Or as late-night host Jimmy Jackson interpreted it, “Give up the right to complain in exchange for security? Can I make that same deal with my wife?”

Most Americans agreed it was a great deal. The late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan coined the phrase benign neglect to describe a philosophy which postulates that leaving something alone will be more beneficial than focusing attention to it. This was far more sinister; it might better be termed active neglect. Americans made a choice, deciding that “You the government…” was preferable to “We the people,” telling the government, essentially, you got my back.

In return, the American people asked one compelling question: Can we get fries with that?

That’s a joke, the American people did not want fries with that. They wanted a Happy calorie-free meal, enjoyed in peace. And so they made a choice. If there is an indictment to be made, here it is: The American people didn’t simply let this happen, they wanted it to happen. Congress might also have risen up to defend and save democracy, to stand strong against this coup, but then it wouldn’t have been Congress. Instead it followed the will of the people who had elected them. The people wanted Congress to do nothing, which coincidently was its area of expertise. Fortunately, this was a situation in which Congress had substantial experience; it had been surrendering its powers to the executive branch long before any citizen thought of it. History had seen this before, as Edward Gibbon wrote in his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: “The image of a free constitution was preserved with decent reverence: The Roman senate appeared to possess the sovereign authority and devolved on the emperors all the executive powers of government.”

The result of this docile acquiescence was that Wrightman and Hunter successfully consolidated their power. Their takeover was complete. Only once before in American history had Benjamin Franklin’s warning, “We must all hang together or, most assuredly, we will all hang separately,” been more appropriate. When he said it, he meant it literally; history had made it figurative, a plea for unity; and now it was both literal and figurative. Americans actually are at the end of the rope.

As a practical matter, daily life in America has not been fundamentally changed, as long as you support the government. The vast majority of people still get up in the morning, go to work, and come home to their family at night. The economy is struggling, as the rest of the world has been very cautious to negotiate trade agreements; although that probably will change soon, as China has already praised the “new continuity and stability President Hunter has brought to the American government.” There are people there for whom life actually has gotten considerably better; the nation has been hammered back together in a way that has not been possible for decades. The years of raucous dissent are done. The screaming at one another is done. Mostly now, America resembles the legendary Frankenstein, an assortment of ill-fitting pieces stitched together but somehow breathing and walking.