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As far as I can tell, what is now being referred to by Donald Trump and some of his more enthusiastic supporters as "Obamagate" does not involve a discrete scandal. Instead, umbrage is being taken at the fact that, in addition to refusing to throw his attorney general, Eric Holder, under the bus in 2011, Barack Obama did not shed many tears on behalf of right-wing 501(c)(3) groups on the receiving end of extra attention from the IRS or seriously object to the investigation of a presidential candidate he thought unlikely to win office.

Whatever one thinks of these things, there is no "gate" here. The conspiratorial framing is an implicit rejection of Obama's entire presidency, as if every aspect of it, from his famous speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention until the day Donald Trump took the oath of office had been part of a single overarching plot against the American people.

The gate suffix is nearly as old as the original scandal to which it owes in name. As early as 1974, William Safire (whose reputation as an authority on good English has always baffled me) was denouncing the iniquities of "Vietgate," which he would follow up with "Billygate," "Briefingate," "Contragate," "Debategate," and goodness knows how many more without his editors telling him to find another metaphor. The first of these was a reference to the issuing of presidential pardons for draft dodgers, a policy open to criticism but not a common-law offense punishable under any jurisdiction carried out at the behest of a sitting president. Like so many subsequent gates, it did not involve an underlying crime that became the object of a cover-up certainly not a crime as brazen as the burglarizing of a hotel room in the hope of obtaining a dubious advantage in an election whose outcome was never remotely in doubt.

It is astonishing how rare it is to encounter both of these conditions the specific offense and the conspiracy to obscure it from public view fulfilled in the vast gate-related literature. Instead one finds offenses that were never hidden from the world ("Hailgate," a video of white supremacists openly employing the Nazi salute at a conference) or simply crimes against taste ("Donutgate," i.e., the time Ariana Grande licked a doughnut); there are procedural offenses ("Emailgate"), accidents ("Elbowgate," i.e., Justin Trudeau's elbowing of a female member of the Canadian parliament), mean-spirited public remarks ("Faceliftgate," when President Trump asserted that MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski had undergone the aforementioned surgical procedure), embarrassments ("Fartgate," which doomed Congressman Eric Swalwell's never very serious presidential aspirations), and government policies worthy of criticism ("Pastygate," widespread disagreement with taxes levied in 2012 upon meat pies and other cooked snacks by the Conservative government in Britain). There are also cases in which there does not appear to be any underlying offense ("Russiagate") but in which attempts at journalistic investigation are met with resistance comparable to that of the Nixon administration. In some instances ("Gamergate") there is neither a crime nor a conspiracy but a kind of generalized resentment in search of an incident that might justify it after the fact. Obamagate most resembles the last of these: an insinuation of conspiracy so wide ranging that it cannot by definition be refuted, even by Trump's attorney general.

Why do we insist on appending this meaningless suffix to everything from using the profits of arms sales to fund right-wing militias to doubts about Hillary Clinton's ability to open a pickle jar? I suspect it is because Watergate is the founding myth of contemporary journalism, the lens through which we insist upon seeing all of reality. The urgency with which we lavish attention upon insignificant events (and journalistic attempts to place them inside an implied meta-narrative of cover-up) becomes self-justifying; the currency of scandal is thoroughly debased even as it remains the only acceptable journalistic tender. This is what made Trump's presidency possible: politics re-conceived not as the pursuit of the common good but as an agon of irreconcilable totalizing worldviews, each the product of its own bespoke mythology complete with heroes, villains, bards, noble deeds, and ancient wrongs. So far from being the perfect object of journalists' meta-investigative obsession, he is its totally predictable consequences.

Meanwhile the destruction of the post-war consensus on the mixed economy, the disastrous consequences of globalized free trade, the downside of unregulated instantaneous mass communication, the rise in drug addiction and so-called "deaths of despair" are all stories that became tragedies before they were ever seriously reported. A country whose attention was fixed instead upon Valerie Plame, Dan Rather, one of Janet Jackson's breasts, lane closures in New Jersey, and how Tom Cruise felt about being mocked in an episode of South Park was astonished to learn facts about ordinary life, such as the decline in the American life expectancy during the last decade.

When everything becomes a scandal, nothing is.

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'Obamagate' and the end of scandal - The Week

As absurd, ridiculous, unthinkable as it may seem, the act of wearing a mask has become a badge declaring allegiance to a political tribe, an actual flashpoint for confrontation. Like believing in climate change, it has become a litmus test those who wear masks are branded a Socialist, a Communist, devoted to a Nanny State, or despicably, the Common Good.

And you have to ask yourself why that would be, that instead of Americans coming together to defeat the worst crisis to befall the nation in over a century, there would be the deliberate effort to make the already unprecedented partisan polarization that much worse.

