Welcome back to the annual high-altitude mental asylum known as Davos, where the world’s most expensive haircuts gather to solve the problems they spent the previous fiscal year creating. This year’s main attraction is a masterclass in performative impotence: Emmanuel Macron, a man who views himself as the intellectual heir to Jupiter, attempting to lecture the world on the 'rule of law' while staring down the barrel of a second Trumpian apocalypse. It’s a delightful spectacle of two distinct brands of narcissism colliding in the thin, oxygen-deprived air of the Swiss Alps, and as usual, the only loser is reality itself.

Macron, whose primary political achievement remains his ability to look disappointed in French while his country burns, took to the stage to urge 'rule of law over brutality.' It’s the kind of high-minded, vacuous rhetoric that only a man who spends his weekends dodging yellow-vested protesters could love. By framing the debate as 'law versus brutality,' Macron isn't just taking aim at Donald Trump; he’s trying to convince himself that his own bureaucratic stagnation is a moral virtue. He speaks of a 'sovereign Europe' as if the EU isn't currently a collection of twenty-seven neighbors who can't even agree on whether to keep the lights on, let alone how to defend themselves against an American president who treats the NATO charter like a used Chick-fil-A wrapper. Macron’s 'thinly veiled' takedown was about as subtle as a guillotine in a nursery, yet it carries the weight of a damp croissant. He wants to be the adult in the room, forgetting that the room is currently being demolished by a man who doesn’t believe rooms should have walls unless they’re on the Mexican border.

On the other side of this intellectual abyss sits Donald Trump, a man whose foreign policy is dictated by whatever grievance he most recently saw on a television screen. Fresh off his latest digital tantrum, Trump has decided to fixate on Keir Starmer’s deal regarding the Chagos Islands. To Trump, the British government returning a remote archipelago to Mauritius isn't a complex decolonization effort or a strategic pivot to secure the Diego Garcia airbase; it’s a 'surrender.' He attacks NATO allies with the same rhythmic, mindless consistency of a malfunctioning windshield wiper, screaming about 'delinquency' while ignoring the fact that his own version of global stability looks like a protection racket run by a casino magnate with a history of bankruptcies. Trump doesn't want allies; he wants vassals who will clap every time he insults their mothers. His rant against Starmer is merely the latest symptom of a brain that views every international agreement as a personal affront to his ego. He views the world as a zero-sum game played by losers who haven't realized he’s already stolen the board.

Between these two giants of ego, we find the rest of the world’s 'leaders' scrambling to 'ramp up their response.' This is political-speak for 'panicking in expensive suits.' The European response to Trump’s threats is always the same: a series of meetings about meetings, followed by a joint communiqué that uses the word 'solidarity' until the word loses all meaning. They are terrified, and they should be. Not because Trump is a strategic mastermind, but because he is a chaotic force of nature that exposes the utter fragility of the liberal international order that Macron holds so dear. That 'rule of law' Macron is so fond of? It only works if everyone agrees to play by the rules. Trump has realized that if you just flip the table, the 'rule-followers' spend the next four years trying to figure out which fork to use for their indignation.

The irony, of course, is that both sides are equally detached from the miserable reality of the people they claim to lead. While Macron philosophizes about European sovereignty, his domestic approval ratings are in the basement. While Trump rants about Chagos, his supporters are cheering for a man who would sell the Lincoln Memorial if it meant a five-minute segment on cable news. It’s a battle between a philosopher-king without a kingdom and a bully without a conscience. Davos provides the perfect backdrop for this farce—a place where the 'brutality' Macron decries is actually just the economic reality of the billions of people excluded from the resort’s gated communities.

Ultimately, Macron’s plea for 'rule of law' is a desperate gasp from a dying era of polite globalism. He thinks he can shame a man who has no capacity for the emotion. Trump’s attacks on NATO and the UK’s island deals are the opening salvos of a world where might makes right, and 'right' is whatever the loudest man in the room says it is. We are watching the slow-motion collapse of an old world order, presided over by a Frenchman who thinks he’s smarter than everyone else and an American who knows he can out-shout anyone who disagrees. It would be tragic if it weren't so predictably pathetic. Grab your popcorn, or better yet, your cyanide—the show is only getting started, and the script was written by a committee of the deranged.