Americans have worried about a tyrant taking over their country since before it even existed. Some of the framers of the Constitution imagined that a strong executive branch would be too close to monarchy, and debates over whether the president had too much power stretched into the 19th century and continue to this day. Republicans accused Barack Obama of acting like a "king" for issuing an executive order on immigration; progressives charged George W. Bush with moving the US toward fascism. But no one has made people afraid of autocracy quite like Donald Trump.

How exactly Trump would transform the country was difficult to imagine. David Frum—a neocon who was part of the George W. Bush administration but is now one of Trump's most prominent establishment critics—took a stab in a long Atlantic cover story in March 2017 . He envisioned a world where economic growth had made the public uninterested in Trump's refusal to release his tax returns, divest himself in any way from his business, or allow the investigations into his campaign's connections with Russia to continue. It's a future where civil liberties aren't being snuffed out, but instead are wasting away.

In the Washington Post the day after the election, Ruth Marcus expressed the "hope that our other leaders, in Congress and the courts, will be strong enough to safeguard our ideals and free institutions during the potentially perilous course of the Trump presidency." David Remnick of the New Yorker wrote that "the most hopeful way to look at this grievous event—and it’s a stretch—is that this election and the years to follow will be a test of the strength, or the fragility, of American institutions." Trump's win, the New York Times editorial board intoned, "has now placed the United States on a precipice."

Shocked at Trump's upset victory, serious people from across the political spectrum began to wonder what his administration might do to the country. The question wasn't whether he'd be a good president—few mainstream commenters thought he'd be anything short of a disaster. The question was whether he'd destroy the country he was elected to lead. But if worst-case scenarios about the fall of the republic seem overhyped, the damage Trump is doing is real, and it's terrifying.

Newsweek was asking if he was a fascist as early as July 2015 , and deciding exactly how much of his movement was grounded in actual authoritarianism was a parlor game right up until the night he won the presidency, when it suddenly seemed like a lot more than a game.

"If people retreat into private life, if critics grow quieter, if cynicism becomes endemic, the corruption will slowly become more brazen, the intimidation of opponents stronger," Frum wrote. "If citizens learn that success in business or in public service depends on the favor of the president and his ruling clique, then it’s not only American politics that will change. The economy will be corrupted too, and with it the larger culture. A culture that has accepted that graft is the norm, that rules don’t matter as much as relationships with those in power, and that people can be punished for speech and acts that remain theoretically legal—such a culture is not easily reoriented back to constitutionalism, freedom, and public integrity."

Trump might want to be an autocrat, and can certainly talk like one—he's reportedly upset that his Justice Department won't protect him like he thinks they should. But he's not popular or effective enough to actually bend the country to his will.

"Trump’s political weakness, his lack of popularity, and his sheer incompetence have obviously benefited democracy," Steven Levitsky, a political scientist who co-wrote a book on the decline of democracy, recently told Slate's Isaac Chotiner. Vox's Ezra Klein had the same take back in November, writing that Trump "lacks the focus, the persistence, the strategic sense, to become the strongman he dreams of being."

Meanwhile, election watchers are looking at the prospect of a "blue wave" that would deliver the House, if not the Senate, back to Democrats in the midterms, giving the opposition party a better chance to check Trump and make him even less effective.

So there is a Panglossian end in sight: Trump's norm-busting ways drag the Republican Party down electorally and end with him defeated in 2020 by a reenergized Democratic coalition. After being tested, the institutions that make up civil society are stronger for it—the conservative movement resolves not to elevate toxic figures like Trump, the media agrees to spend less time chasing shiny objects during campaign season, and the elites in DC become more attuned to the widespread anger that helped put Trump in office. Or maybe Trump gets impeached and the whole affair ushers in an era of good-government reform, just as happened in the years after Watergate.

But it's hard to imagine such a rosy scenario actually playing out. Even if the wonks are right that Trump won't usher in autocracy and that the Democrats will seize enough power to block his worst impulses, he's exposed horrific flaws in the US system. The executive branch has grown in power so much that the president is only really limited by the courts, with Congress often relegated to a bystander role. Party loyalty is more important to most politicians than any principle. Often, what prevents the president from being corrupt is not laws but norms—and maybe voters don't really care about norms.

Most of all though, what Trump reveals is that contemporary America is incredibly vulnerable to demagoguery. Trump did not hide his racist or authoritarian impulses—he campaigned on them, and a lot of Americans (if not the majority) embraced him. Someone else could ride those same currents to the White House. The next president could hide their tax returns, or only grant interviews to sycophantic media outlets, or spread disinformation, or work to financially reward their friends. Why not, if Trump has proven that the consequences of those actions are easily avoidable? Maybe the next president would be savvier, better able to bend Congress to their will, or they could go even farther and ignore a court order. Maybe someone would stop them. Maybe not. Trump is not the thing that comes through the door to break America. But maybe he's the guy who cracks the door open.