To stay cheerful in the midst of a gloomy task, fraught with immeasurable responsibility, is no small feat; and yet what is needed more than cheerfulness? Nothing succeeds if high spirits has no part in it. Excess strength alone is the proof of strength.  A revaluation of all values: this question mark, so black, so huge that it casts a shadow over the man who puts it down — such a destiny of a task compels one to run into the sunlight at every opportunity to shake off a heavy, all-too-heavy seriousness. Every means is proper to do this; every “case” is a case of luck. Especially, war. War has always been the great wisdom of all spirits who have become too introspective, too profound; even in a wound there is the power to heal.

Another form of recovery (in certain situations even more to my liking) is sounding out idols. There are more idols than realities in the world: that is my “evil eye” upon this world; that is also my “evil ear.” Finally to pose questions with a hammer, and sometimes to hear as a reply that famous hollow sound which speaks of inflated bowels — what a delight for one who has ears even behind his ears, for me, an old psychologist and pied piper before whom just that which would remain silent has to become audible.

And are new idols sounded out? This little essay is a great declaration of war; and regarding the sounding out of idols, this time they are not just idols of the age, but eternal idols, which are here touched with a hammer as with a tuning fork: there are no idols that are older, more assured, more puffed-up — and none more hollow. That does not prevent their being the most believed in; and they are not, especially in the most eminent case called idols…..

Turin, September 30, 1888, on the day when the first book of the Revaluation of All Values was completed.  Friedrich Nietzsche

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Those acquainted with me know that I admire the writing of Friedrich Nietzsche.  I have condensed here the preface of Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols.  As a writer and public intellectual Nietzsche is under no illusion concerning what he is about to write.  Living at the apogee of the industrial age, with prescience he “sees” what is soon to happen with the rise of the Third Reich, the ravening nihilism that is about to possess the German people.  Adolph Hitler in a few years, by his oratory sells the myth of the Nazi superman, the actualization of Blood and Iron (Blut und Eisen).  In his “little essay” Nietzsche proposes to identify the “idols”  the conventions, the commitments so loved and “believed in” by the German people, and by extension with some cultural accommodation, all peoples.  These are “idols,” false gods, storm-clouds-without-rain, delusions, the precursors to catastrophe.   Nietzsche proposes to sound these “empty promises” with a hammer as with a tuning fork.  His Twilight of the Idols essay is a declaration of war upon poisonous ideas that infect public discourse, that cripple the future prospects of a people.

I am motivated to revisit Twilight of the Idols by the rise of Donald J. Trump to the White House.  A self confessed con-man, self admitted to sexually assaulting women, accused of rape, and of other crimes, he is running for a second term.  Americans are in a state of war with ourselves, and there is no more appropriate time to listen to what “an old psychologist,” Nietzsche had to say.  Speaking of war, warfare is a condition of which you have nothing left to lose, death is encountered at every turn …   In other words this is “prime time,” the most timely of times to consider all that we have valued, held dear, outside of the reach of criticism and evaluation.  A time for running into the sunlight every second, for finding excess strength as a proof of strength.

We’ve nothing left to loose…

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Why end on a somber note?  Choosing to run into the sunlight, here is a fine tune, one that Nietzsche would have loved…

Y.M.C.A
by The Village People