Game of thrones – Special political traditions in France, Israel and the United States

 

[Throne*]

The art of translating goes beyond knowledge of language and encompasses comprehension of culture. A professional translator must know how the societies of the source language handle a given situation and translate the whole concept in such a way that the speaker of the target language can understand. For example, while the United States uses the common law system of law, France uses Droit publique, thus requiring the legal translator to understand the function of each court level in both systems in order to properly translate court documents. Similarly, while many democracies exist, fortunately, each has its own peculiarities. Thus, translators of political and journalistic materials must be familiar with the electoral processes in order to transmit them from one language to another. As an example, I will present a special, sometimes unique, aspect of the French, Israeli and American democratic processes.

[Bed]

2^nd tour or strange bedfellows - France has multiple political parties, with ever changing names. As a result, all French elections, from municipal to the presidential, are conducted into two rounds. To clarify, in the first round, any person, with or without party identification, may run for a public position but only the top two finishers appear in the ballot for the deuxieme tour. So, the deuxieme tour does not refer to the 1904 running of the Tour de France but instead to the second round of voting. This reduction to two candidates requires the losing local representatives and national parties to choose whether to remain neutral or recommend a vote for one of the two remaining candidates. Given the fluidity of modern French political alignment and the interaction between personal dislike and future ambition, the result is rather comical to an outside observer as personal and/or ideological enemies suddenly unite because they both despise or fear the challenger even more. The recently completed round of municipal elections in France provides numerous examples with a potpourri of local ideological alliances. Thus, the 2^nd tour exemplifies that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, at least for the moment.

[Bread and crumbs]

Remainders or waste not, want not – Israel also has a multiparty parliamentary system. In fact, Israel has never had a non-coalition government. Thus, the distribution of seats in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, is of vital national interest. To determine the final result, the national election committee calculates the total number of actual, not only registered, voters and remove all votes for parties that did not meet the legal minimum for a seat, currently 3.25% of the total vote. The resulting number is divided by 120, the number of seats in the Knesset. For example, in the latest national election in March of 2020, each seat was equal to 37,943 voters. The interesting issue is what to do with the votes from 37,944 to 75,885. To avoid throwing them away, each party signs a heskem odefim, an agreement on how to distribute the remaining, unused votes, right before the election. The goal is to help the party closest to gaining one more seat, which may be the difference between being the government or opposition. The how and why of these agreements are for the politicians but the result is that the official results take up to three days so that some ballots can be checked and the heskem odefim can be applied. Every little vote counts.

[Jigsaw puzzle]

Gerrymandering or scribbly lines – The United States is a federal government and has effectively two parties. Individual elections are much simpler, i.e. the winner of hte one and only election is the person getting the most votes. However, the U.S. Constitution, written with its typical ambiguity, creates a unique process for defining the voting district for a member of the House of Representatives, which is legislatively limited to 435 members. Article 1 of the Constitution merely states that a representative must be elected every two years by a district with no more than 30,000 registered voters. Having observed the dead borough phenomenon in the UK, i.e., districts where most of the voters has long died, the Congress allows the redistricting every change of decade after the census. Now the fun begins. Whichever party controls the legislative branch in a state gets to redraw the map, guided only by the Constitutional limit of equal districts of no more than 30,000 voters. The considerations are not administrative but electoral. To clarify, as a rule, most minorities tend to vote Democrat while many white suburban voters tend to vote Republican, depending on the local politics. So, if a party wishes to diminish the impact of a concentrated voting bloc, it divides up its voters among several districts while the opposite is true if the goal is to maximize electoral impact. The district lines do not have to resemble any known geometric shape. In recent years, the courts have started to reject extreme gerrymandering but it is clear that one of the strengths of the Republican Party has been its control of many of the state legislatures for several decades. The devil is in the details, even in politics.

Seen from the outside, these traditions are curious, even amusing, a bit like reading or viewing the Game of Thrones.  However, from the inside, they have a huge impact on the residents of the country. A customer requiring translation of an economic or political text must make sure that the translator understands the concept and can transmit it to the target audience. Unlike the series, this game is real.

*Caption pictures to allow full access to the blind. All images via Pixabay.

