22 ms·

Mendon, Missouri

491 points by h2odragon 4y ago

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
justusthane 4y ago
In a similar spirit of small towns rising to the occasion, I’ll take this opportunity to recommend the musical Come From Away (Apple TV), about the planes grounded in Gander, Newfoundland on 9/11. A wonderfully told story.
- mttjj 4y ago
  Might be on Netflix in other countries, but it’s on AppleTV+ in the US. (Also, if the live production is touring near you- go see it. I saw it live a few years ago and it was awesome!)
  - justusthane 4y ago
    Thanks, fixed — I misremembered the platform I watched it on.
mcphage 4y ago
Is the author's claim that modern journalism doesn't contain enough feel-good human interest stories?
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
  No. The author indicated that the exceptional (and it was, indeed, "exceptional") generosity and sense of Duty, exhibited by the townsfolk was ignored by the press. It was probably a bit "whiny," but it was not incorrect. I do feel that publicizing examples of generosity of spirit would help in healing our nation, but he's right, in that it doesn't sell papers.
  - rospaya 4y ago
    > No. The author indicated that the exceptional (and it was, indeed, "exceptional") generosity and sense of Duty, exhibited by the townsfolk was ignored by the press. Man bites dog is news. Dog bites man isn't. Sorry to be cold and unaffectionate (I love the story though) but I believe it happens regulary. Big town, small town, there's good people everywhere.
    - toomuchtodo 4y ago
      Terrible people everywhere too. I like hearing about the good folks. It invigorates my soul. Hope is important!
    - phtrivier 4y ago
      I'm pretty sure there is a market for a social network that would tweak their algorithm to present positive content rather than the usual junk, though. It's not like FB or twitter doesn't have the resource and skill to A/B test that - but I'm pretty sure their biased by the 19th century tradition of "sex sells, and we only have one frontpage".
      - rospaya 4y ago
        Every time I saw a website present itself as "good news only" it was almost always religious in nature. Not sure if there's a market.
    - ShroudedNight 4y ago
      > Man bites dog is news. Dog bites man isn't. I become increasingly convinced that a significant part of our deficiency in reporting is that we've conflated "news" with "current affairs" long enough that we've forgotten that both are actually worthy of mental bandwidth.
  - mcphage 4y ago
    > The author indicated that the exceptional (and it was, indeed, "exceptional") generosity and sense of Duty The author took pains to assert that it wasn't exceptional: >> And the most unusual thing about all this is: None of this is unusual >> believe me, they happen. Every day. Every hour. Ordinary Americans will astound you with their goodwill > was ignored by the press Well, they're right in that I didn't hear anything about this specific train derailment, but heart-warming human interest stories are a pretty regular staple of even the national press. > I do feel that publicizing examples of generosity of spirit would help in healing our nation I'm not so sure. Our nation isn't breaking apart because we can't pull together in a crisis, it's breaking apart because we can't stand together outside of a crisis. Americans want very different things, and pulling together in a crisis only helps when we're in crisis mode.
- xbar 4y ago
  Is this a question you are asking in good faith, because I think it is clear that he is not making that claim?
  - mcphage 4y ago
    > I think it is clear that he is not making that claim? This is the second last line of the piece, where the author explicitly makes that claim: >> Although we rarely hear about such acts of compassion and lovingkindness within our society, believe me, they happen. Every day. Every hour. Ordinary Americans will astound you with their goodwill. Sadly, ordinary American journalists aren’t interested in being astounded by such things. Maybe that's not what they're trying to get across—if not, I'd like to hear what you think it is—but I like how you jump to "acting in bad faith".
    - xbar 4y ago
      I think your question was rhetorical in casting journalism that focuses on American goodwill as "human interest" was designed to engender an angry response; that it was a trollish question where you already had an answer that was baiting; that you were not at all asking that question; that you were expressing an opinion. I think your responses affirm my read.
      - mcphage 4y ago
        > casting journalism that focuses on American goodwill as "human interest" was designed to engender an angry response Much like a passenger train barreling full speed into a dump truck, you made one severe mistake at the beginning and rode it head first into a spectacular disaster.
    - wmeredith 4y ago
      I'd actually argue that it's just not astounding, so it doesn't make headlines.
- tptacek 4y ago
  Yes. It's a bit of a thing with him.
  - mcphage 4y ago
    Well then—I guess that's better than I was expecting, given how often "ordinary Americans" is a dogwhistle. I don't agree that journalism needs more feels good stories... but they could do worse.
    - tptacek 4y ago
      He writes very effectively in the voice of a 1980s regional newspaper columnist; you'd have gotten the same take on "if it bleeds it leads" news culture from one of them.
fortran77 4y ago
One way to see rural MO is on the Katy bike trail: https://mostateparks.com/park/katy-trail-state-park https://mostateparks.com/park/katy-trail-state-park It's a 240 mile protected bike path.
- moomoo11 4y ago
  Awesome thanks!
- freediver 4y ago
  Love HN for gems like this.
- tnorthcutt 4y ago
  And if you like that you’ll also like the Mickelson Trail in South Dakota: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_S._Mickelson_Trail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_S._Mickelson_Trail
- PrairieFire 4y ago
  And ironically one of the most popular ways to “do” the Katy trail is to take the Amtrak to Kansas City since that train has bike stowage, and riding the trail from west to east is (generally) all downhill.
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    Is it relatively easy to get back to Chicago from the eastern terminus of the bike trail?
- psmith50 4y ago
  Rode the entire trail in 3 days in 2016! Quite the challenge for myself at the time and living out of your bike was a blast. Got to talk and meet many locals and go into many small towns to resupply food and enjoy the ride. My total milage ended up being 270 miles.
hansword 4y ago
Is a good story, but I am not sure what use it has for YChackernews....? Also want to second @mcphage
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
rhexs 4y ago
"This was not a small truck. This was a vehicle about the size of a Sonic Drive-In." Has the author ever been to a Sonic Drive-In or was there a Liebherr T 282B in Mendon Missouri?
- pcthrowaway 4y ago
  Maybe it's the size of the Sonic in Mendon
- Miner49er 4y ago
- boopboopbadoop 4y ago
  By mass maybe?
chronotis 4y ago
It may not have made national news, but here (I only live a couple hours from Mendon) some of this made its way into local awareness. It was mostly focused on the efforts of the boy scouts in the area, though.
- tigeba 4y ago
  The Scouts who responded to this incident were passengers on the train that derailed. They were returning from Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico. It is traditional for Scouts to take the trip to and from Philmont on a train.
