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Open the Overton Window

May 8, 2024

Open the Overton Window

Open the Overton Window

You may have heard of the “Overton window.”

The concept of the Overton window caught on in professional culture, particularly those seeking to nudge public opinion, because it taps into a certain sense that we all know is there.

There are things you can say and things you cannot say, not because there are speech controls (though there are) but because holding certain views makes you anathema and dismissable. This leads to less influence and effectiveness.

The Overton window is a way of mapping sayable opinions.

The goal of advocacy is to stay within the window while moving it just ever so much. For example, if you’re writing about monetary policy, you should say that the Fed should not immediately reduce rates for fear of igniting inflation.

You can really think that the Fed should be abolished but saying that is inconsistent with the demands of polite society. That’s only one example of a million.

To notice and comply with the Overton window is not the same as merely favoring incremental change over dramatic reform. There is not and should never be an issue with marginal change.

That’s not what’s at stake.

To be aware of the Overton window, and fit within it, means to curate your own advocacy. You should do so in a way that’s designed to comply with a structure of opinion that’s pre-existing as a kind of template we’re all given.

It means to craft a strategy specifically designed to game the system, which is said to operate according to acceptable and unacceptable opinionizing.

In every area of social, economic and political life, we find a form of compliance with strategic considerations seemingly dictated by this window. There’s no sense in spouting off opinions that offend or trigger people because they’ll just dismiss you as not credible.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Tide of Public Opinion is Turning in Assange’s Favor

May 27, 2019

Tide of Public Opinion is Turning in Assange’s Favor

Corporate media & some politicos who opposed Assange after the 2016 election have radically changed their tune, favorably influencing public opinion after the Espionage Act indictment of the WikiLeak‘s founder, reports Joe Lauria.

The indictment of Julian Assange under the Espionage Act has profoundly affected press coverage of the WikiLeaks founder, with much of the media turning suddenly and decisively in his favor after  years of vilifying him.

The sharp change has also come from some politicians, and significantly, from two Justice Department prosecutors who went public to express their dissent about using the Espionage Act to indict Assange.

To the extent that public opinion matters, the sea-change in coverage could have an effect on the British or Swedish governments’ decision to extradite Assange to the United States to face the charges. 

Used to Be a Russian Agent

Since the 2016 U.S. presidential election establishment media, fueled by the Mueller probe, has essentially branded Assange a Russian agent who worked to undermine American democracy. 

Focusing on his personality rather than his work, the media mostly cheered his arrest by British police on April 11 after his political asylum was illegally revoked by Ecuador in its London embassy.

Assange’s initial indictment for conspiracy to intrude into a government computer was portrayed by corporate media as the work of a “hacker” and not a journalist, who doesn’t merit First Amendment protection.

But the superseding indictment under the Espionage Act last Thursday has changed all that. 

Rather than criminal activity, the indictment actually describes routine journalistic work, such as encouraging sources to turn over sensitive information and hiding a source’s identity.  

Since the Trump administration has crossed the red line criminalizing  what establishment journalists do all the time, establishment journalists have come full-square against the indictment and behind Assange.

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Are people really concerned about climate change? What the polls tell us

October 9, 2018

Are people really concerned about climate change? What the polls tell us

A review of recent public opinion polls reveals that the public, when asked only about climate change, will agree overall that it’s a serious problem that demands action. When asked to rank climate change against other concerns, however, it comes well down the list. The implication is that the public really isn’t worried about climate change. Certainly the high level of public support that would be needed to implement an aggressive and highly disruptive transition to low-carbon energy, such as that called for by the Paris Agreement, does not exist. The climate change lobby is in fact losing the public support battle.

As illustrated in the inset, politicians pay a lot more attention to the results of climate change opinion polls than they do to climate change science. And since politicians are responsible for setting climate change policy a review of what climate change polls tell them becomes important. In this post I review the results of climate change polls from four countries – the US, the UK, Canada and Australia – along with two global polls. We begin with the global polls.

The Pew global poll

This poll was conducted in 2015 by the Pew Research Center, and republished in April this year. Responses were received from 43,435 people in 40 countries. The three main questions posed and the responses to them are summarized below:

Q32. In your view, is global climate change a very serious problem, somewhat serious, not too serious or not a problem?

Majorities in all 40 nations polled say climate change is a serious problem, and a global median of 54% believe it is a very serious problem.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why We Don’t Have Principled Politicians

May 3, 2018

Why We Don’t Have Principled Politicians

Politicians choose their stances on issues based on public opinion, not principles.