Culinary couch potato or non-vicarious political living

In the last decade, the television screen has slowly turned into a giant kitchen. Food preparation programs are becoming more and more numerous.  They include cooking and baking and both.  They range from the sophisticated such as Professional Master Chef to the absurd, such Worst Cooks in America. Their approach can focus on the food, such as the French MasterChef, the people in the Israeli MasterChef or the culture in Les Carnets de Julie.  The competitive atmosphere can be high as in Iron Chef or bordering on cooperative as the Great British Bake Off.  They can emphasize team work as the Chef Games in Israel or single improvisational skills as in Chopped.  Regardless of the format, viewers sit on their fannies and watch other people prepare and eat food.  Admittedly, some actually learn from the shows, copying and applying the techniques and recipes.  Most people just find something to munch on and look forward to the next show or season. 

I admit that I belong to the last category. My personal reason for relishing cooking and baking shows is the current state of politics. Simply put, it stinks. I will be fair: it stinks in Israel, the United States, France, Britain, Russia, China, Turkey, Germany, Italy and the Palestinian Authority, to name just a few.  I heard that the situation in Monaco or Luxemburg and maybe Singapore may be okay but I lack sufficient knowledge to know nor do these good apples really improve the barrel. The situation is and has been so bad that I have stopped watching the news or listening to news radio.  I do care but lack the emotional strength to deal with the scope of the disaster even if I know I personally will be affected by it sooner or later. Call it cowardice or weakness but I simply cannot take politics right now.

So, instead, in the two hours or so of free time I have in the evening, I watch people prepare food and even jokingly, mostly, ask why they did not offer me a slice or taste of it.  From time to time, my wife prepares a dish based on one of the recipes, which I enjoy.  Theoretically, I myself could print the recipe and make it myself as I know how to cook.  However, there is almost no chance that I would ever do so.

They say that troubles cause people to either gain or lose weight, depending on their reaction.  Although I try to eat healthier snacks during my escapism sessions, I have to admit that I have not lost weight.  I cannot speak for the viewers of the program but the reason that I enjoy such programs is that I find it much cheerful to listen to a discussion of a beautiful profiterole than one on the profits of all Trumps and Bibi’s friends.  To paraphrase the maligned Marie Antoinette, let us eat cake, at least vicariously.

General failures

In Judaism, the term messiah refers to a godlike figure that will appear deus ex machina and restore human affairs to its mythical orderly paradise. In politics, this individual is called “the general”. Specifically, the public wishes to believe that this seemingly uncorrupted and clearly patriotic personality, who seemingly has mastered the art of running a huge military machine, will seamlessly apply his skill and fix the mess of civilian politics. Where ever and whenever, this faith has always been disappointed.

In the United States, elected generals have shown themselves to be rather poor presidents. Andrew Jackson and Zachery Taylor were romantic but did more harm than good while Ulysses Grant was clearly over his head in trying to run the country. George Washington is highly rated not only because there was no president before him but also because there was no established political structure to manage and he was surrounded by political geniuses, many of which become president after him. Dwight D. Eisenhower is also respected but this is mainly because he did what the public wanted him to do, nothing, which is relatively easy to carry out.

Europe does not have a better track record. Napoleon was genius in terms of military skill but very mediocre in terms of administration. He left France in very poor condition and did not improve the lives of its regular citizens in any substantial manner. In modern times, Francisco Franco in Spain and Antonio Salazar in Portugal suffocated their countries economically, socially and optically for decades.  Charles de Gaulle was effective in extracting France from an ineffective fourth republic and a civil war due to its policies in Algeria but created a new system that is so open to corruption that it resembles the mythical Stygian stables. In other words, he did not fundamentally improve the political situation of the French.

In the Middle East, Israel is a country with a bit of a Spartan tradition and has always been enamored of generals. The list of chiefs of staff and top generals that have entered politics after a successful career in the Army is extensive but their glory rolls are sparse. The best that can be said is that Moshe Dayan, Igal Yadin, Ariel Sharon and Yizhak Rabin had their moments but their learning curve was no less steep than their civilian counterparts. Benny Gantz is the latest to jump into the ring of Israeli politics but the past is against him.  Egypt, Israel’s neighbor, has twice been ruled by military councils with dominant figures, Gamal Nassar in the 1960’s and 1970’s and Abdel el-Sisi currently.  Whatever foreign policies success they may have achieved, the average Egyptian has not benefited economically to any significant degree.

Many military heads are not better than one.  Juntas, whether in Europe as in Greece in the 1960’s and 1970’s or in South American as in Argentina in the 1970’s to the 1980’s, only leave their country even more poor.

