Americans are terrified of being accused of racism, or nativism, or any of the other go–to allegations used by leftists to disarm their political opponents. Knowing this, leftists have spent decades shifting the Overton Window—the limits of acceptable public opinion. They’ve succeeded. Today, virtually all political positions opposed by the left are outside the Overton Window. Anything outside the Overton Window is, ipso facto, racist or nativist or any of the other leftist taboos.

In other words, the left has mastered the technique of eliminating debate about their political views simply by rendering the opposing views socially unacceptable. As a result, Americans are afraid to express views outside the Overton Window. Doing so could cost them their jobs or social standing, or expose them to public humiliation or shame.

At the same time, people who hold views inside the Overton Window (essentially every position on the political left) do so without realizing that they are the pawns of other, more intelligent or cunning actors. These people are what we refer to as “normies.” They accept the prevailing political discourse without question–indeed, without even realizing there is something to question. For example, if the woke left has successfully recharacterized a given political subject as racist, xenophobic, or nativist, the normie accepts that new characterization without question.

As I explain below, normies are never swayed by technical objections to leftist dogma. For the most part, they’re not even aware of those technical objections. On the other hand, normies can make substantial changes to their political orientation, but only as a consequence of tectonic paradigm shifts or, in some rare cases, individual awakenings usually prompted by traumatic or spiritual experiences.

By contrast, non-player characters (NPCs for short) are pugnacious defenders of political dogma. In many cases their entire conception of reality has been heavily conditioned by other minds. They are committed to the conditioning dogma because it provides them deep psychological nourishment. They are physiologically incapable of abandoning that nourishing dogma because it is their identity. To abandon it would be to commit suicide. As a consequence, they will follow the Overton Window wherever it moves, even if the new view is diametrically opposed to the old. They cannot change.

Except for members of the ruling elite who are opportunists, all Democrats are either normies or NPCs. By contrast, many Republicans are normies, but none is an NPC. There is no such thing as an NPC on the right if only because there is no coherent right-wing dogma to provide the essential psychological nourishment. That’s not to say that in principle there can’t be a right-wing drone-slave ideology analogous to woke leftism, only that today there isn’t one. In the modern West, all NPCs are on the woke left.

Based Americans are neither normies nor NPCs. They are the people who have realized that something is gravely wrong with the West. 20 years ago, there were no more than a few thousand of these people. Four years ago, there were millions of them. Today, there may be tens of millions.

Based Americans hold views outside the Overton Window. Today that means they hold views that are, by and large, true. Their mental models accurately depict the state of reality and are constantly updated to respond to new information. They are operators.

One way to think about the current struggle for the West is to conceptualize it as a war between the based and the NPCs / ruling elite for the minds of the normies. The elite wish to turn the normies into drone-slave NPCs. The based hope to set them free. A war of 15% versus 15% over the minds of 70%.

Today, there are many fronts in that war, though none is as important as the struggle over mass foreign invasion. If this struggle is lost, the majority of foreign invaders (absurdly called “undocumented migrants” in NPC newspeak) will become drone-slave NPCs. As a result, based Americans will be marginalized and utterly disempowered. A thousand years of darkness will ensue.

 

Scylla and Charybdis

Given the woke left’s control of the Overton Window, based Americans are in a bind. If they confront the issue of foreign invasion head on, they risk being marginalized and caricatured as racists, nativists, or xenophobic. Conversely, if they attempt to flank the issue and attack its periphery, they divert resources from the main event. Unfortunately, based Americans are not particularly good tacticians. They have yet to learn that flanking maneuvers cannot defeat woke leftism.

There are many examples. Based Americans are afraid to say that blacks commit crimes disproportionately. Instead, they oppose defunding the police. They’re afraid to say that transgenderism is a psychological disorder, so they object to a few children’s books in public libraries. In the case of immigration, they’re afraid to say that we don’t need reasons to exclude foreigners. Instead, they talk about the numbers of convicted felons who have crossed the border illegally.

