
Photograph Source: Sdkb
– CC BY-SA 4.0
A wise man once told me that when the pendulum gets to the bottom it can only go up. “But how will I know it has gotten to the bottom?” I responded. Trump’s November 5 election and January 20 inauguration can be seen as a bottom, but perhaps they are only the tip of what could be a much greater descent. I have lived through low points with “Tricky Dick” Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Trump 1.0. (Those not mentioned should not be assumed to be high points on the pendulum.) The question is resistance. What lies ahead for those shocked, discouraged, disgusted by what is taking place. Michelle Obama was not at the 2025 inauguration. In 2017 she described her feelings at Trump’s first swearing in: “To sit on that stage and watch the opposite of what we represented on display, there was no diversity, there was no color on that stage,” the former First Lady said. “There was no reflection of the broader sense of America. Many people took pictures of me and they’re like, you weren’t in a good mood. No, I was not.” This time she was a no show.
What is there to do? What kind of resistance is possible? I have long-lost relatives calling from the States asking me about moving to Switzerland where I live, a form of no show.
A small Swiss example of resistance: Donald Trump was inaugurated on January 20, the very day the World Economic Forum (WEF) began its 55th annual meeting in Davos. So at the same time Trump 2.0 officially began, 3,000 of the world’s formal leaders met to discuss “Collaboration for the Intelligent Age.” While Trump could not be there in person – even he cannot accomplish the quantum phenomenon of being in two places at the same time – his presence was dominant. As the media reported, “Trump is a magnetic force that does not escape Davos,” a CEO told the New York Times. “Davos is only talking about one thing,” he observed, “which is Donald Trump as president of the United States and what it means for the world.”
Trump is in many ways the ultimate Davos Man. While the WEF’s mission statement says, “Together we continue to strive for a better world, where cooperation and trust lead to lasting progress,” Trump flouts “America First” and “Make America Great Again,” and has little value for working together, cooperation or trust. But Trump is the ultimate Davos Man. As Robert Reich wrote, “Instead, after years of calling for responsible global corporate capitalism, the CEOs gathering in Davos are now openly focusing on their bottom lines. In other words, the jig is up. The pretense is over. The blather about corporate social responsibility is revealed for what it really is and always has been — PR designed to make the public believe that big global corporations care about anything other than making as much money as possible, as soon as possible.”
Trump is the incarnation of the individual who thinks he or she is the ultimate power broker and decider. The term Davos Man was originally used by the Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington in a 2004 essay describing a new class of enriched globalists who are only loyal to themselves. Much like today’s nomads who ski the slopes of Verbier in Switzerland or Vail in Colorado while “working,” or surf the beaches in Hawaii or Bali between zoom meetings, Trump, the Davos Man, is imbued with his own importance, dedicated to making himself more money while pretending “to strive for a better world.” Surrounded by 5,000 Swiss soldiers as well as thousands of police officers, the 3,000 makers and shakers at Davos this year count 350 government leaders, more than 1600 business leaders including over 900 of the world’s top CEOs. The Davos Man takes many forms.
To return to resistance: Several hundred protestors are present in the Swiss alpine resort this week. Far from the warmth of the conference meetings and top-end hotels, Young Socialists and anti-capitalism activists from Strike WEF are among the assembled few braving the cold outside demonstrating against Davos Man and all he represents. “We are criticising the elites who presume to speak for the people while millions of people are already dying from climate change,” a spokesperson for the Strike WEF collective told Keystone-SDA. Many carry signs such as “Tax the Rich.” Some throw snowballs at the passing attendees’ upscale vehicles. The history of protests against the WEF is long. In 2003, protestors blocked access to the town and anti-globalization demonstrations spread throughout Switzerland. The point of the protests is always the same. Hundreds of people gathering in the cold of January to express their displeasure with the global elites representing all that is wrong with capitalism and its failures to deal with global inequality, climate change and whatever else the WEF and Davos Man represent.
But, in reality, the Davos protests are like throwing snowballs to try to squelch California fires. The protestors are correct in their sentiments; it’s the right thing to do, but what are the consequences? Over 70 million American citizens voted for Trump 2.0. He has control of both houses of Congress as well as a powerful influence over the Supreme Court. In addition to political domination, he even feels divinely anointed; “I felt then, and I believe even more so now, that my life was saved by God to make America great again,” he said in his inauguration speech.
For the moment, the pendulum is moving radically downward on the democratic/humane scale. No one is sure how low the pendulum will go, nor when it will start going upward. But throwing snowballs at Davos or brandishing signs will surely not be enough.