The World Economic Forum is essentially a high-altitude support group for the people who have successfully strip-mined the planet’s resources and now want to be thanked for it. It is a gathering of the global elite—the kind of people who view 'humanity' as a vague marketing term—nestled in the Swiss Alps to discuss 'sustainability' while burning enough jet fuel to melt the very glaciers they claim to be protecting. Into this den of manicured hypocrisy stepped the American President, a man whose relationship with the truth is not merely estranged, but actively litigious. His speech was a masterclass in what one might call 'aggressive improvisation,' a rhetorical shrug aimed at the very concept of objective reality.

To watch the institutional fact-checkers descend upon this speech with their digital red pens is a spectacle in itself—a desperate attempt by the high-priests of the status quo to apply the rules of logic to a man who operates entirely on the physics of a Saturday morning cartoon. They point out that his claims regarding Greenland’s history are 'misleading.' This is like pointing out that a category-five hurricane is poorly socialized. Of course it’s misleading. The man treats history not as a record of human endeavor, but as a lump of damp clay he can reshape to fit whatever grievance he is currently nursing over his morning fast-food haul. To the fact-checker, a date or a treaty is a fixed point; to the President, it is merely a suggestion, subject to the whims of his own ego.

The obsession with Greenland, which the media analyzed with the solemnity of a theological debate, represents the ultimate manifestation of the real estate developer’s soul. It is the core belief that everything on this planet, from sovereign land to the people living upon it, is just an asset waiting for a better rebranding. To Trump, Greenland wasn’t a territory, a culture, or a geopolitical reality; it was a missed acquisition opportunity, a fixer-upper with a bit too much ice. The fact-checkers dutifully noted that his grasp of the U.S. role in Greenland’s history was shaky. Shaky? It was non-existent. He spoke of it with the confidence of a man who believes he personally invented the concept of the northern hemisphere.

Then we have the NATO routine, the President’s favorite campfire story. He treats the North Atlantic Treaty Organization like a protection racket in a low-budget gangster film, leaning over the table to ask the Europeans where his 'vig' is. The fact-checkers scurry to provide 'context,' explaining the nuances of the 2 percent GDP spending goal and the difference between direct payments and internal defense budgets. They are shouting into a void. The President’s supporters don't care about the nuances of the North Atlantic Treaty; they care about the image of a strongman shaking down a bunch of bureaucrats in expensive suits. The fact-checkers are bringing spreadsheets to a flamethrower fight, seemingly unaware that their audience has long since traded in their desire for 'accuracy' for a desire for 'entertainment.'

What both sides fail to grasp—or perhaps what they are both terrified to admit—is that the truth no longer carries the weight of currency in the modern political economy. We are living in a barter system of narratives. The President provides a narrative of American victimhood and dominance; the media provides a narrative of enlightened resistance; the Davos elite provide a narrative of benevolent stewardship. All of them are lying, though with varying degrees of aesthetic polish. The President’s lies are simply louder, more vulgar, and less concerned with the tedious requirements of plausibility. He is the mirror reflecting the absurdity of the world back at it, and the world is horrified by what it sees.

The futility of 'fact-checking' a man who perceives reality as a series of ratings points is the most pathetic element of our era. It assumes there is an audience for whom the truth is the deciding factor. It presumes that the people cheering for the dissolution of international alliances are doing so because they have been misinformed, rather than because they simply enjoy the sound of glass breaking. The fact-checkers are like librarians trying to organize a library that is currently engulfed in a four-alarm fire. They are doing a very thorough, very professional job, but the books are still turning to ash.

In the end, Davos is the perfect stage for this farce. It is a place built on the illusion of progress, hosting a man who represents the absolute stagnation of the human intellect. We watch the 'misleading accounts' pile up like the artificial snow on the Swiss slopes, and we pretend that by labeling them 'False' or 'Mostly False,' we have somehow tamed the beast. We haven't. We’ve just provided the footnotes for our own eventual extinction, written in a very professional, serif font by people who still believe that if they just find the right data point, the world will stop being a nightmare. It won't. The jet engines are warming up, the vintage champagne is being poured, and the truth remains exactly where we left it: abandoned under the wheels of a gold-plated motorcade while the elite applaud their own survival.