Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for September 08, 2010

She will deal with it, one way or another.

So GT means to work a psychotic episode into Doonesbury? And with B.D. playing the psychiatrist?

Oh well, as Brewwitch and the rest who deplore Trudeau’s psychobabble would say, it’s just a comic strip. GT would never depict the tragedy of a young man ruined by war. Doesn’t every vet turn into a mature, thoughtful citizen like B.D.?

Those who read the comics to escape from politics and life’s complications will do themselves a favor by avoiding Doonesbury.

I wonder if this is common among returning soldiers?

Thank god that Alex hid the gun! Considering the amount of damage done to Leo by the IED, it’s not surprising he has plenty of animosity toward whoever was involved in making and planting it. Odds are high that Iraqis were involved, so there is a strong connection in Leo’s mind between Iraqis and very bad things happening to him. Of course, he’s angry and would like to get even. It’s going to take him a long time to get over the trauma, if he ever does. There are many veterans in this situation. You might not want to hear about it, but PTSD and TBI are real.

It seems as if GT wants to explore the great toll taken by PTSD, not only on the veteran but by their loved ones and those around them as well.

I’ve known several vets from wars as early as WWII with PTSD. For some, it stays with them the rest of their lives. To think it is anything but real is to not know very many who’ve been there.

I think I will just avoid (and ignore) certain posters and do myself a favor.

It’s not some modern invention, either. During WWI, the term was “shell shock” because then people thought that it was due to the sounds from the constant barrage of shelling. Soldiers and veterans had the same experiences of flashbacks, depression/apathy, heightened response to unexpected noises, etc..

It’s perfectly legit to put BD into the role of mentor. He’s a retired officer. He might be an idiot in some respects but he appears to have made a bleeep good officer, and that’s the hat he’s putting on now. Appropriate as heck.

How come the nannybot bleeeps “d…a…r…n” but lets “heck” right on through?

Just so you know … I am a college professor. One of my students, a vet who served in Iraq, had a required course taught by an Iraqi professor. The professor has been in this country for years, longer than the student has been alive, but the trauma was great. We found an alternative for the student, but he was just as angry and had the same kind of aggressive feelings as Toggle.

The Vets have honored Trudeau for bringing these stories to light. There is a framed article hanging at my VA clinic.

Though it seems Leo has a pretty bad case of PTSD(and really, if HE wouldn’t, who would?), it doesn’t take a large trauma to damage someone pyschologically. My maternal grandfather was in the European Theater in WW2, and I don’t ever once remember hearing the man talk about the war, not even in passing. My mom said he always refused to do so even when she was a little girl; nothing horrifically bad happened to him, he just didn’t want to dredge up the memories.

“Trudeau’s psychobabble”…? Try again. Use a mirror this time.

B.D. was a football star who used his leadership skills to survive the war, but his “mentoring” of Leo comes too late and too little. If Alex hadn’t hidden the gun, Leo would have toggled over from heroic survivor to murderer and B.D. would be consoling him in prison.

His name reminds us that Toggle stands for the precariousness of life. It can go either way, depending on which influence (Alex’s love and foresight, awakened memories of fear and hatred) prevails.

well, war IS hell

Doonesbury’s continued respect for both soldiers & civilians and, particularly, the costs of war at home make a strong case against war and highlight the thoughtless callousness of Bush-Dick, starting two wars simply to line his friends’ pockets and to extend American hegemony through the Middle East.

Feeney is correct: P.T.S.D. has been around a long time. Virginia Woolf, in her beautiful book, Mrs. Dalloway, describes the mental horrors of a returning veteran, perhaps more horrible, because there was no official diagnosis for what ailed him.

Drome, sometimes you are a good close reader; sometimes, not so good, and you consistently have an unfortunate tendency to stoop to symbolism. Leo knew that his gun was not in his truck. He might have used it to kill the Iraqi; he might not have. In this week’s strips, Leo makes a strong case for gun control, too.

Okay, somebody fill me in. I know what PTSD is, but what is TBI?

Traumatic Brain Injury.

traumatic brain injury

Actually, Radish, during the 19th century and into the 20th century, doctors were looking for physical reasons for psychological disorders, hence, a 19th century soldier displaying symptoms we associate with PTSD would be diagnosed with “nostalgia” or “soldier’s heart”, and doctors actually believed it to be brought on by stresses to the heart.

