There was a time when any one of these things would have sparked a national crisis: The illegal and unconstitutional attack on a sovereign nation and the abduction of its leader; the persecution of a celebrated war hero, astronaut and elected official solely because of his public, and constitutionally protected statements; the cover-up of the president’s pedophilia; the cold-blooded murder of a mother of three by federal agents in broad daylight.

Yet, even taken together, I am skeptical that these events will catalyze anything like the crises that we might have seen before; the kind of thing that would force a president to resign, or to step back from seeking re-nomination, or would bring about any kind of political reckoning. By definition, crises pass, but there will be no resolution here, only the enduring escalation of outrages.

It is Renee Good’s murder in Minneapolis, and especially the regime’s blithe response and the endorsement of so many MAGA pundits – and even the response of many ordinary, conservative-leaning voters in social media – that I find most troubling. It all suggests that there will be no break, resolution, or change, and that this ongoing parade of horror is just how we live now.

We do not need to go through the play-by-play of Good’s murder. A federal agent murdered a civilian and all that the regime can do is to justify it. Power justifies power, after all. The regime is beyond accountability, and it knows it.

This has never happened before. Yes, President Nixon called the protestors (and by extension, the victims) at Kent State in 1970 “bums,” but he almost immediately tried to walk those remarks back and, two days later, ordered an enquiry “to find out where the errors were made” and “to avoid similar incidents with the same tragic outcome” in the future. Even duplicitous “Tricky Dick,” the author of the madman strategy and the October Surprise knew he had to answer for the consequences.

There is none of this in the MAGA regime. For President Trump and his gang, Good’s murder was what law enforcement calls a “righteous kill.” After all, the president said, “the woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer.” None of that actually happened, of course, but it doesn’t matter. The regime itself has taken over the investigation and taken it out of the hands of local and state law enforcement, not “to find out where the errors were made,” but to exculpate federal power. In the United States today, disorderly conduct is a capital offense.

Steven Miller said the quiet part out loud this week when he brushed off criticism of the regime’s flagrant violation of international law in Venezuela: “We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.” The MAGA conception of statecraft is power deployed beyond the state and any laws (“niceties”) that might constrain it. If I can do it – “grab pussies,” rape children, threaten to invade allies, tear-up treaties – and get away with it, then that is all the justification I need. This is gangster-logic, it is might-makes-right and the law of tooth and claw, the only law that matters.

The regime has neither shame nor explanations, and none will be forthcoming. It hardly bears mentioning that this is a midterm election year and that, in theory, in any event, there should be political consequences. The video of Good’s murder will play over and over again in months leading up to midterm elections, or at least it should, as testimony to the unrestrained violence and tyranny of the MAGA regime. Indeed, it is damning evidence.

Yet, whether it will have any outcome in November is anyone’s guess. Indeed, the regime is acting, as it always acts, as if it can do is not worried about losing votes or control of Congress. It is a reality-show dictatorship, and it knows that American politics is television. Just as we got used to one exploding zombie head after another in The Walking Dead and accustomed to the endless series of rapes and murders in Game of Thrones, we have become inured to the outrages of MAGA. In ten months, Good will be one more lifeless body among many, her individuality and the conditions of her summary execution buried in a common grave.

In a sense, Miller is absolutely right; we no longer inhabit a society governed by “niceties” like the rule of law. We can quote the Constitution all we want, but MAGA statecraft left that venerable document, its statement of rights and limitations on central authority, its provision for a “balance of powers” between the branches of government, the very idea of popular sovereignty, far behind. President Trump and Secretaries Hegseth, Rubio, Noem, and all the others, have confirmed that power should not, and cannot, be limited. It is not “natural,” as Secretary Kennedy might insist. Only the red meat of cruelty is truly natural.

And there is a significant minority of Americans who will support the regime because of this theory of power. One need only read the social media commentaries to know that they believe Good deserved what she got; that she was not an unarmed mother of three, but a savage “terrorist.” They agree with MAGA’s totalitarian realpolitik because they never believed in democracy and the rule of law anyway: that demands that they regard others – all the minorities, deviants, foreigners, Jews and Muslims – as equals. They have only signed on to a social contract predicated on the domination of everyone else.

One person commented in social media that “citizens are not the enemy,” but to this regime, and its supporters they certainly are. At the very least, MAGA has an extremely restricted idea of what constitutes citizenship.

There will be no revolution, no uprising, no crusade for justice and accountability. This is no crisis. For the guardians of order, this is business as usual, and for a great many Americans – perhaps neither a majority, nor a plurality, but a significant-enough minority to matter – that is a good thing.

On it goes. On it will go.