The Overton window is the range of policies, actions and behaviours that are politically acceptable for the majority of the population at a given time. It is also known as the speech window.
(Notice and dedication . This is going to be a long article, you can go back to Twitter if you want fast-food, but I think you will find this article very interesting. You will see that I do not “travel” to Canada until after several paragraphs but I assure you this will be a very amusing journey. This article is dedicated to the woman who puts up with me while I write and whom I love with all my heart)
The Roman historian Livy places the first Roman gladiatorial games around 264 BC during the beginning of the first Punic War. These games were rooted in the Etruscan and Campanian tradition of holding sword duels during funerals, something that was considered a moral duty (munus ) to please the family gods (manes ) of the deceased. Honorius prohibited gladiatorial fights in the year 399 of our era, but they continued to take place until Valentinian III, in 438, revalidated this prohibition. For seven hundred years, seeing human beings killed to the sword of other human beings was considered a pious and patriotic act by most of the inhabitants of the Roman Empire. Death as a spectacle and as an offering to the gods was at the center of Romans´ Overton window.
From the origins of Christianity until the year 249, the attitude of the Roman authorities towards this new religion varied depending on the attitude of each provincial governor and how each magistrate, prefect and other high officials interpreted the level of threat that Christians constituted. In the Roman mentality of those years the identification between the State and religion was predominant and mainstream; the Roman gods, their public worship and adherence to the Empire were the same thing altogether. Rome tolerated any particular faith as long as this faith was compatible with the public worship of the Roman gods and the emperor. Public adherence to the gods and the Augustus were identified with patriotism and fidelity to Rome.
Since Christianity was – and is – incompatible with worshiping other gods, Christians were reluctant to show veneration for the Roman pantheon and were therefore viewed with suspicion. Between the first century and until the middle of the third century there were continuous cases of persecution of Christians in different provinces, although it was not yet persecution on an imperial scale. Those who, being accused of Christianity – yes, being a Christian was a charge – refused to offer sacrifices, were banished, risk deportation or were beheaded if they were Roman citizens, and were killed by wild beasts in public spectacles called damnatio ad bestias should they not be Roman citizens.
Overton’s window can move very quickly and make the idea of a Canadian prime minister being beheaded or imprisoned for life, move from being out of frame to become commonly acceptable and lay at the very center of the window frame
In 250 the emperor Decius granted a charter for the persecution of Christians through an edict that forced all the inhabitants of the empire to make sacrifices to the gods in the presence of a Roman magistrate. Those who did so, received a document or certificate called a libel. Subsequently, the emperor Valerian ordered that all Christian clergy be forced to perform sacrifices and that the properties of the high ranking officials of the empire of Christian faith be seized. In many cases Roman patricians became slaves and were sentenced to forced labor for not denying their faith in Christ. In those years being a Christian was not seen as following a religion, like it was the cult of the Egyptian goddess Isis -very popular in the city of Rome-, but as belonging to a subversive criminal association. Anyone can find resemblances with today´s Canada?
Let’s stop for a moment. A certificate, the libel, that everyone must have for the common good of the Empire. Carrying out a forced ritual to ward off fear in the face of a threat. A document that certifies your adherence to a cult for the common good, and those who do not carry out this ritual become outlaws and are stripped of their rights. Does anyone know of something like this today? It’s for just for the sake of asking…
All inhabitants of the empire are required to make sacrifices before the magistrates of their community “for the safety of the empire” on a given day. When they make the sacrifice they will be able to obtain a certificate (libellus) documenting the fact that they have fulfilled the order(Decio’s edict)
Make sacrifices “for the safety of the empire” and receive a certificate in return. Wow, I just don’t know, but it’s kind of something I’ve been hearing a lot lately. Stuff about herds. By the way, between 251 and 266 Rome was devastated by the second Antonine Plague that came to leave a horrific daily death toll of 5,000 people at its peak just in the city of Rome. Right after Decius’ certificate came a pandemic. Isn´t it ironic? If the population at that time in the Eternal City was approximately one million inhabitants, with the figures given by the chroniclers, we have that one in 200 of its inhabitants died daily. I lay this information for those who say that this covid thing is something new and the worst epidemic ever seen. The only thing that this plandemic has of novelty is that this virus, instead of being zoonotic, is manufactured “made in China”.
Curious note : The Antonine Plague broke out for the first time in the second half of the 2nd century (166) and spreaded throughout the empire by the legionnaires who returned from fighting the Seleucid Persians. There is an interesting coincidence in the fact that the Han Dynasty chroniclers documented a similar plague in China five years earlier, so it is quite likely that this pandemic traveled through the Silk Road. As can be seen, China has always been an exporting “powerhouse” of pathogens.
