Ah, Davos. The annual migration of the world’s most expensive suits to a Swiss mountain, ostensibly to save the planet, but primarily to remind one another that they are, in fact, the only people who matter. It is a sterile theater, a high-altitude bubble where the air is thin and the delusions of grandeur are thick enough to choke a mountain goat. This year, the script of our global collapse has taken a particularly gauche turn, evolving from the tragedy of failing institutions into a farce of schoolyard aesthetics and real estate fantasies. In one corner, we have Emmanuel Macron, the self-styled philosopher-king of the Hexagon, desperately trying to summon the ghost of Charles de Gaulle. In the other, we have Donald Trump, a man who views the delicate lattice of international diplomacy as nothing more than a series of properties he hasn't yet managed to slap his name on in giant gold letters.

The latest skirmish in this terminal decline involves, of all things, a pair of aviator sunglasses and a massive, ice-covered island. It would be funny if it weren’t so profoundly depressing. Macron, standing before the gathered masters of the universe, delivered what he clearly believed to be a stirring defense of the 'European project.' He spoke of resisting 'bullies' and rejecting the 'law of the strongest,' a rhetorical flourish aimed squarely at the American president without—heaven forbid—actually mentioning his name. It was the diplomatic equivalent of a passive-aggressive Post-it note left on a communal refrigerator. Macron wants us to believe that Europe remains a bastion of Enlightenment values, a sophisticated bulwark against the crude impulses of the New World. He speaks of 'multilateralism' with the reverence of a priest clutching a rosary, while his own continent fractures under the weight of bureaucratic inertia and populist resentment.

Enter the American response. Trump, never one for the subtleties of Gallic subtext, decided to bypass the high-minded debate over global governance and go straight for the jugular: Macron’s choice of eyewear. Mocking the Frenchman’s aviators is, perhaps, the most honest moment of the entire summit. It cuts through the pretense. Why bother discussing the complexities of carbon footprints or trade imbalances when you can simply point out that your opponent looks like he’s auditioning for a low-budget remake of 'Top Gun'? It is the politics of the playground, elevated to the status of a state visit. Trump’s obsession with the aesthetic—the 'look' of power—is the perfect mirror for a world that has long since abandoned substance for spectacle.

But let us not forget the catalyst for this sartorial spat: Greenland. The very notion that the United States would attempt to purchase an autonomous Danish territory is a masterpiece of the absurd. It is 19th-century imperialism reimagined by a man who thinks the world is a giant Monopoly board. Macron’s indignation over the 'Greenland campaign' is predictable; it offends his sense of order, his belief that the world is governed by treaties and polite lunches rather than the whims of a man who sees a map and wonders about its development potential. To Trump, Greenland is not a sovereign landmass inhabited by people; it is a strategic asset with excellent potential for a golf course, provided one can melt enough of the permafrost.

The tragedy here is not that these two men dislike each other. It is that their exchange represents the absolute horizon of modern leadership. On one side, we have the 'intellectual' who believes that using the right words—'sovereignty,' 'cooperation,' 'resistance'—will somehow stop the tide of history. On the other, we have the 'disrupter' who believes that if you can’t buy something, you should at least make fun of the owner’s sunglasses. It is a dialogue of the deaf, performed for an audience of billionaires who are already looking for the exits. Macron’s 'law of the strongest' remark is particularly rich. He speaks as if Europe is a formidable titan standing its ground, rather than a collection of aging states trying to remember where they put their collective relevance. One wonders if he truly believes that calling someone a 'bully' from a podium in Switzerland constitutes a geopolitical strategy. It is the cry of a man who realizes the 'Old World' is being treated like a museum by a man who only visits museums to see if the frames are real gold.

As I watch this spectacle from the comfortable distance of my own disillusionment, I am reminded that Davos was meant to be the 'Great Reset.' Instead, it has become the 'Great Recess.' We are witnessing the final, twitching nerves of a Western hegemony that has run out of ideas and is now subsiding into petty bickering. Whether Macron wears aviators or Trump buys an island is ultimately irrelevant to the cooling of the sun or the rising of the seas. But for a few brief moments in the thin mountain air, it provided a distraction from the fact that neither of them has the slightest clue how to fix the crumbling theater they both call home. They are simply two men arguing over the lighting while the stage collapses around them, one polishing his glasses and the other checking the price of the real estate.