I explore the hisory of the absurd to shed light on the relationiship between blind faith and the propaganda technique of the Big lie....and how defiance of absurd claims can bring forth a "strange love" that echoes "brotherhood from sea to shining sea."

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Marie Brenner's 1990 profile of Donald Trump for Vanity Fair "captured the real estate mogul in turmoil, as he struggled to hold onto his empire amid a nasty divorce fight. It's a juicy piece, but one anecdote in particular stands out: that Trump owned a copy of Adolf Hitler's speeches and allegedly read them for inspiration:

Ivana Trump told her lawyer Michael Kennedy that from time to time her husband reads a book of Hitler's collected speeches, My New Order, which he keeps in a cabinet by his bed.... Hitler's speeches, from his earliest days up through the Phony War of 1939, reveal his extraordinary ability as a master propagandist.

"Did your cousin John give you the Hitler speeches?" I asked Trump.

Trump hesitated. "Who told you that?"

"I don't remember," I said.

"Actually, it was my friend Marty Davis from Paramount who gave me a copy of Mein Kampf, and he's a Jew." ("I did give him a book about Hitler," Marty Davis said. "But it was My New Order, Hitler's speeches, not Mein Kampf. I thought he would find it interesting. I am his friend, but I'm not Jewish.")

Later, Trump returned to this subject. "If I had these speeches, and I am not saying that I do, I would never read them."

Absurd?! Herewith, I offer reflections on absurdity in order to come to an understanding of how only by rebelling against the lies that enslave us and justify violence can we rise out of despair to what Camus called "a strange love." This is a reflection on the strange love that arises out of the revolutionary act of saying NO.

The blind faith that masters of the Big lie manipulate echoes the concept of blind faith that Tertullian (200 AD) expressed when he said "I believe because it is absurd." Tertullian wrote "God's Son has been crucified? I am not ashamed because one has to be ashamed. And God's Son is dead? It is credible because it is inept. And the buried rose from the dead? It is certain because it is impossible."

Assad dropped chemical bombs on the people he has been fighting to liberate a week after Trump said he had no desire to remove him and his war against the terrorists was succeeding? Yes, and so we must bomb him. This is the absurdity we must deal with today. We are asked to believe, without evidence and in defiance of all logic, that Assad sabotaged his recent success....that he has done the absurd.

We are asked to believe the absurd.

In the 19h Century, the existential Christian ironist Kierkegaard reiterated this concept in Fear and Trembling when he established Abraham's faith "by virtue of the absurd."

iierkegaard also wrote on of the first books critiquing modern society and the masses. He felt faith was so essential that we should believe "because it is absurd." What is not absurd, we need not believe, for we can know it.

Modern art captured the sense of the absurd in color and verse.

Doestoevsky, another man of faith, wrote Notes from Underground: the Dream of an Absurd Man, in which he declares that sometimes 2 plus 2 = 5.

This revolt against the inhumanity of rationalism found its way onto the political stage with Hitler's mass rallies, in which he offered lies so big his followers could not doubt them. Trump read Hitler's speeches and has become a master of both advertising and the Big Lie, by which he came to power. He has learned that only a lie so big, so absurd that many would not think such a colossal lie possible, can transform otherwise rational people into blind followers.

In a NYTimes interview, Trump was asked what he meant by Make America Great Again, and with the surprising candor that interrupts his compulsive lying, he said that "People want a fantasy...." and he gives it to them. He called it, in true Orwellian fashion, "truthful hyperbole." a construction that echoes the Big Lie and terms such as collateral damage (to describe the murder of innocents killed in the quest to kill people who kill innocents). This term is itself a perfect example of the Absurd.

