As the president spoke, the interviewers didn’t bat an eye, but everyone in Syria knows that the snipers on the rooftops are themselves the political solution. Their commanders decide which cities to attack; they themselves decide who lives and who dies. The more they shoot, the more they drive Syria into the abyss.

If the president had been willing to speak about the doings of these troops—which mosque will they surround tomorrow? which cities will they attack?—the larger public in Syria might have watched this interview. But as everyone there knows, the institutions to which the president referred are not quite his own. They operate under the control of the president’s younger brother, Maher, and a coterie of ultra-loyal generals who have served the Assad family since the current president was a child. The president controls politics; these people control the nation.

By discoursing on constitutional reviews and committee processes, the president made it seem as though he didn’t understand that these have no relevance any longer. By refusing to acknowledge the power the snipers exercise over the nation, he made it seem as though he didn’t care or didn’t know what was happening in the streets.

The truth is that in each of Bashar Al Assad’s four public appearances since the beginning of the uprising in March, he has exhibited exactly this cluelessness. By now, the public has accepted it. The president inhabits another planet. Who cares?

A nation teetering on the edge of civil war does not need or want a weakened, irrelevant president. Maher and the generals of 40 years tenure surely know this. When Assad falters on national TV, the country looks leaderless. When it looks leaderless, the demonstrators are encouraged. This prompts Maher and the generals to grasp after greater control of the cities. When they grasp, the president must appear on TV to say that it is he, after all, who stands at the head of the political system. The more he makes irrelevant points like this, the more the country’s confidence in him deteriorates. This isn’t just a media advisor problem. There is something of the death spiral in the current scenario. Maher awaits.

Almost everyone in Syria believes that Bashar Al Assad has an escape plan. One of the funnier videos now circulating on YouTube uses the trick of combining footage from the German film Der Untergang with Arabic subtitles. On the German soundtrack in the film, Hitler, living through his final hours in his bunker, is berating his generals. The Arabic subtitles in the clip have him saying: “None of you donkeys matters at all! The important thing is that no one be permitted to upload any videos onto YouTube! No pictures, either!” And so on.

The joke isn’t that Assad has come unwound, as Hitler has in the movie. No one in Syria thinks that he obsesses over troop movements in his concrete bunker. People do think, however, that he no longer controls the streets, that he rambles to no apparent end, as Hitler does in the movie, and that his world his closing in on him. Under the circumstances, it’s not surprising that Syrians are beginning to wonder: How will the drama end?

The clip-satire suggests a happy denouement. As shells shake the bunker, the camera cuts to a pretty secretary, listening at the office door, who bears a vague resemblance to Assad’s wife, Asma. She is whispering to a friend. “Don’t worry,” say the Arabic subtitles. “We are UK nationals. When this is over, we’ll escape to Britain.”

Many Syrians believe that Asma has already retreated to London. The peaceful way to resolve the trouble in Syria would involve Bashar taking the cue, giving up, and going home to his family. I have come to this point in the discussion several times in Damascus, sitting around a shisha pipe in a café. Whenever we arrive here, the shisha sippers tell me that even if the president admits such fantasies into his private thoughts, neither Maher, nor the elderly generals, nor the wider community of Alawis will allow him to live them out. In this sense, he is alone and trapped. “God should have mercy on his soul,” say the shisha sippers.