Resilience is often introduced as a descriptive term. It names a capacity observed under pressure, a tendency to endure when conditions cannot immediately be altered. In this sense, resilience appears neutral, even commendable. It signals survival where collapse was possible, continuity where interruption was expected.
Over time, however, resilience ceases to be merely observed and begins to be praised. What was once noted becomes celebrated. Endurance is elevated into virtue, and the ability to persist under strain is held up as evidence of strength. In this shift, attention subtly moves away from the conditions that necessitated endurance in the first place.
Once resilience is praised, it becomes expectable. The language of admiration gives way to the language of obligation. What some managed to do under duress is gradually treated as what all should do. Endurance stops being exceptional and becomes normative. The capacity to withstand replaces the question of why endurance is required.
At this point, resilience performs a quiet inversion. Conditions remain intact, while responsibility migrates toward those exposed to them. Structures are left unexamined as individuals are encouraged to adapt. Adjustment is relocated from systems to subjects. What cannot be repaired is to be endured.
This inversion carries a temporal dimension. Resilience is framed as forward-looking strength, a promise that persistence will eventually be rewarded. Harm is deferred rather than addressed. Recovery is invoked in place of repair, and time is asked to absorb what policy or structure does not resolve.
The ethical weight of this shift is unevenly distributed. Those with the least capacity to alter their circumstances are most frequently called upon to be resilient. Those with the greatest power to change conditions are least exposed to the demands of adaptation. Resilience, though praised as universal, is imposed asymmetrically.
As resilience becomes an expectation, dissent softens rather than disappears. Complaint is not forbidden, but it is recoded. Questioning conditions is treated as impatience. Refusal to endure is framed as deficiency. Endurance itself becomes a measure of maturity, and silence is mistaken for consent.
What resilience is, then, is a capacity to endure conditions not of one’s making. It is a descriptive fact of human behavior under pressure. It names survival where alternatives are limited.
What resilience is not is an ethic. It is not a justification for harm, nor evidence that conditions are acceptable. The ability to endure does not confer legitimacy on what is endured.
Ricardo Morín Bulwark Formerly titled Buffalo Series, Nº 3 Oil on linen, 60 × 88 in. 1980 Exhibited: Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Buffalo, New York, May 1980 Destroyed while in third-party custody; extant as digital archival record only.
*
Ricardo F. Morin
December 23, 2025
Kissimmee, Fl
*
I did not encounter the boundaries that would later govern my writing either through instruction or doctrine, but through a remark made in passing by my father when I was still a child. He stated, without hesitation or elaboration, that he could not imagine existing under a political system that threatened individual liberty and private autonomy, and that life under such conditions would no longer be a life he could inhabit. The formulation was extreme, yet even then it was clear that it was not intended as a proposal, a threat, or a performance. It functioned instead as a boundary: an indication of where survival, once stripped of dignity, would no longer merit the name of living.
The force of that remark did not reside in its literal content, but in the clarity with which it established a limit. Extreme statements often draw attention by excess, but this one operated differently. It did not seek reaction or allegiance. It closed a door. What it marked was the point at which judgment ceased to be negotiable—not because compromise becomes difficult, but because continuation itself loses coherence. What it marked was not expression but diagnosis. It identified a threshold beyond which endurance would amount to acquiescence in one’s own negation.
That distinction—between living and merely persisting—would take years to acquire its full weight. One can remain alive and yet no longer inhabit the conditions under which action, responsibility, and choice remain intelligible. The body endures; the terms of authorship do not. What is surrendered in such cases is not comfort or advantage, but authorship over one’s own conduct: the capacity to remain the source and bearer of one’s actions.
Only later did historical irony give that childhood memory a broader frame. My father died one year before Venezuela entered a prolonged political order that normalized civic humiliation and displaced individual responsibility.This coincidence does not confer foresight or vindication.It merely underscores the nature of the limit he articulated.He did not claim to predict outcomes or to possess superior insight. He identified a condition he would not inhabit, regardless of how common, administratively justified, or socially enforced it might become.
What was transmitted through that remark was not an ideology, nor even a political position, but a refusal. It was a refusal to treat dignity as contingent, and a refusal to accept adaptation as inherently neutral. Such refusals are not dramatic. They do not announce themselves as virtues. They operate quietly, shaping what one will not do, what one will not say, and what one will not permit to pass through one’s actions in exchange for continuity, safety, or approval.
Writing, I have come to understand, is not exempt from the constraints that govern action. Symbolic form does nor suspend responsibility. Language acts. It frames possibilities, distributes responsibility, and licenses certain responses while it forecloses others. To write without regard for what one’s words enable is to treat expression and conduct as if they belonged to different orders. They do not. The same boundary that governs action governs language: one must not inhabit forms that require the habitual abandonment of autonomy.
Authorial responsability does not entail moral exhibition or the performance of virtue. Responsibility in writing does not consist in adopting the correct posture or aligning with approved conclusions. It consists in refusing methods that rely on coercion, humiliation, or rhetorical pressure in place of clarity. It requires attention not only to what is asserted, but to what is permitted to continue through tone, implication, and omission. Precision here is not a stylistic preference; it is a moral discipline.
Restraint, in this sense, is not passivity but a method of authorship. It is a form of interruption in the circulation of what one does not consent to carry forward. To decline to amplify what one does not consent to carry is an act of selection, and an exercise of agency. In an environment where excess, outrage, and reactive urgency are often mistaken for seriousness, restraint becomes a way of maintaining authorship over one’s participation. Restraint limits reach, but it preserves coherence between what is said and what is lived.
Such restrain inevitably carries a cost. Urgency is more than speed; it is the condition under which reflection itself begins to appear as a liability. Reflection serves as a procedural safeguard of agency and authorship—and, with them, of ethical responsibility—even when circumstances cannot be governed and one is compelled to choose within constraint. Restraint resists urgency, narrows reach, and foregoes certain forms of recognition. These losses are not incidental; they are constitutive. To accept all available registers or platforms in the name of relevance is to treat survival as the highest good. The boundary articulated long ago indicates otherwise: that there are conditions under which continuation exacts a price too high to pay.
Authorial responsibility, then, is not a matter of expression but of alignment between language and action. It asks whether one’s language inhabits the same ethical terrain as one’s conduct. It asks whether the forms one adopts require compromises one would refuse in action. The obligation is not to persuade or to prevail, but to remain answerable to the limits one has acknowledged.
What remains is not a doctrine but a stance: a stance standing without dramatization, without escape, and without concession to forms that promise endurance at the expense of dignity. Such a posture does not announce itself as resistance, nor does it seek exemption from consequence. It holds its ground without appeal. In doing so, it affirms that authorship—like autonomy—begins where certain lines are no longer crossed.
