Psychology defines magical thinking as the belief that you can alter reality using your thoughts or beliefs, that you can think your way to the reality you want. This seems nicely to sum up how many Trump supporters hank these days about the presidential election results.

In the immediate wake of the election, we witnessed what I’ll call the “fraud theme,” an argument that mixed together assertions of direct and broad based fraud in the counting of ballots, the assumption that there were “illegal votes” and votes cast by “illegal voters,” and that the only way Joe Biden could have won was by rigging the election. Trump, himself, created this mindset early, making claims of fraud in the spring and summer, which seeded the terrain for his more delusional supporters to bang the fraud drum.

They demanded recounts that, ultimately, reinforced the results rather than overturning them — even in Republican-controlled states like Georgia. That led to accusations that — to describe the. With a bit of hyperbole — the state’s Republican institutions were in the hands of dis,oral sleeper agents. In this case, an unprovable charge that plays to the deep paranoia engendered by Trump among many of his fans.

Once the recounts failed, the Trump and his believers moved the goalposts, heading to court, convinced that judges — many appointed by Trump — would make things right. Trump lost every single suit, with many judges castigating Trump’s unhinged legal team for even bringing suit. One went so far as to accuse Trump and his legal team of magical thinking.

Federal judge Stephanos Bibas pulled no punches when he issued a scathing opinion last Saturday rejecting the Trump campaign’s latest attempt to overturn the outcome of the November 3 presidential election.

“Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so,” federal judge Stephanos Bibas, a Trump appointee, wrote in one ruling. “Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.” 

Despite there being no “there there,” the president and his supporters have kept pushing, with a new target date assumed for when the people would be heeded and the republic saved — i.e., the Dec. 14 vote by the Electoral College. This, the true believers said, was the constitutional requirement, and the EC would save Trump by demonstrating that the fraud had infected the recounts. They believed the Electoral College would support their arguments and save Trump, and that their belief (absent any verifiable facts) would magically create the result they desired.

When that did not happen, they took it as confirmation of the fraud they believe responsible for Trump’s loss. “There was fraud,” they will argue. “Trump won, and there is nothing you can say to make me think otherwise.” Arguing this is like arguing the existence of god with a true believer — you can’t disprove their arguments, which are based on faith and faith alone. This is fine in the religious realm, but dangerous in the political one.

We’re now being asked to wait again on another deadline, another goal post moved. Jan. 6 is the date. That is when Congress will intervene. That is when the righteous will overturn the corrupt and grant Trump the four years they know he earned. On Jan. 6, Congress will meet to certify the Electoral College results. There is no reason to think they will overturn Biden’s win, but that is what the Trump True Believers expect. Congress will reinstall Trump to his rightful place atop the American government, dashing the hopes of the deceitful and disreputable.

Congress is not going to do this, of course, and once Congress certifies the election, the magical thinkers will need a new point of attack. I would like to think they will finally accept the results, that Biden can be sworn in. This does not mean they should go away, or that they would not be right in protesting Biden’s appointments, his policies, and so on. That is their right and I would encourage that.

What worries me, however, is that we already are hearing from those close to Trump that other efforts should be pursued. Michael Flynn, the president’s former and disgraced National Security Adviser, has called on Trump to declare martial law, and while Trump has publicly distanced himself from the suggestion, it has been reported that he at least asked about it during a White House meeting.

I don’t think Trump would attempt to usurp power by declaring such an emergency, nor do I think that the military would buy in — though, I can’t be sure on either count. I don’t want to be alarmist, but 73 million people voted for Trump — more than any other presidential candidate in the history of the United States other than Joe Biden. Many are true believers. Some might be willing to engage in violence on Trump’s behalf. I don’t think we are there, but I am less confident that we could never get there than I have ever been.

Our common reality has been fractured. A large portion of the public has abandoned it, has yoked its wagon to magical thinking and the charlatan who has occupied the White House for the last four years.

