“Credo quia absurdum”—”I believe because it is absurd.”
—Tertullian, early Christian theologian
It’s conspicuous. Despite impressive technological advances, the United States remains a proud bastion of anti-reason. Though approval numbers trend downward, President Donald J. Trump remains widely-admired for “courage,” “caring” and “common sense.” In some quarters, Trump is seriously considered a divine rescuer, a deliverer selected by the heavens to offer beleaguered Americans a secular “redemption.” This is not an exaggerated assessment. It is not hyperbole. It is not metaphor. It is instantly verifiable.
In American law, as elsewhere, all things are interconnected.[1] What we witness day after day amid the self-defiling dynamics of US politics is compelling evidence of non-rationality and anti-reason. Whether or not “Trump II” will give rise to more corrosive forms of human conflict—military or economic—is hardly a serious question.[2] What is less obvious but ultimately more perilous is America’s stubborn indifference to “mind.”[3]
In fairness, intellectual decline in the United States did not begin with Donald J. Trump. Though this president’s deformed views of science, law and history thrive on America’s sympathetic attractions to superstition and pseudo-science,[4] his refractory posture is rooted in long-present indifference to disciplined learning.[5] This indifference reflects the fateful triumph of philistinism over wisdom, a patently lethal victory of barbarism over law-based order. In modern literature, we should think here of Nobel laureate Hermann Hesse’s description of a crudely dissembling leader in The Glass Bead Game (1943): “The dull-witted brute, blindly trampling around in the flower gardens of intellect and culture.”
How did the American presidency manage to reach to such a grievous nadir? Years ago, long before Trump, Paul Tillich offered a succinct answer: “Man cannot receive an answer to a question,” explained the American theologian-philosopher, “that he has not yet asked.” While almost childishly simple, this explanation was a universally provocative “wake-up call.”
In weighty matters of national purpose and survival, tangible points of clarity can sometimes be summoned to the surface. For Americans, there exists an identifiable intellectual beginning to all this. In principle, at least, the United States began its wobbly post-Westphalian existence[6] with a more-or-less credible vision of justice under law, both nationally and internationally.[7] Now, under “Trump II,” America is urged to act against the once-presumptively immutable principle: “We are a government of laws, and not of men.”[8]
During Donald Trump’s first tenure in the White House, his confused response to Covid-19 propelled Americans toward a collective “sickness at heart.” Philosophically, this is what Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard would have called a “sickness unto death.”[9] Along with bitter infirmity came “might makes right” philosophies,[10] including ritualistic Trump obeisance to Vladimir Putin.[11]
Intellectually, none of this declension should be difficult to decipher. Rather than encourage the American people to embrace broadly generous expressions of law-based cooperation—nationally and internationally[12]—Donald Trump discovered his optimal vision of “law and order” in “beautiful” border walls of sharpened spikes. Now, during Trump II, America’s incrementally grievous declensions have accelerated to outermost limits of societal degradation.[13] In the conceivably worst case scenario, leaving aside this president’s multitudinous violations of human rights, these declensions could produce a nuclear war.
For an unhappy nation suffering under myriad forms of anti-reason, it’s no longer about harboring plausible hopes for an improved global future.[14] Now it’s about passively or grudgingly accepting an absurd future. Without any hint of embarrassment, the second Trump presidency is simultaneously waging relentless war against justice and intellect. While not widely recognized, a casual dismissal of “mind” lies at the heart of America’s current policy derelictions. The long list of these accumulating derelictions includes absolute indifference to Higher Law,[15]— that is, to the constitutional and jurisprudence bedrock of the American polity.
Trump rallies help to explain this phenomenon. These rallies are intentionally devoid of any serious legal or ethical content. More than anything else, rally speeches—harking back to the president’s earlier support by Duck Dynasty and cage wrestlers—express loathing for any kind of empathy. Chanting orchestrated hatreds of pure nonsense, Trump’s rally audiences never consider that their chorus speaks in the obedient accents of pure philistinism.[16]
Only one thing really matters for Donald Trump’s contemporary “mass man,” a term embraced by philosophers José Ortega y Gasset, Frederic Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud,[17] Carl G. Jung, and Soren Kierkegaard. The thing that matters to this group is the disclosure of “enemies” for nationalist Americans to scapegoat and loathe. That said, Americans need to worry not just about “mass man,” but also “mass woman.”
