Strangers on a Train
mebrat...@yahoo.com
Linder, the often dyspeptic and sometimes vicious proprietor of
Vanguard News Network. Jones is a Traditionalist Catholic, Linder an
atheist and avowed opponent of "loxism", and I am a nontheist who does
not philosophically like monotheism in any form whether you call your
monopolist-of-divinity Jesus, Allah, Yahweh or Hitler (or Stalin or
Obama or.....any other name). None the less there is some valuable
stuff here. Bret.))
Strangers on a Train
by E. Michael Jones
>> " At 4:22 PM on September 12, 2008, a Metrolink passenger train ran a red light at the CP Topanga signal near the Chatsworth section of Los Angeles and plowed head on into a Union Pacific freight train, causing the deaths of the engineer and over 20 passengers. It was the nation’s deadliest train wreck in 15 years. The train wreck occurred on a curve just after the freight train had emerged from a tunnel, which meant that the engineers of the two respective trains had four seconds to react from the time the trains became visible to each other. During those four seconds the engineer of the freight train and his assistant applied the train’s emergency break and jumped from the train. Both men survived. During those four seconds, the engineer of the passenger train did nothing, allowing his train to plow into the freight train at over 40 miles per hour.
Within hours of the wreck, the spokesman for Metrolink blamed the
crash on human error, and from that moment on the investigation
focused on Robert Sanchez, the 46-year-old engineer of the Metrolink
train, but the post-mortem following the crash soon became a
hermeneutical battle, in which determinations about what could be said
and what could not be said got made with little if anything to do with
the canons of railroad safety.
Four days after the crash, California Senator Diane Feinstein
delivered her verdict. The problem, according to Feinstein, was
Sanchez’s work schedule, which made him work “an ‘untenable’ schedule
of 11-hour days, five days a week in split shifts.” By the time
hearings on the crash got held, people were lining up to make sure
that this cloud had a silver lining for whichever group they
represented. Speaking at a United States Senate hearing on the crash,
Metrolink Chairman Ron Roberts began his testimony by extending
“sincerest regret for this situation” but then got down to the
business at hand. “This collision is not just what the NTSB determines
to be the cause,” Roberts hinted darkly. “It’s about our nation’s lack
of investment in passenger rail as a whole.” Roberts, in other words,
used the deaths of 25 people as an opportunity to ask for more money
from the government. Labor wasn’t much better than management when it
came to self-serving statements about the cause of the crash. Tim
Smith, California Chairman of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers
and Trainmen, saw the Senate hearing as a way of doubling the members
of his union, claiming that “the deadly crash is a good reminder why
railroad companies should always place two engineers aboard a train.”
Those familiar with railroading have questioned Smith’s claim because
experience has shown that when trains have two engineers they tend to
distract each other with their talking.
By the time the Senate held its hearings, there was plenty of evidence
about the crash concerning human error, the biography of the engineer,
distraction, and a host of other details. The main issue was not
gathering information. The main issue was determining which
information could be deemed relevant according to the canons of
acceptable discourse.
One of the first details to emerge in the aftermath of the crash was
that Robert Sanchez was a homosexual, a detail which emerged from an
AP story on his “troubled personal life” along with stories about
traffic violations and larceny convictions. It seems that Sanchez’s
“partner” had committed suicide in 2003 and Sanchez had received only
three days off with pay to deal with the grieving process. Some
observers wondered whether the wreck had been caused by aborted
grieving resulting from too few paid grieving days. Some railroad
workers complained that their employers allowed them three days off
work but without pay.
Carolann Peschell, the sister of Sanchez’s deceased “partner,” felt
that Sanchez had murdered him, but she could never get anyone to take
her claims seriously. Peschell described Sanchez as “very odd, very
strange,” but the rest of the press accounts seemed determined to
explain how normal he was once it became clear that he was a
homosexual. One report described “the easy smile and kind eyes in the
burly engineer's driver's-license photo.” Another report tried to
generate sympathy for homosexuals by announcing that a lesbian officer
on the Los Angeles Police Department had been among the victims of the
crash which Sanchez had caused. Spree Desha, we read, “was a standout
presence in the LAPD,” who “proudly wore her uniform on the train to
reassure riders that they were under the watchful eye of the police.”
Unfortunately, the train Ms. Desha had been riding on was under the
watchful eye of a fellow homosexual, and it turns out that that eye
had been blinded by passion. It was precisely that blindness which was
the cause of her death. If Ms. Desha had been asked before she stepped
onto the last train ride of her life if the engineer’s sexual
orientation had anything to do with his job performance, one can
imagine the answer.
