The Overton Window

[Occam's Banana]

https://x.com/oldbooksguy/status/1850552770295738422
to: https://x.com/oldbooksguy/status/1850554829128728853
{Jash Dholani @oldbooksguy | 27 October 2024}

This is Joe Overton

The famous "Overton Window" is named after him

It's the best mental model for understanding how political change ACTUALLY happens

A thread...

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1/ Overton was a libertarian political scientist. In the 1990s, while raising funds for rightwing thinktank "Makinac Center," he kept meeting donors who didn't understand what thinktanks actually do. He coined a new concept to solve this problem: Window of Political Possibilities

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2/ Overton argued that politicians are not leaders but followers

Since they want to get re-elected, they'll only turn those proposals into policy which already have some public appeal

A totally unpopular idea? Political suicide. Outside the "window of political possibilities"

3/ Overton argued that a think-tank's job is not to convince politicians, but their VOTERS

A great think-tank will—using research, writing, films, and advocacy—slide the window of political possibilities until their preferred proposal goes from unthinkable to acceptable

4/ You can't expect politicians to not respond to public will. Even Napoleon said: "Public opinion is the thermometer a monarch should constantly consult." But what you can do is persuade, nudge, seduce, and pull the public over to your side. This is why "Culture Wars" matter

5/ The best way to boil a frog is slowly

The best way to turn an unthinkable idea into a popular law is not via the parliament but the public square

Politics is downstream of song lyrics, viral tweets, movie plots, museum exhibitions. First normalize, then legalize...

6/ In 2003, Joe Overton tragically crashed his one-seat aircraft and died. He was only 43. His think-tank colleague Joseph Lehman renamed the "Window of Political Possibilities" into the "Overton Window"

The rest is history...

7/ Moldbug writes: "Cthulhu only swims left." That is, with local variations, the Overton window in modern politics only shifts leftward. She/her pronouns went from a tumblr micro-trend to official Kamala Harris speeches in less than 10 years. Is Moldbug right?

8/ 2024 is proof that with the right combination of free speech, ungovernable billionaires, & feisty schizo edits, Cthulhu can swim right. Yesterday's sacred truism is the butt of today's joke. Much that was revered in 2018 is mocked in 2024. The Overton Window has shifted right

9/ When people online say "Just be Normal Bro" - they're saying "Just be inside the Overton Window Bro"

THAT is where most people are ever going to be - inside the Overton Window

The window itself can never be destroyed - people need psychic orientation. Too much light blinds..

There are decades when the Overton Window slides by micrometers...there are weeks when it slides by a mile

Post well, friends! For you, too, can slide the window...

 

[TheTexan]

It's pretty fucked that we're at a point where 50% of your income going to various taxes is "Policy" and anything less than 48% of your income going to various taxes is "Unthinkable"

 

[Occam's Banana]

It's pretty fucked that we're at a point where 50% of your income going to various taxes is "Policy" and anything less than 48% of your income going to various taxes is "Unthinkable"

"That's just normal, bro!"

 

[Matt Collins]

The Overton Window is a myth. It's just something the political class wants you to believe exists.

 

[Occam's Banana]

The Overton Window is a myth. It's just something the political class wants you to believe exists.

Of course the "Overton Window" exists. It's just a label for a particular analytical approach to framing, characterizing, and describing how political, cultural, and social attitudes shift and change over time. You might disagree with that approach, or think there are better ones - but saying that it doesn't "exist" is just silly.

 

[Henry Rogue]

Of course the "Overton Window" exists. It's just a label for a particular analytical approach to framing, characterizing, and describing how political, cultural, and social attitudes shift and change over time. You might disagree with that approach, or think there are better ones - but saying that it doesn't "exist" is just silly.

The Gnome knows.

 

[Matt Collins]

Of course the "Overton Window" exists. It's just a label for a particular analytical approach to framing, characterizing, and describing how political, cultural, and social attitudes shift and change over time. You might disagree with that approach, or think there are better ones - but saying that it doesn't "exist" is just silly.

Perhaps but it's usually used as a way to tell people what kind of speech and policies are acceptable and reasonable, which of course is complete BS. As Tom Woods says, "the index card of allowable opinions"

 

[Occam's Banana]

Perhaps but it's usually used as a way to tell people what kind of speech and policies are acceptable and reasonable, which of course is complete BS. As Tom Woods says, "the index card of allowable opinions"

I don't recall ever having seen it used to tell people what they should or shouldn't say or believe, or what policies they should or shouldn't support. I have only seen it used as a generic label to denote whatever things "normal" people happen to think (or are told) are "acceptable and reasonable" at any given time (regardless of what those things might actually might be). IOW: The "Overton Window" is just a metaphor that serves the same analytical purpose as the "index card" analogy.

