Tens of thousands of handshakes in two days means less than a second per handshake. I figured in that time, I could bleat a single syllable of dissent from his sodomy policy. For some reason I spent my one syllable saying “Hi,” and got a quiet “Hello” in response before being hurried along to shake the hands of his brother and sons. Within seconds I had clasped my way through the entire receiving line, and been led to a large hall where workers gave me a tastefully wrapped fruitcake and a photograph of the sultan as parting gifts.

No politician in the United States receives adulation in quite this ritualistic way. There are rallies, adoring crowds, MAGA hats, and HOPE T-shirts. But our system is designed to discourage and prevent the courtly obeisance that happens at least annually in Brunei. Here it is understood that no politics exist except at the pleasure of the sultan, and every freedom depends on his willingness to grant it. The rally or ritual is not an ornament on the system, but a celebration or acknowledgment of the system itself, or himself. One thing you get from a nod and a weary handshake, even just once a year: a chance to look a sovereign in the eye, and confirm and obtain a physical connection to assure you that the will to whom you have surrendered remains, at least three days a year, earthbound and human. Every other day of the year, he is one of the richest men on Earth. But briefly he stands on your level.

Read: Brunei becomes first country to impose nationwide Sharia law

When I was in Brunei, I heard various defenses of the sodomy policy, which came down to an assertion that the sultan rules justly, and that he is a man of honor, proud of his country’s modernity and not at all keen to cast the first stone. And in the political culture of an absolute monarchy, the personal proclivities of the sovereign are pretty much what you have to go on. If a law mandating the execution of gays were passed today in the United States (as some would like), I would see no alternative but to fight against my government. In a country where a man is sovereign, and the laws are merely an extension of his will, it might be possible that his will differs from the straightforward reading of his policy, and that he expects and hopes to stone no one at all.

Other defenses were familiar to me from other Islamist societies that criminalize gay sex: Sharia law requires certain punishments for certain crimes, and sodomy has historically been one of them; the sultanate probably won’t stone many people anyway, because potential sodomites will be deterred or driven so far underground that they’ll never be caught; and the sultan is getting older—he is now 72—and we should not be surprised that as he nears his meeting with God, he will begin setting his country in order, like a drill sergeant preparing his barracks for an inspection. He is famous for his playboy exploits, and now he is in a period of atonement.