Recently, Senator Chuck Schumer introduced a bill that would decriminalize marijuana on the federal level. He stated that the legality of marijuana should be a matter left up to individual states. This ringing endorsement of federalism might carry a little more weight if Senator Schumer hadn’t spent a large part of his political career trying to micromanage Americans’ behavior at the national level. Hillary Clinton is widely considered to be a staunch supporter of the LGBT community; however, she was publicly opposed to marriage equality until 2013. These are just two of the innumerable examples of politicians changing their stances on policy issues in the face of evolving public opinion. This is not a new phenomenon or exclusive to a single political party. Not only is it common for politicians to modify their positions of political principles to match changing public opinion, you’d be hard-pressed to find one who doesn’t. We are dealing with political followership, not political leadership. So, what does that get us? Antony Davies and James Harrigan talk about this and more on this week’s episode of Words and Numbers.

U.S. Government Is Boosting Military Spending to Record Levels 

March 12, 2018

U.S. Government Is Boosting Military Spending to Record Levels 

Photo by DVIDSHUB | CC BY 2.0

Early this February, the Republican-controlled Congress passed and President Donald Trump signed new federal budget legislation that increased U.S. military spending by $165 billion over the next two years.  Remarkably, though, a Gallup public opinion poll, conducted only days before, found that only 33 percent of Americans favored increasing U.S. military spending, while 65 percent opposed it, either backing reductions (34 percent) or maintenance of the status quo (31 percent).

What is even more remarkable for a nation where military spending has grown substantially over the decades, is that, during the past 49 years that Gallup has asked Americans their opinions on U.S. military spending, in only one year (1981) did a majority of Americans (in that case, 51 percent) favor increasing it.  During the other years, clear and sometimes very substantial majorities opposed spending more on the military.

Although the Gallup survey appears to be the only one that has covered American attitudes toward military spending in 2018, reports by other polling agencies for earlier years reveal the same pattern.  The Pew Research Center, for example, found that, from 2004 to 2016, the percentage of Americans that favored increasing U.S. military spending only ranged from 13 to 35 percent.  By contrast, the percentage of Americans that favored decreasing U.S. military spending or continuing it at the same level ranged from 64 to 83 percent.

This opposition to boosting U.S. military spending became even stronger when pollsters provided Americans with information about the actual level of federal government spending and arguments for and against particular programs.  In March 2017, before opinion polling began by the University of Maryland’s Program for Public Integrity, it distributed a rough outline of the federal budget and a series of statements about spending programs vetted for fairness by opposing groups.  The result was that a majority of survey respondents reported that they favored cutting the military budget by $41 billion.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Information or Disinformation? Only 32 Percent of Americans Trust the Media

September 17, 2016

Information or Disinformation? Only 32 Percent of Americans Trust the Media 

The News Leaders / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

A Gallup Poll released this week shows the largest decline in trust in the media since the organization started asking the public’s opinion on the subject in 1972. Conducted with people over 18, across 50 states, only 32 percent of those surveyed said they trust the media “to report the news fully, accurately and fairly.”

Only 14 percent of Republicans trust the media, down from 32 percent in 2015. According to the poll, the steep decline in trust among Republicans has been influenced by Republican leaders, conservative pundits and GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, who continually claims the media is biased toward his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.

Democrats (at 51 percent, compared to 55 percent in 2015) and independents (30 percent vs. 33 percent last year) have a little more faith in the Fourth Estate than Republicans.

Young and old alike are distrustful. For 18 to 49 age group, only 26 percent say they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media, down 10 percent from 2015. For those 50 and older, it’s 38 percent, down 7 percent from 2015.

Gallup reports:

The divisive presidential election this year may be corroding Americans’ trust and confidence in the media, particularly among Republicans who may believe the “mainstream media” are too hyperfocused on every controversial statement or policy proposal from Trump while devoting far less attention to controversies surrounding the Clinton campaign. However, the slide in media trust has been happening for the past decade. Before 2004, it was common for a majority of Americans to profess at least some trust in the mass media, but since then, less than half of Americans feel that way. Now, only about a third of the U.S. has any trust in the Fourth Estate, a stunning development for an institution designed to inform the public.

With the explosion of the mass media in recent years, especially the prevalence of blogs, vlogs and social media, perhaps Americans decry lower standards for journalism. When opinion-driven writing becomes something like the norm, Americans may be wary of placing trust on the work of media institutions that have less rigorous reporting criteria than in the past. On the other hand, as blogs and social media “mature,” they may improve in the American public’s eyes. This could, in turn, elevate Americans’ trust and confidence in the mass media as a whole.

