I have long maintained that the annual gathering of the world’s self-appointed masters in Davos is less a geopolitical summit and more a high-altitude support group for the people who broke the planet. It is a place where the air is thin, the ethics are thinner, and the champagne is cold enough to freeze the conscience of a hedge fund manager. This year, the sybaritic elite found their new messiah in Mark Carney, the perennial ‘adult in the room’ and former central banker who has spent his career being precisely the kind of technocratic savior that everyone pretends to listen to until the checks bounce. Carney stood before a room of billionaires and told them, with the measured gravity of a mortician, that ‘Pax Americana’ is over—that the great American experiment is currently undergoing a ‘rupture’ so profound that Canada must start looking for new friends before it gets pulled into the drainage ditch of history. And what did the audience do? They gave him a standing ovation. There is nothing the global elite loves more than being told the world is ending, provided the news is delivered by a man in a well-tailored suit who uses words like ‘fragmentation’ instead of ‘collapse.’

Let’s look at the sheer, unadulterated comedy of the situation. We have the Americans, currently trapped in a political psychodrama that resembles a school bus fire fueled by resentment and cheap cable news rhetoric. On one side, you have the performative Left, more concerned with the linguistic purity of their surrender than actually governing; on the other, the moronic Right, a collection of grievance-mongers who think isolationism is a valid economic strategy for a country that doesn't actually manufacture its own shoes anymore. Carney is right about the ‘rupture,’ but he’s remarkably polite about it. He sees a superpower devolving into a collection of warring tribes and realizes that Canada—a country whose entire national identity is basically ‘the polite apartment above a meth lab’—is in serious trouble. The U.S. is no longer the reliable hegemon; it is a volatile, aging athlete trying to punch its way out of a paper bag of its own making.

But here is where the farce really hits its stride. Carney’s solution for Canada’s survival is to find ‘new allies.’ I find this adorable. In a world where every major power is currently retreating into its own navel or sharpening its knives for a resource grab, who exactly does Carney think is going to step up? The EU, a collection of nations that couldn't agree on a lunch order, let alone a security pact? Or perhaps some emerging bloc that will treat Canada as anything more than a glorified lumber yard with a decent health care system? It is a desperate, intellectualized plea for a return to a rules-based order that the rules-makers have already set on fire. The standing ovation wasn't for his insight; it was for his delivery. The Davos crowd loves the aesthetics of crisis. They love the feeling of being ‘informed’ about the disaster they helped facilitate. It makes them feel like they’re part of the solution, rather than the primary reason the problem exists.

I find it exhausting to watch these people pretend that a change in leadership or a new trade agreement will fix a fundamental rot. The ‘rupture’ Carney speaks of isn’t just a U.S. problem; it’s the natural conclusion of the neoliberal grift he has personified for decades. You cannot spend forty years hollowing out the middle class, outsourcing the soul of your industry, and treating the world as a giant spreadsheet, and then act surprised when the peasants start voting for the loudest lunatic they can find. Carney is the ultimate Davos Man, trying to navigate a post-Davos world using the same broken compass that got us lost in the first place. He talks about Canada’s ‘survival’ as if it’s a matter of diplomatic maneuvering, when in reality, it’s about the fact that the entire global system is a house of cards built on the assumption that everyone would just keep playing along with the American myth. Now that the myth is dead, the priests of that religion—like Carney—are desperately trying to start a new cult before the congregation realizes the gods were never there. They clap because they’re terrified, and clapping is the only thing they know how to do when they’re not signing checks for their own vanity projects. It’s a pathetic display of intellectual vanity, and frankly, I’m tired of watching these people pat themselves on the back for describing the fire while they’re holding the gasoline.