Steve Bannon, a man who consistently looks like he was reconstructed from the floor sweepings of a failed insurrection and dipped in a vat of lukewarm gin, has emerged from his latest brush with the consequences of his own actions to deliver a eulogy for American pushback. Speaking with the greasy confidence of a man who knows the locks have been changed and he’s the only one with the key, Bannon recently marveled at the sheer, terrifying lack of 'resistance' to the incoming Trump sequel. 'You have to take it however deep you can take it,' he purred, using the kind of predatory phrasing that would make a shark blush, 'and, quite frankly, until you meet resistance. And we haven’t met any resistance.'

It is a rare moment of honesty from a professional chaos-peddler. Bannon isn’t just bragging; he’s conducting an autopsy on a living patient. The 'Resistance'—that once-lucrative brand of pussy-hat-wearing, bumper-sticker-buying indignation—has effectively evaporated into the ether, replaced by a collective, national shrug. The Left, having spent four years performing a series of increasingly frantic interpretive dances about 'democracy being on the ballot,' has apparently decided that the ballot was a suggestion and the democracy was too heavy to carry. They are currently preoccupied with a circular firing squad of blame, wondering which specific identity group failed to save them from their own staggering incompetence. It turns out that fundraising emails and strongly worded celebrity TikToks are a poor defense against a movement that views the rule of law as a series of optional guidelines written by losers.

On the other side of this necrotic coin, we have the Right: a collection of sycophants and opportunists who have traded their last shred of intellectual consistency for a chance to sniff the exhaust of the MAGA bus. Bannon’s gloating is a direct insult to the spinelessness of the GOP establishment, those 'principled conservatives' who once whispered about guardrails and legacy. Those guardrails have been sold for scrap, and the legacy is being rewritten by a man who thinks the 18th Amendment was a brand of artisanal water. The 'resistance' Bannon mentions isn’t just the opposition party; it’s the concept of friction itself. We are watching a political movement slide into total control not because it is intellectually superior or morally sound, but because the floor has been waxed with the grease of a thousand broken institutions.

Bannon’s 'take it deep' philosophy is the logical conclusion of a society that has replaced civic duty with doom-scrolling. When he says they haven’t met resistance, he is pointing out that the institutional immune system of the United States has been compromised by a terminal case of vapidity. The courts are being packed with ideologues who view the Constitution as a choose-your-own-adventure novel. The bureaucracy is being prepared for a purge that would make a Roman emperor feel inadequate. And the response from the 'Resistance' leaders? They are likely drafting a new series of fundraising appeals to 'save our democracy' by purchasing a limited-edition tote bag. It is the banality of evil meeting the banality of the stupid, and Bannon is the only one laughing because he’s the only one who realized the door was never actually locked.

There is a profound, almost poetic nihilism in Bannon’s assessment. He understands that power is not granted; it is seized by whoever is willing to be the most annoying person in the room for the longest period of time. The lack of resistance is an indictment of everyone involved. It indicts a media class that treated the collapse of norms as a ratings-driven reality show. It indicts a political class that treated governance as a social media strategy. And it indicts a public that has become so desensitized to the absurdity of their leaders that they can no longer distinguish between a policy shift and a fever dream. Bannon isn’t a genius; he’s just a man standing in a vacuum. He is gloating because he discovered that the 'Adults in the Room' were actually just three toddlers in a trench coat, and the trench coat is currently on fire. We are entering an era where the only limit on power is the imagination of those who hold it, and judging by the current trajectory, we are in for a very imaginative, very deep descent into the abyss.