Why? Because observing the disproportionate crime rate among blacks, the psychological disorder inherent in transgenderism, or the essence of nationhood are outside the Overton Window and, therefore, risky. Conversely, opposing defunding the police, criticizing the public library’s book selection, or noticing that many illegals are violent felons, are inside the Overton Window and, therefore, not risky. For now, anyway.

Never mind that many views outside the Overton Window also happen to have the redeeming characteristic of being true, including the three mentioned above. This is consistent with the essential reality denial of woke leftism. That said, we must give credit where it’s due. The left’s mastery of political propaganda is so thorough that it has no difficulty removing from polite society topics that are self–evidently true. Impressive.

 

Rearranging the Deck Chairs

In the case of immigration, the woke left’s strategy of shifting the Overton Window has succeeded. This means that most based Americans are afraid to say anything that looks like this: “This is our country, you will leave when we tell you to leave. No reason will be given.” Instead, as per the leftist playbook, we resort to attacking the periphery. Here, that means publicizing the incidental side effects of immigration like crime, inflation, or housing shortages.

Republicans in Congress are masters of missing the action: They think they’re flanking the opposition when in fact they are AWOL. Their battle plan is always the same: marshal facts they believe can be used to expose and embarrass the woke left. They do this by sending meaningless subpoenas and politely worded cover letters to Biden appointees.

When the responses come (if they come at all), they usually do reveal leftist policy failures. After all, it’s not as though the last 60 years of woke leftism have led to widespread virtue, material prosperity, or prudential governance. With these responses in hand, Congressional republicans believe they’ve hit political pay dirt. They are always mistaken.

A recent example is Congress’ March 13 demand for information about convicted felons among the incessant waves of illegals entering the country. That letter generated a response from Immigration and Customs Enforcement on September 25. There, ICE Deputy Director Patrick Lechleitner acknowledged that the tsunami of illegals invading the United States of America includes a huge number of dangerous felons. In short, he acknowledged that ICE (which is part of the Department of Homeland Security under its beleaguered Secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas) is either willfully derelict or grossly incompetent. Which one matters not.

For what it’s worth, ICE’s figures revealed that 662,566 violent criminal illegals entered the US during Biden’s term in office. Among them were more than 15,000 murderers.

Horrible figures, no doubt. And, of course, had such figures materialized under the leadership of a Republican administration . . . blah, blah, blah . . . you know the rest. Double standards, hypocrisy, etc.

Predictably, though, Republicans thought they’d hit pay dirt. They hadn’t. What they failed to realize–what they always fail to realize–is that those Americans who are already willing to speak the “primary truth” (that illegals must leave because we say so) don’t need the peripheral fact that illegal immigrants bring crime with them. It is, after all, peripheral. Conversely, the normie mind that can’t conceptualize (let alone speak) the primary truth will never know about the illegal immigrant crime rate. Not unless we change the paradigm. They need to know that it’s okay to want foreigners out simply because they are foreign; i.e., not American.

 

There’s Nothing to Learn from the Second Kick of a Mule

So why do Congressional Republicans send these subpoenas and report these facts? They’re continuing to operate on the naïve assumption that by exposing these technical shortcomings, normies will hold the regime accountable for its incompetence–that they will vote the bastards out. That won’t happen for two reasons.

First, as it pertains to the normie mind, the regime has obtained total narrative supremacy. Normies know what the regime wants them to know and nothing more. For example, normies had no idea that Joe Biden suffered from advanced dementia until the regime permitted them to know in July 2024–a concept I explained in Normie Reality Model 1.1 Will be Downloaded Tonight. This was the case even though the signs were obvious more than four years earlier, when he first ran for President.

In the case of illegal immigration, this means that most normies will never know about the mass importation of violent felons. Since they will never know, the regime’s technical incompetence will not be exposed and no Normie votes will change. Indeed, most normies are blissfully indifferent to illegal immigration in general, let alone aware that it is an impending civilizational catastrophe. Any public opinion poll confirms this.

Given this stark reality, the tacit Congressional republican view that normies will cast votes based on the numbers of illegals who are violent felons is grossly irresponsible.

