Every year, the World Economic Forum descends upon Davos like a swarm of gilded termites, ready to chew through the remaining mahogany of global stability while patting themselves on the back for their 'visionary' leadership. It is a nauseating spectacle of private jets and carbon-offset indulgences where the world’s most overpaid bureaucrats and soulless hedge fund managers gather to solve the very problems their own greed and incompetence created. This year, however, the usual performative hand-wringing over Ukraine has been pushed aside for something even more absurdly on-brand for our decaying civilization: the territorial integrity of a giant ice cube. It appears the prospect of Donald Trump treating Greenland like a fixer-upper in Atlantic City has finally given the European elite something to actually lose sleep over.

For months, the Davos set has been dining out on the moral superiority of supporting Ukraine, a conflict that allows them to feel heroic without having to do anything more strenuous than wearing a lapel pin. But the moment the Orange Menace re-ignited his fever dream of annexing Greenland, the collective focus shifted with the speed of a high-frequency trading bot. Suddenly, the brutal realities of Eastern European trench warfare are 'so last season.' The new hotness is the potential real estate grab of the century. It is the ultimate testament to the intellectual bankruptcy of our global leaders that they find the purchase of a sovereign territory more cognitively demanding than the ongoing slaughter of thousands. But then again, war is messy and involves logistics; buying a country is a transaction, and if there is one thing the Davos crowd understands, it is the art of the grift.

On one side of this idiocy, we have the American Right, led by a man whose understanding of geography is likely limited to the layouts of his own golf courses. To Trump and his sycophants, Greenland is not a nation or a culture; it is a strategic asset with 'tremendous potential'—which is developer-speak for 'I want to build a hotel on a glacier.' It is the peak of moronic greed, a throwback to 19th-century manifest destiny dressed up in a MAGA hat. The idea that you can simply whip out a checkbook and buy a piece of the Danish Kingdom is the kind of hubris usually reserved for bond villains or toddlers. It ignores international law, the residents of the island, and the basic reality that the world is not a game of Monopoly played on a golden toilet. Yet, this is the caliber of discourse we are forced to endure because one side of the political aisle has decided that 'statecraft' is synonymous with 'hostile takeover.'

On the other side, we have the European 'intellectuals' and the performative Left, who are currently clutching their pearls with such force they might turn them back into coal. Their outrage is as predictable as it is hollow. They are not offended by the neo-colonialism of the proposal; they are offended by its lack of decorum. If a tech billionaire proposed 'disrupting' Greenland’s sovereignty through a series of complex carbon-credit swaps and 'sustainable development' NGOs, the Davos crowd would be lining up to give him a keynote slot. But because Trump wants to do it with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, they find it 'appalling.' These are the same leaders who have spent decades ignoring the Arctic’s environmental collapse while subsidizing the industries causing it, yet now they pose as the noble defenders of Danish sovereignty. It is a masterclass in hypocrisy, a grand theater of the absurd where the actors have forgotten their lines but keep screaming anyway.

What we are witnessing is the final evolution of the geopolitical landscape into a trashy reality TV show. Ukraine was the gritty, high-stakes drama that started to lose ratings because the plot was too depressing. Greenland is the wacky spin-off where a billionaire tries to buy an island. The Davos elite prefer the latter because it doesn’t require them to think about anything as inconvenient as human suffering. They can argue about maritime borders and strategic minerals over five-hundred-dollar bottles of wine, all while pretending they are saving the world from American expansionism. They don't actually care about the people of Greenland any more than they care about the people of Ukraine. To them, the world is just a collection of assets to be managed, regulated, or sold off to the highest bidder.

In the end, it doesn't matter who 'wins' this argument. Whether Greenland remains a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark or becomes the 51st state with a 'Trump Ice' bottling plant, the outcome for humanity is the same: continued descent into a shallow, greed-driven madness. We are a species that debates the ownership of melting ice while the very ground beneath our feet is liquefying. The Davos vultures will continue to circle, the American Right will continue to drool over new maps to carve up, and the European Left will continue to find new ways to feel morally superior while doing absolutely nothing. It’s a perfect circle of stupidity, and frankly, we deserve every bit of it. If this is the best the 'leaders of the world' can do—distracting themselves with Arctic real estate while the world burns—then perhaps it’s time we let the ice melt and start over with the dolphins. At least they don’t try to buy each other’s reefs.