Were the Wild West, Gov. Tony Evers told MSNBC just hours after Wisconsins Republican-majority Supreme Court struck down his authority to issue a stay-at-home order. Were just leaving it open. Were going to have more cases. Were going to have more deaths. Its a sad occasion for the state. I cant tell you how disappointed I am.

Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin, The Hill reported, tweeted, The people of Wisconsin have done their part to advance our common good during this pandemic and now the WI Supreme Court has done the bidding of @SenFitzgerald & @repvos once again to put politics ahead of public health. Its shameful they cant put your health and safety first.

Obamas Attorney General Eric Holder said the courts ruling was motivated by politics and ideology and had callously puts lives at risk.

But, The Hill reported, Trump hailed the opinion and the defeat for Evers: The Great State of Wisconsin, home to Tom Tiffanys big Congressional Victory on Tuesday, was just given another win, Trump tweeted. Its Democrat Governor was forced by the courts to let the State Open. The people want to get on with their lives. The place is bustling!

Trump refuses to let Dr. Fauci (or anyone) testify in front of House committees. He suppressed the CDCs 68-page guidelines detailing how businesses, industries, public entities should reopen. He threatens to withdraw from the World Health Organization and threatens China with a renewed tariff war to shift blame for the fact that the pandemic that has already struck over 1.5 million Americans, killed 90,000, and taken the jobs of 36 million numbers that far exceed any other country and shine an ultraviolet light on the ineptitude of the Trump administration.

The pandemic has become so politically charged, and Trump so desperate to reopen the economy to get those deadly numbers down which might hurt his election and stuff people back into those massive adoring rallies, that Trump-friendly governors are now keeping secret how many people are dying.

Surely it is a bad look for Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, having noted that 80 percent of the hospitalized COVID-19 patients were black, observing that reopening the state was A-OK even while the numbers of sick were rising because the coronavirus had little impact [on Georgias white society].

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has now ordered Medical Examiners not publish the death rates. Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts is keeping secret the number of deaths in meat-packing plants, which Trump ordered to reopen under the Defense Production Act, without requiring employers to provide safe conditions for workers.

Even the way the dead are counted has become a way of hiding the politically-inconvenient truth: they arent counting the dead in nursing homes (hot spots), veterans homes, or those who had other ailments even if COVID-19 was the thing that did them in. And while Trump is challenging the number of dead (or suggesting that 90,000 Democrats died to make him look bad), Dr. Fauci agrees that the number reported could actually be 50 percent higher.

Now the Big Lie from the guy who has already made 18,000 of them, is about a vaccine. How funny that a leading anti-vaxer, is now pushing a Warp Speed vaccine that could not possibly be sufficiently tested for efficacy or health risks if, as Trump says, it will be out by the end of the year (conveniently, just after the election).

Is this like his health plan (better, cheaper than Obamacare, you just wait and see!), he promised in the 2016 campaign? So far, his only health plan is to destroy Obamacare, even as 28 million people have lost their employer-sponsored health insurance, and Trump refuses to reopen enrollment.

What exactly is the plan to produce not 330 million, but billions of doses of a vaccine?

What is the plan to administer it? Thats what Dr. Rick Bright, the nations top vaccine specialist before being fired for refusing to hype snakeoil (hydroychloroquine), wondered about before a House committee (the Senate is too busy trumping up Obamagate to care), while chastising the Trump administration for failing to produce sufficient PPE.

The federal government is jumping through hoops to allow companies to develop a vaccine, so the federal government should set rules and say any company that develops a vaccine, the next day that patent, that formula should be given to companies across the globe so they can produce vaccine to treat everyone, Governor Andrew Cuomo said in Tuesdays coronavirus briefing at Northwell Health, Manhasset. It cant be where only the rich, the privileged can get it. This is a matter of public health, national security.

Cuomo is proposing an Americans First Law that makes sure that government funding supports workers, keeps people employed, and does not allow corporations to get the money but gleefully downsize (rightsize) anyway.

He is calling for a repeal of the cap on SALT (State And Local Taxes) deductions which so penalizes New York and other blue states and is pushing for $500 billion in funding so that states and local government can maintain vital services, including hospital workers, police, fire, teachers.

Its about priorities, values, he said. I understand large corporations fund the political accounts of officials, but they get elected by people people still vote, people still matter. Show the same consideration for workers you showed for corporations.

Cuomo continues to maintain that the pandemic isnt a Red versus Blue thing, but I challenged him that was wishful thinking or perhaps just being diplomatic, not to piss off those who control the purse strings. New York is already staring at a $61 billion budget deficit because of COVID-19 and will need federal aid within a matter of weeks or start cutting services.

I have no doubt that many politicians act through politics. But I am saying today, in this situation, they should rise above and this should not be about politics, it should not be about red versus blue. People who are dying are Americans, red white and blue. It is such an ugly concept in this situation where people are dying to say they will not bail out a blue state.

