When Compassion Becomes Destruction: Venezuela, Ideology, & the Psychology of Belief
- R.D. Ordovich-Clarkson
- Jan 5
- 4 min read
As a Brazilian American, South American culture—including Venezuelan politics—has been close to my heart for nearly two decades. In the mid-2000s, I supported the Hugo Chávez government. At the time, I saw Chávez as a socialist beacon for the Americas—a leader who promised dignity, equity, and economic justice for a region long burdened by corruption and inequality...a continuation of the Bolivarian Revolution.
It is worth pausing here to reflect on Simón Bolívar, a seminal figure of Latin American history. Often called El Libertador, the “George Washington of South America,” his legacy would later be invoked to legitimize Hugo Chávez’s revolution. Bolívar was not a socialist ideologue in the modern sense, but a complex revolutionary deeply concerned with liberty, sovereignty, and the moral fragility of newly freed nations. Near the end of his life, disillusioned by factionalism and authoritarian drift, Bolívar famously warned that Latin America risked trading colonial rule for internal tyranny. His fear was not foreign domination alone, but the concentration of power justified in the name of the people. That Chávez’s movement would later sanctify Bolívar’s legacy while pursuing policies rooted in ideological centralization represents one of the great historical ironies of modern Latin American politics.
In my twenties, I was deeply committed to Marxist ideology. I believed, at that time, that socialism was not merely a political system but a moral correction: a way to right historical wrongs and lift my brothers and sisters across Latin America out of poverty. At that time, I supported the nationalization of industry, particularly in the energy sector, convinced that reclaiming natural resources from foreign interests would allow Venezuela to flourish.
I was wrong. Not from of a lack of compassion, but because compassion unmoored from reality can become dangerous.
Before Chávez, Venezuela was one of South America’s wealthiest nations, endowed with extraordinary natural resources and a robust middle class. Over the past twenty-five years, I have watched Venezuela unravel. What replaced promise was scarcity; what replaced dignity was desperation. Stories that once sounded exaggerated—families scavenging for food, professionals fleeing en masse, starvation and prostitution—became routine. These are not abstract policy failures; they are human tragedies.
At some point, I had to confront a painful question: How could a movement so saturated with moral language produce so much suffering?
This is where philosophy and psychology become indispensable.
Ideologies like Marxism are seductive not because they are cruel, but because they offer moral certainty. They divide the world neatly into oppressors and oppressed, promise historical inevitability, and relieve individuals of the burden of doubt. Psychologically, this is powerful. Human beings crave meaning, coherence, and belonging. A system that claims to possess the moral arc of history offers all three.
But moral certainty is not the same as moral wisdom.
Writers and moral thinkers from Dostoevsky to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn warned that when an ideology claims absolute moral authority, ordinary ethical restraints begin to erode. As Dostoevsky wrote in The Brothers Karamazov, “If there is no God, everything is permitted.”
Solzhenitsyn, writing from firsthand experience within the Soviet Gulag system, repeatedly emphasized that totalitarian regimes do not merely suppress dissent—they reshape moral reasoning itself. When history is framed as inevitably moving toward a predetermined ideological end, individual suffering becomes morally expendable. In such systems, cruelty is no longer viewed as cruelty but as necessity, and conscience is replaced by obedience to “historical destiny.”
Venezuela did not collapse because its leaders lacked compassion. It collapsed because compassion was subordinated to ideology, and ideology was enforced through power.
This is not unique to Venezuela. The pattern recurs wherever abstract systems override lived reality: Maoist China, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, the Soviet Union under the Bolsheviks. Each began with utopian promises and ended with dehumanization. Not because the people were evil, but because the system made dissent immoral and failure unspeakable.
I eventually awoke from the intoxicating and nightmarish slumber of ideological possession about 10 years ago. What woke me was not a single argument, but the accumulated weight of human suffering that theory could no longer explain away. I began to see that systems which cannot admit error inevitably double down on coercion.
This brings us to the present moment in Venezuela.
Two things can be true at once. One may feel uneasy about the manner in which Nicolás Maduro was removed from power. And I do. History has shown that foreign intervention—particularly by the United States—often carries unintended and disastrous consequences. Prudence demands skepticism.
But it is also true that Maduro’s continued rule was untenable.
The more interesting question is not whether his regime fell, but why Venezuelans are celebrating its collapse. Are they naïve? Manipulated? Or have they simply endured decades of economic devastation, political repression, and social fragmentation under a system that claimed to speak in their name?
The answer seems painfully clear.
This is not a celebration of chaos or revenge. It is the relief that comes when an unbearable weight is lifted. When people cheer the end of a regime, it is rarely because they crave instability—it is because stability under tyranny has become indistinguishable from despair.
What happens next matters more than what has already happened. Venezuela’s future will depend not on replacing one ideology with another, but on rebuilding trust, institutions, and moral humility. The lesson of the past twenty-five years is not merely that socialism failed—it is that any system that refuses self-correction will eventually devour the people it claims to serve.
If there is a philosophical takeaway here, it is this: compassion must be tethered to reality, and moral vision must remain accountable to human consequences. Otherwise, the road to hell will continue to be paved with the best of intentions.