In the 17^th century, Oliver Cromwell aimed to create a government of godly man to rule English but failed. The public continues to share his faith and seeks divine, military guidance, generally to little avail. The sad truth is most generals are political failures.

News blackout

I come from a political family. My parents came from politically active families. At the dinner table, we discussed the Vietnam War and Watergate, not the price of bread. My father at the age of almost 91 still religiously reads two newspapers every day and discusses the articles with my mother.  I myself followed events in the recent US election with close attention and voted in every Israeli election since I have been here.

So, it is with great sadness that I have gradually but almost totally entered a self-imposed news blackout. To explain, I am very upset about policies developments around the world, to put it mildly.  I despise what Putin and Erdogan mean for their countries and the entire world. The elections of Natanyahu and Trump have driven me into despair. Their elections depress me not only because of their policies, which are based on negative visions in my opinion, but also because of the large number of people that share and bought that vision. In short, I am politically depressed.

My reaction, alas, has been to withdraw. I do not want to hear about Trump's appointees or Netanyahu's decisions. I know that they will disturb me very much. Like the old Jew in the Warsaw ghetto that kept on complaining that the new landlords did not want to heat the flat and consciously ignored that the Germans were trying to starve the Jews until they could find a more efficient way to kill them, I choose to ignore (not deny) the current situation. I deep in my heart want to wake up in few years to a better world, where tolerance and peace are the norm, not hatred and violence. Of course, I will do my civic duty and support anybody with those ideals but recognize that this is a waiting time until the tide turns, as it always does eventually.

Of course, my news blackout is not total. I still check the scores of my various teams, who also are not doing very well (Lakers, Bengals, Pirates), but there is hope for next year. I do check the weather report as well as look for any changes in the VAT rate since these items has a direct effect on my life. Yet, I refuse to peer into the bigger picture although I know I will bear its consequences no less. I cannot say that my response is very mature or brave but for now it is all I can do. To destroy Descartes, I don't think so it does not exist.

Irish addition by subtraction?

In continuation of last week’s post on Ireland, I feel obliged to mention what Ireland has few of, for better or worse.   Of course, I could be wrong about any of these points and confused the forest and trees. I am open to any correction.

Ireland has very few cats, pets or wild.  Neither in Dublin nor Galway did we see any cats in the streets or windows.  Apparently, something there, possibly the weather, discourages their procreation.  It certainly is not due to a lack of birds.

For that matter, Ireland lacks pests.  St. Patrick probably did not kick them out, but there are no native Irish snakes.  Furthermore, I didn’t see any cockroaches or mosquitoes either. The largest carnivore is a fox, not exactly a major threat to life. There are badgers but they apparently avoid the city and wreak only their havoc in the countryside. To be fair, midges can be problem at certain times but it is a much localized problem at that.

Curiously, with no connection to the previous paragraph, Ireland has few Israeli visitors. We were there some 12 days and did not meet a single Israeli.  I am not complaining but it was certainly surprising as Israelis are big travelers. I do not know the reason. It may the relatively high price or lack of Jewish roots in the Emerald island, but we could speak Hebrew freely without worry of being understood.

Continuing on the positive note, Irish food portions are respectable but not obscene. With no longer the appetite and capacity to burn calories that I had when I was in my 20’s, I appreciated getting up from Irish meals satisfied but not stuffed.  There was always room for the delicious dessert, which are also tasty but not copious. Less can be better.

While most people think driving on the left (not wrong) size of the road is very frightening, Irish road makers were very Scottish in their craft. The roads are so narrow. To my eye, the country roads are one way. However, somehow they serve two- way traffic, allowing even a bus and car to pass each other without damage.  I often thought of that scene in one of the Harry Potter movies in which the bus changes form in order not to hit a car. Those tight squeezes made me happy not to drive in Ireland. Phrased positively, Irish drivers are amazing.

Regarding subtraction, the politics of Ireland as expressed by the weather reports is quite fascinating. The Irish TV station always mentions the weather in Belfast and northern counties even though they are part of the UK. By the contrast, the BBC, including BBC Northern Ireland, steadfastly ignores the weather in the lower two thirds of the island, somewhat like the missing picture of the embarrassing aunt. By contrast, the Irish I spoke with rarely mentioned the British and their influence on Irish history. They were cryptically (sarcastically?) referred to as our English cousins.  The less said the better.

