While President Trump spends another day alternating between throwing chicken bones at the TV and yelling at Muslims and cheating at golf, it’s worth noting that the United States government has already begun to fall apart under his watch. And quite rapidly! It’s fallen apart in Puerto Rico, where nearly 3/4 of the people still have no power and, according to Buzzfeed, have begun to burn their dead. It’s falling apart at the National Weather Service, which is nearly bereft of staff during what has been one of the most calamitous storm seasons on record. It’s falling apart at the State Department, where my colleague Jason Zengerle found lifelong public servants demoralized and fleeing. And it’s falling apart at the EPA, where Scott Pruitt has, like other Trump appointees, acted as an infectious agent, turning the agency’s body against itself.

This is all by design, of course. The Tea Party mentality that Trump seized upon always regarded government—particularly at the Federal level—as an active evil. I can assure you that none of Trump’s base is particularly sad that career bureaucrats are now finding themselves unused and/or unemployed. This was always the goal, and the rest of us are starting to get a tangible idea of what it’s like to live in a country where the government is in an induced coma. SPOILER: It is not pleasant.

Keep in mind that none of this purging will, like, save you any money. Far from it. The money “saved” by not having a government isn’t going back to you, Mr. Middle Class Taxpayer. No no, that’s all going to companies and the billionaires who run them, and you’ll likely be stuck with a higher tax bill that doesn’t even begin to compensate for that lost revenue. Oh, and it’ll cost you $70 to visit a park now. Because while Republicans want less people involved in the government, they don’t actually seem to want spend less money ON that government. Between the Senate approving $700 billion in defense spending, and a Whitefish Energy contract so brazenly corrupt that Puerto Rico canceled it, your tax dollars are still being spent, just not on you. And this downsizing will only consolidate money and power among those who want to hog both.

All of this serves as a tragic lesson to voters who, whipped into an anti-government frenzy by Trump and other Republican goons, fail to grasp the services that a functional government—even if it’s just somewhat functional—provides. You can take it for granted when a government provides you with clean highways, and vital weather alerts, and protected wilderness, and regulations that keep companies from putting nerve gas in your food (OOPS SAY BYE TO THOSE). Those are nice things to have, and we are not going to have them for much longer. Under Trump, there’s a non-zero chance the government won’t even remember to process your tax refund.

"Recovering from the damage done by Trump will not only be arduous, but there’s nothing to suggest Mike Pence or any other GOP leader poised to fill the void wants to make that effort."

There are a lot of countries that do not have such invisible support, and we are already finding out what it’s like to live in such a country. Americans are, increasingly, alone. And it’s only gonna get lonelier. The mainlanders who give two shits about Puerto Rico’s suffering right now are in for a rude awakening when such negligence falls upon their hometown, and it will. Because you now live in a GoFundMe America, where the absence of governmental support means people have been reduced to begging for pretty much everything. Victims of the Las Vegas massacre—about which Trump has done literally nothing—have been burdened with the added insult of having to ask for money to help pay their medical bills. What progress has been made in Puerto Rico has been thanks to the added largesse of private citizens like José Andrés and Elon Musk. And Betsy DeVos promises to worsen a school system that, for ages now, has reduced people to raising money and taking out crippling loans to pay for a private education.