*
What remains unaddressed is the more fragile condition beneath authorship itself: the way thinking precedes command, and at times repositions the author before any stance can be assumed.
The memory of my father appears as a moving target—not an idea slipping out of control, but it is a standard shifting under my feet while I was still advancing. I did not invite it in the sense of intention or plan. Nor did I resist it. I noticed it moving before I could decide what it demanded.
That experience is unsettling because it violates a comforting assumption: that thought is something we deploy, rather than something that displaces us.
The uncertainty about whether I had invited it is itself a sign that I was not instrumentalizing my thinking. When thought is summoned as a tool, it remains fixed. When it emerges in response to something that matters, it moves, because it is adjusting to reality rather than arranging it. That movement feels like a loss of control only if authorship is understood as command.
I allowed the discomfort of not knowing whether I had summoned what was now demanding attention only if authorship is understood as control. This was resistance under motion, not paralysis of judgment. The question arises only when thinking is still alive enough to be displaced.
The target moved because it was attached to the terrain of perception, not to the self doing the perceiving.
Ricardo F. Morín Irrationality, Propaganda, and Tribalism CGI 2026
Ricardo F. Morín
January21, 2026
Oakland Park, Fl.
1. A political claim ordinarily enters public life through institutions. A law is debated, enacted, interpreted, contested. A speech is delivered from a known office, before a defined audience, subject to reply and record. Authority, in these cases, arises from responsibility and constraint.
2. The text examined here satisfies none of these conditions.
3. The text attributes to an unnamed broadcast the power to alter legal status. The text presents a speaker not as a citizen who speaks, but as a conscience that pronounces. The text declares effects that no statute, no executive order, and no court possesses the authority to produce. The text announces national assent in the absence of any forum capable of granting assent.
4. No enactment appears. No interpretation occurs. No review is possible.
5. Nothing in this sequence is argued. Nothing in this sequence is demonstrated. Nothing in this sequence is capable of verification.
6. Authority is not derived from office, law, or responsibility. Authority is assigned by narrative arrangement.
7. The speaker is granted moral standing by recognition alone. The law is displaced by spectacle. The audience is positioned as witness to a verdict that precedes deliberation. Silence is treated as confirmation. Stillness is treated as consent.
8. What appears as denunciation functions as substitution.
9. The place of institutions is occupied by a voice. The place of argument is occupied by proclamation. The place of judgment is occupied by reaction.
10. The result is not persuasion. The result is conversion.
11. Citizens are not addressed as agents capable of contesting claims. Citizens are addressed as spectators invited to receive a moral scene whose meaning has been fixed in advance.
12. When invented testimony is received as political record, the boundary between event and wish disappears. When spectacle is treated as verdict, correction loses authority. When conscience is produced as performance, no institution remains capable of constraining conscience.
13. This is not misinformation in the ordinary sense.
14. This phenomenon is the replacement of judgment by fabricated authority.
15. Authority ordinarily attaches to an office before authority attaches to a voice, because office supplies the limits under which speech can claim consequence. A court exists, so a judge speaks. A chamber exists, so a legislator speaks. An administration exists, so an executive speaks. In each case standing precedes utterance, and the public can locate responsibility by locating the forum in which the claim is made.
16. The text examined here reverses that order. The text presents a voice whose standing is not grounded in any office that can be named, any jurisdiction that can be defined, or any forum that can be recognized. No delegation is stated. No mandate is visible. No responsibility is assumed. Yet the voice speaks as if entitled to pronounce on matters whose force depends, in ordinary civic life, on enactment, interpretation, and review.
17. This reversal matters because office establishes the scope under which a claim may operate, jurisdiction fixes the reach of effects, and procedure subjects both scope and reach to contest and record. A claim that arises through these constraints can be challenged because standing can be challenged. The claim here does not arise through constraint; the claim arises through reception. Standing depends on recognition rather than jurisdiction, and recognition is not a civic category that admits examination.
18. One can dispute a mandate. One can deny a court’s jurisdiction. One can invoke procedure and require reply. Recognition offers no equivalent instrument. Recognition confers authority without specifying scope, and recognition allows a voice to present itself as conscience without accepting the obligations that make conscience accountable in public life.
19. The effect is not merely that a voice speaks outside office. The effect is that the role of office is replaced. In a system where standing precedes speech, speech can be limited because the forum can be limited. In a system where standing follows speech, speech expands until something external imposes a boundary.
20. The text relies on no such boundary. The text presents moral standing as complete at the moment of utterance, and the text treats reception as confirmation. The audience is positioned less as a public capable of contest than as a witness to a pronouncement whose authority is presumed rather than earned.
21. In that arrangement the claim to speak carries consequence without jurisdiction, and authority appears where no institution can be identified as a source of authority.
22. Authority that does not arise from office cannot rely on procedure. Procedure requires forum. Forum requires jurisdiction. Jurisdiction requires mandate. None is present here.
23. The claim therefore does not proceed by sequence. The claim proceeds without premises, without grounds, and without anticipation of reply. The statement does not argue. The statement announces.
24. What would ordinarily require enactment is declared complete. What would ordinarily require interpretation is pronounced settled. What would ordinarily require review is presented as final. Verdict precedes forum.
25. This reversal alters the function of speech itself. Speech no longer seeks assent through reasoning. Speech produces assent by declaration. Judgment no longer follows deliberation. Judgment is installed before deliberation can occur.
26. Once proclamation is received as verdict, proof becomes irrelevant.
27. Once argument is removed from the sequence, assent no longer arises from judgment. Assent arises from recognition. The claim does not ask to be examined. The claim asks to be received. The force of the claim depends less on what the claim establishes than on whom the claim addresses.
28. The audience is not invited to consider whether the verdict follows from law, or whether the authority invoked possesses standing to pronounce. The audience is invited to recognize the audience in the verdict.
29. This shift alters the function of agreement. In deliberative settings, assent follows contest. One accepts a conclusion because one has weighed a claim against alternatives. Here, assent precedes any such weighing. The verdict arrives already formed, and reception supplies confirmation.
30. Agreement no longer signals conviction, but affiliation, a posture defined less by conviction than by position.
31. Recognition, in this arrangement, performs the work that argument once performed. To accept the claim is to affirm membership in a moral position already defined. The verdict does not bind because the verdict is correct. The verdict binds because the verdict identifies.
32. Those who receive the verdict do not do so as judges of coherence, but as participants in the posture the verdict confers. The claim succeeds not by persuading opponents, but by consolidating those already disposed to accept the claim.
