United States. The essay takes up her premise that to be a citizen implies not only legal rights, but effective belonging and recognized dignity.)
Smilde, David: “Participation, Politics, and Culture in Twenty-First Century Venezuela.” Latin American Research Review 52, no. 1 (2017): 157–65. (Analyzes the cultural impact of political polarization and exclusion in Venezuela, and how identity is formed in contested civic spaces.)
Trinkunas, Harold A.: “Venezuela’s Defense Sector and Civil-Military Relations.” Washington: Brookings Institution Working Paper, 2015. (Trinkunas examines the entrenchment of Cuban and Russian influence in the Venezuelan military. Cited to explain the redefinition of sovereignty under foreign advisory presence.)
To the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System—in recognition of the ongoing challenge of aligning institutional independence with public responsibility.
By Ricardo Morin
July 27, 2025
Abstract
This essay examines the conceptual validity of an independent treasury, free from executive control and governed by long-term, nonpartisan economic reasoning. It argues that the alignment of fiscal institutions with short-term political leadership creates structural risks that compromise transparency, sustainability, and public trust. By contrast, an autonomous treasury—operating within clear legal mandates and guided by professional expertise—can promote fiscal stability and integrity while preserving essential democratic oversight. The analysis rejects both executive subordination and technocratic absolutism, and proposes a balanced institutional model in which independence functions as a form of principled restraint. This concept, as developed in the essay, refers to the structured and lawful limitation of authority in pursuit of long-term public interest—discipline rooted not in detachment, but in ethics, transparency, and legality. This framework, abstracted from any specific national context, is intended to apply broadly to the theory and design of sound fiscal governance.
The Case for an Independent Treasury
The question of how a treasury should be structured—whether subordinated to political leadership or operating autonomously—raises fundamental concerns about institutional integrity, fiscal responsibility, and democratic accountability. While treasuries are often housed within executive power, there is a strong theoretical case for granting such institutions political independence. A treasury removed from direct control of governing administrations and guided instead by economic expertise, long-term reasoning, and publicly defined mandates can provide a more stable and ethically sound foundation for fiscal policy.
At the heart of this argument is the fact that fiscal decisions—such as setting tax levels, allocating public spending, and managing debt—extend far beyond the timeline of electoral cycles or political terms. When treasury operations are subject to short-term political priorities, fiscal policy risks being distorted by opportunism—through unsustainable tax cuts, politically timed spending increases, or the concealment of uncomfortable debt projections. These distortions undermine both the credibility of fiscal governance and the long-term stability that supports public trust and financial soundness.
A common set of distortions includes election-cycle spending surges that prioritize immediate electoral gains over lasting fiscal balance; strategic underreporting or reclassification of deficits to hide true fiscal conditions; and biased tax enforcement, where tax authorities selectively target or protect groups based on political motives. Such behaviors not only threaten fiscal sustainability but also weaken the treasury’s role as a neutral guardian of public resources.
Principled restraint is key to addressing these challenges. This concept refers to a structured commitment to ethical limits and responsible governance. It is a form of authority that binds itself willingly to the public interest, resisting both political capture and technocratic arrogance. Principled restraint is not the absence of power, but its disciplined and transparent exercise, grounded in law, deliberation, and long-term accountability. It affirms the treasury’s role as a steward of the public good across political transitions and economic cycles.
An autonomous treasury, governed by clear statutes and staffed by nonpartisan experts, can anchor fiscal management to long-term goals such as sustainability, fairness, and generational equity. Its purpose is not to replace democratic decision-making but to ensure that such decisions are carried out with consistency, impartiality, and professional skill. Just as some institutions responsible for macroeconomic stability are insulated from immediate political pressures, so too might a treasury—especially in functions like forecasting, revenue collection, and debt issuance.
The credibility of an independent treasury extends beyond its internal workings. Reliable and professionally managed fiscal behavior builds confidence among citizens, investors, and institutions. When financial governance is free from sudden reversals or partisan manipulation, it fosters trust and encourages long-term investment. Independence also helps prevent the politicization of fiscal enforcement, reducing the temptation to use taxation or regulations as tools of political favor or retaliation.
However, institutional independence is not without risks. Fiscal decisions are not merely technical; they are moral and distributive, touching on societal values, justice, and competing visions of the common good. Shielding these decisions entirely from democratic debate risks technocratic overreach, ideological rigidity, or disconnect from lived realities. Expertise alone cannot legitimize choices that affect livelihoods and social priorities.
