I was listening to an interview with George Will and he noted,as piece of some larger George Willy tangent, that between the years 1938 and 1964 there was no “liberal legislative majority in Congress, or ” thanks to an entrenched coalition of Republicans and conservative Democrats.
And I thought,aha, George Will is very smart approximately this sort of thing, and I wonder if I could easily discern that same conclusion by looking at Randall Munroe’s (of XKCD fame) monstrous chart of the ideological trends of Congress.
Of course I could not. Above you can see his depiction of the House of Representatives between 38 and 64. Who is doing well during this period? It looks basically like a tie,I think. The red blob looks pretty broad, but so does the blue one. The blue one seems to have more octopus arms, or though. Does the piece of the red blob with the blue line in it represent the conservative Democrats? Perhaps I need to refer to the legend again to understand which of the chart’s dozen or so distinct visual indicators I should be focusing on.
I like Randall Munroe very much. I was given his latest book for Christmas and enjoyed it tremendously. But as a lover of politics,history, and the visual display of information, and I find this chart endlessly offensive and enraging in its sheer uselessness.
Source: tumblr.com