The Vital Lie of the Western Democracies

Art for the cripple, and advertising for the hero. Plastic design of the intellectual handicap in the very flesh. Thus we live now in the dark democratic times of a neurotic global interpretation without censorship, without hindrance, unless it is by that of the forces opposed to the constitution, of those who have self-critically marginalized themselves. We hear of the pressures of churches, of monarchical systems earlier, and can praise ourselves today as being happy, how we are almost in danger of being envied, of injuring ourselves with the abundance. Still, if not from the outside, would not a danger from inside be still worse, something that we suppress, in order — for the sake of a successful career, of the businesses today — to please the occupying forces of global interpretation, those powerful victors in thought and feeling after the abolition of honor and courage and fidelity and worth and, if need be, to vouch for it, even if it be with one’s death? Who threatens us, who intimidates us and who entices us? Living on the greatest lie, the vital lie of democracies? In earlier times it was the church ministry which threatened, and one knew that God was something different when the witches were burnt and the Crusades were brutal and the world was colonized in the name of Christ. They said, if only the King knew that, and thought to themselves, if it was something bad, that the King himself was perhaps betrayed by his representatives. Only then? If the people today is the sovereign, should we not say: if only we knew that? Is that which we represent today in line with that which the people represent, and should we not, precisely when they accuse, look for that which they accuse — when they speak in the name of democracy or of anti-racism, and for freedom and justice — in themselves? They themselves are perhaps racists and anti-democrats, prejudiced and their art not free and not right? Where are the present-day lickspittles — both those of the suppressed resistance, and those of the truth that will survive this age?