Since 1972, the apex of trust in media by the general public was 76 percent in 1976.

7 Examples of Demonising Dissention and Public Opinion

December 22, 2015

7 Examples of Demonising Dissention and Public Opinion

As the Western world powers that be tighten their tyrannical controlling noose on humanity dissention and public opinion has never been so important: -As consistent with the quote from Orwell‘s novel 1984

“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

To countermeasure this much-needed dissention and public opinion to raise awareness and free humanity the powers that be have taken a severe stance on punishing those who oppose their views regardless of truth or untruth to advance an oppressive agenda.

So, in response, during these times of universal deceit and oppression, here are 7 examples of unjustly demonising dissention and public opinion.

Dissention, political correctness, suppression, new world order, medical dissention, climate change, mandatory vaccination, Paul A Philips, New Paradigm, raising awareness

1. Medical dissention and the AMA’s gagging orders

To get an even larger slice of the medical monopoly the highly influential AMA (American Medical Association) a wing of the medical/pharmaceutical establishment has announced plans to put in gag orders designed to control and prevent doctors from speaking out publically on ‘dubious alternative medical practices.’  Should doctors go outside of the AMA’s guidelines then they could face having their licenses revoked while being unjustly accused of quackery…

-This unfairly biased stance will even further hit integral doctors offering help and advice on track-record proven effective alternative medical practices.

What has the US come to? People, are you going to allow this suppression of free speech? History has shown us time after time that medical advancements resulting in humanitarian contribution has come from challenging medical orthodoxy.  

Dissention, political correctness, suppression, new world order, medical dissention, climate change, mandatory vaccination, Paul A Philips, New Paradigm, raising awareness

2. Climate change

At a recent talk in Austin, Texas for the yearly South by Southwest Festival (SXSW) Al Gore, former vice-president, made a number of pseudo-scientific statements provably wrong about climate change with all its data manipulation in support of this monumental hoax.

Gore described climate change as ‘settled science’ but nothing could be further from the truth. Climate change is far from settled…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Civil Disobedience Isn’t Helping Your Cause

July 13, 2015

Civil Disobedience Isn’t Helping Your Cause

Last week, activists protesting the climate summit blocked off a street near where I live. Not a big inconvenience for me since my schedule for the day only included binge watching Shark Week, but it was met with a fair amount of negativity from those I share a building with.

Having spent most of my adult life working with environmental organizations I was aware of what the protesters were blockading the street over, but those around me were not, nor did they care to be.

In the lobby somebody asked someone else what the protesters were protesting, and the words chosen to answer that question have stuck with me for the last few days: “I don’t f’n know or care”

Was this a case of one person’s apathy, or a symptom of a culture of activism in Canada that frequently employs tactics which ceased to be effective decades ago?

There have been times and places where civil disobedience has changed the world for the better, there can be no doubt about that. Civil disobedience has ended wars, given women and people of colour the right to vote, and on a personal note once got me one-third off my cell phone bill for a period of a year.

I can’t help noticing however that the years I spent protesting pipelines and angrily shouting about tar sands developments didn’t actually yield any tangible results, in fact we are in a worse place now than we were when I started all that yelling. So what do you do when nothing seems to be working?

A study from the University of Toronto recommends that a change in tactics is long overdue for Canada’s culture of activism, one that does not include civil disobedience, shouting, or getting angry at all.

University of Toronto psychologist Nadia Bashir studied the ability of certain types of activists to have influence over the opinions of the general public. The results were considered “troubling” to some, but were confirmation for me of long held suspicions over the work I had been involved with.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

That Moron Who Spews Garbage and Doesn’t Listen to Reason May Be a Bot

March 23, 2015

That Moron Who Spews Garbage and Doesn’t Listen to Reason May Be a Bot

Rampant Disinformation

NATO has announced that it is launching an “information war” against Russia.

The UK publicly announced a battalion of keyboard warriors to spread disinformation.

It’s well-documented that the West has long used false propaganda to sway public opinion.

Western military and intelligence services manipulate social media to counter criticism of Western policies.

Such manipulation includes flooding social media with comments supporting the government and large corporations, using armies of sock puppets, i.e. fake social media identities. See this, this, this, this andthis.

In 2013, the American Congress repealed the formal ban against the deployment of propaganda against U.S. citizens living on American soil. So there’s even less to constrain propaganda than before.

Information warfare for propaganda purposes also includes:

  • The Pentagon, Federal Reserve and other government entities using software to track discussion of political issues … to try to nip dissent in the bud before it goes viral

Automated Propaganda

Some of the propaganda is spread by software programs.

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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