True, “shell shock” in WWI was believed to be caused by nerve damage from shelling, but you are defining the symptoms more narrowly than the doctors did back then. There were “shell shock wounds” which appear to have included combat stress reactions, and “shell shock sickness” which included the lingering symptoms of PTSD. These were believed to be physical wounds resulting in behavioral disorders. Psychology was still in its infancy.

By WWII we were calling it battle fatigue or combat fatigue, and we were starting to understand it as a psychological disorder, but still confusing it with a type of exhaustion.

The point is, some form of what we now call PTSD has always existed.

I love Neolib’s prescription for ending war. Just control guns! That would eliminate much of life’s uncertainty.

Does Neolib fear that her neighbor has a gun, I wonder? While we’re at it, let’s pass a law forbidding Iran to develop nuclear warheads.

algurka, TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) is physical damage to the brain caused by external forces, which in this case accounts for Toggle’s aphasia (speech disorder). Although blast waves can cause TBI (during WWI, many of the symptoms were also lumped in under “shell shock,” see my earlier post), TBI can also be caused by rapid acceleration/deceleration (car accidents included), or actually having something pierce your skull and enter the brain.

Always have a backup gun ;)

“Leo knew that his gun was not in his truck” (BrianCrook).

Then why does he confess that he “lost it” when he left the classroom to get his gun? Maybe he FORGOT that he already “knew that his gun” had been hidden by Alex?

Either way, Toggle realizes he tried to kill an innocent student. The sad part is that he finds it hard to talk about it, particularly with sympathizers who have never “lost it” themselves—-or if they have, find it easy to blame somebody else: evil forces like Cheney, for instance.

Chrisnip, Thanks, As a teenager, I knew several WWI vets including one who worked for my father and thus was a coworker to me. He was a great fellow but would get upset by the wrong smell. He had been a victim of gas attacks in the trenches and had limited lung function.

TYEFCAAIOECVAS! (Thank you everyone for clarifying another acronym in our ever confusing vocabulary and society!) Now that you’ve explained it, I do seem to remember TBI being mentioned with Toggle’s injury. Unfortunately, I suffer from CRS.

Alex deserves a medal! She just helped save at least two lives. I shudder to think what could’ve happened if the gun was still in the truck…

We can define Leo’s “lost it” as a sudden rush of overwhelming conflicting emotions: a desire to kill, a desire to flee, a knowledge that these desires are irrational, a fear of such a rush of emotions that one may be going crazy.

Drome, you presume that Leo left the classroom to get his gun. He may have left the room because he “lost it” (see above). Many of those emotions would motivate one to “flee”, as Leo put it.

As for his ability to talk about it, anyone would find it difficult, and Leo’s aphasia just makes communication slightly more difficult. Pointing out that Leo’s P.T.S.D. & that of thousands of others along with the many other atrocities of this war are Bush-Dick’s fault is what we, not suffering right this second w/ P.T.S.D., should continue to do, so that we have no more wars.

@palin drome, Why do you read this comic????

I like that Trudeau is exploring this aspect of a soldier’s life, but I wish he’d be able to keep his personal politics a bit more distant.

The only reason Toggle says “Because gun not in truck” is that Trudeau’s a big supporter of gun control.

Why do I read this comic? Because I like to see how GT copes with his resentment of the world’s imperfections. Readers who are happier ignoring the imperfections can ignore the comments (GT’s or his readers’) as well. Or they can fixate on a better, future world, as BrianCrook prefers to do when he reinterprets Trudeau’s satire as optimistically as he can.

@iamthelorax -

The genius of Trudeau is how he shows the political views in terms everyone understands. People going through their lives, dealing with choices and consequences.

Drome’s reading of my comments says more about Drome than it does about my comments or me. I welcome his/her continuing to read Doonesbury, however. It remains one of the great comic strips.

“Because I like to see how GT copes with his resentment of the world’s imperfections.”

You left out “and I like to troll”.

Ancient Greeks and even Spartans knew what PTSD was, they just didn’t define it. “Lost it” carries different connotations, and while I held no animus toward Vietnamese, Bob McNamara, or today, Cheney, in my presence might “toggle”. Going into law enforcement, “containing” situations without undue violence, or gun use, helped me adjust to my PTSD, not “get over it”, but handle it. After 43 years I still have it, and just this morning had to use “technique” to suppress reaction to several progressive inputs that were “negative”.

