Its an unclear mystery to me why the term and the concept of "political correctness" evokes such a strident reaction in so many contexts and is seemingly viewed as the embodiment of any and all attacks on the freedom of speech, the freedom of expression, and unbridled individualism.

Words do matter, despite the parental injunction that "Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words won't hurt me." This well-meaning bit of advice was never intended as a license to utilize any term, from the most vulgar to the most sublime, in any and all contexts. It was offered as a cognitive strategy whereby one could look to one's better self before reacting to being verbally bullied, harassed, teased, or put-down.

"Political correctness" has become a phrase like "death taxes." The latter was chosen to refer to estate taxes in a pejorative manner and to make a statement about one's position on the topic in such a way that it establishes a defensive barrier between the speaker and the listener. We are no longer talking about one of the traditional tools organized societies employ in order to carry out its mandate to maintain order and promote the common good. We are talking about "robbing the dead" and making the lives of the aggrieved even more painful than it already is, simply out of spite as it were.

"Political correctness" can easily and advisably be restated as civility, courtesy, and respect. These qualities describing citizen interaction are essential to the proper functioning of society. Courteous and respectful behavior on my part warrants that I address you by the name, pronoun, title, race or ethnicity of your choice. I may not understand your choice; I may not make the same choice as you.  I respect your individuality in the matter within ever evolving formal and informal social norms. There will be those times when I inadvertently make use of the wrong or less desirable term or simply reflect my failure to properly update my vocabulary. These are times for apologies and education--my own. We either reside in diverse communities or our homogeneous communities regularly and intimately interact within a very diverse patchwork of diverse communities. Taking some liberty with the parental injunction about "inside and outside voices," at a minimum we ought to measure our choice and use of terms for appropriateness to the immediate context in which we are speaking. Far better advice would be to make use of the politically correct term in internal and external speech and in any and all social settings.

Refusing to exercise civility, courtesy, and respect can be construed as an attempt to tilt the playing field to one's advantage and the disadvantage of a fellow traveler in this time and place in which we find ourselves and to evoke a previous time and place when our better corporate self was not always adequately in play. As citizens we are charged with the responsibility to make sure that our corporate self continues to be a work in progress and that our individual efforts fall primarily on the positive side of that equation.

I find it highly unusual for a Sunday morning service and Monday Morning Joe to have something in common. I don't recall it ever happening before. But then again these are not usual and customary times.

The Catholic liturgy as part of the reforms of the Second Vatican Council added a list of intercessions called The Prayers of the Faithful at the transition from the Liturgy of the Word to the Eucharistic Liturgy. They usually include pretty staid and standard prayerful requests. Occasionally, a social justice topic will be included. The priest who presided over yesterday's service, typically ad libs one or more intercessions after the lector completes the prepared ones. This particular priests often asks the Good Lord to intercede "to secure our southern and northern borders." When I think of Church sanctioned social justice issues, this particular statement (I hesitate to call it prayerful.) is hardly consistent with the Church's stance on international immigrants and refugees. It has been included enough times, that I am no longer startled by it. Yesterday, I was startled anew. Father asked the congregation to pray that our country be protected from the "shadow government." I admit that I was not paying full attention to his words until I heard the term "shadow government." I then sat up and took notice even though I was standing at the time. Routinely, I have difficulty hearing and understanding this priest despite the presence of a sound system and seemingly adequate volume. I checked with a friend and fellow parishioner after mass to make sure that I heard it correctly. He assured me that I did. He had nothing more to add by way of clarification or explanation.

This morning I was startled again as I caught a bit of Morning Joe before stepping out into the light rain for my morning walk. One of the guests asked Michael Hayden, the former director of the National Security Agency, if President Trump's tweets about wiretapping speak to the suggested presence of a "deep government" within the U.S. political and governmental landscape. Michael Hayden did not deny or discount such a supposition. He chose to respond by stating that the term "deep government" is more appropriately applied to such countries as Turkey. That was more or less the entirety of his response. What does that mean? What does that suggest? Do we now have a respected former government official giving credence by way of a wink and a nod to some conspiracy theory? Does this constitute adequate grounds to move this very notion beyond theory to something with greater veracity?

It appears that the subject of these posts is often related to a book I am reading or have recently finished reading. This entry will be no exception, except that it references two recent reads: Theory and History in International Relations by Donald Puchala and On Being Human, Why Mind Matters by Jerome Kagan. Both authors are writing late in their professional careers and possibly upon retirement from those careers. They are age 78 and 88 respectively. What strikes me in these two works is the common thread that questions much of the "science" which underpins their respective chosen professions--international relations and clinical psychology. The "science" in these disciplines is not the empirical science characteristic of chemistry, physics, and fields of that ilk. The social sciences co-opted the language of the so-called hard sciences some fifty years ago in an attempt to acquire a more equal footing and legitimacy with the traditional sciences. By way of examples, social studies became social science; governmental studies became political science.