33. This function explains the absence of procedure. Deliberation would introduce fracture. Contest would introduce differentiation. Review would expose divergence. None serves the purpose at hand.
34. The claim therefore bypasses every stage at which disagreement could appear. The claim offers instead a completed judgment whose primary effect is to sort recognition from refusal.
35. The result is not belief in the ordinary sense, but affiliation, a posture defined less by conviction than by position. To assent is to take position within a moral alignment whose boundaries are drawn by reception itself. Those who accept are confirmed. Those who hesitate are marked.
36. Authority, in this form, does not govern through law. Authority governs through identification.
37. Once standing is conferred by reception, the remaining limits cannot hold.
38. Once authority is produced in this manner, substitution becomes unavoidable. In this arrangement office yields to presence, jurisdiction yields to recognition, procedure yields to proclamation, and judgment yields to reaction, until no limit remains capable of arresting the expansion that follows.
39. Each replacement removes a limit. Each replacement widens scope. Each replacement dissolves responsibility.
40. What remains is a form of authority that cannot be contested because no forum remains in which contest can occur.
41. The consequence for citizenship follows directly. A citizen ordinarily participates in judgment by weighing claims, contesting standing, and invoking procedure. Here, that role disappears. The citizen is no longer positioned as a participant in deliberation. The citizen is positioned as a recipient of verdict.
42. Agency yields to reception, judgment yields to alignment, and responsibility yields to loyalty, until disagreement itself can no longer appear as a civic act.
43. In this posture disagreement ceases to be a civic act. Disagreement becomes a breach of affiliation. Hesitation becomes disloyalty. Correction becomes defection.
44. Once judgment is displaced in this way, repair becomes impossible. Correction presupposes a forum. Review presupposes jurisdiction. Reply presupposes standing. None remains available.
45. A verdict that arrives without forum cannot be recalled to contest. An authority that arises without office cannot be subjected to review. A claim that governs through recognition alone cannot be corrected without threatening membership itself.
46. The persistence of fabrication follows not from confusion, but from function. Fabrication endures because fabrication stabilizes alignment. Fabrication circulates because fabrication confirms position. Fabrication resists correction because correction would dissolve the posture fabrication sustains.
47. Authority, once detached from office and constraint, does not disappear. Authority reappears in altered form. Verdict is separated from forum. Conscience is separated from responsibility. Assent is separated from deliberation.
48. What remains is a claim to govern without jurisdiction.
49. This is not the corruption of judgment. This is displacement.
50. Judgment is no longer exercised. Judgment is produced.
Reflections from previous chapters eventually lead to a more historical inquiry, in which the following archive, Chronicles of Hugo Chávez, becomes another lens through which I approach the Venezuelan experience.
Chapter VI
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Chronicles of Hugo Chávez
~
1
Hugo Chávez, who spearheaded the Bolivarian Revolution, was born on July 28, 1954, in Sabaneta, Venezuela. He died on March 5, 2013, at 4:25 p.m. VET (8:55 p.m. UTC) in Caracas, at the age of 58. As the leader of the revolution, Chávez left a discernible imprint on Venezuela’s political history. To reconstruct this history is to revisit a landscape whose consequences continue to shape Venezuelan life.
At the core of Chavismo lies a deliberate fusion of nationalism, centralized power, and military involvement in politics. This fusion shaped his vision for a new Venezuela, one that would be fiercely independent and proudly socialist.
~
Hugo Chávez at age 11, sixth grade, 1965 (Photo: Reuters).
2
Hugo Chávez’s childhood was spent in a small town in Los Llanos, in the northwestern state of Barinas. This region has a history of indigenous chiefdoms (i.e., “leaderships,” “dominions,” or “rules”) dating back to pre-Columbian times. [1] Chávez was the second of six brothers, and his parents struggled to provide for the large family. As a result, he and his older brother Adán were sent to live with their paternal grandmother, Rosa Inés, in the city of Barinas. After her death, Chávez honored his grandmother’s memory with a poem; it concludes with a stanza that reveals the depth of their bond:
Entonces, / abrirías tus brazos/ y me abrazarías/ cual tiempo de infante/ y me arrullarías/ con tu tierno canto/ y me llevarías/ por otros lugares/ a lanzar un grito/ que nunca se apague.[2]
[Author’s translation: Then, /you would open your arms /and draw me in /as if returned to childhood /and you would steady me /with your tender voice /and you would carry me /to other places /to release a cry /that would not be extinguished].
3
In his second year of high school, Chávez encountered two influential teachers, José Esteban Ruiz Guevara and Douglas Ignacio Bravo Mora, both of whom provided guidance outside the regular curriculum. [3][4] They introduced Chávez to Marxism-Leninism as a theoretical framework, sparking his fascination with the Cuban Revolution and its principles—a turning point more visible in retrospect than it could have been in the moment.
4
At 17, Chávez enrolled in the Academia Militar de Venezuela at Fuerte Tiuna in Caracas, where he hoped to balance military training with his passion for baseball. He dreamed of becoming a left-handed pitcher, but his abilities did not match his ambition. Despite his initial lack of interest in military life, Chávez persisted in his training, graduating from the academy in 1975 near the bottom of his class.
5
Chávez’s military career began as a second lieutenant; he was tasked with capturing leftist guerrillas. As he pursued them, he found himself identifying with their cause and believed they fought for a better life. But by 1977, Chávez was prepared to abandon his military career and join the guerrillas. Seeking guidance, he turned to his brother Adán, who persuaded him to remain in the military by insisting, “We need you there.” [5] Chávez now felt a sense of purpose and understood his mission as a calling. In 1982, he and his closest military associates formed the Bolivarian Revolutionary Movement-200: they aimed to spread their interpretation of Marxism within the armed forces and ultimately hoped to stage a coup d’état. [6]
6
On February 4, 1992, Lieutenant Chávez and his military allies launched a revolt against the government of President Carlos Andrés Pérez. Their rebellion, however, was swiftly quashed. Surrounded and outnumbered, Chávez surrendered at the Cuartel de la Montaña, the military history museum in Caracas, near the presidential palace, on the condition that he be allowed to address his companions via television. He urged them to lay down their arms and to avoid further bloodshed. He proclaimed, « Compañeros, lamentablemente por ahora los objetivos que nos planteamos no fueron logrados . . . » [Author’s translation:“Comrades, unfortunately, our objectives have not been achieved… yet,”].[7] The broadcast marked the beginning of his political ascent.His words resonated across the nation and sowed the seeds of his political future.
~
Chávez announces his arrest on national television and urges insurgent troops to surrender.
