Lew Rockwell provided a link which linked to this essay on what the author Neal Devers calls The Overton Bubble where a) the establishment statists (mostly left) mentally reside and b) outside of which they simply cannot think. Since 2008, I’ve been saying that our opponents cannot and do not engage our ideas EVER. They also have never even tried to engage some of the smarter things Rush Limbaugh has said. It seems to me that the Nancy MacLean book and the new Trump Jr. hysteria comport with this general analysis.
It is no longer effective, but almost by definition, those within the Overton bubble are unable to accurately perceive or understand what is happening outside the bubble, lest they be purged. And all this analysis is quite outside the bubble, so they have a hard time realizing that Overton radicalization and expulsion is no longer a viable mechanism of political control. That combined with institutional momentum holding them in the operating pattern that has worked for them for the past few hundred years, and they keep on with business as usual, responding to dissent with radicalization and exclusion, despite its impending failure.
And so now we are stuck with a really nasty situation: A closed bubble of mainstream left-wing thought unwilling and incapable of engaging with anything outside itself, which is rapidly shifting so that almost all principles of good governance and civilization are outside it. And on the other side an uncontrolled free-for-all outside the bubble, not mature enough to reliably settle on truth and the principles of civilization, but quite economical enough to organize effective and fully hostile challengers to the elite consensus.
The "Bubble" may actually be larger and more insidious than this writer states. It seems impossible for any Republican to conceive of Obama or Hillary as being a war criminals because they are deemed weenies. Plus, the "Hillary shipping Gadaffi's weapons to Al Qaeda in Syria" and "Obama installed Nazis in Ukraine" stories do not seem to compute with anyone.
Lew Rockwell provided a link which linked to this essay on what the author Neal Devers calls The Overton Bubble where a) the establishment statists (mostly left) mentally reside and b) outside of which they simply cannot think. Since 2008, I’ve been saying that our opponents cannot and do not engage our ideas EVER. They also have never even tried to engage some of the smarter things Rush Limbaugh has said. It seems to me that the Nancy MacLean book and the new Trump Jr. hysteria comport with this general analysis.
ReplyDeleteIt is no longer effective, but almost by definition, those within the Overton bubble are unable to accurately perceive or understand what is happening outside the bubble, lest they be purged. And all this analysis is quite outside the bubble, so they have a hard time realizing that Overton radicalization and expulsion is no longer a viable mechanism of political control. That combined with institutional momentum holding them in the operating pattern that has worked for them for the past few hundred years, and they keep on with business as usual, responding to dissent with radicalization and exclusion, despite its impending failure.
And so now we are stuck with a really nasty situation: A closed bubble of mainstream left-wing thought unwilling and incapable of engaging with anything outside itself, which is rapidly shifting so that almost all principles of good governance and civilization are outside it. And on the other side an uncontrolled free-for-all outside the bubble, not mature enough to reliably settle on truth and the principles of civilization, but quite economical enough to organize effective and fully hostile challengers to the elite consensus.
http://thefutureprimaeval.net/the-overton-bubble/
https://www.lewrockwell.com/political-theatre/disgrace-us-intellectual-class/
The "Bubble" may actually be larger and more insidious than this writer states. It seems impossible for any Republican to conceive of Obama or Hillary as being a war criminals because they are deemed weenies. Plus, the "Hillary shipping Gadaffi's weapons to Al Qaeda in Syria" and "Obama installed Nazis in Ukraine" stories do not seem to compute with anyone.
ReplyDelete@ Bob Roddis
DeleteThanks for the comments. Very interesting thoughts.