On February 3, 2023, a Norfolk Southern freight train carrying hazardous chemicals derailed in East Palestine, Ohio — a small town of 4,700 people near the Pennsylvania border. Three days later, officials conducted a “controlled burn” of vinyl chloride and other toxins, sending a massive plume of black smoke over the town and surrounding farmland. Residents were evacuated, then told it was safe to return. Fish floated in the creeks. Animals sickened. The story cycled through the news and faded, as these stories do.
For the first ten days, the story barely existed on national television. A Media Matters analysis found that CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and the three broadcast networks combined aired fewer than three hours of total coverage across 92 segments — and not a single minute on any of the major Sunday political shows.
None of the coverage examined how rail industry lobbyists had spent a decade gutting the safety regulations that might have prevented the disaster. A reporter was arrested trying to cover the governor's press conference. The EPA told residents it was safe to return three days after the burn — based on testing conducted not by independent scientists but by a firm hired by Norfolk Southern itself. Meanwhile, residents reported rashes, respiratory problems, and nausea.
An estimated 43,000 fish and animals died in the surrounding waterways. The story cycled through as spectacle, got politicized from every direction, and faded — which is exactly how these things are designed to work. Most Americans still have no idea what actually happened in East Palestine, or that toxic chemical releases, fires, and explosions occur on average every two days across the United States.
Diverted Awareness
behind the curtain
the players play
pulling levers, wielding cleavers
diverting our attention
behind our eyelids
lies take root
growing into complex deceits
too deep to question
stumbling through staged events
reeling from deliberate harms
unaware of the consequences
of diverted awareness
like sheep herded toward the cliff
we respond to our fears
with hatred for our neighbors
shifting blame for unseen fate
birds fly away
elephants get separated
waters reel with poisons
air thickens with exhaust
children lose track
spin away from themselves
devolving into caricatures
of who they once were
the fabric sunders
as pirates plunder
thunder screams
crazy winds expire
comets streak by
planets decay
where is the creator
we believed in
detached and demented
we smugly devour
the bounty laid before us
without regret
permanently destroying
the pristine wonders
of a once balanced sphere
now ruled by fear and greed
when it ends we’ll be gone
the stage will remain
stained, but finally free
of our cancerous ways
it was all there was
now instantly forgotten
as time warps
forward to the now