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

  • Are incipient panic, strange calm or high expectation upon us as warning signs gather and we anticipate the end of the world with democracy in tow?
  • Do dire  warnings about Iowa last week and disturbing observations from Cabo today reinforce estimations  and the gravity of the moment?
  • Is ruin  presaged by record  Iowa caucus results and tremors on Lover’s beach, or neighboring and  dangerous Playa  Divorcio,  at  Lands End, Cabo’s famed,  End of  the World?
  • How could those  farm-belt, Iowa-rube, caucus goers, start the giveaway of Democracy?
  • Maybe  global warming of minus 15 degrees warped judgments?
  • How could they back such a media hated, homophobic, xenophobic, misogynistic, commie collaborating, nazi insurrectionist, bent on ending democracy with undiluted danger to all mankind?
  • Are all those frantic appellations, plus persecution and prosecution piled on, indication of feared energy, executive capability and awareness?
  • Will those Iowa clods rue the day when determinant write  in caucus ballots, postmarked well after the fact or not at all, change the outcome?
  • Thank the God not believed in that elections are now fungible and can save the people from themselves and stave off the end of democracy and the world?
  • Who has learned that elections allowing citizens  to be identified and vote in person are to be avoided?
  • After all, how can the election process be flawed if victorious?
  • Is  the offer of free Cabo winter vacations to government  and teacher unions an example of an enlightened and empowered  government staving off the end of the world?
  • Does boiling the frog technique make reliance on government the last best hope for saving the unwashed masses from themselves, especially if they live in Iowa or anywhere else they may be be tempted to think for themselves?
  • Does  Madison’s  warning ring true:  “Democracies always  commit suicide”  because they fail to act in their  own interests  and  citizens, with government help,  end up exploiting one another until society unravels in economic and tribal (racial) warfare?
  • Warning, who really wants to preside over the end of  representative democracy and our world?

Socrates reminds: “The unexamined life is not worth living.”  The actions and  answers are yours.  Me, I’m soon off to the beach.