White Noise, The Airborne Toxic Event (The Norfolk Southern Train Derailment), and the Technological Sublime
Don DeLillo the Pattern Recognition Prophet, Three Mile Island, Mundanity Obscuring Action, A People's Revitalization, Collective Health, and a Gen-Z application of the Sublime.
The Norfolk Southern Train derailment was not shocking enough to immediately make the 24hr news cycle when cars containing vinyl chloride began to leak out into East Palestine, Ohio early February, but the incident has slowly burned into the American consciousness as a haunting spectacle which highlights our dependency on plastics and carcinogenic chemicals while showing the staggering risks taken for profits.
I could argue that there is ample consumer demand for record albums and PVC pipes, which, sure, there is, but something tells me that the citizens affected would argue that safety protocols—for people and the environment—trump plastic production. Transportation safety has certainly been an underlying focus of the conversation, though there has yet to be a national or widely publicized call for ample reforms. It seems that like the trees we keep hacking, we’re stumped when it comes to how we can mobilize and enact collective health solutions. But beyond the abuse of man & land is the eerie foretelling of a nearly identical occurrence by Don DeLillo in his novel White Noise (1985).
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