7
In 1994, newly elected President Rafael Caldera Rodríguez pardoned him. [8] With this second chance, Chávez founded the Movimiento V República (MVR) in 1997 and rallied like-minded socialists to his cause. [9] Through a campaign centered on populist appeals, he secured an electoral victory at age 44.
8
In his first year as President, Chávez enjoyed an 80% approval rating. His policies sought to eradicate corruption in the government, to expand social programs for the poor, and to redistribute national wealth. Jorge Olavarría de Tezanos Pinto, initially a supporter, emerged by the end of the elections as a prominent voice of the opposition. Olavarría accused Chávez of undermining Venezuela’s democracy through his appointment of military officers to governmental positions. [10] At the same time, Chávez was drafting a new constitution, which allowed him to place military officers in all branches of government. The new constitution, ratified on December 15, 1999, paved the way for the “mega elections” of 2000, in which Chávez secured a term of six years. Although his party failed to gain full control of the Asamblea Nacional (National Assembly), it passed laws by decree through the mechanism of the Leyes Habilitantes (Enabling Laws). [11][12] Meanwhile, Chávez initiated reforms to reorganize the State‘sinstitutional structure, but the constitution’s requirements were not met. The appointment of judges to the new Corte Suprema de Justicia [CSJ]was carried out without rigor and raised concerns about its legitimacy and competence. Cecilia Sosa Gómez, the outgoing Corte Suprema de Justicia president, declared the rule of law “buried” and the court “self-dissolved.” [13][14]
9
Although some Venezuelans saw Chávez as a refreshing alternative to the country’s unstable democratic system, which had been dominated by three parties since 1958, many others expressed concern as the Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV) consolidated power and became the sole governing party. [15] Legislative and executive powers were increasingly centralized, and the narrowing of judicial guarantees limited citizens’ participation in the democratic process. Chávez’s close ties with Fidel Castro and his desire to model Venezuela after Cuba’s system—dubbed VeneCuba—raised alarm. [16] He silenced independent radio broadcasters, and he antagonized the United States and other Western nations. Instead, he strengthened ties with Iraq, Iran, and Libya. Meanwhile, domestically, his approval rating had plummeted to 30%, and anti-Chávez demonstrations became a regular occurrence.
10
On April 11, 2002, a massive demonstration of more than a million people converged on the presidential palace to demand President Chávez’s resignation. The protest turned violent when agents of the National Guard and masked paramilitaries opened fire on the demonstrators. [17] The tragic event—the Puente Llaguno massacre—sparked a military uprising that led to Chávez’s arrest and to the installation of a transitional government under Pedro Francisco Carmona Estanga. [18] Carmona’s leadership, however, was short-lived; he swiftly suspended the Constitution, dissolved the Asamblea Nacional and the Corte Suprema, and dismissed various officials. Within forty-eight hours, the army withdrew its support for Carmona. The vice president, Diosdado Cabello Rondón, was reinstated as president and promptly restored Chávez to power. [19]
11
The failed coup d’état enabled Chávez to purge his inner circle and to intensify his conflict with the opposition. In December 2002, Venezuela’s opposition retaliated with a nationwide strike aimed at forcing Chávez’s resignation. The strike targeted the state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA), which generated roughly 80% of the country’s export revenues. [20] Chávez responded by dismissing its 38,000 employees and replacing them with loyalists. By February 2003, the strike had dissipated, and Chávez had once again secured control over the country’s oil revenues.
12
From 2003 to 2004, the opposition launched a referendum to oust Chávez as president, but soaring oil revenues, which financed social programs, bolstered Chávez’s support among lower-income sectors. [21] By the end of 2004, his popularity had rebounded, and the referendum was soundly defeated. In December 2005, the opposition boycotted the elections to the National Assembly and protested against the Consejo Nacional Electoral (National Electoral Council) (CNE). [22] As anticipated in view of the opposition boycott, Chávez’s coalition capitalized on the absence of an effective opposition and strengthened its grip on the Assembly. [23] By that point, legislative control rested almost entirely with Chávez’s coalition.What followed was not a departure from this trajectory, but its extension through formal policy.
13
In December 2006, Chávez secured a third presidential term, a victory that expanded the scope of executive initiative. He nationalized key industries—gold, electricity, telecommunications, gas, steel, mining, agriculture, and banking—along with numerous smaller entities.[24][25][26][27][28][29] Chávez also introduced a package of constitutional amendments designed to expand the powers of the executive and to extend its control over the Banco Central de Venezuela (BCV). In a controversial move, he unilaterally altered property rights and allowed the state to seize private real estate without judicial oversight. Furthermore, he proposed becoming president for life. In December 2007, however, the National Assembly narrowly rejected the package of sweeping reforms.
14
In February 2009, Chávez reintroduced his controversial proposals and succeeded in advancing them. Following strategic counsel from Cuba, he escalated the crackdown on dissent.[30] He ordered the arrest of elected opponents and shut down all private television stations.
15
In June 2011, Chávez announced that he would undergo surgery in Cuba to remove a tumor, a development that sparked confusion and concern throughout the country.[31] As his health came under increasing scrutiny, more voters began to question his fitness for office. Yet, in 2012, despite his fragile health, Chávez campaigned against Henrique Capriles and secured a surprise presidential victory.[32]
~
Chávez during the electoral campaign in February 2012.
16
In December 2012, Chávez underwent his fourth surgery in Cuba. Before departing Venezuela, he announced his plan for transition and designated Vice President Nicolás Maduro as his successor, alongside a powerful troika that included Diosdado Cabello [military chief] and Rafael Darío Ramírez Carreño [administrator of PDVSA].[33][34][35] Following the surgery, Chávez was transferred on December 11 to the Hospital Militar Universitario Dr. Carlos Arvelo (attached to the Universidad Militar Bolivariana de Venezuela, or UMBV) in Caracas, where he remained incommunicado, further fueling speculation and rumors. Some government officials dismissed reports of assassination, while others, including former Attorney General Luisa Ortega Díaz, claimed he had already died on December 28.[36] Maduro’s cabinet vehemently refuted these allegations and insisted that no crime had been committed. Amidst the uncertainty, Maduro asked the National Assembly to postpone the inaugurationindefinitely. This further intensified political tensions.
17
The National Assembly acquiesced to Maduro and voted to postpone the inauguration. Chávez succumbed to his illness on March 5. His body was embalmed in three separate stages without benefit of autopsy, which further fueled suspicions and conspiracy theories. Thirty days later, Maduro entered office amid sustained political uncertainty.[37] The implications of this transition extend beyond chronology; they shape the conditions examined in the chapters that follow in this series, which comprises 19 chapters, miscellaneous rubrics, and an appendix.