jordanmorgan10 4y ago
Typing in Mendon, Missouri in Apple Maps has the most small town feel a town could have once iOS zooms in on all four buildings
manor 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- bpodgursky 4y ago
- mmmpop 4y ago
- sixothree 4y ago
  Having lived in the deep south, it's easy to see the paradox. Vehemently, deeply racist and judgmental people willing acting so selflessly at random occasions. Southern manners are usually just a facade masking hatred. I hate to say these things, but it is true.
  - Ancapistani 4y ago
    I’ve heard the following said: “Southerns will hate the group but love the person. Northerners will love the group but hate the person” Obviously that’s way oversimplified, but it’s broadly reflective of what I’ve seen. I’ve seen open casual racism in the South followed by kindness and empathy toward individual members of that race. I’ve seen public “performative” condemnation of racism in the North followed by quietly limiting the opportunity of individual members of that race by the very same people. In my experience, Southern manners aren’t a “facade”. They’re the way people interact with the world. They do things out of a sense of duty, even - perhaps especially when doing it requires that they put aside their feelings about the matter.
    - sixothree 4y ago
      We can talk Missouri in particular. Just a year or two ago there were anti-blm protests. I saw signs people were carrying with the n-word on them. This was in public and on television. And I'm guessing this same person will use their southern manners accordingly when they come across a black person in their daily life.
ethbr0 4y ago
Looks like Kansas City news picked it up. KSHB - https://www.kshb.com/news/local-news/mendon-missouri-community-helps-amtrak-train-passengers-after-derailment https://www.kshb.com/news/local-news/mendon-missouri-communi... KCUR - https://www.kcur.org/news/2022-06-28/amtrak-derailment-mendon-missouri-train-deaths https://www.kcur.org/news/2022-06-28/amtrak-derailment-mendo...
BenFranklin100 4y ago
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  Pretending that there's a compromise just floating out there that if we could just get "the extremes" out of the way, would be embraced by all, is a rosy but ultimately utterly false fantasy. There are very, very different views about the role of government and religion in this country, very different takes on morality, responsibility, and lots more. These are not resolvable via compromise. If things are relatively good economically, people can generally agree to disagree. When things are not so good financially (e.g. after 30+ years of the destruction of the American manufacturing sector and wholesale movement of capital and labor offshore), this becomes much, much less easy. The answer to "Can't we all just get along" is, fundamentally, "No, unless we're all doing so well that we don't have to care".
  - BenFranklin100 4y ago
    - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
      Your comment suggests that there's "65%" of the country that just wants to get along. I'm disputing that.
      - Clubber 4y ago
        >When things are not so good financially (e.g. after 30+ years of the destruction of the American manufacturing sector and wholesale movement of capital and labor offshore), this becomes much, much less easy. Neither of the political parties are doing anything other than lip service to entice jobs back. Trump was the only one to really bring it up in probably 40 years, and he was lambasted. >Your comment suggests that there's "65%" of the country that just wants to get along. I'm disputing that. Based on what? There are only a few wedge issues, I think aside from those, most people aren't that far off, even on the issues they are passionate about. The biggest impediment is that the political parties are both extremely economically conservative.
999900000999 4y ago
Anywhere in the world if you fall off your bike someone will help you up.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  As someone who fell off their bike rather hard in my case it was a 9 year old boy that found me and he really made my day in how he responded and organized help.
photochemsyn 4y ago
For some reason this reminded me of the Ray Bradbury story, "The Town Where Noone Got Off" which is a dark little story indeed about two men and a small town on a railroad line. This one is a bit more positive. However, it turns out this whole incident was apparently due to the lack of a railroad crossing guard system of any kind at the intersection. The most basic system has flashing lights warning of oncoming trains, and even that wasn't present. https://www.kwch.com/2022/06/30/amtrak-derailment-places-spotlight-uncontrolled-railroad-crossings/ https://www.kwch.com/2022/06/30/amtrak-derailment-places-spo... In that respect it's also a story about the poor state of American infrastructure.
- kodah 4y ago
  Interestingly, it's the line operator that usually has to establish and maintain those according to federal and (whatever) state guidelines might exist.
  - cagey 4y ago
    I believe that this is incorrectly simplistic, if only because these sorts of situations by definition exist at the interface between a railroad and either a private or government road. Having the line operator (which I'm taking to mean railroad owner, in this case BNSF) bear 100% of the burden of providing full crossing protection creates an unbalanced situation (in terms of the cost to be borne). I'm not an expert, but have been following a forum thread on this topic (this Amtrak-truck collision and how to prevent repeats)[0] which points to articles stating that this particular crossing has been "on the list" of not the RR owner (BNSF) but MODOT (Missouri [state] Dept of Transportation) for receiving a "crossing gates and lights" (automated protection) deployment, and that the cost of this prospective deployment is approximately USD400K (per crossing) which would be shared by the state (MODOT) and BNSF, and that, as noted by others posting in this thread, there are a large number (probably the majority) of RR/road crossings in the state (and country) which are similarly unprotected, and whose low use rate has historically not justified the installation and ongoing maintenance costs of full crossing protection. A cynic on the linked[0] thread mentioned it was possible that MODOT had put every unprotected RR/road crossing "on the list" to receive a full protection equipment deployment, so that in case of any similar accident, they could claim to "already be working on a solution, just didn't get there in time" as in bureaucratic CYA. Given the costs involved, IMO it would probably be better to close at least half of the crossings in (e.g. relatively flat farmland) areas where the road grid incurs these crossings at a rate more than one per mile. But as with decisions to spend money, choosing which crossings to close (ostensibly so that the remainder may have automated protection added) becomes a political "hot potato" that can easily cause the process to stall. [0] https://cs.trains.com/trn/f/111/t/292768.aspx https://cs.trains.com/trn/f/111/t/292768.aspx [1] https://www.kansascity.com/news/state/missouri/article263049938.html https://www.kansascity.com/news/state/missouri/article263049...
ryan_j_naughton 4y ago
