It was beneath the cold, translucent dome of Alaskan sky that the two performers—each bloated on borrowed mythologies and slathered in the makeup of statesmanship—entered stage left. One oozed in orange defiance, a man as familiar with reality as a child is with nuclear protocol; the other, stewed in vodka and historical grievance, played his role with the grave, twitching pride of a bear poked once too often.

If we have learned anything from the tangled spectacle of billionaires hobnobbing with predators and politicians shoveling dirt on forests, it is that no piecemeal reform can suffice when the entire recipe is rotten. The dazzling theater of power demands not incremental touch-ups but a profound reimagining of the systems that govern our lives—economic, political, and social alike.