Second, by pointing to technical shortcomings, the right becomes vulnerable to technical rejoinders. All this plays into the hands of the ruling elite by crowding out existential issues that can’t compete for the public’s mental bandwidth. The left knows this, which is why it disputes the data while highlighting obscure stories of falsely accused illegals.

The left’s response implies that the precise figures matter: as though illegal immigration is fine for America provided that only 662,565 felons have entered the country, and not one more! Once that tacit premise is conceded by the tactical retards on our side, down the rabbit hole we go. Subpoenas are issued, Congressional letters delivered, and right–wing social media inundated with outrage porn for the based. The left responds with its spin. The nation must, MUST!, find out if it’s 662,565 or 662,566 illegal felons. This will decide the fate of the West, or something.

And republicans think they’re winning the debate. After all, the left’s characterization of the facts is often facially absurd and easily rebutted (see, e.g., Debunking the Myth of the ‘Migrant Crime Wave or a million other agitprop “news” stories). In reality, however, we’ve already lost. The dispute rages for months, years–as long as the left wants it to rage, which is always just long enough to distract Normies until the next election. Meanwhile, the invasion continues apace.

Based Americans allow this discourse shift to happen because we don’t know how to control the Overton Window. Instead of observing that no illegal can be falsely accused if he isn’t here in the first place, we question our national sovereignty. Doing that is, after all, less socially risky. This astonishing dichotomy reveals the power of the Overton Window to displace reality and realpolitik. These are the benefits of total narrative supremacy, you see.

 

Post Mortem

For the past 60 years, when handed facts like these, Republican strategy has consisted of something like this: The left has a terrible track record of atrocious public policy failures. These failures cover the whole spectrum, from domestic to foreign policy, housing projects to foreign wars, public education to law enforcement, illegal immigration to sexual perversion, and so on. If we marshal facts on these policy failures and disclose them to the American public, we will regain power and restore the country! The problem with this approach is that it doesn’t work. At all.

Pointing out left wing policy failures has done nothing to slow the advance of left-wing ideology. The country is now on the verge of destruction despite mountains of evidence of catastrophic leftist policy failure in every domain.

What gives?

The problem with all right–wing attempts to expose left–wing failures is that by nitpicking program implementation, Republicans tacitly justify the underlying policies.

In the case of illegal immigration, focusing on technical failures implies the need for nothing more than technical solutions—as if illegal immigration would be a good thing provided it didn’t include convicted felons. In reality, counting and tracking those who are convicted felons is no more relevant than counting and tracking the number that are left handed. Illegal immigration is, itself, an existential issue, even assuming that not a single illegal is a convicted felon.

As I explained in A Republic, If You Can Keep It, Americans don’t need reasons to exclude foreigners: it doesn’t matter if illegal immigrants work really hard, are “good people,” are “people of faith,” are family-oriented, commit fewer crimes, will “reduce price inflation,” or will add to U.S. productivity. Though much of that is false and though huge numbers of illegals are none of those things, all of it is irrelevant.

The survival of the West depends upon us mustering the will to stop the influx of foreign invaders and then quickly deporting tens of millions of them—not on arguing about how many are felons.

To do this, Americans need to resist the urge to criticize the side effects of such immigration and start confronting the issue head on. They need to stop fearing the dreaded Overton Window. We must re–normalize certain essential political ideas that the left has removed from the domain of acceptable public discourse.

And, for what it’s worth, the technical dispute will be resolved, usually long after the real battle has already been lost. Here, this means that many years from now, on page 193 of a DHS inspector general report (probably in a footnote), the government will admit the mundane fact that Congressional Republicans were right way back in 2024: actually, there were 662,566 felons admitted into the country illegally when Kamala Harris was Vice President.

But that report will be issued in Spanish, long after the primary surrender has rendered the primary issue moot.

TJ Harker is the general counsel of a Knoxville, Tennessee, company. He spent more than a decade as a federal and state prosecutor, where he investigated and tried national white-collar frauds and espionage matters. He writes at Amicus Republicae on Substack.