Keeping people passive and obedient

The narrowing spectrum of discourse

Robert Malone, in his latest post, has reminded me of the Overton Window (or the Window of Discourse) that describes the scope of acceptable ideas the majority of the population will accept at any given time. This model I’d completely forgotten about but is of great significance. It’s a good model to be thinking about when considering, not only public policy, but the mind of the masses. Here’s an overview…

This is very interesting as we can see in the West the radical movement of the window from the middle ground between freedom and government control to a totalitarian style of governance. What were extreme control positions (dispelled as conspiracy theories) 24 months ago are now in the middle of the Overton window as policy. Just having this model as a cognitive tool gives us much needed clarity about what opinions are where on the spectrum, who’s pushing what opinions, and how this is shifting the window (We might also glean some tactics about how to pull the window back up toward the realms of greater freedom).

I’m also aware in conversations with people who have bought into the government narrative that their narrowing field of awareness correlates to a narrowing Overton window. And this is disturbing given what Noam Chomsky has said…

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum—even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate. (Chomsky, 1998¹)

And isn’t this what we are seeing, especially on MSM? A very narrow band of conversations, seemingly hotly debated, but nevertheless extremely constrained from the broader picture (i.e. we are plunging headlong into totalitarianism, all these people are dying from the ‘cure’, we are weakening our military at a time of great geopolitical instability, etc). It’s like the narrow window of opinion and debate is carrying people along the continuum to absolute government control, like a train carriage without windows taking the passengers to a surprise location!

The “narrow band” conversations are generally around viral cases, vaccination rates, and gaslighting the scapegoats (the unvaxxed). Mention government overreach, vaccine injury/death, Big Pharma cartels, national security, privacy issues, etc, and the one trapped in the narrow window of obedient thought snaps back to fear-driven topics of viral contagion (or whatever MSM has hypnotised them with). They seem to be devoid of critical thinking about the bigger picture.

I fear this window of popular opinion is shifting so far toward total government control that the ideals of freedom are now, not just radical, but in the ‘unthinkable’ end of the continuum.

Please tell me I’m mistaken.

1. Chomsky, Noam (1998). The Common Good. Odonian Press.