Congress is set to pass a $900 billion spending bill that some describe as a relief package and others call a stimulus. Given the paltry amount of aid to individuals in the bill, it is hard to see how either appellation fits.

The legislation, which still needs to be signed by outgoing President Trump, is better than nothing. When you have little, any help will do — or, at least that’s the argument. “Beggar’s can’t be choosers” is the line, which is just so much horse shit, a capitalist excuse for doing as little as we can away with doing.

Let’s not pretend, however, that this “relief bill” this is anything more than inadequate. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi calls it a down payment, operating on the assumption that incoming President Joe Biden and the Democratic House can work with what they hope will be a Democratic Senate to pass more expansive measures.

Recent history tells us that will be difficult, at best. Democrats first have to win both Georgia Senate races, which would create a 50-50 tie in the upper house. In theory, that gives Vice President-elect Kamala Harris the deciding vote. In reality, it puts West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin in the driver’s seat. Manchin is the most conservative member of the Democratic caucus, a deficit hawk, but he also has been supportive of relief in the past, so it is hard to know what direction he will take once Biden is sworn in.

That said, it is important to look at what this bill actually does, and not get caught up in the hype over this sudden bout of bipartisanship. There are reasons the left is critical, and it’s not because of truculence or ideological purity. The bill is basically inadequate to the task, though probably the best available, and progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, not only have a right but a responsibility to point that out.

These are what I think are the pertinent portions of the bill, which come from the Huffington Post. The brief analyses are mine, and they are just rough, back-of-the-envelop assumptions and not meant to be seen as anything more than that. I welcome anyone who can offer a better and deeper understanding of these issues.

The bill includes:

• Direct payments of $600 to people earning under $75,000 ($1,200 for households earning under $150,000). A total of $166 billion has been set aside, which means there is enough money for about 2.2 million individuals, if the maximum amount is doled out to each recipient. There are about 64 million households earning $68,000 or less in the United States, according to the Census Bureau.

• An extension of the federal eviction moratorium until Jan. 31 — or two months. On Jan. 31, millions will then be faced with the prospect of not only paying February’s rent, but back rent that for many could run into the tens of thousands.

• Rental aid totaling $25 billion, which sounds like a lot, but ultimates comes to $625 per endangered renter — there are 40 million renters facing potential eviction, .

• $300 per week in extra unemployment benefits, which also will cover so-called gig workers, though not all states consider gig workers and freelancers to be eligible. 

• $30 billion in funding for vaccine distribution — about $90 per person.

There is more in this bill, some of it absolutely necessary and some seemingly less so. I am not an expert, but I do think we have spent the last 45 years focused on the wrong things — on the deficit and debt, rather than on making people whole, on providing help, on building better infrastructure — and this has left us ill-prepared medically, economically, and politically to deal with the threat the coronavirus posed and the damage it has in fact done.

Passing this bill is important, but we should not take any victory laps or injure ourselves trying to pat ourselves on the backs. Passing this bill may be necessary at this moment, but it is the least, and I mean the very least, we can do, and nothing more.

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