After this little historical tour, let’s go back to the Overton window before traveling to Canada. The Overton window concept was coined by Joseph P. Overton , an electronics engineer and lawyer of strong libertarian convictions, born in 1960 and who passed away in 2003 in an accident aboard an ultralight airplane.
Broadly speaking, Overton stated that there is a framework –or window– within which are a series of policies or ideas that are considered acceptable in a given society. This window, which changes in time and geographical space, moves along a vertical axis, that of freedom, in which different ideas or policies meet. The ideas most related to freedom are located at the top of this vertical axis, while the most despotic are at the bottom. Overton’s window moves along this axis and can also become wider or narrower. I will portrait a very topical example, what is politically acceptable nowadays about vaccination with new experimental substances becoming compulsory?
The Overton’s window framing on what is politically acceptable regarding the debate on compulsory vaccination sets a playing field today in which only defending two positions is “tolerated”. One stand point is that people can choose not to be vaccinated by paying part of their freedom as a toll, the other is that vaccination should be compulsory. The rest of the options can be supported by certain groups or individuals, but no political party, company or politically correct media outlet, which are considered as part of the establishment , would risk running openly in favor of the options that are outside the window frame. The image above would be the photograph that represents how things are in the world (on average) for the purpose of “acceptability” with respect to vaccine dementia.In Canada after the Emergency Act came into effect, the window has slid down making politically defensible that truckers calling for an end to Covid mandates and the return of their rights and freedoms, and those who support them, can be considered de facto terrorists.
Overton, libertarian as he was to the core, thought that it was essential that different groups, institutions and academic circles defend ideas that, being outside the window, were located at the top of the axis (that of freedom), to permeate society with these ideas until they become acceptable for the institutional political parties and the mass media, so that they could make them their own. What has been unfortunately happening in the last four decades, is that those defending the ideas that are closer to totalitarianism have been the ones who have pushed the most to make their (liberticidal) postulates acceptable. This has happened for any field of social debate. The main Anglo-Saxon universities have been at the forefront of this work of indoctrination, macerating future leaders in a soup of socialism. To this end, enormous financial resources have been provided by very powerful foundations (Ford, Bill and Melinda Gates, Open Society) in turn financed by companies and individuals such as Facebook, Google, George Soros, etc.
Let’s go back to Rome fast forwarding only 61 years since Decius decreed the punishment for those who did not bow down to worship the imperial gods. The edicts of Nicomedia first and of Milan later, promulgated by Galerius in 311 and by Constantine I in 313 respectively, put an end to the persecution of Christians throughout the Empire. Overton’s window ran up the axis of liberty. In 380 the emperor Theodosius (Edict of Thessaloniki) made Christianity the official religion of the empire and twelve years later (392) the same Theodosius banned any other religion within the borders of the Roman Empire. The window tilted towards totalitarianism again by denying the possibility of professing another faith other than Christianity.
It went from persecuting Christians to tolerating them and then to Christianity being the state religion. Finally the persecuted persecuted those who persecuted them. It was wrong to persecute Christians and it was wrong to change the official prey. I say all this despite the fact that Christian morality is objectively superior and better than that which emanated from the Roman pantheon. Worshiping one god or another, or not worshiping any, is something that belongs to the private sphere of each individual and not to the State; Another thing is that the worship of some god carries with it aberrations such as human sacrifices or the consideration of women as inferior beings or the mandate to despise those outside that faith… or to preach “holy” war by different means as a form of carrying out an supremacist agenda. When a religion preaches and justifies crime and threats, it positions itself as nothing but one more of those bad “ideas” located at the basement of the Overton’s axis. I think I have made myself understood… At least hope so. Let´s go on
Let´s go back to Canada.
It is worth reminding our new dandy dictators with the appearance of cherubs and the ways of conceited psychopaths, such as Justin Trudeau, Pedro Sánchez, Olaf Scholz or Jacinda Ardern (and many others), that trying to move the Overton window in one direction has -and this it’s a theory of mine – a dangerous “spring effect”.
The spring effect –OWSE (Oberton Window Spring Effect)– is defined as the accumulation of potential energy that is generated when the Overton window moves in either direction of the freedom-despotism axis, being the increase of this energy directly proportional to the distance traveled by the window from the center of the axis, and pointing in the direction opposite to that of the movement of the window.
In other words, the more you compress the spring, the greater the energy that accumulates in it, and this energy is oriented and directed in the opposite direction to that of the force that compresses it. In addition, for each additional “inch” that the spring contracts, the energy that accumulates in it, oriented in the opposite direction, grows more than proportionally.
The consequences of EMVO are very dangerous in general and potentially lethal for bastards like Justin Trudeu who are determined to shrink the spring too far down. Trying to make acceptable tyrannical things such as that people can be deprived of their money, their property, their livelihood, their pets and even their children, for defending their basic freedoms – and that is exactly what is happening today in Canada and in many other countries to a lesser extent – make the reaction in the opposite direction precipitate and be more virulent than if they only pushed a little. When you have nothing left to lose, you go all out.
