Once again, the high priests of our collective economic doom have gathered on a Swiss mountaintop to discuss the weather, as if they aren’t the ones seeding the clouds with acid rain. The World Economic Forum in Davos is back, and with it comes the annual pilgrimage of the world’s most expensive suits, all congregating to pretend that the ravaging of the planet and the hollowing out of the middle class are problems they didn’t personally engineer over several decanting sessions. It is the ultimate circle-jerk of the global elite—a performative gathering where the arsonists discuss fire safety while holding lighters behind their backs.

Enter Robert Reich, the diminutive patron saint of the American liberal conscience, who has taken to the pages of the Guardian to issue a plea so naive it borders on the clinically insane. Reich is demanding that this collection of tax-dodging CEOs and puppet-state prime ministers finally "stand up" to Donald Trump. He wants the very people who have benefited most from the erosion of democratic norms to suddenly develop a backbone and a sense of civic duty. It’s a touching sentiment, provided you haven't been paying attention to the last century of human history. Expecting Davos attendees to defend democracy is like asking a colony of termites to repair the foundation of a house they’ve been dining on for decades.

Reich’s list of Trump’s transgressions is a greatest-hits compilation of liberal anxiety: the withdrawal from the UN climate treaty, the threats to NATO, the bizarre obsession with annexing Greenland, and the supposed deployment of 'brownshirts' to American cities. While Trump is undoubtedly a cacophonous orange void of a human being, Reich’s framing suggests that the 'international order' being dismantled was somehow a benevolent utopia. He speaks of the post-WWII stability as if it weren't a carefully curated protection racket designed to ensure that the Global North remained fat and happy while the rest of the world provided the cheap labor and raw materials. Trump isn’t destroying a holy temple; he’s just being loud and obnoxious while he robs the same treasury they’ve been looting quietly for years.

The irony, of course, is that the Davos crowd doesn't actually hate Trump for his policies; they hate him for his lack of decorum. They prefer their exploitation with a side of sophisticated rhetoric and a commitment to 'sustainability' that never actually results in a lower profit margin. Trump is the Id of the Davos Man, stripped of the tuxedo and the TED-talk vocabulary. He is the logical conclusion of the neoliberal project—a man who treats the entire world as a real estate deal to be leveraged and liquidated. When he demands to buy Greenland, he is simply saying out loud what the mining conglomerates in the room have been whispered in boardrooms for decades.

Reich’s plea for these 'leaders' to denounce the havoc is a masterclass in performative futility. Does he truly believe that a CEO who oversees a trillion-dollar portfolio is going to risk a tax cut or a regulatory rollback just because the President is mean on social media? These people are not leaders; they are high-level middle managers for global capital. Their only loyalty is to the spreadsheet. If Trump promises them another round of corporate welfare, they would watch him burn the UN charter on the Davos main stage and then applaud him for his 'disruptive energy.'

The 'havoc' Reich describes is merely the friction created when a dying system finally stops pretending it cares about the people it governs. The global elite in Switzerland aren’t there to save the world; they are there to ensure they have the best seats in the lifeboat. They will nod solemnly when someone mentions climate change, and then they will board their private jets to fly back to their gated communities, leaving the rest of us to drown in the rising tides of the very instability they facilitated. Reich’s call to action is a scream into a golden void. He is asking the vampires to lead a blood drive. It would be funny if it weren't so pathetic. In the end, Davos is just a high-altitude reminder that no one is coming to save us, especially not the people who made a fortune breaking everything in the first place.