In the final analysis, nothing could be more pleasing to mass[18] than a promised political end to citizen bewilderment, even if carried out by contrived means of half-truths, illiterate clichés, and empty witticisms. Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset warned in “The Revolt of the Masses” (1930) that the “mass-man” has “no attention to spare for reasoning;[19] he learns only in his own flesh.” It is only in their “own flesh” that Trump and his devoted followers are able to learn. By definition, this tells us that they will continue to reject reason at all costs.
Verifiable facts are irrelevant to gratefully submissive Trump minions. For these undeterred followers of political magic, science and logic are merely anathema, secondary to the palpable attractions of the president’s “charisma.” They draw similar conclusions about law and order, some of whom are public officials and Congress members who have graduated from “prestigious” universities.
Somehow, Trump supporters will always find redeeming qualities in their “mass man” president. Among his purported attributes, these supporters are pleased that he is willing to “say it like it is.” However, this begs the question: what does this willingness mean where there exists no mind to speak?[20]
At Trump rallies, a key to this president’s political success lies in his unceasing distractions. Why ask supporters and adherents to work through complex analytic problems when it is much easier to cast blame on “fake news” and alleged “enemies of the people”? Americans, it has been predictably reassuring that Trump can always be relied upon to round up the usual suspects.[21]
Contrary to “mass” belief, these are not the “changing times” welcomed by musician Bob Dylan back in the 60s. Surrounded by like-minded followers who have willingly forfeited independent thought, each rally attendee prepares to abandon any residual pangs of personal responsibility or compassion. Amid Donald Trump’s escalating howls of execration against “enemies,” especially beleaguered refugees fleeing from “shithole countries,” this president won’t trouble his followers with any complex discussions of finance, science, law, or history. How could he?
Favoring a national ethos of raw emotion and determined anti-reason, Donald Trump pushes Americans to navigate raging seas. This manipulated ethos is animated by chaotic celebrations of selfishness, anti-reason, and absurdity; not by respect for the rule of law.
Ancient philosopher Tertullian was long-believed to have said, “credo quia absurdum,”—“I believe because it is absurd.” Left unchecked, this president’s “thinking” could lead Americans toward impending dangers like plagues, public disorder, or catastrophic war.[22] In this last scenario, Trump’s deference to Vladimir Putin is already resulting in America’s simultaneous abandonment of US law and international law.[23]
In a 1936 novel, writer Sinclair Lewis prophesied that “it can’t happen here.” Left to his own devices, and to the barren expert advisor “insights,” President Trump will prod blind obedience to humiliating banalities that masquerade as astuteness. The United States could inevitably suffer the same demise of other “know-nothing” countries.
Sinclair Lewis’s novel, It Can’t Happen Here, is distressingly relevant today. The book details the not-so-fanciful story of a populist American politician who rises to power on a hazy platform of simplistic and fraudulent promises. Following his election, Buzz Windrip gradually imposes authoritarian rule upon the dazed country. While most Americans living under “Trump II” don’t worry about such far-reaching infringements, neither did the bewildered masses living in Weimar Germany.
In these matters, history deserves evident pride of place. The German people of the 1930s were in no way collectively deviant, inferior, or unique. Much like the people of the United States today, they were, for the most part, law-abiding and ordinary.
Existential philosopher Karl Jaspers—famous for asking Germans questions about guilt after World War II—studied the deeper and more generic issues involved. In his still-timely “Reason and Anti-Reason in our Time” (1952), Jaspers explains that authoritarian leadership depends on docile citizenry—not an “evil” one. It requires a citizenry that willfully seeks the simplest answers to inherently complicated questions; one that can reliably blame accessible scapegoats—like the Jews, the Bolsheviks, immigrants, refugees, etc. To employ “purifying” strategies, the government’s objective is to manipulate by organizing the faithful, and stifling dissidents under the auspices of “preserving law and order.”
Donald Trump’s most serious crimes are not just ones of international criminality, such as failing to condemn Russian aggression and occupation of Ukraine. They are also lèse-majesté infractions, or “crimes against the sovereign.” This is because the American president is not the Constitutional “sovereign” in the United States. That source of ultimate authority is “We the People.”
The president’s agenda remains intentionally punitive and narrowly self-serving. More than anything else, Donald Trump’s wished-for objective is to prevent Americans from substituting genuine thought for unhesitating loyalty. The fact that this president reads nothing, absolutely nothing—literally nothing at all—is hardly a political liability. In these United States, it is a manifestly distinct asset.
