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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. We'll talk now about the train derailment in Eastern Ohio this month that released toxic chemicals into the air and water and the implications for us all. You've probably heard about the evacuation order from Governor Mike DeWine when it first happened, and the safety assessment since people there have been complaining of respiratory and other symptoms, and those are just in the short term. Various cancers are associated with the chemicals involved if the exposure is bad enough.

My guest, Jeet Heer, national affairs correspondent for The Nation has a particular take, which I will call the Pete Buttigieg-Adam Driver Nexus. I'll explain why Adam Driver and see if Jeet agrees as we go. The title of the article is Buttigieg’s Paralysis After Disaster Is a Gift to the Hard Right. Jeet, thanks for coming on for this. Welcome back to WNYC.

Jeet Heer: Well, it's always great to be here.

Brian Lehrer: I'll tell the listeners that you were also hosted the weekly podcast from The Nation, The Time of Monsters and author of two books, In Love With Art: Françoise Mouly's Adventures in Comics with Art Spiegelman, and Sweet Lechery: Reviews, Essays, and Profiles. Little bit of a distance from toxic train derailments. On to the toxic airborne event from the train derailment, your article opens on Sund[-ay, February 5th, the exact day that Governor DeWine gives the evacuation order. Buttigieg appears on that day on three Sunday talk shows, Sunday morning talk shows as US transportation secretary and he doesn't bring it up and neither do any of the interviewers. They talked about other issues. How do you look back on that absence of conversation?

Jeet Heer: Well, it is really striking, even from the start, this is a major accident. Fortunately, there hasn't been a loss of life but the chemicals that were released include known carcinogens. There was a controlled explosion to try to limit the damage done. On that day that he appeared on three different news shows that are supposedly dealing with current events, the governor of Ohio made a very stern warning to people that they have to evacuate saying that this is a matter of life and death.

One would think that news programs would be concerned about that. What's interesting is that what they did actually talk about was the Chinese balloon, most likely a weather balloon that had gone off course. There was a big hysteria about it, invading American airspace. I think that there's a parallel. The news is usually concerned or the news often focuses in on invasive threats. That happened to be the invasive threat of the day, and there was not room for what was actually unfolding.

That quickly changed in the coming days. It is notable that Buttigieg was not asked about it, did not feel the need, even though he's a transportation secretary, train regulation is under his purview and did not actually comment on the incident until a full 10 days after the initial train crash.

Brian Lehrer: You write about what you call Buttigieg's reticence on the topic. One reason you say reticence has to do with the federal rule about the brakes that trains need to have that was undone by the Trump administration and not reinstated by Buttigieg or Biden. Can you explain that braking rule?

Jeet Heer: Sure. Maybe the way to start this is if I were to ask you, Brian, you have freight trains going throughout America, carrying very dangerous chemicals. How old would you say the braking system that these trains use is? The one in East Palestine, say, well, when do you think it dates back to?

Brian Lehrer: I cheated, I read your article. I know that it's earlier than 2022.

Jeet Heer: Yes, do you want to [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: That was 19th century, right?

Jeet Heer: The Civil War, it dates back to the Civil War. The train braking system that was used in East Palestine would be very familiar to William Tecumseh Sherman and General Grant. Now obviously, even though trains are 19th-century technology, there have been updates. Early in the 21st century, there was a newer brake systems developed that are electronic, that would actually prevent or at least limit the damages done from derailment and cause fewer derailments.

Brian Lehrer: Right. We've done shows on that after the Metro North derailment in Spuyten Duyvil a few years ago, everybody was talking about these automatic braking systems that should be installed on trains all over the country. That's what you're referring to there, right?

Jeet Heer: That's right. Yes, the automatic. They are very widely used. I think if any of your listeners have ever travelled to Europe or to Japan or China, they're pretty confident that they do have to use civil war technology on those train systems. The interesting thing is initially the railroad industry was very enthusiastic about this and say that this will help us with train derailments, but that at a certain point, the Obama administration started to put in regulations to try to implement this.

