There’s no permanent attorney general or secretary of defense. (The acting attorney general, Matthew Whitaker, is alleged to have helped a company currently under federal investigation for fraud intimidate its critics.) The national security adviser is John Bolton, and he seems to be trying to provoke a war with Iran. An Associated Press story contains this deadpan line: “White House aides expressed regret that the president did not more clearly and forcefully deny being a Russian agent when asked by the usually friendly Fox News host.”

To be clear, we’re very far from a worst-case scenario version of a Trump administration. Last year the president sent nearly 6,000 active-duty American troops to the border based on racist propaganda about a migrant caravan, but there haven’t been tanks in the streets. The administration winks at foreign governments who kill journalists, but its own threats against the media are mostly empty. I feared, at the beginning of this administration, that Trump would try to exploit American intelligence capabilities against his personal enemies, but instead he gets his intelligence from Fox News. The fact that so many high-level Trump associates have pleaded guilty to crimes is a sign of his corruption, but it also shows he hasn’t corrupted our entire system.

Trump has turned out to be the Norma Desmond of authoritarians, a senescent has-been whose delusions are propped up by obsequious retainers. From his fantasy world in the White House, he barks dictatorial and often illegal orders, floats conspiracy theories, tweets insults and lies unceasingly. But much of the time he’s not fully in charge. He has the instincts of a fascist but lacks both the discipline and the loyal lieutenants he’d need to create true autocracy.

That doesn’t mean, however, that the country isn’t coming undone. Trump’s bumbling incoherence, coupled with his declining political fortunes since the midterms, makes him seem less frightening than he once did. But, two years in, the jaded weariness many of us have developed might obscure how bad things are. We’re living through an unprecedented breakdown in America’s ability to function like a normal country.

The shutdown throws our crisis into high relief. For the first two years, Trump destroyed American norms, standards and conventions. Now he’s cavalierly destroying American lives.