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Yahoo
5 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Historian Federico Finchelstein: Trump's "abuse of the law fits an old autocratic pattern"
The Age of Trump wrapped itself in the flag of false patriotism while simultaneously destroying America's sacred civic myths about its national greatness and the permanence of its democracy. This paradox has left many, white Americans in particular, dizzy as they are forced to confront the harmful consequences caused by their belief in a country that never existed. President Ronald Reagan famously talked about a 'new day in America' as he encouraged the American people to shrug off their old cynicism and to embrace a new optimism. So many Americans believed that their country was truly 'a shining city on the hill' and a beacon of democracy and freedom for the world. There is also the common belief in the fundamental decency and goodness of the American people and that such 'universal values' would make the likes of President Trump and other such demagogues an impossibility, as they were judged to be incompatible with the national character and temperament of the American people. In total, the ascent of the Age of Trump and the authoritarian fake populist MAGA movement has revealed the hollowness of these myths and narratives. So where do the American people go from here as the authoritarian tide continues to rapidly rise in their country? Federico Finchelstein is a leading expert on fascism, populism and dictatorship and professor of history at the New School for Social Research and Lang College in New York City. He is the author of seven books on fascism, populism, Dirty Wars, the Holocaust and Jewish history in Latin America and Europe. Finchelstein's most recent book is 'The Wannabe Fascists: A Guide to Understanding the Greatest Threat to Democracy.' In this conversation, Finchelstein explains how Donald Trump and his forces represent what he describes as 'wannabe fascism' and the specific type of danger that such autocrats and aspiring tyrants pose to a failing Western democracy. Finchelstein also reflects on the danger caused by how 'respectable' elites and other mainstream voices in the political class and news media were and continue to normalize Trumpism because they are not (yet) being targeted in the same way as undocumented people and other marginalized communities. At the end of this conversation, Federico Finchelstein warns that Donald Trump and his forces have moved at a very fast rate to consolidate power, but that their victory is not guaranteed — especially if pro-democracy Americans and their leaders finally decide to commit themselves earnestly instead of being bystanders who are mostly looking away. How common or distinct is America's experience with democratic backsliding and democracy collapse as compared to other countries? This belief in exceptionalism is both American and part of a global history. All countries have a myth of their own uniqueness. America's experience with the erosion of democratic beliefs and experiences is quite common at the level of everyday practice. Intolerance, racism and violence have always been part of modern global history, this country included. However, at the federal level, Trumpism represents a change from previous norms and administrations. It is way more disruptive. Extreme forms of populism that are oriented towards fascism are now at the helm of the most powerful country in the world. Trumpism is more anti-democratic than its predecessors, and it also exerts a big influence outside of the United States. Trumpism is toxic for democratic life here in the United States and around the world. Donald Trump has now been back in power for more than 100 days. Are things as you expected? Better? Worse? I am not shocked by the extremism of Trumpism. But the Trump administration has failed in many ways, and yet it will keep trying to degrade American democracy as much as it can. A troubling question is, how will Trump and MAGA escalate their attacks on democracy and the rule of law to remain in power? I am very pessimistic in this regard. It is always more dangerous when totalitarians rule in the face of imminent defeat. Trump has clearly not yet achieved that level of power — I emphasize "yet". This explains why Donald Trump and his administration and forces more broadly are not as bold as they could be in terms of advancing Trump's goal of destroying constitutional democracy. Where are we in the story of the Age of Trump and his return? We do not have the wisdom of hindsight that future historians will have. My own view, an educated guess of sorts, is that we are in the middle, at least, of Trump's radicalization towards fascism. The American people were repeatedly warned about the calamity that would befall the United States if Donald Trump were put back in power. Why didn't they listen to the warnings? Many people do not care about the harm that Trumpism is causing democracy. Many of the Trump followers are hardcore, diehard believers in fascism in its varied forms and the quest for total domination that is fueled by hatred. But many other Trump supporters, a majority of them, are just hoping for a better economic situation. It is dubious that Trump's policies will create that outcome. And of course, those Trump supporters have ignored or otherwise put aside many of the most troubling dimensions of Trumpism, such as racism, nativism, sexism and wanton cruelty. At some point, the Trump supporters who are not the diehards and de facto cultists will recognize that they voted against their own interests. This is part of the history of fascism and dictatorship. Unfortunately, history