A great convocation of the lost, out of touch and confused is taking place in a Swiss mountain resort that represents Earth’s largest gathering of plutocrats, media stenographers, corrupt foreign ministers, heads of state, global autocrats, PR executives, CEOs and academics. The bacchanalia styles itself the World Economic Forum, but is better known by its more famous nickname, “Davos.”
It is the supercilious domain of performative climate warriors whose self-importance is great. Their presence for “conversation” is so essential that their private planes are needed for fighting climate change, by transporting a billionaire with a messiah complex and a plan for banning your natural gas stove top.
The coverage this year is different than in past when bold pronouncements around the reliability of Dmitry Medvedev or the commitment of President for Life Xi towards global stability were made with certitude by the masters of the universe who live a life apart and separate from all, but the infinitesimally smallest percentage of the world’s population. Davos is a world of unimaginable wealth and power where single-digit billionaires are paupers, and where the richest man in the room must always be the wisest.
The ludicrousness of the affair derives from its pretensions and solipsisms around the idea that its aims are noble, its worldview beneficent and its attendees wise. The buzzwords and slogans that it produces each year are empty and meaningless. Past examples include:
“Shared Norms for the New Reality” (2011)
“Cooperation in a Fragmented World” (2023)
“Resilient Dynamism” (2013)
It is a conference about nothing but the arrogances of a global elite who find comfort in the insularity of their tribe’s annual gathering. The fundamental premise of Davos has always been the banal notion that the attendees know something that the rest of us don’t. The entire event is premised on this illusion, based on a delusion. It is organized around an intricate series of access badges that restrict entry on the arbitrary Davos hierarchy.
The economic psychology of establishing hierarchy and artificial scarcity amongst the neediest and most privileged group of people in the world was a genius insight. Davos is structured like a Vegas club where the mirage of exclusivity is the coin of the realm. The lesser attendees are allowed to breathe the same air as their betters — if not necessarily in the same room. Klaus Schwab sold the con that there was a room in which “it” happens, and where all of the answers are known and under control. That is the world that is falling apart at this year’s Davos. The attendees seem to be as clueless, vain and certain as ever, but not about what will happen next for a change. They seem to be certain that it is okay to be afraid and bewildered. The world’s richest people seem to sense that the era they wished into existence is falling apart. The gilded age is coming to an end.
What is happening in this moment is perfectly clear. The failure to confront actual reality is what is most obviously absent at a global gathering that has managed to exist within the bubble of its own reality, safe from outside intrusions. It is a place in which suffering, war, famine and poverty are lines on a graph. Davos is a place where all of the riches of the world can create infinite theories about how to engineer society, but can’t offer one lesson about the actual existence of the overwhelming number of Earth’s eight billion human inhabitants.
2023 will be a year when things start to fall apart. It will be a year of crisis, both internationally and in the United States.
The war in Ukraine will become more dangerous and lethal in 2023. There is growing danger of armed conflict reigniting in the Balkans. The extremist Israeli government under Benjamin Netanyahu is simultaneously eviscerating the rule of law, provoking a Palestinian intifada, comforting Russia and beating the war drum against Iran, which is arming the criminal Russian military.
The political situation in the United States will deteriorate significantly in the months ahead. The McCarthy/MAGA Congress will be unspeakably corrupt and brazen about it, as Popular Information reported yesterday. The prominence of Jeff Miller, a Washington, DC, lobbyist, and about whom I’ve written before, atop this invitation is an act of astonishing arrogance:
It speaks to the absolute and total abandonment of any type of interest on the part of the national media in covering the overt corruption of this era in American politics. The simple truth is that the question around who is the most corrupt lobbyist in Washington, DC, is only a secret from you. It’s not a secret from the media. All of this happens in plain sight. In fact, unlike the SBF corruption, when it comes to DC lobbying it’s okay to announce the shadiness. Who is the next Jack Abramoff or Paul Manafort? It’s Jeff Miller. His job is to shake down corporate America for the MAGA Congress. This will be treated like a state secret by the DC access media, as opposed to being printed on the front page of The Washington Post — where it belongs.
The Jim Jordan-led 118th Congress House Un-American Activities Committee will be a travesty and an abuse of power for the ages. It will give a strong indication of how quickly American democracy will be strangled if the MAGA movement is able to spread its 2022 gains to the US Senate and the White House. The MAGA House majority will almost certainly default on America’s debt payments for the first time in history, and the economic crisis it will produce, as always, will land hardest on working-class Americans.
The self-inflicted economic disaster ahead has the potential to trigger a global economic depression. It will occur at the exact moment the starvation in sub-Saharan Africa, resulting from grain shortages from the Ukraine war and Russia’s deliberate sabotaging of their shipments, will start to be noticed by western nations and their citizens. By then of course, it will be too late to stop the mass suffering, death, and war that will follow. In the end, it will lead to one of the great humanitarian crises of the century. It will lead to massive population displacements and refugees from the global south into Europe, which will continue to drive support for far-right European nationalist parties that are hostile to liberal values and democracy.
Lastly, 2023 will be the year during which the stupidity of American politics and its abject brokenness hits home in a way that would have been inconceivable to ponder 20 years ago.
What was the most important story in the United States yesterday?
It was this: the west is months away from a water crisis, and few in America are talking about it. It seems it didn’t really come up during the Kari Lake insanity theater that counted as public debate in an American state in 2022. It ranked number five on The Washington Post hierarchy of their “The 7” daily email of top stories. It should have been number one, but at least the newspaper covered it. Regardless, the question from The Washington Post story that is at hand is this: what is the next town to lose its water supply because there is no more water? And, what happens when millions of people lose their electricity in the third decade of the twenty-first century in the United States?
Unsurprisingly, there was no mention about that at Davos today. I suppose because it was real.
2023 is a year during which reality will not be postponed. Looking back, 1923 was a consequential year. An Austrian man who was laughed at by the elites attempted a coup in Germany. He was arrested and convicted. He was sentenced to jail. He wrote a book there. When he was let out early, The New York Times covered the event. They said Mr. Hitler had been “tamed” by prison, was “no longer to be feared,” and would be retiring from politics.
The age of delusion is cracking. Can you hear it?
So my question is, what does a regular citizen such as myself do in a situation like this? To survive, and to help set us on a correction course. I know I won't be alive to see it resolved, but what steps can I take to help initiate the change needed? I advocate for voting, and register as many as I can to vote in the future. Observe, orient, decide, act. I observe the disaster ahead of us, and I want to act. I would be happy to collaborate with like minded people like you who give a damn.
I am so tired of being enraged. I am weary of the criminality and fake patriotism . I am so tired waiting for justice . I am so tired of ppl being ignoramuses and not voting. We are full steam ahead with fascism . History repeats itself on our borders this time. Instead of Hitler , Putin is winning the war against our democracy and way of life. The MAGATs are creating the chaos and dismantling every institution in the US. Covid mismanagement tears apart healthcare and public schooling . Now transportation with electrical grids . Tainting the FBI and DHS as if they are terrible . THEY WANT NO GOVT but for a small militia . We can’t have nice things anymore .
What is terrible is Congress men and woman being bolstered by Russia being traitors ! And the media spewing propaganda or celebrity nonsensical BS. The hope for a brighter future is barely a thread .