> And the most unusual thing about all this is: None of this is unusual. At least not within the national tapestry that is The Great American Small Town. It also isn't unusual in the cities. Humans are wonderful and terrible everywhere. It reminds me of the 30 Rock episode where Jack and Liz go to Georgia to find a new comedian in touch with the "real America" and Liz keeps insisting that all Americans are real Americans and there is no "real America." The acts of people after 9/11 in NYC remind us of the good in humans just as this small town inspires us. As Mr Rogers said, "When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping."
- melenaboija 4y ago
  Although I agree with it I think that small towns have something that is lost in big cities which is the sense of community, and that is simply because in towns you know every single person that has some impact in your daily live. My family is from a small town who moved to the city right before I was born and there is something my mom said to me when I was a kid that got stuck in my mind which is the awareness of death, in big cities is like people don't die because you don't know about it. Although it may sound macabre I think that knowing about death helps me better understand being alive.
  - skeeter2020 4y ago
    smaller communities exist in big cities too. They might be neighbourhoods like a small town, or interest, cause or activity-based. The trick is not to defer to government to provide them for you, which I think is harder in big centers.
    - InefficientRed 4y ago
      Harkening back to the GP post: Mr. Rogers Neighborhood was based on a city neighborhood, not a small town.
      - 4y ago
jxcole 4y ago
- bsuvc 4y ago
  So you read a story of people helping people and all you can think of is "how do I make this reflect poorly on my political enemies"?
  - mlyle 4y ago
    The story is a commentary on how wonderful the people living in small towns are. And, well, I disagree with the premise--- because it seems to deny that most people are wonderful everywhere, not just in small towns. Most people are also capable of terrible things in groups, too. A whole lot of people have had to flee small towns to avoid the kind of disgrace and judgment that only a really small community can give. And, yes, small town America is, for the most part, politically regressive.
    - xbar 4y ago
      >The story is a commentary on how wonderful the people living in small towns are. I don't think so, but I see how you got there. I think it is a story about empathy for others in a crisis, and the author argues that this is universal in America--including New York, Chicago, Mobile, Detroit, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Boston, Houston, Seattle, Indianapolis, Honolulu, and Charlotte.
      - mlyle 4y ago
        This was the sentence that convinced me it's talking about something being special about small towns: And the most unusual thing about all this is: None of this is unusual. At least not within the national tapestry that is The Great American Small Town. The author blogs pretty much exclusively on the cultural tapestry of the South. > and the author argues that this is universal in America- I see a comment arguing that, but not by the author.
alasdair_ 4y ago
Americans are especially good when it comes to large efforts over the course of a short space of time to solve a major problem. Americans are also especially bad at tackling problems that require a small, consistent, amount of help over a long period of time. I’m honestly not sure why this is.
- nkrisc 4y ago
  The former feels like you’re doing something to immediate effect. The latter is invisible, both the solution and the problem, until it’s too late. I don’t think it’s a uniquely American trait.
- sovande 4y ago
  On a larger scale, the US Marshall Plan to help Europe back on its feet after WW2 was immensely important for Europe and for individuals. My uncle got help funding a successful garment factory in Bergen, Norway. He could employ over a hundred women, many widows. Those who still remember are forever grateful to the US. The same uncle also told me about how the Flesland airport outside Bergen was constructed. For years there had been bikesheeding about building an airport outside Bergen. After the war, it was finally constructed when NATO needed an airport. The US army came in with large bulldozers, shaved off the hilltops and put it into the valleys between the hills and in short time a large airstrip was made.
  - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
    Thank you for writing this. Reading it in the USA on our Independence Day reminds me how wonderful my country can be.
- bigdict 4y ago
  That's people.
  - micromacrofoot 4y ago
    Yeah exactly, big efforts where you see short-term results are instantly gratifying - you see things change almost immediately. Small gradual changes are hard to see, many people might overlook them entirely, and the reward is stretched thin or very far off. You might not even see the full outcome in your lifetime. It’s easy to see why people favor short term results. This old proverb comes to mind: “A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” We’ve still got a long way to go.
exar0815 4y ago
I have witnessed something quite similar. During the flash-floods in 2021 in Germany, locals in the Ahr region absolutely rose to the occasion. Farmers were evacuating people in head-high water with their tractors during the night, local restaurants were already providing hot food and water the next morning wherever they could reach, pharmacies were loading whatever they had available on ATVs to somehow get much-needed medicine down precarious mudpaths. Local construction companies were already clearing rubble and building emergency bridges out of it. One Excavator was just basically standing in the middle of the river and ferrying people and rescue partys across. The local racetrack basically just organized everything while politicians were still playing the blame game. When our local firebrigade was officially pulled back from active duty because we lost one of ours during rescue operations in the first day, basically everyone just went down again and just tried to do whatever was possible. Absolutely stunning what people will do when they are face to face with disaster. I freely admit that I was crying like a little girl when I first saw the endless columns of Bundeswehr, THW, Fire Brigades, Farmers, basically everyone who could just streaming to help people they never met but were neighbors and friends for me. Sorry for the rambling, but I am still not emotionally disconnected enough from it to concisely talk about it.
- mlyle 4y ago
  Yes. I think people are good overall. I think the biggest reason people in small towns may be a bit quicker to help is that people in cities are a little conditioned by the bystander effect to assume that people around them, or the authorities, are better equipped to help. But any random individual asked for help in a city is likely to go well beyond their duty and be quite helpful.
  - InefficientRed 4y ago
    > or the authorities, are better equipped to help. It's not just "equipped to help". It's also that random untrained people can do more harm than good. Hell, even random trained people can do more harm that good when there are too many people around. I'm not a medical professional, but I have some first aid training and have been the most-trained first responder in not-even-crowded areas on a few occasions. Even with only 10 people around, managing the crowd while providing care becomes difficult. The article even mentions: > “It was a wonderful problem to have,” said school district superintendent, Eric Hoyt, “but we probably had too many volunteers show up.” In a town of 171 people. Just 171 people, and crowd management became a problem. Now drop into Manhattan, with approximately 1.629 million more people. If "everyone" showed up to an incident, you'd have at least an order of magnitude more deaths from the stampede to help than from the original event. People in dense cities move away from the scene of an accident in order to get out of the way, which in most cases is genuinely the best thing they can do to help.
