Welcome to this Sunday’s Third Degree: Tough, Brief, Weekly Interrogations on matters public and private that force thinking and response. Today we again target: Solution

  • When last Sunday’s column ended with the question as to the possibility of solution, simple or otherwise, to the vexing problem of racism, perceived, real or unreal, and said “tune in this week” (hopefully after a week of your own deliberations), does Robert Service (The Cremation of Sam McGee) remind: “A promise made is a debt unpaid?”
  • Will we do well to leave last week’s mentioned 1619 project to its own devices, just or not, except to note that gospel is hard to come by while narrative is not?
  • Is the gospel of racial prejudice a result of skin color and subjugation or slight by one race over another, nominally white over black, though intersectional activists would also advocate for women against men, brown against white, though Hispanics are racially considered and classified white, and Asians are excluded and discriminated against because they are “near white” and just too smart and successful?
  • While hardly inclusive, do those same activists add sexual proclivities other than straight, gender fluidity, climate change, ESG, road placement, defunding police, poor against rich followed by equity, however ill defined or administered?
  • Is that or any “racial gospel” further advanced or diminished by manipulation of language designed to bolster position or advantage including political power?
  • Is a simple solution just to appeal to tolerance and fairness by all? That said, would definitional difference derail discussion much less action?
  • Does the golden rule create a standard of individual performance that is not only desirable but attainable?
  • But then, don’t the screamers and the schemers and the cash hungry media or judge and jury social media get into it?
  • Does a much recommended review of The Census Bureau”s “Quick Facts” and multiple, recent and respected Pew Research Center Polls on race in America provide insight into our circumstance?
  • So framed, if a building is burning, make it your building, do you care about the race of the fire fighters? Do you care about anything except getting everyone out and cared for….and putting out the fire?
  • If your tire is flat on a rainy nite and someone stops to help, do you turn the Samaritan down because of skin color?
  • If comedy be tragedy over time, can we just lighten up on one another or do we need a pigmentation of choice vaccine or treatment at a neighborhood pigmentation center where colors of the rainbow can be swapped out on a weekly basis?
  • Absent humor, so needed and so normal, because serious situations if taken too thoughtlessly serious can become really serious and threaten essential personal and American freedoms, even existence, then what?
  • Beyond needed smile and laughter that understand the frailty of human nature, how about a modest proposal, a simple foxhole enterprise joining diverse people and communities with foxhole reality and mentality?
  • Imagine sharing the effort in digging and manning foxholes wherever needed?
  • Can you envision local and national presence and cooperation? Military or civilian, does it matter?
  • Can you sense increased security and safety based on mutual reliance and need?
  • Isn’t that what goes on in and from foxholes?
  • And who will benefit if we dig in together? Starting where?

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