I am amazed that anyone could subscribe to a religion or a quasi-religious movement, such as the Republican (Trump) Party as it now stands.  Shiny surfaces notwithstanding, the truth of our time, this first half of the 21st century, is that of existential exhaustion.  There is a market for fanaticism, many “takers,” those willing to shill for an empty figurehead, a “joiner” — cultivating hatred for immigrants, for any non-white individual, for the poor, campaigning for apocalypse…

There’s always “conversely,” an on-the-other-hand reality, to offset the tableau of exhaustion of spirit.  Let’s dance !

Faith is always coveted most
and needed most urgently
where will is lacking;

for will, as the affect of command,
is the decisive sign of sovereignty and strength.

In other words,
the less one knows how to command,
the more urgently one covets someone who commands.
who commands severely
–a god,
   prince,
      class,
         physician,
            father confessor,
               dogma,
                  or party conscience.

From this one might perhaps gather
that the two world religions, Buddhism and Christianity,
may have owed their origin
and above all their sudden spread
to a tremendous collapse and
disease of the will.

Both religions taught fanaticism
in ages in which the will had become exhausted,
and thus they offered innumerable people some support,
a new possibility of willing, some delight in willing.

Conversely,
one could conceive of such a pleasure and power of self-determination,
such a freedom of the will that the spirit would take leave of all faith
and every wish for certainty, being practiced in maintaining himself on insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near abysses.

Such a spirit would be the free spirit par excellence.

–excerpt The Gay Science, Book 5, Section 347 by Friedrich Nietzsche

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A song, what tune shall we hold onto ?!  Shadows of the Night by Pat Benatar.