Aw, c'mon! Mel's smarter than that.

In the 50-years-ago-today Flashback strip Trudeau sticks it to F.B.I. director J. Edgar Hoover with that reference to their "top secret F.B.I. file room." Just months earlier, on March 8, 1971, the F.B.I. office in a Philly suburb was burgled by the unknown Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the F.B.I., which made off with a treasure trove of embarrassing documents detailing the F.B.I.’s illegal activities. Journalist Betty Medsger broke the story days later in The Washington Post and her 2014 book The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret F.B.I. tells the story, as does the 2014 documentary 1971.

Weaponizing the truth, Mel's not one jot partisan; she's on the front lines to defend us against domestic enemies. Huzzah. 

Just noticed the first panel in the strip from 5 years ago today, about 2016 post-election shock. Shadowy figures in the background seem to be saluting with a single arm outstretched as if to be saying, "Heil Hitler" and the red, white and blue balloons all seem to be somewhat deflated, or am I reading too much into it?...

How could you move to another subject without resolving the Kim-Mike downsizing trauma?

Oh Roland, welcome back. You have been missed. 

Re today's Flashback strip from '01, when Boopsie is applying to appear on "Survivor": perhaps the czar of "The Apprentice" missed his real calling. 

On the bright side, at least that thing must have had a low carbon footprint!

Prescience rears its head once more. Make America Mighty Again!

Let's hope the select committee on the 1/6 siege can start to turn the tide against the real steal (of our democracy). Otherwise -- as today's strip vividly augurs -- we may look forward to generations of Americans eating crow. On Independence Day, one weeps for the land we may lose.

On today's Doonesbury Flashbacks page, we are treated to four strips featuring Davenports, beginning with the poignant moment of Dick's death when the birds came. Over the years, the Davenports have been perhaps my favorite characters. They were the last good Republicans -- G. H. W. Bush and Barbara may have been the real world equivalents. Always glad to see them.

Just as I suspected, Garry (under the guise of Phred) is Q, and has been posting cryptic, subliminal messages since at least 1996!

While researching a book, the late Pulitzer laureate Tony Horwitz (a DC native) did some re-enactment himself. Unfortunately, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War (1998) has proven more prescient than he might have thought. So now the Lost Causers' casus belli is that Trump won because he says so. Trouble is, if they fight on flaccidly opposed, they may yet prevail. Pity. 

Harassed by an open carrier in a recent Flashback, Leo finds his voice to point out how wounded vets fought for freedoms that include such bravado. Let's hope Mel finds hers, to get through to some hard brass skulls that washing one's hands of internecine assault does our nation no favors. In the wake of 1/6, with Chief Deputy Whip Dan Kildee (among others, no doubt) reeling from "Post-Trump Stress Disorder," one holds one's breath for Mel. Again. All the more, come to think of it, since our ex-Commander-in-Chief admits (on tape) to habitual sexual assault -- and has been credibly charged with rape. 

As best my Flashback surfing can determine, June 11, 1971's slapstick abuse of his younger brother Benjy/Sal seems to mark Michael's last Feifferesque portrayal as a mouthless rube. Though still a rube, he thenceforth seems to possess a mouth where once there was a gap.

Just a nod (replete with extrapolated irony) to a 15-years-ago-today Flashback shoutout. Unable (it turns out) to "crisply" reply to each missive, Editor/Duty Officer David Stanford likely can't even leap tall buildings in a single bound; force Mexico to pay for a wall it doesn't want; buy Greenland; or balance the budget without taxing the rich. Shame!

"Everyone looks American, because Americans are from everywhere." As timely today as ever. 

Somehow I missed the blending of the Doonesbury nuclear family consisting of Mike, Kim, and Alex. Kim's knack for not condescending to a seven-year-old is surprising and sweet. Only in Doonesbury does a kid like Alex get the role-model parent-surrogate she truly deserves.

In The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump (2017) and elsewhere, mental health pros raise the specter of high-placed malignant narcissism. Now Mark chats with a pathological lie-writ-large (spreading, indeed, like cancer). In all, illness as metaphor speaks volumes; Trump's paths of glory lead but to the morgue. Physically and otherwise, our body politic has become one sick puppy. To deny that plain truth is to bode its demise. (Sad.)

Wait, the Kim in today's 1996 Classic strip is the same Kim as the little orphan girl from Vietnam? The little girl who was sitting in her high chair, looking suspiciously at her oatmeal until her mother explained those were raisins (and not shrapnel as she suspected)?