Davos. A charming Swiss village currently serving as the world’s most expensive enclosure for the migratory Billionaire Class. Here, the 'Great and the Good'—words that have never been more violently misapplied—gather to solve problems they largely created over catered lunches that cost more than a mid-sized sedan in the Midwest. It is the annual pilgrimage of the globalist ego, a high-altitude circle-jerk where the air is thin and the empathy is thinner. And now, the golden wrecking ball himself, Donald Trump, is set to descend upon the World Economic Forum, and the 'global norms' are supposedly at risk. Oh, the tragedy of it all. My eyes remain stubbornly dry.

Let’s dissect these 'norms' that the media is so desperate to protect. They are the polite fictions that allow the EU’s technocratic vampires and the Americas’ corporate overlords to sleep at night. They are the invisible rules of the game that dictate you can exploit the Global South and hollow out the working class as long as you use the right progressive pronouns in your annual report and fund a 'sustainability' initiative that amounts to planting three trees in a parking lot. Trump doesn't like these rules, not because he is a champion of the downtrodden—don’t be a fool—but because they are too quiet for his tastes. He prefers his exploitation loud, garish, and preferably with his name etched into it in 24-karat gold leaf. He is the guy who brings a boombox to a funeral; the funeral is for the planet, and the music is a loop of his own rally speeches.

The media is currently hyperventilating over his 'volatile' record. They point to Venezuela, a humanitarian disaster that has been successfully converted into a geopolitical chess game played by people who couldn't find Caracas on a map if their offshore accounts depended on it. They point to Iran, where the administration is poking a powder keg with a stick while the rest of the world watches with the terrified fascination of people witnessing a toddler play with a hand grenade. And then, the piece de resistance: Greenland. Only a mind thoroughly marinated in the stagnant juices of 1980s Atlantic City real estate could look at a sovereign territory and think, 'I could put a casino there.' It is the ultimate manifestation of the American dream: treating the entire planet as a distressed asset waiting for a predatory loan.

The Davos crowd will pretend to be horrified. They will sip their mineral water—bottled at the source by children paid in exposure—and talk about 'stakeholder capitalism' while their private jets clog the local tarmac like cholesterol in a boomer’s artery. They hate Trump because he is the mirror they refuse to look into. He is the raw, unrefined version of their own greed. They want the profit without the PR nightmare; he is the PR nightmare who thinks the profit is a scoreboard. They find him distasteful not because he’s a narcissist, but because he’s an uncurated one. He represents the ugly truth of their entire world order: that it’s all just a smash-and-grab job with better catering.

This isn't a clash of civilizations; it's a clash of different brands of decay. On one side, you have the 'liberal international order,' which is essentially a global Homeowners Association run by people who think a sternly worded letter from a subcommittee is a weapon of mass destruction. On the other, you have a man who treats international law like a pesky non-disclosure agreement he can simply ignore or tweet out of existence. Neither side has the slightest interest in the actual human beings residing on this spinning rock. To the Davos elite, you are a data point to be managed; to the wrecking ball, you are an audience member to be grifted.

When the orange golem finally touches down in Switzerland, expect the usual theater. There will be speeches about 'shared futures' and 'inclusive growth'—phrases that mean absolutely nothing but sound profound when spoken by someone with a McKinsey pedigree or a European accent. Trump will likely brag about his stock market while ignoring the fact that half his country is one medical bill away from eating cat food. The Europeans will talk about the environment while continuing to sell weapons to any regime with a pulse and a checkbook. It is a spectacle of the highest order, a carnival of the vapid held at an altitude where reality is an optional extra.

We are watching the terminal phase of an era where the only thing being 'disrupted' is our collective ability to pretend any of this matters. Trump isn't destroying the world; he’s just showing us that the people in charge of it are just as vacid, self-serving, and intellectually bankrupt as he is. They just have better tailors and more expensive watches. As the wrecking ball swings, the only thing to do is watch the dust settle on the pristine Swiss snow and realize that whether the 'norms' stay or go, the view from the bottom remains exactly the same: cold, dark, and utterly indifferent.