Beware the OUTRAGE MACHINE!

Here's a tale of bandwagons and prisons, personal history and Scott County, Virginia history, and dark days....I hope it encourages some reflection.



BEWARE THE BANDWAGON

It seems that not a week passes these days without somebody getting all worked up and outraged about something, some new horrible thing that’s going to end” Life As We Know It”-it’s all over the mainstream media and social media. Everybody is urged to jump on that bandwagon and share and post and tweet and email and march and protest and petition.


In recent months, for example, a photographer who took an innocent picture of a soldier holding his baby in an American flag had her life turned upside down by a vicious e-mob reaction. In another case, a professor who accidentally sent her students a link to a disgusting pornographic site almost lost her job after the mob demanded her head. It’s a really disturbing phenomenon, because I learned a long time ago that no mob is moral or responsible, even if their ideas are correct or cause is just. Often times mobs form based on wrong or incomplete information. Either way, it’s just not something I want to be a part of. That’s because I’ve been where these targets have found themselves, but thank goodness, it was before the days of Twitter and Facebook and email. I shudder to think what would have happened if those had been available. It’s a real possibility we’d have been the target of physical violence or property damage because of social media’s ability to intensify emotion and de-humanize people.


Let me tell you a little story, with a little Scott County history thrown in, to illustrate why. Twenty years ago, I saw hysteria in action. My husband decided he wanted to do something for the community, so he volunteered to serve on the county Industrial Development Authority, charged with bringing jobs to our county. At that time it was an unpaid volunteer job, subject to appointment by the Board of Supervisors, and their charge was to find ways to bring new jobs. About that time, the state of VA decided it had to increase its prison capacity and set out to build prisons, both public and private.


While nobody likes prisons and it’s clearly questionable as to whether our current philosophy of incarcerating everybody instead of treating addictions and mental illness is a good idea, it is, nevertheless, an undeniable fact that we have to have prisons somewhere. (And I know all about why private prisons are controversial; the state of VA evidently came to the conclusion not to go that route, after all, and I think that was a good decision.) Anyway,after a year of exhaustive research, including traveling to other communities where prisons were located, etc. , the Board of Supervisors decided to try to get those good-paying jobs here, and they would try to get one of the new prisons located in our county. The IDA started the process of making it happen. You’d have thought the world was ending.


Some in Scott County wanted nothing to do with prisons. People wrote letters to the local papers accusing my husband (he was the chairman) and others of benefiting somehow financially from the proposed prisons-complete nonsense. He was called a “crooked politician” when he was no kind of politician at all, only a volunteer. Our phone rang off the hook day and night with people railing at us, making wild claims that had already been thoroughly researched and debunked by the board and other officials. Law enforcement had to walk board members and county officials to cars after public meetings because of the violent rhetoric that took over. We received anonymous threatening calls, even at work. People who had known us all our lives, practically, and should have known my husband’s heart and his integrity called to tell him they were no longer his friends and they’d never speak to him again.


It was a truly depressing experience.

Eventually, the two new prisons were built in neighboring Lee and Wise counties where, twenty years in, absolutely none of the horror stories opponents promoted have come true, and most of the good benefits the IDA tried to explain to people have also come true. (By the way, the almost identical scenario had played out about a generation before when VA decided to build a community college in Scott County. Mountain Empire Community College wound up being built in Wise County, too. People in Scott County said a college would bring drugs and social unrest to our county back in the 60s. Seriously.)


All I’m saying is this-fear is often out of the gate first and facts are slow to catch up. Beware: all forms of media, anyone seeking to increase their own power, and fear itself- all thrive on mobs. Ascribing the worst of motives to people, slandering, believing every wild tale you hear, and refusing to even listen to both sides of an issue can make you the bad guy in many instances. Caution is always advised. Beware of the TV News, Facebook, or Twitter Outrage Machine.