Welcome to The Twilight Zone
still from opening sequence of The Twilight Zone
I am not much of a “binge watcher,” but these days of forced isolation have found me revisiting that old favorite, The Twilight Zone, and binging a good amount of old and new episodes. So, when I came across this page on the Mackinac Center for Public Policy’s site describing a suspiciously Twilight-Zone-esque concept called the “Overton Window,” I was ready to dive in.
Just as the charm of the Twilight Zone stories is that sense of these unsettling, slightly off-kilter stories being “almost true,” so it is with the Overton Window. The concept was named after a book of fiction by none other than Glenn Beck, published in 2010. Beck, a now much-shamed far-right wing TV pundit, comes up a what was considered an outlandish concept only ten years ago: that politicians could use propaganda and lies to shift the public’s perception so that ideas previously thought to be radical would begin to be more acceptable over time.
What’s that you say? This idea, amidst everything else, is not so outlandish in 2020? I agree, except that in his book, Beck was espousing it was only the left wing spreading lies and conspiracy theories to move the public’s perceptions into the Overton Window. And of course, Fox News-type patriots come to the rescue and stamp out each… and every… one… of those nasty conspiracy theories to save the day and protect American values.
This entire situation turned even more “Twilight Zone” when a think tank in Michigan called the Mackinac Center for Public Policy starts promoting its own Overton Window concept—only this concept is posthumously named after the Mackinac Center’s late senior vice president, Joseph P. Overton, who went from being an electrical engineer with Dow Chemical to an expert on societal and cognitive thinking. One of his main arguments is that politicians are basically just followers of social opinion, going along with shifting societal norms which form a window of voter acceptability in various public policies. He cites several excellent examples, such as prohibition. At one time, the public saw drinking as “bad,” and now they are mostly accepting of it. Same goes for marijuana usage—depending on whose using (or selling) it, we see it as harmless, humorous, or criminal.
The public acceptance window (Overton Window) shifts. What was once considered bad might someday be seen as good. Politicians just have to watch this window shift and legislate accordingly. Right? That’s the thing about Twilight Zone concepts, and similar alternative universe theories like the Overton Theory—they are usually about half right, which often makes them seem entirely right. Powerful lies and conspiracy theories built on a basis of truth, or even those with just a facade of recognizable fact, gain a stronger hold in common belief and are always harder to disprove outright.
The Mackinac Center website addresses the obvious question here: “Can the Overton Window be shifted by lies, distortions, or misunderstandings?” Here is their short and sweet retort: “Yes, but it’s obviously wrong to intentionally disseminate misleading information.”
Can’t you just hear that Twilight Zone theme music starting up in the background?
As we can imagine, Rod Serling might say, “Imagine you are trapped in a world not governed by space, time, logic, or morality. A world where politicians—and their little pundit dogs too—freely spin stories of dubious truths and obvious deceits so that they may lead their followers, like some Pied Piper, through a magical portal which they call the Overton Window. Once there, the people cannot tell the difference between right and wrong, between truth and lies, fact and fiction, windows and brick walls, even up and down.”
This all sounds pretty familiar, right? Welcome to the Twilight Zone.
—Ray Brimble
A BRIEF EXPLANATION OF THE OVERTON WINDOW
—The Mackinac Center for Public Policy
Ever wonder how politicians choose which policies they’ll support? Or have you ever noticed that a politician championing one policy idea can win an election in one country, but at the same time no politician in your country will support that same policy? The Overton Window of Political Possibility can help explain these phenomena.
The Overton Window is a model for understanding how ideas in society change over time and influence politics. The core concept is that politicians are limited in what policy ideas they can support — they generally only pursue policies that are widely accepted throughout society as legitimate policy options. These policies lie inside the Overton Window. Other policy ideas exist, but politicians risk losing popular support if they champion these ideas. These policies lie outside the Overton Window.
But the Overton Window can both shift and expand, either increasing or shrinking the number of ideas politicians can support without unduly risking their electoral support. Sometimes politicians can move the Overton Window themselves by courageously endorsing a policy lying outside the window, but this is rare. More often, the window moves based on a much more complex and dynamic phenomenon, one that is not easily controlled from on high: the slow evolution of societal values and norms.