The annual migration of the world's most overpaid parasites to the Swiss Alps has, once again, yielded a crop of rhetoric so pungent it could peel the paint off a Gulfstream G650. This year, the Davos circus has pivoted from its usual diet of 'synergy' and 'sustainability' to something far more desperate: a collective existential crisis triggered by the looming shadow of Donald Trump. The spectacle is as predictable as it is pathetic. On one side, we have the orange-hued avatar of American ego, Donald Trump, informing the global elite that 'without us, most countries would not even work.' It is the classic boast of a slumlord who hasn't fixed the plumbing in forty years yet expects a standing ovation for not setting the building on fire. On the other side, we have the so-called 'Middle Powers'—a collection of former empires and current dependencies—scrambling to convince themselves they are relevant enough to survive his inevitable return.

At the center of this tragicomedy is the sudden, frantic adoption of the phrase 'living in truth.' It is a phrase originally coined by Václav Havel, a man who actually suffered for his convictions under a totalitarian regime. To see it hijacked by the likes of Mark Carney, Emmanuel Macron, and Ursula von der Leyen is a testament to the sheer, unmitigated gall of the technocratic class. Carney, a man whose personality possesses the riveting texture of a revised fiscal forecast, used his speech to suggest that the West must finally acknowledge the US is no longer a reliable ally. This is what passes for 'truth' in the rarified air of Switzerland: stating the blindingly obvious three decades too late while pretending it is a revolutionary epiphany. They are not 'living in truth'; they are finally admitting that the imaginary safety blanket they’ve huddled under since 1945 is actually a moth-eaten rag.

Macron and Von der Leyen, the twin pillars of European self-importance, seem to believe that by whispering 'strategic autonomy' into their champagne flutes, they can wish a cohesive military and economic bloc into existence. They represent the 'Liberal Alliance,' a grouping that exists primarily in the realm of high-end press releases and televised hand-wringing. The irony is staggering. They despise Trump for his lack of decorum, yet they are utterly dependent on the very system of American hegemony that he is currently dismantling with the grace of a toddler in a glass factory. They are the 'middle powers'—a polite term for those who have realized they are the supporting cast in a movie that is about to be canceled. Their sudden interest in 'truth' is merely a survival mechanism for people who have spent their entire careers building a house of cards on a foundation of American debt and military muscle.

Then there is Keir Starmer, the human personification of a 'Loading...' screen. While his contemporaries attempt to sound like 20th-century dissidents, Starmer is busy performing his signature move: the hesitant shuffle. He is currently navigating the Herculean task of figuring out how to call out Trump without actually saying anything that might lead to a consequence. He is waiting for a focus group to tell him if the British public prefers their vassalage with a side of American tariffs or European bureaucracy. Starmer’s silence is the most honest thing at Davos; it perfectly encapsulates the impotence of a nation that has traded its sovereignty for a front-row seat to its own decline. He is the ultimate middle-manager in a world where the CEO has gone insane and the board of directors is busy arguing about the font size on the termination notices.

This 'Middle Powers' assembly is not a strategic realignment; it is a support group for the politically bereaved. They talk of 'alliances' and 'liberal values' as if these words still carry the weight of currency. In reality, they are terrified. They are terrified because they know that Trump is a symptom, not the disease. The disease is the hollowed-out center of the Western consensus, a void where actual leadership used to reside. They cling to Havel’s words because they have no ideas of their own. They have spent decades outsourcing their security to Washington and their manufacturing to Beijing, and now that the bill is due, they are trying to pay it with 'moral clarity.' It is a bankrupt currency accepted only in the VIP lounges of ski resorts.

Ultimately, Davos remains a monument to human vanity. Whether it is Trump’s blustery claims of American indispensability or the liberal elite’s performative embrace of 'truth,' both sides are engaged in the same fundamental grift: convincing the masses that someone, somewhere, knows what they are doing. They don't. The world isn't breaking because of one man in a red hat; it's breaking because the people in the room at Davos are too busy admiring their own reflections in the Alpine ice to notice the ground is vanishing beneath them. We are left to watch this slow-motion collision of egos, where the only thing 'middle' about the middle powers is the quality of their imagination and the depth of their resolve. It’s a theater of the absurd, and the tickets are far too expensive.