Who’s Nudging the Overton Window?
Can Glenn Beck write? “”His writing is as logical, brilliant and engaging as his television commentary. He’s taken a stab at writing a political thriller called The Overton Window. As one of the characters in the book explains, if you imagine some social condition plotted on a line where one end is utopian goodness and the other is unspeakable evil, the range of conditions society will tolerate at a given time occupies a narrow window. Ideologues with an agenda can execute their agenda by nudging the window in the desired direction.
The hero discovers a plot to establish an authoritarian regime by portraying patriot movements as kooks, then staging a nuclear attack on Las Vegas and pinning it to patriots. The hero foils the attack, discovers that the ringleader is his own father, and feigns acquiescence while biding his time. The book ends on a hint that a counterstrike is coming soon.
So when exactly did the patriot movement need Government help in being portrayed as kooks? When they accused the Government of attacking its own cities? When they claimed Barack Obama was a closet Muslim? When they insisted that jet contrails were spraying mind-control chemicals?
If anyone’s sliding the window, it’s the wingnut Right. Who’s going around planting the notion in people’s minds that FEMA is setting up secret concentration camps? (The only people seriously arguing in public for detention camps want to put Mexicans in them.) Who’s making it socially acceptable to believe that the U.S. routinely stages false flag attacks? Any day now, we’ll read that Lincoln planted agents dressed as Confederates to fire on Fort Sumter. Who is making it socially acceptable to make racist remarks that would have embarrassed Strom Thurmond?