There is always going to be some such "window" or "index card". As noted in the OP, "the window itself can never be destroyed - people need psychic orientation"

For any ideological movement, the point is not to deny the existence of the "window" (or "index card"), which is just bizarre and makes no sense. The point is to shift the "window" (or to edit 'the "index card"). Unfortunately, the progressive left has been the most successful at doing that. That is what needs to change ... and perhaps it finally is. Perhaps Cthulhu is starting to "swim right", as suggested in the OP. If so, then libertarians should try to take full advantage of the opportunity.

 

[Invisible Man]

Perhaps but it's usually used as a way to tell people what kind of speech and policies are acceptable and reasonable, which of course is complete BS. As Tom Woods says, "the index card of allowable opinions"

I would make the exact opposite argument.

Shifting the Overton Window is precisely why we should explicitly advocate unpopular policies. The more people hear these policies being advocated the more they will start to see them as part of the acceptable range of views.

This is why the silly philosophy of one of the admins here, who thinks that we shouldn't make posts that are favorable to so-called "price gauging" or eating cats, because these views are unpopular, is so backwards and unbecoming of this website and its mission.

 

[Occam's Banana]

Shifting the Overton Window is precisely why we should explicitly advocate unpopular policies. The more people hear these policies being advocated the more they will start to see them as part of the acceptable range of views.

The "Overton Window" (or the "index card of allowable opinion") is merely what Ron Paul refers to in the quote below as "the center of political debate":

THREAD: Purism is Practical​

As is so often the case, Ron Paul is exactly and entirely correct:

"Those who advocate a so-called extreme position can often move the center of political debate closer to the pure libertarian position." -- Ron Paul

By definition, any compromise will always be a reconciliation between extremes (where an "extreme" is the full set of whatever a given side of a compromise actually wants, as distinct from what that side will actually be able to get). If gradualist reformers are to be effective, then for any reformative compromise to significantly skew our way, gradualist reformers must be "backstopped" by those who are willing and able to be more vocally absolutist and radical. Otherwise, the "spectrum of possibility" (so to speak) will be foreshortened, and gradualist reformism (rather than absolutist radicalism) will be the "extreme" upon which any compromise will be erected (to the dissatisfaction and disappointment of both gradualist reformers and absolutist radicals).

[...]

 

[Brian4Liberty]

I would make the exact opposite argument.

Shifting the Overton Window is precisely why we should explicitly advocate unpopular policies. The more people hear these policies being advocated the more they will start to see them as part of the acceptable range of views.

This is why the silly philosophy of one of the admins here, who thinks that we shouldn't make posts that are favorable to so-called "price gauging" or eating cats, because these views are unpopular, is so backwards and unbecoming of this website and its mission.

Your desire to eat cats and dogs is not part of the mission of this website, nor is it to "advocate" the "unthinkable-radical" practice of eating dogs and cats. You are free to post about it all you want, and others are free to disagree with you, although you may be forever mentally damaged by such disagreement.

Ignoring what is considered "policy-popular-sensible-acceptable" in any given debate is a recipe for failure, and no way to utilize the Overton Window model. It is akin to denying reality, which often seems to be your modus operandi.

 

[PAF]

The current state of the nation: More Left of Center than before.

The Overton Window keeps moving in that direction. At that rate, the Overton Window won't work or matter anymore due to everything collapsing, and then history repeats itself and tries socialism/communism/fascism/whatever again - as long as people get to rely on others.

So there.

See "Everybody Wants Some" by Van Halen for reference.

 

[Invisible Man]

Your desire to eat cats and dogs is not part of the mission of this website, nor is it to "advocate" the "unthinkable-radical" practice of eating dogs and cats. You are free to post about it all you want, and others are free to disagree with you, although you may be forever mentally damaged by such disagreement.

Ignoring what is considered "policy-popular-sensible-acceptable" in any given debate is a recipe for failure, and no way to utilize the Overton Window model. It is akin to denying reality, which often seems to be your modus operandi.

See?

 

[Invisible Man]

Ignoring what is considered "policy-popular-sensible-acceptable" in any given debate is a recipe for failure, and no way to utilize the Overton Window model. It is akin to denying reality, which often seems to be your modus operandi.

We shouldn't ignore those things. We should see them as indications of policies that we should talk about more with the aim of changing popular perception of what is acceptable. If we believe that we are right, and have good reasons for our positions, then the more people are presented with these reasons and find themselves incapable of refuting them, the more they will come to see these right positions as, first of all, acceptable, and then ultimately, actually right.

If something is wrong, the fact that it is also popular is no reason to go along with it. It is a reason to be all the more vocal in opposing it.

 

[GlennwaldSnowdenAssanged]

The Overturn window is defined as the window of opportunity that a cheating party has to cheat/steal the election.