Clubber 4y ago
>"This is a crisis for our democracy and our society," said Penelope Muse Abernathy, a visiting professor at Medill and primary author of the report, in a statement. Why is everything a crisis now? The crying of wolf gets tiresome and it makes it easy to tune out, probably to the detriment of local newspapers. Oops, replied to the wrong article.
- pjbeam 4y ago
  I didn't see this quote in the article--what are you referring to?
  - Clubber 4y ago
    Oops I must have replied in the wrong article. It was in reference to this: https://www.axios.com/2022/07/04/local-newspapers-news-deserts https://www.axios.com/2022/07/04/local-newspapers-news-deser...
davidro80 4y ago
Stories like this are extremely motivating to me after seeing non-stop streams of pure social negativity or bad events unfolding in the news. Unrelated, but it did make me think of 9/11 and “The Man in the Red Bandana”: https://youtu.be/S77KYbkmjwc https://youtu.be/S77KYbkmjwc The opening question sets the stage for the context: “What would you do, in the last hour of your life?” I love humans even with all of our negatives. Everyone has the potential to “rise to the occasion” in their own way big or small. Happy 4th of July to my US HN friends!
bilsbie 4y ago
This reminds me of a town I ended up in when I got separated from the truck transporting me and actually had to do community service to fix up the roads.
RickJWagner 4y ago
Great story. The day of the train wreck will live on in Mendon for generations, I'm sure. There will be kids and grand-kids telling this story in 50 years.
marssaxman 4y ago
There is an excellent book on this theme, which I have been recommending liberally for several years: "A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster". https://www.amazon.com/Paradise-Built-Hell-Extraordinary-Communities/dp/0143118072 https://www.amazon.com/Paradise-Built-Hell-Extraordinary-Com...
- fritztastic 4y ago
  That was the first thing on my mind, also. I found that book during a really difficult time in my life and it really helped me find an optimist hopeful perspective when everything seemed hopeless- it inspired me deeply.
Linda703 4y ago
[dead]
njarboe 4y ago
Great to hear these people helping out. I didn't like when people started using the phrase "First responder" for police, fire, ambulance people. If you are at the scene of a problem, you can be a first responder and be there sooner than the "first responders". You can be a zeroth responder.
- InefficientRed 4y ago
  > You can be a zeroth responder. You can be. But you can also cause more harm than good as the zeroth responder (removing an impaled object, moving someone with a back injury). Fortunately, there are affordable high-quality first responder courses. In the extreme, becoming a certified EMT takes only 100-200 hours of instruction, and there are many training options that are much shorter and cam be completed over a weekend.
mycpuorg 4y ago
<3
bediger4000 4y ago
Just as a counterpoint to this, here's a murder in small town Missouri, not too far from Mendon: https://www.google.com/amp/s/fox2now.com/news/true-crime/missouri-town-keeps-bullys-murder-a-secret-for-40-years/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/fox2now.com/news/true-crime/mis... Nobody said anything about it in 40 years. There's a lot more nuance to small town people pulling together than the train wreck shows. I grew up outside of Kirksville MO. I've even taken the Southwest Chief from La Plata one or two stops NE of Mendon, to Newton KS. Idealizing small town or rural life is a mistake. The issue is more complicated than "rural Americans pull together, urban Americans do not".
- RC_ITR 4y ago
  This is the same problem with authoritarianism. Communities aligned to a single goal can do amazing things, the downside is just that sometimes that single goal is “protect a murderer that we all like” or “commit genocide”.
- soared 4y ago
  I do not enjoy that every good hearted story needs to have a top comment with a clickbait counterpoint.
  - bediger4000 4y ago
    Given that I grew up near there, and remembered the Skidmore murder story, what would you have me do? Not add material to the discussion? Arm I supposed to just stay silent about some things? If so, how should I know whether or not to stay silent. Give me a method, and I'll use it next time.
    - jessaustin 4y ago
      How would "sometimes bad things happen" be relevant in the least? Missouri is a large state and the two communities aren't close. Besides, you should read the link you posted rather than relying on memory. That story is of a small community defending itself from the predations of a sociopath whom law enforcement could not control. Maybe it's a critique of law enforcement, but it isn't a "counterpoint" to "small town people help out in emergency".
buchoo 4y ago
Reminds me of the American TV show "What Would You Do?", of which there are many videos on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/WhatWouldYouDo https://www.youtube.com/c/WhatWouldYouDo It tends heavily to revisit certain themes, but overall it drives home the point that regardless of the social acrimony and political polarization that dominate social media and seem to divide Americans into inexorably inimical tribes, when it comes to everyday interactions, most Americans seem to be pretty decent and kind people.
ketanmaheshwari 4y ago
Tangent but I have observed in the US that often the red lights at the train crossing start very late and give less than a minute for a vehicle to stop.
yooo000 4y ago
God Bless America.
aaron695 4y ago
fritztastic 4y ago
There is a book about how people come together during times of disaster, called A Paradise Built in Hell by Rebecca Solnit. One of the distinct things I got from it is how the media often focuses on the gruesome details rather than how people more often than not help one another out. It is an eye-opening read that gave me a lot of hope and inspiration. From the Publisher: "The most startling thing about disasters, according to award-winning author Rebecca Solnit, is not merely that so many people rise to the occasion, but that they do so with joy. That joy reveals an ordinarily unmet yearning for community, purposefulness, and meaningful work that disaster often provides. A Paradise Built in Hell is an investigation of the moments of altruism, resourcefulness, and generosity that arise amid disaster’s grief and disruption and considers their implications for everyday life. It points to a new vision of what society could become-one that is less authoritarian and fearful, more collaborative and local." <https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/301070/a-paradise-built-in-hell-by-rebecca-solnit/ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/301070/a-paradise-b...>
- thematrixturtle 4y ago
  There's a related phenomenon called "elite panic", where the media focuses/outright manufactures fear about poor people looting, rioting etc whenever there's a natural disaster, and this leads to idiocy like police standing around guarding undamaged rich people's houses instead of even trying to save the actual victims: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_panic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_panic

