George Soros is not a good public speaker. When he does deliver one of his rants, he sounds too much like the aspiring James Bond villain that he is. And that's packaged with the charisma of Jabba the Hutt. Even with the best talent out there writing his speeches, it's not a good combination. And the Davos rant was the old vicious anti-Semitic billionaire in his usual unpleasant form.
"It has become something of an annual Davos tradition for me to give an overview of the current state of the world," Soros began. Like all Bond villains, Soros can't shut up. And he's convinced that everyone loves listening to him. " I was planning half an hour for my remarks and half an hour for questions, but my speech has turned out to be closer to an hour. I attribute this to the severity of the problems confronting us."
If Soros had any self-awareness, he would have attributed it to his need for an editor. The actual speech is a rambling mess. Soros croaks lefty pieties and issues vague threats.
"Clearly, I consider the Trump administration a danger to the world. But I regard it as a purely temporary phenomenon that will disappear in 2020, or even sooner," he boasts.
"My foundations, most of our grantees and myself personally are fighting an uphill battle, protecting the democratic achievements of the past. My foundations used to focus on the so-called developing world, but now that the open society is also endangered in the United States and Europe, we are spending more than half our budget closer to home," he declared.
Having a billionaire use his fortune to impose a political agenda contrary to the one that voters voted for is the opposite of democracy. But Soros likely uses the term the way that the USSR did. And he's certainly spending plenty of money.
"The rise of leaders such as Kim Jong-Un in North Korea and Donald Trump in the US have much to do with this. Both seem willing to risk a nuclear war in order to keep themselves in power," Soros insists.
His solution is for America to accept a nuclear North Korea. "The fact is, North Korea has become a nuclear power and there is no military action that can prevent what has already happened. The only sensible strategy is to accept reality, however unpleasant it is, and to come to terms with North Korea as a nuclear power."
That's exactly the strategy of appeasement you expect from Obama's sugar daddy.
"This will require not only a landslide in 2018 but also a Democratic Party that will aim at non-partisan redistricting, the appointment of well-qualified judges, a properly conducted census and other measures," Soros insists. Assume that he means the opposite. In short, partisan Dem redistricting, radical left-wing judges and a census that continues to include non-citizens to inflate Dem districts.
The bulk of the rant was an attack on Facebook and Google. "Companies earn their profits by exploiting their environment. Mining and oil companies exploit the physical environment; social media companies exploit the social environment."
That's a stupid claim in too many ways to count.
Then Soros turns to the EU.
"Our aim is to help save the European Union in order to radically reinvent it," Soros arrogantly declares.
He blames the EU's unpopularity on austerity and the debts owed by Greece and other countries to more productive European nations, while ignoring the more fundamental issues with the EU. That's left-wing dogma which is the only thing that ever comes out of Chez Soros.
"One important country, Britain, is in the process of leaving the EU and at least two countries, Poland and Hungary, are ruled by governments that are adamantly opposed to the values on which the European Union is based. They are in acute conflict with various European institutions and those institutions are trying to discipline them," he declares.
Discipline is a most interesting term.
"We are in a revolutionary period; everything is subject to change. The decisions taken now will determine the shape of the future."
That much we can agree on. The struggle for the future has reached a crucial period. And people all over the world can choose between freedom and Soros.