Tell that to McConnell, who in the midst of the Great Recession, as Americans were losing their homes, jobs, health care, retirement and college savings, McConnells priority was to make Obama a one-term president. Now, McConnell is salivating at the political advantage the pandemic affords: weakening Democratic governors and suppressing Democratic votes in the bargain.

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Viewpoint: Politicizing a pandemic - Blog - The Island Now

Agustn Fuentes

Agustn Fuentes, the Rev. Edmund P. Joyce, C.S.C. Chair in Anthropology, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nations oldest learned societies and independent policy research centers.

He is among more than 250 members of the 240th AAAS class, which includes singer-songwriter Joan Baez, former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, and filmmaker Richard Linklater.

A prominent figure in the field of anthropology and a National Geographic explorer, Fuentes research interests include the roles of creativity and imagination in human evolution, multispecies anthropology, evolutionary theory, and the structures of race and racism.

Since its founding during the American Revolution by John Adams, James Bowdoin, John Hancock, and other scholar-patriots, the academy has elected leading thinkers and doers from each generation, including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin in the 18th century, Daniel Webster and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the 19th, and Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill in the 20th.

Fuentes joins 27 other AAAS fellows from Notre Dame, 25 of whom are also affiliated with the College of Arts and Letters. Recent elections include Declan Kiberd, the Donald and Marilyn Keough Professor of Irish Studies; Dianne Pinderhuges, chair of the Department of Africana Studies and a professor in the Department of Political Science; Notre Dame President Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C.; R. Scott Appleby, the Marilyn Keough Dean of the Keough School of Global Affairs; and Robert Audi, the John A. OBrien Professor of Philosophy.

Fuentes books include Why We Believe, which examines how religion became an essential aspect of human evolution; The Creative Spark, which argues that creativity and collaboration are the most important explanations for why humans are the way they are; Evolution of Human Behavior, which focuses on how and why humans evolved behaviorally; and Health, Risk, and Adversity, which provides a comparative approach to the analysis of health disparities and human adaptability and examines the pathways that lead to unequal health outcomes.

Fuentes was named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2011 and has served as chair of the associations anthropology section committee. He is a fellow of the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies, Institute for Latino Studies, the Kroc Institute for Peace Studies, and the John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values.

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Notre Dame anthropologist elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences // College of Arts and Letters // University of Notre Dame - ND Newswire

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Why is there so much hatred for President Trump, hatred that started before he was even inaugurated? Was it because he beat Hillary Clinton or because of his many promises to build a border wall, bring back jobs from China, cancel the Iran nuclear pact, drain the swamp and stop American from becoming a socialist nation? Wasnt it President Obama who, five days before his own inauguration, said that we were five days from fundamentally transforming America? How many knew what that meant? Was Mr. Trump perceived as a threat to this transformation?

A sham dossier paid for by the Democratic National Committee was used to obtain warrants to spy on Mr. Trumps aides. A trap was laid for Gen. Michael Flynn, the appointed national security adviser, to get him to lie about talking to the Russian ambassador. We are slowly discovering that top Obama appointees, such as Eric Holder, Susan Rice and James Comey, were involved in the attempt to smear Flynn. How could all this go on without the knowledge and approval of the then president, Obama?

We can no longer trust the top leadership of the FBI. We are witnessing a breakdown in the role of Congress, which has become so polarized as to destroy any semblance of bipartisanship and doing what is right for America. Freedom of the press seems limited to saying negative things about the president. The mainstream media ignores the triumphs of this administration. The damage of all this to American democracy should not be underestimated.

WARREN MANISON

Potomac, Md.

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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: 'Transformation' at all costs - Washington Times

Rep. Justin Amash announced April 28 that he was launching an exploratory committee to seek the Libertarian Partys presidential nomination.

There had long been buzz about a potential presidential run around Amash, who last year left the Republican party and became an Independent member of Congress (a spokesperson for Amash says he is now officially a Libertarian member of Congress). Though hes been critical of Trump and the Republican party, Amash says his main argument is broader: He believes the country is locked in what hes repeatedly called a partisan death spiral in which representative government is broken.

Amash, who says he will not seek reelection to his current House seat, spoke with TIME via Skype from his home in Michigan on May 3, where he discussed the state of the current Republican party, how he believes campaigning virtually levels the playing field, and why he thinks he has a pathway to the nomination.

Below is a lightly edited, condensed transcript of the interview.

As a presidential candidate, what would the core idea of your campaign be?

The core idea is liberty and representative government. And what we have right now in Washington is a very broken system. What happens right now too often is a few leaders in Congress negotiate with the White House, and they decide everything for everyone. And this leads to a lot of frustration and a lot of partisanship because when Congress cant deliberate actual policies, when you have most members of Congress left out of the process, then they start to debate personalities.

Why are you dipping your toes into this with an exploratory committee instead of just outright running?