For the most part, the Founding Fathers did not believe in democracy. Most agreed with Alexander Hamilton that “the people are a great beast.” Thomas Jefferson, arguably the most democratic of the Founders, regarded “We the People” as “refuse” from which a small number of prospectively gifted individuals could somehow be culled once each year. Said Jefferson in his “Notes on the State of Virginia” that there “should be instituted a plan of elementary schooling by which twenty of the best geniuses will be raked from the rubbish annually.”
It’s time for a summation. This is the 2st century. The last thing America needs is a president whose willfully incoherent policies on education, public health, public law, and foreign policy confirm the Founding Father’s worst fears.
For the American democracy to change course in convincingly law-based directions, a more courageous condemnation of this president’s “America First” posture is required.[24] Most urgently, such condemnation will need to be focused on Donald Trump’s belligerent nationalism (a sentiment that also animates his destructive trade policies) and his disregard for Vladimir Putin’s Nuremberg-category crimes against Ukraine.[25] If Americans should fail in this task, correlative harms to the United States could become existential and irreversible.
Though such failure would reveal the ultimate triumph of anti-reason, it is by no means an unthinkable outcome. Credo quia absurdum, reminds the ancient philosopher Tertullian: “I believe because it is absurd.”[26]
LOUIS RENÉ BERES was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971) and is the author of many books and articles on international relations and international law. His twelfth book, Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy, was published in 2016 by Rowman & Littlefield (2nd ed. 2018): https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781442253254/Surviving-Amid-Chaos-Israel%27s-Nuclear-Strategy. A frequent contributor to JURIST, Dr. Beres’s writings have also been published at The New York Times; The Atlantic; Oxford University Press; Oxford Yearbook of International Law; Yale Global; Modern Diplomacy; The Daily Princetonian; World Politics (Princeton); Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence; International Security (Harvard); BESA (Israel); Special Warfare (Pentagon); The War Room (Pentagon); Air-Space Operations Review (USAF); Modern War Institute (West Point); Israel Defense (Tel Aviv); The Jerusalem Post; Harvard National Security Journal (Harvard Law School), American Journal of International Law and American Political Science Review.
Dr. Louis René Beres is Emeritus Professor of International Law at Purdue University. He was born in Zürich at the end of World War II.
[1] Says French Jesuit philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in The Phenomenon of Man (1955): “The existence of `system’ in the world is at once obvious to every observer of nature….”
[2] Observes Sigmund Freud in a lesser-known work on Woodrow Wilson: “Fools, visionaries, sufferers from delusions, neurotics and lunatics have played great roles at all times in the history of mankind, and not merely when the accident of birth had bequeathed them sovereignty. Usually, they have wreaked havoc.”
[3] “It must not be forgotten,” writes French poet Guillaume Apollinaire in “The New Spirit and the Poets” (1917), “that it is perhaps more dangerous for a nation to allow itself to be conquered intellectually than by arms.”
[4] See by this author at Modern Diplomacy, Louis René Beres: https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2019/08/28/whisperings-of-the-irrational-core-origins-of-americas-trump-decline/
[5]Anti-intellectualism has always been a visible part of American political life. Nonetheless, the Founding Fathers of the United States were serious intellectuals. As explained by American historian Richard Hofstadter: “The Founding Fathers were sages, scientists, men of broad cultivation, many of them apt in classical learning, who used their wide reading in history, politics and law to solve the exigent problems of their time.” See Hofstadter’s Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964), p. 145. See also the earlier authoritative volume by Jacques Barzun, The House of Intellect (1959).
[6] The current system of international law has its historical origins in the Treaty of Westphalia (1648). See: Treaty of Peace of Munster, Oct. 1648, 1 Consol. T.S. 271; and Treaty of Peace of Osnabruck, Oct. 1648, 1., Consol. T.S. 119, Together, these two treaties comprise the Peace of Westphalia.
[7] Regarding this primary bifurcation, note the precise words used by the U.S. Supreme Court in The Paquete Habana, “International law is part of our law, and must be ascertained by the courts of justice of appropriate jurisdiction, as often as questions of right depending upon it are duly presented for their determination. For this purpose, where there is no treaty, and no controlling executive or legislative act or judicial decision, resort must be had to the customs and usages of civilized nations.” See The Paquete Habana, 175 U.S. 677, 678-79 (1900). See also: The Lola, 175 U.S. 677 (1900); Tel-Oren v. Libyan Arab Republic, 726 F. 2d 774, 781, 788 (D.C. Cir. 1984) (per curiam) (Edwards, J. concurring) (dismissing the action, but making several references to domestic jurisdiction over extraterritorial offenses), cert. denied, 470 U.S. 1003 (1985) (“concept of extraordinary judicial jurisdiction over acts in violation of significant international standards…embodied in the principle of `universal violations of international law.'”).
