Anyone in the UK who imagined they lived in a representative democracy - one in which leaders are elected and accountable to the people - will be in for a rude awakening over the next days and weeks.
TV schedules have been swept aside. Presenters must wear black and talk in hushed tones. Front pages are uniformly somber. Britain's media speak with a single, respectful voice, about the Queen and her unimpeachable legacy.
Westminster, meanwhile, has been stripped of left and right. The Conservative, Liberal Democrat, and Labour parties, have set aside politics to grieve as one. Even the Scottish nationalists - supposedly trying to rid themselves of the yoke of centuries of an English rule presided over by the monarch - appear to be in effusive mourning.
The world's urgent problems - from war in Europe to a looming climate catastrophe - are no longer of interest or relevance. They can wait till Britons emerge from a more pressing national trauma.
Domestically, the BBC has told those facing a long winter in which they will not be able to afford to heat their homes that their suffering is "insignificant" compared to that of the family of a 96-year-old woman who died peacefully in the lap of luxury. They can wait too.
In this moment there is no public room for ambivalence or indifference, for reticence, for critical thinking - and most certainly, not for Republicanism, even if nearly a third of the public, mostly the young, desire the monarchy's abolition. The British establishment expects every man, woman, and child, to do their duty by lowering their head.
Twenty first-century Britain never felt so medieval.
Wall-to-wall eulogiesThere are reasons a critical gaze is needed right now, as the British public is corralled into reverential mourning.
The wall-to-wall eulogies are intended to fill our nostrils with the perfume of nostalgia to cover the stench of a rotting institution, one at the heart of the very establishment doing the eulogising.
The demand is that everyone show respect for the Queen and her family, and that now is not the time for criticism or even analysis.
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