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I’m not clairvoyant. I’m not going to make predictions about the future. But a couple of weeks ago I asked the question, “Do we still have rule of law” in America? Nothing that has happened in the intervening days indicates that the question was hyperbolic. If you’re watching a ball roll downhill, it’s safe to assume that, absent external intervention, it’s eventually going to reach the bottom. That’s about where we are, I think, in the process of losing our democracy.

It’s natural to assume it will be obvious when the moment finally arrives that you don’t live in a republic anymore. Maybe it’s armed men in unmarked vans snatching up Americans off the street who voice disfavored opinions. Maybe it’s the President completely ignoring the legislature and issuing new laws by mere proclamation from the White House. Maybe it’s the administration openly defying direct orders from federal judges.

None of these things are all that far from what has already happened. People are being snatched off the streets and thrown in dungeons with no due process. So far, they’ve all been non-citizens. That could change. The President is ignoring the legislature and issuing new laws by executive order, including one that attempts to amend the Constitution by fiat. Many of those orders won’t survive their first day in front of a judge, but that only begs the question of whether this President believes himself to be constrained by the courts at all, to which we have the semblance of an answer: Trump is defying direct orders from federal judges, including the Supreme Court. He’s not yet “openly” defying them, as the White House still deems it necessary to put forth a fig leaf of a legal justification for its failure to comply with judicial rulings. But how long will even that pretense of legality last?

Still, there’s a big difference between being close to losing our democratic rights and actually losing them. This nether region is the space we currently occupy, less than three months into Trump’s second term. Do we still live in a democratic society? Depends on how you look at it. It’s sort of a glass half-empty or half-full kind of question. That’s not a good situation to be in, when you’re not entirely sure whether or not the laws will actually protect you.

It may not even be possible. It’s like being half-pregnant. If you only have a tentative democracy, you can’t live as if you’re in an actual democracy. You’re careful what you say, just in case the alarmists are right and you don’t actually have freedom of speech anymore. You’re careful about what you do, because even if it’s clearly legal, there’s always the off chance that the government might not abide by a court ruling if it comes to one. You’re cautious about what petitions you sign with your full name, ambivalent about the wisdom of participating in public protests. If you’re a university president, you capitulate to the government’s endless demands; if you’re a partner at a white shoe law firm, you make a deal with the administration. You stay on the safe side, keep your head down, hope that things will blow over. You start acting like a subject instead of a citizen. You bend the knee.

Whether you still have rights or not largely depends on what mood the people running the government wake up in tomorrow. If Trump feels like it, maybe he’ll respect the institutions that check his power. Hopefully that lasts. But if something really works him up into a lather one day, then who knows? Suddenly all bets are off, and your sneaky suspicions are confirmed: your rights were actually privileges that existed only at the pleasure of the ruler. Good thing you stayed under the radar, because the hysterical libtards on MSNBC turned out to be right: we didn’t really have a democracy after all. Thank god you were an early adapter.

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One sign that maybe we don’t live in a democracy anymore is that we all start getting used to trying to mind-read the President. Why did Trump reduce tariffs this week, after jacking them up a few days ago? Is this a game of 4-dimensional chicken with China? Is it something very complicated about interest rates and global reserve currencies that you’ll never understand? Or is there no real reason at all, and it’s just an expression of Trump’s emotional state?

Why is he so mad, anyway? Does he feel the righteous anger of the American worker? Or is he just pissed that Xi is making him look like a weakling? Or is he trying to prove all the haters wrong who accuse him of being Elon’s stooge? Or maybe something’s going on in his personal life? Who the fuck knows? And . . . you might be tempted to say, “Who the fuck cares?”, but unfortunately, we all have to, because another tariff hike could destroy the company we work for, our social media posts may or may not get us on some government list, and if we start bombing Iran because Trump felt cucked by the Ayatollah, maybe we end up in World War 3.

A few years ago I wrote about Norbert Elias’ book, “The Civilizing Process,” which is about how our social manners have their roots in early modern state formation. As the kings and queens of Europe pacified the lands and came to monopolize the legitimate use of violence, the political power of aristocrats became less a function of the military might each could amass to himself, and more a function of one’s social proximity to the monarch. In the intrigues of royal politics, mastery of flattery, charm, subterfuge, patience, self-restraint, the forming of alliances, and the ability to anticipate people’s reactions got one much further than the threat of force. These social manners of court came to be called “courtesy.” Those most expert in their practice were best positioned to earn the trust and confidence of the king, and to steer the king’s decisions toward their own private interests.

That’s how politics works under Trump. When normal presidents are in charge, we tend to interpret their choices through the logic of mass politics: they did this thing because it would attract support from that crucial electoral demographic; they did that thing because they needed to position the party on this side of an issue for the midterm elections. But with Trump, our interpretations tend to be much more personal: he sided with this guy because he has a festering, jealous hatred for that guy; he did that thing because he needs to remind this guy of his place. It’s all very soap operatic, like the court of Elizabeth I.

What that means is not just that the White House under Trump is a nest of vipers all waiting for their chance to strike at their rivals and bask in the short-lived attention of their king — it’s that we all have to sit around psychoanalyzing Donald Trump, trying to trace the precise contours of his narcissistic personality disorder. We have to, because his temperament is mercurial and the exercise of his power is arbitrary. He wears the crown, and his will is law. What’s left to us is merely to adapt to his shifting moods.

This is not democracy. It’s more like the feudal order of things, in which political power was a function of private, personal fealty rather than of public laws and offices. Worse than that, it’s like absolutism, in which there was a single monarch with an uncontested grip on power, rather than an array of dueling petty despots. Under absolutist regimes, the state became a mere appendage of the king himself — “L’etat, c’est moi.” Whether this describes the present moment under Trump, or just the general direction we’re headed in is a matter of opinion. But as with a ball rolling downhill, the destination is plain for anyone to see.