The solution is not absolute independence but a careful balance between insulation and accountability. A treasury designed for long-term neutrality must be bound by clear mandates, subject to transparent review, and accountable through publicly visible processes. Its leadership should be appointed through pluralistic methods that reduce capture by any one faction, and its actions should undergo open reporting, independent audits, and legal oversight. Protected from arbitrary dismissal or short-term interference, it must still answer ultimately to the legal and ethical framework established by society through its representative institutions.
Moreover, any institutional design must include mechanisms for coordinated emergency response. No treasury, however independent, should be structurally paralyzed in times of acute crisis. Temporary protocols for collaboration with political authorities—limited by law and time—ensure that flexibility does not compromise integrity.
Ultimately, the case for an independent treasury rests not only on technical competence but on maintaining civic trust. When fiscal governance is shaped by rules rather than impulses, by analysis rather than improvisation, and by impartial stewardship rather than partisan interest, it becomes a stabilizing force in public life. The institutional form must embody a dual commitment: to professional expertise and democratic legitimacy. Independence, in this sense, is not isolation but principled restraint—a structured commitment to ethical limits and responsible governance. It is the disciplined and transparent use of power, grounded in law, public deliberation, and long-term accountability. This discipline protects the treasury’s role as steward of the public good across political changes and economic cycles.
Any society seeking to secure the long-term integrity of its public finances must confront the structural incentives shaping its treasury. If fiscal authority remains vulnerable to fleeting political agendas, sustainability will always be precarious. But if that authority drifts too far from public input, it risks losing the legitimacy it depends on. The challenge is to build institutions that are durable without becoming unresponsive, disciplined without becoming opaque, and independent without giving up accountability.
*
Annotated Bibliography
Blyth, Mark: Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013 (Blyth explains how austerity, often framed as a technical necessity, has historically served as a political tool to restructure economic power. His analysis is crucial to understanding why an independent treasury should not be conceived as a default promoter of restrictive policy but as an institution committed to fiscal sustainability with social responsibility).
Brunner, Roger: “Independent Fiscal Authorities: A Comparative Analysis”. Public Finance Quarterly 21 (4): 482–505. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1993 (Brunner offers a comparative analysis of different models of independent fiscal authorities. His study provides an empirical foundation for evaluating how institutional independence can be balanced with effective mechanisms of democratic accountability).
Goodhart, Charles, and Dimitrios Tsomocos: The Challenge of Fiscal Independence. London: CEPR Press, 2021 (This volume examines the conceptual and practical challenges of separating fiscal policy from short-term political pressures. Its contribution is key to supporting the argument that fiscal independence must be grounded in clearly defined limits and democratic legitimacy to avoid self-referential technocracy).
Lledó, Victor, and Teresa Ter-Minassian: “Fiscal Councils and Independent Fiscal Institutions”. Washington; IMF Working Paper WP/22/47. International Monetary Fund, 2022 (This IMF paper provides a detailed overview of independent fiscal institutions across multiple jurisdictions. It emphasizes that the effectiveness of such institutions depends not only on their legal design but also on their integration into transparent democratic processes).
Ooms, Thomas: “Fiscal Policy and the Risk of Politicization”. Journal of Economic Perspectives 32 (3): 75–92. Nashville: American Economic Association, 2018 (Ooms argues that the politicization of fiscal policy leads to significant distortions in resource allocation. His article supports the idea that a structurally protected treasury can reduce the risk of decisions driven by partisan interests).
Stiglitz, Joseph E.: Economics of the Public Sector. New York: W. W. Norton, 2000 (This classic textbook offers a comprehensive framework on public sector economics. Stiglitz’s discussion of market failures and the role of institutions provides a solid theoretical foundation for justifying the careful design of a treasury with structural independence and public accountability).
Wehner, Joachim: Legislatures and the Budget Process: The Myth of Fiscal Control. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010 (Wehner challenges the presumption that legislatures exercise effective control over public budgets. His work suggests that, given legislative weakness, strengthening the institutional role of the treasury may be necessary to ensure transparency and fiscal discipline).
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.
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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.)
