From the schoolyard to global geopolitics, rules are not followed out of justice but out of power. Not being invited to a classmate’s birthday marks the start of discrimination, and some lives will be easy while others scrape by with poorly defined jobs and low wages. The same happens on a larger scale: the United States intervenes in Venezuela, seizing a president under legal charges that are only a pretext for economic and strategic goals. International law becomes a façade and force decides what matters. The cost of challenging the powerful is so high that no country takes it on, and the UN remains paralyzed while the judge is also the accused.

This is systemic realism: rules exist only as long as they do not clash with those in power. The law of the strongest is replicated from schools to countries. Systems, whether work or state, treat people as collateral damage while maximizing benefits or control. Individual skepticism toward this reality is not cynicism but defense: recognizing that the official narrative rarely matches the facts and that sovereignty, justice, and health are subordinated to the interests of those who dominate. What remains is distrust and alienation as the gap between what is said and what happens grows unchecked.