There is a certain, nauseating predictability to the American political theater, a cycle of outrage and absurdity that serves no purpose other than to distract the terminal patient from the fact that the hospital is on fire. The latest flare-up comes from Steve Bannon—the rumpled, multi-layered architect of our collective descent—who recently declared his intention to drive a 'Mack truck' through the 22nd Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. It is a delightfully violent metaphor for a man whose entire career has been spent treating the foundational documents of the Republic like the grease-stained napkins of a dive bar. The 22nd Amendment, for those who still harbor the quaint delusion that parchment can restrain power, limits a president to two terms. To Bannon, this is not a rule; it is a suggestion, a speed bump in the path of a man who views the presidency as a lifetime achievement award that never expires.

Bannon’s rhetoric is the ultimate manifestation of the 'Constitutional Conservative' who has decided that the only way to conserve the Constitution is to set it on fire to stay warm. It is the logical conclusion of a political movement that has abandoned policy for personality, traded principles for a cult of the individual, and replaced the rule of law with the rule of the loudest voice in the room. By suggesting that Donald Trump should—and could—simply ignore the term limits established after FDR’s four-term reign, Bannon is signaling the final death of the Republican pretense. They no longer care about the 'original intent' of the Founders unless that intent includes a permanent seat for their preferred deity. It is a transparent, desperate power grab, and yet it is perfectly in character for a side of the aisle that has replaced the Bible with the art of the deal.

But let us not allow the performative pearl-clutching of the American Left to go unpunished. The Democratic establishment reacts to Bannon’s 'Mack truck' with the kind of practiced horror that hides a deep, shameful secret: they need him. They thrive on the threat. Without the specter of a MAGA-fueled autocracy, the Left has nothing to offer but a managed decline and a series of increasingly frantic fundraising emails. They don’t want to fix the system; they want to be the ones holding the leash when it eventually breaks. Their defense of the 'sacred institutions' is as hollow as Bannon’s disregard for them. They have spent decades expanding executive power when it suited them, only to act shocked when the monster they helped build finally finds a driver who doesn't care about the guardrails. It is a symbiotic relationship of incompetence and malevolence, where both sides agree on only one thing: the American public is a collection of idiots to be manipulated.

The 22nd Amendment itself was born of a moment of genuine panic, a realization that the American experiment was dangerously close to becoming a monarchy by another name. Yet, as Bannon correctly identifies—in his own grotesque way—the law is only as strong as the people’s willingness to enforce it. If half the country is ready to applaud the truck as it crashes through the gates, and the other half is too busy arguing about the semantics of the crash to stop it, the Amendment is already dead. We are living in a post-legal reality where the 'will of the people' is whatever the most aggressive propagandist says it is at three in the morning on a podcast. Bannon isn’t inventing a new crisis; he is merely pointing out that the doors are unlocked and the security guards are asleep.

This is the state of the 'Americas' in the 21st century: a race to see who can destroy the machinery of state the fastest. Bannon’s Mack truck is not just a threat to the 22nd Amendment; it is a symbol of the utter contempt both parties hold for the concept of a shared reality. The Right wants a king they can use to punish their enemies; the Left wants a crisis they can use to justify their own existence. Neither side has the slightest interest in governing, and both are perfectly happy to let the country burn as long as they can blame the other for the smoke. Bannon’s boast is the sound of the engine revving. Whether he actually drives the truck is almost irrelevant. The fact that he can say it, and that millions will cheer while millions more scream in useless indignation, proves that the experiment is over. We are just waiting for the wreckage to be cleared, and knowing our luck, the cleanup crew will be just as corrupt as the driver.