| | I think that there is a powerful psychological governor in place that stops any media person from asking or commenting on anything that would imply or entail a positive answer or conclusion that is outside of the current location of the Overton Window.
That is, they seem to have been 'trained' to not go into areas that moves the intellectual context, even if only for a moment, too far from where their sub-culture is now. This is the hallmark of a society that thinks in concretes and feels uncomfortable with principles. It is a mechanism for using group think instead of reasoning. This is why the left is so successful with cliches and emotional appeals rather than reasoning from basic principles.
If you don't reason from principles, you need something to let you formulate responses that work in a journalistic context - that would be pushing hidden agendas of the group, emotional reactions, politically correct responses, cliches, talking points, group-think and an Overton governor.
This avoidance of positions too far from some presumed mainstream position (which for the press is to the left of the population at large, and that makes them keep working to shift the window to the left) makes it safer to discuss practical consequences of a policy, rather than to examine it on moral grounds. This makes it more popular to discuss process stories instead of policy stories. This explains why anything labeled "ideological" will be dead - as if pronouncing it ideological makes it unnecessary to say any more. This makes it more popular for the far left to use ridicule of the opponent than to argue in favor of Obama's ideological positions which are too far to the left. This is why the libertarian positions, or strict constitutionalists, or serious balanced budget advocates get dismissed immediately - they are so far to the right that they are outside of the Overton Window.
Calvin Coolidge, in response to a serious economic downturn, cut taxes by 50% and he refused to spend money on things that weren't authorized in the constitution. That is clearly what we need now, but it is seen as too extremist from the current location of the Overton Window. So, we can't cut taxes by 50% without first moving the window to the right. The Overton Window is a model for the mass political psychology in a society and it is useful in seeing more realistically what a given change would take in time or effort.
By relying on an emotionally based guidance system the left studiously avoids those things to right of them, only goes so far to the left, and this is a shared, flock-like, mechanism for responding to all political issues.
It must be the liberal college professors in journalism, history, and poli-sci classes that model this mental process for them, and then it gets reinforced at work when they get into NBC, ABC, NY Times, etc. The base of this avoidance is keeping a fuzzy mind and ignoring the dissonance generated by being partisan on the inside while pretending to be neutral on the outside. That is, being accepting of lying as a norm.
|
|
