Re-posted by Nicholas Stix
What Do You Think You’re Accomplishing?
By Countenance BlogmeisterNovember 29, 2014
Countenance Blog
The handsupdontshoot rabble is (sarcasm on) really doing right by their cause from a public relations standpoint (sarcasm off). The average person is really going to want to sign up for a cause whose most visible and vocal adherents and advocates burn down auto parts stores and pizza joints, riot, loot, make kids cry at Christmas tree lighting ceremonies, threaten violence at malls to make them close, disrupt big box store shopping, stand in the middle of interstate highways during rush hour, threaten people who are about to come out of hockey games such that the arena is locked down (that happened in St. Louis last night).
White suburban soccer moms and working moms bringing themselves and their kids to handsupdontshoot street theater? Forget about that, we blew way past that milestone a long time ago. It’s now even more fundamental than that: Who wants even to believe in their cause? Other than the kind of reprobates and losers who naturally gravitate to that kind of thing. While it’s not a logical thing to say or think, these kinds of optics do matter very much in the PR world. People are going to draw conclusions about the undesirability of a cause and its politics from the violent and proto-violent antics of its adherents.
I do PR for a living, partially, but I also have a logical mind. I can operate in both worlds while realizing that they often contradict each other. This is why while the logical side of me didn’t make the Michael Brown case settled science until August 18 (when Eric S. Raymond analyzed the first autopsy), the PR side of me fully realizes why a lot of people made up their minds on August 15 (when the Ferguson Market security camera still shots were released). Until August 18, most everyone who cared about this had to operate in the benefit-of-the-doubt space, but what August 15 did was clue people on which side deserved most of that benefit. This is why the other side didn’t want the security stills released and ranted and raged out when they were, because they knew it was a PR coup and an instant narrative buster.
Which is why I warn our own people: Avoid the temptation of millenarianism. If we start promulgating the notion that things have to fall apart before they get better, then no quality people are going to join our cause. Who actually wants disaster to begin with? And who wants to be part of a cause where disaster is a prerequisite to its success?
One of the favorite chants of the rabble: “This is what democracy looks like.” And you know what? That’s the only correct thing they’ve said so far.
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