An entertaining 1987 persuasive map offering a liberal caricature of the world view of President Ronald Reagan.

The map uses a pictorial style to depict the United States and Soviet Union wildly out of scale with the rest of the world. Reagan in full gunfighter regalia stands astride a hypertrophied California, while a dour Gorbachev, wearing what appears to be a bear skin, stands at the ready. The two men gaze warily at one another, hands hovering above their six-shooters.

In this rather ungenerous take on Reagan’s world view few are spared: There are of course “The Evil Empire,” “Libyan Terrorists,” “Drug Pushers” (aka South America), and “Democrats and Welfare Bums” (aka the Northeast). But even many of America’s allies come off poorly: Canada is “Acidrainia (A Subsidiary of USA Corp.)”, the Western Europeans are “Socialists and Pacifist Wimps,” and Australia has been reduced to “Kangaroos.”

This map was drawn by David Horsey (1951-), at the time a Pulitzer-winning cartoonist for the Seattle Post Intelligencer and now at the Los Angeles Times. It updates a 1982 Horsey map of the same title, also featuring Ronald Reagan but replacing Brezhnev with Gorbachev and adding portraits of Margaret Thatcher, Daniel Ortega and Muammar Quaddafi.

References

OCLC 30812627 et al, listing a total of 8 institutional holdings as of September 2017. Not in Rumsey or Persuasive Cartography: The PJ Mode Collection.