Finally, Irish (Gaelic) and Hebrew are both resurrected languages, effectively reborn for nationalistic reasons in the last century or so.  While in Israel the vast majority can and do use Hebrew in their daily lives, Irish is not widely spoken, only 16% of the population, mainly in rural areas, despite it being the first official language. My favorite Irish sound was the name of the Irish railroad, Iarnród Éireann. During our trip to and from Galway by train, we heard it at the end of every announcement, to my constant amusement. To an English ear, it sounds like here nor there, which is funny in the context of travel. In any case, I wish the Irish success in creating a true local national language.

To end my two-part Irish post, I heartily recommend a trip there. Come armed with a sense of humor and adventure. Both the country and its people are a bit wild in a positive way.

Inverse Proportions – (Politically proportional or not)

An inverse proportion can describe a relation where the scales of effort and results are opposite, i.e. greater effort is used for less consequence.  It applies to the 80/20 rule, which states that 20% of the work attains 80% of the results while the last 20% requires 80% of the effort. 

This rule has a curious parallel in politics, specifically the actual voting process in general elections.  In the United States, voting during a presidential year can take great time and effort.  Voters place their booklet in the holder and then punch holes for the choice for the following positions, depending on the year, of course: president of the United States, senator  and representative for the U.S. Congress, senator and representative for the state legislature, representative for city legislature, governor, mayor, judge, police chief, local prosecutor,  sheriff, and board of education members, not to mention countless state propositions where allowed in that state (California, for example).  Voting truly demands concentration and several minutes of concentration.  U.S. citizens are naturally expected, even around half of them fail to do so, to find time during their working day to get to the voting stations. 

By contrast, the Israeli voters go their voting stations, generally a school within walking distance, show their ID to five people, who mark off their name on a list.  That is the hard part.  Then they walk into a curtain covered booth, take out an envelope, choose a piece of paper identifying the party of their choice, place that paper in the envelope, seal the envelope, exit the booth, and place the envelope in the appropriate box.  In fact, it took more time to write that description than to actually do it.  Ironically, Israelis get a day off to accomplish that complicated task.  Even then, a significant percentage of Israelis do not vote.

In short, Americans have to work hard to vote and don’t get any time off for fulfilling their civic duty.  By contrast, Israelis have almost nothing to do, aside from getting to the voting station, to pick their Knesset members.  However, as illogical as it sounds, Israelis get a day off.  It is truly inverse.

Religion and Identity – (Middle) East and West

As an American who has lived some 23 years in Israel, I have learned to appreciate a certain reality which escapes people who have never been here, some of which who have to make vital policy decisions.

Religion in the West, meaning the United States and Europe, is a biographical fact.   Being born Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, or anything else influences your values, your way of dressing, your ideal mate as far as your parents are concerned, and possibly your political view.  To be clear, I am not referring to actually practicing the religion or attending a house of worship.  The mere fact of having parents of a certain religion creates a part of your culture (with a small c).  In terms of understanding people, it is easier to relate to someone with same culture.  That being said, the parents’ background does not determine the children’s future in the United States. Since these countries view religion as a private matter separate from public identity, children can change or adapt their religion while still maintaining their status as an American, Italian, or Brit.  Thus, in the West, I am who I am and also have a religious culture.

By contrast, in the Middle East, religion is an identity, private and official, affecting all aspects of life.  ID cards list the religion of the carrier.  In Israel, a person’s faith, whether Jewish, Muslim, Christian, or Druze, determines that person’s social circle and public status in society.  In the Arab world, the situation is no different.  The Ottomans recognized and used this to administer the Middle East, letting each community run its own affairs as long as it paid taxes of course. Outside your faith, it is hard to be part of a community.

This understanding is vital for average citizens and decision makers.  Attempts to westernize the Middle East and make it religious in the Western way are doomed to fail.  People hold on strongly to their faith, even more today.  The zealots here may be crazy, but most honestly believe that they are right.   (See that ancient book Future Shock by Alvin Toffler for a potential explanation.)  More importantly, leaders and people in the street in the Middle East do not think like their counterparts in the West.  There is a wonderful story about John Dulles, the US Foreign Minister during the 1956 Middle Eastern crisis, who complained to reporters that he was shocked that Nasser lied to him.  This demonstrates the critical lack of understanding then and maybe now of Middle Eastern thinking.  Ignoring the power of religion just feeds that misinterpretation

The next time you hear about some “irrational act” in the Middle East or by someone from here, keep in mind that faith here defines both identity and ethics.