It seems like only yesterday that Keith Olberman was declaring, “We are at war with Russia,” and posing for pictures of himself wrapped in a U.S. flag like a flood victim in a Red Cross blanket. Yet it’s been going on a year and a half and, well, plus ça change. Last week, The New York Times ran nearly 4,000 words on the origins of the Russiagate investigation, and all but apologized for having run a semi-exculpatory headline in 2016 noting that “Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia.” Over 60 paragraphs down, however, we could read that “no public evidence has surfaced connecting Mr. Trump’s advisers to the hacking or linking Mr. Trump himself to the Russian government’s disruptive efforts.” Is it time for some theories of the case to change?

Suddenly, Russia seems to be yesterday’s news. Apparently, in August 2016, an emissary for two Gulf state princes, a social-media-manipulating Israeli, and former Blackwater chief Erik Prince met with Donald Trump Jr. at Trump Tower to offer help to the campaign. This is a sign, notes the Times, “that countries other than Russia may have offered assistance to the Trump campaign.” Where does this leave us on Russia? Jonathan Chait and others argue that the scandal just grows bigger. More is more. “The discovery of an additional crime obviously does not constitute proof that the original crime did not exist,” he writes in New York. “If the F.B.I. is investigating a suspect for racketeering, and it turns up evidence he engaged in loan-sharking as well, ‘he’s definitely innocent of racketeering’ is not the most likely explanation.” True enough. But since the interests of Russia and those of Israel and its Gulf state allies (recall that Russia and Saudi Arabia have traditionally been bitter foes) are often diametrically opposed—on Syria, Iran, Yemen, oil, Afghanistan, and much else—the analogy is unconvincing. If the F.B.I. is investigating a suspect for rigging the 2013 World Series in favor of the Red Sox, and it turns up evidence he also rigged it for the Cardinals, “he’s probably guilty of rigging it for both” is not the most likely explanation, either.

Two years in, the flood of Russiagate (or is it now Israeli-Saudigate?) information seems no more navigable, but also no less frenzied. Last Wednesday, we could read thousands of pages about another Trump Tower meeting, this one in June 2016, between Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, who everyone thought was going to offer dirt on Hillary Clinton’s dealings with Russia, but instead wanted to talk about repealing the 2012 Magnitsky Act. Then we learn that Veselnitskaya was also meeting with the Clinton-hired research firm Fusion GPS, with which she was likewise working on repealing the 2012 Magnitsky Act. Comparisons to the Coen brothers farce Burn After Reading start to look apt. It’s all almost too perfect that Trump’s people agreed to meet with an intelligence-linked Russian to get dirt on Clinton’s dealings with Russia, while Clinton’s team hired a guy to have meetings with intelligence-linked Russians to get dirt on Trump’s dealings with Russia.

To be sure, any Russia conspiracy is, technically, possible. Given the choice to tell the truth or lie, Donald Trump seems to reliably go for the latter, all things being equal. His business associates are even sleazier than Trump himself. No matter what, foreign threats to the stability of our political system should always be investigated. But the more some of us learn, the harder it gets to take each breathless headline seriously. Meanwhile, the damage done by the unceasing cycles of bombshell-to-nevermind—the not-hacked-after-all electric grid in Vermont, the no-advance communication-after-all exchange between Wikileaks and Donald Trump Jr., the no-hacking-of-CNN-after all, the no-Russian-election-hacking-after-all in 21 states, and more—has been considerable. It has inflated the threat posed by Russia and pushed us toward physical conflict. It has caused us to focus too little on similar possible intrusions by numerous foreign rivals. And it has accelerated a trend toward treating every election victory by the opposite side as illegitimate.