Im new to the Libertarian Party, and Im seeking the nomination of the Libertarian Party. I want to be respectful of all the delegates, I want to be respectful of the people who have been a part of that party for a long time. And Im starting it as an exploratory committee so that I can try to earn the nomination, and if Im able to get further along and obtain the nomination, then we can talk about changing it to a full committee.

Do you have a deadline then when it comes to deciding whether you will actually run versus exploratory?

I dont have a specific deadline in mind. I think as this goes on, well have a better idea of where we stand with the delegates. And there may come a point where I feel more comfortable moving forward concretely and saying, yes, Im in 100%, Im going all the way. But right now I want to make sure Im being respectful of the delegates and working to earn their trust. And Im going to continue to work to do that over the next few weeks.

Why now, when its so late in the election cycle, and in the middle of a pandemic?

Well for one thing, I think its important to think about the fact that the election cycles have been getting longer. Theyre starting early in the year before the election, and we dont need that much campaigning going on for a presidency, otherwise these things are just nonstop, around-the-clock, and people get really tired of it. But actually, at the beginning of this year, in February, I started to look at it very carefully, and wanted to consider whether I would be a candidate, and I would have made a decision earlier, but then we had the coronavirus pandemic come up, and I had to make the decision, the right decision, I believe, to delay the final judgement of whether Im going to jump in or not, because I want to be able to represent my constituents during this time, I wanted to make sure Im in top of what was going on in Congress, and I wanted to reassess how a pandemic situation where were all stuck at home would affect the campaign.

Is it still possible to advance the things you want to talk about as a third-party candidate?

It is possible to do that, and the way Im going to do that is by getting my message out there. And if I do that, I feel confident that people will see that among the three candidates, the one running as a Libertarian Party nominee right now, or seeking the Libertarian Party nomination, is the one who will be the most compelling and qualified candidate of the three.

Do you think your presence in the race will help or hurt either candidate?

I think it hurts both candidates. The goal is to win, so you obviously want to take votes from both candidates. Theres a huge pool of voters who arent represented by either of the parties, and a lot of times, they just stay home or they settle for one of the two parties, but they would be happy to vote for someone else if they felt there was another candidate that was compelling.

Have you thought about whether youd vote for Biden or Trump?

I would not vote for Biden or Trump. Getting rid of Donald Trump does not fix the problems because Donald Trump is just a symptom of the problems. The problems will still exist with Joe Biden in the White House.

Is there anything that your friends in the Republican Party could do to redeem themselves now in your eyes?

I dont think that theres any way to pull them back from where they are. The culture of Donald Trump that has become dominant in the Republican Party is not going away anytime soon. Its probably here for at least a decade. Its a very different tone; its a very different style. Theres not much focus on principles anymore, its a focus on personality.

What makes you think that theres a viable path for you?

When you think about whether Republicans are firmly behind Trump, yes, theyre firmly behind Trump because they dont see an alternative. And they view the alternative right now as Joe Biden, and thats not a viable alternative for most Republicans. So there is a path for a third candidate to receive votes from Republicans.

Michigan has been in the news recently for the protests against the governors coronavirus policies. Can I ask what you made of them?

I support people protesting. I support their right to protest. I think people are very upset in Michigan about much of the overreach. I do condemn and denounce things like using Nazi flags or Nazi symbols at protests. Or coming into the state capitol holding weapons in a way that might be intimidating to many people.

What about the protests where folks havent been adhering to socialdistancing practices?

It shouldnt happen where people dont keep away from each other by at least 6 ft. I mean, were hearing from doctors and epidemiologists and others. We should adhere to those guidelines.

What was the decision not to run for reelection like?

It was one of the most difficult decisions of my life. I think its important to focus on one race at a time, and this is the race Im focused on. Ultimately I decided that even though I can win reelection as an independent, I wasnt sure it would make the same kind of difference to our system as running a presidential campaign and winning that campaign. If you win as an independent, some people might just write it off to some oddity of the third district of Michigan, saying, well in that district, an independent can win, but it wont work anywhere else. If you win the presidency as a Libertarian, you have a chance to really upset the system in a way that can restore our constitutional process and our representative government, and to me that is the more important thing.

Whats it like being home and deciding whether you want to run for President under these circumstances?

Its a different kind of campaign, but its one that actually may work to my benefit. If we were running a normal campaign, I obviously dont have the name ID yet to go out and hold massive rallies or any of those kinds of things, like the President might, or maybe Joe Biden might. So were at a point where we can compete with the other candidates through video and through technology, and I have an advantage in that, maybe, as a younger candidate, going out there and getting my message out on social media and elsewhere.

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Write to Lissandra Villa at lissandra.villa@time.com.

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Michigan Rep. Justin Amash on Why Hed Run for President as a Libertarian and the Culture of the GOP - TIME