It only took a week after Donald Trump’s inauguration before Democrats and the media began to warn that our democracy faces a grave and potentially fatal threat. On the second weekend of Trump’s presidency, when customs officials began enforcing his hastily imposed ban on travel from Muslim nations, Senator Cory Booker dashed out to Dulles Airport and told a crowd of protesters that the American rule of law was under assault. “I believe it’s a constitutional crisis,” Booker declared. Two days later, when Trump fired acting Attorney General Sally Yates for refusing to enforce the ban, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer practically had the question, “Are we on the verge of a constitutional crisis?” on auto-repeat. And when Trump blasted the “so-called judge” who overturned the travel ban, Senator Richard Blumenthal wasted no time in predicting the worst: “We’re careening, literally, toward a constitutional crisis.”

We weren’t. The ban may have been illegal, and deeply un-American, but its issuance alone didn’t present an existential threat to the republic. Lawyers sprang into action, and federal judges halted the ban’s enforcement. Even the president’s tweeted response indicated that the Constitution was still in working order: “SEE YOU IN COURT.”

The alarm over the travel ban reflected the wider fear that many Americans have felt ever since Trump was elected. Indeed, the mere fact of his victory struck many on the left as nothing short of a national emergency—a threat to the very nature of American democracy. But in their vigilance, many politicians and pundits are missing a deeper and more profound peril. We aren’t “careening” toward a constitutional crisis, as Senator Blumenthal feared. We’ve been sinking into one for years—and the Constitution isn’t designed to get us out of it.

Long before Trump came along, America was already mired in a constitutional crisis—one that crept up on us gradually, as historical transformations always do. The reason is simple: Our Constitution wasn’t built for a country with massive economic inequality and deeply entrenched political divisions. The three times in our history when the republic has faced a threat to its very existence—the Civil War, the Gilded Age through the Great Depression, and the present moment—the crisis arose because America had evolved in ways the Founders could only dimly imagine. In each instance, the social conditions of the country no longer matched the Constitution.

Trump is a symptom, not the cause, of the crisis we now face. It is written, in fact, into the very fabric of our society. And the only way we’ll avert the disintegration of our political system—as Lincoln and the abolitionists did in their day, and the Roosevelts and the progressives did in theirs—is first to understand its origins.