491 points by h2odragon 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

In a similar spirit of small towns rising to the occasion, I’ll take this opportunity to recommend the musical Come From Away (Apple TV), about the planes grounded in Gander, Newfoundland on 9/11. A wonderfully told story.

mttjj 4y ago
Might be on Netflix in other countries, but it’s on AppleTV+ in the US. (Also, if the live production is touring near you- go see it. I saw it live a few years ago and it was awesome!)
- justusthane 4y ago
  Thanks, fixed — I misremembered the platform I watched it on.

mcphage 4y ago

Is the author's claim that modern journalism doesn't contain enough feel-good human interest stories?

ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
No. The author indicated that the exceptional (and it was, indeed, "exceptional") generosity and sense of Duty, exhibited by the townsfolk was ignored by the press. It was probably a bit "whiny," but it was not incorrect. I do feel that publicizing examples of generosity of spirit would help in healing our nation, but he's right, in that it doesn't sell papers.
- rospaya 4y ago
  > No. The author indicated that the exceptional (and it was, indeed, "exceptional") generosity and sense of Duty, exhibited by the townsfolk was ignored by the press. Man bites dog is news. Dog bites man isn't. Sorry to be cold and unaffectionate (I love the story though) but I believe it happens regulary. Big town, small town, there's good people everywhere.
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    Terrible people everywhere too. I like hearing about the good folks. It invigorates my soul. Hope is important!
  - phtrivier 4y ago
    I'm pretty sure there is a market for a social network that would tweak their algorithm to present positive content rather than the usual junk, though. It's not like FB or twitter doesn't have the resource and skill to A/B test that - but I'm pretty sure their biased by the 19th century tradition of "sex sells, and we only have one frontpage".
    - rospaya 4y ago
      Every time I saw a website present itself as "good news only" it was almost always religious in nature. Not sure if there's a market.
  - ShroudedNight 4y ago
    > Man bites dog is news. Dog bites man isn't. I become increasingly convinced that a significant part of our deficiency in reporting is that we've conflated "news" with "current affairs" long enough that we've forgotten that both are actually worthy of mental bandwidth.
- mcphage 4y ago
  > The author indicated that the exceptional (and it was, indeed, "exceptional") generosity and sense of Duty The author took pains to assert that it wasn't exceptional: >> And the most unusual thing about all this is: None of this is unusual >> believe me, they happen. Every day. Every hour. Ordinary Americans will astound you with their goodwill > was ignored by the press Well, they're right in that I didn't hear anything about this specific train derailment, but heart-warming human interest stories are a pretty regular staple of even the national press. > I do feel that publicizing examples of generosity of spirit would help in healing our nation I'm not so sure. Our nation isn't breaking apart because we can't pull together in a crisis, it's breaking apart because we can't stand together outside of a crisis. Americans want very different things, and pulling together in a crisis only helps when we're in crisis mode.
xbar 4y ago
Is this a question you are asking in good faith, because I think it is clear that he is not making that claim?
- mcphage 4y ago
  > I think it is clear that he is not making that claim? This is the second last line of the piece, where the author explicitly makes that claim: >> Although we rarely hear about such acts of compassion and lovingkindness within our society, believe me, they happen. Every day. Every hour. Ordinary Americans will astound you with their goodwill. Sadly, ordinary American journalists aren’t interested in being astounded by such things. Maybe that's not what they're trying to get across—if not, I'd like to hear what you think it is—but I like how you jump to "acting in bad faith".
  - xbar 4y ago
    I think your question was rhetorical in casting journalism that focuses on American goodwill as "human interest" was designed to engender an angry response; that it was a trollish question where you already had an answer that was baiting; that you were not at all asking that question; that you were expressing an opinion. I think your responses affirm my read.
    - mcphage 4y ago
      > casting journalism that focuses on American goodwill as "human interest" was designed to engender an angry response Much like a passenger train barreling full speed into a dump truck, you made one severe mistake at the beginning and rode it head first into a spectacular disaster.
  - wmeredith 4y ago
    I'd actually argue that it's just not astounding, so it doesn't make headlines.
tptacek 4y ago
Yes. It's a bit of a thing with him.
- mcphage 4y ago
  Well then—I guess that's better than I was expecting, given how often "ordinary Americans" is a dogwhistle. I don't agree that journalism needs more feels good stories... but they could do worse.
  - tptacek 4y ago
    He writes very effectively in the voice of a 1980s regional newspaper columnist; you'd have gotten the same take on "if it bleeds it leads" news culture from one of them.

fortran77 4y ago

One way to see rural MO is on the Katy bike trail: https://mostateparks.com/park/katy-trail-state-park https://mostateparks.com/park/katy-trail-state-park It's a 240 mile protected bike path.

moomoo11 4y ago
Awesome thanks!
freediver 4y ago
Love HN for gems like this.
tnorthcutt 4y ago
And if you like that you’ll also like the Mickelson Trail in South Dakota: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_S._Mickelson_Trail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_S._Mickelson_Trail
PrairieFire 4y ago
And ironically one of the most popular ways to “do” the Katy trail is to take the Amtrak to Kansas City since that train has bike stowage, and riding the trail from west to east is (generally) all downhill.
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  Is it relatively easy to get back to Chicago from the eastern terminus of the bike trail?
psmith50 4y ago
Rode the entire trail in 3 days in 2016! Quite the challenge for myself at the time and living out of your bike was a blast. Got to talk and meet many locals and go into many small towns to resupply food and enjoy the ride. My total milage ended up being 270 miles.

hansword 4y ago

Is a good story, but I am not sure what use it has for YChackernews....? Also want to second @mcphage

deleted 4y ago

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rhexs 4y ago

"This was not a small truck. This was a vehicle about the size of a Sonic Drive-In." Has the author ever been to a Sonic Drive-In or was there a Liebherr T 282B in Mendon Missouri?

pcthrowaway 4y ago
Maybe it's the size of the Sonic in Mendon
Miner49er 4y ago
boopboopbadoop 4y ago
By mass maybe?

