So, the U.S. presidential impeachment circus has come to town. It’s sometimes easy to forget that there have only been two successful presidential impeachments in the two-century long history of the country: Richard Nixon, in 1974, technically wasn’t impeached because he resigned before the verdict; the other two were Andrew Johnson, in 1868, and Bill Clinton, in 1999, both of whom were acquitted by the Senate. So it is, legitimately, a big deal.

The impeachment of Donald Trump for some kind of crime or misdemeanour seemed a practical inevitability upon his unexpected ascension to the presidency. That he has since retained the support he has is more likely a symptom of the cheer-squad mentality of contemporary politics than any legitimate reflection on what his performance has been like, or whether the ceaseless bluff, bluster and sleight of hand that is his administration’s modus operandi is remotely befitting the office which he holds.

But all that is beside the point of this particular gripe: mercifully, it’s taken a while, but—as inevitably as Trump’s own nihilism has come home to roost—it has finally happened. In an article in the New Yorker this week, John Cassidy plumbed the darkest depths of journalistic trope and dug out the de facto “political-crisis” synonym of the twentieth-century and beyond: suffixgate.

To be fair, in this context we are at least talking about impeachment, and if the portmanteau had not been so wildly abused up to this point, it would actually be quite appropriate. I expect Cassidy knew exactly what he was doing when he used the phrase, unlike most proponents. Watergate was, of course, the inception of the motif, but the problem with the size of that particular scandal is that by its very nature the mere suggestion was an easy way to whip up attention toward any new issue about which the media wanted to generate some quick spin.

In some cases, as with “Ukrainegate” or “Clintongate” it has some synonymous reverberance with the locus of meaning. But once the tabloids get a hold of it, like most guff it quickly slips from relevance into farce and is quickly leeched of any real semantic meaning other than its place within the attention economy: to flag that “this is a big deal, pay attention”, whether it actually is or not. This latter usage sheds its association with the obscene criminality of the Watergate scandal, with the conspiratorial deception, and the level of government to which the scandal reached. It simply becomes this week’s gossip point.

A wonderful example of this phenomenon is—either ironically or appropriately, take your pick—offered by the “great” man himself. Trump has quickly turned his efforts—after literally enacting the very crimes and misdemeanours so despised the creators of the Constitution which is the basis of his authority—to referring to a scandal of his own making as “spygate”.

Though, interestingly, “spygate” itself as a concept has been enthusiastically adopted by fringe conspiracy theorists on YouTube and elsewhere, for years. Much of the material is staggeringly implausible, and one wonders if the peddlers of this thin-coated dross legitimately believe what they espouse or are simply mining the internet for sympathetic shills in order to turn a dime as they cross-post remarkably similar Fox News-inspired “breaking” events. Most of it seems like satire, until you realise that hacks like Tom “make sure my bicep is in shot” Fitton and his ilk can barely string a factual sentence together, much less engage in genuinely creative humour.

Accordingly, spygate has also been used (probably among other things) to refer to an incident involving the New England Patriots’ unauthorised recording of opposition signals back in 2007 (the Patriots are an American gridiron team). Similarly, something called “deflategate” also referred to the high crime or misdemeanour of letting air out of a ball (incidentally also Patriot-related).

This particular morpheme is so intellectually percolated as to have reached the point of homeopathic insignificance, so it perhaps isn’t surprising that the same cheap memetic tool has been inadvertently diluted by a plethora of imbeciles whose indolence resulted in a failure to investigate whether anyone else might have already utilised their generic schlock.

How, then, could we forget the insipid “gamergate” of 2014, which perhaps singularly embodies the worst attributes of a version of this trope in which grossly inaccurate fables are constructed by an overly-sensitive and insular group who blockade themselves with astounding effectiveness from allowing any kind of reasoning to infect their wild, and almost exclusively unverified, assumptions? In this sense it isn’t just an attempt at grabbing attention, but the conscious deployment of hyperbole that most defines the activity. The rise of conspiracy theory among internet enclosures seems by its very nature to go hand in hand with obnoxious and bratty behaviour.

The “gamers” of this particular example seem to have suffered from little more than the refusal to recognise that it isn’t 1996 any more and white boys aren’t the only consumers of computer games. And—quelle horreur!—some among the new demographic might have an opinion or two about how the medium might better serve its entire constituency as it continues its glacial shift from mindless entertainment toward recognition as a legitimate form of artistic practice. Because that shift won’t happen if FPS twitch-reflexes and overdeveloped thumbs remain the only means of inflecting status within the medium and its associated culture. Ironically, those among the pro-gamergate community who weren’t a part of what was to come—the inflammatory bleating of the sockpuppet “hordes” who claimed absolutism in regard to their representation of true “gamer” culture—had whatever sensible ideas they may have wanted to offer drowned out by the deafening noise of their own toxic proto-champions, ultimately making the entire movement literally self-defeating.

By no means is this suggesting that someone like, say, Anita Sarkeesian should by default be free from criticism or that her position is intellectually unassailable. What signalled the ethical bankruptcy of the aggressors in that pathetic debacle was not just the largely baseless accusations they made—most of what was accused was either incorrect or absurdly exaggerated—but the vitriol with which it was delivered (which is, coincidentally, also what reveals that gamergate was a mere over-reaction and nothing like a cogent argument). In short, the entire episode was an utter disgrace which reflected poorly on an entire community, many among whom, myself included, either held no such views, or whose opinion was significantly more moderate than the shrill shrieking of the infantile progenitors of the farcical tantrum which ensued.

This obsessive status-entitlement and the accompanying refusal to acknowledge any position other than their own is suggestive of more than a little synonymity between that small but vocal group of gamers who felt it necessary to inaccurately vilify some women who dared challenge the tired status quo, and a national leader who demands the worst kind of toadying deprecation and acquiescence to what he seems to feel is his natural right to behave as he pleases. There is little doubt Trump would flourish on 4chan, where attitudes toward dissent appear to have more than just a whiff of neo-medieval witch-hunts denouncing beasts and whores as the source of all evil.

Nevertheless, self-contradictory rubbish remains about as effective a means of distracting from the situation as anything else the president might procure at this late stage. The only strategy Trump seems to have left is a bit of old fashioned trickery—apologies; not tricks, Michael… illusions!—whether a bait-and-switch or perhaps just plain misdirection. Either way, it seems as though this crash course in outrage escalation may have just about reached its climax.

Speaking of gates, there’s a saying that the gate to Heaven is not so high as the arch of a prince’s palace. Those who enter must do so on their knees. Between his hotels and golf courses, Trump’s gilded lifestyle may have allowed him to walk tall in the presence of sycophantic associates and toadying underlings, but cronyism and nepotism in business is not the same as public malfeasance, which will likely see him humbled by history (however far in the future) if not by his own introspection.