… Rethinking Identity and Belonging in Civic Life”
By Ricardo Morin
July 2025
Ricardo Morin Silence III 22’ x 30” Watercolor, graphite, gesso, acrylic on paper 2010
Abstract
This essay explores the moral and civic tensions between identity and democratic belonging. While the affirmation of cultural, ethnic, or political identity can offer dignity and solidarity, it can also harden into exclusionary boundaries. The essay argues that liberal democracies must find ways to acknowledge difference without allowing it to erode shared commitments to equal rights, mutual recognition, and the rule of law. Drawing on historical reflection and philosophical insight, it calls for a civic imagination that resists reductionism and makes space for the full complexity of human life.
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“Lines That Divide: Rethinking Identity and Belonging in Civic Life”
The idea of a people signifies more than shared humanity—it evokes a sense of belonging, shaped by culture, memory, and mutual recognition. At its best, it names the bonds that tie individuals to communities, traditions, and aspirations larger than themselves. Yet when the phrase my people becomes a marker of separation or proprietary ownership over culture, suffering, or truth, it risks reinforcing the very divisions that our civic and legal frameworks aim to overcome. What begins as a declaration of identity can easily become a posture of exclusion. We hear it in moments of pain, pride, or fear: “You wouldn’t understand—you’re not one of us.” Sometimes that is true. But when the language of belonging hardens into a refusal to listen or an excuse not to care, it stops being a refuge and becomes a wall.
Throughout history, group identities—whether national, racial, religious, or political—have served both as sources of solidarity and as instruments of division. While identity offers a means to reclaim dignity and assert visibility in the face of marginalization, it also contains the seeds of separation. The line between affirmation and alienation is perilously thin. The same identity that uplifts a community can harden into a boundary that isolates others. It is a double-edged sword: capable of healing or harming, depending on how it is wielded.
The modern democratic project rests on a delicate balance: it must recognize difference while upholding equality. Liberal democracies are premised on the idea that all individuals, regardless of group affiliation, possess equal rights under the law. It’s a principle taught in early childhood, often before it’s fully understood: the sense that rules should be fair, that being left out or judged before being known feels wrong. That early moral intuition is echoed in constitutional promises, which exist not just to reflect majorities but to protect the dignity of each person, especially when they are in the minority—of belief, background, or circumstance.
The goal is not to erase identity, but to prevent it from becoming the sole axis along which rights, value, or participation are measured. When identity becomes the primary currency of belonging, we risk turning citizenship into a competition of grievances, where recognition is awarded only at the expense of others.
This problem is not abstract. We see it daily in public discourse, where appeals to identity often overshadow appeals to principle. The phrase my people can be used to claim historical injury, moral superiority, or cultural authority—but it can also suggest exclusion, as if others are not part of that moral circle. The danger lies in what is left unsaid: who is not included in my people? Who becomes them?
Such binaries—us versus them—flatten the complexity of human relationships and obscure our mutual dependence. In truth, no community exists in isolation. Our economies, institutions, and ecosystems are inextricably linked. The law is designed to reflect that interdependence by granting rights universally, not tribally. Yet when identity becomes the filter through which justice is demanded or denied, the rule of law suffers. Justice ceases to be blind and becomes instead a servant of factional interests.
This does not mean we should abandon the language of identity. Cultural and historical specificity matter. Erasing them in the name of unity risks another form of injustice: the silencing of lived experiences. The solution is not to reject identity, but to contextualize it—to understand it as one part of a broader human condition, rather than the totality of a person’s worth or moral standing.
To move forward, we must ask a hard question: Can we acknowledge identity without allowing it to calcify into division? Can we affirm cultural or historical differences while building institutions and relationships that are capacious enough to include those unlike ourselves?
Doing so requires more than tolerance. It demands a civic imagination—one that envisions solidarity not as uniformity, but as the commitment to coexist with dignity across lines of difference. It means seeing others not primarily as representatives of a group, but as individuals with rights, needs, and aspirations equal to our own. It means remembering that no one can be fully known by a single trait, history, or belonging—not even ourselves. We each carry contradictions: tenderness alongside prejudice, loyalty tangled with resentment, the need to be seen and the fear of being exposed. To honor our shared humanity is to make space for that complexity—not to excuse harm, but to understand that moral life begins not with certainty, but with humility.
Ultimately, the challenge of our time is not merely to recognize difference, but to live with it constructively. The real test of a pluralistic society is not how loudly it proclaims diversity, but how equitably it distributes belonging. To succeed, we must shift from my people to our people—not as an erasure of identity, but as a deeper, shared commitment to the fragile experiment of coexistence.
