There is nothing more boring than dictionaries. They are not for bedtime reading. Learners reach for them only when obliged to verify a word. But they are necessary to explain, selectively, the American lexicon in this year of electioneering. The following is my mini political dictionary of the American elections. “LIVE FREE OR DIE”: This is the motto of the State of New Hampshire, a liberal state, known as a “blue-colour state”. Had it been conservative, it would have been categorised as “a red-colour state”, like most of the southern states, which still call the Civil War the “war between the States” with a capital letter S. THE HAWKEYE STATE: The reference here to the State of Iowa, a rural state in the Midwest where 64 per cent of the inhabitants are evangelical Christians. You could call the evangelicals the equivalent of the Muslim Brotherhood, except that they do not engage in physical violence. This state is where the primary elections for both the Democrat and the Republican Parties are first waged. THE PRIMARIES: These are intended as boxing matches between the candidates of the two main parties and aim to determine the viability, meaning “the electability”, of a candidate, leading the winner to be the party's nominee. They weed out the political chaff from the wheat, like giving the American voter a test run of a new car before committing to buying it. AN ESTABLISHMENT CANDIDATE: This is someone who has prior political experience as a senator, governor or ambassador. This year, if you are an establishment candidate, you are not a favourite of those participating in the elections for the first time. Call it a generational gap, an educational gap or a regional gap. Gaps here are the sluices (sliding gates) through which rage against the government pours in. This year in America is definitely a year of rage. “A FUTURE TO BELIEVE IN”: The mantra of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont fashioned after Barack Obama's winning political mottos of 2008, “Yes we can”, and “Change you can trust”. The reference is to the general perception in the US that “government lies”, part of the innuendo referring to the CIA fabricating information about then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction. PROJECTING A HIGH TURNOUT: This refers to total uncertainty about the percentage of those eligible to cast their ballots. In Iowa, the percentage of youth (defined in America as between the ages of 18 and 30) who stayed at home in the recent elections (caucuses) was a whopping 84 per cent. A RAZOR-EDGE MARGIN: In the American system, a fraction of one per cent of voters for a candidate satisfies putting him or her on top. The winner takes all. The system avoids the proportional representation of the Italian or French systems. At the Iowa caucuses, Hillary Clinton won 49.8 per cent of caucus-chosen delegates; her opponent, Bernie Sanders, got 49.6 per cent, meaning that there was a razor-thin difference. To cover that defeat, Sanders called it “a virtual tie”. This made the Hillary camp laugh. “There is no such term. A win is a win is a win,” they said. CAUCUSING: This is a special form of political choice through a meeting of an elective party committee. Caucuses are all about local politics, giving the nation a pre-warning of what might emerge in the national elections this November. It is a form of participatory democracy. MORE ON “CAUCUSING”: Is caucusing suitable for the Arab world, such as in countries like Egypt or Tunisia? No, it is not. The main reason is that America began from localities, whereas the Arab states began from centralism. IDENTITY POLITICS: This refers primarily to age, not race. The identity is with the issues, not with minority interests and majority interests, and determining things by age keeps America on a consistent political course, regardless of changing demographics. This helps to maintain political stability, since by 2030 whites in America will have been reduced to 45 per cent of the population. EQUALITY BEFORE THE LAW: This is based on the Constitution with its amendments as America's governance safety net. CONSERVATIVE VERSUS LIBERAL: These are terms primarily used by contenders for the Democratic Party nomination, in other words with the elimination process between Hillary and Bernie. The process has pushed Hillary to the left, forcing her to call herself a “progressive centrist”. Whatever that means. Sanders has stayed for the past 20 years on ideological course for “a socialist revolution”, causing the Clinton camp to accuse him of “sloganeering”. Former president Bill Clinton has come to his wife's rescue, saying, “Talk is cheap. America needs Hillary. She gets things done.” “A SOCIALIST REVOLUTION”: The political description of Sanders's political message, used against him by the Clinton campaign. In essence, the Sanders message is nothing but continuity from the days of President Franklin D Roosevelt in the 1930s and means no turning away from the system of social security and strict banking regulation. But Sanders pushes the envelope further in the direction of free education for all. (In Egypt, this is called the Taha Hussein philosophy, or “education is as essential as water and air”.) “ROBOTIC”: A robot is pre-programmed, and nothing comes out except what is put in. This is an insult addressed to Hillary by the Republicans and to Marco Rubio by his Republican and Democrat opponents. “FROM DAY ONE”: A cliché used by Republican contenders promising swift action once in the Oval Office. It is too impractical for implementation and provides high expectations that threaten the credibility of a new president. The occupant of the Oval Office is not a push-button executive and instead is hemmed in by checks and balances. “WITH ALL DUE RESPECT”: Watch out! Your opponent is about to tear your views apart. “MY COMPETITOR WOULD MAKE A GREAT VICE-PRESIDENT”: A putdown by an opponent seeking the presidency. It means: “My adversary is below me in authority and stature. I am way ahead”. “THIS IS AN AWESOME NON-ANSWER”: A description of the alleged stupidity of an opponent, generally used in political debates, or to refuse to answer a question from the