After nearly a decade of Donald Trump dominating America’s frontal lobe, most of us have developed the survival skill of rolling our eyes and moving on. Ten years of Trump noise will do that to a body. We’ve watched reality TV bleed straight into the Oval Office until the lines blurred—and everyone’s half-sedated, doom-scrolling through each new absurdity like it’s just another weather update.

After all we live in a country where the MyPillow guy once wandered into the West Wing to pitch martial law. This level of lunacy would’ve crippled a lesser nation’s psyche—and yet here we are. Still upright. Still scrolling.

But every now and then, something still manages to cut through the static. Trump’s latest grin-and-wink about hanging around after January 20, 2029 made my blood pressure twitch. He recently told NBC he’s “not joking” about a third term and teased “methods” to pull it off, including a Bond-villainesque subplot in which Vice President J.D. Vance wins in 2028, then politely hands the keys back to his boss. Sure, it sounds like trolling—until you remember he once “joked” about refusing to concede, and January 6 showed how funny that was.

Trump loves walls, but he keeps barreling into one he can’t bulldoze. The Twenty-Second Amendment isn’t a polite suggestion taped to the White House fridge; it’s ironclad: get elected twice and “beat it.” And the Twelfth slams the side door, banning anyone ineligible for the presidency from moon-walking in as VP. Could those constitutional barriers be breached? Sure, right after two-thirds of Congress agrees, thirty-eight state legislatures nod in unison, and every writer in America finally agrees on the Oxford comma. Translation: somewhere between a cold day in hell and Vermin Supreme sweeping the Iowa caucuses with 100% of the delegates.

So why burn two hours of my otherwise pleasant Saturday afternoon writing about an idea that has the legal shelf life of gas station sushi? Because complacency kills. That was gospel when I was in the infantry, and it ought to be gospel in politics. Authoritarian regimes don’t usually kick things off with tanks and troops on Main Street. They start by floating the unthinkable, watching us shrug, then floating it again—just a click louder.

We don’t need Doc Brown and a rattle-trap DeLorean to find examples. All we have to do is look at recent history—stuff that’s happened since YouTube and Twitter started warping our attention spans. Erdoğan rebranded himself out of Turkey’s term limits, called snap elections until the clock reset, and declared it democracy. Vladimir Putin played the long game: step aside just long enough to install a puppet, change the rules, and slide right back into power. Each move came dressed up in legalese—referendums, court rulings, parliamentary votes—but the result was the same: democracy gutted and left on display like a trophy.

Trump’s reading from that same dog-eared playbook. Or maybe someone’s just reading it to him, or handing him the CliffsNotes, because let’s be honest—there’s a good chance he’s never made it through an actual book. But we all know how much he admires strongmen, sees himself as one, and loves floating a big red test balloon. So he floats the unthinkable. Waits for outrage fatigue. then cranks the dial another notch.

And it’s not just Trump testing the waters. When Steve Bannon whipped up a “We want Trump in ’28!” chant at CPAC this year, the crowd didn’t boo—they beamed, clapping like true believers at a rally in 1933. And that applause matters. The Constitution is only as strong as the culture willing to back it. Once a norm cracks, it rarely seals clean. Constitutional guardrails are easy to damage, not so easy to repair.

And if you look around, you might notice that the guardrails are already dented. We’ve watched presidents profit off the presidency, Supreme Court spouses scheme behind the scenes, senators hold national security hostage over partisan culture wars. Toss a casual threat to the Twenty-Second on the pile and half the country shrugs. That shrug  is the real danger. Optional outrage becomes optional democracy.

Cue the what-about chorus:”Relax, the courts will save us.” Maybe, but smoke alarms don’t drag you out of a burning house; they just scream until someone moves. And anyway, Trump’s already busy gutting the system—defying Supreme Court rulings when they don’t serve him, stacking lower courts with loyalists. Institutions aren’t self-cleaning. They survive because people step up when it counts—or fall apart when they don’t.

Yes, Trump may be part trolling, part ego-trip. But history tends to punish countries that dismiss early warnings as theater. The founders drew the line in ink; keeping it bright is on us. Meet this nonsense with nervous laughter and cable-news eye-rolls, and the Overton window slides wider. Meet it with a collective, non-negotiable “Nope,” and the window slams shut—this time and every time it cracks.

So, fine, I just spent eight hundred eighty-five words  to deliver what should fit on a fortune cookie: Two terms, pack your bags, don’t let the door hit you. Sad that we have to spell it out… but here we are. The republic doesn’t need another king; it needs citizens who understand why the crown got melted down in the first place.

Nick Allison is a former Army infantryman, a college dropout, and a writer based in Austin, Texas. He spends too much time reading about history, democracy, authoritarianism, and systems in collapse—and not enough time being optimistic about any of it. He’s not a journalist or a pundit—just a political independent, unaffiliated with any party, who still believes the Constitution is worth defending. Ever since discovering the Mac shortcut for the em dash way too late in life, he’s been abusing it—constantly—and has no plans to stop.

Also, he secretly enjoys writing his own bio in the third person because it probably makes him feel a little smarter and more important than he actually is.

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