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Annotated Bibliography
Appiah, Kwame Anthony: The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity. New York: Liveright, 2018. (Explores how identities such as race, creed, and nation are constructed, sustained, and misused—calling for a more flexible, cosmopolitan ethics.)
Arendt, Hannah: The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958. (Analyzes the nature of political life and plurality, grounding civic belonging in the shared space of action and speech rather than fixed identities.)
Benhabib, Seyla: The Claims of Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global Era. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002. (Defends universal human rights while acknowledging the legitimacy of cultural claims—proposing a model of democratic iterations.)
Fukuyama, Francis: Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018. (Traces the rise of identity politics globally and its impact on democratic institutions, arguing for a re-centering of shared civic values.)
Glazer, Nathan, and Daniel P. Moynihan: Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians and Irish of New York City. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1963. (Classic sociological study showing how ethnic identities persist across generations and shape urban belonging in complex, often contradictory ways.)
Hooks, Bell: Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics. Boston: South End Press, 1990. (Critiques exclusionary forms of identity politics and calls for forms of solidarity that cross boundaries of race, gender, and class.)
Ignatieff, Michael: Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994. (Personal and political reflections on nationalism in the post–Cold War era, warning of the moral danger in defining belonging through ancestry.)
Rawls, John: Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. (Presents a theory of justice grounded in overlapping consensus rather than shared identity, advocating for stability in a pluralist society.)
Taylor, Charles: Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition. Edited by Amy Gutmann. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. (Argues that recognition of cultural identity is vital to individual dignity, but must be balanced within a just liberal framework.)
Wiesel, Elie: Nobel Peace Prize Lecture. Oslo: Nobel Foundation, 1986. (A deeply moral reflection on human solidarity, memory, and the responsibility to resist indifference—invoking identity without exclusion.)
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.
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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.)
The image that opens this essay was taken inside the Masonic Temple of Philadelphia, a structure conceived by architect John Mary Gibson and interior designer George Herzog as a civic sanctum of symbolic order. Along one of its grand corridors, the Latin phrase fide et fiducia—“by faith and trust”—appears inscribed in gold, presiding over patterned walls, vaulted symmetry, and ritual space.
Such inscriptions, embedded in the design of institutions, are not incidental. They distill a worldview into mottos, gestures, and emblems, inviting belief without question. In this architecture of conviction, the ideals of trust, honor, and fidelity are codified through repetition and reverence. The physical setting becomes a moral template.
This essay explores the persistence of such forms—how belonging is cultivated through ritual, how virtue is performed through alignment, and how, in modern life, the aesthetics of tradition may obscure the labor of thought. The photograph does not explain itself, but its symbols remain present—unmoving, persistent, and open to interpretation.
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The Ritual of Belonging
Group virtue often operates without scrutiny. Once symbols are introduced—flags, mottos, salutes—values begin to resemble formulas: repeatable, ceremonial, unexamined. Belonging takes precedence over understanding. Within such frameworks, the line between loyalty and obedience fades, and systems of moral performance begin to replace systems of moral reasoning.
The structure is familiar. Organizations built on tradition—be they civic, fraternal, or political—adopt postures of unity and discipline, cultivating a sense of shared purpose while discouraging internal dissent. Ceremonies do not welcome contradiction. In many such settings, affirmation becomes a form of sublimation, and ritual a substitute for thought.
This cultural pattern predates contemporary politics. Its persistence depends not on any one ideology, but on a readiness to exchange reflection for reassurance. When belief is inherited through performance rather than inquiry, it becomes indistinguishable from superstition. The language remains uplifting—duty, service, honor—but the content thins out. Over time, what is repeated becomes what is revered, and what is revered becomes untouchable.
This imitation has become increasingly visible in the political sphere. No more so than in the visible rise of Trumpism, which distilled belonging into spectacle and allegiance into repetition. It weaponized affirmation, turned performance into principle, and recoded belonging as opposition. Its slogans thrived on exclusion, its truths on applause. But what emerged was not only a political movement—it was a ritual template: highly transferable, affect-driven, and structurally indifferent to fact. That template now echoes far beyond politics, seeping into how reality itself is being filtered, including through artificial intelligence. Trained on language steeped in polarized emotion and viral certainty, AI systems are learning to mimic a world shaped by fervor, not reflection. The same pressures that hollow out discourse in human arenas—speed, spectacle, certainty—now shape the machine’s mirror of us. In this feedback loop, the aesthetics of belief are reinforced, while the conditions for nuance erode.
