Davos is back, that annual migration of the world’s most over-leveraged egos to a Swiss village that smells of fondue and existential dread. For the uninitiated, the World Economic Forum is where the global 'elite'—a term used here with maximum derision—gather to discuss how the rest of us should live in pods and eat insects while they commute between sessions via private jet. This year, the festivities are seasoned with a particular brand of panic: Friedrich Merz is headed to the mountains to 'confront' Donald Trump. It is a spectacle of such profound futility that one wonders if the oxygen at that altitude hasn't finally thinned to the point of collective hallucination.

Friedrich Merz, a man who possesses the natural charisma of a well-organized filing cabinet and the aesthetic appeal of a corporate takeover, is preparing for what the press calls a 'high-stakes' meeting. In reality, it is a collision between two different flavors of obsolescence. Merz represents the old guard of Teutonic bureaucracy—the belief that if you just have enough committees, enough white papers, and a sufficiently stiff collar, you can manage the chaos of the 21st century. He is traveling to Davos to find a 'European answer' to the Trumpian storm. One can only assume this 'answer' will be delivered in the form of a strongly worded memo that will be promptly ignored by everyone involved, including the person who wrote it.

Across the ring stands Donald Trump, the sentient gold-plated dumpster fire who continues to treat global diplomacy like a particularly nasty episode of a reality show that should have been canceled in 2016. Trump’s latest maneuvers involve the release of private messages—the political equivalent of a jilted teenager posting screenshots on Instagram—and a renewed, baffling obsession with Greenland. He is threatening tariffs as if the global economy were a game of Monopoly played by a toddler who hasn’t slept in forty-eight hours. The demand to buy Greenland is the ultimate manifestation of the American id: a desire to own everything, even the melting ice, just to say it belongs to the brand.

The media, led by analysts like Gordon Repinski, treats this as a chess match. It isn’t. Chess requires two players who understand the rules. This is a man trying to play chess against a guy who is currently eating the pawns and setting the board on fire while claiming he won by a landslide. Merz’s 'preparation' is a joke. How do you prepare for a conversation with a man who views the concept of a 'European answer' as a personal insult to his own reflection? The German political class is 'trembling'—or 'zittert,' for those who prefer their cowardice in the original language—because they realize their entire worldview is built on a foundation of sand that Trump is currently pissing on.

Let’s be clear: there are no heroes here. The Davos crowd is terrified not because Trump is a threat to democracy—they couldn't care less about democracy—but because he is a threat to their specific, comfortable brand of exploitation. They like their globalism polite, quiet, and wrapped in the language of 'sustainability' and 'equity.' Trump is the same beast, just louder and without the filter. He is the inevitable result of a system that rewarded greed until it became the only surviving trait. Merz is simply the latest bureaucrat tasked with pretending the engine isn't on fire while the plane hurtles toward the side of a mountain.

The 'Greenland' tariffs are the perfect metaphor for this era of stupidity. We are arguing over the price of a frozen wasteland while the world burns, led by men who think 'leaking private messages' is a valid form of foreign policy. Merz wants to lead Europe; Trump wants to own the horizon. Neither of them has a single thought for the billions of people who will actually have to pay the price for their ego-driven trade wars. The Left will perform their usual ritual of pearl-clutching and 'resistance' posters, while the Right will scramble to justify why buying an island is actually a brilliant strategic move. Both sides are intellectually bankrupt, fighting for the steering wheel of a car that ran out of gas three decades ago.

As Merz prepares his 'response' in the Swiss Alps, remember that this is all theater. It is a gala of greed where the tickets cost more than the average person’s annual salary, held in the name of 'improving the state of the world.' The only thing being improved in Davos is the bottom line of the luxury hotels. Whether Merz manages to look 'tough' or Trump manages to offend an entire continent before lunch is irrelevant. The reality is that we are being governed by a collection of grifters and fossils, and the only 'European answer' that actually matters is how much longer we are willing to watch this circus before we stop buying tickets.