In January 2025, the Trump administration repeatedly asserted the bold claim that they were halting a $50 million federal expenditure of condoms to Hamas. Of course, this bold claim is an outrageous lie — and a preposterous one at that. At $50 million worth of condoms, assuming the condoms were purchased at the super bulk wholesale price the United Nations purchases condoms, and assuming every man ages 15 to 65 in Gaza uses 52 condoms a year (a generous estimation), that would be enough condoms to last the entire population of Gaza more than 40 years.

Reasonable people know that the “$50 million for condoms” claim is a lie at face value. I’d suspect (and hope) that even reasonable Republicans know that the “$50 million for condoms” claim is a lie. But of course, the lie isn’t the point — especially not at face value. Instead, the lie intends to operate at underlying rhetorical levels, and analyzing these levels illuminates the lie’s intentions. First, the lie asserts the underlying conceptual assumption, in the sheer scale of the $50 million expenditure, that the condoms aren’t *really* for Hamas — that instead the condoms are for all of Gaza. In this way, the Trump administration is deliberately trying to create categorical confusion between Gaza and Hamas. Secondly, the lie implies that Gazans must be having lots and lots of hedonistic unprotected sex. The Trump administration is trying to imply that Gazans are dirty and sinful. The implication is that Gazans need the USA’s military complex, with its shades of Christianity embedded into its essence, to liberate Gaza. Lastly, the lie in its preposterousness asserts its own preposterousness onto federal spending — the idea that federal spending is so absurd and outrageous that the only way to speak about federal spending is on absurd and outrageous terms. The implication is that it is not only justifiable but necessary for the federal government to purge hundreds of thousands of federal workers, shut down popular government programs, and even eliminate entire government departments.

The Trump administration’s lies have been outrageous and dangerous, but they wouldn’t be so notable if they weren’t so frequent. From a research perspective, it would be genuinely difficult for even a moderately sized research team to list even a majority of the Trump administration’s lies the Trump administration has told during the first month of its second term.

Here are some of the most notable lies just off the top of my head. Trump stated that any clashes with police during the January 6th insurrection were only “very minor incidents,” a blatant lie that he used to justify pardoning more than a thousand insurrectionists, roughly a quarter of whom were convicted for assault or other violent offenses. Trump has repeatedly stated that out of some still-to-be-found “study” of 40 countries, the USA ranks dead last in education​ — a lie that his administration is using to dismantle the Department of Education. Trump has also repeatedly stated that the USA is the only country in the world with “unrestricted birthright citizenship,” a lie the Trump administration not only is using to justify a dramatic increase in ICE raids but is using to rollback rights for immigrants altogether. With potentially world-historical consequences, Trump claimed that Ukraine started the Russia-Ukraine war, a lie that the Trump administration is using to realign global politics in such a magnitude the world hasn’t seen since the Second World War.

Of course, if you’re reading this, you likely already know that the Trump administration lies outrageously, frequently, and dangerously. The Trump administration lies outrageously, frequently, and dangerously so much so that it can be hard to wrap your head around.

To me, that’s the most dangerous part of it all — the normalization of the desanctification of the truth.

When on January 28, 2025, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt first introduced to the world the “$50 million for condoms to Gaza” lie, it was striking that not one reporter — out of more than 50 of the USA’s top journalists — bothered to fact check that lie in the moment.

In these more than 50 journalists’ silence on the “$50 million for condoms to Gaza” lie, there existed a tacit assumption and acceptance: of course that was a lie. We all know that was a lie. These lies are so outrageous and frequent as to overwhelm our ability to fulfill our basic job duties. There are so many lies to come from this present situation that we cannot bother to question a lie that — although comical in the darkest sense — may very well contribute to more genocidal war and certainly will contribute to fundamental government programs being eliminated.

In times when we are desanctifying the pursuit of the truth, I believe we are compelled to remind ourselves about the concept of truth and to critically examine what we even mean by “the truth.”

***

I was 18, a freshman at the University of California, Davis, when three of my friends and I were passing around a bong, getting way too high on weed, and having the common experience many freshmen college students have sitting around a table in an under-furnished dorm. Bruh, like, it’s objectively true that the color red has a wavelength of 700 nanometers, but like, how do we even know if the subjective experience of the color red is the same among any of us. Like, what if we all experience red differently. Or like, dude, how do we even know what is objectively real, bro, since we all experience things subjectively, like, what if this is all a lie, or I’m in a computer simulation, or we’re all in a collective delusion, like, how do we even know anything.

In this essay, I’m not talking about any of that.

For Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher regarded as the father of existentialism, objective truth refers to empirically verifiable truths (such as those from the natural sciences) or abstract logical truths (such as those from mathematics or what would eventually become analytic philosophy), while subjective truth refers to truth that can only be encountered on a personal level and struggled for in an embodied narrative sense. These distinctions are important for Kierkegaard because for him, Christian faith is not a rational statement: “I believe in an all-knowing, all-powerful creator of this world who sent his son down to Earth to die for our sins.” Indeed, for Kierkegaard, this sort of rational statement as a proposition toward Christianity misses the entire point of Christianity altogether, taking belief in God as to mean God’s existence as a material or historical being, when in fact the fundamental axiomatic essence of God is that he exists outside space and time. For Kierkegaard, the historical reality of a man named Abraham — whether he “truly” existed and was tested by God’s command to sacrifice his son Isaac — is largely not important. What matters is the subjective truth one can choose to embody narratively and in the deepest personal ways — rejecting societal ethics in favor of a leap of faith, as illustrated in the Abrahamic story, which is the true source of wisdom.

In short, faith is ultimately not about “knowing” anything at all, since knowing and the certainty that comes along with knowing belong to objective truth. What takes over when the outer limits of objective truth reach their limit — and indeed our understanding of whatever objective truth exists *always* has its limits — is faith.

Is this not precisely the conundrum we face more and more within politics today? That objective truth as an ontological category is clearly far too limited? That political action is obviously not just a contest of the objective truths of the world — and that if anything, only playing on the level of objective truth will surely result in the demise of the working class?

For Kierkegaard, faith always exists within the tension of doubt. Indeed, real belief even generally speaking is never a rational statement — a belief becomes real only when that belief is enacted and struggled for in a narrative sense. That I may feel uncertain yet take action anyway is actually the precise necessary condition upon which a belief can exist meaningfully — otherwise, there would be no point to a belief.

Kierkegaard makes the distinction between the “knight of infinite resignation” and the “knight of faith.” The knight of infinite resignation represents someone who has accepted the impossibility of their deepest desires being fulfilled in this world, as I’m sure it may feel in the present political moment. The knight of infinite resignation makes a passionate commitment to something higher (like an ethical or spiritual ideal), but then renounces any expectation of seeing his desires realized in tangible reality. This figure embodies a form of noble despair — accepting suffering and loss with dignity but without hope of restoration. Meanwhile, the knight of faith embodies a paradoxical trust in God, believing that even the impossible can come to pass. Unlike the knight of resignation, the knight of faith does not merely accept loss — as in the aforementioned Abrahamic story — but believes that, through divine power, they will receive back what they have given up. Note that it is only once Abraham commits to killing his son Isaac that an angel intervenes, replacing Isaac with a ram. In this way, the knight of faith makes a double move: a movement towards the infinity, rejecting everything finite, yet at the same time making the move towards the finite, having faith that he will regain what he has renounced and that his highest earthly hope will be obtained — and in so doing, makes a leap of faith that only becomes true once taken.

I believe the necessity of the leap of faith is true even on a practical and technical level if, like me, you believe that field organizing is the key to transformative political change. While an inexperienced field organizer may go into an organizing conversation with a skeptical intent to “organize someone,” most ordinary working people can sense this manipulation or at least the inauthenticity of the field organizer needing something from them. The sense that manipulation or inauthenticity is occurring in an organizing conversation makes deep trust impossible, especially if the organizer is pushing someone to take the risks necessary for transformative political change. In contrast, a more experienced, effective field organizer goes into a conversation setting up a frame and premise but otherwise allows himself to be authentic and vulnerable, allowing himself to speak spontaneously and authentically, combining what he’s deeply listening to with his personal experiences and thereby surprising even himself with the words he says. Doing so and forgoing a skeptical intent to “take something” from the people the field organizer is speaking with actually ends up producing higher organizing numbers, especially in the long run, since it is through authenticity and deep listening that a field organizer can build real trust.

In other words, the mature field organizer allows himself to be truly authentic, and this authenticity is important for organizing. But importantly, he is not authentic for the sake of organizing. That’s the wrong frame. He is authentic, period. Also then this authenticity is the key to organizing, and in this leap of faith opens up the possibility to transformative political change.

***

What I find most deeply ironic about the Trump administration’s “$50 million for condoms to Hamas” lie isn’t just its outrageousness and dangerousness — though it is certainly both — but the fact that it completely misinterprets the very Christian ethic its proponents think they are upholding. As I’ve demonstrated, the Trump administration is actually trying to make sneaky rhetorical moves with the intention to create categorical blurriness between Gaza and Hamas, to paint Gazans as hedonistic sinners in need of Christian salvation, and to enact further austerity measures — all within a project to advance what they think would be a Christian nationalist state not only here in the USA but abroad.

But the power of Christian faith has never been about battling it out within the limited confines of the field of objective truth. Rather, the power of Christian faith comes from embodying higher ideals truthfully and — in making a leap of faith — living those ideals in a narrative sense.

We live in an age when the confines of the field of objective truth is not only limited but has become oversaturated and toxic.

By miracle, the field of objective truth does not hold the potential for transformative political change, at least not alone.

Rather, the subjective truth we hold as individuals collectively when we authentically speak with one another and embody that truthful speech through field organizing does.