Donald Trump’s administration is a black box of confusion, chaos and incompetence. Those on the outside looking in are left confused and bewildered, desperately seeking signs and portents of what the most powerful man in the world will do next. This is not normal. In a time of global crises and increasing tensions it is also very dangerous.

The United States is supposed to be the world’s leading democracy. The health of a democracy is highly dependent on transparency and accountability. Trump’s administration has repeatedly shown his disdain for both of those fundamental principles. This is a lubricant for America’s further descent into fascism. It also signals to a much bigger problem.

Much has been written about how Vladimir Putin apparently sought to manipulate the 2016 presidential election in order to install Donald Trump in the White House.

But much less has been written about the damage that Vladimir Putin’s interference in the 2016 presidential election — and the subsequent victory of Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton — has done to America’s political culture. In many ways, Putin has turned the American people and its news media into “Kremlinologists,” but instead of being turned outward with the goal of trying to figure out the inner workings of Russia’s leadership, the American people and news media are focused inward on Donald Trump and his presidential administration.

Writing at Medium, Fabrice Deprez explains the concept of Kremlinology as:

…methods that find their origins in soviet times, when censorship and the totalitarian nature of the soviet regime forced western analysts to deduce power plays in the Kremlin from hints like the seating plans of officials during a parade or the various nominations published in soviet newspapers. Kremlinology can nowadays be used simply to describe the study of Russian politics, but is more often understood as the analysis of those small events — speeches, appointments, travel plans, the date or the composition of a meeting — that seems to bear no significance when taken alone but, when put together, allows (in theory) to deduce the great movements happening behind the Kremlin’s closed doors. Kremlinology is also the interpretation of what isn’t: the absence of an official at a crucial meeting or the silence of Vladimir Putin about some issue … can quickly be used to draw conclusions about what’s going on.

In an interview at the website Stratfor, Eurasia specialist Lauren Goodrich explains the goals of Kremlinology:

First, it shows you what is the ultimate power structure within the Kremlin and the stability of the ultimate leader within the Kremlin, be it the Soviet leader or the current Russian president. What is the distribution of assets and wealth within the Kremlin, and who holds and gets to make decisions within those assets of wealth. And third, what’s the overall stability of the Russian state itself, because of the stability of the Kremlin?

Under Donald Trump, the American people and news media are being forced to learn the same habits.