President Trump campaigned on making ’Merica first with nostalgia for the past, his slogan calling to make ’Merica great “again.” And indeed, he has recreated many of the most notable moments in past American history. He made ’Merica first all right. We’re first in total covid-19 infections and deaths.

Here’s what’s back under Trump: the pandemic of 1918, and the widespread death associated with it; the Republican Great Depression of 1929 and the widespread economic pain associated with it; white supremacists like the rise of the Ku Klux Klan after the failure of the Reconstruction; and the race riots of the 1960s, once again setting our cities on fire.

Trump said he would “drain the swamp,” but he has put in power people who I believe are loyal toadies who would lie and cheat for him: at the Department of Justice with William Barr, at the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of the Interior with a couple of fossil-fuel lobbyists, at the Federal Communications Commission with a Verizon lawyer, at the Department of Education with a billionaire hack who hates public schools, and a former defense lobbyist in charge of the Pentagon.

Which raises the question: What else will he bring back? Another world war if he wins reelection? Another civil war if he loses? Or might he take us in an entirely new direction, back to the past in other ways — fascism and brutal military intervention on U.S. soil?

Lawrence Josephs

Penn Township, Westmoreland County

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