Health Care/Joan Retsinas

The Know Nothings Redux

In the zeal for back-to-the-future revivals, the Know Nothings have risen through the muck of American politics. nnThe original Know Nothings spawned in the mid- 19th century when an influx of Catholic immigrants tainted the mythic purity of American stock. (They were not abolitionists either). The Know Nothings fought immigration with a frenzy that presaged today’s xenophobes. They wanted to return to a monochromatic Protestant past. Wherever they looked, they saw foreign plots, asserting that the Pope was trying to take over this country. They urged native-born Protestant Americans to resist. (Their moniker arose as the standard response to questions: “We know nothing” — truly they did know nothing).

The 21st century version is just as vitriolic, just as nostalgic for a purer time. They’ve added uppity women to their list of undesirables, as well as the overbearing Uncle Sam. (Ironically, the Jeffersonian past they yearn for included slaves; but consistency was not the forte of the Know Nothings).

Here are a few Know Nothing truisms about health that defy facts, common sense, and compassion.

1) Bans on abortion should be total, should not allow exceptions for rape and incest. The women demanding those exceptions don’t understand history. They are ignorant of the basic role of rape and incest in growing the population. Stephen King, a Republic from Iowa, sets the thinking straight:”What if we went back through all the family trees and just pulled out anyone who was a product of rape or incest?” he explained at an event in Urbandale, Iowa, on August 14. “Would there be any population of the world left if we did that?” This stance marks him and his cohorts as genuine Know Nothings.

2) Vaccination is a plot by Uncle Sam, Democrats, Russians …pick your bogey. It is not a public health strategy, but a plot veiled in the guise of public health factoids. The American Psychological Association linked “vaccination skepticism” to a conspiracy-mania. Specifically, people who believed that an assassin killed Princess Diana, that our government, forewarned, let the 9/11 attacks happen; that a modern Dr Strangelove is plotting anarchy, or that some evil entity wants to decimate the world via vaccination will show “skepticism” about public health admonitions. The facts are more prosaic. Our enemy is diseases. We have taken aim, successfully, at the polio virus, and we are targeting other illnesses, from tetanus to diphtheria to chicken pox to measles. (We have, I hope, declared victory over smallpox.) The people who claim otherwise belong to the modern Know Nothings: they threaten more lives than they purport to save. Sadly, celebrities from Jim Carrey to Charlie Sheen to Robert De Niro have joined this movement, giving it a strange legitimacy.

3). Those huddled masses yearning to be free carry germs that will decimate native-born Americans (much as the white Christian pioneers decimated native American tribes by introducing smallpox). People who want to ban migrants are raising this factoid: “We” are protecting ourselves not from hordes of brown-skinned workers, but from hordes of germs. Again, the facts belie that myth. In general, immigrants are healthier than native-born populations: they tend to be younger, more physically fit, more energetic. The less able-bodied will not cross rivers, hike for miles, or crush into cargo ships. As for the migrants from Central America, they come here remarkably healthy. (Ironically, Nicaragua, Costa Rico, Mexico and Honduras, Costa Rica, have higher vaccination rates for for measles, diphtheria and polio than the US.) Once here, clustered in unsanitary crowded “detention” facilities without sufficient food, they may understandably become sick. Ironically, President Trump’s decision to bar flu vaccines for migrants all but guarantees that some will contract the flu, a communicable disease that will end up supporting the Know Nothings’ claims that migrants carry disease.

The mid-19th century Know Nothings faded into the history tomes. Let us hope that this updated version also withers into a footnote.

Joan Retsinas is a sociologist who writes about health care in Providence, R.I. Email retsinas@verizon.net.

From The Progressive Populist, October 1, 2019

Populist.com