The Nobel Prize in Physics for 2013 has just been awarded to Peter Higgs and Francois Englert for helping the world understand how a background field can cause phantom particles to acquire mass. The relatively irrational world of politics, riddled as it is with contradictions, offers its own version of the Higgs Field in terms of divergent national narratives.

For example, a news story can gain heft and traction in one field, while its equivalent in another field is rendered weightless or lightweight. The use of bombs and bullets by terrorists to maim and kill civilians in a luxury shopping center is a heavy media event. But when the US uses bombs and bullets on civilians in a remote desert, it gets off light. Before the concept of Higgs Field entered public discourse, there were other less elegant ways of describing the effect of field on a story. The durable concept of "double standards" comes to mind, as does "narrative frame". Either way, one man's meat is another man's poison.

Washington's doublespeak is littered with terms that assign a different weight to murder, depending on who does it and where it happens. When the US does it, it's collateral damage, pacification, humanitarian intervention, peacekeeping, surgical strikes, to mention a few, whereas an act of violence by the other side is terrorism, and those who use violence terrorists. Violence is rendered understandable, if not respectable, when the US government does it, but just plain murder when someone else tries the same.