These two authors bridge that period of before and after. Puchala certainly questions the value of this change in appellation as a fool's errand. In the search for parity, his chosen profession set for itself an unattainable goal. Rather than develop its own and more fitting tools to express and evaluate the validity of knowledge in the field of international relations, it borrowed the tools of hypothesis, theory, law, experimentation, and replication from the more traditional sciences. The social sciences simply do not lend themselves to such empirical dissection. Causality with respect to the human subject, either as an individual or a group, can not be distilled to the point where a single causality can be isolated from all other causal and coincidental factors. Puchala repeatedly asked the core questions of epistemology: how do we know what we know and what is it that we know? When he distills the possible array of responses to those questions, he is left with a choice of basic assumptions upon which the varied responses are based and depend for their individual claims to validity. Kagan does not ask the epistemological questions, but he sums up his review of the state of knowledge in the field of psychology with the comment (I will paraphrase): I know a lot more than I did 40 years ago, and I know a lot more with less certainty than I did 40 years ago.

Is this what old men do? We re-evaluate our life's work and in so doing find ourselves questioning the very authenticity of the very discipline to which we committed ourselves and our efforts.  I won't propose to speculate with respect to women. If I read Kagan correctly, I suspect he might say that women are less likely to commit themselves to such certainty of knowledge up front. Kagan does posit gender differences and credits those differences to biology although his differentiation is not binary. So here I sit, stand, or otherwise position myself in the 8th decade of my life and find that when I read authors like Puchala and Kagan there is a resonance between their writings and my look-back on my life and chosen profession. It is good to have company. And I also realize that one doesn't have to be alone to be lost.

Both of these authors would support the statement that absolute truth has not yet been discovered by humanity and most likely never will be. It would require a degree of perfection that is not viable in humanity.  Knowledge--our access to The Truth--is a developmental process. It may well be another fool's errand to commit oneself to the search for absolute truth that can be characterized as contextually free, culturally universal, and permanently valid. It is not a fool's errand to examine one's "knowledge" (working philosophy, ethical guides, and worldview) in a never ending pursuit of a more reasoned, internally consistent, and corporate knowledge base which guides our individual human activity. When one has substantial experience to look back upon from the perspective of 8 or 9 decades, one has a mountain of real world data with which to not only assess one's past, but to plot one's future--a future which faithfully integrates that past. In the end, I am responsible only for and to my self (spacing intentional).

Another game-day Sunday is upon us, and,once again, no Packer Green and Gold was seen in church this morning. Although Fr. Kevin was wearing green, since we are in that cycle of Sundays this time of the year.

When I went for a clean pair of socks to wear to church this morning. I almost took the Packer socks that were a Christmas present. I didn't; I stuck with the basic black.

I remain at a loss as I try to determine what happened to the Packer backers or why they are, at a minimum, incognito. I could make the rounds of the local bars later today. If I recognize any fellow church-goers, I could inquire as to the reasons behind their change in game-day behavior. If I go too early, they may not be adequately loosened to speak freely; if I go too late, they may be somewhat impaired so that I will not be able to understand their responses. The longer that I would stick to this project, the more unintelligible my notes would become. If I bump into Fr. Kevin, all bets will be off.

We will know in the next several hours, but I am thinking the Green Bay Packers will have a difficult time winning today's game in the first round of the play-offs. How did I arrive at that conclusion?

Here goes!

During the regular season on any Sunday game day, there would be considerable Packer Green and Gold present during our local church service. There would be general team wear--shirts, hoodies, winter jackets, pajama pants--along with individual jerseys with the numbers 12, 87, and 52 dominating. I suspect the belief is quite widespread that praying in costume enhances the prospects of a favorable response to one's prayer. This is a variation of the rule applicable to any number of situations: "One needs to look the part to play the part." Yet, today not a swatch of the familiar Green and Gold. Folks might have made the judgment call that the team can make it through these first rounds on their own so they are saving their petitions for divine intervention for the Big Game. Fans like players need to pace themselves. It can be a long four quarters; it can be a long play-off post-season. Hold something in reserve. And hope that one does not live to regret it.

What might I be in for some Sunday not so distant--February 5, 2017 to be exact? Our congregation--small in numbers and big in enthusiasm--will look like a fan-cam shot of the stands at Lambeau Field on game day. Green and Gold in such numbers and with such flare that Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras will stand up and take notice. There may even be a tailgate breakfast crowd in the church parking lot. The pastor could move through the parking lot warming up the crowd. Folks could be so keyed up for the opening number (aka, entrance hymn), that Father might ask folks to tone it down. Prayer done that way all but guarantees a favorable response.

