Congratulations CSX - You Beat Santa Claus

My best writing comes after I have had a nice nap.  Restful sleep is a thing of the past.  This year on Christmas Eve CSX chose to run freight trains continuously all through the night.  It was not St. Nick in his sleigh with Rudolph guiding them with his glowing red nose.  It was CSX exploiting the recent resolution of an impending rail strike marshaled by the White House.  I am a Biden supporter, but respectfully I disagree with the sentiments of "Amtrack Joe."  Amtrack may be special to the Bidens, but south of the Mason/Dixon line America becomes the "Rust Belt."  We don't have catenary stretched above the "Spaghetti Bowl."  We have rumbling, turbo-charged, two-stroke, sixteen cylinder GP locomotives grandfathered in evading the Tier standards of the recently neutered EPA.  SCOTUS decided the Environmental Protection Agency in actuality shouldn't be able to protect American citizens.  That breech of trust began with George W. Bush, but it was predicated by Bill Clinton who licensed our currently used wireless microwave frequencies.  These frequencies were deemed harmful to humans, and the FCC rightly cordoned them off for commercial use.  Bill changed that, and in one fell swoop airborne electricity became the American economy.  Smartphones.  Apps.  (formerly known as applications)  Applepay.  Every conceivable thing you can imagine to accomplish with a smartphone.  I don't have one, and I don't want one.  Control my home's security with a phone?  Please.  There is so much electricity flying around our heads, it is surprising our brains haven't melted.  Or have they?  Melting brain, shooting up a school.  That is farfetched, but I'll put it this way.  The list of personal networks showing up in my computer preferences in my home is long.  I am not happy with all of this airborne energy, because it or something causes interference with amenities I use for enlightenment.  FM radio?  Who even knows what this is?  Fayetteville has a translator for the Classical Station WCPE only a few miles away, and yet radio reception of this indispensable aural pleasure is poor most of the time.  Although my Alexa reception has been acceptable recently, it will drop its signal when she gets angry.  There are all kinds of electrical phenomena happening in our homes.  Batteries run down.  Lights flicker.  The audio from my vintage musical instruments is modulated and distorted.  Their amplitude is quelled.  What is supposed to be stereo sound inexplicably moves from side to side.  These are common occurrences of which I have become familiar over the years.  They are a product of both low frequency sound (infrasound) and airborne electricity of many frequencies.  Some is RF energy, radio frequency energy now mostly in the microwave range, and some is alternating current from AC traction locomotives, the pride and joy of America's rail industry.  This must be the worst, but there is more.  Helicopters, commercial jets, and small private planes all have their own aural and electrical skyprints.  None of it is healthy to human beings, but no one seems to care.  When an ice or wind storm roars knocking out the power, a sudden calm besets our homes.  In the great American way instead of trying to cure disease, we chose to treat symptoms.  It pays better.  Get rid of dangerous antagonists in our environment?  Better to devise some novel way to scrub electricity from the air.  Bueller?  Anyone?  The rail industry likes to tell us our lives would fall apart without them, but my instincts tell me the majority of what they haul isn't for us.  Coal they supply.  If we decided to take a look into some of those thousands of containers stacked on flatcars, it would be surprising.  It's hard to imagine earning 700 million in revenue for one quarter hauling veggies.  And the drug problem persists.  Was it the military using Christmas as a training exercise, or was it corporate America doing its best to upstage the anniversary of the birth of the Baby Jesus?  In any case it was rude, callous, and sacrilegious.  There is no way Santa could compete with that maelstrom.  So congratulations CSX.  You beat Santa Claus. 

