Dalcahue, Chile shop window with a miscellany of items
Trump and the USA…invading Venezuela one week. Next week doubling down on taking over Greenland while proposing, falsely, the Arctic Ocean is full of Chinese and Russian warships so the US needs to be there. And doing this despite the US being part of NATO, whose role is to defend Greenland. Not to mention suggesting Denmark’s military is equivalent to two dog sleds while posting a far-right-wing influenced meme asking ‘Which way Greenland man?’, showing the US flag to the left and Chinese and Russian flags to the right.
Then there’s supporting Iranian protestors while suppressing Minneapolis protests about ICE personnel killing an American. “One death is too much,” – an Iranian death, that is. This is gaslighting in the extreme – controlling your own population with military force when they protest, while promising military aid to protestors when it’s the Iranian populace protesting.
Is Trump shifting the global Overton Window for the what’s sayable and thinkable? Has David Seymour shifted it for New Zealand with his Treaty Bill? And what is the Overton Window?
The Overton Window (also known as the ‘Window of Discourse’) is a concept developed by free-market advocate Joseph Overton in the 1990s. The Overton Window is the range of subjects and arguments politically acceptable to the mainstream population at a given time. Overton’s concept was a window shifting, expanding or contracting over time which exemplifies ‘the slow evolution of societal values and norms’. Overton suggested the window frames the range of policies a politician may recommend without appearing too extreme in relation to public opinion.
Overton died in 2003 and his friend and colleague Joseph Lehmann formalised and named the Overton Window. Lehmann said, “It just explains how ideas come in and out of fashion, the same way that gravity explains why something falls to the earth. I can use gravity to drop an anvil on your head, but that would be wrong. I could also use gravity to throw you a life preserver; that would be good.”
However, the Overton Window has morphed way beyond the original concept. It is used to underpin the power of advocacy. If you state something often enough and loudly enough, today’s fringe idea can become tomorrow’s conventional wisdom, shifting the Window. The Overton Window came into common usage after publication of a novel of the same name, written in 2010. The novel follows a nefarious PR executive who pushes the window so far Americans are prepared to accept a hostile takeover and shredding of the Constitution.
Activitists both left and right picked up the Overton Window concept, using it variously to push away from and towards restrictive immigration policies. Trump shattered the window in his proposal to restrict all Muslim travel to the USA (December 2015); then he was elected President.
While the Overton Window concept was originally about what the public sees as acceptable with politicians responding to that window, the concept is now used in reverse – the window being what Trump sees as acceptable (pretty much anything) and the public shifting their views in response to his actions. Was Overton’s concept reversible or is Trump upending the world? Is the Overton Window still a useful idea, or is it now so wide open anything is possible?
What’s certain is Trump’s use of one of the many human cognitive biases – the ‘Repetition Trap’ or the ‘Truth Effect’. The more times we hear the same information repeated, the more likely we are to believe it. Take the erroneous-frog-in-a-pot meme I wrote about a while back – we’ve heard so many times that frogs sit in gradually increasing temperatures until they boil to death, we think it is true. That’s what I thought, until I specifically went and investigated because it seemed surprising frogs are that stupid. They aren’t.
Trump makes statements he would like to come true. Or statements just to see what happens. Trump knows (likely intuitively) the louder and more often he says things, the more likely people will believe him and those things can happen. The more often Trump says, “The US needs Greenland,” the more people will consider the US taking over another country because the US ‘wants’ the country, an acceptable action. Which would make Russia taking over Ukraine understandable, because Russia wanted Ukraine. And Israel wants Gaza. And America wants Venezuelan oil. Iranian oil would also be nice to have.
Social media is an excellent medium for amplifying the Truth Effect. So much opportunity for repetition and exposure of people to repetition. Trump is right on top of this with Truth Social. It’s not so long ago it would have been unthinkable for a politician to announce their intention to take over another jurisdiction on social media. It’s no longer surprising.
If the Overton Window exists, it has become like the jaws of a boa constrictor – unhinged.
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