If the team doesn't make it through these early rounds of the play-off, my questions will go unanswered--not unlike my prayers.

Take a knee! Take two knees!

The American political scene has been dominated for decades by the two major parties--Democrats and Republicans. There is a long history of "third" or minor party involvement. During my lifetime, I've seen Benjamin Spock in 1972, Ross Perot in 1972, Ralph Nader in 1996, 2000, 2004, and 2008, and Jill Stein 2012 and 2016. These campaigns were never given much heed, except in the role of potential spoiler. In the past week, we may have witnessed the beginning of a potential game-changer. The Green Party has filed a request for a recount of the presidential vote in Wisconsin and is reported that it will make similar requests in Michigan and Pennsylvania.

To date, a majority of the public, I presume, and I, most definitely, felt that a third party candidate had to win--at least a number of statewide elections--in order to have a substantive and identifiable impact on an election. The impact of these challenges may go far beyond that of a spoiler in an individual election year. The curtain may be drawn back, so to speak, on the general election process. The general public may well see it for what it is--a human invention with overlap, gaps, and other slippage in its implementation, if not design. There is historical evidence that the political elites in both major parties have made decisions to maintain the appearance of integrity in the system rather than to insure its validity in any individual election. There is Richard Nixon's loss to John Kennedy in 1960 and Al Gore's loss to George W. Bush in 2000. Even though these two examples aren't a mirror image of one another, in the end the apparent rightful loser capitulated publicly and with considerable magnanimity--"for the sake of the republic" or some similar wording.

Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign certainly challenged the political elites in both parties--the Republicans during the primary election and the Democrats during the presidential election. Those challenges were successful in his win of the nomination and may have contributed equally to his victory in the general election. Will the end result be the demise of the Republican Party as we have known it? Will the Democratic Party refashion itself based on its own autopsy of the 2016 presidential election? President-elect Trump effectively questioned the partisan politics we have come to know in recent decades. Now it appears to be Jill Stein's and the Green Party's turn to call into the question the very mechanism whereby we cast our votes for president and, by inference, all who serve in an elected office. Let us not forget that this recount comes on the heels of a federal court decision declaring the latest Wisconsin redistricting map unconstitutional, within the context of an ongoing challenge to Wisconsin's voter id legislation and a revised Wisconsin Elections Commission. On the national level, we have seen the impact of actual or alleged computer hacking and fake news stories. There are several moving parts within this scenario, several of which are clearly partisan.

What will we see once the curtain is drawn back on the internal workings of the voting process and mechanics? Does a legitimate validation process even exist? Or will there simply be an endless series of curtains to be drawn back one by one as slowly and undramatically as possible until the concerned parties and the public become exhausted with the process? If the political elites are in charge of the process, will they simply regroup a little further back of the new front lines to quickly and quietly build a new breastworks? I am suggesting that the partisan politics practiced by both Republicans and Democrats, which have become clearly evident during the past 18 months, have raised serious questions as to the integrity of those with whom we have entrusted with this process or those whom we have permitted to be in control of the process. The recounts will provide us with some evidence as to whether or not the system has the ability to validate itself and to self-correct, if necessary. Failure to do so, will only contribute to the distrust of the general population in the political process and further alienate and even enrage that population.

Maybe I am reading too much of Donald Puchala's work (Theory and History in International Relations) into the current American scene. His discussion of empires and the roles of political and commercial elites in both core and satellite states in their own seemingly inevitable demise is telling.

Earlier this month I was approached by a member of the local Explorer Troop who was participating in a popcorn fundraiser and who enticed me to participate as well. Answering the door in the late afternoon sun I opted for caramel corn, which was touted as top-of-the-line and which lightened my wallet by $20.00.

Earlier today the delivery was made. There was no armed guard to protect my purchase and insure safe delivery; there was no brown paper bag to disguise the purchase and safeguard against marauding bands of caramel corn snatchers; there was no squad car accompanying the delivery vehicle guarding against likely hijackers. What arrived was an 18 oz. bag of caramel corn and mixed nuts. (I am going with the labeling on the bag as I have yet to examine its contents.)

The nutrition data suggests that this bag contains 17 servings--not 18 single ounce servings, not 12 ounce and a half servings, not 6 three ounce servings, or even 10 $2.00 servings. How does not arrive at 17 servings in an 18 ounce bag? It doesn't even round off to a number that one might expect for calories per serving.

I guess this means that I will need to gather together 16 of my closest friends to join me in enjoying some caramel popcorn with mixed nuts. I suppose I will need to provide drinks plus a cheese and cracker tray so these friends don't leave hungrier than when they arrived and far less friendly.

Bottom line: $20.00 for Girl Scout cookies is beginning to look a lot better than a Black Friday doubly discounted price. Bring on the Samoas.