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

  • Over the last few days, cast by turbulent events into the mortars and pounding pestles of power, politics and press, wherein respite, if not rescue, from a fraudulent bill of goods?
  • Do you feel suckered, bamboozled, by the Sayers and Sellers of such proverbial stuff on full display?
  • What are we supposed to feel, and think, when just nine days ago, the President and White House continued to insist, that he would carry on governing and campaigning with his normal and always impressive vigor, and win the upcoming election, and then,48 hours later, Sunday afternoon, he tweets out that he’s out but, in the full spirit of democracy, ordains a successor?
  • What changed? Wednesday, after three days of mind-blowing spin, did his very political, platitudinous, non-explanation attempt cover up realities of infirmity, impending defeat and party leader mutiny?
  • How does “too weak to run” jibe with “just fine to govern?”
  • Was it big time bill of goods time as the assailants themselves, other abundant factotums, including the long time complicit and conspiring empress designate, rushed to heap praise?
  • Unacceptable, dangerous, political and media hypocrisy on full display?
  • Do the emperor and the apparent empress of the Democrat socialist bunch scramble to find new clothes but is exposure complete?
  • Is naked reality on display for all to see and no policy language doublespeak or cheerleading now or at the upcoming convention can provide cover?
  • As is the bent of The Third Degree, do we turn again to Shakespeare for perspective and deliverance?
  • Does Brutus, warning of Caesar, ring true: “The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins remorse from power?
  • King Lear’s, once friend and advisor, Kent, banished for truth telling, speaks: “Think’st thou that duty shall have dread to speak when power to flattery bows? To plainness honor’s bound when majesty falls to folly?”
  • Should threatened attack on the Supremes by emperor and designated empress raptor, be rejected “Measure for Measure”: “We must not make a scarecrow of the law, setting it up to fear the birds of prey, but let it keep one shape till custom make it their perch and not their terror?”
  • Are the “griefs of disposition”, not those of Richard the Second, but our own, as we, if we, do not put on display the fortitude of citizens rejecting the bill of goods peddlers so injurious to our future?

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