chronotis 4y ago

It may not have made national news, but here (I only live a couple hours from Mendon) some of this made its way into local awareness. It was mostly focused on the efforts of the boy scouts in the area, though.

tigeba 4y ago
The Scouts who responded to this incident were passengers on the train that derailed. They were returning from Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico. It is traditional for Scouts to take the trip to and from Philmont on a train.

jordanmorgan10 4y ago

Typing in Mendon, Missouri in Apple Maps has the most small town feel a town could have once iOS zooms in on all four buildings

manor 4y ago

deleted 4y ago
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bpodgursky 4y ago
mmmpop 4y ago
sixothree 4y ago
Having lived in the deep south, it's easy to see the paradox. Vehemently, deeply racist and judgmental people willing acting so selflessly at random occasions. Southern manners are usually just a facade masking hatred. I hate to say these things, but it is true.
- Ancapistani 4y ago
  I’ve heard the following said: “Southerns will hate the group but love the person. Northerners will love the group but hate the person” Obviously that’s way oversimplified, but it’s broadly reflective of what I’ve seen. I’ve seen open casual racism in the South followed by kindness and empathy toward individual members of that race. I’ve seen public “performative” condemnation of racism in the North followed by quietly limiting the opportunity of individual members of that race by the very same people. In my experience, Southern manners aren’t a “facade”. They’re the way people interact with the world. They do things out of a sense of duty, even - perhaps especially when doing it requires that they put aside their feelings about the matter.
  - sixothree 4y ago
    We can talk Missouri in particular. Just a year or two ago there were anti-blm protests. I saw signs people were carrying with the n-word on them. This was in public and on television. And I'm guessing this same person will use their southern manners accordingly when they come across a black person in their daily life.

ethbr0 4y ago

Looks like Kansas City news picked it up. KSHB - https://www.kshb.com/news/local-news/mendon-missouri-community-helps-amtrak-train-passengers-after-derailment https://www.kshb.com/news/local-news/mendon-missouri-communi... KCUR - https://www.kcur.org/news/2022-06-28/amtrak-derailment-mendon-missouri-train-deaths https://www.kcur.org/news/2022-06-28/amtrak-derailment-mendo...

BenFranklin100 4y ago

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
Pretending that there's a compromise just floating out there that if we could just get "the extremes" out of the way, would be embraced by all, is a rosy but ultimately utterly false fantasy. There are very, very different views about the role of government and religion in this country, very different takes on morality, responsibility, and lots more. These are not resolvable via compromise. If things are relatively good economically, people can generally agree to disagree. When things are not so good financially (e.g. after 30+ years of the destruction of the American manufacturing sector and wholesale movement of capital and labor offshore), this becomes much, much less easy. The answer to "Can't we all just get along" is, fundamentally, "No, unless we're all doing so well that we don't have to care".
- BenFranklin100 4y ago
  - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
    Your comment suggests that there's "65%" of the country that just wants to get along. I'm disputing that.
    - Clubber 4y ago
      >When things are not so good financially (e.g. after 30+ years of the destruction of the American manufacturing sector and wholesale movement of capital and labor offshore), this becomes much, much less easy. Neither of the political parties are doing anything other than lip service to entice jobs back. Trump was the only one to really bring it up in probably 40 years, and he was lambasted. >Your comment suggests that there's "65%" of the country that just wants to get along. I'm disputing that. Based on what? There are only a few wedge issues, I think aside from those, most people aren't that far off, even on the issues they are passionate about. The biggest impediment is that the political parties are both extremely economically conservative.

999900000999 4y ago

Anywhere in the world if you fall off your bike someone will help you up.

jacquesm 4y ago
As someone who fell off their bike rather hard in my case it was a 9 year old boy that found me and he really made my day in how he responded and organized help.

photochemsyn 4y ago

For some reason this reminded me of the Ray Bradbury story, "The Town Where Noone Got Off" which is a dark little story indeed about two men and a small town on a railroad line. This one is a bit more positive. However, it turns out this whole incident was apparently due to the lack of a railroad crossing guard system of any kind at the intersection. The most basic system has flashing lights warning of oncoming trains, and even that wasn't present. https://www.kwch.com/2022/06/30/amtrak-derailment-places-spotlight-uncontrolled-railroad-crossings/ https://www.kwch.com/2022/06/30/amtrak-derailment-places-spo... In that respect it's also a story about the poor state of American infrastructure.

kodah 4y ago
Interestingly, it's the line operator that usually has to establish and maintain those according to federal and (whatever) state guidelines might exist.
- cagey 4y ago
  I believe that this is incorrectly simplistic, if only because these sorts of situations by definition exist at the interface between a railroad and either a private or government road. Having the line operator (which I'm taking to mean railroad owner, in this case BNSF) bear 100% of the burden of providing full crossing protection creates an unbalanced situation (in terms of the cost to be borne). I'm not an expert, but have been following a forum thread on this topic (this Amtrak-truck collision and how to prevent repeats)[0] which points to articles stating that this particular crossing has been "on the list" of not the RR owner (BNSF) but MODOT (Missouri [state] Dept of Transportation) for receiving a "crossing gates and lights" (automated protection) deployment, and that the cost of this prospective deployment is approximately USD400K (per crossing) which would be shared by the state (MODOT) and BNSF, and that, as noted by others posting in this thread, there are a large number (probably the majority) of RR/road crossings in the state (and country) which are similarly unprotected, and whose low use rate has historically not justified the installation and ongoing maintenance costs of full crossing protection. A cynic on the linked[0] thread mentioned it was possible that MODOT had put every unprotected RR/road crossing "on the list" to receive a full protection equipment deployment, so that in case of any similar accident, they could claim to "already be working on a solution, just didn't get there in time" as in bureaucratic CYA. Given the costs involved, IMO it would probably be better to close at least half of the crossings in (e.g. relatively flat farmland) areas where the road grid incurs these crossings at a rate more than one per mile. But as with decisions to spend money, choosing which crossings to close (ostensibly so that the remainder may have automated protection added) becomes a political "hot potato" that can easily cause the process to stall. [0] https://cs.trains.com/trn/f/111/t/292768.aspx https://cs.trains.com/trn/f/111/t/292768.aspx [1] https://www.kansascity.com/news/state/missouri/article263049938.html https://www.kansascity.com/news/state/missouri/article263049...

