Welcome to the Third Degree: Tough, Brief, Weekly Interrogations on matters public and private that force thinking and response. This Sunday, we target: Stagger and Staggering
- Did beat up, and sad, Anthony Quinn, reeling around life and ring, create a staggering film that haunts today’s, American, political realities?
- Is professional boxing (amateur too) a sport or just painful and sanctioned violence that, like politics, lets loose the animals in and around us?
- Are there positive aspects to boxing, for fighters and fans? What about politics and reportage?
- Does the nation stagger from too many gut punches taken but denied, not reported or covered up?
- Do the managers, the elected and appointed corner men who lead us, create and encourage an excruciating and extended fight against ourselves?
- Who staggers, who bleeds?
- Have we lost faith in talents, those designated protectors and defenders, because we let them pummel us against our own interests?
- Is it strap on gloves time, or go bare knuckles, against those contenders who demand the purse of civic and social largess without displaying required civic accountability and responsibility?
- Is the ring a lonely and painful place where blows to the body and face must be countered by determined defense and devastating offense?
- Until knockout, TKO or the judges rule, is outcome unclear? How about when staggering reality bangs us in the face?
- Is an option to throw in the towel and stagger off into the annals of decline and unforgiving history?
- Would we rather, knowing the price, expect, and want, enduring, pugilistic, pragmatic purpose and pride?
- Are we tough enough to fight that fight against the fixers, the folly and the faint?
- Even if staggered, and knowing the enduring struggle, as we seek will and way to protect and win for our own, is it not a requiem but a paean we must earn and deserve?
- If we’re not our own, and world, champions, who is?
Socrates reminds: “The unexamined life is not worth living”. The answers and actions are yours.