Identity is offered as redemption. The individual is folded into a collective story with a ready-made meaning and a designated enemy.Applause becomes evidence. Slogans become arguments. Conviction replaces clarity. Political movements, once shaped by ideals, begin to mirror the emotional architecture of clubs, congregations, and lodges.
Few notice the shift while it happens. Emotional coherence is mistaken for truth. Dissent sounds like betrayal. The invocation of tradition appears more trustworthy than the disruption of contradiction. Repetition creates comfort. Symbols produce confidence. Under such conditions, facts are less persuasive than feelings that seem familiar.
This is not the result of ignorance alone. It is the outcome of cultural habits that discourage ambiguity. In many environments, uncertainty is mistaken for weakness. Questioning is mistaken for disloyalty. The space for moral hesitation—the place where ethical clarity might grow—is quietly removed.
Authoritarianism does not begin with violence. It begins with ritual. Its strength lies not in force, but in emotional choreography: the right gesture at the right time, the practiced cadence of certainty, the reward of approval. It borrows the tone of heritage to advance the mechanisms of control. In its early forms, it is nearly indistinguishable from patriotism, from tradition, from pride.
Resistance, if it is to mean anything, cannot rely on counter-slogans or louder voices. It must begin with the restoration of difficulty—with the refusal to accept that belonging is more important than understanding. Reflection must interrupt ritual. Doubt must interrupt repetition. The goal is not to replace one set of unexamined beliefs with another, but to slow the machinery long enough to remember what thought feels like when it is not performed.
No movement built on emotional choreography can long withstand honest attention. It thrives on reflex, not recognition. And when the symbols lose their spell—when applause no longer passes for argument; then clarity, long exiled, returns—not quietly, but with the gravity of attention.
*
Ricardo F. Morin, Bala Cynwyd, Pa., July 16, 2025
Annotated Bibliography
Arendt, Hannah:Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.New York: Viking Press, 1963.(A foundational analysis of how ordinary people participate in systemic harm by following rules and routines without moral reflection).
Arendt, Hannah:The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt, 1973.(A sweeping historical account of the conditions that enable authoritarian regimes, with emphasis on ideological myth-making and political isolation).
Berger, Peter L., and Luckmann, Thomas:The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge.New York:Anchor Books, 1967.(Explores how collective belief systems take on the force of reality through habitual social practices and institutional reinforcement).
Bermeo, Nancy:“On Democratic Backsliding”. Journal of Democracy 27 (1): 5–19, 2016.(An analysis of how modern authoritarianism emerges gradually within democratic frameworks, often through rituals of legitimacy).
Brown, Wendy:Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire. Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press, 2006.(Critiques how liberal ideals of tolerance and diversity can paradoxically serve exclusionary and imperial power structures).
Eco, Umberto:“Ur-Fascism”. The New York Review of Books, June 22, 1995.(A compact essay identifying recurring features of fascist ideology, particularly its emotional appeal and use of cultural nostalgia).
Elias, Norbert:The Civilizing Process.Oxford: Blackwell. Revised Edition, 2000.(Traces the historical evolution of self-regulation and public behavior, revealing how ritual and hierarchy shape social norms).
Frankfurt, Harry G.: On Bullshit.Princeton:Princeton University Press, 2005.(A concise philosophical inquiry into the nature of insincere speech and the erosion of truth in public language).
Fromm, Erich:Escape from Freedom.New York:Farrar & Rinehart, 1941.(Describes the psychological mechanisms by which individuals relinquish freedom in exchange for belonging under authoritarian rule).
Girard, René:Violence and the Sacred.Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977.(Examines how ritualized violence and scapegoating function as stabilizing myths in collective identity and moral systems).
Graeber, David:The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy.Brooklyn, NY:Melville House, 2015.(A critique of how bureaucratic systems—both state and civic—sustain irrational authority through ritual and deference).
Hedges, Chris:American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.New York:Free Press, 2007.(Investigates how religious and civic ritual are used to normalize authoritarian tendencies in American political life).
Hofstadter, Richard:The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays.Cambridge, MA:Harvard University Press, 1964.(A seminal exploration of conspiratorial thinking and performative virtue in American political rhetoric.
Illouz, Eva: The End of Love: A Sociology of Negative Relations. Oxford:Oxford University Press, 2020.(Analyzes how emotional life is structured by political and economic forces, with attention to how identities are manipulated by affect).