shows us that such realizations often come very late in the game after there has been a lot of suffering inflicted on the country. The centrists, institutionalists and other establishment voices were very wrong about Donald Trump and his MAGA authoritarian populist movement's rise to power. These errors began in 2015, continued in the years to follow, and were fully exposed when so many of these 'respectable voices' continued to claim that there was no way Donald Trump could win in 2024. Per their logic, 'the American people would never do such a thing!' Alas, here we are. What does that dynamic look like in other countries when the so-called respectable voices are so wrong? Are they discredited when the autocrat-authoritarian takes power — and with widespread popular support? One of the key problems is how Trumpism is enabled by normalization. This represents the opposite of understanding the reality and facts of what is happening. Many scholars and pundits on the center as well as the right and the left denied the fascist dimensions of Trumpism. They kept trying to locate Trump as part of an older continuity and tradition of American presidents and other leaders. Trump is separate from that democratic tradition. These pundits, scholars and other public voices had a range of responses to being so wrong. Some of them recognized their mistake, but just want to move on and not have to explain their error and how they arrived at such incorrect conclusions. Others are telling the American people not to worry that much about Trump because it won't get that bad, and that Trump is not the real problem or danger anyway. The real problem and danger is that liberal democracy itself is flawed. That, too, is not entirely correct. I have a different perspective. When I was a kid, I lived under a gruesome dictatorship in Argentina. As a historian but also as a citizen, I never forget the key difference between an imperfect democracy and a total dictatorship. It is always fascinating to observe how these normalizing views are presented from a place of privilege and far away from the obvious victims of repression and demonization. If you never interact with the victims, it is harder to notice the change. Is America now in the grips of authoritarianism? If so, what type? Moreover, why were so many in the news media and political class afraid to use the 'f-word,' i.e., fascism, when it was readily apparent years ago that Donald Trump and his anti-democracy movement fit that definition. In my own work, I describe the Age of Trump and this version of authoritarian populism as 'wannabe fascism.' Wannabe fascism is an incomplete version of fascism, it is characteristic of those who seek to destroy democracy for short-term personal gain but are not fully committed to the fascist cause. As I explain in my books, the more we know about past fascist attempts to deny the workings of democracy, the more alarming these wannabe fascists appear. There have been many public discussions of the so-called authoritarian's playbook and how Donald Trump and his agents are following it very closely. What are some specific examples? Some of them are learned in the ways of fascism, others, like the leader himself, are intuitively antidemocratic, but the effects are the same, namely, the irrational rule of a leader who would like to rule as a king or dictator. The examples are many and they range from deportations for racist/and or other authoritarian ideological reasons, attacks against the press, attempts to destroy the independence of universities, the replacement of legality with manipulations of the law in the name of the leader and the attacks against idea and the practice of anti-racism and in favor of diversity. And last but certainly not least, are the events of Jan. 6 and the larger attempt to usurp democracy. Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat recently warned that the speed of Donald Trump and his forces' attacks on democracy and civil society is more like a coup than autocratic capture. Do you agree? My friend and colleague Professor Ben-Ghiat is absolutely right! This is not a gradual process. It is unclear, yet, exactly what type of authoritarian end goals they want or will be able to reach. Do they want a full-on fascist dictatorship? An elected populist autocracy? Traditional tyranny? What is clear is that Donald Trump and his MAGA forces and their allies want to leave constitutional democracy behind. I don't want to be too strict with path dependency. But was there a moment(s) when Trump's return to power could have been stopped? Or was this democracy crisis and now the rise of naked fascism and authoritarianism more probable than not? What I focus on is that the architects and visionaries who did the intellectual work never faced justice for their role in the events of Jan. 6 and the larger attempt to nullify the results of the 2020 election. This is a key ingredient of the success of Trumpism. Without the link between history and justice, democracy cannot properly function or expand. The opposite happened, and we can now see the horrible consequences of these mistakes. The news media and free press are supposed to function as the Fourth Estate and the guardians of democracy. How would you assess the American mainstream news media's performance in that regard? The mainstream American news media continues to normalize Trumpism when it is labeled or framed as a 'conservative' or 'center-right' movement. Trumpism is radical and revolutionary. We are witnessing a new ultra-right populist phenomenon in the form of Trumpism and MAGA that is close to fascism. The extremism must be emphasized when discussing it so that the American