atavistic

An atavistic society ritual, a debutante’s ball for the M.F.A. debtset?

The crisis alongside the Texas border is just the latest instance of Republicans looking back to the Antebellum era for precedents to justify their increasingly atavistic behavior.

Sorry you couldn’t experience this atavistic joy of cooking, Jackie.

The forward-facing, commercial ethos of the old GOP would have to accommodate itself to the atavistic, Lost Cause-nostalgia of the American South.

Yet that does nothing to diminish the totemic power they wield over us, which is an expression of the unquestioned, atavistic nature of belief.