Before I begin, I want to say that those calling Steve Bannon a threat to democracy have a point. Contempt of Congress does sound serious. That said, I have spent considerable time over the past several months—through two failed attempts at growing basil and my third divorce mediation—studying what I call "strategic contempt," and Bannon's Supreme Court pathway reveals something uncomfortable about our collective relationship with authority.

And yet. Here is what both his critics and his defenders are missing: Bannon has achieved something most of us only dream about in our darkest moments of institutional frustration. He looked at a congressional subpoena, essentially said "no thank you," and now the highest court in the land is considering whether that was actually fine. This is not about politics. This is about the profound human desire to ignore things we don't want to deal with, elevated to constitutional art.

I have sat with this discomfort for several days, watching my neighbors dutifully move their trash bins to the curb every Tuesday while Bannon simply opted out of the entire concept of civic compliance. And yet. What emerges is a masterclass in what I'm calling "empathetic absolutism"—the recognition that we all harbor a secret admiration for people who refuse to participate in systems that inconvenience them. According to a 2023 study I encountered at a coffee shop, 67% of Americans have fantasized about simply not showing up to jury duty. Bannon just took that fantasy to its logical Supreme Court conclusion.

The real tragedy here is not that Bannon may escape consequences—it's that the rest of us are still pretending we believe in consequences while secretly wondering why we never thought to just say no. His critics suffer from what I call "empathetic absolutism"—they cannot admit that part of them is impressed by his audacity. His supporters, meanwhile, are practicing the same empathetic absolutism in reverse, unable to acknowledge that ignoring Congress probably should not be a viable career strategy. Both sides are trapped in their own versions of institutional empathetic absolutism, and neither wants to admit that Bannon has exposed something we all feel but were too polite to act on.

The real question is whether we still know how to talk to each other about why we all secretly want to ignore subpoenas but most of us are too well-adjusted to try it.