~
Endnotes:
§ 2
[1] Charles S. Spencer and Elsa M. Redmond, Prehispanic Causeways and Regional Politics in the Llanos of Barinas, Venezuela (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). Abstract: “…relacionados con la dinámica política de la organización cacical durante la fase Gaván Tardía.” Published in Latin American Antiquity, vol. 9, no. 2 (June 1998): 95-110. https://doi.org/10.2307/971989
[4] L’Atelier des Archive, “Interview du révolutionnaire: Douglas Bravo au Venezuela [circa 1960]” (Transcript: “… conceptos injuriosos en contra de la revolución cubana …” [timestamp 1;11-14]), YouTube, October 14, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cx2D5VM8VM
§ 5
[5] “Hugo Chavez Interview,”YouTube, transcript excerpt and time stamp unavailable: Original quote in Spanish (translated by the author): “. . . , if not, maybe I’ll leave the Army, no, you can’t leave, Adam told me so, no, we need you there, but who needs me?” Retrieved October 12, 2023.
[9] Gustavo Coronel, “Corruption, Mismanagement, and Abuse of Power in Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela,” Center for Global Liberty & Prosperity: Development Policy Analysis, no. 2 (CATO Institute, November 27, 2006). https://www.issuelab.org/resources/2539/2539.pdf.
[11] Mario J. García-Serra, “The ‘Enabling Law’: The Demise of the Separation of Powers in Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela,” University of Miami Inter-American Law Review, vol.32, no. 2, (Spring – Summer, 2001): 265-293. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40176554
[37] “Cuerpo de Chávez fue tratado tres veces para ser conservado: … intervenido con inyecciones de formol para que pudiera ser velado,” El Nacional De Venezuela – Gda, Enero 27, 2024, 05:50, actualizado Marzo 22, 2013, 20:51. https://www.eltiempo.com/amp/archivo/documento/CMS-12708339
This essay examines trickle‑down not as an economic theory but as an axiom. It asks when a contested hypothesis ceases to require demonstration and begins to operate as a standing justification. At that point, it no longer explains outcomes. It authorizes them.
Trickle‑down is commonly presented as a mechanism through which accumulation generates general benefit. Concentration is framed as provisional, inequality as temporary, and reward as ultimately shared.
These claims shift attention away from verification and toward expectation. Promise substitutes for proof. What is described as distribution depends on prior withholding. Benefit is said to flow only after it has been secured elsewhere.
A mechanism that requires inequality in order to justify equality nullifies its own claim. The logic depends on deferral. Those positioned to wait are not those positioned to decide. The contradiction becomes operative when patience is assigned unevenly. Those asked to trust the longest are those least able to absorb delay. Those who benefit earliest are not exposed to failure in the same measure. Risk is not shared. Time is not reciprocal.
Trickle‑down does not compel through force. It governs through assurance. It asks that inequality be endured in the present in exchange for a benefit that cannot be demanded.
What trickle‑down is, then, is a narrative that stabilizes concentration by postponing accountability. What it is not is a distributive mechanism or a mutual ethic.
When promise replaces demonstration, trickle‑down ceases to be examined and begins to function as an axiom.
A diagnostic study of how public life continues to function when judgment is limited and conditions remain unsettled
*
Mantra: Domains of Action 21” x 28.5” Watercolor, graphite, wax crayons, ink and gesso on paper 2003
Note:
Nothing I say belongs to the painting.
The painting does not need words.
It already speaks in its own medium, to which language has no equivalent.
By Ricardo F. Morín
December 18, 2025
Oakland Park, Fl
Preface
This work was not written to advance a position or to resolve a debate. It emerged from sustained attention to conditions that could not be ignored without distortion. Writing, in this sense, is not an expression of purpose, but a consequence of awareness.
The pages that follow do not claim authority through expertise or urgency. They proceed from the recognition that judgment must often act under incomplete conditions, and that clarity, when it appears, does so gradually and without assurance. What is offered here is not a conclusion, but a continuation: an effort to remain faithful to what can be observed when attention is sustained.
This study does not proceed from constitutional expertise, institutional authority, or professional proximity to governance. It proceeds from observation. Its claims arise from sustained attention to how public life continues to function under conditions in which judgment is constrained, information remains incomplete, and decisions must nonetheless be made.
In fields where credentialed knowledge often determines legitimacy, writing from outside formal authority can invite dismissal before engagement. That risk is real. Yet the conditions examined here are not confined to technical domains. They are encountered daily by citizens, officials, institutions, and systems alike. Judgment under uncertainty is not a specialized activity; it is a shared condition.
The absence of formal expertise does not exempt this work from rigor. It requires a different discipline: restraint in assertion, precision in description, and fidelity to what can be observed without presuming mastery. The analysis does not claim to resolve constitutional questions or prescribe institutional remedies. It examines how governance persists when clarity is partial, when authority operates through multiple domains, and when continuity depends less on certainty than on adjustment.
If this work holds value, it will not be because it speaks from authority, but because it attends carefully to how authority functions when no position—expert or otherwise—can claim full command of the conditions it confronts.
Author’s Note
This work clarifies a confusion that appears across many political cultures: the tendency to treat “republic” and “democracy” as interchangeable ideals rather than as distinct components of governance. The chapters observe how political arrangements continue to operate when inherited categories no longer clarify what is taking place.
The method is observational. Political life is described as it is experienced: decisions made without full knowledge, terms used out of habit, and institutions that adjust internally while keeping the same outward form. The analysis begins from the limits of judgment as a daily condition: people must act before they fully understand the circumstances in which they act.
What follows does not argue for a model or defend a tradition. It traces how language, institutions, and expectations diverge across different domains of action, and how public life continues to operate under conditions that do not permit full clarity.
Chapter I
The Limits of Judgment in Public Life
*
1
Public life depends on forms of judgment that are uneven and often shaped by the pressures people face. Individuals arrive at political questions with different experiences, different levels of knowledge, and different conditions under which they weigh what is put before them. These differences do not prevent collective decisions, but they shape how clearly political terms and arrangements are perceived. Everything that follows—how authority is organized, how participation is structured, and how each is described—develops within this clarity, which is limited and variable.
2
Political terms remain stable even when they are understood to different degrees. Words such as republic and democracy have distinct meanings—one referring to an arrangement of authority, the other to a method of participation—yet are often used interchangeably. The terms carry familiarity, even when the clarity required to keep them separate varies by circumstance. As a result, public discussion may rely on established language without consistently matching it to the arrangements actually in effect.
