Politics being one damn thing after another, political language never sleeps. Fortunately, the insomniac hunter of neologisms David K. Barnhart has compiled a lexicon of au courant political terms. Should confirmation be needed that Americans are innovative, democratic, and deranged by partisanship, look no further than Barnhart’s Never-finished Political Dictionary of the 21st Century. Our politics may be ruder than ever, but at least our political language is healthy.
Barnhart’s trove can be divided into two categories. The first is descriptive, and most of its message is the medium of technology, lightly seasoned with terrorism. The malfunction of touch-screen voting machines causes vote flipping. The prefix cyber- is attached to anything with an electric pulse: attacks, jihad, polls, security, and voting. Reflecting the volatility of the tweet, a gesture of Twitter diplomacy may spark a Twitter revolution, and a Twitter offense can mean both “breaking the law” and an aggressive messaging campaign (“Trump back on Twitter offense”).
As ever, long names are reduced into a single word for easy and quick reading. This produces the trio of insurgent acronyms that threaten the peace of Europe, AQAP, ISIS, and UKIP, and compounds like WikiLeaks and uberwealthy. Some old terms have been revived too. Once more, we kick the can down the road (1956), follow the veepstakes (1952), laugh sadistically as a candidate is unendorsed (1935), and rue the failure of yet another pivot (1920). The venerable cat out of the bag (1760) is refreshed as the cat out of the bag doctrine, in which officials allude to secrets while denying they are doing so.
The second category is analytical, in the sense that the descriptive uberwealthy might lead to the analytical one percent (which isn’t in Barnhart, but should be). Often, a political moment is named for posterity and framed within political history. The suffix -gate, as in Spitzergate, Weinergate, and Melaniagate, has become a marker for any kind of scandal. Although the transgressions of Carlos Danger hardly resemble those of G. Gordon Liddy, -gate remains reliable headline porn. More seemly analysts may mold a series of policy statements into an ideology, like Trumpism or Clintonism. Users should note, however, that Bidenism is not a coherent ideology. A Bidenism is a gaffe. If it reaches critical Bidenosity, it can be fixed by Bidentistry, the removal of the metaphorical foot from the vice-presidential mouth.
Plato believed that art was mimetic, an imitation of a higher reality, so he probably would have understood the concepts of gesture politics and the meta-lie, a “lie about a lie.” He contrasted mimesis with diegesis, the kind of fiction that tells instead of shows, and reflects only its own interior life. The analytical vocabulary emerges from a politics of personalities and pollsters’ narratives, of memes and atmospherics. Its diegesis reflects these insiderly preoccupations. It does not reflect well that Aleppo moment is not a political crisis resulting from a sustained failure of policy, but a momentary lapse of memory before the cameras (after the one by the Libertarian presidential candidate).
For now, the language, like the rest of America, belongs to Donald Trump. Hence the changed meaning of Trumpistan. Today, Trumpistan denotes Trumpland, the Trumpiverse, and the Trumposphere, where mating pairs of Trumpanzees and Trumpettes are in a Trumpy state of mind. But in October 2001, a New Yorker cover showing a hand-drawn map of the Five Boroughs placed Trumpistan on the Upper West Side. Now, with Mr. Trump going to Washington, the Upper West Side is largely Trumpless, and a last redoubt of the Hillaryites of Hillaryland. As to what the Trumpster does next, it may not be a Trumpocalypse, but there might be Trumpruption, and even the occasional Trumpertantrum.
Some descriptive shoots are likely to wither after their brief moment in the sun. What, future readers of Barnhart may wonder, made Grover Norquist’s libertarianism so Norquistian, and how did Eric Cantor get Cantored off a high perch at short notice? Other neologisms are not precise enough. Does the Buffett Rule describe a tip for getting value for money from an all-you-can-eat scenario; the hiring practices of Jimmy Buffett’s Cheeseburger in Paradise chain; or the investment strategies of Warren Buffett?
Further problems arise when a metaphor is used in a way that inadvertently evokes its literal meaning, as when Donald Trump opined that Hillary Clinton got schlonged by Barack Obama in the 2008 Democratic primaries. The composites of Arab Spring are a sustained disaster of this kind. Post-Arab Spring implies a literal Arab Summer. But everyone now knows that the real Arab Spring led to a metaphorical Arab Winter. But an Arab Winter, confusingly, would literally have been the season of the metaphorical pre-Arab Spring. All of which confirms the suspicion that the very idea of the Arab Spring was an unreal conceit to start with.
For a neologism to last, it has to be crisp, instructive, and preferably witty. It has to feel natural, and stay relevant too. Obamanomics would read well, but Obamamania does not, because the eye sees the mama before the mania. Feeling the Bern is a memorable pun, but Sandersista could have three meanings. Is a Sandersista someone who shares Bernie’s nostalgia for the Nicaraguan revolution, or an African-American woman who supports Sanders, or perhaps even both? And while Clintonite reads easily, the vowel sandwich of Bernieite looks wrong to the eye. Only 13 other English words contain “iei.” Of them, only hogtieing and pixieish are used regularly, through rarely in the same sentence.
The re-shoring of manufacturing plants from overseas to the United States sounds reassuring, as does the idea that illegal immigrants will self-deport. Romnesia, President’s Obama’s term for Mitt Romney’s apparent changes of opinion, is a clever play on amnesia and might even evoke the pariah state of Rhodesia. Scandalabra both describes multiple, interrelated scandals, and promises to cast light into corners; the word originates in the title of a play by Zelda Fitzgerald. The enthusiasms of the Tea Party are mocked with Teahadi and Teavangelicals. This name-calling is probably the work of slacktivists who do not undertake much else apart from Facebook politics.
Less elegantly, below the line means below the belt. Just as farmers know that pig slurry is a fecund source of fertilizer, so the talkbacks are a foul but rich source of new political language. The wingnuts of the right taunt the moonbats of the left. Dumbocrat reminds Democrats of their embarrassing Dixiecrat (1948) associations. Blognuts accuse Rethuglicans of conservative correctness, and Rethuglicans oblige with libtard. The mudslinging may change nobody’s mind, but it pleases the slinger. Propaganda, Orwell wrote in “Propaganda and Demotic Speech” (1944), “seems to succeed when it coincides with what people are inclined to do in any case.”
The winner of the rhetorical race to the bottom has to be cuckservative, the alt-right term for “a moderate political conservative.” Its combination of inventiveness and madness, digital malice and Chaucerian richness, gives us hope for the English language, if not for the people who use it. Barnhart’s Never-finished Political Dictionary (available from lexikhouse.com) is a magnificent piece of lexicographical work, but after reading it I feel nauseated by an excess of memes—in fact, positively memetic.
Dominic Green, a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, teaches politics at Boston College.
