Evil Flourishes When Good Men Do Nothing

My day was ruined yesterday from the ensuing nausea caused by the Trump team's presence in my neighborhood.  Vice President Pence evidently spoke to departing troops at Fort Bragg, members of the 82nd Airborne soon to deploy to Afghanistan.  I wish they would get gone.  Hauling their gear down to Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point is a lengthy affair.  It is a job for STRACNET, the Strategic Rail Network which really is trackage of CSX Corp.  A few months ago their workers descended upon Fayetteville and repaired the Vander line running down the middle of Russell Street.  They rebuilt all of the grade crossings in a few days and did some routine maintenance on the rail, tie, and ballast.  This track serves two purposes.  One, in the phraseology of a potential presidential candidate, because they seem always to talk in lists of three examples, this track's primary purpose is to service DAK Americas, a polyester resin manufacturing plant on Cedar Creek Road on the other side of Interstate I-95.  If one were to follow it on a Google satellite map it originates in downtown Fayetteville from the CSX Milan Yard.  It is a "local" line, a piece of track that is used locally every day.  CSX has been switching raw materials in and out of DAK America's in the late afternoon ever since Trump became president.  Before that we had about a year's respite from this invasive rail activity.  We were able to sit at the dinner table facing the Milan Yard and eat peacefully without unwanted infrasonic pressure and vibration.  That changed overnight when the Donald became president by bribing most members of America's electoral college.  Some states realized this emergency and began to scrutinize their own electoral colleges.  A state can choose whether it wants its vote to represent the people, the popular vote, or a small group of unknown, incognito, yes men who are ripe for bribery.  How else could have Donald Trump won the United States Presidency?  He lost the popular vote by two million ballots.  In prime American fashion a small group of empowered elites chose the president for us.  This is the way America is, especially North Carolina.  We are too ignorant up in here to decide for ourselves who we want to represent us.  The country club has to chose for us with the aid of lobby money.  Believe me, it is not a Hobby Lobby.  Lobbying the Electoral College is all the Trump camp had to do to win.  They may have thrown in some dinero for good measure.  This man's face was on the front page of the Fayetteville Observer today, and after seeing a video clip of him with Jeffry Epstein years ago, I had to cut the photo out and tear it into little pieces.  The people of North Carolina, at least the Trump supporters, do not represent my vote.  It is clear to me that this contingency, this political movement, this group of southerners are no different than the slave owners who grew this region.  We had progressed in America with our Civil Rights Movement until Dr. King brutally was shot down in Memphis, Tennessee.  This heinous crime gave rise to the Black Power movement.  This is when America grew up and most citizens realized there was no silver lining to the American dream.  It is war.  It is war in America, and we have enough on our hands without fighting the Taliban.  Donald Trump has reignited this war, this race war, and his foul words are of biblical proportions.  Donald Trump is an epic, watershed president.  His sentiments will be cemented in American history in a dark chapter reminiscent of the Civil War.  This war is raging in America they way it always has, and I have to get out of bed and face it everyday like an ignorant hillbilly.  My life has become about survival, not enlightenment.  It is ironic that my newfound interest in jazz history is linked to Donald Trump.  As I reach farther and farther back towards the origins of jazz music, they are intertwined with the struggle for racial equality in America.  I am becoming more enlightened about jazz music, but also I am faced with a heinous racism that has plagued this country since its founding.  "I love niggers.  I think everybody should own one."  I realized that African-Americans never immigrated to America of their own accord.  They were captured, shackled, and shipped to America in the cargo holds of filthy sailing ship and sold to plantation owners for a profit.  These were the first African-Americans to populate America.  If Donald Trump doesn't like their presence here and their subsequent influence, then the white man is to blame.  The slave owning plantation owners and some of our founding fathers owned slaves.  They owned black men imported from Africa.  How's that for a conundrum?  We can say America has progressed.  We can say we have overcome the evils of slavery and our resulting Civil War.  We can bury our heads in the sand, but the same families who participated in slavery still are here today, and it is war.  Now in addition to the race war, the gender war has been reignited.  The war of the sexes.  All of this shit has happened before in America.  It is nothing new, but now Congressmen are afraid to have lunch with their women colleagues.  This is because a small group of financially influential men have spread their tainted semen across America.  Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Matt Lauer, and Les Moonves all have mistakenly used money as a tool to sexually abuse women.  They should be in jail with Jeffry Epstein.  It is egregious behavior, something that Donald Trump knows about.  The people of North Carolina see it as natural.  They feel affluent people should be in control running the plantations like good white folk.  Only today is my nauseated stomach starting to recover. 