Hang in there Toggle, and stay with him B.D., and thank you G.T. for making the effort to clarify to a public unwilling to accept the consequences of their actions, in starting wars, the cost of their actions- on we who face the field, not just listen to Glenn Beck, or rants from Rush.

This is just awful…a national shame…and people are concerned about a mosque…we have more to fear from the anger within ourselves. J

Good post, @dtroutma.

Brian, thanks for getting your daily dose of BlameBush on record.

Btw, for those who are confused, Afghanistan is Obama’s war. He campaigned on it, he surged it, he approved the strategy, and he appointed the leadership of it. You don’t hear Rush and Beck pumping it up, although they see the value of it, as does Obama. Obama’s concern, as was Bush’s, isn’t really Afghanistan but Pakistan, which has nuclear weapons that the terrorists would love to send over to the good ‘ol USA.

As to the strip, we don’t know if Toggle was going to shoot anyone, although he was upset enough to want to. The gun mention is just GT’s version of a punchline. Had Toggle really wanted to kill his classmate, he wouldn’t need his gun to do it.

Fairportfan2: Is that sarcasm I sense? :) I love it! I do like Dr.Seuss, but I’m not a “tree-hugging liberal”.

I didn’t mean to say his views are bad. It’s just that sometimes Trudeau likes to preach his views, and that little “gun not in truck” bit sounds more to me like an injection of politics than a part of the story.

“Had Toggle really wanted to kill his classmate, he wouldn’t need his gun to do it.”

So true!

It’s also proof he didn’t really lose it but was following pre-programmed actions. I suspect we will see a lot more of this story playing with all these elements.

That GT gets folks riled is something we can all agree on.

Eight years of trying to ruin America, Nemesys, wouldn’t you expect that we blame Bush-Dick? No president could clean up all of Bush-Dick’s ruination is 20 months. America will be cleaning up after the Bush-Dick presidency for a long time.

We can discuss Afghanistan whenever you want, but Leo was in IRAQ, which was indubitably Bush-Dick’s war—criminal, bloody, & costly (and if you had any backbone, then you would be there)—, and Obama is ending it.

As for Afghanistan & Pakistan, I agree that Pakistan is a problem, but it has been a problem for a long time. The U.S. helped fund its nuclear weapons program, and it has an unstable government with a group of insurgent religious fanatics. If Bush-Dick had not begun a war in Iraq, then the Afghan-Paki war might be over.

In re “Rush and Beck”: I would not hear them say anything, because no one of any sense listens to either the little fuzzball or the big fat mouth.

Redbear, Doonesbury never riles me. Sometimes I tire of the same punch lines or of some characters (Duke & Earl, to name two, though I’d love to know what’s going on with Honey, a woman who needed a life), but Doonesbury is a great strip.

I have really liked what GT has done with B.D. and the military angle. B.D. used to be a “Dumb Jock” but he became a caring husband and a good Officer. And he continues to try to take care of is comrades. Toggle is one of the many vet’s who have returned home with serious injuries and G.T. uses these episoides to try and explain the difficulties they have. Can you imagine what it would be like to realize that if your GF had not hid it you would have killed some innocent person without thinking. And his reaction tells us how much that scares him. These are the ones we should worry about helping even though we can hardly understand their problems.

palin drome said, about 19 hours ago

“So GT means to work a psychotic episode into Doonesbury? And with B.D. playing the psychiatrist?”

All the empathy of a chickenhawk!

PalinDrone> Get Out Of The Kitchen.

GT knows. It’s his job. Humor is the only saving grace our “civilization” has going for it. MASH* – Catch 22 – daytime soaps.

And, yes, sometimes GT has to preach to a reluctant choir.

Orgelspieler said, How come the nannybot bleeeps “d…a…r…n” but lets “heck” right on through?

Damned if I know.

DirtyDragon said, “Because I like to see how GT copes with his resentment of the world’s imperfections.”

You left out “and I like to troll”.

I have disagreed with Palin Drome, and I have agreed Palin Drome, but I have never considered anything s/he said to be trolling. PD is too smart for that.

Smart has nothing to do with trolling. It’s all about how willing one is to toss decorum aside and taunt people, for whatever reason.

Sort of like some Yankee fan going to a Red Sox home game in full regalia. And being very boisterous. That’s my opinion of Palin Drome. This isn’t isolated behavior from that poster.

There’s plenty of places on the internet to complain about ‘that pinko Trudeau’ - generally people who read Doonesbury would be Trudeau fans.