Our Commericial American Christmas sans Jesus

 If anyone had the time or inclination to pontificate something during our seeming, short-lived, American, Christmas season, what was it?  I'll start.  I used to admonish those who decorated for Christmas before Thanksgiving.  Since I have aged and time goes more quickly, I need two months to prep for true Christmas spirit.  I got it right after Thanksgiving, and then retail's blatant commercialism quashed it.  Whence does this spirit come?  Maybe an odd question, but it's not.  If it is not created by decorating our neighborhoods and downtown, whence does this Christmas spirit come?  Does it come from our schools?  Large clusters of children is fertile soil for the hopes of Christmas gifts brought by Santa Claus.  These gifts have become epicenter of American Christmas spirit, but with the slow death of brick and mortar retail in America and an outbreak of Covid 19 our gift illusions have been tattered.  Gifts or toys are lame or moot if they have no substance; that substance is created by the conception, planning, making, and marketing of Christmas gifts.  There has to be something to them, because a gift is an outward sign of an inward spiritual grace.  American society has become shallow, because the substance upon which we have relied has been sold out.  Sold out!  What does this mean?  Not "sold out" in the sense of a product selling so well there is none left.  "Sold Out" like selling out "to the man."  Anytime I use this phrase, "the man," I am admonished.  I refer back to the 1960's and 70's, when much was amiss in American society.  There is much amiss today, but we have lost our ability or desire to voice our feelings much less actively do something about them.  Perhaps I am speaking only of white America.  Perhaps a brutal war in Viet Nam halfway around the world was enough to spur this anxiety and expression in an emerging "Hippie" movement.  Our soldiers were returning in coffins or missing limbs.  Viet Nam  decimated a large percentage of our young and vital youth.  This could have been the goal.  The War in Viet Nam, not unlike the 9/11 attacks, could have been a ruse, or conspiracy, or plan for ulterior purposes.  Why didn't then President George W. Bush respond  immediately, when officials informed him at the school he was visiting planes had flown into the World Trade Center?  He continued with his lesson to the children ignoring a national emergency which ultimately killed hundreds of innocent Americans.  Could it have been that he knew it was going to happen?  His administration needed some cataclysmic event to boost his political image, so why not stage a tragic event about which he could become America's savior?  Now we have a new bureaucratic agency, his "Department of Homeland Security" and the NSA.  Efficiently Congress passed the Patriot Act and suddenly Washingtonian politics could invade every aspect of our private lives in the name of finding terrorists.  After Ross McNutt pitched his airborne surveillance packages, essentially 360 degree cameras mounted on the underside of a Cessna, no aspect of your life would be private again.  Eventually they would discover that while there always are a few pockets of malcontents, most Americans are law abiding citizens who desire freedom and happiness.  America is not communist, so most Americans are not concerned with conspiracy, political coups, or party tactics.  We just want our MTV, Coca Cola, pornography, and fast food.  This is an exaggeration, so I should include bubble gum as a metaphor for how the Russians have stereotyped America.  If we could acquit the white man from his demonic moniker, we will find that America has a substantial success record including traveling to the moon, creating the Tennessee Valley Authority, and devising jazz music.  Yes, white men were involved in the evolution of this art form mostly created by African-Americans.  While recently affluent white men in positions of authority have proven themselves immature, selfish, depraved, and criminal especially in the area of sexual aggression, these men should not be the representatives of American ingenuity.  We should attribute that to our Founding Fathers, those who penned the United States Declaration of Independence and Constitution.   In this age of misinformation and cancel culture,  we want to ignore the Constitution completely.  For a nation to exist in all of its complexity, foundations are needed.  For a socioeconomic system to function and remain viable, it must be supported.  Somehow since the emergence of Donald Trump as president, a contingency has emerged which has chosen to "sell out" America.  "Sell Out" in the cheapest sense of the phrase.  "Sell Out" meaning discard your ideals and your integrity and suck up for the easiest possible reward.  "Be bought."  "Can be bought."  Washington unfortunately has become "bought."  We can can talk about "woke,"  but American has been "bought."  Our entire lifestyle and our social, educational, religious, and philosophical ideology has been "sold out" to a shallow cast of radical horn blowers who only wish to feign power and control the kitty.  They are not qualified or capable of doing much of anything except inciting violence by screaming.  Because we have been protected from this zealot behavior previously by our own systems of checks and balances, we were not ready for this deluge of B.S. that came raining down with the election of Donald Trump.  His electing was fraudulent anyway understanding Hillary Clinton received over two million more popular votes.  Our system is dead, so how were we able to concoct Christmas spirit when our social infrastructure has been dismantled.  It began when the media began trying to eradicate God from our consciousness.  There was an assault on God, and for the most part it has been successful.  With no presence of God humans  can do whatever they want including selling out America.  Honesty, integrity, and selflessness are not natural traits to loudmouth zealots.  These are tenets of Christianity learned in church from the lessons of Jesus Christ.  Because largely we have undermined public education and organized religion, good luck finding your Christmas spirit.  Cheap Chinese trash does not suffice for American ingenuity. 