Trudeu may find that on other issues, and as a consequence of his totalitarian drift, Overton’s window can move very quickly and make the idea of a Canadian prime minister being beheaded or imprisoned for life, move from being out of frame to become commonly acceptable and lay at the very center of the window frame . Ceausescu and his wife, Benito Mussolini and many other Justin colleagues suffered first hand the consequences of the EMVO.
Gladiator shows fighting to the death were considered very tasteful and spoke highly of those who organized and financed them. The Romans of means and considered pious carried out these moral duties or munera (plural of munus) for social good, as an offering to their family gods (manes) and in honor of their deceased. These shows were then seen with such good eyes as it could be seen today giving money for charities. Governors, prefects and emperors organized these shows to gain the favor of the people and they were a fundamental tool in the electoral campaigns of the time. Having several men killing themselves in a coliseum was something that was at the center of Overton’s window at that time. In the 15th century, in the Mexica empire, sacrificing women children and men, by the tens of thousands in some 2- or 3-day celebrations, to honor the death of a tlatoani (emperor) or just to guarantee next day´s dawn was at the center of their particular Overton window, . At that same time in the Inca empire it was a very pious thing to do burying girls alive, drugged and drunk, in the peaks of the Andes (Capacocha).
The Romans of the second century, like the Aztecs and Incas of the fifteenth, considered themselves very progressive and fashionable people for carrying out these atrocities. Because boys and girls, I bring you some shocking news: what is acceptable at each time and place is not necessarily objectively good or fair. In Overton’s scheme, justice is not marked by what is acceptable, but by the ideas that are located at the top of the axis that marks what is more respectfull toward human freedom. Acceptable is only good if the window is located at the top of this axis. Something very popular but located in the lower part of the axis will always be bad. Human kind improves, progresses and advances in the right direction, only if the window rises. When the window goes down, no matter how much they want to sell it to you as “progress” –which they do–, dear boys and girls, we objectively go backwards as a society.
Feeding us up with true nonsense disguising it as and advance and as progress is ridiculous, but, oh boy!, do they persists. Here is a brief list of nonsenical mantras that are sold as facts although they lack any rooting in reason whatsoever:
- Only white people can be and are racist by nature;
- sex and gender are two concepts that do not run parallel;
- there are such things as a la carte rights for collectives;
- the oxymoronic term “positive-discrimination” can describe something beneficial;
- getting vaccinated with substances that are as ineffective as they have proven to be and potentially dangerous is an “act of love”;
- forcing people to inject substances is something great;
- it is an act of responsibility inoculating your 7-year-old girl with something she doesn’t need and that will not prevent her from getting infected while giving her a ticket for a raffle of death and chronic adverse effects;…
Excuse me for showing you my “shopping list” but I wanted to bring here a few dogmas before going on to make my point (please be patient I´ll soon wrap up).
When we are sold these colossal nonsense, we are being shipped pure shit. Shit sprayed with abundant perfume of neologisms and euphemisms to make it more attractive to the eye and the palate, but shit after all.
That shit is acceptable, and can be at the very core of Overton’s window at any given moment, is by no means new, as we have already seen.
And since we’re talking about shit, let’s go back to Justin Trudeu so we don’t change the subject .
Emperor Justinian considers that fair demonstrations are only those that pursue objectives that his imperial majesty likes, such as the demonstrations of the para-terrorist, Marxist and racist group Black Lives Matter. If they are truck drivers, working people, protesting peacefully and asking Justiniano Borealis to give them back what he has stolen (their basic freedoms) such as their right to move freely without having to be injected with what the neo-dictator has prescribed for them, then they are Nazis, racists, and, since a couple of days, also terrorists. Not only them, but also anyone who gets near bringing them a can of diesel or a sandwich. All terrorists.
Attention animal owners at demonstration
— Ottawa By-law (@OttawaBylaw) February 17, 2022
If you are unable to care for your animal as a result of enforcement actions, your animal will placed into protective care for 8 days, at your cost. After 8 days, if arrangements are not made, your animal will be considered relinquished. pic.twitter.com/OkbXc8RE3c
Justinian I Borealis is pushing Overton’s window, jumping on top of it with liberticidal quips and playing with the OWSE (Oberton Window Spring Effect) that I have coined. When the pressure on the spring is so high that it triggers a reaction in the opposite direction to the one that Monsieur Trudeau pushes, the Canadian neo-dictator may find that his wokish American preppy head may end up in the center of something similar to a window. I am talking about a rectangular structure topped by a sliding blade at the top and placed on a scaffold.
Canada, Otawa #lareunionsecreta @LRsecreta pic.twitter.com/Ye1pJNbi6B
— Tabarnesa (@MarataTabarnesa) February 18, 2022
