EOTO#2 Reaction Post

Today I got the pleasure to hear some of the other presentations from my classmates. All of these presentations held valuable information about todays society. Some of the topics I have never heard of before, so allow me to take you through a few that I found interesting.

Source

The first interesting topic was about whistle blowers. This is when an employee, formal or current, finds some illegal activity going on in their place of work and report it to the proper authorities. Some of the things whistle blowers report are fraud, abuse of power, and embezzlement.Whistle blowers are often a major red flag for the government and the government will do everything in their power to shut you up. 

One of the most famous whistle blowers out there is a man named Edward Snowden. He was an IT systems expert who was employed at the NSA. He was responsible for leaking highly classified information from the NSA in 2013. He proceeded to flee to Russia where he still is today. The U.S. government now considers Snowden a traitor in violation of the espionage act. 

The second theory that I found interesting from today was the overton window theory. To me it gets a bit confusing but ill do my best to explain it.

The overton window is a political science concept that represents what society will except. Lets put it this way. You are running for president and you want to know what policies you should advocate for. Lets take the right to bear arms. 

Typically when talking about this you would most likely find 3 different people. The first group of people think that there should be no gun laws and that guns should be used everywhere. The second group of people think that guns are not allowed and no citizen should own a gun. But then you have a happy median which is any citizen should own a gun as long as its used privately. 

Now ideally you should be supporting this happy median as it is where the overton window is, as shown by the picture.

Its important to know that the publics opinion can and will change over time so these graphs are constantly changing. Its good to know where the overton window is if you want to win you next election. The overton window helps politicians decide where they stand in order to get the publics approval and their vote.