ryan_j_naughton 4y ago

> And the most unusual thing about all this is: None of this is unusual. At least not within the national tapestry that is The Great American Small Town. It also isn't unusual in the cities. Humans are wonderful and terrible everywhere. It reminds me of the 30 Rock episode where Jack and Liz go to Georgia to find a new comedian in touch with the "real America" and Liz keeps insisting that all Americans are real Americans and there is no "real America." The acts of people after 9/11 in NYC remind us of the good in humans just as this small town inspires us. As Mr Rogers said, "When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping."

melenaboija 4y ago
Although I agree with it I think that small towns have something that is lost in big cities which is the sense of community, and that is simply because in towns you know every single person that has some impact in your daily live. My family is from a small town who moved to the city right before I was born and there is something my mom said to me when I was a kid that got stuck in my mind which is the awareness of death, in big cities is like people don't die because you don't know about it. Although it may sound macabre I think that knowing about death helps me better understand being alive.
- skeeter2020 4y ago
  smaller communities exist in big cities too. They might be neighbourhoods like a small town, or interest, cause or activity-based. The trick is not to defer to government to provide them for you, which I think is harder in big centers.
  - InefficientRed 4y ago
    Harkening back to the GP post: Mr. Rogers Neighborhood was based on a city neighborhood, not a small town.
    - 4y ago

jxcole 4y ago

bsuvc 4y ago
So you read a story of people helping people and all you can think of is "how do I make this reflect poorly on my political enemies"?
- mlyle 4y ago
  The story is a commentary on how wonderful the people living in small towns are. And, well, I disagree with the premise--- because it seems to deny that most people are wonderful everywhere, not just in small towns. Most people are also capable of terrible things in groups, too. A whole lot of people have had to flee small towns to avoid the kind of disgrace and judgment that only a really small community can give. And, yes, small town America is, for the most part, politically regressive.
  - xbar 4y ago
    >The story is a commentary on how wonderful the people living in small towns are. I don't think so, but I see how you got there. I think it is a story about empathy for others in a crisis, and the author argues that this is universal in America--including New York, Chicago, Mobile, Detroit, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Boston, Houston, Seattle, Indianapolis, Honolulu, and Charlotte.
    - mlyle 4y ago
      This was the sentence that convinced me it's talking about something being special about small towns: And the most unusual thing about all this is: None of this is unusual. At least not within the national tapestry that is The Great American Small Town. The author blogs pretty much exclusively on the cultural tapestry of the South. > and the author argues that this is universal in America- I see a comment arguing that, but not by the author.

alasdair_ 4y ago

Americans are especially good when it comes to large efforts over the course of a short space of time to solve a major problem. Americans are also especially bad at tackling problems that require a small, consistent, amount of help over a long period of time. I’m honestly not sure why this is.

nkrisc 4y ago
The former feels like you’re doing something to immediate effect. The latter is invisible, both the solution and the problem, until it’s too late. I don’t think it’s a uniquely American trait.
sovande 4y ago
On a larger scale, the US Marshall Plan to help Europe back on its feet after WW2 was immensely important for Europe and for individuals. My uncle got help funding a successful garment factory in Bergen, Norway. He could employ over a hundred women, many widows. Those who still remember are forever grateful to the US. The same uncle also told me about how the Flesland airport outside Bergen was constructed. For years there had been bikesheeding about building an airport outside Bergen. After the war, it was finally constructed when NATO needed an airport. The US army came in with large bulldozers, shaved off the hilltops and put it into the valleys between the hills and in short time a large airstrip was made.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
  Thank you for writing this. Reading it in the USA on our Independence Day reminds me how wonderful my country can be.
bigdict 4y ago
That's people.
- micromacrofoot 4y ago
  Yeah exactly, big efforts where you see short-term results are instantly gratifying - you see things change almost immediately. Small gradual changes are hard to see, many people might overlook them entirely, and the reward is stretched thin or very far off. You might not even see the full outcome in your lifetime. It’s easy to see why people favor short term results. This old proverb comes to mind: “A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” We’ve still got a long way to go.

exar0815 4y ago

I have witnessed something quite similar. During the flash-floods in 2021 in Germany, locals in the Ahr region absolutely rose to the occasion. Farmers were evacuating people in head-high water with their tractors during the night, local restaurants were already providing hot food and water the next morning wherever they could reach, pharmacies were loading whatever they had available on ATVs to somehow get much-needed medicine down precarious mudpaths. Local construction companies were already clearing rubble and building emergency bridges out of it. One Excavator was just basically standing in the middle of the river and ferrying people and rescue partys across. The local racetrack basically just organized everything while politicians were still playing the blame game. When our local firebrigade was officially pulled back from active duty because we lost one of ours during rescue operations in the first day, basically everyone just went down again and just tried to do whatever was possible. Absolutely stunning what people will do when they are face to face with disaster. I freely admit that I was crying like a little girl when I first saw the endless columns of Bundeswehr, THW, Fire Brigades, Farmers, basically everyone who could just streaming to help people they never met but were neighbors and friends for me. Sorry for the rambling, but I am still not emotionally disconnected enough from it to concisely talk about it.

mlyle 4y ago
Yes. I think people are good overall. I think the biggest reason people in small towns may be a bit quicker to help is that people in cities are a little conditioned by the bystander effect to assume that people around them, or the authorities, are better equipped to help. But any random individual asked for help in a city is likely to go well beyond their duty and be quite helpful.
- InefficientRed 4y ago
  > or the authorities, are better equipped to help. It's not just "equipped to help". It's also that random untrained people can do more harm than good. Hell, even random trained people can do more harm that good when there are too many people around. I'm not a medical professional, but I have some first aid training and have been the most-trained first responder in not-even-crowded areas on a few occasions. Even with only 10 people around, managing the crowd while providing care becomes difficult. The article even mentions: > “It was a wonderful problem to have,” said school district superintendent, Eric Hoyt, “but we probably had too many volunteers show up.” In a town of 171 people. Just 171 people, and crowd management became a problem. Now drop into Manhattan, with approximately 1.629 million more people. If "everyone" showed up to an incident, you'd have at least an order of magnitude more deaths from the stampede to help than from the original event. People in dense cities move away from the scene of an accident in order to get out of the way, which in most cases is genuinely the best thing they can do to help.

