Image: AI-generated graphic illustrating the central theme of rigid structure revealing itself beneath an organic exterior.
The week between Christmas and New Year is strange. Half the world is offline. The other half is present but distracted. Conversations drift. People say things they might not say in a normal week.
I had several conversations this week. Different people, different continents, different topics. An argument about vaccines in a group chat. A back-and-forth about China’s EV overcapacity. A debate about whether the US has withdrawn from the Middle East.
By Wednesday, I realised I was having the same conversation every time.
Not the same topic. The same structure. Someone would make a claim. I would push back. They would adjust. And then, somewhere in the middle, we would land on the same ground: the thing that looked like a choice was actually a constraint. The thing that looked like strategy was actually arithmetic. The system was revealing what it had always been.
In the EV debate, a friend called China’s consolidation “normal growth pains.” I said no. Overcapacity is not a growth pain. It is a clearing problem. When capacity exceeds demand at prices that cover full cost of capital, margins compress, balance sheets fracture, and weaker players exit. In a state-led system, the clearing can be delayed. Losses get fiscalised. Local governments extend lifelines. But the bill does not disappear. It just moves. The structure still forces consolidation. Someone always pays.
In the vaccine argument, people were blaming anti-vaxxers for measles resurfacing. The problem is upstream. Access gaps matter. Health systems cracked. Supply chains broke. But trust sits above all of it. Trust collapsed during Covid. Mandates without legitimacy produce counterfeit compliance. You can enforce a rule, but you cannot enforce belief. Once people learn that rules are applied selectively, they stop treating any rule as binding.
In the Middle East discussion, someone said the US had withdrawn. The footprint shrank, but the leverage did not. Fewer troops, more surveillance, more targeted strikes. Allies now carry more of the visible cost while underwriting US leverage through basing, procurement, and financial alignment. The mode changed. The interest did not. What looks like absence is actually efficiency.
Each conversation started somewhere different. Each ended in the same place: systems do not lie. They reveal themselves under pressure. You can narrate whatever story you want, but the structure will eventually assert itself.
The African Union issued a statement this week rejecting Israel’s recognition of Somaliland. Territorial integrity. Colonial borders. Sovereignty.
Fine. The same African Union that stays silent when incumbents rewrite constitutions. The same body that tiptoes around election malpractice. The same institution that issues communiqués after coups but never applies sustained pressure. Years earlier, its own fact-finding mission called Somaliland’s case historically unique and self-justified in African political history.
Is that not the problem? Whether the statement is right on its merits is beside the point. It is weak because of what surrounds it. When you enforce selectively, you do not get credit for the enforcement. You get suspicion. People learn that your principles are negotiable, that your framework is decorative, that your authority is performance.
The cost is not just suspicion. It is displacement. When institutions lose standing, the vacuum fills. External patrons, parallel networks, private brokers.
Whether the subject was vaccines, EVs, foreign policy, or continental governance, the destination was the same. You cannot choose when to apply your rules and still expect them to hold. Consistency is not a slogan. It is the price of being believed. And most institutions are no longer willing to pay it.
I noticed something in myself this week. I did not feel angry. I felt tired. Tired of explanations that avoid structure. Tired of arguments about personalities when the system is doing the deciding.
Weeks like this one, when guards are down, are often when you finally notice. Not as argument. Just as structure, doing what structure does.
Revealing itself.