To Live in a War Zone at Christmas

 The proof is in the pudding.  You can gas light.  You can misdirect.  You can lie.  You can spread rampant misinformation.  Eventually like the economy the situation will correct itself.  Humanity must survive, and survival instincts are strong enough to cut through most B.S.  Take a look around your town or city.  Is it thriving?  Are there people?  Is it clean?  Or are there homeless people?  Are there indigent, desperate, drug-addicted criminals scouring the streets?  Have properties become vacant and dilapidated?  Does the air smell of diesel exhaust or jet fuel?  In short, is there life, human life?  What is human life?  America seems confused on this topic.  If I guessed I would say Americans are addicted to the internet.  They are at home, inside, on their couches streaming or gaming.  They order with Uber Eats or Grub Hub.  The kitchen is not used to cook dinner.  The yard is meager and neglected, and the kids bikes are in disrepair.  Very simple events can give life or kill a community.  This has been well known over the centuries, but with Trump's divergence from sanity and reality we have lost sight of what things are important to humanity.  It is not money, but money helps.  What is important is human health, and human health requires stringent and intense defense from the Borg.  The Borg has overrun America using her as a cheap whore.  This is what America has become, and even the world's richest man wants off.  We have raped and pillaged our environment and natural resources, and now we are tossing Mother Nature to the dogs.  This predicament is not complicated, and it is a matter of integrity, respect, and empathy.  If you want a community to thrive, and in our socioeconomic construct members must earn and spend, these members must be healthy.  We cannot work and earn money to spend if we do not remain healthy.  Health once was a simple matter.  Throughout American history a myriad of obstacles have plagued our survival, but we knew the foundation of healthy living was clean living.  Clean air.  Clean water in which to bathe, with which to cook and to drink.  It is our responsibility to manage the land and coax it to serve our purposes.  Conservation is important.  Frugality is helpful.  Wisdom in necessary.  If I look around the community in which I live, the obstacles have become daunting.  Most of these obstacles have been created by the need for revenue and a desire to pay shareholders.  Shareholders and investors seem to be controlling our lives.  This contingency has lost sight of the people they are supposed to serve, the American population.  It is not a select few of high brow society elite.  America once was for America.  When I see commercial flights carelessly using communities as runways, it incenses me.  Low flying aircraft are an imminent threat to human health only usurped by heart disease.  I'll repeat.  Low flying aircraft whether military, commercial, or personal are a serious threat to human health.  The aeronautical community seems to have forgotten this, and their convenience now takes precedence.  If they can save a little fuel or cut a few minutes off a commuter flight, then they feel it is okay to alter their traditionally regulated flight paths and pollute an entire community.  As I watch the planes do this daily in Fayetteville, it reinforces that the balance of authority, governance, and leadership are askew.  It has become our sentimentalized depiction of America's Wild West.  Anything goes.  The businesses rationalize their irresponsible behavior by quoting figures and protocols.  Often they do the wrong thing like Piedmont Airlines.  CSX has been doing the wrong thing since John Snow built this railroad into a financial powerhouse capable of exerting influence over most of our government.  If you provide the motive power for the Strategic Rail Corridor and coal for out power plants, "Embargo on, Master Blaster!"  The reality for humanity trying to survive in these communities is it is becoming difficult to survive.  The odds have risen above our abilities to compensate.  When our health is being assaulted, when financial opportunity wanes, and when violence becomes prevalent our circumstances become dire.  (Evidently President Biden brokered a rail agreement, because we haven't had a moments peace.)  The trains have sprung to life and are running continuously making up for lost time.  Rumbling freight trains and exhaust spewing jets do not provide the necessary infrastructure for healthy human living.  Instead they emulate the dynamic of war.  Because Ground Forces Command and Fort Liberty train for this, this may be their scenario of choice.  What about the rest of us?  Listening to bomb blasts preparing for the anniversary of the birth of Christ is contradictory.  There isn't much Christianity in fighting.  The enemy has become ourselves. 

News Desk Editor At Large - Vacancy, Needed, Urgent!

