‘The Sun and Sky Were Darkened’: The Politics of the Train Derailment
‘The Sun and Sky Were Darkened’: The Politics of the Train Derailment
Plus: Lashing Out, Rod Dreher (Again) Reveals His Ignorance of Hungary
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DANIEL MCGRAW: ‘The Sun and Sky Were Darkened’: The Politics of the Train Derailment.
You’ve seen the images: A fire that lasted for days. A huge plume of black smoke rising into the sky. A controlled release and incineration of vinyl chloride—a carcinogen with numerous health concerns—and other chemicals. Mandatory evacuations. Dead fish in the rivers, and reports of other animals dying off. Warnings not to drink the water.
Some people are blaming the Norfolk Southern railroad for more than just the February 3 accident in East Palestine, Ohio—and doing so in apocalyptic terms. When the train crashed, “it was like the gates of hell opened up,” resident Chasity Smith told the New York Times. Then, setting fire to the chemical spill “basically nuked a town with chemicals so we could get a railroad open,” Sil Caggiano, a hazardous materials specialist and longtime firefighter from nearby Youngstown, told a local TV station.
At a very boisterous meeting last night in the local high school gym, East Palestine Mayor Trent Conaway told the crowd through a bullhorn that Norfolk Southern would be held accountable. “They screwed up our town, they’re going to fix it,” he said.
GISELLE DONNELLY: Keep the New Russian Offensive in Perspective.
As the long-awaited Russian offensive in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas oblasts unfolds amid grisly fighting, it’s looking like a case of déjà vu all over again in at least two respects. First, whatever Vladimir Putin and his senior generals may have learned in the past year, their ability to transform the army they went to war with has proved quite limited. Second, and relatedly, those in the West who foresaw an inevitable Russian victory have learned nothing and forgotten nothing; facts have yet to derail theory.
ELLEN BORK: Beijing-Controlled Hong Kong Tries, Lamely, to Buff Up Its Image.
It’s probably not a coincidence that a few days before 47 democracy activists went on trial for subversion on February 6, Hong Kong’s chief executive, a Beijing puppet named John Lee, presided over a ceremony to promote the city’s new marketing campaign. The “Hello Hong Kong” launch featured an opening musical number with dancers dressed as hotel staff, pilots, flight attendants, and chefs, and a giveaway of 500,000 airline tickets.
The Hello Hong Kong campaign is not just an effort to bring back business and tourist travel after the pandemic, or to distract from the trial of the democracy activists. It is also designed—indeed, chiefly designed—to promote China’s narrative about Hong Kong.
Mike Pence is erasing his own profile in courage by trying to resist special counsel Jack Smith’s subpoena, a Mar-a-Lago document prosecution is still viable, and Ben Wittes — who once challenged Putin to a fistfight — is still irritating the Russians.
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JOE PERTICONE: Republicans Turn a Blind Eye to Elon Musk’s Twitter Manipulation.
Elon Musk’s unstable reign at Twitter is continuing to draw media attention. At times, the Tesla billionaire has behaved in ways that would appear to run afoul of the standard Republican criticisms of Big Tech: He has arbitrarily changed the platform’s rules to benefit himself, altered algorithms to fit his personal agenda, and colluded with powerful officials and sympathetic journalists to shape his company’s public narrative. That’s why it’s so strange that Musk’s antics do not appear to have irked any Republicans.
According to a report this week from Platformer, Musk became livid in the aftermath of the Super Bowl (an event he attended in the company of Rupert Murdoch) because President Joe Biden’s “fly, Eagles, fly” tweet received more impressions than Musk’s own “Go Eagles!” tweet. Facing threats of termination if they did not deliver—one senior engineer was reportedly fired for suggesting that interest in Musk’s tweets had simply waned—Twitter’s engineers were given the “high urgency” late-night task of solving this “problem,” which they did by rejiggering Twitter’s algorithm to boost each of Musk’s tweets “by a factor of 1,000.”
H. DAVID BAER: Lashing Out, Rod Dreher (Again) Reveals His Ignorance of Hungary.
“Report the news, don’t become the news” may be a sound principle of journalistic practice, but as Rod Dreher has discovered, it’s not an easy principle to adhere to in Hungary, especially for a journalist who embarrasses Viktor Orbán. Not that Dreher would ever do such a thing—at least not on purpose. He admires Orbán; his esteem for the man is apparently so great that he decided to move to Hungary to work at a think tank financed by Orbán’s government.
In his capacities as an Orbán supporter and widely read blogger, Budapest’s new resident was extended the honor of a private audience with the prime minister, alongside fourteen other prominent illiberal and postliberal writers and journalists, in a refurbished monastery next to the palace where Hungary’s Habsburg king occasionally spent the night in the great days of the Austro-Hungarian empire.
🚨OVERTIME 🚨
Happy Thursday! George Santos is still making a mockery of his constituents.
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Rob Manfred has ruined baseball, continued… Look at these bases. Look at them! It’s only a matter of time before we have mandatory pitcher’s helmets and juiced bongo bats.
Fear made John McAffee rich… But it also ruined him.
What is our ambassador to Afghanistan doing? Can somebody please help her logoff?
Mike Pence is here to piss it all away… Greg Sargent argues in the Post: “Pence’s resistance to testifying will likely fail to realize his apparent political goals. In the end, many Republican voters will still remember him as Trump’s Judas. And his stonewalling will squander the good will his Jan. 6 stand engendered among everyone else.” Even worse, it doesn’t appear that Michael Luttig agrees with his reasoning not to testify.
In local news… A man was killed when his dog’s leash got stuck in a D.C. train door. (The dog, which typically isn’t allowed, lived.)
We go live to the Nikki Haley 2024 rollout… And there’s already a nutty pastor being invited to give the opening prayers. Our old colleague David Byler has the only chart you need to see to get a sense of her poor chances (not good!) With a big swing and a miss on a Hannitized softball, her launch isn’t going so hot.
Tetris? Yes, Tetris. The movie.
Good news for the far right… There is a conservative chat GPT now, so they don’t have to worry that it won’t say the N-word, which they’re weirdly obsessed with.
How displaced Ukrainians are living… In Lviv, a refugee city.
That’s it for me. Tech support questions? Email members@thebulwark.com. Questions for me? Respond to this message.
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