Let us now turn to the second half of Nietzsche's aphorism, the words that inspired both the theme of this series and its title:
And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.
It’s tempting to imagine this abyss as an external phenomenon, as something that exists outside of us, but that through prolonged exposure can shape, influence, and ultimately transform us. Consider how a well-mannered child raised in a gang-ravaged neighborhood might grow up to become a violent gangster himself, or how a genial and radically innocuous commissioner can mutate into a petty and malignant bomb-thrower once surrounded by newly elected colleagues who exemplify that same behavior.
On that last note: Oh, how the milquetoast have fallen. Is there anything more pathetic than watching a sexagenarian pull a Mean Girls meets Never Been Kissed by desperately attempting to remake himself in the image of surly mediocrities barely two-thirds his age? For more than three years, Kirk's entire PR strategy consisted of ice cream socials, city-subsidized "free" movies at the Art Cinema, and line dancing at the Adult Activity Center. Now, when he's not leading dramatic walkouts during commission meetings, he's e-blasting 30,000 residents with conspicuously Ariel-esque "statements" that serve no purpose other than to promote the latest scandal to roll out of KFC’s 24/7 outrage factory. Whatever it takes to sit at the cool kids’ lunch table, I guess.
But the abyss, according to those who've read Nietzsche carefully, lies within. When we dwell obsessively on something—be it revenge, power, or corruption—we aren't just observing external phenomena, but rather engaging with latent parts of ourselves. The more we fixate on these darker impulses, the stronger they become, until what began as mere contemplation transforms into actualization. This is how someone who constantly thinks about corruption might become corrupt, or how one who obsesses over being wronged might become the wrongdoer.
Or as Nietzsche might have answered Descartes: We dwell, therefore we become.
And if KFC is good at anything, it’s dwelling. That’s because their thought leader, the sole toxic source of their venomous ethos, is an obsessive-compulsive narcissist with an inferiority complex, a prolific grudge-bearer and perpetual dweller who feels so entitled to status he'll never attain that he views anyone in his orbit who has it as beneficiaries of some profound cosmic injustice.
If any of that sounds hyperbolic to you, try speaking to one of Ariel’s former coworkers from his days as a congressional aide. I’ve spoken to several myself, including one who cleverly referred to Ariel as the “Danielle Steel of ethics complaints” for his ability to churn out a seemingly endless stream of penny-ante ethics complaints against colleagues at an almost industrial pace.
How else does one explain the stupefying, jaw-aching, soul-crushing hypocrisy in which KFC engages daily? They rail against supposed injustices like they're unearthing Watergate, only to turn around and commit those very same crimes themselves. Consider the following:
City Manager Insubordination: Tellingly, Ariel's first and most salient grievance against Peter Iglesias—read aloud the day he fired him—was Iglesias's failure to kiss his ring immediately after his election. But Ariel explicitly cited “insubordination” and "refusal to work with every member of the commission" as the principal reasons for Iglesias's summary dismissal. His most vivid examples of this supposed insubordination? "Delegating all communications with [Ariel] to the assistant city manager" and "not showing up to [Ariel's] next two agenda review meetings." These were barefaced lies, of course, but they were nonetheless portrayed as fireable offenses, and rightly so.
So what happened when Ariel’s own hand-picked city manager delegated all communications with the mayor to the assistant city manager and refused to show up to agenda review meetings? Did he stage a very public professional execution like he did for Iglesias? Nah, he just took him out for ice cream as reward for his loyalty.
Residents First: Like everything with Ariel, an idea can't simply remain an idea, it must become a tag, a catchphrase, a dumb slogan written in ugly font underneath a cheesy self-portrait as part of some tacky, ubiquitous, and perpetual campaign of shameless self-promotion. "Residents First" is his crowning achievement in this regard, his defining mantra—and by extension, KFC's defining mantra. They're all very proud of it. They're also full of shit.
Consider the three defining issues of KFC's reign thus far: November elections, the commission's 102% raises, and the city manager debacle. KFC didn't just ignore the overwhelming majority of residents on these issues—they brazenly defied and denigrated them. When they're not implying that residents are too stupid to know what's good for them, they're explicitly accusing them of being shills and coconspirators of the Lago-Anderson alliance...excuse me, the "establishment."
Take Gonzalo Sanabria, who according to Ariel couldn't possibly have chosen to speak out against the city manager hire on his own accord. No, he had to be Lago's plant—because how else could someone be critical of Ariel? Or consider those residents on Alhambra who dared speak out against KFC's preferred sidewalk configuration for their neighborhood. They learned firsthand what happens when you defy Ariel: you get one of his patented walkouts and a loud and fat-fisted punch in the face when the item comes to a vote. The residents are first alright, first to be sent to the symbolic Gulag when they defy the ruling party's wishes.
