{"id":24394,"date":"2017-07-10T19:43:36","date_gmt":"2017-07-11T00:43:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=24394"},"modified":"2017-07-10T19:43:36","modified_gmt":"2017-07-11T00:43:36","slug":"were-good-people-really-we-are","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=24394","title":{"rendered":"We\u2019re Good People, Really We Are!"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"title-media-block\">\n<div class=\"post-title-wrap\">\n<h3 class=\"title\"><a title=\"We\u2019re Good People, Really We Are!\" href=\"http:\/\/kunstler.com\/clusterfuck-nation\/good-people-really\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">We\u2019re Good People, Really We Are!<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"fix\">The disgrace of America\u2019s putative intellectual class is nearly complete as it shoves the polity further into dysfunction and toward collapse. These are the people Nassim Taleb refers to as \u201cintellectuals-yet-idiots.\u201d Big questions loom over this dynamic: How did the thinking class of America sink into this slough of thoughtlessness? And why \u2013 what is motivating them?One path to understanding it can be found in this sober essay by Neal Devers, <em><a href=\"http:\/\/thefutureprimaeval.net\/the-overton-bubble\/\">The Overton Bubble<\/a><\/em>, published two years ago on TheFuturePrimaeval.net \u2014 a friend turned me on to it the other day (dunno how I missed it). The title is a reference to the phenomenon known as the Overton Window. Wikipedia summarizes it:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The Overton Window, also known as the window of discourse, is the range of ideas the public will accept\u2026. The term is derived from its originator, Joseph P. Overton (1960\u20132003), a former vice president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy\u2026.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Devers refines the definition:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The Overton Window is a concept in political sociology referring to the range of acceptable opinions that can be held by respectable people. \u201cRespectable\u201d of course means that the subject can be integrated with polite society. Respectability is a strong precondition on the ability to have open influence in the mainstream.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This raises another question: who exactly is in this corps of \u201crespectable people\u201d who set the parameters of acceptable thought? Primarily, the mainstream media \u2014 <em>The New York Times<\/em>, <em>The WashPo<\/em>, CNN, etc. \u2014 plus the bureaucratic functionaries of the permanent government bureaucracy, a.k.a. the Deep State, who make and execute policy, along with the universities which educate the \u201crespectable people\u201d (the thinking class) into the prevailing dogmas and shibboleths of the day, and finally the think tanks and foundations that pay professional \u201cexperts\u201d to retail their ideas.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"entry\"><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We\u2019re Good People, Really We Are! The disgrace of America\u2019s putative intellectual class is nearly complete as it shoves the polity further into dysfunction and toward collapse. These are the people Nassim Taleb refers to as \u201cintellectuals-yet-idiots.\u201d Big questions loom over this dynamic: How did the thinking class of America sink into this slough of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[14964,449,15487,15486],"class_list":["post-24394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-clusterfuck-nation","tag-james-howard-kunstler","tag-overton-bubble","tag-overton-window"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24394"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24395,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24394\/revisions\/24395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}