The workplace ramifications of this moral fact quickly got medicalized
and absorbed into discourse acceptable to the therapeutic state. As
some indication that Metrolink’s criteria for employee evaluation were
equally out of sync with reality Sanchez’s employer praised his job
performance a little over a week before he caused the deaths of over
30 people by his negligence. In a letter they sent to him on September
3, Metrolink told Sanchez that he would be receiving an employee
incentive award bonus check because they had ascertained that “The
measurements to receive your award include safety and rules
compliance, exemplary attendance and other performance factors that
contribute to the success of your operation.”
Anyone who felt that Sanchez’s homosexuality had something to do with
the crash got shouted down. It was clear that only a bigot would make
statements like that. That became obvious when the fact was broached
on an Internet forum for railroad workers. The person who raised the
homosexual issue was subjected to long and labored explanations of the
sort intended for idiot children from the folks who would be the first
to die if the nation’s railroads continued blindly hiring homosexuals
to drive their trains.
On September 30, 2008, RRTom entered the discussion at Trainorders.com
by asking a question: “Are they saying Sanchez was a homosexual?” The
immediate response seemed like relief that someone had finally stated
the obvious.
The first response was: “Word’s been out on that for a while.” Then
PumpkinHogger joined in by complaining that at work “we have to dance
around all that and ignore it or be held to the fire by diversity
policies.” The railroad version of political correctness in the
workplace “fully muzzles and makes un-PC any spoken thought about
anyone. … Sanchez’s co-workers may not have known his preferences were
different from theirs. Nobody cares if someone is Catholic, that makes
for a different lifestyle if a strict adherent, but gay just flips
people out.”
But then political correctness kicked in and the focus of the
discussion shifted from wondering whether the engineer’s homosexuality
had anything to do with the wreck to wondering why someone would raise
the issue in the first place. According to FJC, “People who work in
the world of railroading are part of a big melting pot of differing
ethnicities, religions, sexual preferences and personalities. I never
try to judge a book by it’s [sic] cover.”
RRTom, however, remained unconvinced. His question: “Are they saying
Sanchez was a homosexual?” prompted Pecosvalleychief to respond: “I
was actually pleasantly surprised that no one directly reported this.
Sure it was implied by the story of his ‘partner,’ but I never saw an
actual statement that he was gay. I was kinda [sic] expecting the
headline, ‘Metrolink Engineer a Sexual Deviant’ or some such crap.
Maybe there is some hope.” Saying that the engineer’s homosexuality
contributed to the the crash is something “You’d never see . . . in
the ‘mainstream’ media. Maybe on the 700 Club or an anti-gay
mouthpiece rag, but not in a metro newspaper.”
One railroader opined that he knew many homosexuals and that they were
“like any other group,” which is to say “there are nice people and
there are jerks.” Then, as if to sum everything up for the likes of
RRTom, he added, “I don’t care if a guy at work is black white red or
purple with green polka dots so long as he does his job in a
professional and respectful manner.” To which RRTom replied: “It
doesn’t sound like Sanchez was doing his job in a professional and
respectful manner.” And that response in turn generated more
vituperation and more lectures about the virtue of tolerance.
“I don’t know why his homosexuality was brought up,” Calhog opined.
“He apparently was an excellent engineer, who for whatever reason,
made the worst mistake an engineer can make. His sexuality had nothing
to do with it.” To which Crosstie-Walker responded, “Well stated.”
Crosstie-Walker’s opinion was seconded by Benthere, who claimed that
“Being gay has nothing more to do with being an engineer and railfan
as [sic] being Catholic or heterosexual.” And he, in turn was seconded
by another railroad worker who felt that “How an adult American
citizen lives his/her private life with another adult American citizen
is of no concern. We don’t hear about straight employees of company
XYZ who liked whatever.”
Then the fact that Sanchez was a compulsive text-messenger came out.
On his next to last shift on September 12, a shift which lasted a
little over two hours, Sanchez either sent or received a total of 45
text messages while driving a Metrolink passenger train. In his last
shift, which began at 3:03 PM and ended with his death 79 minutes
later, Sanchez had either sent or received 12 text messages. Sanchez
sent his last message 20 seconds before he died. Sending a text
message, we need to remember, involves looking at the cell phone’s
small screen and keyboard and typing in a message. Unlike talking on a
cell phone, which can be distracting while driving, texting must be
distracting because it involves directing the driver’s eyes away from
the road in front of him.
On October 1, 2008, the railroad workers began to discuss Sanchez’s
penchant for “texting.” The bloggers at trainorders.com found this
fact a little more difficult to dismiss, probably because compulsive
texters don’t have a lobbying group which defends their compulsion.