[8] See by this writer, at JURIST: Louis René Beres, https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2024/11/forcing-ukraine-to-negotiate-for-territory-seized-by-russia-would-violate-international-us-law/
[9] In essence, this “sickness” is an ironic reciprocal to death anxiety. Here, death becomes a deliverance and “sickness” consists of “not being able to die.” What this means, inter alia, is that there may not only be a fate worse than death, but that death could become simultaneously welcome and unachievable (See: Soren Kierkegaard, FEAR AND TREMBLING and THE SICKNESS UNTO DEATH; Walter Lowrie, tr.: Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1941).
[10] For the origins of such philosophies, see especially the classic comment of Thrasymachus in Bk. 1, Sec. 338 of Plato, The Republic: “Right is the interest of the stronger.”
[11] See by this writer at JURIST: Louis René Beres, https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2024/11/forcing-ukraine-to-negotiate-for-territory-seized-by-russia-would-violate-international-us-law/
[12] International law, which remains an integral part of the legal system of all states, assumes a general and reciprocal obligation to supply benefits to one another, and to avoid war whenever possible. This core assumption of jurisprudential solidarity is known formally as a “peremptory” or jus cogens expectation, that is, one that is not even subject to question. It can be found in Justinian, Corpus Juris Civilis, Hugo Grotius, The Law of War and Peace (1625) and Emmerich de Vattel, The Law of Nations or Principles of Natural Law (1758).
[13] For a time, American law and legal policy, founded of course upon the learned jurisprudence of Sir William Blackstone, had acknowledged the ubiquitous obligation of all states to help one another. According to Blackstone, each state is always expected “to aid and enforce the law of nations, as part of the common law, by inflicting an adequate punishment upon offenses against that universal law….” See: 2 William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, Book 4, “Of Public Wrongs.” Lest anyone ask about the significance of Blackstone for current US national security policies, one need only point out that Commentaries were an original and core foundation of the laws of the United States. This fact remains wholly unknown to US President Donald Trump or his determined acolytes. To wit, policies of “America First” are the diametric opposite of what Blackstone would have had urged or expected.
[14] As an original member of the World Order Models Project at Princeton and Yale Law School in the late 1960s, this author published several early books about an improved global future. See, for example, Louis René Beres (with Harry R. Targ) Reordering the Planet: Constructing Alternative World Futures (1974) and Louis René Beres (with Harry R. Targ) Planning Alternative World Futures: Values, Methods and Models (1975).
[15] When referencing such “law based” institutions as the American presidency, we should be reminded of this country’s original commitment to a “Higher Law.” This idea, drawn from the ancient Greeks and ancient Hebrews – is contained, inter alia, within the international law principle of jus cogens or peremptory norms. In the language of pertinent Article 53 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (1969: “A peremptory norm of general international law….is a norm accepted and recognized by the international community of States as a whole, as a norm from which no derogation is permitted, and which can be modified only by a subsequent norm of general international law having the same character.”
[16] Regarding such accents, recall the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard’s comment in The Sickness unto Death: “Devoid of imagination, as the Philistine always is, he lives in a certain trivial province of experience as to how things go, what is possible, what usually occurs…. For philistinism thinks it is in control of possibility….it carries possibility around like a prisoner in the cage of the probable, and shows it off.”
[17] Freud remained pessimistic about the United States, a nation he felt was “lacking in soul” and therefore a place of great psychological misery (“wretchedness”). In a letter to Ernest Jones, he declared unambiguously: “America is gigantic, but it is a gigantic mistake.” (See: Bruno Bettelheim, Freud and Man’s Soul, 1983, p. 79).
[18] The term “mass” favored by Swiss psychologist Carl G. Jung is roughly identical in meaning to Sigmund Freud’s term “horde” (itself derived from Friedrich Nietzsche’s “herd”) and Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard’s “crowd.” Always, warns Kierkegaard, “The crowd is untruth.”
