A Few Minutes of Fear in Ohio

Just a typical moment in the declining Empire

About an hour ago, I was taking my wife’s advice and watching a pretty good documentary/re-enactment series about Alexander the Great when the house began to vibrate.

A low rumble turned into a roar that sounded like jet engines. I heard the key at the lock of the front door, which opened to admit my stepdaughter. The noise increased, sounding like it was coming from all around. I asked her what it was. She shrugged and said “Jet engines,” then went upstairs.

The noise continued unabated at a steady volume. It drowned out the TV and the cats were nowhere to be seen. We live near a small rich man’s airport, but neither private nor commercial jets ever sound like they’re stationary. Not relative to my house.

We hear Navy or Air Force fighter jets several times a year, at air shows on spring and summer holidays and before various sporting events. The noise did sound something like a fighter jet. But it’s February. There is no air show in February, there are no outdoor sporting events going on, and jets flying about emit very distinctly varying levels of engine noise; they’re never steady.

Therefore, the noise wasn’t caused by jets. I put on my hat and coat and walked out the front door and then around the side of the house to the back.

The noise got faintly louder, and now I could hear a faint clicking, an underlying, familiar rhythm. It was a train. Going fast. On railroad tracks, maybe two miles away as the eagle flees, that haven’t been properly maintained in decades. Tracks going from Euclid to East Cleveland through Cleveland, as I could now determine from the Doppler Effect the train was heading west.

The train sounded heavy. It didn’t have the hollow, bouncy sound of empty cars. I wondered what it was carrying, visions of East Palestine and dozens of other toxic train derailments dancing in my head.

I stood there, waiting, listening, knowing there was not much I could do if I heard a train wreck. Go inside and seal up the windows, I guessed.

Suddenly, the volume diminished and then, for a few seconds, there was utter silence. It was as if everything alive within several miles of that Sound of Potential Disaster was holding its breath.

Then there came the growls and rattling of dozens of cars and trucks accelerating in the distance as they moved to cross the tracks over crossings so rough one would think one was in southeastern Ukraine or northern Gaza. I heard several sirens and I froze.

Nope, they didn’t escalate. Gone after a minute. Probably cops abusing their toys to get to their favorite eatery, possibly cops going after some impatient asshole who did something stupid to try to make up for lost minutes spent waiting for the train.

Just another ordinary few minutes of fear on an ordinary day in America. Nothing unusual to see here. Millions of Americans feel the same thing I did every day.

Every presidential administration from at least Ronald Reagan on has let our rail network decline. Under predatory neoliberal capitalism, a few rich vampires are allowed to decide to let tracks warp, cut staff, ignore safety protocols, and literally burn up their own shit in the air we breathe to increase their profits.

They literally poison our towns and people to keep that stock price up. No problem, according to this guy after the East Palestine derailment, there are hundreds of derailments every year!

This meme was made before he was made Secretary of Transportation because A) He said “how quick” when Obama told him to drop out of the 2020 primary B) He’s gay, and C) He went to Oxford and worked as a “consultant” for McKinsey & Company, so of course he’s a CIA asset.

The CIA doesn’t give a shit about the American rail network or the Americans who live anywhere near the tracks, so neither does Pete Buttigieg.

One of these days, there will be a disaster and a major city will be poisoned. Unless the vampires who control our governments and businesses are driven from their positions of power, that major city will be treated exactly how East Palestine was and still is being treated—ignored except for photo ops for political props.

They’ll let a major city die of slow poison.

Oh well. Just another ordinary thought of an ordinary working class citizen of an empire in exceptionally rapid decline.

Thank you for reading, good day, and good luck.

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