 Our local newspaper's subscription rate has risen to almost $600.00 a year.  We are canceling not because we don't want the almost daily paper, but because it is too expensive.  I don't believe it is too expensive in light of our recent Covid epidemic.  If you calculated the cost of running a small local newspaper the old fashioned way - hiring personnel, running a printing press, and gathering and managing news, it would be exorbitant.  It would be exorbitant in light of the discovery that the smart phone has predicated the extinction of many American businesses.  The best metaphor is iTunes which single-handedly crippled the American music industry.  If you chose to replace thriving, democratic, capitalist businesses with one machine, then you must suffer the consequences.  Enter "The Borg."  We will be absorbed by the Borg.  We have been absorbed by the Borg, and Covid helped.  My point is I don't feel $4.00 for a dozen eggs is exorbitant.  It seems that way, but if you calculated the value of one dozen fresh hen-laid eggs and the infrastructure it needs to provide these eggs, then they would be worth it.  Instead America has opted to devalue most things that should be paramount to our health and happiness.  These are grassroots processes, local traditions, and small family businesses which once were a mainstay of the American economy.  Then the Borg arrived, Big Business, which always has been around.  Then George W. Bush, under the pressure of lobbyists, began to deregulate most American corporate entities.  This means there is no oversight of their processes, and pretty much they can do whatever they want like dump PFAS into our rivers and streams.  The best metaphor for today is the rail industry.  I was happy they were on the cusp of a strike, because this industry has been operating out of the bounds of American decency for quite a while.  All you have to do is stick your head outside your house and listen.  When Hunter Harrison was hired to pilot CSX, he brought Precision Railroading with him.  Their trains got longer, and locomotive emissions instead of only being at the front of the train moved to the front, middle, and back.  Now thanks to their new CEO America has a two mile long cell of thundering, vibrating, radiating funk.  If you thought the train was going to disappear into the horizon, surprise!  At the middle of the train are two or three running locomotives, and surprise again.  At the end where a caboose once sat carrying able and viable railroad workers earning them salaries and making a living, now there is another locomotive.  The "consist" now is spread out over the length of the train.  When the stampede comes, truly now it is an overwhelming and omnipresent event.  It has become constant.  The emissions from these locomotives, while the greenhouse gases may seem less, are great.  Now they are different.  With the huge DC to AC conversion of the Norfolk and Southern, airborne alternating current is rampant.  Add G5, Wifi, satellite, and military microwaves to the stew, and America is being electrocuted.  We may not catch on fire from "Old Sparky," but the effects of this R/F and EMF energy are wreaking havoc on our society.  Why has violent crime escalated?  Why are zealots shooting up schools?  Why are we killing each other?  Perhaps it has something to do with our bodies using and needing electricity to control our behavior.  Our nerves send electrical impulses, and compared to what is in our air today, we don't have a chance.  Change of subject.  From now on when you hear the name Trump, think of slave labor.  Trump/Slave Labor.  That is what he is.  His philosophy is and always has been you should work for free while he gets rich.  Donald Trump was a return to plantation America reliant and dependent upon slave labor.  We watched as his four years of a failed presidency preached this mantra to gullible, needy, and willing disciples.  A return to slave labor and plantation America?  When did a regressive political movement become vogue?  It is called Deconstructionism.  Screw things up so royally that mayhem ensures.  Get the masses fighting themselves.  America's number one problem is the abandonment of the notion of a free, ladder climbing, mobile America.  The idea that in America there are enough jobs in small businesses and corporate structures to keep people working and earning a living.  The idea that we can earn a LIVING WAGE with respect, dignity, and happiness.  Trump's ideology has ruined this philosophy.  Instead he wants an authoritarian dictatorship.  The fight against Communism never has waned; it was just disguised and repackaged.  When you disenfranchise most of America by eliminating them with disease, with lack of opportunity, and creating tribal war the only thing left is corporate America.  Corporate America is those who sit in their ivory towers sipping brandy and moving money via the internet.  They don't really labor.  They are not real people.  They have no grassroots inclinations.  They are selfish self-proclaimed gods living in their own narcissism.  What built America was not corporate America.  Corporate America, the handful of prominent immigrating families who knew how to capitalize on fresh resources, used American labor to achieve their success.  They provided an infrastructure for what we understand as a free market system.  They employed Americans at all educational levels and provided sustenance for human life.  The government had to police their activity and provide assurances for these workers.  Temptation always is at play.  The best metaphor for this is the Jazz Age and the ensuing Great Depression.  Checks and balances are necessary to keep things honest.  I am no economist, but I know America can work.  We have tossed our values into the wind and forsaken the majority of the population of America.  The elite 1% need no more money.  They are just in it for the entertainment.