Ah, Davos. The annual migration of the world’s most expensive parasites to the Swiss Alps, a place where the air is thin, the fondue is overpriced, and the hypocrisy is so thick you could carve it into a commemorative statue of a middle manager. This year, the festivities of the World Economic Forum were graced by a display of profound revolutionary courage—or, if you possess a functioning brain, a display of utter, performative futility. A group of activists, likely fueled by nothing but self-righteousness and overpriced espresso, decided to project a satirical image of Donald Trump onto a ski slope. Because, as we all know, nothing makes a globalist billionaire rethink their life choices quite like a giant light-show on a pile of frozen water.

Let us dissect the players in this tragicomedy. First, we have the Davos crowd itself: a collection of soulless technocrats and corporate ghouls who spend their days discussing ‘inclusive capitalism’ and ‘sustainability’ while their private jets idle on the runway, spewing enough carbon to choke a prehistoric mammoth. To these people, Trump is not a threat to democracy; he is a branding error. He is the loud, orange uncle who shows up to the family reunion and mentions the inheritance too early. They loathe him not because of his policies—many of which they quietly enjoyed for the tax breaks—but because he lacks the refined, polite vocabulary of exploitation that they find so comforting. He is the mirror they refuse to look into, a crude reflection of their own greed stripped of its Ivy League veneer.

Then we have the activists. Oh, the activists. These professional grifters of the ‘resistance’ brand believe that projecting a caricature of an orange man onto a mountain is a meaningful act of defiance. It is the political equivalent of a toddler throwing a tantrum in a high-end department store; it might be loud, but it doesn’t change the price of the Gucci bags. These people are the flip side of the same debased coin. They crave the attention of the very elites they claim to despise. They want to be seen ‘speaking truth to power,’ oblivious to the fact that power is currently inside a heated chalet, sipping a thirty-year-old scotch and wondering if they should buy another island. The projection on the mountain isn’t a message; it’s a selfie. It’s a way for these people to feel morally superior while accomplishing exactly nothing of substance.

Consider the sheer logistics of this absurdity. The activists haul high-powered projectors through the snow to beam an image of a man who isn’t even in the country, onto a mountain that doesn’t care, for an audience that isn’t looking. It is a perfect microcosm of our modern era: light and shadow, signifying nothing. The image of Trump, a man whose skin tone matches a vintage nacho cheese dispenser, flickering against the pristine Swiss landscape is almost poetic in its ugliness. It represents the collision of two vapid worlds: the world of the populist demagogue and the world of the neoliberal technocrat. Both are obsessed with imagery, both are devoid of humanity, and both are currently leading the rest of us into a ditch.

Historically, peasants would at least have the decency to bring pitchforks to the gates. Today, we bring lumens. We have replaced actual social change with 'awareness,' a nebulous concept that allows everyone to feel like they’re doing something while the fundamental structures of power remain entirely unmolested. The billionaire class in Davos isn't trembling because of a projection on a ski slope. They are laughing. They are laughing because they know that as long as the 'opposition' is busy playing with flashlights on mountainsides, the status quo is safer than a Swiss bank account.

There is something profoundly depressing about the fact that this qualifies as news. It’s a feedback loop of vanity. The activists get their headlines, the media gets its clicks, and the Davos attendees get to pretend they are the enlightened center between two extremes. Meanwhile, the actual world—the one where people can’t afford heat or healthcare—continues to spin toward oblivion. We are living in an age where the spectacle is the only thing that matters. We don't want solutions; we want better lighting for our grievances. Whether it's the right-wingers worshiping a golden calf in a suit or the left-wingers projecting icons on a hill, it's all the same religion of the self. So, bravo to everyone involved. You've managed to turn the Swiss Alps into a backdrop for a digital middle finger that no one felt. I hope the fondue was worth it.