Smitty195 felt that Sanchez’s behavior “while operating a train with
hundreds of passengers on-board” was “irresponsible and unsafe.”
Texting while driving a train “is about as irresponsible as someone in
that position can get.” Checkmate concurred:
“Let’s do the math. 43 mph is 61.6 feet per second. Multiply that by
22 and you have him sending the text 1355 ft before impact. What was
the official distance given from CP Topanga to the crash site? [I
went] On Google Earth and came up with about 2100 ft. If all this is
correct, he sent the message after blowing the signal.” Which is to
say, the red signal ordering him to stop went by unnoticed because
Robert Sanchez was deeply involved in texting.
Outrage against engineers who text while driving trains was more
acceptable, but in expressing that outrage, the railroaders once again
went out of their way to say that this compulsive texting had nothing
to do with Sanchez’s “orientation,” or as TomPlatten put it:
If it, in fact, is true that he was “texting” 22 seconds before the
crash—regardless of his “orientation,” he was clearly inattentive to
his task, and was, therefore, responsible for the deaths of 24 people.
Nothing can change that now! It is sad that he lost his own life, but
if he had been doing his job properly, he would be alive today and so
would the other folks who died! It is time to call a spade a spade.
Well, it depends on what you mean by spade here. Robert Sanchez, it
turns out, wasn’t “’texting’ 22 seconds before the crash—regardless of
his ‘orientation.’” He was texting 22 seconds before the crash because
of his orientation. Sanchez, it turns out, “was something of a
celebrity. . . among young train fans,” which was the main-stream
media’s way of saying that he was in the habit of communicating with
teen-age boys while he was running his train. It turns out that there
was a link between Sanchez’s compulsive texting and his sexual
compulsions after all, even if everyone from the main-stream media to
the mainstream railroad establishment was determined to ignore it.
Sanchez called these boys “his teenage train buffs,” according to his
next-door neighbor Bud Amelsberg. “They would all yell at him as he
rolled by.” And instead of ignoring them and keeping his eyes on the
track in front of him, Sanchez would try to contact his fans and
arrange to meet them. The last message Sanchez ever texted, the one he
sent 20 seconds before his death, “apparently told the teen and his
friends where Sanchez would be meeting another passenger train,”
according to KCAL 9 and CBS 2 reporter Kristine Lazar. Or is this just
another way of saying that Sanchez last act before he died was
arranging a meeting with a 14-year old boy, a meeting so important to
him that he was willing to risk the lives of hundreds of people to
arrange it.
Once again this fact took a back seat to other more important
considerations, like discrimination against homosexuals. Cumbresfan,
another railroading blogger, wrote: “I’m dealing with one [knee jerk
nut] on another forum that believes that the engineer’s homosexuality
was the direct cause of the wreck, that he was a pedophile and his
texting was to young men for obvious reasons. He said if it was a
priest it wouldn’t be covered up. I told him goodbye. I’m not going to
argue with such a closed mind.”
In the American empire we can only offer technological solutions to
moral problems, largely because we have acquired the unfortunate habit
of redefining moral problems like homosexuality out of existence. The
archetypal moment in this regard came in the early ‘70s when
homosexuality was stricken from the DSM’s list of disorders. The only
moral that the trainbloggers could draw from the Metrolink wreck was
“respect the train” or as NJTMatt put it, “The solution is never to
get comfortable and always respect the train. Texting while running is
not having respect for the train. . . . based on what the NTSB has
found this engineer seemed to have a habit of texting while on duty.”
As the details gradually emerged from the press accounts, the story of
what actually happened began to take shape in spite of virtually
everyone’s determination to force it onto the procrustian bed of
allowable discourse. The engineer who was the cause of the fatal
trainwreck was a homosexual who was in the habit of compulsively
texting teenage boys while at the controls of passenger trains where
the lives of hundreds of people were literally in his hands. Concern
for those lives finished a distant second to Sanchez’s sexual
compulsions.
Aquinas articulated the moral consensus among the ancients, both
Christian and pagan, when he opined that lust makes you blind. Would
Metrolink consider hiring an engineer who was blind? Probably not. Why
then do they insist on hiring someone who, because of the fact that he
is a homosexual, is blinded by lust? When we say blind we mean that in
the most literal sense of the word, i.e., incapable of seeing a red
light, in fact a large red light, prominently displayed as a warning
not to proceed, as it was at the CP Topanga signal.
As a cultural mile marker which can indicate how far we have fallen
over the course of my lifetime, I recommend Alfred Hitchcock’s
Hollywood movie Strangers on a Train. The main character in the film
is a tennis star who meets a homosexual deviant on a train by chance.