3
A republic identifies an arrangement in which authority is held by public offices and exercised through institutions rather than personal rule. A democracy identifies the method through which people participate in public decisions, whether directly or through representation. A republic describes how authority is contained; a democracy describes how participation is organized. Because these terms refer to different dimensions of political life—one structural, the other procedural—a single system may combine both. The United States exemplifies this combination: authority is institutional and public, while participation is organized through elections and collective choice.
4
Public discussion often relies on familiar terms to describe political arrangements without tracing how authority and participation are actually organized. Broad references substitute for institutional operation, allowing language to remain continuous even as circumstances shift. The terms persist not because they precisely describe current arrangements, but because they provide a stable vocabulary through which public life can continue to be discussed as it adapts.
5
Patterns of this kind appear across many societies. When circumstances are unstable, authority tends to concentrate; when conditions are steadier, participation often widens. The direction is not uniform across countries or periods, but the pattern is recognizable: authority gathers or disperses in response to conditions rather than to the language used to describe political life. What varies is how clearly a society distinguishes between the structure that contains authority and the method through which participation occurs.
6
This movement between concentrated and dispersed authority appears differently across national contexts. In Venezuela, references to the republic have often accompanied periods of strong executive direction, while appeals to democracy have not consistently been supported by durable procedures of participation.
In the United States, the emphasis sometimes reverses. Democratic language is used to affirm broad popular involvement at the point of election, while republican structure is invoked to justify subsequent limits on participation through institutional filtering—nominee selection, confirmation timing, strategic vacancies, and procedural sequencing. Presidential nominations move from popular mandate into Senate committee review, confirmation votes, and ultimately lifetime tenure, where decision-making authority is consolidated beyond direct public reach.
The terms differ, but the underlying pattern converges: participation expands symbolically at the moment of selection and contracts structurally in the domains where authority is exercised over time.
7
Public life is easier to follow when the distinction between structure and participation remains visible. A republic identifies how authority is arranged through offices and institutions; a democracy identifies how participation is organized through collective procedures. When these terms are used without that distinction, attention shifts from institutional operation to nomenclature. Debate turns toward language rather than process, and the movement of authority becomes harder to trace.
8
No single combination of structure and participation satisfies all the demands placed on public life. Concentrated authority allows for speed but limits inclusion; broad participation expands inclusion but slows coordination. Most governments combine these elements in varying proportions, and those proportions change as conditions change. The relation between authority and participation becomes clearer in some periods and more opaque in others.
9
When this relation is unclear, people orient themselves by what is most visible. Some look to executive action; others to representative bodies; many respond primarily to immediate outcomes. These points of reference shape how the system is experienced even when its formal structure remains unchanged.
10
Public life continues not because its conditions are settled, but because decisions cannot wait for full certainty. Authority acts while circumstances remain incomplete, and participation proceeds without full anticipation of its effects. The system endures through this necessity: decisions are made under partial visibility, terms persist beyond their precision, and institutions adjust internally without losing their outward form. What holds public life together is not clarity, but the need to proceed in its absence.
Chapter II
Executive Action Under Uncertainty
1
Executive action is the domain in which decisions are least postponable. Unlike deliberative bodies, the executive is structured to act before conditions stabilize. Time pressure, incomplete information, and competing signals define its operating environment. This does not make executive judgment exceptional; it renders its limits more visible.
2
Because executive decisions are publicly observable, they often become the primary reference point through which political life is interpreted. Orders, statements, appointments, and enforcement actions are easier to see than the processes that precede or follow them. Visibility creates the impression of control even when outcomes remain uncertain.
3
The authority of the executive is often described as personal, yet it is exercised through institutional mechanisms. Decisions attributed to an individual are carried out through agencies, procedures, and delegated discretion. This layered execution allows action to proceed while responsibility is distributed across structures that remain largely out of view.
4
Periods of uncertainty tend to compress authority toward the executive. When coordination slows elsewhere, executive action fills the gap. This concentration does not require a change in constitutional structure; it occurs within existing forms as responsibilities narrow and timelines shorten.
5
Public judgment frequently focuses on decisiveness rather than conditions. Speed is mistaken for clarity; repetition for resolve. The question of whether a decision could have been otherwise is displaced by whether it was made visibly and without hesitation.
6
This focus alters how accountability is perceived. Because executive action is immediate, it absorbs praise and blame even when outcomes depend on factors beyond executive control. The executive domain becomes symbolically overloaded, functioning as a proxy for the system as a whole.
7
Over time, this dynamic reshapes expectations. Executives are asked to resolve conditions that no single office can manage. When results fall short, dissatisfaction is personalized rather than structural. Judgment narrows toward figures instead of processes.
8
The persistence of executive action under uncertainty does not indicate failure elsewhere. It reflects the necessity of action where delay carries its own costs. The executive does not eliminate uncertainty; it operates within it.
9
As established in Chapter I—The Limits of Judgment in Public Life—the distinction between structure and method remains intact. Executive authority is one structural component of the republic. Its prominence under uncertainty does not convert the system into personal rule, nor does it dissolve other forms of participation. It alters their relative visibility.
10
Executive action continues because decisions cannot wait for conditions to stabilize. What the public observes is not mastery, but motion. The domain appears decisive not because it resolves uncertainty, but because it must act while relevant information remains in flux.
Chapter III
Administrative Displacement and Procedural Substitution
1
Administrative action operates at a distance from public attention, not because it is concealed, but because it unfolds through structures designed for continuity rather than visibility. Rules are applied, procedures adjusted, and priorities reordered within agencies whose work sustains governance without occupying the foreground of political life. These actions rarely present themselves as discrete decisions, yet they shape outcomes as directly as legislative acts or executive orders.
2
Although the executive branch bears the most visible weight of action, it does not act alone. Authority moves through a dense internal structure—departments, offices, and administrative hierarchies—that translates executive direction into practice. Within this structure, different temporal orientations coexist. Some units respond to the immediacy of political mandates; others operate within constitutional and statutory frameworks intended to secure duration, stability, and institutional memory.
3
What appears publicly as a unitary executive act is, in practice, the visible edge of a distributed process. Administrative authorities do not replace the legislative function, nor do they interpret law in the judicial sense. They apply existing statutes, regulations, and precedents to concrete circumstances, exercising discretion only within bounds already defined. Governance continues through this application not because interpretation expands, but because execution must proceed even when direct legislative action is absent or delayed.
4
Procedural substitution occurs when formal decision-making cannot advance at the same pace as events. When legislation stalls, or when executive authority reaches its constitutional limits, administrative processes absorb responsibility by adjusting how existing rules are applied. Guidance is refined, enforcement priorities are reordered, and procedural pathways are recalibrated so that action can continue without altering the legal framework itself.
