Overton Window: Chapter 19-21

[sabotabby]

Chapter 19

At the end of the last chapter, Molly flounced and Noah had lost her to the teeming crowds of Times Square. He’s managed to find her again, though. These two have known each other for a day, and I don’t think they’ve even exchanged cell numbers. But he’s changed his tune on the spying on secret-but-not-really meetings at Doyle & Merchant, so in they go through the secret-but-not-really entrance to the office.

Noah wrestles with his ethics for a bit, then:

If Molly was right, then a cute but quirky mailroom temp had identified a grand, unified, liberty-crushing conspiracy that had been hatched in the conference room of a PR agency.

Which contradicts everything out of Noah’s mouth for the last few chapters about how the conspiracy is out in the open and he knows everything and no one will care, but you know how guys like to brag. I’m more distracted by the mental image of Molly as Manic Pixie Dream Girl.



So they break into Arthur’s office, critique his extensive art collection, and find all of those PowerPoints from Chapter 3. Yawn. They find a bit that mentions “Casus Belli” and the Reichstag, in case the plot wasn’t already obvious enough even if you’ve never read a book before (that would be the majority of Beck’s audience).

Some technologically improbable things happen and we finally get to the new content. Oooh, title drop! Noah mansplains the concept of the Overton Window, which Beck likely encountered on some left-wing blog that was talking about how he’s made tin-hatted paranoid ramblings increasingly part of the mainstream political dialogue. He throws in a couple real examples (airline security, WMDs), and then, to my delight, plays the anti-vax card. There’s an interesting example of the Overton Window theory in two paragraphs, if you care.

“Saddam’s on the verge of getting nuclear weapons, so we have to invade before he wipes out Cleveland. If we don’t hand AIG a seventy-billion-dollar bailout there’ll be a depression and martial law by Monday. If we don’t all get vaccinated one hundred thousand people will die in a super swine-flu pandemic. And how about fuel prices? Once you’ve paid five dollars for a gallon of gas, three-fifty suddenly sounds like a real bargain. Now they’re telling us that if we don’t pass this worldwide carbon tax right now the world will soon be underwater.

“And understand, I’m not talking about the right or wrong of those underlying issues. I care about the environment more than most, I want clean energy, I want this country to recover and be great again, people should get their shots if they need them, and Saddam Hussein was a legitimate monster. I’m saying opportunists can attach themselves to our hopes and fears about those things, for profit, and this is one of the tools they use to do that. The question to ask is, if they’ve got a legitimate case for these things, then why all the lying and fabrication?”

Notice what Beck is doing here: Throwing a bunch of wacky shit at us, and then having the “reasonable” Noah modify it into an acceptable mainstream position to justify the war and occupation against Iraq and deny the reality of climate change. Clever! Not very subtle, though.

There’s some more blather, including a weird throwaway line about Goldman Sachs being an “environmental luminary.” The whole chapter is kind of a cross between the bits in Minority Report where Tom Cruise is grabbing 3D projections out of the air, and the Unibomber.

+ =

D&M’s newest client, which for lack of a better name I’m going to call the ZOG, has a 10-point plan on a PowerPoint that includes adding a social justice component to education, a one-world currency, giving the vote to non-status immigrants and prisoners, and FEMA internment camps. I don’t think the evil conspirators of the world do their plotting on PowerPoints. Nor do I think they use terms like “criminalizing dissent” when developing their evil strategies.

The ZOG, of course, is planning a little Reichstag Fire of their very own (spoiler: it’s a nuclear bomb), and they’ve put the timeline for that on the PowerPoint: three days.

DUN DUN DUN

Conspiracy count: Off the fucking map.


Chapter 20

Noah and Molly ride around in a cab. Noah reassures Molly that he’ll protect her. They hold hands.

Things that happen in this chapter: Nothing.

Chapter 21

And over to Molly’s house we go. She lives in a slum. Beck, who makes $32 million a year, and his groupies, who are wealthier than average, have likely never been to a slum, so the description feels a bit off. Also, she lives near Tomkins Square Park, which is a festering sewer of poverty and violence.

Inside, it’s some sort of hipster loft that serves as a hideout for the I-can’t-type-it-without-giggling-Patriot Underground. The book collection includes some hippie shit, John Birch Society blather, and a hat tip to Orson Scott Card’s abominable Empire (which essentially has the same plot as this book, by the way). And a whole bunch of survivalist literature on how to blow things up, kill people, and live off the land. No, they’re not violent people at all.

Hollis shows up and gives Noah a tour of the Martin Luther King-inspired arms manufacturing facilities, where they are carrying on Gandhi’s legacy by making their own ammunition. Hollis cutely compares it to baking fresh, hot cookies.


Not since Buffy’s infamous “cookie dough” exchange has a baked goods metaphor been so ill-advised.

Then they crash a meeting of the Founders Keepers, all of whom have twee pseudonyms from the names of the Founding Fathers. For fun, apparently these guys like to read out stuff from Thomas Jefferson like it’s Bible Study. I get the sense Jefferson wouldn’t have liked this very much. To carry on the Bible Study analogy past the point of absurdity, each of these people has memorized the works of one of the Founding Fathers. You know, like persecuted Christians used to memorize bits of the Bible? Apparently in the NWO, it’s going to be illegal to take historical quotes out of context like wingnuts do all the time. I for one welcome the NWO.

It’s not illegal yet, though, because half of this chapter is out-of-context quotes and the rest is about how great Ragnar Benson’s books on how to start the next Waco are. By the way, the original Benson is Hollis’ uncle, and the current Benson is Hollis himself. Molly gives away this rather sensitive information to a guy she’s known for two days.

Then they cuddle more and talk about “faith, hope, and charity.” It’s not very interesting beyond Molly’s assurance that God back their little jihad and her hope that one day she can live in a Thomas Kinkaid painting.

And with that, we are now halfway through this literary abomination. Two quick announcements: Deeky at Shakesville is also going to be doing a read-through of this nightmare, and New Scum is actually brave enough to cover Atlas Shrugged.

Comments

[symphorophilia.livejournal.com]

I really appreciate your reviews of this piece of literary excrement! You've made it way more hilarious than it actually is, probably.

[sabotabby]

Yeah, it is more boring than anything else. Like the guy ranting on a street corner is funny the first time you hear him, but when you pass him every day, he becomes increasingly less so.

[sabotabby]

I secretly liked that scene in Buffy. No one else did.

I am so excited that someone else is reading Atlas Shrugged so that I don't have to. I'll wait for the movie with Angelina Jolie and recap it then.

[bike4fish.livejournal.com]

What? Everyone knows the Unabomber looks like this:

[sabotabby]

He has too many teeth oh god.