The homosexual then proposes dual murders: he will kill the tennis
star’s promiscuous wife if the tennis star agrees to kill his
overbearing father. Hitchcock portrays the homosexual as a decadent
member of the upper class because as of 1950, when the film was made,
working men were family men. This is another way of saying that during
the 1950s America came closer to implementing the family wage, i.e., a
man earning enough to support a wife and children, than at any other
time in its entire history. Railroads didn’t (knowingly at least) hire
homosexuals because for the most part union jobs went to the heads of
families. The family wage had many benefits, but one was keeping
homosexuals out of the engineer’s cab on trains and confined to places
like Bohemia, where the damage they could inflict on decent people was
negligible.
There are other lessons we can draw from the blogging railroaders’
inept attempts to understand the cause of the Metrolink train wreck,
and most of them have to do with the state of contemporary discourse.
If anything, their interest in this question is more immediate than
that of the average American. If the nation’s railroads continue to
hire lust-blinded engineers, they are much more likely to die as a
result than the rest of us. And yet the blogging railroaders were so
tyrannized by the conventional narrative, they seemed more likely to
drive their trains over a cliff or head on into each other before they
would give up their attitudes toward homosexuality.
In this they are remarkably similar to their traditional enemies, the
nation’s automakers, who are fighting for their survival by aiming all
of their weapons at their own heads. After arriving in Washington to
ask for bail-out money, they seemed incapable of articulating the main
reason they deserve to be bailed out, namely, because they are the
last bastion of high wages in American industry. As a result their
enemies, i.e. the Wall Street financiers, got to articulate the case
against them with the help of other members of their ethnic group,
i.e., the ones who control the media in this country. As Charles
Krauthammer, one of their spokesmen put it, the real issue here is
wages. The financiers and the media moguls want to force the auto
industry into bankruptcy because, as Krauthammer wrote,
Saving Detroit means saving it from bankruptcy. As we have seen with
the airlines, bankruptcy can allow operations to continue while
helping shed fatally unsupportable obligations. For Detroit this means
release from ruinous wage deals with their astronomical benefits (the
hourly cost of a Big Three worker: $73; of an American worker for
Toyota $48), massive pension obligations and unworkable work rules
such as “job banks,” a euphemism for paying vast numbers of employees
not to work.
What Charles Krauthammer forgot to tell us is that $350 billion
dollars of the government’s bailout money had already been dispersed
to the “massive pension obligations” of firms like AIG. The only
difference is that the money at AIG’s pension fund gets divided up
between hundreds and not hundreds of thousands of pensioners.
The Big Three should have no illusions about who calls the shots in
this country. It’s no longer 1954 when what was good for General
Motors is what was good for the country. It is now 2008 and under the
new dispensation what is good for Wall Street is what is good for the
country.
The big three automakers looked like deer caught in the headlights of
one of their own cars when the mainstream media convicted them of
flying to Washington in private jets. They were blinded in their way
as well, if not by greed then by an inability to see that they were
adopting the commands of their enemies and had been doing so for
decades. Henry Ford, I suspect, would have been able to read the
writing on the wall. When he was on his death bed, he was asked by a
reporter what he thought of the Ford Motor Company going public, i.e,
falling into the hands of Wall Street. His answer was clear enough. He
raised himself up on one elbow and, wagging his finger at the
reporter, said that he’d tear his company down brick by brick before
he would let it fall into the hands of the Jews.
Charles Krauthammer and the people whose interests he represents have
long memories. Now they are within striking distance of achieving two
goals which have always been close to their hearts: punishing Henry
Ford and destroying the last vestiges of union power in America.
Another member of the same sect, Alan Greenspan, bragged about how
during his tenure as head of the Federal Reserve System one of his
main goals was keeping labor in line. His actual phrase was “off
balance.” The goal of both men and the interests they serve is a world
in which the goyim all work for firms like Wal-Mart and earn slave
wages, which they can then be convinced to spend on flat-screen TVs,
which enslave them still further. Wall Street wants Detroit to die, so
that they can pick up the pieces at fire sale prices and then
reconstitute the auto industry along lines they find congenial, which
is to say, with workers getting paid $5 per hour with no benefits.
As some premonition of his death, Robert Sanchez asked that his ashes
be scattered on the railroad tracks. If Detroit doesn’t awake from its
own dogmatic slumbers and discover what’s in store for them a few
miles down the tracks, they should imitate Robert Sanchez and ask to
have their ashes scattered over the Interstate Highway System. " < <
E. Michael Jones is editor of Culture Wars.