(1) The military says no to Trump on the transgender ban.

A future trivia question and historical footnote, the spectacular 10-day flameout of Anthony Scaramucci qualifies as the most entertaining episode yet of the ongoing reality show that is the Trump presidency. (Working title: “The Pompadours of 1600 Pennsylvania.”) But even as the cocksure sycophant’s gobsmacking spectacle stole the show, something of real importance took place a bit lower on the radar.

At five separate junctures, the sinews of our democracy held against the careening recklessness of this presidency. Consequently, Donald Trump’s worst week proved a particularly fine hour for

Well, not directly — that’s insubordination — but with rather elegant circumspection. The president tweeted out a total ban on transgender people serving in the military.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs simply declared that a tweet is not an order. In other words, the military told the commander in chief to go jump in a lake. Generally speaking, this is not a healthy state of affairs in a nation of civilian control. But under a president so uniquely impulsive and chronically irrational, a certain vigilance, even prickliness, on the part of the military is to be welcomed.

(2) The Senate saves Sessions.

Trump’s relentless public humiliation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions was clearly intended to get him to resign. He didn’t, in part because of increasing support from Congress. Sessions’ former colleagues came out strongly in his defense and some openly criticized the president’s shabby treatment of his first and most fervent senatorial supporter.

Every once in a while, the Senate seems to remember that it is a coequal branch.

(3) Senate Republicans reject the Obamacare repeal.

The causes here are multiple, most having nothing to do with Trump. Republicans are deeply divided on the proper role of government in health care. This division is compounded by the sea change in public opinion as, over seven years, Obamacare has become part of the fabric of American medicine, and health care has come to be seen as a right rather than a commodity.

Nonetheless, the stunning Senate rejection of repeal was also a pointed rejection of Trump’s health care hectoring.

(4) The Boy Scouts protest.

In a rebuke not as earthshaking but still telling, the chief executive of the Boy Scouts found it necessary to apologize for Trump’s speech last week at its quadrennial jamboree. It was a wildly inappropriate confection, at once whining, self-referential, partisan and political.

(5) The police chiefs chide.

In an address to law enforcement officials, Trump gave a wink and a nod to cops roughing up suspects. Several police chiefs subsequently reprimanded Trump for encouraging police brutality — a mild form, perhaps, but brutality still.

Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said it was all a joke. Nonsense.

Whatever your substantive position on the various issues involved above, we should all be grateful that from the generals to the Scouts, from the senators to the cops, the institutions of both political and civil society are holding up well.

Trump is a systemic stress test. The results are good, thus far.