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

  • Did you have a proclivity to pessimism when The Third Degree was not in your Sunday morning back channel mailbox? Perhaps, by design?
  • Alternatively, were you ever optimistic, after years of faithful Sunday publication in newspapers, and now, by miserly, monthly, cup of coffee, email subscription, that it would arrive to probe facts and follies of our time, or all time?
  • Much as society tends to reward extroverts over introverts, is there corresponding proclivity with optimists and pessimists?
  • Do geneticists provide a Calvinistic, predestiny, disposition while “Behavioral Scientists” largely tote experience?
  • What proclivity makes us wary of preachy science (read jackbooted, climate changers) or science that requires modifying prefix and, in general, abhorrent sociologists?
  • Can proclivity, if only mood, (don’t expect constancy), be found in selected examples?
  • In the extreme, were the pessimistic POWS in North Vietnam convinced that we would die up there and they wouldn’t even send our bodies home?
  • Were the optimists sure that they would send our bodies home?
  • Is Senator Tuberville’s proclivity to put a hold on all senior military promotions cause for pessimism or optimism that existing federal abortion law should be enforced or changed? Do you know the law? Regardless, will the military keep running?
  • Is the reality of state choice regarding abortion rightly a matter of people’s proclivity? Is it, in fact, realistic? Why? Will it paint the Republicans into a corner of public pessimism and loss in the next election?
  • Will your electoral proclivity change after reading, “Gender Queer”, recommended for kid’s summer reading by the NEA?
  • Are you optimistic that the Justice department will enforce existing Federal Law when it comes to picketing and parading at the homes of judges? So?
  • Can Wray do no wrong and Wray do no right at the same time when the ray of oversight light shines? How so?
  • Does the FBI’s motto, Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity” evoke proclivity to praise or pan? Why?
  • If the 2024 election matches Biden and Trump, what proclivities matter? What outcome generates national optimism?
  • Penultimately, maybe they’ll send the bodies home?
  • Lastly, for today, will all be for naught as AI created chaos through information vulnerability, control and manipulation will lead to unchecked domestic and international violence? Optimist, Pessimist, Realist?

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