To the editor:

Appreciations to Jeff Southard for his letter of Oct. 22 in which he responds to the Trumpian call to “take America back.” As the letter asks, “back from what?”

The letter recalls another Trumpianism, to “Make America great again.” Many have asked, “When did America become less than great? And great how? In its scientific achievements? Its love for its citizens? Its respect by other great nations?” (How much of this respect will remain if Trump succeeds in this election?)

Both these Trumpian imbecilities reflect a shallow sense of the past untested by serious reading and inquiry. Nazis, the Klan, sports booster clubs have reveled in it. Religious history, used as myth, bears responsibility for many episodes of forcing inhumanity on the body politic. This is imagined convincingly by Margaret Atwood in “The Handmaid’s Tale,” a book that justifies her conclusion that the past, far from being a safe guide, “is a great darkness and full of echoes.”

Richard F. Hardin,

Lawrence