News outlets all across the US have been having a good chortle at those poor, dumb Southerners, freaked out by a couple inches of snow and totally unable to drive. Oh, how we northern veterans of snow laugh at their plight, at their ill-preparedness. If ever it turns out that we're in for global cooling instead of global warming, those rubes are doomed when the new ice age comes around.
But look again.
Watch how those same "rubes"—people that the rest of the country perceives as benighted, backward, and befuddled—have come together to help each other in this time of crisis. Leave aside, for a moment, the debate about whether it's fair to expect people who almost never encounter serious snow to be able to deal with the sudden arrival of a couple inches of it. Observe these good folks tramping gamely in the powdery whiteness, doling out drinks, cereal, and sandwiches to people trapped in 18-hour traffic jams. See them open their homes to each other and use large vehicles to drive stuck families wherever they need to go. Note how restaurants like Chick-Fil-A offer free hot food to the stranded, and free shelter as well. Be humbled by the neurosurgeon who left his car behind to tromp six miles in the cold to perform emergency brain surgery. Then ask yourself:
How dumb are these people, really?
_
Friday, January 31, 2014
dumb... yet smart
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Atlantans showed that they are Good People during this sorry business... as for the issue of preparedness, this storm is almost an exact duplicate of the one that struck in January 1982, the infamous SnowJam. The effect of the storm was to create almost completely impassable roads (ice + hills + curves + trucks = fucking disaster), but the patchwork of state, county, school districts, and multiple city governments completely botched things. The right call would have been to close schools and businesses preemptively. Sure, you'd look stupid if no snow came... but at least children wouldn't be stranded at school and the highways clogged with abandoned or crashed vehicles.
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