Milgram, Stanley:Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View.New York:Harper & Row, 1974.(Details the famous psychological experiments on obedience, showing how institutional framing can suppress ethical responsibility).
Orwell, George:“Politics and the English Language”. Horizon, April 1946.(A classic essay on how political language obscures meaning and enables ideological deception).
Putnam, Robert D.:Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community.New York:Simon & Schuster, 2000.(Documents the decline of civic engagement and the transformation of group belonging in American culture).
Scott, James C.:Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed.New Haven:Yale University Press, 1998.(Explores how centralized systems impose simplified models of society that disregard lived experience, often with destructive effects).
Sennett, Richard:The Fall of Public Man. New York: Knopf, 1977.(Argues that modern life has hollowed out the space for reflective public discourse, replacing it with scripted social roles).
Turner, Victor:The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure.Chicago:Aldine Publishing, 1969.(Foundational in the study of ritual, this book explores how symbolic acts create social cohesion while suppressing ambiguity).
Weber, Max:The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.New York:Scribner, 1958.(Connects religious discipline and capitalist rationality, illuminating how ethics become institutionalized through habit and belief).
Weil, Simone:The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Toward Mankind.New York: Harper & Row, 1952.(A moral meditation on the need for justice, belonging, and resistance to ideological coercion).
Zuboff, Shoshana:The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power.New York:PublicAffairs, 2019.(Details how digital platforms convert personal behavior into economic control, blending corporate power with rituals of personalization).
This story forms part of a narrative triptych alongside In Tenebris [2021] and In Darkness [2022], three pieces that explore the same murder trial through a different angle.
In Tenebris addresses the deliberation from within; In Darkness proposes an open-ended reimagining; Between Law and Conscience returns to the experience from a reflective distance—to examine what the justice system leaves out.
*
The trial took place seven years after the murder.
It was difficult to grasp how something so grave could have waited so long. No weapon had been recovered.The witnesses gave halting, conflicted testimony.The victim had been fourteen when he was shot. The defendant—who looked barely older than twenty at the time of trial—must have been about the same age back then. Both boys, really.What had unfolded in those missing years—before and after—was never addressed.
We were told the crime stemmed from a turf dispute between youth gangs. Not a premeditated act, but a flare of violence born in a world where survival, for some, is its own daily labor. Children—some no older than primary school age—trapped in loops of retaliation, where fear and poverty set the rhythm. None of that—none of what might explain how violence germinates where options vanish—was part of what we were allowed to consider.
There may have been earlier proceedings. Maybe the case began in juvenile court. Maybe there were appeals, delays, witnesses who refused to testify. Or maybe the file just sank, for a time, under the sheer weight of the judicial backlog. By the time we—the jury—entered, none of that background was available to us. Our task was to begin where the case file did: with the event. As if time had left no mark. As if the intervening seven years had not eroded memory or reshaped the young man who now sat before us.
The purpose, formally, was to determine guilt or innocence. But from the outset it felt like we were being asked to apply a blunt question to a situation that resisted such clean edges. This was not just about what had happened—but about what could not be said.
We were instructed to confine ourselves to the evidence. And we tried. But the questions kept tugging—quietly, steadily. How could we not see that this was a killing between teenagers? That it unfolded in a context already stacked against them? How could we not feel that something vital had been left out of the frame?
No one spoke of the defendant’s time in custody—how long he’d waited for trial, whether he’d been offered a plea, or had access to counsel early on. And that expression on his face—unreadable to some, unsettling to others—may have carried traces of confinement, of growing up inside a system that offers little room for grace. I couldn’t know. But I kept wondering.
Despite our best efforts to remain disciplined, the questions kept returning. What chances had that boy really had to escape the fate that claimed him? What might his life have looked like if different choices—his or others’—had been possible earlier? Was it fair, even legal, to weigh his guilt without considering the conditions that had shaped him?
But those thoughts were not admissible. They weren’t in the record. The judge’s instructions were clear: such context, however compelling, was irrelevant to the task before us. Justice, we were told, required a kind of tunnel vision—stripped of background, stripped of time.
So the proceedings followed their course: objections, testimony, forensic accounts, cross-examinations. The weapon was never found. Both the prosecution and the defense had their lapses—moments where arguments frayed or confidence gave way to fatigue. But what lingered wasn’t the strength or weakness of the case. It was the feeling that something essential remained unspoken, unreachable. That the full truth—if such a thing existed—had been sealed off long before we arrived.
