Train Wreck In East Palestine, Ohio: A Living Nightmare

By Frosty Wooldridge

February 23, 2023

“Equity, diversity and inclusion are about as intelligent as allowing a 10-year-old child to pilot a 747 airliner. Would you want to be a passenger?” Unknown author

You cannot help but cringe when you saw the black plume of smoke rising from that horrific train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. But it’s what you didn’t see that made that tragedy more disturbing.

When transporting such deadly chemicals by rail, why wasn’t the train going slower? Why weren’t the tracks checked for defects? Why hadn’t Norfolk Southern maintained the utmost in maintenance for such a deadly cargo being transported on its tracks? Why weren’t standards in place to make sure that such a tragedy never happened?

Why puncture those deadly chemical-laden rail cars to burn those deadly chemicals into the air—-knowing that the air would be horribly polluted for miles around? What about the acid rain that would fall onto the fields…poisoning them for years to come? What about the rivers that will forever be polluted and deadly for fish and wildlife?

Why didn’t top Washington bureaucrats visit the area? Why did it take “affirmative action” recipient Secretary of Transportation “Mayor” Pete Pothole Buttigieg over two weeks to visit the area to direct clean up?

First of all, it’s apparent that the rails, ties and spikes that hold the tracks into place were NOT maintained. We’re talking about track inspectors being paid off to appease CEO’s to make higher profits instead of public safety.

Second, we’re failing to understand what it takes to maintain our first world civilization. Why are we deteriorating our country to its lowest levels? Mike Rowe, author of Dirty Jobs, said it best: “We’re churning out a generation of poorly educated people with no skills, no ambition, no guidance and no realistic expectations of what it means to go to work.”

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The driver for capitalistic profits overwhelms moral responsibility, a sense of ethical accountability, and simple choice of goodness over destroying peoples’ lives.

Third, whose bright idea was it to burn those deadly chemicals instead of siphoning them into waiting truck tankers? How stupid was the person in charge to order something THAT idiotic? Why weren’t the finest environmental engineers contacted immediately, flown to East Palestine, and given a chance to offer a more reasonable solution?

Here is what I discovered in travels through third world countries: they don’t maintain train tracks until a major accident occurs. At that point, they only repair the tracks where they broke. They never maintain the tracks. When it comes to their cars, they run them until the brakes fail. Then, repair the brakes and run them until the next accident.

Well, Pete Buttigieg announced that we have three derailments daily in the USA. So, why hasn’t that nightmare been remedied with proactive maintenance to make sure there are NO derailments, daily?

Instead of competent people fulfilling jobs competently, we in America have instituted “Inclusion, diversity and equity” guiding us into lowering every standard in our society to match Haiti, Columbia, Congo, Somalia or India. How’s that working out for the people of East Palestine, Ohio?

How’s that working for the backup of ships in the Los Angeles harbor for six months? How’s that working for airlines cancelling thousands of flights? How about those planes nearly colliding because incompetence in the air traffic control tower? How’s that working out for all those cities voting to “defund the police”? How’s it working out where we lower the L-SAT scores for minorities to become doctors, airline pilots or astronauts…when they can’t perform math problems past 2+2= 4?

It’s become so crazy in this new “woke” world that a child cannot pretend to be an Indian, but a grown man can pretend to be a woman and actually compete in women’s sports. How’s that working out for women in America?

How far down that rabbit hole will we descend into equity, inclusion and diversity? Do we want enough illiterate people with “equity diplomas” to become electricians, doctors, pilots, train engineers, dentists, pharmacists, plumbers and lawyers? Which one of them would you hire to work for you?

America’s Illiteracy Race to the Bottom

“More than 45 million people read at a fifth-grade level or below which makes them functionally illiterate. In the United States, 44% of adults don’t read a book in a year. Six out of ten households don’t purchase even one book each year. Three out of four welfare recipients are illiterate. 20% of Americans are illiterate. Literacy is required to make a living wage.”

What happens when more “equity, diversity and inclusion” takes hold of our society? What happens when there are more of them than the ones of us who actually make our society function? Remember Jackson, Mississippi? Their water cannot be consumed, and their water treatment plants were not maintained until they totally broke down…leaving sewage everywhere. That town suffers under equity, inclusion and diversity.

What can we do as a nation? We better return to standards in education. We better teach our kids to be responsible, engaged, and finally, learn how to work a job that benefits them and our society. We better stop spending our money on foreign wars in Ukraine and spend it to stop the rot and deterioration of our own cities like Chicago, New Orleans, Detroit, LA, San Francisco, et al. Those cities are rotting with crime, drugs, and illiterate youth, carjacking’s, shoplifting and killing people at will.

We need standards and we need them enforced if we hope to maintain our “once” first world country. Finally, we need to honor, fund and support our police across America. We need to teach our children to honor themselves, one another, their communities and their country.

E-Mail Frosty: frostyw@juno.com