Welcome to the Third Degree: Tough, Brief, Weekly Interrogations on matters public and private that force thinking and response. This Sunday we target: Dress-Up

  • Do Halloween and the coming election make for a scary time but set up dress-up opportunity?
  • Are we talking language, shuddering, sanguinary words, as well as costumes?
  • Have we noted any moderation or diminution of inflammatory rhetoric in recent days?
  • Just the opposite? Scary time indeed?
  • So, is it to be covers over the head, stay at home time, or venture forth, ready for Halloween and eager to vote?
  • Do ghosts and goblins, young and the old, offend with culturally appropriated dress-up or does (even should) such assimilation just represent the welcome obvious?
  • Do too many, ever manipulating, university ecosystems, (administrators, professors and students), recoil at such pseudo travesty and need stuffed animals and counselling to make it thru another day of payment, protest, drinking, sports and sex? And who pays?
  • Do intersecting identities provide or reflect desired dress-up proclivities ?
  • Can dress-up demonstrate allegiance or antipathy toward prominent people?
  • By example, who, with gesticulatory fervor, inspires the extra-large Howdy Doody outfit or the pretend to be a combat soldier uniform?
  • Does a hairy, up from the holler, country creature make a hillbilly costume attractive? Moonshine or Rip van Winkle wisdom, does it matter?
  • Using a reptilian projectile tongue and prehensile tail, does a change colors as needed Chameleon slip-on, suitable for any occasion, any purpose, any promise satisfy or stupefy?
  • Does the red tie and tailed, Orange hulk set sartorial example to share along with simultaneous intent to bust up and build up the whole neighborhood?
  • Given ensuing turmoil, is such huge transformational dress-up appealing or necessary?
  • Did the zombie costume, yesterday’s favorite, stumble through a damaged, and now, almost irrelevant, but expensive past, with its dead man walking routine?
  • Is that too cruel or too true for zombies and their loyalists? Still want to suit-up?
  • Does costume choice consume, concern, confuse, or even, cement convictions?
  • But, carefully considering (Indeed sounding out) all the variations, is it: Trick and/or Trump or Trump and/or Treat?
  • What happens when you substitute Kamala for Trump?
  • How can one really assess this scary time and evaluate dress-up?
  • Maybe by looking in the mirror on the wall? Question as you should?

Socrates reminds: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” The answers and actions are yours.