people understand the dire reality that they are facing. The American news media need to put more history and context into their discussions of the Age of Trump and the attacks against democracy. This would also involve interviewing and otherwise featuring more scholars and other real experts. In your conversations with colleagues in higher education, what is the environment like now, given the Trump administration's attacks? There is, of course, the desired and planned chilling effect. There are attacks on media and universities, legal firms, judges, and others across civil society and the country's democratic and governing institutions. As I see it, what is even more troubling and deeply concerning is how the American people, the majority, are becoming increasingly numb to the abnormal behavior of Trump and his allies. Expert voices and others who have a trusted platform must continue to sound the alarm to wake the American people up from their complacency about Trumpism and the extreme danger it represents to the nation. Going beyond language and concepts, what are some practical, day-to-day things that the average American can do to defend democracy and civil society? It is critically important to be informed and alarmed about the extreme dimensions of Trumpism. In practice, we all need to continue reading independent media accounts of what is going on. We need to defend the independence of institutions and the separation of powers. I think it is important to oppose anti-democratic attempts by defending key dimensions of democracy and not giving up out of frustration and exasperation. This involves voting but also convincing others to do so. It also involves clearly and peacefully expressing one's own positions in conversations, in the streets and on social networks. History demonstrates that the worst thing we can do vis-à-vis wannabe dictators is being silent and apathic. What are some books, articles, creative work, films, movies, etc. that you recommend to those Americans who are trying to make sense of Trump's rise to power and the ascendant authoritarianism and fascism in this country? I would recommend novels such as "It can't happen here' or the recent movie about Trump and his relationship to Roy Cohn. The works of Hannah Arendt on totalitarianism and obedience are essential readings as well, especially her classic book On the Origins of Totalitarianism. I would also recommend the analysis of Nazi language by Viktor Klemperer, 'The Language of the Third Reich.' I also believe that the works of Latin American writers such as Jorge Luis Borges or Roberto Bolaño are of key importance in understanding the logic of fascism. I would recommend movies like the Argentines' 'The Official Story' and 'The Secret in their Eyes' to understand how important it is to know the links between history and legality when confronting propaganda, demonization and violence. I also think the second season of the Star Wars series 'Andor', starring Diego Luna, offers an excellent portrayal of the authoritarian manipulation of the truth through lies and propaganda. It is really well done and quite entertaining as well! The graphic novel "Persepolis" by Marjane Satrapi is also an excellent representation of how the Iranian dictatorship distorts the lives of an entire population. The novel focuses on the life of a young woman who resists in her own way. As different from the United States as all these cases are, there are still troublesome connections. The United States is becoming more and more like those real and fictional contexts where fascism and dictatorship are part of the picture, and a government wants its people to be less diverse and less tolerant of others. As you see it, what is the most disturbing aspect of Trump's return to power during these first four months? For fascists, what the leader wants is more legitimacy than legality, because while the former was the result of a cult of heroism and leadership principle, the latter was regarded as artificial and even boring. For example, this meant that everything Hitler wanted was legitimate and beyond the rule of law. This was the rationale for Jan.6 and Trump's arguments that he is above the law and that the courts should not have co-equal power to interfere with his actions as president. These actions take place in the context of lies and propaganda; one helps the other. Fascists, and wannabe fascists, imagine that all actions in defense of the law and democracy are part of a conspiracy against them. Donald Trump and his allies' abuse of the law fits an old autocratic pattern, one that has been given a new life in America. I hate applying sports analogies to politics, especially given a situation as serious as the Age of Trump. But who is 'winning right now? Trump and his 'team'? Or the other team? (the institutions and democracy, the 'Resistance,' civil society and the norms, etc.) Donald Trump and his 'team' started very aggressively, but they also made many mistakes. These mistakes include their approach to the economy and the rule of law. The apparent corruption will also not be forgotten by many American citizens. The apparent corruption and using public office to make money embodies the heart of the extremist politics of Trumpism and other forms of extreme populism and wannabe fascism. At this point, it is too soon to conclude how well Trump and his 'team' are playing the 'game.' There is another side to this 'game' that must be included. The other 'team' is those Americans who believe in democratic institutions and if they are going to go on the offense and get involved in the 'game' instead of mostly looking the other way.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Couple faces retirement fears amid market swings
