Mueller has helped me come to the conclusion that boomers are not capable of internalizing how incompetent and corrupt our elites are, nor can they disbelieve what they hear on TV. ("Suprising - we heard he was such a good/great guy & had right pedigree, etc.).
They can, in the moment, realize the error in a given particular ("wow, Mueller was unimpressive" or "maybe his reputation was undeserved"), but they cannot derive from this any true universal principles: "Elite education and reputation is often a sham, TV lies to you, etc."
To be fair, their proclivity to associate truth with TV is also why they might question Mueller today, which is unfair to him (his problems run far deeper than not making good appearanced on TV), and why many actually fell for the Blasey-Ford gambit.
But they will always believe, deep down, in the validity of the system of education and media as they have known it. Which is why they will increasingly experience trauma as they age and that system is increasingly publicly deconstructed and ultimately destroyed.
Of course, many boomers have known for decades that our media & educational system, etc., are a complete disaster. But they had to fight against the tide of their own times/formation.
At this, their penultimate stage, this generation is still large and in charge of these same institutions, and even those on the Right still find it very hard to radically question their validity and competence.
Ultimately, what is surprising about the hearing today is how many people were surprised or expected otherwise.