5
The effect of this adjustment is cumulative rather than declarative. Procedures acquire force through sustained use across cases, offices, and time. What matters is not the announcement of a decision, but the establishment of a practice that becomes operative through repetition. Authority is exercised through continuity of application, not through proclamation or display.
6
Because responsibility is distributed across agencies and routines, public judgment often struggles to locate where change occurs. Outcomes appear without a single moment of decision to which they can be traced. This dispersal does not eliminate accountability, but it complicates it. Effects are experienced before their procedural origins are understood, if they are understood at all.
7
Over time, this mode of governance reshapes public expectations. Citizens may sense that conditions have shifted while remaining uncertain about who acted or how. Dissatisfaction attaches to the system as a whole rather than to identifiable actors, not because authority is absent, but because it operates through channels that do not align with public narratives of decision and responsibility.
8
Administrative displacement does not signal institutional breakdown. It reflects the necessity of maintaining governance under constraint. When formal decisions cannot be taken at the speed required, procedures adapt so that authority continues to function without exceeding its legal bounds. The system does not suspend itself; it adjusts its pathways.
9
This domain illustrates the separation between form and operation established in the opening chapter. The constitutional structure of authority remains intact, while its execution shifts in emphasis and sequence. What changes is not who holds power, but how that power is carried forward under conditions that do not permit explicit resolution.
10
Governance persists through these substitutions because action cannot stop. Authority moves not by abandoning its limits, but by working within them. The continuity of public life depends less on visible decisions than on the capacity of institutions to apply existing frameworks to changing circumstances—imperfectly, and without claiming finality.
Chapter IV
Electoral Ritual and the Persistence of Form
1
Elections are the most recognizable feature of democratic participation. They provide a recurring structure through which public involvement is organized and displayed. Their regularity creates a sense of continuity even as surrounding conditions change.
2
As ritual, elections affirm participation through repetition. Procedures remain familiar—campaigns, voting, certification, transition—and establish a shared sequence that signals order and legitimacy. These outward forms sustain confidence in the process, even when outcomes remain uncertain.
3
Elections endure not because they resolve conflict, but because they organize trust at the point of selection. They do not settle disagreement; they make continued coordination possible by establishing a recognized moment of authorization.
4
Once trust is organized at the point of selection, public attention shifts from the mechanics of participation to the visibility of results. Winning and losing replace examination of how participation translates into policy, administration, or enforcement. The ritual satisfies the expectation of involvement, while attention moves away from the pathways through which authority is exercised after selection.
5
This emphasis on outcome reinforces symbolic stability. As long as elections occur on schedule and results are recognized, the system appears intact. Questions about how decisions are made afterward—how authority is carried forward, distributed, and constrained—receive less sustained attention.
6
Discrepancies between electoral choice and lived experience are often attributed to individuals rather than to institutional pathways. Dissatisfaction becomes personalized, while the structural distance between participation and governance remains largely unexamined.
7
Electoral rituals persist because they serve a stabilizing function. They mark transitions, renew legitimacy, and provide a shared reference point for public life. Their endurance does not depend on their capacity to resolve underlying pressures, but on their ability to preserve coordination in the presence of disagreement.
8
As conditions change, participation may become more expressive than effective. Voting signals presence and alignment, even when it does not materially alter administrative or executive trajectories. Expression remains visible; influence becomes less certain.
9
Democracy, understood as method, remains visible and active. What fluctuates is the degree to which participation reaches into the domains where decisions are continuously adjusted, and where authority continues to operate after the moment of voting.
10
Public life continues through this arrangement because action cannot pause at the point of selection. Decisions proceed while conditions evolve, information accumulates unevenly, and responsibility shifts across domains. What endures is not resolution, but continuity: governance advances through adjustment rather than completion, sustained by institutions that act without claiming finality.
Ricardo F. Morin Eschatology Watercolor, gouache, oil sticks, white correction fluid, and black ink on paper 14″ x 20″ 2004
Ricardo F. Morín
January 11, 2026
Oakland Park, Fl
1. Civilizations periodically describe their present as uniquely perilous. Such claims are rarely grounded in historical comparison or institutional analysis. They arise instead from a failure of scale: the inability to distinguish disruption from collapse, uncertainty from termination, and incoherence from apocalypse.
2. Moments of genuine civilizational danger are not hypothetical. The Black Death removed a third of Europe’s population. The Thirty Years’ War devastated entire regions. The twentieth century combined industrialized warfare, genocide, and the advent of nuclear annihilation. These events did not require prophetic language to be understood as catastrophic. Their magnitude was measurable. Their effects were material. Their causes were traceable.
3. Apocalyptic rhetoric appears not when danger is greatest, but when comprehension falters. It converts uncertainty into moral drama. When political processes appear opaque, when outcomes resist prediction, and when authority behaves without an intelligible pattern, explanation withdraws. In its place enters eschatology: a narrative that simplifies complexity, assigns absolute blame, and promises closure.
4. The figure of the Antichrist belongs to this register. It is not an analytical category. It is a symbolic condensation of fear. By locating total danger in a single person, eschatological thinking relieves societies of the obligation to examine institutions, incentives, and limits. It replaces causal inquiry with revelation.
5. Such framing also distorts responsibility. Civilizations do not disintegrate because of individuals alone. They deteriorate through cumulative failures of governance, adaptation, and legitimacy. These processes unfold unevenly, often reversibly, and without finality. They do not announce themselves with signs. They do not culminate on schedule.
6. Eschatology thrives where explanation retreats. It offers emotional certainty where analysis requires patience. It persuades by promising an end to ambiguity, not by clarifying causes. By transforming political disorder into cosmic struggle, it diverts attention away from conditions that can be examined and toward myths that cannot be corrected.
7. The danger of apocalyptic thinking is not that it exaggerates risk, but that it misdirects attention. It trains citizens to search for omens rather than causes, villains rather than conditions, destiny rather than decisions. In doing so, it deepens the very helplessness it claims to describe.
8. What the present requires is not prophecy, but proportion. Not moral theater, but discernment. Not the language of revelation, but the discipline of understanding how power operates, where it fails, and how it can be constrained.
9. Where explanation returns, superstition recedes. Where clarity is restored, apocalypse loses its hold.
Ricardo F. Morín Viability Watercolor frottage and white corrector on drafting vellum 20″x30″ 2005
1. The question is often posed as to why certain corrupt regimes become objects of political action while others, no less compromised, do not. At first glance, this appears to demand a comparative moral explanation. In fact, it does not. The difficulty lies not in the absence of information, but in the assumption that such actions are guided by a coherent and generalizable system of principles.
