THE OVERTON WINDOW Read Online Free PDF

sense, though in this case I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m standing on the shoulders of giants—Woodrow Wilson, Julian Huxley, Walter Lippmann, Cloward and Piven, Bernays and Ivy, Saul Alinsky. The list is long. All I’ve done here”—he held up the folder—”is to crystallize the vision of those who’ve come before me, those who dreamed of a new and sustainable progressive nationalism but never saw their dreams fully realized.
    “Because we must, we
will
finally complete what they envisioned: a new framework that will survive when the decaying remains of the failed United States have been washed away in the coming storm. Within thisframework the nation will reemerge from the rubble, reborn to finally take its rightful, humble place within the world community. And you,” he said, looking around the table, “will all be there to lead it.”
    A hand went up on the far side, a question from the senior member of the party, who’d so far only listened in silence.
    “Mr. Gardner,” the man said. “What about the public?”
    “What about them? The public has lost their courage to believe. They’ve given up their ability to think. They can no longer even form opinions, they
absorb
their opinions, sitting slack-jawed in front of their televisions. Their thoughts are manufactured by people like me. What about the public? Twenty years ago in this room I showed a small group of shortsighted businessmen how to sell the public the most abundant substance on the face of the earth at ten times the price of premium gasoline, the very same water that flows from their own kitchen faucets for one-tenth of a penny per gallon. That would seem unbelievable; it defies all logic and reason. Your grandparents would have called it larceny, fraud, or wanton thievery … and rightly so, I might add. But that experience proved one thing to me: there’s a double-edged sword by which the public can be sold anything, from a three-dollar bottle of tap water to a full-scale war.”
    The screens winked out at once, and left behind were three tall words in black on white, dominating the room from floor to ceiling.
    HOPE AND FEAR
    “Do you see? If the people are simply swindled there’s always a chance they might one day awaken and rebel against the crime. But we don’t change their minds; we change the truth. Most people simply want to be left alone; they’ll go along with anything as long as we maintain their illusions of freedom and the American way. We leverage their hopes and feed their fears, and once they believe, they’re ours forever. After that they can be taken by the scruff of the neck and shown theindisputable scientific proof, with their own eyes they can read the label that says
contents drawn from a municipal water supply,
and they will only nod their sleepy heads and walk past the faucet to the vending machine. That’s when you know that anything is possible.
    “You!” He pointed to Mr. Purcell at the far end of the table, who flinched as though he’d just been goosed by a cattle prod. “You entered this room thinking of me as a hired hand, believing you were a master of these proceedings, and since you pay my salary, by all rights you should have been correct. Why then did you allow me, your humble employee, to overpower you, to control you, to humiliate you in front of your peers and subordinates? Why?”
    When it became clear that not even a stammering answer was forthcoming the old man continued.
    “Indoctrination. I made you afraid, Mr. Purcell, and in your fear you accepted
my
truth,
my
power, and you abandoned your own. The public will do the same; leave them to me. The misguided resistance that still exists will be put down in one swift blow. There’ll be no revolution, only a brief, if somewhat shocking, leap forward in social evolution. We’ll restore the natural order of things, and then there will be only peace and acceptance among the masses.” He smiled. “Before we’re done they’ll be lining