T-shirts sold on Amazon. Worn by Proud Boys in D.C. during Trump rally on Saturday. “6mwe.” Six million were not enough.* // Graffiti in Forest Hills. Swastika painted on an Idaho memorial to Anne Frank. // Trump campaign board member, convention speaker tweets conspiracies. Enslavement of the goyim. Jewish money. She was canceled. // House candidate touts QAnon.  Conspiracies about “wealthy, all-controlling globalists; and the ancient ‘blood libel’ of requiring blood of Christian children.”* She’s endorsed. Elected. // The Rothschilds lurk in the imagination. George Soros. Jewish money. An international cabal. // “The danger of antisemitism never fully disappears,” writes Stephen Eric Bronner, “and, in any event, the political risk in making the opposite assumption is too high.”* // Eleven dead in a Pittsburgh synagogue shooting. Another in a California synagogue. Another at a Kosher deli in Jersey City. // Chabad member is run down at menorah lighting in Kentucky.* Menorah bulbs shot out at Dartmouth. // “I don’t want to make more of it than what it is,” Jeff Sharlet posts on Facebook. “Anti-Semitism is always at least a low simmer in the U.S., but rarely more.” But “very little of it compares to the scale of hatred faced by Black, Indigenous, and other people of color, trans people, and many others.” // Sharlet. Half Jewish. Was called names as a kid. Got into fights. I’ve been called kike, and referred to as a “good kind of Jew.” // I light the candles. Say the prayers. I’m not religious. Call me agnostic. Skeptical. But the symbols are important. I light the candles most nights. I’m a Jew every night. // But fear is not part of the equation. Not for most of us. White skin confers privilege, even when stopped by a cop for speeding. // Still, there’s the dual-loyalty charge. The conspiracies. The questions. A sign at a protest: Jews as “the real plague.” // All of this floats just below the surface. Bubbles up occasionally. Boils over in violence. The risk is always there.

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Sources:

Bernstein, David S., “Anti-Semitism, Trump, And The Republican Convention.” GBH 89.7, 28 August 2020, https://www.wgbh.org/news/commentary/2020/08/28/anti-semitism-trump-and-the-republican-convention Accessed 17 December 2020

Bronner, Stephen Eric. A Rumor About the Jews, 2000, St. Martin’s Press, e-book chapter one, https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewBook?id=934046316

Eads, Morgan. “Chabad of the Bluegrass member injured in attack before menorah lighting in Lexington.” Lexington Herald-Leader, 13 December 2020, https://www.kentucky.com/news/local/crime/article247814240.html#storylink=cpy Accessed 17 December 2020

Palmer, Ewan. “Neo-Nazi Shirts Worn by Proud Boys Supporters Sold on Amazon.” Newsweek, 15 December 2020, https://www.newsweek.com/nazi-amazon-proud-boys-holocaust-1555192 Accessed 17 December 2020

Whitfield, Stephen. “Why the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ is still pushed by anti-Semites more than a century after hoax first circulated.” The Conversation, 3 September 2020, https://theconversation.com/why-the-protocols-of-the-elders-of-zion-is-still-pushed-by-anti-semites-more-than-a-century-after-hoax-first-circulated-145220 Accessed 17 December 2020

I’m planning to write about vaccine skepticism and, based on the polling, it’s clear that not all skepticisms are the same. Some view vaccines as intrusive and vaccine mandates as a violation of their rights. Others see vaccines as creating other illnesses. And other still have qualms about Big Pharma. While I don’t agree and have trouble seeing from where some of this skepticism derives, I think it is important to have this discussion.

I’m interested in all concerns, and want to know what it would take to ameliorate them. I’m particularly interested in African Americans, who have expressed the greatest concerns, because of the history of abuse at the hands of the medical establishment.

If you’re interested in helping — either by passing along your thoughts, having a conversation, or connecting me to skeptics or academics who look at this, send me an email, or comment below.

Please, do not use this post as an excuse for debate in the comment section. I will remove those. I’m truly interested in what people have to say, and I don’t want them to fear criticism or attack. There are plenty of other forums for people to go back and forth.

Thanks in advance.

The vaccines are here! The vaccines are here! If my use of the exclamation point seems a bit over the top, I apologize. I don’t want to be hyperbolic, but I am echoing the tone offered by much of the media and the political classes now that the Pfizer vaccine has shipped and the first doses have been given to frontline workers. 

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, for instance, described the vaccine as “the weapon that will end the war.” Dr. Chris Dale of Swedish Health Services in Seattle told the Associated Press that we are at “mile 24 of a marathon.”

“People are fatigued. But we also recognize that this end is in sight.”

I’m left wondering if we shouldn’t be tempering that optimism with a little more humility that “it’s a long tunnel, but we can see the light.” Just because you make it to mile 24, does not mean you will be able to drag yourself across the finish line.