Dinner at the Gomez home outside Boston provides a textbook image of the sandwich generation: three sets of relatives living under one roof. "A club sandwich has a lot of layers, and we have a lot of layers," 57-year-old Alicia Gomez said. It's not the easiest way to save for retirement, as Gomez and her 59-year-old husband, Chu, told CBS News during an interview last year. Back then, their nest egg was healthy and growing. Stocks were climbing, hitting an all-time high by February of this year. But they cratered as the trade war started, only to climb back and recover most of the losses. "I feel like I'm on a rollercoaster," Alicia Gomez said. "You just hope that if we're gonna be on the downturn now, will we be on the upturn when we decide to retire?" Like millions of Americans, the couple is experiencing waves of an uncertain, see-sawing market. These gyrations can trigger rash decisions, said labor economist Teresa Ghilarducci of the New School for Social Research. "We have a name for living through that kind of volatility, and it's called scarring," Ghilarducci said, stressing the importance of asking the experts in times of financial crisis. "Do not talk to your friends or your family about what to do. Take a breath, take a minute and rely on expert advice," Ghilarducci said. Alicia, who holds down two jobs, had thought maybe she'd cut back work at 62. Chu, who works in logistics, thought it would be at 65. Now, they've adjusted that mindset. "It's probably gonna be 67 at least, but you know, I think there's still a lot of unknowns," Alicia said. Right now, the couple is maxing out their retirement accounts, Chu said, but that could change if they needed to pull back. Adding to their anxiety is the fear that the Social Security system could run dry. There's been a 13% jump this year in people claiming retirement benefits early, despite the reduced payouts, according to the Urban Institute. Ghilarducci strongly advises against that. "Wait for the maximum benefit that you can get. Don't haircut yourself now, anticipating it'll be cut later," she said. The Gomezes say their retirement investments are up by about 3% this year, so they'll simply sit tight and work hard to hold onto their jobs. "A lot of us have been through a lot within, you know, just less than a year. We don't have do-over time," Alicia said. Sneak peek: Where is Jermain Charlo? Baldwin grills McMahon on unallocated funds for students, schools, approved by Congress Hegseth orders Navy to rename USNS Harvey Milk, Jeffries calls it "a complete and total disgrace"
Yahoo
16-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Do You Have Your Cootie Shot?
A sudden and mysterious outbreak of communicable disease began recently in my apartment building in Manhattan. Three 7-year-olds, a boy and two girls, were sharing the elevator one day with a caretaker and a random adult (me). The boy was leaning against the back of the elevator, between the two girls. 'Help! I'm in a girl sandwich,' he said. 'If I'm not careful, I'm going to get cooties!' 'Kids still play Cooties?' I asked, surprised that cooties were not a relic of my Boomer childhood but had endured into the 21st century, still sparking alarm, feigned or real, among the young. 'Yeah-huh,' the boy said. One of the girls piped up: 'I know how to give a cootie shot.' She demonstrated on her own shoulder, her technique a bit of a blur. The kids and their caretaker got off on their floor, leaving me to ponder the cootie phenomenon for the first time in many decades. Beyond being amused, I was struck by the morbid salience of a children's game that mimics infection at a time when vaccine skepticism is on the rise and an outbreak of a non-pretend disease, measles, is threatening the lives of children in the Southwest. I learned that there is a vibrant if slender slice of academic literature on 'preadolescent cootie lore,' as one scholar puts it, and that this goofy grade-school fixation is more closely tied to real public-health concerns than you might think if your cootie expertise derives only from the playground. What exactly are cooties? Since at least the 1960s, field researchers have collected definitions of varying specificity from grammar-school respondents: 'boys' germs,' 'girls' germs,' 'something that kills you,' 'like germs, it has germs on it,' 'where somebody licks the bottom of the chair or eats paper.' Other experts speak of cooties in more anthropological terms. The University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee folklorist Simon J. Bronner has characterized cooties as a 'ritualized affliction.' In their seminal 1976 book, One Potato, Two Potato: The Folklore of American Children, Herbert and Mary Knapp described cooties as a kind of sport. 'There are no supervised Cootie leagues, but more people in the United States have played Cooties than have played baseball, basketball, and football combined,' they wrote. 