Maybe it's time to bring back the concept of adversaries settling their insults with a good old-fashioned duel? That's the thought I have been having while watching the flurry of playground tantrums and unrestrained bullying spewing forth from the highest ranks of MAGA supporters. Maybe Steve Bannon and Elon Musk should just count off ten paces and take potshots at each other -- they could even make it pay-per-view and make a fortune! Well... whomever was left alive might, at any rate.

I am only being semi-facetious here, since it already seems like American society is trending towards stylized legal violence between antagonists anyway. But even without the pistols at dawn, the infighting has already become epic in nature and we haven't even begun -- since there's still a whole week left before Donald Trump gets sworn in.

The core problem, of course, is that people who both feed into and try to emulate Trump have such enormous egos and are so convinced that they are right in absolutely everything that they chafe when they bump up against another MAGA-influencing blowhard who has staked out some contrary position. Neither side will ever back down, and both sides emulate Trump's "all-out attack, all the time" persona, which could easily lead to trouble in Trumpland in all kinds of unforeseeable ways in the very near future. What we're seeing now is just a preview of this unfolding, most likely.

Elon Musk is the perfect case in point. He, not unlike Trump, has an absolute planet-sized ego, plus a personality that is annoyingly off-putting to an extreme degree. Ditto for Bannon, although Bannon has considerably less money (and Trump famously measures the value of sycophants by the size of the bank accounts).

Musk has already begun to grate on others in Trump's inner circle. This all blew up in a big way over the holidays, in a battle over H-1B visas. Musk is for them, but the knee-jerk anti-immigrant MAGA types are against pretty much all forms of immigration, including H-1B visa holders. The subject is a complicated one (that I will be addressing soon, as I have my own first-hand experience to share), but that's enough of an introduction for this discussion.

Musk went ballistic over the issue (when other Trump supporters ripped into H-1B visas), with some awfully juvenile rage:

Musk ultimately began calling his MAGA critics "subtards" and said that these "contemptible fools must be removed from the Republican Party, root and stem." He later clarified that the "contemptible fools" were "those in the Republican Party who are hateful, unrepentant racists."

Musk then directed an expletive at his H-1B critics, adding: "I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot comprehend."

That's the cleaned-up version, mind you. So recently, Bannon fired back, in an interview with an Italian newspaper (which doesn't have an English-language translation on their website, so the quotes below are all from a Breitbart story, to give full credit where it is due). Here's some of what Bannon had to say about Musk:

I will have Elon Musk run out of here by Inauguration Day. He will not have a blue pass to the White House, he will not have full access to the White House, he will be like any other person.

He is a truly evil guy, a very bad guy. I made it my personal thing to take this guy down. Before, because he put money in, I was prepared to tolerate it; I'm not prepared to tolerate it anymore.

. . .

He went out of his way to mock our movement as racist and retards, and he lost. We blew him out of the water. He won't fight. He's got the maturity of a little boy.

It is rather amusing to hear different people in Trump's orbit calling each other "contemptible fools" and "a truly evil guy... [with] the maturity of a little boy." But that's not the biggest "pot, meet kettle" moment. Here's Bannon on the H-1B visa fight:

This thing of the H-1B visas, it's about the entire immigration system is gamed by the tech overlords, they use it to their advantage, the people are furious. Seventy-six percent of engineers working in Silicon Valley are non-Americans. No Blacks or Hispanics have any of these jobs or any access to these jobs.

Peter Thiel, David Sachs, Elon Musk, are all White South Africans. He should go back to South Africa. Why do we have South Africans, the most racist people on earth, White South Africans, we have them making any comments at all on what goes on in the United States?

Now we've got two top Trump allies actually calling each other racists, with one of them explicitly saying "go back to South Africa" -- to the richest man on the planet. The irony is pretty obvious, wouldn't you say?

Not only are Bannon and Musk posturing about how wonderfully not-racist they are (which is laughable on the face of it), but Bannon seems to also have channelled his inner Bernie Sanders at times during the interview:

We have been fighting this fight for ten years. We are going to expose the entire corruption of the American system, of how money controls everything and hopefully we'll inspire you in Italy to wake up.

. . .

[Musk's] sole objective is to become a trillionaire. He will do anything to make sure that any one of his companies is protected or has a better deal or he makes more money. His aggregation of wealth, and then -- through wealth -- power: that's what he's focused on.

It makes you wonder whether Steve Bannon has ever met Donald Trump. But I digress....

Nobody has any idea how this sycophantic power struggle is going to play out. And it's not the only one brewing in Trumpland either. When you can chart a Republican's political rise in the public eye by how many truly outrageous (often conspiracy-infused) opinions they spout -- and how offensive each one is -- then this sort of thing becomes almost inevitable. Trump's first White House team wasn't exactly known for getting along with each other, but now there will be very few (if any) "adults in the room" to police the playground behavior of them all. Trump's certainly not going to -- Trump loves watching other people fight. The only thing Trump can't stand is if someone eclipses him in the media spotlight -- which (to date) neither Musk nor Bannon seem to have done. Yet.

So why not legalize duelling once again? I'm sure the GOP House and Senate could whip up some sort of bill to do so at the federal level, to allow these spats to be much more entertaining for us all. And rather than just "pistols at dawn," perhaps they could allow for more impressive weaponry in such showdowns? Rocket-propelled grenades, anyone? The possibilities are endless.... The entire spectacle would doubtlessly impress Trump with the biggest yardstick he cherishes, because even on pay-per-view, the ratings would be absolutely off the charts. The whole thing could start with a video of one of the antagonists slapping the other in the face with a glove with the ultimatum: "Sir, I demand satisfaction!"

Ridiculous? Sure. Violent and inhumane? Oh, definitely. Juvenile? Without a doubt. But in today's Trumpian political atmosphere, such things are becoming increasingly plausible -- especially with the characters Trump surrounds himself with. So while this is merely a satirical "modest proposal" at this point, who knows whether it might end up being prophetic in the long run? It wouldn't surprise me in the least, that's all I'm saying.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant