I am currently nursing a migraine the size of the hadron collider, brought on entirely by the spectacle of the World Economic Forum. For those blissful few of you ignoring the news cycle in favor of staring into the abyss, let me set the scene: the world’s wealthiest grifters, technocrats, and elected narcissists have once again descended upon the Swiss Alps to solve the problems they created, all while drinking champagne that costs more than your kidney. And amidst this carnival of self-congratulatory irrelevance, French President Emmanuel Macron decided to take the stage and engage in that most European of pastimes: performative defiance against a reality he has absolutely no power to change.

According to the reports—which I read so you don’t have to suffer the indignity—Macron has vowed that France will not “capitulate” to bullying from Donald Trump. It is a sentence so dripping with unintentional comedy that I nearly choked on my stale coffee. The imagery it evokes is precious. Here we have Macron, the poster child for a neoliberal order that has been clinically dead since 2016, standing atop the Magic Mountain, puffing out his chest and declaring that he will not be shoved into a locker by the orange bully across the Atlantic. It is the geopolitical equivalent of a chihuahua growling at a monster truck. The monster truck doesn’t care. The monster truck doesn’t even know the chihuahua is there. The monster truck is just going to keep rolling, fueled by tariffs and grievance politics, while the chihuahua prattles on about the rules-based international order.

Macron warned the assembled elites that we are “reaching a time of instability and imbalances.” This is the kind of piercing insight one expects from a freshman philosophy student, not a head of state. No kidding, Emmanuel? The world is unstable? The sky is also occasionally blue, and water remains wet. To stand before the Davos crowd—a group of people who have spent the last forty years creating these very imbalances by stripping the working class for parts—and warn them about instability is the height of irony. It’s like the captain of the Titanic gathering the passengers in the ballroom to announce that he has noticed a slight chill in the air and perhaps some moisture on the lower decks.

But let’s dissect this “vow” not to capitulate. What, precisely, does Macron think he can do? The European Union is an economic giant but a geopolitical worm. It is a museum run by bureaucrats. When Trump threatens tariffs, he is wielding a bludgeon. When Macron threatens “not to capitulate,” he is wielding a sternly worded communiqué and perhaps a PowerPoint presentation on the importance of multilateralism. The Right in America views trade as a zero-sum war where the winner takes all. The Center-Left in Europe views trade as a polite dinner party where everyone should just follow proper etiquette. Macron is bringing a salad fork to a knife fight, and he expects us to applaud his bravery.

The French President urged “more cooperation among nations.” It is a plea that sounds pathetic in its naivety. Cooperation requires shared values or, at the very least, shared reality. We have neither. We have the American Right, descending into a protectionist fever dream where allies are just marks to be fleeced, and we have the European establishment, clinging to a fantasy of global harmony that evaporated the moment China joined the WTO. Macron is preaching to a choir that has already lost its voice. The people in that room in Davos agree with him, certainly. They love cooperation. They love borders that are open to capital but closed to accountability. But their agreement means nothing because they have lost the plot. They are the architects of the resentment that fuels the very populism Macron claims to fight.

This is the tragedy of the modern political landscape that I am forced to witness. On one side, you have the chaotic, greedy nihilism of the Trumpian Right, which seeks to burn down the institutions just to see the sparks. On the other, you have the preening, impotent moralizing of leaders like Macron, who believe that if they just use enough high-minded rhetoric, the barbarians will stop at the gate. They won’t. They are already inside, eating the hors d'oeuvres.

So, Macron stands in the snow, issuing threats he cannot enforce against a man who does not read. He warns of imbalances while representing a system defined by them. He calls for cooperation in a world fracturing into tribes. It is a piece of theater designed to make him look strong at home, but from where I’m sitting, it just looks like a man shouting at an avalanche. The avalanche is coming, Emmanuel. Your vows won’t stop it. But I suppose the speech will look good in the memoirs you’ll write from your bunker.