saturday overton musings

speaking about speech

as we approach the monday of trump’s return as “47” a great many things are changing, perhaps chiefest among them speech.

this change is not just the end of institutionalized federal censorship regimes and the shift of the zuckerbot 9000 onside to team “free speech” in all its saccharine glory (for could there be any doubt that had kamala won he’d be doubling down on fact checking?)

it is not just the dawning realization in the EU that their veil of censorship used to such great effect to suppress dissent against the green/left ruling alliances and to suppress populism and liberty (great article here) is about to be torn asunder because trump is having exactly none of their attempts to censor and fact check US social media companies.

it’s not just the unraveling of woke, DEI, and the calamitous cancel culture that has underpinned their ideological regimes.

it’s a change in what can be said and to whom, a change in permissible conversation, that which may be spoken in polite company, professional context, said out loud and proud.

and this is perhaps more important than even official censorship. this is the end of unofficial censorship, self-censorship, of we the people acting as our own proscribers of pontification for fear of what might happen if we spoke aloud because, make no mistake, the thought police are more likely to be your neighbors than your government and if you fear the thought police, you are the thought police.

this is the so called “overton window” the determinant of what one can even think much less express. it can move far more than many imagine. in america today, leaving a sickly baby out on a stone to die is unthinkable. in sparta, it was the height of moral duty and basic table conversation. it was policy.

everyhting can move and things are moving now.

one of the great overton shifts of the last 20 years has been around expressing ideas directly and confidently and the statement of “facts” and use of “logic” and “consistency” as the yardsticks of reason and sense. we have so vastly shied away from anything that might offend the delicate sensibilities of the professionally and performatively over-sensitive for fear of being called “bullies” that we have instead become the perpetually bullied as this class of inverted empathetics and frauds have played upon our empathy in order to mask how little they possess of their own.

you’ve seen these people: always aggrieved, always on, always angry, never ceasing, never calm, never at fault. they erupt in anger and accusation at the slightest form of criticism or divergence and this explosive aspect has made disagreeing with them so disagreeable and we have so institutionalized their rights not to be offended that opposing them has been shunted out to the realm of the radical and even into the unthinkable. many of the crybully class themselves see disagreeing with them as so unthinkable that they ascribe evil and stupidity to any who fail to fall in line and kowtow to their increasingly implausible demands.

past a certain point, such license drives them mad. it’s how we get to here:

the picture basically says it all, but so too does the fact that we pushed an overton window so far into actual breakage that “feminists” are making arguments like this:

quite a long haul from “no means no,” no?

it is not hard to see how this is the point where the sleeping giant of american society awakens and shoves the pendulum of radical into sensible and popular and thereby back into policy.

“shut up drooler, we’re taking civilization back.”

it’s speech that does this, the ability to speak to share our minds and to establish norms. people always ask “well what can we do to fix X?” speak. always speak. reclaim the societal role of setting standards and expectations, of establishing mores and morals and what may be spoken. return to calling things by their names and move beyond the fear of cancelation. stop empathizing with the manipulators who prey upon it to abuse the very trait which they accuse you of lacking.

once you see it, you realize that the whole game is taking advantage of your empathy by describing you as unempathetic. it’s some sort of ideological neg. and the only response to such things is to go right at them.

aggressive aggressive swamps passive aggressive every time.

this is why the powers that be have gone to such great lengths to try to brand it toxic in defense of their own toxicity.

here’s a fun lesson for the funhouse gang in congress:

AOC plays her usual game of seeking to set up some emotional issue with a slanted framing of the question. “you support family separation!” even 2 years ago, this might have been a trump card, an assertation from which all must shy and back down and cower.

tom homan is having none of that.

he leans in and pushes the cybully off her spot.

he brings logic to bear. “well, how is this not like any US citizen being arrested?” AOC looks utterly flummoxed. she has no idea how to engage on this simple fact, this obvious analogy. she pivots back to emotion and he just runs her over with more logic asserted without apology. she then gets flustered and starts making up facts.

“legal asylees are not charged with any crime!”

tom then gives her statute and verse about illegal aliens.

“seeking asylum is legal!”

if you want to seek asylum, you go through a port of entry. that’s the legal way. the US AG has made that clear.

she tried to pass off a false equivalence behind a façade of affect.

gambit not accepted.

AOC looks lost. she thought she was laying down a winning hand and instead suddenly learns that “all red” is not in fact “a flush.”

she’s in so much trouble the chair has to weigh in and save her saying “please respect the chair’s authority!”

but why should he respect her authority? she’s using it to lie, to mislead, and to grandstand.

the chair’s hilarious rage when homan will not grovel and winds her up with “i’m a taxpayer, you guys work for me” is phenomenal.

sure, he’s being a bit boorish and is obviously seeking to inflame, but how has taking these interlocutors cum inquisitioners seriously been working out for everyone?

if they want to play these sorts of stupid gotcha games, i’m ok with them winning some stupid prizes.

and anyone who has to say “respect my authority” essentially has no authority.

the overton has relocated.

authority is earned. this is not that. this is authoritah, the jumped up self-anointed demand for acquiescence to credential.

we have lived for a long time in fear of all this authoritah, in fear of challenging it, speaking against it, speaking truth to power. instead these regimes of leaders and ideologues have been speaking power to truth.

the sudden shift back will take some getting used to, but my advice is “get used to it. learn to love it. this is good stuff. this is the way home.”

these are not fragile flowers, they’re bullies and standing up to them is the only way to make them stop. their feelings are not your fault.

i am personally finding this sudden shift in overton a bit awkward. perhaps owning to some feline perversity, i just do not find the middle all that interesting. once most people agree with me, what is there to say? what’s to explore, to hash out, to learn? where’s the fun in regurgitating consensus?

as such, in coming weeks i’m going to try a bit of an experiment and start to range my musings into some less familiar topics to see what else the cat might drag from “radical” and into “acceptable” and “sensible” and what other matters we might seek to explore as we wind along our way.

who knows, it might be fun.

oh no he “rodididn’t”