Some jurors were ready to decide quickly. For them, the evidence presented was enough to convict. Others, myself included, were less sure—not out of sympathy, but because the case felt incomplete. I kept returning to a quiet unease: were we being asked to judge a person, or only the narrow outline the system permitted us to see?
During deliberations, the tension thickened. One juror said that the defendant’s withdrawn posture looked like guilt. Another saw in it exhaustion. I couldn’t say. But I kept asking myself—what does innocence look like after seven years in pretrial detention? What shape does presence take in someone who has lived under constant suspicion?
On one afternoon, before we adjourned for the day, the youngest among us—barely twenty—spoke up. His voice was low but certain:
“I grew up in a neighborhood too, where you were more likely to be stopped for how you looked than to be seen as someone worth protecting. I don’t know if he did it. But I do know what it feels like to be judged before you understand who you are.”
No one responded. But something in the room changed. The atmosphere softened. Our conversations grew less defensive, more reflective.
It took us nearly three weeks to reach a verdict. Not because the case was complex in a technical sense, but because we all—each of us—had to confront not only the facts but our own expectations of justice. Doubts lingered. The discussions were civil, even quiet, but weighted. It was as if the jury room had become something else—a kind of confessional, where what we revealed was not just about the case, but about ourselves.
I thought of my father, who used to say that justice must be blind, but never deaf. That one must listen for what’s withheld, not just what’s claimed. That memory stayed with me as we signed the verdict: not guilty.
There were quiet cheers from the defendant’s side. The victim’s mother wept. We, the jury, didn’t feel resolution—only the tremor of uncertainty. The judge thanked us for our service. We exited through a narrow corridor, shielded from the public, down a service elevator, then out.
I don’t know what became of him after that. Maybe he disappeared again into the margins of a city that had already marked him. Maybe he tried to begin again. I can’t know. But I do know this: that trial was not only about one act of violence. It was about the quiet violence of exclusion—of what the law, in its procedures, often refuses to see.
And it is that omission—silent, sanctioned, systematic—that places justice itself on the stand.
On Trump, Putin, and the Veiled Axis from Kyiv to Caracas“
In recent weeks, I’ve watched with growing unease as foreign policy decisions under Donald Trump unfold with a peculiar symmetry—one that echoes, benefits, or subtly enables the strategic priorities of Vladimir Putin. While these choices are framed by officials as matters of diplomacy, security, or immigration control, the pattern that emerges—when traced across geography and timing—is harder to dismiss. It suggests not only a convergence of interests but also a convergence of silence, of things not said, not questioned, not confronted.
A sharply argued opinion piece in The Washington Post by Marian Da Silva Parra, a scholar at Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute, called out the administration’s expanded travel bans for what they are: policies that punish Venezuelan dissidents and effectively strengthen Nicolás Maduro’s grip by allowing him to portray his opponents as foreign threats. But what is more telling than the piece itself is the fact that it appeared only as an op-ed, not as a subject of sustained front-page reporting. For all its substance, the critique is offered through a medium that functions more like commentary than alert.
At the same time, U.S. support for Ukraine is being retracted and reissued with increasing hesitation. Aid deliveries were quietly paused and only resumed after public pressure following the July 4 missile strike on Kyiv. Multilateral sanctions coordination has reportedly faltered, and new diplomatic pressure is being placed on Ukraine to accept a ceasefire—one the Kremlin has shown no real interest in reciprocating.
These are not isolated gestures. They land, again and again, in Moscow’s favor.
This invites a broader question: Are we witnessing the quiet shaping of a two-front geopolitical shift—from Eastern Europe to the Western Hemisphere—where American policy, whether by intention or inertia, now facilitates Russia’s global posture? Or is this merely the result of domestic calculations with unintended consequences abroad?
There is, to be clear, no proof of deliberate collusion. But outcomes matter. A weakened Ukraine. An emboldened Maduro. A distracted and demoralized press. A public fed more performance than substance. The effect is less of a conspiracy than of a stage being set—unexamined, unchallenged, and disturbingly aligned with a worldview in which democratic resistance is treated as destabilizing and authoritarian consolidation as order restored.
In such a climate, perception is not a matter of optics. It becomes the only terrain left to navigate what official language refuses to name.
Observations On Perception 