On the unification of two blogs, we again ask what our mission is about. To provide my answer to our mission, it seems appropriate to republish one of my best articles written before.
Illustrated by Shystee on Corrente. The Overton window is a concept in political theory, named for Joe Overton, who developed the model to help describe the purpose of a think tank, like his own Mackinac Center for Public Policy. The Overton window describes a "window" in the range of public reactions to ideas in public discourse, where basically politicians have to work. The degrees of acceptance of public ideas can be described roughly as:
- Unthinkable
- Radical
- Acceptable
- Sensible
- Popular
- Policy
Politicians work in the "acceptable, sensible, popular, policy" range, for their constituency. So Keith Ellison is working in a different range than Tim Waltz. One of the great flaws of social movements is that the focus of letter writing has been on the political representatives, when the focus should be on changing people's minds first. By the way, in using the above picture, I would describe there existing many lines in n-dimensional universe, not simply a line. Even the words "push" and "pushback" are coming from this Overton window concept.
It should be the purpose of think tanks and blogs to be pushing that Overton Window. |
| Note that corporate mainstream media is not neutral, it is also deliberately trying to push the window in favor of views of the corporate owners, while trying not to appear too biased so the audience is not alienated.
The Republican blogs and all Republican bloggers have all been very extreme to promote ideas that even less acceptable than the previous "outer fringe" ideas. That makes those old fringe ideas look less extreme, and thereby acceptable. This is how ideas like privatization, home schooling, no-bid contracts and even war have been pushed into the window of acceptability. We have been remiss in being "nice". Indeed you can see this pushing even on blog comments, with edge pushing comments like "you people do not have a chance HA Ha Ha Ha Ha". Basically we should all be fighting back - hard. No we don't need to lose our moral standards, or descend into namecalling, the simple truth will do. So I will be replying to such comments, "This comment has no content, merely meant to inflame without fact. If you want to read more about the intent of these comments, read my article on Overton windows here." I invite a discussion across blogs on how we can deal with this.
Pushback can work both ways. Right now we could be pouring salt into the open Republican wounds around self-fixing markets and giveaways. Remember the principle of "loyalty" is supposed to trump all other Republican values. Republican bloggers do not get to have personal opinions and principles beyond loyalty.
The Overton window is actively used to change public policy through either providing shocks or taking advantage of shocks to more public policy to where the government can be forced into previously unacceptable actions like "no bid" contracts. This is well documented in Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine, my vote for the most important book of the year.
Also any blog or think tank, working for the common good should be actively persuading and moving people for currently "unthinkable" or "radical" ideas. If what you write could be easily published in the Star&Tribune then you are helping the shift the wrong way. So for example DailyKOS is working on elections and politicians, more of the "acceptable, sensible, popular, policy" range. Brad Blog is the cutting edge of documenting election fraud. Basically Brad Blog's work is hard, not because of facts, there are plenty of those, but because people emotionally cannot accept betrayal. People expect other people to be like them, so the public corruption is "unthinkable" for those working for the common good. Where is the writing on your blog? Are you making a difference in an Overton Window category?
So when I blog, I am writing about ideas that until my article, may have been "unthinkable" or "radical". I source my information and lay out the ideas in detail. When I worked in the corporate world, I was the IT expert frequently sent to work with customers because I had the sense of how to persuade. Even the best and the perfect idea usually takes three hearings before being accepted. It takes an unusual person to be able to move on a good idea on first hearing. So are you, one of those rare types who take a new idea like Overton window and do something fantastic with that idea? |
