Stretching out the word ‘interesting,’ drawing it out, pronouncing it this way: ‘in…ter…est…ing,’ I started doing that, years ago, at work. Mostly, when something was just really interesting, or weird, or what have you. We’d be discussing one thing or another in meetings, or just casually, in conversations, and there’d be something unexpected or unusual, and I’d be saying: ‘in…ter…est…ing.’
The word came to me, exactly that way, just recently, while I was reading a story in The Atlantic Magazine, written by Peter Wehner, because the story made me think about what could very well be a PR challenge, like no other in our lifetime. And having been in PR for many decades, what could be more in…ter…est…ing than that?
What I was reading was about our deeply polarized country, as described in a book by Jonathan Rauch, The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth. Mr. Rauch is a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution and a contributing editor of The Atlantic, which ran the story I was reading, featuring Mr. Wehner’s Q&A with Mr. Rauch.
The last time our nation was as polarized – as divided – as now was “approximately the time of the Civil War,” notes the author. “The South engaged in a campaign to create an alternative reality in which the North was the aggressor and it was coming down to destroy the South and its lifestyle.
“The more polarized a society gets, the easier it is to manipulate people,” and this “lays the groundwork for cultism, demagoguery, and so on.”
Does this sound familiar, considering current events?
“The U.S. Constitution is basically a mechanism that forces compromise and disperses power,” Mr. Rauch goes on to say, and he discusses rules of law and values, and such, that seem like a glue, in a way, that has kept things together, pretty much, for several centuries.
I’m just briefly summarizing some key points in the article, but if I’m interpreting Mr. Rauch’s observations correctly, we could be in a heap of trouble, if compromise, rules of law, values and other principles written in the Constitution, during the summer of 1787, are being undermined.
What a challenge, sorting all this out! A PR challenge, for sure, requiring winning hearts and minds, like never before, perhaps, and that’s seldom easy. “You can spend your entire adult life and career working at shaping opinion, without really knowing, for sure, if you’re succeeding,” I mentioned in the Daily Post, last April.
Yes indeed! A PR challenge, like no other in our lifetime! And in…ter…est…ing, to say the least!
Harvey Radin is former senior vice president in charge of corporate communications and media relations, Bank of America Western Region. He makes his home in Redwood City, CA.