media. “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN”: Mantra used by Republican candidate Donald Trump to explain that he is ready to use non-conventional means to achieve American ends of supremacy in a turbulent world. Even when he was defeated in the Iowa caucus, Trump prided himself on being new to the game of politics, but ready to rule the US as an accomplished “deal-maker”. His book, The Art of the Deal, has been made by his campaign the equivalent of Chairman Mao's Little Red Book. Yet, when Trump was defeated in Iowa, the front-page headline on the New York Daily News was “Dead clown walking”. “DONALD TRUMP ISN'T REAL”: This was the headlined on an article by David Brooks, a nationally acclaimed New York Times writer. Here are his words against Trump, who has called for the banning Muslims from America: “Trump's whole campaign was based on success breeding success, the citing of self-referential poll victories to justify his own candidacy. How does he justify a campaign built entirely around his own mastery? Can an aggressor like him respond gracefully in the days ahead to self-created failure? His concession speech was an act of pathetic self-delusion.” “YOU CAN'T BE A MODERATE AND A PROGRESSIVE”: I don't perceive a big difference between the meaning of these two terms. But this is what was said by Sanders in an attack on Hillary Clinton's political philosophy in the now-contested liberal state of New Hampshire. This is Sanders's territory, where he has what is called, in American political lingo, “neighbourly advantage and home state advantage”. Sanders is from Vermont, but his home state borders New Hampshire to the west. This is one of “the blue states” of the northeast of the US called “New England”. There is a city in New Hampshire called “Lebanon”. “I AM NOT A POLITICIAN”: This stands for freshness, innocence of the grid-lock chaos in Washington, DC, and of lying to the public. Fury against so-called “establishment politics” has shaken the 2016 race. An article in the New York Times on 2 February was headlined “Electorate divided in deep disaffection,” for example. “SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS ARE MUSLIMS”: Watch out for what follows — Islamophobia. This is where the leadership steps in to protect the American values of diversity and concern for American security. On 3 February, President Barack Obama visited the Islamic Society of Baltimore Mosque and warned Americans not to be the “bystanders of bigotry”. What does it all mean? Democracy has no universally agreed definition. It is something that sprouts in various flavours out of the soil of culture, hence the variables in its political expression, as evidenced by the foregoing. There are doctrinal differences, but there are also other differences of a structural nature between an American model of democracy and, say, an Egyptian model. In Iowa, candidate Jeb Bush spent $5,200 per elector on the elections. These were not direct payments, however. They were largely the cost of staff by the thousands and of media ads. It is impossible for an Egyptian candidate for public office to spend that kind of money. An Egyptian candidate might offer a pound of fresh meat or sugar to voters. Because of that little gift to a needy public, his opponents and the media might scream “corruption”. Furthermore, it is unthinkable for an Egyptian candidate to have his family, including his wife and mother, join him or her on the stumps. But Jeb has asked his mother along, to the point that the US media has referred to his “MOMentum”. Hillary has had her husband, former president Bill Clinton, next to her behind a microphone. Which of the two parties are expected to get the Oval Office in January 2017? The Democrats. And Hillary, not Sanders. He is too shrill, a bit too far to the left. The American electorate tends to be in the centre. Hillary is the woman expected to follow Obama, becoming the first-ever woman president to follow the first-ever black president. Why did I embark on this perilous journey of putting together this mini-dictionary? Perilous, because every paragraph is subject to challenge. Because it has an ideological subtext — namely that “democracy” cannot be one single paradigm. Like “the seven veils of Eve”, you cannot measure democracy outside America by an American yardstick. This is also the case when wanting to measure the observance of human rights in the New Egypt. The New Egypt is still at the “sorry for any inconvenience, we are under construction” stage. Democracy, including various forms of respect for human rights, is the product of its environment. For the purposes of understanding through contrasts, here are two examples: the American media has long been enamoured of criticising Egypt's security forces for clearing the sit-ins in the squares in Cairo (Rabaa and Al-Nahda) in 2013. That was following the removal (in fact, the recall) of the Muslim Brotherhood reign of Islamist fascism. And while you are it, why not examine the way the Egyptian prosecution and judiciary have handled opposition to the law and order of the Al-Sisi government? Compare that to an America that was rightly stressed by 9/11. The Americans set up the infamous Guantanamo Bay prison camp where Muslim victims of the dragnet benefitted from no due process. At Guantanamo, American values were submerged under the floodwaters of two contrived fictions. The first was that Guantanamo was not on American soil. Really? So why do I see it flying the American flag? And the second was that at Guantanamo, the Geneva Conventions are considered obsolete and are in any case not applicable to Muslim detainees. You must be kidding! So why did we recall those same conventions when a group of American sailors lost their way recently in the Gulf, were arrested in Iranian waters, and videotaped by their Iranian captors prior to their release? Please get real! Words have consequences, globally speaking. Life lessons can be remembered if taught through contrasts and comparisons. Someone once said, “The evil in this world is the creation of those who make a distinction between self and other,” as quoted by David Brooks from a nameless author. The writer is a professor of law at New York University.