Clubber 4y ago

>"This is a crisis for our democracy and our society," said Penelope Muse Abernathy, a visiting professor at Medill and primary author of the report, in a statement. Why is everything a crisis now? The crying of wolf gets tiresome and it makes it easy to tune out, probably to the detriment of local newspapers. Oops, replied to the wrong article.

pjbeam 4y ago
I didn't see this quote in the article--what are you referring to?
- Clubber 4y ago
  Oops I must have replied in the wrong article. It was in reference to this: https://www.axios.com/2022/07/04/local-newspapers-news-deserts https://www.axios.com/2022/07/04/local-newspapers-news-deser...

davidro80 4y ago

Stories like this are extremely motivating to me after seeing non-stop streams of pure social negativity or bad events unfolding in the news. Unrelated, but it did make me think of 9/11 and “The Man in the Red Bandana”: https://youtu.be/S77KYbkmjwc https://youtu.be/S77KYbkmjwc The opening question sets the stage for the context: “What would you do, in the last hour of your life?” I love humans even with all of our negatives. Everyone has the potential to “rise to the occasion” in their own way big or small. Happy 4th of July to my US HN friends!

bilsbie 4y ago

This reminds me of a town I ended up in when I got separated from the truck transporting me and actually had to do community service to fix up the roads.

RickJWagner 4y ago

Great story. The day of the train wreck will live on in Mendon for generations, I'm sure. There will be kids and grand-kids telling this story in 50 years.

marssaxman 4y ago

There is an excellent book on this theme, which I have been recommending liberally for several years: "A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster". https://www.amazon.com/Paradise-Built-Hell-Extraordinary-Communities/dp/0143118072 https://www.amazon.com/Paradise-Built-Hell-Extraordinary-Com...

fritztastic 4y ago
That was the first thing on my mind, also. I found that book during a really difficult time in my life and it really helped me find an optimist hopeful perspective when everything seemed hopeless- it inspired me deeply.

Linda703 4y ago

[dead]

njarboe 4y ago

Great to hear these people helping out. I didn't like when people started using the phrase "First responder" for police, fire, ambulance people. If you are at the scene of a problem, you can be a first responder and be there sooner than the "first responders". You can be a zeroth responder.

InefficientRed 4y ago
> You can be a zeroth responder. You can be. But you can also cause more harm than good as the zeroth responder (removing an impaled object, moving someone with a back injury). Fortunately, there are affordable high-quality first responder courses. In the extreme, becoming a certified EMT takes only 100-200 hours of instruction, and there are many training options that are much shorter and cam be completed over a weekend.

mycpuorg 4y ago

bediger4000 4y ago

Just as a counterpoint to this, here's a murder in small town Missouri, not too far from Mendon: https://www.google.com/amp/s/fox2now.com/news/true-crime/missouri-town-keeps-bullys-murder-a-secret-for-40-years/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/fox2now.com/news/true-crime/mis... Nobody said anything about it in 40 years. There's a lot more nuance to small town people pulling together than the train wreck shows. I grew up outside of Kirksville MO. I've even taken the Southwest Chief from La Plata one or two stops NE of Mendon, to Newton KS. Idealizing small town or rural life is a mistake. The issue is more complicated than "rural Americans pull together, urban Americans do not".

RC_ITR 4y ago
This is the same problem with authoritarianism. Communities aligned to a single goal can do amazing things, the downside is just that sometimes that single goal is “protect a murderer that we all like” or “commit genocide”.
soared 4y ago
I do not enjoy that every good hearted story needs to have a top comment with a clickbait counterpoint.
- bediger4000 4y ago
  Given that I grew up near there, and remembered the Skidmore murder story, what would you have me do? Not add material to the discussion? Arm I supposed to just stay silent about some things? If so, how should I know whether or not to stay silent. Give me a method, and I'll use it next time.
  - jessaustin 4y ago
    How would "sometimes bad things happen" be relevant in the least? Missouri is a large state and the two communities aren't close. Besides, you should read the link you posted rather than relying on memory. That story is of a small community defending itself from the predations of a sociopath whom law enforcement could not control. Maybe it's a critique of law enforcement, but it isn't a "counterpoint" to "small town people help out in emergency".

buchoo 4y ago

Reminds me of the American TV show "What Would You Do?", of which there are many videos on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/WhatWouldYouDo https://www.youtube.com/c/WhatWouldYouDo It tends heavily to revisit certain themes, but overall it drives home the point that regardless of the social acrimony and political polarization that dominate social media and seem to divide Americans into inexorably inimical tribes, when it comes to everyday interactions, most Americans seem to be pretty decent and kind people.

ketanmaheshwari 4y ago

Tangent but I have observed in the US that often the red lights at the train crossing start very late and give less than a minute for a vehicle to stop.

yooo000 4y ago

God Bless America.

aaron695 4y ago

fritztastic 4y ago

There is a book about how people come together during times of disaster, called A Paradise Built in Hell by Rebecca Solnit. One of the distinct things I got from it is how the media often focuses on the gruesome details rather than how people more often than not help one another out. It is an eye-opening read that gave me a lot of hope and inspiration. From the Publisher: "The most startling thing about disasters, according to award-winning author Rebecca Solnit, is not merely that so many people rise to the occasion, but that they do so with joy. That joy reveals an ordinarily unmet yearning for community, purposefulness, and meaningful work that disaster often provides. A Paradise Built in Hell is an investigation of the moments of altruism, resourcefulness, and generosity that arise amid disaster’s grief and disruption and considers their implications for everyday life. It points to a new vision of what society could become-one that is less authoritarian and fearful, more collaborative and local." <https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/301070/a-paradise-built-in-hell-by-rebecca-solnit/ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/301070/a-paradise-b...>

thematrixturtle 4y ago
There's a related phenomenon called "elite panic", where the media focuses/outright manufactures fear about poor people looting, rioting etc whenever there's a natural disaster, and this leads to idiocy like police standing around guarding undamaged rich people's houses instead of even trying to save the actual victims: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_panic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_panic