The Overton Window isn’t real. Political parties can create their own political realities by leading the electorate, rather than cowardly tailing the electorate like they’re advertisers trying to sell a product.
Political leaders don’t just represent the electorate, they lead it. Political reality has always been shaped by parties and leaders, even if sometimes those leaders aren’t electoral and so we pretend they aren’t political leaders.
For example, MLK Jr was a political leader even if he wasn’t elected. He created political realities through organizing and activism and propaganda and sloganeering and speeches. He didn’t just wait around for the Overton Window to move, he moved it.
Is that manufacturing consent?
Either we use politics to shape political reality or we allow the right wing to do it for us. Fascists will manufacture consent for our extermination if we let them.
It gets the causal relationship between political leaders and the masses backwards.
The Overton Window presupposes that politicians are limited by the electorate in what they can discuss and pursue; there’s a range of acceptable politics which is created by public opinion.
The reality is that public opinion is created by political leaders and politics is the tool they can use to change the range of acceptable opinion.
By getting the causal relationship backwards there is a tendency to tail the masses rather than lead them. Instead of using politics to create new political realities, politicians behave as if they are trapped within the existing political reality by politics. They seem to think politics is something that happens to you, rather than a tool you use to do things.
There’s a range of acceptable opinion, sure, but it doesn’t limit politics. Instead, politics creates the range of acceptable opinion.
The Overton Window isn’t real. Political parties can create their own political realities by leading the electorate, rather than cowardly tailing the electorate like they’re advertisers trying to sell a product.
Manufacturing consent? What ever happened to representative democracy?
Political leaders don’t just represent the electorate, they lead it. Political reality has always been shaped by parties and leaders, even if sometimes those leaders aren’t electoral and so we pretend they aren’t political leaders.
For example, MLK Jr was a political leader even if he wasn’t elected. He created political realities through organizing and activism and propaganda and sloganeering and speeches. He didn’t just wait around for the Overton Window to move, he moved it.
Is that manufacturing consent?
Either we use politics to shape political reality or we allow the right wing to do it for us. Fascists will manufacture consent for our extermination if we let them.
Define real? There is certainly something in US politics that acts exactly like Overton Window.
It gets the causal relationship between political leaders and the masses backwards.
The Overton Window presupposes that politicians are limited by the electorate in what they can discuss and pursue; there’s a range of acceptable politics which is created by public opinion.
The reality is that public opinion is created by political leaders and politics is the tool they can use to change the range of acceptable opinion.
By getting the causal relationship backwards there is a tendency to tail the masses rather than lead them. Instead of using politics to create new political realities, politicians behave as if they are trapped within the existing political reality by politics. They seem to think politics is something that happens to you, rather than a tool you use to do things.
There’s a range of acceptable opinion, sure, but it doesn’t limit politics. Instead, politics creates the range of acceptable opinion.
That’s an entirely novel way for me to think about that, and I like it, and now I need to let that percolate. Thank you.
sounds extremely unlikely tho.