For a certain paranoid sort — a growing contingent, since paranoia has become such a lucrative enterprise — international gatherings of elites are a threat. Exclusive confabs that attract the world’s wealthiest and most powerful are assumed to be where the geopolitical agenda is set, often in opposition to the interests of ordinary people. But the true secret of these conventions isn’t the exquisite competence with which they conspire to subvert the people’s will. The big secret, which is hidden in plain sight, is that these masters of the universe make profound embarrassments of themselves in these surroundings in much the same way and for the same reasons as America’s domestic elites: because they want to be liked by the right people.
Take, for example, this display at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, which was billed as an exercise in cross-cultural competence but has the feel of the performance art native to America’s effete college campuses:
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