Maybe I’m just a natural skeptic, but I’m concerned that we have taken to describing these vaccines as magic bullets. I have no reason to doubt their efficacy. I believe the science, and I plan on being vaccinated when it’s my turn. But we should not allow ourselves to fall into the trap of magical thinking, thinking that if we believe in something it will lead to the outcome we desire. 

The available science gives us cause for optimism, but also should give us pause. The logistics of getting viruses to millions of people will be complicated and difficult. The anti-vaccine community is larger and, when combined with the Trump cohort, creates a mass of people who can undermine our efforts. We should not allow ourselves to be seduced into hubris.

Vaccine trials are structured so that they can mimic real-world conditions, but they still are just trials. As Carl Zimmer explained in The New York Times in November, researchers during vaccine trials “vaccinate some people and give a placebo to others. They then wait for participants to get sick and look at how many of the illnesses came from each group.” They do this while controlling for variables that can include age, gender, health, and other issues, and they are designed to measure narrow outcomes. They give us an idea of how effective a vaccine is likely to be and what potential side effects the vaccine are likely to cause, but they cannot account for all of the conditions that exist outside of the trials. The important word here is likely, because it reminds us that the conclusions offered by researchers are their best estimates.

That’s why scientists differentiate between efficacy (in this case 95 percent), which is what trials give us, and effectiveness. Efficacy and effectiveness are measure the same way, using different data. The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, the federal agency tasked with studying the spread of the coronavirus, says that efficacy refers to laboratory conditions or clinical trials — or “when a study is carried out under ideal conditions.” Effectiveness refers to less-than-ideal, real-world conditions. “Exactly how the vaccines perform out in the real world will depend on a lot of factors we just don’t have answers to yet,” Zimmer wrote in his Times piece, “such as whether vaccinated people can get asymptomatic infections and how many people will get vaccinated.”

So, the 95 percent efficacy rate — which the CDC describes as the reduction in the number of cases for those who are vaccinated compared to the baseline expectation for those who are not vaccinated — may end up being significantly smaller, though this distinction  and the uncertainty it implies should not dissuade us from getting vaccinated.

But it should cause us to rein in the hyperbole, because the kind of language used in this report on ABC News (“life-saving science,” “something more than hope,” “a solution”), while understandable given the difficulties of the last year, could create unrealistic expectations. And that, in turn, could empower anti-vaxxers. Treating the vaccines as an automatic fix, when it is inevitable that there will be some hiccups, will allow the folks who distrust vaccines or assume they are some kind of crazy plot to seize upon isolated problems as they occur and use those problems to denounce the entire vaccine effort.

The other danger of treating the vaccines as magic bullets is that people might assume the “solution” — ABC’s word — is at hand and the entire crisis is over or is nearing its end. This, in turn, could lead people who have grown exhausted and angry to flout the guidelines and rules we have used to prevent this catastrophic pandemic from being even worse than it has proven to be.

Our approach going forward, therefore, should be to engender hope while being realistic, and to make clear both the benefits and shortcomings of vaccination. As with the use of masks, vaccines offer protections to individuals but are most effective when they are broadly applied. As Zimmer explained, vaccines may protect the individual, but they are more effective at “slow(ing) the spread of the virus” and “driv(ing) down new infection rates.” This will “protect society as a whole.”

Scientists call this broad form of effectiveness a vaccine’s impact. The smallpox vaccine had the greatest impact of all, driving the virus into oblivion in the 1970s. But even a vaccine with extremely high efficacy in clinical trials will have a small impact if only a few people end up getting it.

“Vaccines don’t save lives,” said A. David Paltiel, a professor at the Yale School of Public Health. “Vaccination programs save lives.”

Getting the vaccine to large swathes of the public is not going to be easy, especially with a significant number of people — up to a third of Americans, by some estimates — seeing vaccines as an assault on their freedoms or as being responsible for other illnesses. Again, the science says otherwise, but this anti-vax cohort will affected our ability to create herd immunity (an unfortunate label). We can’t ignore them or pander to them. We have to find ways to neutralize their impact, which can only happen through education and honest and open dialogue with the public. We should not oversell the vaccines, but we have to make clear that they are, along with masks and social distancing, an essential tool in getting us back to a version of normal with which we all can live.