Here we go again. The circus is back in town, but this time it is hanging off the side of a giant glass needle in Taiwan. You know the guy. Alex Honnold. The man who looks at a sheer rock face and thinks, "I should go up that without a rope because I hate living comfortably." He is the guy who climbed El Capitan in Yosemite and gave everyone in the movie theater a panic attack. Now, he is heading to Taiwan to climb Taipei 101. It is one of the tallest buildings in the world. It is huge. It is shiny. And apparently, it is the answer to geopolitical nightmares.

Let’s look at what is actually happening here. On one side, you have Taiwan. They are sitting there, sweating, looking across the water at China. China is big, loud, and constantly talking about how they want to take Taiwan back. It is a tense situation. There are fighter jets flying around. There are angry speeches. The whole world is worried about a war starting there. It is real life, with real stakes and real danger. So, what is the plan? How do we solve this? Diplomacy? Trade deals? No. We send in the spider-man guy.

Taiwan sees this as a "marketing opportunity." That is what the news says. Think about how sad that sentence is. You have a country that is worried about its very existence, and their big move is a publicity stunt. They want you to look at their tall building. They want you to see the cool American climber. They hope that if enough people watch a guy dangle from a window washer’s nightmare, maybe the rest of the world will care about them. It is desperate. It is like trying to put out a house fire by doing a card trick on the front lawn. Look at me! I am doing something cool! Please don't let my house burn down!

And then there is Honnold. I don't get this guy. I really don't. Most people wake up and want coffee. He wakes up and wants to cling to a ledge the size of a credit card while the wind tries to kill him. He is a superstar because he does things that are biologically stupid. Evolution built us to stay on the ground. It gave us fear so we wouldn't fall off cliffs. Honnold looked at millions of years of evolution and said, "Nah, I’m good." Now he is trading rocks for glass. He is going to scale this massive tower, Taipei 101, which looks like a stack of take-out boxes glued together.

Why? Because he can. Because we are bored. We live in a world where everything is falling apart, so we need bigger and crazier distractions. We can't just fix our problems. We have to watch a guy maybe fall to his doom. It is the modern version of the gladiators, but without the lions. We sit on our couches, eating chips, watching a man risk his life for absolutely nothing. There is no prize at the top. The view is the same from the elevator. He is doing it for the thrill, and we are watching because we are ghouls.

Think about the "marketing" angle again. What are they marketing? Heights? Gravity? The fact that Taiwan has buildings? Everyone knows they have buildings. We know they make the chips that go in our phones. We know they are important. Does seeing a guy climb the outside of the office really help? Is the leader of China going to watch this on TV and say, "Wow, that is impressive. I guess we won't invade now. They have a guy who can climb stuff."

Of course not. It is performative nonsense. It is a distraction. The Right will probably say this is American excellence on display. The Left will probably say something about international solidarity. Both sides are wrong. This is just noise. It is a loud, dangerous spectacle designed to make us look away from the fact that we have no idea how to handle the actual problems in the region. We are replacing policy with stunts.

It is perfect for our time, really. Everything is content. War is content. Fear is content. A man clinging to a skyscraper is content. We consume it, we say "wow," and then we scroll to the next video. Honnold will climb the building. He will probably make it to the top because he is a machine. Everyone will clap. Taiwan will feel good for fifteen minutes. The sponsors will sell some energy drinks or climbing shoes. And the next day, the fighter jets will still be flying, and the tension will still be there.

Nothing changes. We just get a better view of the mess from the top of the tower. But hey, at least the video will look cool on your phone.