Transparency and Accountability: A perennial staple of every political campaign since time immemorial, these buzzwords weren't enough for Ariel—he had to demagogue with them. Most politicians treat transparency, accountability (and their third sibling, "engagement") as categorical virtues—qualities you can never have too much of and can always improve upon. But that wasn't good enough for Ariel. He needed there to be not just room for improvement, but a complete, utter, and literally criminal lack of these qualities at City Hall. Hence his penchant for the imbecilic phrase "shadow government" to describe the old Iglesias administration, most of which, ironically enough, was inherited by Aimless Amos.
So how have Ariel and KFC delivered on their endless promises of restored transparency and accountability? They gave themselves a 102% raise with a fancy car allowance, burying it in the budget to avoid public scrutiny. They took a shady trip to Tallahassee without a city liaison to skirt sunshine laws. They hired a tragically unqualified city manager without public notice to avoid inevitable and well-deserved criticism. And just the other day, one of their preternaturally unlikeable lackeys was caught trying (and failing) to blind copy infamous pay-to-play blog Political Cortadito on an email chain, hoping to instigate another hit-piece on Lago:
Standing Up to Developers: Of all Ariel and Dr. Castro’s campaign promises, their stance on overdevelopment was the one aspect I found promising, if overly strident. While they sometimes pandered to the "moratorium on all building permits" crowd, I hoped their directional instincts might create common ground with Lago and Anderson once reality tempered their more cartoonish impulses. Instead, upon joining forces with Kirk, Ariel and Dr. Castro didn't just moderate their stance—they abandoned it entirely.
Rather than using their majority to craft stricter zoning codes, they focused on convening a charter review committee two years early, revealing that their reelection prospects trumped any concerns about development. Despite their aggressive campaign rhetoric about "greedy developers," they've voted unanimously for every development project brought before them, including those requiring zoning exceptions.
But their hypocrisy reaches peak absurdity in their treatment of Lago versus Kirk. They've savaged Lago over the Little Gables annexation because his brother's firm represented a client there over a decade ago, even staging a theatrical stunt where Ariel demanded Lago sign a self-written conflict affidavit during a commission meeting. Meanwhile, they conveniently ignore that Kirk's son somehow landed a job with one of the Gables' biggest developers (the one with the new project next to the Mercedes dealership) and look away while Kirk votes, always favorably, on their projects instead of recusing himself, or at least disclosing the potential conflict (I’ll have more on this in the coming months). Imagine attacking a mayor over his brother's ancient professional connection while rubber-stamping massive developments for a man who mercifully employed your ally’s son.
Behold the anti-development stance of the KFC commission:
Becoming one with the Abyss
I'll confess, there's a part of me that feels foolish, even embarrassed, when I use artistic themes or weighty philosophical concepts to frame KFC's behavior. There is indeed a sense that the joke's on me when I attempt to think seriously about such unserious people. Yet, in this instance, the aptness of the Nietzschean abyss is impossible to ignore.
KFC's conduct transcends run-of-the-mill hypocrisy or the common human tendency to compromise principles upon attaining power. They aren't merely failing to live up to their own standards, they're relentlessly and unapologetically flouting them. Their entire modus operandi seems to be explicitly denouncing a supposed evil one day, only to commit that very evil themselves the next, and with defiant enthusiasm no less.
Ariel, especially, embodies this pattern. To harp on specific phantom transgressions by Peter Iglesias—transgressions everyone knows he fabricated—only to deliberately engineer those very same transgressions against his political nemesis is more than mere hypocrisy. That's exorcising some very powerful demons. That's Ariel becoming the monster within.
Indeed, Ariel never loathed unchecked power; he coveted it. He never objected to a city manager defying commissioners; he longed for it. His righteous crusades were never about vanquishing these sins, but securing his exclusive right to commit them.
Every evil against which Ariel inveighs is but a reflection of himself, every crusade merely an attempt at moral licensing—that peculiar phenomenon where seemingly moral behavior is used to offset immoral conduct. Like sexual predators who ostentatiously champion women's rights, or drug cartels that donate millions to orphanages while creating more orphans than anyone else, Ariel and KFC seem to believe that if they protest loud enough, pound the table hard enough, and demonize forcefully enough, they earn the right to act as repugnantly as they please. For them, the virtue of any act, whether it is right or wrong, is determined by the actor, not the act itself.
And so they persist in their performative crusades, seeing monsters everywhere but blind to their own transformation, projecting their darkest impulses onto others while committing the very sins for which they've crucified their enemies. It's precisely as Nietzsche warned: when you look long into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you.
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