'It's our unofficial national game.' Cooties certainly have something to do with hygiene. According to a (somewhat gross) analysis by Lawrence A. Hirschfeld, an anthropologist at the New School for Social Research, cooties are 'a social contaminant that pass from one child to another,' made up of 'the invisible particulates associated with germs, farts, or 'boogers.'' They seem to draw upon children's anxieties about illness and doctors but also gender, reflecting the confusing mix of flirtation and social opprobrium attached to boy-girl relations (and not entirely absent from adult life). Beyond that, Hirschfeld concludes, 'Cootie lore is not conceptually orderly.' Cootie history is clearer. The word itself began life as a British colonial term, probably a corruption of kutu, a Malay word for lice and other biting insects. American soldiers picked it up, as it were, from their allies during World War I. A New York Times report from 1918, headlined 'Doughboys Lose Cooties,' described soldiers who 'scratch with a vengeance' lining up at a 'Disinfecting Plant' run by the American Red Cross. One 'lanky New England lad' exclaims, 'I've got all the cooties in France.' In the 1920s, games referencing cooties became popular at bridal showers, in honor of grooms who had served in Europe (and also provoked, perhaps, by sublimated anxiety about other communicable diseases they might have brought home). One version involved drawing separate parts of a bug, based on rolls of a dice, until a winner had a completed louse. This practice evolved into Cootie, the game in which kids assemble plastic insects with fiddlehead-fern-like proboscises, which was introduced nationwide in 1949 and is still manufactured today. The invisible-particulate form of cooties appears to have hit American playgrounds sometime in the 1930s, but surveys suggest that it didn't become ubiquitous until the early '50s, at the height of the polio epidemic. Before the polio vaccine was introduced in 1955, tens of thousands of children were catching the disease every year; thousands of them died, and more were left paralyzed. In his book Explaining Traditions: Folk Behavior in Modern Culture, Bronner writes that cooties and cootie shots—'circle circle, dot dot' being one classic formulation—were a way for children 'to dramatize the dread of the disease.' Cooties was also popular during the '80s, when kids were hearing a lot about AIDS. This kind of imitative play—not just Cooties but also House or Cops and Robbers—helps children make sense of the world. Like nursery rhymes, it can also be commentary, even a kind of satiric outsider art. As Iona Opie, a pioneering British children's folklorist, once observed: 'Step into the playground; a kind of defiant lightheartedness envelops you. The children are … making fun of life.' This was apparently very much the case during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. Bronner told me that while schools were shut down and kids were isolated at home, they began sending one another memes in which cooties tended to represent a kind of generalized pandemic funk. Moreover, the senders often depicted themselves as babies—in Bronner's interpretation, a humorous expression of their frustration at not being able to do normal kid things. I suppose it is comforting that, five years after COVID-19 was first declared a pandemic, my elevator acquaintances had returned to an in-person style of cootie play, acting out their venerable parody of infection and protecting themselves with shots in the arm. But the epidemiological satire takes on an especially dark cast when it expresses more faith in the power of vaccination than does the current secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Kennedy has dismissed the scientifically proven efficacy of the polio vaccine as 'mythology,' despite polio having been considered eradicated in the U.S. since 1979. (Before he was confirmed, a spokesperson noted: 'Mr. Kennedy believes the polio vaccine should be available to the public and thoroughly and properly studied.' Not quite a full-throated endorsement.) He has also sown doubt about vaccines at a time when vaccine hesitancy is fueling a historic and frightening measles outbreak in the Southwest, which has now infected more than 600 people in the U.S. and killed two unvaccinated children in Texas—the first measles deaths in America in a decade. An adult who died in New Mexico was also found to be infected with measles. (Outside the U.S., the health secretary of Chihuahua, Mexico, announced that an unvaccinated man had died of measles in connection with the Texas outbreak.) Kennedy has spoken about the benefits of the MMR vaccine but also continues to undermine its safety and efficacy. He has repeatedly emphasized parental choice in vaccination and, as The Atlantic reported, told the grieving father of one Texas child, 'You don't know what's in the vaccine anymore.' He insists on promoting unproven alternative treatments such as cod-liver oil (a source of vitamin A), antibiotics, and steroids; in a Fox News interview, he claimed that these can lead to 'an almost miraculous and instantaneous recovery.' According to actual virologists, this is a prodigious exaggeration of vitamin A's efficacy, and in the case of the other supposed miracle cures, it's pure invention. A cootie shot might be an even more fanciful treatment, but, unlike with vitamin A, overdoing it won't lead to liver damage, which Texas pediatricians told The New York Times they are now seeing in unvaccinated young patients, whose parents were presumably paying Kennedy heed. When so many adults seem intent on returning to the Dark Ages, we must cherish medical wisdom wherever we find it. In 2025, the cootie shot stands as an inadvertent rebuke to the nation's top health official, in that it emphasizes vaccines' very real efficacy against disease. I wonder if the HHS secretary has ever heard this anecdote from his own family history. On February 25, 1923, his grandmother Rose Kennedy recorded the following in her journal: 'Joe Jr. and Jack have a new song about the Bedbugs and the Cooties. Also a club where they initiate new members by sticking pins into them.' Did RFK Jr.'s uncles (who had likely received smallpox vaccinations) invent cootie shots? A topic for further research. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
16-04-2025
- Health
- Atlantic
Do You Have Your Cootie Shot?
