A meandering discussion on political polarization and the Overton Window
Dear Readers,
I apologize in advance. This post attempts to preserve what I regard as the highlights of a rather long Twitter conversation that involved a lot of participants (not all of them represented here) and cross-posting. I did my best to put things in something of a logical order that followed the general path of the conversation, but it is messy.
Yours,
Todd
Thanks to @PintSizePolemic, I saw something interesting. The Overton Window is widening. The range of acceptable discourse is broader now than it was when I was a kid. This is a minor conservative victory.
Quote tweet Replying to @PintSizePolemic
I think about this a lot. (green lines added by me)
Can't be completely accurate, because conservatism has adopted a lot of positions that were unthinkable even to liberals in 1994, but at least it's a consistent approach over the years.
source: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/interactives/political-polarization-1994-2017/
It certainly puts to rest the notion that the right has become more extreme.
@PintSizePolemic: Moving the Overton Window.
Hmm, good point. The area of acceptable discourse has overall widened. This is a conservative victory insofar as the left keeps moving left, always. Just holding the right side of the frame still is an achievement.
@PintSizePolemic: Picking the right battles on social issues is the Right's biggest problem.
Maybe. I dunno that there are any wrong battles. The Left's MO has changed from winning the ideas race to driving the Right out of every sphere. The Right merely needs to assert itself and it's a salvo against the Left.
@PintSizePolemic: This is a different conversation. The time for rational discourse with the Left ended in 1989. They chose to adopt the Rules for Radicals as standard operating procedure, ending all possibility of civil discourse.
I would say that the Cold CW II began around this time.
We are not of different minds. I'm not talking about the Right asserting itself in rational discourse. I am speaking merely of assertion. The Right is here. Get used to it.
Quote Tweet Replying to @philllosoraptor
Can we get away from the notion that politics is anything other than convincing people (a) of what the problems are, and (b) that you can solve them?
Either that, or GOP needs to characterize Dem causes as a "panic." Healthcare panic. Discrimination panic. USPS panic.
Just make everything a panic. Make it a rule that whatever the other side mentions is a panic. We're past the point of trying to right the discourse. Just use the Dems' language until it becomes as meaningless for them as it is for us.
@VarangianSkull (replying to the initial tweet): I would dispute that the Overton Window is widening, though agree with everything else you are saying. I think that Rightists are generally OUTSIDE the Overton Window now, and that's why outing people to their employers or on social media is so effective.
It could be looked at both ways. It certainly is a conscious, overt attempt by Mainstream forces (the Cathedral) to narrow the Overton Window. The Mainstream would feel no such need if it believed the actual Window matched what they believe it to be.
The good news is that obvious attempts to narrow the Window are, well, obvious. I won't say they are never effective, because we have examples to the contrary. Communist regimes, lately. But repressive regimes are born with an expiration date.
The problem with threatening the rabble to keep them in line
is that threats can never remain idle. Either the rabble tests them, or the
Mainstream forgets they're just threats. Either way, once breached, it leads
toward a critical mass of people with nothing to lose.
@VarangianSkull: True, in the sense that the narrowing is imposed by media/pop culture/etc... But, unfortunately, those count.
We're witnessing the loss of ability by media/pop culture to
determine the bounds of the Window. And those institutions are angry.
The same spirit tries to clamp down social media in a very
old-school way. I think the nature of the internet is such that it won't work
long term.
@VarangianSkull: Part of the reason Trump won in 2016,
for instance, was because of the existence of a Trump closet. People who
pretended leftism in public, but privately voted Trump.
In this sense the artificial narrowing of the Overton
Window incurs a cost for the political Left: they no longer have an accurate
assessment of their enemy's strength.
The error on the Left is that they aren't really trying to
narrow the window. (If they were, they'd move right.) They mistakenly believe
that if they drag their side left, the right will have to follow. This was true
for a time (at least the first decade of the chart) but no more.
@VarangianSkull: That is quite true. In fact, it may be a
situation where, in reality, we have two windows, one Right, and one Left, and
they have disconnected from each other. It is merely the case that only the
Left's window has behind it some centralized power of enforcement.
Scott Adams's "one screen, two movies" analogy is
perhaps the replacement of the Overton Window. The Window is like a scientific
theory that works until a new variable presents itself. Then you learn it was
only partially correct and refine it.
I don't think it is the nature of the Overton Window in
general to have a fixed scope. It was a mid-century fluke aided by the
emergence of mass-media that the Window seemed to have a fixed size. Window is
perhaps a misnomer born of the fact that it was identified in this period.
@VarangianSkull: Range is probably a better term for it.
But it wasn't until... oh, I'd say sometime in the Obama years that the Left
and Right ranges/windows/whatever disconnected completely. Up until then, I
could be known as a Rightist, and only a few far-Left loonies gave a shit.
Today, however, even a mention of being vaguely
Right-wing requires a host of denunciations before anything resembling pleasant
conversation is possible. Denounce racism, Trump, sexism, homophobia, etc...
And even then, people are still suspicious that you might be a secret Nazi.
@PintSizePolemic: Ergo, no rational conversation is possible.
@VarangianSkull: There are a few Leftists with which I may still have decent conversation - even a couple on Twitter - but they grow increasingly rare, and not from any antagonism on my part (save occasional helicopter jokes).
@PintSizePolemic: The Left executes liberals far more swiftly than it does opponents on the Right.
@Gitabushi: traitors/heretics are worse than opponents/infidels
The cost of criticizing the dominant viewpoint is to first
profess total acceptance of the dominant viewpoint. Most political ideologies
aren't designed for co-dominance.
@VarangianSkull: It will work so long as institutions - like corporate entities, government regulators, churches, etc... are pozzed. On the Internet, we may say whatever we wish - and you're right on the nature of the window online. But when the narcs and tattletales come into the real world...
Like I said, it's not that repressive control of the Window
doesn't work. It's that it's too overt to last.
Look at it this way: the USSR was brought down by the VCR.
The State controlled the Window when it controlled the press and the airwaves.
It had no plan for the VCR.
@VarangianSkull: I want to agree with that - but as
technology for expression has accelerated, so has technology for repression. It
would not surprise me if, in the not-to-distant future, something like the
Chinese social credit system was implemented here. It may be that China's
social credit system will be undone by some as yet unknown invention, of
course. The social Cold War continues...
@Gitabushi: one of my Socio-political laws is: what technology giveth, technology also taketh away
The arms race never ends. But each side pulls ahead of the
other at different times.
If the social credit system operates in its most nightmarish form, it will succeed in creating an oversized underclass. That's never good for regime stability.
@craboppotamus replies: I gotta disagree that the Overton
window is widening. Gay marriage as an example: Does any politician take an
‘anti’ position? Ideas counter to homosexuality are labeled as hate speech. The
same tactic is applied to “systemic racism”, and any disagreement will not be
tolerated.
I know it's scattered, but if you read all my thoughts on
it, you'll see I'm two ways about it. That said, I do think that the window has
widened on balance, with most of the widening occurring on the left side. Gains
due to the right side not shrinking as much as the left grows
My explanation is that, due to factors unique to mid-20th c.
media, the two sides of the window appeared tethered, as by a rope. If the left
side moved left, the right would also move left. The fracturing of media has
shown that tether to be more elastic.
I attribute the faulty description to the period in which
the Overton Window was identified. When it was first described, it appeared to
work that way. In retrospect, it seems like it was noticed precisely because it
was behaving abnormally at the time (Such is the way of things)
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