Click here to view entire Doonesbury comic a portion of which is shown above.

The first story I read this morning about Trump’s dementia was this on RawStory:

The RawStory article featured Dr. John D. Gartner, the founder of Duty to Warn. It linked to this longer Salon article which has other interviews in addition to the one with Gartner:

After reading this I looked at the Duty to Warn Facebook page where John Gartner posted a screen grab of the cartoon where the fictional psychologist was saying pretty much word for word what Gartner has been saying.

The psycholgist Elias isn’t a major character on Doonesbury. He’s decribed (on Wikpedia) as “A Puerto Rican Vietnam veteran. He’s B.D.’s counselor after the coming home from the Iraq War. He tries to help B.D. (left) and others to overcome their post-traumatic stress.” B.D. is listed second after Mike Doonesbury on the Wikipedia page. He has his own Wiki page here.

Here’s what psychologist Elias has to say about Trump’s dementia:

It’s possible that more people will read Dr. Elias’s views on Trump’s dementia than have read Dr. Gartner’s opinion even though the later expert (as you can see in a Google News search) has being quoted more than any other.

This is the good psychogist’s conclusion:

I’ve lamented all along that our messages about Trump’s dementia are basically educating people who would never vote for Trump. After all, who reads Salon, RawStory, or listens to John Gartner being interiewed by David Pakman on his podcast (here)? They are people who wouldn’t vote for Trump if he was running against Bart Simpson. For that matter aside from you, dear reader, who reads blog stories like this one of mine?

The people who read such articles in the progressive media are being informed but they won’t be voting for Trump. Making it into Doonesbury is a real coup… the kind of coup we like. While it isn’t the same as Fox News where the likes of Jessie Watters would issue an historic mea culpa about Trump and saying he was wrong and the man is insane and demented, or William Barr being treated for his psychosis (read my blog about him) and saying he’s voting for Biden, at least this strip and it’s message will be read by some who aren’t already in the tank for Trump.

It may not be a massive number of people, after all Doonesbury is, dare I suggest, mostly read by people who are intelligent rational thinkers who skew decidely progressive in their views. However, there may be some Trump supporters who read it because it is in a publication they already read. I don’t know how many newspapers publish it today but in 2010 it was 1,400.

Here’s an excellent essay about the history and cultural significance of Doonesbury.

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