Know Nothingism

Trumpty Dumpty brags of a wall
And says it will be much better than all.
But amid all the BS and clamorous squawk
Voters forget that it's only just talk.

   Many in the support base of True Believers go along with the electioneering patter as if the talk is more than that, and constitutes realistic, worthwhile, achievable goals that will benefit native-born Americans. (Read: White people of northern European heritage whose families have been here for three generations or more.)
   Part of this strategy is to send back or keep out those who do not meet this "standard" of what constitutes worthwhile people.
   As for those of African heritage whose ancestors were brought to America as slaves 300 years ago, there may be some who will advocate a repeat of the early 19th Century episode when freed slaves were transported back to Africa to the new nation dubbed Liberia (place of freedom), with its capital of Monrovia, named after U.S. President James Monroe.
   The current bias against certain groups of newcomers is reminiscent of the Know Nothing Party of the mid-19th Century, notorious for its nativist, anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic sentiments.
   It started as the Native American Party in the 1840s, but was renamed the American Party in 1855. It's an easy guess why the first word in the name of the party was dropped. In any case, the movement was strongly opposed to immigration, especially of people from Ireland, where famine and poverty were widespread, and from Germany, whose people were fleeing political and social upheaval.
   One of those was a 16-year-old named Friedrich Trump. After making his fortune in America, he returned to Germany but was deported because he had not fulfilled his military obligation. Friedrich returned to America and settled in New York, where his son Fred was born. To complete the story of an immigrant's family and the American Dream, Fred's son Donald grew up to become president of the United States.
   Now the country faces a revival of the Know Nothing movement, with its aim of preventing immigration from certain countries and its bigotry against people of certain religious beliefs.
   Oddly, there are many in America today who insist that the president should heed the teachings of the Bible and base his policies on that, notwithstanding the Constitutional ban on establishing an official religion.
   There is a supreme irony in the fact that the only reason the Trump family remains in America is because its founder, Friedrich Trump, was deported from Germany.
   Now the grandson wants to deport all those who do not match his preferred color, ethnicity and religious standards. Clearly, he has forgotten, if he ever knew, the history of immigration to America in the 19th Century, when many who were already here wanted to close the Golden Door of Opportunity on those who were deemed somehow "different."