A sudden and mysterious outbreak of communicable disease began recently in my apartment building in Manhattan. Three 7-year-olds, a boy and two girls, were sharing the elevator one day with a caretaker and a random adult (me). The boy was leaning against the back of the elevator, between the two girls. 'Help! I'm in a girl sandwich,' he said. 'If I'm not careful, I'm going to get cooties!' 'Kids still play Cooties?' I asked, surprised that cooties were not a relic of my Boomer childhood but had endured into the 21st century, still sparking alarm, feigned or real, among the young. 'Yeah-huh,' the boy said. One of the girls piped up: 'I know how to give a cootie shot.' She demonstrated on her own shoulder, her technique a bit of a blur. The kids and their caretaker got off on their floor, leaving me to ponder the cootie phenomenon for the first time in many decades. Beyond being amused, I was struck by the morbid salience of a children's game that mimics infection at a time when vaccine skepticism is on the rise and an outbreak of a non-pretend disease, measles, is threatening the lives of children in the Southwest. I learned that there is a vibrant if slender slice of academic literature on 'preadolescent cootie lore,' as one scholar puts it, and that this goofy grade-school fixation is more closely tied to real public-health concerns than you might think if your cootie expertise derives only from the playground. What exactly are cooties? Since at least the 1960s, field researchers have collected definitions of varying specificity from grammar-school respondents: 'boys' germs,' 'girls' germs,' 'something that kills you,' 'like germs, it has germs on it,' 'where somebody licks the bottom of the chair or eats paper.' Other experts speak of cooties in more anthropological terms. The University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee folklorist Simon J. Bronner has characterized cooties as a 'ritualized affliction.' In their seminal 1976 book, One Potato, Two Potato: The Folklore of American Children, Herbert and Mary Knapp described cooties as a kind of sport. 'There are no supervised Cootie leagues, but more people in the United States have played Cooties than have played baseball, basketball, and football combined,' they wrote. 'It's our unofficial national game.' Cooties certainly have something to do with hygiene. According to a (somewhat gross) analysis by Lawrence A. Hirschfeld, an anthropologist at the New School for Social Research, cooties are 'a social contaminant that pass from one child to another,' made up of 'the invisible particulates associated with germs, farts, or 'boogers.'' They seem to draw upon children's anxieties about illness and doctors but also gender, reflecting the confusing mix of flirtation and social opprobrium attached to boy-girl relations (and not entirely absent from adult life). Beyond that, Hirschfeld concludes, 'Cootie lore is not conceptually orderly.' Cootie history is clearer. The word itself began life as a British colonial term, probably a corruption of kutu, a Malay word for lice and other biting insects. American soldiers picked it up, as it were, from their allies during World War I. A New York Times report from 1918, headlined 'Doughboys Lose Cooties,' described soldiers who 'scratch with a vengeance' lining up at a 'Disinfecting Plant' run by the American Red Cross. One 'lanky New England lad' exclaims, 'I've got all the cooties in France.' In the 1920s, games referencing cooties became popular at bridal showers, in honor of grooms who had served in Europe (and also provoked, perhaps, by sublimated anxiety about other communicable diseases they might have brought home). One version involved drawing separate parts of a bug, based on rolls of a dice, until a winner had a completed louse. This practice evolved into Cootie, the game in which kids assemble plastic insects with fiddlehead-fern-like proboscises, which was introduced nationwide in 1949 and is still manufactured today. The invisible-particulate form of cooties appears to have hit American playgrounds sometime in the 1930s, but surveys suggest that it didn't become ubiquitous until the early '50s, at the height of the polio epidemic. Before the polio vaccine was introduced in 1955, tens of thousands of children were