asymmetry

The Overton Window

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— 4 min read

Overton window

Joseph Overton, (Jan 4, 1960 – June 30, 2003), was a political scientist at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a free-market think tank in Michigan.


He developed a model describing how the “range of politically acceptable ideas and policies expands or contracts based on prevailing public sentiment and elite opinion.”

Overton developed the framework in the mid-1990s to describe the strategic function of think tanks, such as his own employer’s, in advocating bold, initially unpopular ideas to gradually normalize them within public discourse, thereby influencing legislative agendas.

Sound familiar?

  • Think the unthinkable;
  • Say the unspeakable;
    • Flood the channels
    • The unthinkable and unspeakable become policy…

The Overton window is the range of policies and ideas that the public considers acceptable or mainstream at any given time. The idea is simple: 

  • politicians can only act within the window of what the public will tolerate without losing their jobs at the next election…

”The concept underscores that policy feasibility depends less on inherent merit alone and more on positioning ideas within a "window" of tolerability, challenging policymakers and advocates to push boundaries systematically rather than merely reacting to current norms.”

The Overton window has gained widespread adoption in political analysis worldwide.

The window moves, with every election cycle, as the voters favour or disfavour new, radical policy positions; 

  • gay marriage, abortion rights, cannabis legalisation…
    • the Overton window moves more or less quickly, or slowly…
    • It can be nudged gradually, or
    • deliberately torched. 
  • The mechanism is: introduce an extreme position, let it sit in public discourse long enough that it stops shocking, and suddenly the previously unthinkable becomes debatable, then acceptable, then policy. Each outrage normalises the next one.
  • The graphic illustrates this principle in action in bending opinion and policy away from full support, in US and Canada, for Israel towards a more qualified support for Israel over the past decade or so…

Case study- resisting ICE is lawful


ICE’s methods are a breach of the law; deliberately so, with ill will, violence and malice aforethought. Unprovoked masked gunmen terrorising and brutalising civilians is not legal in any democratic nation; and, utterly fails to qualify as any kind of law enforcement activity.

In real time, the instant the social contract is torn up, the government has lost all ethos and legitimacy and none of its institutions has any authority. 

(Note: The details are discussed in the adjacent post ‘Is resisting ICE breaking the law’).

https://physicsandfaith.org/ghost/#/editor/post/69a872e6bb6f0617012c41d6/

The window was supposed to be constrained by the structure. When the structure itself is gamed, the window has no walls, and collapses under its own weight…

Overton posited that-

Ideas do not change abruptly; they shift gradually within the public debate, influenced by political, media, and cultural narratives…

Well, under normal civil discourse standards, yes…

Assaulted by a tsunami of criminality, extreme bad faith, utter amorality, supreme indifference to ethics and law… not so much…

Trump and the Manipulation of the Overton Window


Donald Trump has mastered this mechanism from nursery onwards… it worked so well, it never needed refinement…

  • behave as badly as you wish, when challenged, abuse the critic, escalate with extreme false accusations; flood loudly across every channel; 
  • start other inflammatory hares running: Greenland, Venezuela, Cuba, NATO, piracy, Iran, Gaza, Gaza, and, did I mention, Gaza…
  • aand everyone’s forgotten the Epstein curated collection…
  • a massive wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, 
  • disbelief…
    • a topic of debate…
    • a campaign promise…
    • a partially implemented policy.

  • the forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza. 
  • absurd…
  • Instantly rejected…
  • blatant violation of international law…
    • discussion…
    • Once unthinkable, is now…
    • a hypothesis up for debate.

The objective is to modify mental frameworks and steer the debate toward new norms…

  • the more an idea is discussed, 
  • the more realistic it appears, 
    • even when it remains entirely 
    • incompatible with 
    • democratic and 
    • humanitarian principles.

This is not about what Trump has done. 

It is about what he’s normalised..

what we have accepted as common ‘fare’…


If the book of laws were flung at Trump, he’d come up trumps on every single, fucking, page; been there, done that, got the T shirt, seen the movie, got the book, can’t read (bone spurs, you see, in the eyes)…

He is the living embodiment of the principle of RAA applied to heinous conduct; reductio ad absurdum; he has taken every evil act, vice and deed, and lived them to the most extreme form; 

And, by doing so, legitimised it for anyone…

The Overton window on acceptable human conduct, at any and all levels, politics to discourse, civil to law, transaction to exchange, has no defining edges…










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