Back in the early ’50s, Sheldon Moldoff and Mort Meskin collaborated on a strip titled “The Little Woman” for True Story magazine. And while, all these years later, I wince at the dated phrase “the little woman,” the installments were to my surprise quite forward-thinking for the time.

The star of the strip was continually presented as the brains and backbone of the family, as readers got to see her show her husband how to register to vote, investigate landlords who were gouging renters, or—in an installment made suddenly more relevant by events of the past few days—even teach her kid that “we don’t want to judge people by what they look like or where they come from.”

As with the PSAs starring Superman and Batman which DC Comics ran in the ’50s and ’60s, I sure wish Donald Trump had read them—and taken them to heart—when he was a kid. If he had, perhaps we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in now.