Editor, Gazette-Journal:

This president’s “Make America Great Again” slogan may be code for “Take America Back to the 1950s.” I grew up in the ’50s, and there were indeed some good things about that era, but I don’t want to go back.

I liked those cool little triangular vent-windows on cars, and the foot-operated headlight dimmer switches. But the cars were basically death traps with metal dashboards and no seat belts. After the 1950s the federal government required car makers to build safer vehicles that saved many lives.

The U.S. economy boomed in the ’50s, largely because other countries were devastated during the war. But how did we treat our own people?

Many women were discriminated against in the workplace, and excluded from schools such as the University of Virginia. Blacks were treated even worse, forced to suffer indignities too extensive to describe here.

As for the environment, it was culturally acceptable to throw trash ou...