2. What can be observed is not the application of a principle across cases, but decisions taken one case at a time. Political action does not follow a rule that can be applied in advance to different regimes. For that reason, comparisons between Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Russia, or Argentina obscure more than they clarify. They assume a standard of decision-making that is not, in practice, a guiding action.
3. The actions examined here are those taken by Donald Trump in his capacity as a political actor. His name is introduced not to explain behavior through personality or intention, but to locate responsibility. The analysis proceeds from observable decisions and the circumstances in which those decisions were taken, rather than from suppositions about character, motive, or disposition.
4. The more relevant question is therefore not why some regimes are confronted and others ignored, but under what circumstances a country presents few obstacles to action, and which immediate interests align to make that action feasible. This reframing shifts the analysis away from moral judgment and toward observable circumstances.
5. Understood in these terms, the issue admits a response—not as a rule, but as an account of how decisions are made in specific cases. There is no way to infer, from the level of corruption alone, whether action will occur. There is, however, a way to explain why, in particular circumstances, action proceeds.
6. In the Venezuelan case, several conditions converge.
7. First, immediate external resistance is limited. Venezuela lacks allies willing to impose material, military, or economic consequences in response to pressure or limited intervention.
8. Second, state institutions do not act in a coordinated manner. Administrative agencies, security forces, and political authorities do not reliably operate under a single command, reducing the ability to mount a unified response and making external action easier to pursue.
9. Third, Venezuela can be publicly described as an exceptional case—marked by collapse, criminal conduct, and administrative failure—which allows actions to be presented to domestic audiences without invoking a general principle that would need to apply elsewhere.
10. Fourth, economic interests operate through short-term negotiation rather than long-term alignment. Venezuelan oil, under sanctions and administrative disorder, can be folded into ad hoc bargaining without requiring stable commitments or enduring partnerships.
11. Finally, pressure on Venezuela does not trigger immediate disruption to major markets or strategic balances. Unlike cases involving Saudi Arabia or Russia, action does not risk cascading economic or military responses.
12. None of these factors amounts to a moral explanation or a guiding doctrine. Taken together, they describe when an administration acts through foreign policy: not because corruption is greater, but because resistance is limited, interests converge quickly, and a domestic account of the action can be sustained—conditions absent in many cases of equally severe corruption.
13. This does not explain the world. It explains a decision.
This essay treats inflation not as a technical variable but as an axiom. It asks when inflation ceases to appear as a policy outcome and begins to function as a background assumption. At that point, it no longer argues its case. It is endured.
Inflation is commonly described as neutral. It is said to affect all equally, to arise impersonally, and to correct excesses over time. These descriptions grant it the status of a natural condition rather than a decision mediated by institutions. In doing so, they suspend ethical inquiry.
What presents itself as general is, in practice, asymmetrical. Inflation redistributes value across time. Those who can defer consumption, hold assets, or hedge exposure are not affected in the same manner as those whose lives are indexed to wages, rent, or fixed obligations. A condition that produces predictable inequality while presenting itself as neutral contradicts its own description.
The contradiction deepens when inflation is framed as inevitable. Inevitability removes agency from decision while preserving its effects. Responsibility dissolves into explanation. Adjustment is demanded without consent, and patience is prescribed as virtue. The ethical tension does not lie in sacrifice itself, but in the absence of reciprocity. Those who decide are not exposed in the same temporal frame as those who absorb the cost.
Inflation operates quietly. It does not compel through force but through normalization. It is accepted because it is explained, and it persists because it is treated as unavoidable. What inflation is, then, is a distributive mechanism embedded in time. What it is not is neutral, impersonal, or shared equally.
The moment this distinction is obscured, inflation ceases to be examined and begins to rule as an axiom.
Ricardo F. Morín Erasures Watercolor rub-offs on Japanese tissue paper 14″x20″ 2005
Ricardo F. Morín
January 10, 2026
Oakland Park, Fl
*
1.
Public discussion often treats corruption as a series of discrete scandals attached to identifiable individuals. That framing is misleading. Investigative reporting and judicial records increasingly show that, particularly in the Venezuelan case, responsibility is displaced through repeatable actions that allow illicit benefit while obscuring accountability.
2.
The PBS Frontline documentary examining the rise and role of Alex Saab provides a clear point of entry. Saab did not function as a policymaker or symbolic representative. According to United States indictments and sustained investigative reporting, he acted as a testaferro—a fraudulent front man—through whom contracts, assets, and payments were routed to conceal the true beneficiaries.
3.
The diagnostic importance of Saab lies not in his personal profile but in the action he performed. A testaferro is not a neutral intermediary. He lends his name so that authority may receive benefit while denying responsibility for the consequences of its decisions. The contractual signatory does not indicate decision-making authority.
4.
This action appears repeatedly in Venezuela across multiple domains: oil sales conducted through intermediaries, food import programs delivering overpriced or tainted goods, housing projects funded and left incomplete, and financial transfers designed to evade sanctions and scrutiny. Each domain differs in form, but the same action recurs: authorization is granted, benefit accrues, and responsibility is displaced.
5.
The same displacement of responsibility appears in the use of irregular armed groups that exercise coercion without formal attribution. Their actions do not require demonstrable command. The absence of a traceable chain of authority is not incidental but integral: force is applied while authorship remains deniable.
6.
At this stage, individual corruption gives way to criminal conduct sustained over time. United States prosecutors have alleged that these financial and logistical actions coincide with narcotics trafficking and money laundering attributed to senior civilian and military officials, including Nicolás Maduro. These allegations rest on claims of coordination, protection, and benefit.
7.
What U.S. indictments and investigative journalism describe as the Cartel de los Soles does not depend on the existence of a unified chain of command. The term refers to a condition in which drug trafficking depends on permission, tolerance, or protection by state authorities rather than independent criminal initiative.
8.
Under this account, Saab is neither anomaly nor mastermind. He is a replaceable participant whose removal does not interrupt the conduct described. The persistence of the activity depends on substitution, not on loyalty or hierarchy.
9.
This clarification resolves a recurrent confusion in public debate. Describing these actions does not constitute moral judgment or ideological hostility. It identifies delegated fraud through which authority preserves outward legitimacy while transferring legal exposure to intermediaries.
10.
When these actions extend across ministries, borders, and markets and are sustained by coercive power, they exceed ordinary corruption. They constitute organized criminal conduct exercised with the capacity of the State, regardless of whether a classic cartel form is present.
11.
The significance of the Frontline investigation is not that it adds another episode to a familiar narrative. It shows how the use of front men allows this conduct to persist over time. What follows from this recognition is not vindication but clarity about why accountability cannot be achieved by removing individuals alone.
Observations On Perception 
