The Overton Window is a political concept that says there is a certain range of beliefs that the majority of voters find palatable or acceptable. For a politician to be viable, he or she has to be in the Overton Window. Stray to far in either direction outside of the Window and a politician will lose support among the mainstream. The diagram below is a good visual of this concept.
A candidate like Bernie Sanders was pushing the edge of the Overton Window with his advocacy of socialism. His idea were popular with some and radical with others.
The Overton Window works nationally as well as locally. This sometimes results in conflict. The Overton Window for gun control in New York and California is very far from where it sits in Middle America. A politician advocating for gun bans and restrictions that are popular in NYC or San Francisco is unthinkable in Alabama and Texas.
It’s why a kindergarten class in California can have a transgender coming out party for one of its students and the teachers think that is sensible and the parents completely freak out.
This is a useful concept to understand. Occasionally pundits will discuss attempts to move the Overton Window in an attempt to make less popular ideas more popular.
The deep thinkers (the English language really needs irony punctuation) over at The Hill want to blame the election of Donald Trump on the right deliberately shifting the Overton Window on discourse.
What I have not heard is a discussion the deliberate attempt to move the Overton Window in relation to what is going on with the protests, riots, and destruction of monuments by the Left.
After Leftists destroyed Confederate monuments Trump asked if we were going to destroy monuments to George Washington next.
Let us be clear about this: THAT IS THE ENTIRE GOD DAMN POINT!
Step 1: make the wholesale destruction of anything related to the Confederacy acceptable because slavery.
Step 2: update the Jefferson Memorial in Washington DC to mention that Jefferson owned slaves, and mandate that professors teach that Jefferson was a white supremacist at the University of Virginia, which he founded.
Step 3: erase the monuments to Jefferson all together.
Step 4: erase his body of works – the principles enshrined in the Deceleration of Independence and the founding of this nation.
Step 5: repeat for all the other founders.
It is already being done to George Washington in Social Justice social media.
Mayor and corrupt piece of shit Bill de Blasio is considering taking down the statue of Columbus in NYC.
A leading thought by Leftist antisemites is that Israel has no legitimate right to exist. They say that the land was stolen from the Palestinians by the British and given to the Jews because of European guilt about the Holocaust and that it shouldn’t have ever been founded. Forget that Jews have lived there for 5,000 years and had several Kingdoms in the region, it is an illegitimate state.
I truly believe that everything the Left is doing right now is to move the Overton Window of Americas illegitimacy into the mainstream of the left of center crowd.
Turn Columbus, Jefferson, Washington and others into nothing but genocidal, white supremacist, slave traders and America suddenly is not the shining city on the hill but a North American version of Israel or Rhodesia. An illegitimate colonial state that should be done away with, like they did to Rhodesia and want to do with Israel.
The Left couldn’t win the presidency and rule America so they are going to absolutely destroy her.
And as bad as aparteid is, look what happened to Rhodesia after.
Trump was wrong about Jefferson and Washington. It did not take one or two weeks for that movement to start; it only took a day or two. That’s how quickly CNN put a couple of commentators on national TV who called for the removal of Washington and Jefferson monuments. Another day or so later there was an article (in “Vice” whatever that is) arguing it would be good for the Mount Rushmore monument to be erased. The author claimed it wasn’t an attack on Washington, he merely opposed having any mountain turned into a monument — but he didn’t say a word about the Crazy Horse monument a few dozen miles away from Rushmore.
You’re watching the destruction of your country by communist right before your eyes.
What are the words I’m searching for… I got it! Goddam dickheaded ignorant commie wannabe assholes.
They will win IF We the People let them. Some how we have to prove that we out number them.
Your essay is chilling. 20 years ago to publicly state “marriage is between one man and one woman”; was so innocuous and obvious why even bother?
The same statement today , in some places any way , can get you assaulted for “, hate speech”, dehumanized, criminally sanctioned and your business destroyed. That window has sure been scooted along.