Our current American interregnum is, to put it mildly, a time of troubling uncertainty, a dull anxiety thrumming beneath the routines of daily life. We sense an approaching storm, but we do not know whether it will merely rattle the roof or whether it will actually shake the foundations of American democracy.

There are certainly ample signs that it will be the latter: the chilling pages of Project 2025, the nominations of spectacularly unqualified people for high posts, the pronouncements of goons like Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller and Tom Homan. (The latter, when told that the mayor of Denver would not cooperate with ICE in deporting immigrants, said, “Me and the Denver mayor, we agree on one thing – he’s willing to go to jail, and I’m willing to put him in jail.”)

There are, as might be expected, those who are sanguine about our prospects, holding to the view that democratic norms are so firmly established that not even Trump can dislodge them. They imagine the next four years to be full of mild inconveniences and cringeworthy missteps, but not of disruptions that will actually change America’s face, America’s commitments, America’s basic identity as a bastion of liberal democracy.

These folks may be right, and if they are, they will end up chuckling at those of us who are fearing something worse. Of course, the level of disruption that lies ahead depends, in part, on who you are. Undocumented immigrants, women needing reproductive care, Ukrainian soldiers, trans people, mid-level government employees and those dependent on the Affordable Care Act for health care might have their entire lives upended, while those of us in more comfortable circumstances might notice little more than a ripple in the contours of our daily existence.

The temptation for us may be to ignore the fact that harm to the most vulnerable is, in fact, harm to us all – an understanding of community that is often lost in the odorous haze of an overripe American individualism. And that temptation would have us overlook the chilling words of German pastor Martin Niemöller: “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.”

It seems, then, that preparing for the worst is not an unreasonable thing to do just now. And that raises the deeper uncertainty. Not the uncertainty of what Trump will do, but the uncertainty about what I will do.

I am guessing that most of us do not know the answer to that question. We do not know how high a price we will be willing to pay to preserve democracy. But we could do worse than to bow with reverence before those who did know, and with that knowledge announced exactly what they would put on the line.

They said, in America’s foundational document “…with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” Around that same time, Thomas Paine put it in stark terms: “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”

God willing, enough of us will rise above being “sunshine patriots,” so that the American experiment will not be found to fail.