The Long Arm of the Communist Military

Firstly I want to thank CSX Corp. and/or Fort Bragg for switching trains in the entirety of last night.  Good sleep on a Sunday night in Fayettenam is contingent upon this, just as it is every night.  The military runs Fayetteville, and I am positive from their perspective because of the economic base they provide, each and everything they do is justified for the national security of this once great nation.  Take for example the Festival Park Fourth of July celebration.  Last Monday evening, because local automotive seller Reid Lallier was accused of molesting a young boy at a race in South Carolina, Stefan Sanders took the reins as jockey for the celebration.  Sponsored by the Arts Council the Fayetteville Symphony Orchestra provided most of the entertainment.  I am certain what transpired was Stefan's first encounter with the behemoth beast that is CSX Corp.  At the exact time of their performance, like a tandem ballet, CSX decided to pull a munitions train out of Fort Bragg.  A rail feasibility study was done in Fayetteville not that long ago that is available on the internet.  They concluded that the majority of downtown congestion relating to freight trains was caused by this activity.  The trunk line servicing Fort Bragg crosses the CSX mainline double tracks.  There is no connector.  For a munitions train to be hauled to Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point, they must crossover the CSX tracks on the Vander line and back down Russell Street toward the DAK America's plant on Cedar Creek Rd.  Incidentally this manufacturing installation, formerly Roman Haas, makes polyester.  They are owned by a Mexican conglomerate.  When this train activity occurs it blocks traffic downtown for several hours.  The study suggested that CSX install a connector track, so trains could directly access the mainline to Pembroke.  There could be no more appropriate time for such a project to take place.  The DOT already has prepared the land with their massive bridge replacement project for the Rowan Street bridge, one of the oldest and most unsafe in North Carolina.  Now that the bridge has been completed and the subsequent land cleared, laying ties for a connector tracks would be simple.  Even if that track had been planned and laid years ago when the study was done, it would not have spared Maestro Sanders from the debacle that ensued.  The entire time his orchestra was attempting to provide patriotic music for the celebration of the independence of America from Great Britain, a rumbling munitions train hovered in the background.  I cannot imagine the experience of a major orchestra and conductor having to perform in such an adverse situation.  It was insulting, and the train seriously hindered the sentiment of the evening.  What it did do was provide the appropriate metaphor for the importance of Fort Bragg.  Which was more important, community citizens celebrating the birth of freedom for America, or supplying a martial military force about which we do not know its intent.  Why is America in Afghanistan?  We are soon to forget the decade of Viet Nam, a ten year period from 1965 to 1975 when American troops fought an unwinnable war for a foreign interest with which the American people disagreed.  Although Mr. Lallier may be a tried and convicted pedophile, he was adebt as negotiating.  He got on the horn and negotiated with CSX and convinced them to curtail their train activity while the North Carolina Symphony performed.  During this time the United States Army directly was involved with the festivities providing cannon fire for the climax of the 1812 Overture.  This year a stark and unsettling dichotomy existed that both undermined and mocked America's celebration of freedom.  The strong arm of the military, in a maneuver that mimicked President's Trump's show of fascist and communist sentiment, prevailed.  If American politics continue on the course of Trump, it won't be long before freedom is just as evasive as intelligent leadership.