Personal Vendettas in the House of White

I am waiting for the Ritalin to kick in.  Several things are important in Fayetteville news.  DAK Americas, a manufacturing plant on Cedar Creek Road, is shuttering its doors on July 31, 2025.  From its onset, despite the spin ascribed to it by its owners, DAK Americas has not been good for Cumberland County.  It was good for CSX, formerly CSX-T, one of the largest monopoly railroads in the Eastern United States.  In their eyes that would make DAK Americas very good to them, because it was a large contract.  The Milan Yard almost is a personal sorting yard for both DAK Americas and Cargill.  (We should include the United States Military in this list.)  If one were to pay attention, the DAK Americas polyester plant was not American-owned.  Chemours, sold by DuPont, belonged to the Chinese.  Excluding Russians this makes two manufacturing plants in Cumberland County owned by foreign interests.  Who does own DAK Americas, and why are they closing it?  The melting of pellets and spinning plastic bottles out of this PET resin must be fairly automated.  There never were many cars in the parking lot of DAK Americas, which should have its name changed.  Oh, it did but not to DAK South America or DAK Mexico.  If the casual observer were to draw a conclusion about this plant, which used to spin fabric, the conclusion would be there were not many employees.  The recent news coverage states they are losing 180 jobs.  DAK was owned by Alfa S.A.B. de C.V. or Alpha Group, a multinational conglomerate headquartered in Monterrey, Mexico.  Mexico.  Understanding that Fayetteville conveniently is located on Interstate I-95 and hosts the world's largest military base, is it interesting a Mexican-owned plant set up shop here?  They had their own personal rail provider which ran locals out the Vander line to the plant almost daily.  Over the years the hosts of this rail service mixed.  Sometimes Aberdeen and Rockfish locomotives did this work.  Later Norfolk Southern and CSX shared this responsibility.  If one looks at a Google map, you will see the large rail yard at the DAK facility.  As for Fayetteville and its downtown patrons who support revitalization, the closing of this facility is a milestone.  No more 8:00 pm local disturbing downtown entertainment.  That seemingly harmless small train that ambled down Russell Street should be mute in less than a week.  This is a baby step, but one can hope. The heat wave in Fayetteville largely is caused by excessive rail traffic.  Here are the rail yards:  DAK Americas, River Terminal, Honeycutt Marshalling Yard, Milan Yard, Cargill, and Fort Junction.  The list of industries served by rail is earmarked by their presence on the Cape Fear River, while the Chemours siding comes from Lumberton.  Hexion, Valley Proteins, Goodyear, Cargill, and now a Titanium plant all use the Cape Fear River for some purpose.  No one has ever suggested that illegal drugs flowing northward from South America may end up at a sparsely populated manufacturing plant.  The federal government stop policing rail freight with deregulation.  At the root of criminal activity by small players, a much larger organization exists.  In the Tom Cruise film "American Made,"  it never was made clear whence the billions of dollars came to buy the drugs from the Mexican Cartel.  Who in America could have that expendable capital to subsidize a drug trade that has crippled our youth?  At a very clear point these people stopped just trying to take our money and began trying to kill us.  To me this suggests a foreign interest.  Globalization.  In Cumberland County not only do we have the Chinese continuing DuPont's work of polluting the entire water shed, we have had a Mexican conglomerate operating freely doing whatever they please.  Who allowed this?  Was it the Federal Trade Commission?  I have not even mentioned soldiers from the Viet Nam War smuggling opioids in caskets.  This unhealthy balance in Cumberland County now favors the military, and this military is not integrated with the local community.  It has evolved as an exclusive boy's club with little thought for local citizens.  It is difficult to ignore that the gentrification of the local population in favor of Fort Bragg soldiers is occurring.  The extremism of the Trump Regime has upped the ante, and American citizens should realize their lives and longevity are in question.  It is a game of loyality.  It has become far too easy for corporate America to become the blunt intimidator allowing active duty servicemen to feign neutrality for their pay.  If we are not careful this now benign force of naive and inexperienced plebes could be bred into full fledged Stepford Soldiers not recognizing clearly the line of demarcation between freedom and tyranny.