What if there’s no smoking gun, no silver bullet? The standards have changed in the Age of Trump. What used to be offenses that would cause any politician to immediately resign if there was even a threat of public revelation, are now reduced to mere peccadilloes. I suspect that unless Mueller can show incontrovertible evidence that Trump conspired with the Russians to bring down the United States and the rest of the Free World, not much will actually happen. The definition of “high crimes and misdemeanors” has changed, the goalposts have moved, and the dividing line has shifted. Remember, Clinton was almost impeached for having consensual sex with an intern, Trump is already acknowledged to have paid off multiple adulterous sex partners with campaign funds and has numerous accusations of sexual harassment against him and nothing has happened. Clinton was investigated for an alleged crooked real estate deal (Whitewater) while Trump has a career history of crooked real estate deals, some of them with hostile foreign countries.

We have become inocculated to corruption, and even if Mueller can turn up a completely convincing case against Trump and his associates, it is likely the Republican Party will pull in unison to either ignore the charges, minimize them, obstruct the prosecution, or bury the story altogether.

You know how it works, the Democrats are accused of something and its a crime against God, the Republicans get caught red-handed doing the same thing and “Well, all politicians do that.” We live in the Age of False Equivalency, where “compromise” and “meeting half-way” mean two steps backward and one step forward. We’ve already seen what the Right is willing to do to keep their tax cuts, consolidate their defense of corporate privilege, defeat health care and environmental protection, fix elections and stack the courts. You’ve seen what they’ve done with climate change, no matter what the law or the Constitution says, if they think they can get away with just ignoring it, they will.

Only a simultaneous outburst of public outrage, shared even by a substantial portion of the TParty cult, is going to be able to move the fanaticism of the MAGA people and the apathy of everybody else. So if Trump and his GOP survive the coming shitstorm, he (or his followers) will be so secure in their position nothing else will be able to dislodge them.

Mueller had better get it right.