Welcome back to Davos, that annual mountaintop assembly where the world’s most efficient bloodsuckers gather to discuss how they might better facilitate their own relevance while sipping sparkling water that costs more than a subsistence farmer’s annual yield. The 2026 edition has provided us with a truly spectacular display of performative impotence, courtesy of Emmanuel Macron. The French President, a man who consistently carries himself as if he’s just finished narrating a four-hour documentary on his own brilliance, decided to use the Swiss stage to deliver a lecture on etiquette to a world that has long since traded its manners for a tire iron.

At the heart of this latest bout of diplomatic theater is Macron’s assertion that he prefers 'respect' to 'bullies.' It is a classic Macronism: a statement so blindingly obvious and structurally hollow that it could only be uttered by a man who treats the presidency like a five-act Shakespearean tragedy where he is the only character with lines. His target, of course, is the looming specter of the United States and its weaponized trade policy. To Macron, the American threat to use tariffs as leverage against 'territorial sovereignty' is 'fundamentally unacceptable.' It’s a lovely sentiment, really. It has the same weight as a strongly worded letter to a hurricane, or a philosophy professor explaining the categorical imperative to a starving grizzly bear.

Let’s analyze the players in this tragicomedy. On one side, we have the Americans, whose current approach to international relations is indistinguishable from a protection racket. The Right has fully embraced its evolution into a collection of greedy morons who view the global economy not as a system of cooperation, but as a piñata to be smashed with the blunt instrument of isolationism. For them, 'leverage' isn't a diplomatic tool; it’s a way to ensure they get their cut while the rest of the world wonders where the lights went out. They don’t want a seat at the table; they want to eat everyone else’s lunch and then charge them for the napkin. It is crude, intellectually bankrupt, and unfortunately, quite effective when dealing with a Europe that is more interested in its own reflection than its own defense.

Then we have Macron and the European elite, the performative Left of the global stage, who view 'sovereignty' as a sacred concept until it’s time to dictate the curvature of a banana or the specific tax bracket of a tech giant they didn’t invent. Macron’s plea for 'respect' is the ultimate cry of the intellectually superior who cannot understand why the world won't just follow his beautifully diagrammed flowcharts. He talks about 'territorial sovereignty' as if it’s a fragile antique that the Americans are threatening to knock over. In reality, he’s terrified that the European Union—a sprawling, bureaucratic labyrinth designed to make sure nothing ever happens quickly—is about to be outmaneuvered by a man who treats the global trade order like a failing casino he’s looking to strip for parts.

There is a profound irony in Macron lecturing anyone on 'respect' while standing in Davos. Davos is the headquarters of the very globalism that has hollowed out the working classes he claims to protect, creating the very populist monsters he now decries. The entire event is a monuments to the arrogance of the 'enlightened' class. It is a place where people who fly private jets discuss carbon footprints, and where leaders who haven't spoken to a plumber in twenty years discuss the 'future of work.' When Macron says it is 'unacceptable' for tariffs to be used as leverage, what he really means is that it is uncouth. It’s a breach of the unspoken agreement among the elite: that we all pretend to be friends while we subtly exploit the masses. The Americans have simply stopped pretending, and that is what Macron finds truly offensive. The mask has slipped, and he’s horrified to find that underneath the mask isn't a fellow philosopher, but a debt collector with a baseball bat.

The tragedy of 2026 is that neither side is offering a solution that doesn't involve the further degradation of the human species. On one hand, you have the American 'bully' who believes that might makes right and that every interaction is a zero-sum game played by idiots. On the other, you have the French 'philosopher' who believes that if he just uses enough sophisticated adjectives, the bully will suddenly realize the error of his ways and join him for a glass of Bordeaux to discuss the Enlightenment. It is a battle between the thuggish and the delusional, played out on a mountain peak while the rest of humanity struggles to figure out how they’re going to afford heat.

Macron’s speech was not a call to action; it was a eulogy for a world order that only ever existed in the brochures for the World Economic Forum. He wants a world of 'respect' because respect is free and it requires no actual sacrifice of power. He wants to maintain the status quo where Europe can remain a museum of high-minded ideals funded by someone else’s security and fueled by someone else’s energy. Meanwhile, the bully is at the gate, and he doesn't care about Macron’s respect. He cares about the ledger. And in the end, whether you’re being robbed by a man in a MAGA hat or lectured by a man in a bespoke suit, the result is the same: you’re still the one paying for the omelet at the buffet. We are trapped in a cycle of stupidity where the only choice is between a punch in the face and a lecture on why the punch was grammatically incorrect. Personally, I’m tired of both.