There is a specific kind of spiritual exhaustion that descends upon the soul when watching the World Economic Forum in Davos. It is the sinking feeling that the species has peaked, and that peak was apparently a room full of private-jet-setting billionaires pretending to care about the carbon footprint of your toaster while sipping vintage champagne in a Swiss ski resort. It is a carnival of hypocrisy so dense, so self-congratulatory, that it threatens to collapse into a singularity of pure smugness. And this year, right in the center of this frozen hellscape of late-stage capitalism, we were treated to the ultimate visual gag: French President Emmanuel Macron, the boy-king of technocratic neoliberalism, addressing the masters of the universe while wearing aviator sunglasses.

We are told, of course, by the frantic PR handlers at the Elysée Palace, that this was not a stylistic choice. No, apparently, the President of the Republic suffered from an “eye condition.” How wonderfully convenient. How utterly perfect. In a world spiraling down the drain, where inequality widens like a sinkhole and geopolitical stability is a joke told by madmen, our leaders are literally shielding their eyes. You couldn’t write this script. If you put this in a novel, the editor would reject it for being too heavy-handed with the symbolism. “The leader is blind to the suffering of the people,” they’d say. “Too on the nose.” Yet here we are. Reality, as always, is the hack writer we are forced to endure.

Let’s deconstruct the optics, shall we? Because in politics, optics are the only thing that actually matters. Governance is hard; posing is easy. There stood Macron, looking less like a head of state and more like a hungover DJ at an Ibiza residency, or perhaps a mid-tier villain from a straight-to-DVD Bond knockoff. He stood there, tinted lenses reflecting the dull, lifeless gaze of the global elite back at them, lecturing the room on the complexities of the global order. It is a look that screams, “I am here, but I am not really here. I am physically present, but spiritually, I am cruising at 30,000 feet above your petty concerns.”

The excuse of a medical issue is almost irrelevant. Whether it was a scratched cornea or a stye is immaterial to the sheer aesthetic arrogance of the moment. Wearing sunglasses indoors is universally recognized as the universal signifier of the asshole. It is the uniform of the poker player bluffing with a pair of twos, the rock star who thinks he’s too famous for eye contact, and the dictator who wants to hide the fact that he’s falling asleep during the military parade. For Macron, it fits like a glove. This is a man whose approval ratings at home often hover somewhere between “resented” and “actively loathed,” a man who has faced down Yellow Vests and pension rioters with the cool detachment of an actuary denying an insurance claim.

To see him in Davos, the spiritual home of the disconnect between the rulers and the ruled, hidden behind dark lenses, was to see the modern European project in its purest form. It is opaque. It is distant. It is coolly rational while the world burns. The gathered crowd—the CEOs, the NGO grifters, the thought leaders who haven’t had an original thought since 1998—didn’t seem to mind. Why would they? They all wear metaphorical sunglasses every day. They have filtered out the glare of poverty, the harsh light of social decay, and the blinding reality that their economic models are largely fiction. Macron just made the subtext text.

He spoke, presumably, about “challenges” and “resilience” and “cooperation,” the standard buzzword slurry that is pumped into the ventilation system at the WEF to keep everyone sedated. But who could listen to the words? The sunglasses did all the talking. They said, “I am untouchable.” They said, “My vision is impaired, and yet I am the one guiding you.” It is the perfect encapsulation of the current political moment: the blind leading the greedy.

One has to wonder if he took them off to read the teleprompter, or if he just winged it, trusting in the inherent meaningless of Davos-speak to carry him through. Does it matter? The attendees clapped. They always clap. They would clap if a Golden Retriever walked on stage and barked at a pie chart, provided the dog was introduced by Klaus Schwab. But Macron in shades adds a layer of dystopian chic to the proceedings. It suggests that the future isn’t just bleak; it’s so bright with the fires of our own making that the people in charge have to wear protective eyewear just to look at it.

So, spare me the medical excuses. We have eyes, even if the President’s are currently out of commission. We see what this is. It is a farce played out in high definition, a theater of the absurd where the actors have stopped pretending they want to make eye contact with the audience. Macron in aviators at Davos is the image of the decade: cool, detached, broken, and utterly, laughably ridiculous.