catching the disease every year; thousands of them died, and more were left paralyzed. In his book Explaining Traditions: Folk Behavior in Modern Culture, Bronner writes that cooties and cootie shots—'circle circle, dot dot' being one classic formulation—were a way for children 'to dramatize the dread of the disease.' Cooties was also popular during the '80s, when kids were hearing a lot about AIDS. This kind of imitative play—not just Cooties but also House or Cops and Robbers—helps children make sense of the world. Like nursery rhymes, it can also be commentary, even a kind of satiric outsider art. As Iona Opie, a pioneering British children's folklorist, once observed: 'Step into the playground; a kind of defiant lightheartedness envelops you. The children are … making fun of life.' This was apparently very much the case during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. Bronner told me that while schools were shut down and kids were isolated at home, they began sending one another memes in which cooties tended to represent a kind of generalized pandemic funk. Moreover, the senders often depicted themselves as babies—in Bronner's interpretation, a humorous expression of their frustration at not being able to do normal kid things. I suppose it is comforting that, five years after COVID-19 was first declared a pandemic, my elevator acquaintances had returned to an in-person style of cootie play, acting out their venerable parody of infection and protecting themselves with shots in the arm. But the epidemiological satire takes on an especially dark cast when it expresses more faith in the power of vaccination than does the current secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Kennedy has dismissed the scientifically proven efficacy of the polio vaccine as 'mythology,' despite polio having been considered eradicated in the U.S. since 1979. (Before he was confirmed, a spokesperson noted: 'Mr. Kennedy believes the polio vaccine should be available to the public and thoroughly and properly studied.' Not quite a full-throated endorsement.) He has also sown doubt about vaccines at a time when vaccine hesitancy is fueling a historic and frightening measles outbreak in the Southwest, which has now infected more than 600 people in the U.S. and killed two unvaccinated children in Texas—the first measles deaths in America in a decade. An adult who died in New Mexico was also found to be infected with measles. (Outside the U.S., the health secretary of Chihuahua, Mexico, announced that an unvaccinated man had died of measles in connection with the Texas outbreak.) Kennedy has spoken about the benefits of the MMR vaccine but also continues to undermine its safety and efficacy. He has repeatedly emphasized parental choice in vaccination and, as The Atlantic reported, told the grieving father of one Texas child, 'You don't know what's in the vaccine anymore.' He insists on promoting unproven alternative treatments such as cod-liver oil (a source of vitamin A), antibiotics, and steroids; in a Fox News interview, he claimed that these can lead to 'an almost miraculous and instantaneous recovery.' According to actual virologists, this is a prodigious exaggeration of vitamin A's efficacy, and in the case of the other supposed miracle cures, it's pure invention. A cootie shot might be an even more fanciful treatment, but, unlike with vitamin A, overdoing it won't lead to liver damage, which Texas pediatricians told The New York Times they are now seeing in unvaccinated young patients, whose parents were presumably paying Kennedy heed. When so many adults seem intent on returning to the Dark Ages, we must cherish medical wisdom wherever we find it. In 2025, the cootie shot stands as an inadvertent rebuke to the nation's top health official, in that it emphasizes vaccines' very real efficacy against disease. I wonder if the HHS secretary has ever heard this anecdote from his own family history. On February 25, 1923, his grandmother Rose Kennedy recorded the following in her journal: 'Joe Jr. and Jack have a new song about the Bedbugs and the Cooties. Also a club where they initiate new members by sticking pins into them.' Did RFK Jr.'s uncles (who had likely received smallpox vaccinations) invent cootie shots? A topic for further research.
