Locals Against Party Down South: economic damage and hate campaigns

Recently, a couple of the easily offended crowd started a Facebook hate campaign, "Locals Against Party Down South" (LAPDS) and a Facebook friend asked me to join.

I declined, commented as to why (actually thinking about the blow back), and was ultimately blocked.

In a nutshell, PDS is a stupid reality show about drunken debauchery. The producers floated a trial balloon about filming along the Gulf Coast. The easily offended, spurred on by those who believe in acting first and thinking second, rallied around a message of "we don't like you, and you are not welcome here." 11,400+ of my friends and neighbors along the Gulf Coast joined the hate campaign, the show decided to film elsewhere and the numerous LAPDS bible thumpers whooped in joy.

Naturally, as with any hate campaign, there was denial that this was . . . a hate campaign. Yet comments on the LAPDS page were virulent, mean, threatening, hostile, bullying and quite a number had bizarre, angry biblical references. After all, they must reason, God has plenty of time to join a hate campaign and nothing better to do.

Unfortunately, Stupid is not the new Smart. Hate begets hate. And just as I predicted in numerous comments before I was blocked by the easily offended, the seeds of economic destruction didn't take very long to show up: Walton County went to war against Spring Breakers as shown here within days after the successful social media hate campaign. One of our most vital industries is tourism: the local and even regional money supply increases with every dollar spent by a tourist, rather than simply recycling dollars already in the area.

You would think this was a novel concept, that increasing the number of dollars circulating in a region would have a positive impact on jobs, wages and local wealth of our citizens. It isn't. But for many in this region, Stupid = Smart.

Is possessing alcohol under the age of twenty-one (21) against the law? Certainly. Take their beer and issue a Criminal Summons; take them to jail only if they are a real (as opposed to an imagined) nuisance. Better yet, lower the drinking age to eighteen (18)  - like it was when most of the finger wagging church ladies of LAPDS were that age. But these common sense approaches are actually smart solutions. Therein lies the problem. Common sense - engaging in the hard labor of actually thinking - is highly uncommon. Most would rather create a toxic environment of hate and intolerance.

Thus here's the problem with Stupid being the new Smart, with the new hate Spring Breakers, anti-tourism campaign:

1. The people being targeted, college students who are eighteen (18) to twenty (20), are going to become the most educated in our society - university graduates. 
2. They will have more disposable income than every other demographic in the years to come, for years to come. 
3. They will want to take their families on vacation to amazing places, often where they had a wonderful experience . . . while in college.
4. Odds that hundreds, if not thousands of the exact tourists we will be fighting other areas to have in the next ten (10) to thirty (30) years will say to themselves, anywhere but northwest Florida? 100%

So, not only did LAPDS succeed in preventing a television show from coming to an area, they gave a green light (actually, a virtual command) to politicians to use overly aggressive tactics which will damage our tourism industry for a generation to come.The Walton County Sheriff's Office Zero Tolerance (read Zero Intelligence) campaign will cost the local region millions of dollars over the next three decades.

Stupid is still Stupid. The Sheriff's Office still had to back off and give many people a criminal summons (as opposed to taking them to jail) anyway - it was too expensive to keep up the pace of looking to throw as many people in jail as possible.

Worse, this is costing local taxpayers a ton of money in order to lose money for years and years.

The news gets worse: you are a business owner thinking of relocating to what is perceived as an intolerant area of the country. Think your best talent will be thrilled about relocating to the panhandle with their domestic partner? Not at all. Neither will your shareholders. So, the hate campaign costs this area in future economic development. The damage is incalculable.

And still worse: Memorial Day is right around the corner. The LGBTQ community comes to the Emerald Coast every year, and every year a group of religiously obsessed crybabies publicly complains about all of the "unwanted" queer folk coming to town. Thus the next Locals Against, social media hate campaign is probably underway as I type these words. If the area loses the Pride weekend to another more tolerant area, it is richly deserved. And an utter catastrophe for those businesses and employees who make substantial income form these free spending visitors to our area.

I am reminded of a poem about how a horseshoe, a rider, a skirmish, a battle and ultimately a war were lost, all for the want of a horseshoe nail. Locals Against Party Down South was far more than a mere nail. LAPDS was a full blown war. 11,400+ of my friends and neighbors acted before they thought. They were quick to anger and slow to think, quick to judge yet slow to analyze the reasonably foreseeable consequence of stupid behavior.

Worst of all, the proponents of LAPDS and their blind followers engaged in stupid behavior exceeding that of the cast of low class television reality show. Everyone along the entire Gulf Coast will pay an economic price thanks to the pseudo-morality of the easily offended.

We have seen hate campaigns fuel hysteria before. Today, it is the scourge of underage drinking. A harsh law enforcement crackdown like this, against an entire group of people solely based upon their age, education and presence, is precisely what happens when hate campaigns poison social discourse and create the very breakdown in social order. And I fully expect to see this ugliness displayed against the LGBTQ community in just a few weeks.

Let us hope the hate campaign fails to ignite an aggressive law enforcement attack on another community.