Like a lot of feminists who hoped against hope for Hillary Clinton’s election, there was one thing I looked forward to with special, unqualified joy: The traditional model of the first family was going to be turned on its head at last. Goodbye to the impossibly perfect exemplar of patriarchy we’ve come to expect, if not demand. No more benevolent and hardworking dad who still somehow makes time. No more selfless mom with the over-scrutinized clothes and hair and civic-minded projects. No more well-scrubbed children and adorable dogs and high-jinks-prone cats. America’s archetypal family unit was going to be organized around a powerful woman with a grown-ass daughter and an annoying, retired husband puttering around and causing mischief. If not a smashing of the patriarchy, it would have made a dent.

What we got instead was an even more radical restructuring of the first family than Hillary herself could have envisioned. As Father-in-Chief, Donald Trump hasn’t simply introduced some twenty-first-century version of The Brady Bunch, with a herd of kids from three different mothers all thrown together in a big new house, complete with maid service. He has scrapped any normal notion of the family unit, organizing his personal life around those who advance the same principles that drive the companies that bear his name—taking what you want, doing as you please, and living off other people’s money. We’ve traded the Bushes, the Clintons, and the Obamas for First Family LLC. And in the process, we’ve lost something of genuine value to the country, the world, and ourselves.

However archaic, the institution of the first family carries real cultural and political force. America looks to the White House for some sense of itself, for a reflection of what most of us aim to have in our lives: a unit of mutual affection and mutual responsibility, a place of comfort and normalcy in a chaotic and frightening world. The tools of Madison Avenue were long ago applied to the shaping of the first family brand; it’s always been a focus-grouped projection of the country’s idea of its best self. We define our national selves, in part, by the cultural conversations that the first family stirs, the image it projects. The rest of the world also looks to the president and his family for a gauge of what America stands for: They’re the ambassadors of Brand America.

The Trump family brand mirrors America at its worst—a version in which capitalism deforms all relationships, twisting everyone and everything to serve its basest needs. This is a family only in the Mafia sense of the word, ruled by a ruthless and imperious Don who offers protection in return for fealty. Trump’s children are more than mere relatives: They are executive vice presidents, the capo bastones of an organized racket. In the organizational chart, there’s no box labeled First Lady. Mother, wife, provider of counsel and comfort—these maternal roles have no place in the family business. Melania, Marla, and Ivana have their gracious livings secured, mob-style, by their silence and invisibility.

Trump’s children are more than mere relatives: They are executive vice presidents, the capo bastones of an organized racket.

We’ve come a long way, in a short time, from the days when we argued over whether First Lady Hillary should be baking cookies or running things, or pondered late at night how Laura Bush could be a pro-choice ex-librarian and still play the gracious hostess for a husband who was so clearly her inferior. Despite myself, I long for the days when first families lived together in a place called the White House, expressed discernible tastes in music and culture, and gave every appearance of serving the country, rather than the other way around.