[19] We may recall here Thomas Aquinas’ commentary on Augustine: “St. Augustine says: `There is no law unless it be just.’ So the validity of law depends upon its justice. But in human affairs, a thing is said to be just when it accords aright with the rule of reason; and as we have already seen, the first rule of reason is the Natural Law. Thus, all humanly enacted laws are in accord with reason to the extent that they derive from the Natural Law. And if a human law is at variance in any particular with the Natural Law, it is no longer legal, but rather a corruption of law.” See: SUMMA THEOLOGICA, 1a, 2ae, 95, 2; cited by A.P. d’Entreves, NATURAL LAW: AN INTRODUCTION TO LEGAL PHILOSOPPHY (1951), pp. 42-43.
[20] We may recall Bertrand Russell’s timeless warning in Principles of Social Reconstruction (1916): “Men fear thought more than they fear anything else on earth, more than ruin, more even than death.”
[21] This famous movie line is from Claude Rains (Vichy Police Captain Louis Renault) in Casablanca.
[22] In such circumstances, the criminal responsibility of leaders under international law is never limited to direct personal action. On the pertinent principle of command responsibility, or respondeat superior, see: In re Yamashita, 327 U.S. 1 (1945); The High Command Case (The Trial of Wilhelm von Leeb), 12 LAW REPORTS OF TRIALS OF WAR CRIMINALS 1 (United Nations War Crimes Commission Comp., 1949); see Parks, COMMAND RESPONSIBILITY FOR WAR CRIMES, 62 MIL.L. REV. 1 (1973); O’Brien, THE LAW OF WAR, COMMAND RESPONSIBILITY AND VIETNAM, 60 GEO. L.J. 605 (1972); U S DEPT OF THE ARMY, ARMY SUBJECT SCHEDULE No. 27 – 1 (Geneva Conventions of 1949 and Hague Convention No. IV of 1907), 10 (1970). The direct individual responsibility of leaders is also unambiguous in view of the London Agreement, which denies defendants the protection of the act of state defense. See AGREEMENT FOR THE PROSECUTION AND PUNISHMENT OF THE MAJOR WAR CRIMINALS OF THE EUROPEAN AXIS, Aug. 8, 1945, 59 Stat. 1544, E.A.S. No. 472, 82 U.N.T.S. 279, art. 7.
[23] See by this writer at JURIST: Louis René Beres, https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2024/11/forcing-ukraine-to-negotiate-for-territory-seized-by-russia-would-violate-international-us-law/
[24] See by this writer, Louis René Beres, at Yale Global (Yale University): https://archive-yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/call-intellect-and-courage
[25] See AGREEMENT FOR THE PROSECUTION AND PUNISHMENT OF THE MAJOR WAR CRIMINALS OF THE EUROPEAN AXIS POWERS AND CHARTER OF THE INTERNATIONAL MILITARY TRIBUNAL. Done at London, August 8, 1945. Entered into force, August 8, 1945. For the United States, Sept. 10, 1945. 59 Stat. 1544, 82 U.N.T.S. 279. The principles of international law recognized by the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal and the judgment of the Tribunal were affirmed by the U.N. General Assembly as AFFIRMATION OF THE PRINCIPLES OF INTERNATIONAL LAW RECOGNIZED BY THE CHARTER OF THE NUREMBERG TRIBUNAL. Adopted by the U.N. General Assembly, Dec. 11, 1946. U.N.G.A. Res. 95 (I), U.N. Doc. A/236 (1946), at 1144. This AFFIRMATION OF THE PRINCIPLES OF INTERNATIONAL LAW RECOGNIZED BY THE CHARTER OF THE NUREMBERG TRIBUNAL (1946) was followed by General Assembly Resolution 177 (II), adopted November 21, 1947, directing the U.N. International Law Commission to “(a) Formulate the principles of international law recognized in the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal and in the judgment of the Tribunal, and (b) Prepare a draft code of offenses against the peace and security of mankind….” (See U.N. Doc. A/519, p. 112). The principles formulated are known as the PRINCIPLES OF INTERNATIONAL LAW RECOGNIZED IN THE CHARTER AND JUDGMENT OF THE NUREMBERG TRIBUNAL. Report of the International Law Commission, 2nd session, 1950, U.N. G.A.O.R. 5th session, Supp. No. 12, A/1316, p. 11.
[26] See by this writer, Louis René Beres, at Horasis (Zurich): https://horasis.org/imagining-sisyphus-happy-an-escape-from-trumpian-farce/