The saddest thing for me is not that Trump lies but that a man I once respected and supported has surrendered to the Big Lie. Lies are the tools by which America carries out its imperialistic aggression, and here is one of our former heroes promoting the Big Lie that justifies violence:

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"In a world of vicious dictators, Syria's Bashar Assad tops the list as a dictator who has killed hundreds of thousands of his own citizens to protect his own power and wealth. His regime's use of chemical weapons against the men, women and children of his country, in violation of all international conventions and moral standards, makes him a war criminal." Bernie Sanders

When the most respected leader on the left adopts the lies that promote aggression, now is the time for our tears: it's alright ma, I'm only crying.

In Highway 61 Revisited, Dylan revisits the absurd faith Abraham's God demands of him:

" Oh God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"
Abe says, "Man, you must be puttin' me on"
God say, "No." Abe say, "What ?"
God say, "You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin' you better run"
Well Abe says, "Where do you want this killin' done ?"
God says. "Out on Highway 61".

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In logic 101, we learn the fallacy of reductio ad absurdum. The lesson is simple: any idea, whether faith, reason, or loyalty, taken to the extreme, becomes absurd.

Blind faith, created by the Big Lie, is such an absurdity. Extremism, which demands a certainty that comes only from blind faith, is used today to justify the most brutal and irrational violence. It leads to

the most absurd conclusions: that killing innocent people will produce justice; that wars will create peace, that believing the lies of terrorists justifies attacking those who are fighting to destroy them. War itself is the u ltimate absurdity, granted a kind of justice by having "laws of war" and banning certain methods of murder (chemical) while accepting the brutality of "conventional weapons" as legal. It is legal to rip a woman's body apart with an explosive bomb but it is prohibited from killing her with chemicals. Thus the absurd asserts a kind of morality in the process of murder.

Camus, the philosopher of revolt, called the surrender to the Absurd "philosophical suicide." Camus states in The Myth of Sisyphus: "Thus I draw from the absurd three consequences, which are my revolt, my freedom, and my passion. By the mere activity of consciousness I transform into a rule of life what was an invitation to death, and I refuse suicide." To deny the power of the absurd (while recognizing its reality) is to affirm life, to affirm the love that stirs revolt and give birth to it as a bond among those united in defying the absurd beliefs we are told to accept. This is solidarity, the rebellion that begins deep in our souls but reaches out to bring us together in a force that can defeat even the most violent forces. As Dr. King often said: Love is the only force powerful enough to defeat hatred. And resistance to evil is the only method powerful enough to bring forth what Camus called "a strange love." He summarizes his insight thus: When I revolt, WE are.

In revolt, we say no, and this refusal to accept the consequence of the absurd, now understood as Big Lies, propaganda, defense of the indefensibleand the violence that they rationalize, brings us together and creates, as Camus wrote in the Rebel, an unfamiliar kind of love. It is the feeling of solidarity based on standing together, often with strangers, in common defiance of the absurd lies and actions of unjust rulers.

In the mass rallies throughout the country just after Trump was sworn in, we all said No together, and in my little town of Santa Cruz, California, I felt that "strange love," strange only become it is so uncommon: it is the love we feel for strangers, for those who dare to rise up and say NO, for all who defy the lies and, tho absurdly, move forward to create a world that is just and peaceful. It is the love that makes of strangers comrades, brothers and sisters. It is a joyful love, born of outrage, that brings us to tears.

The only other time I felt that "strange love" that comes with revolt was when I marched with black Baptists and radical students in Selma, Alabama to show defiance against the the power of the Police, the racist rednecks with their rifles on the rack in their pickups, and the entire culture of racism. Among these total strangers, who took us into their homes, I felt this strange love that perhaps, long ago, was the common feeling of communities that were just and peaceful.

Why do we revolt? For justice, and for love. It may be the the love we have for others, strangers, our comrades, can only today be felt when we defy the Order of Oppression, the Law and Order which stifles our freedom and defends injustice. The NO we say to hatred transforms into the love we feel for our brothers and sisters, from sea to shining sea. That is what I have learned, and that is what I have felt.

"You may say that I am a dreamer, but I'm not the only one."

Authors Bio:

retired, working radical egalitarian/libertarian socialist old school independent, vegan, survivor