There was an immediate lobbying effort by the train industry, to stop this legislation, to water it down. There's also regulatory capture. That is to say, the federal institutions that are in charge of train safety often have people that are coming from within the train industry. Even in the Obama administration, people appointed by Obama were watering down attempted regulations. I would say even from the start there was that and they had put in rules about a cost-benefit analysis. That was used to limit the amount of upgrades that would be needed.

Of course, the Trump administration used these loopholes and really push through rescinding this as a result of the lobbying of the train industry. Part of Buttigieg's response was to point out that there was-- he tweeted out on the 14th. "We are constrained by law in some areas of rail regulation, like the braking rule withdrawn by the Trump administration in 2018. But we're using the powers that we have to keep people safe." That response, "We're constrained by law," it's partially true. The Trump administration did make this change.

It's all fully true, under a lot of critics, especially from the railway unions, and also people who are concerned with railway or safety, non-profit groups who said that actually the Biden administration restriction has a lot of power, and in fact that the only rules changes that were under consideration before this train crash happened were to further water down the requirement for upgrading of brakes.

Buttigieg's response, I think is in keeping with his record as transportation secretary. He comes from a corporate background as a McKinsey consultant. He doesn't like to openly challenge the industries that he's supposed to regulate and oversee. It's often been the case and we saw this with the airplane incidences where Southwest Airlines and a lot of people got stuck during the holidays. He cancelled and Buttigieg was very reluctant to come out critical, it took the effort of people like Elizabeth Warren and other people in Congress to prod him to challenge industry.

I think we're seeing something similar, the same dynamic here, that we have a transportation secretary that is very reluctant to pick fights with industry and is reluctant to use the actual power that he has, and has a rhetoric of I think, I would call it learned helplessness. Well, we're constrained by laws, there's not much I can do. Well, I'll tell you, the Trump administration was also constrained by laws, but they actually managed to push through what they wanted which was deregulation.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. You'd think Buttigieg even harder in the article than all of what you just said, globally, in a way citing his time as a consultant at McKinsey, as helping to mold him into what you call a thoroughgoing neoliberal, someone allergic to government regulation of industry. Those are tough words for someone often seen as a rising Democratic Party star.

Jeet Heer: I think they are fair [unintelligible 00:09:31]. He was famously a McKinsey consultant. I think listeners might remember that memorable moment when a New York Times editor challenged him on that and especially his role in working as a consultant for a company engaged in the fixing of bread prices in Canada. I speak as a Canadian, I will tell you that. McKinsey was involved as a consultant for they did in fact jack up prices in a very sinister way and they cause problems. We, Canadians have memories.

Brian Lehrer: Here's my Pete Buttigieg Adam Driver analogy. It's one of the scariest things, of course, that can happen to a person or a family. We're talking about government and regulations and corporate ties and all this stuff. Think of it on the personal level. It's one of the scariest things that can happen to somebody. A potentially cancer-causing toxic plumes suddenly envelops your community. Weirdly, for some moviegoers, including me, maybe you just saw the recent film with Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig and Don Cheadle and others White Noise based on the Don DeLillo novel in which exactly this happens at the beginning of the film.

I'm not doing a spoiler. This is practically the first thing. It sets up the premise of the movie, how different people in the same family react to an invisible toxic threat from a train derailment, some with alarm, others like Adam Driver's character, trying to ignore it and cling to their routines as if everything was normal. If you haven't seen White Noise, think of the movie, Don't Look Up but with more of a 1980s horror than an allegory for climate change, which Don't Look Up is. Did you see White Noise or read the book once upon a time and as Pete Buttigieg, nothing to see here?

Jeet Heer: I read the book a long time ago, and I haven't finished the movie. I watched a little bit of it, but it's exactly on point. In fact, I had thought of making a joke, which is probably in bad taste, which is that if I were conspiratorial, I would say that the reckon East Palestine Netflix doing native advertising. A very sinister native advertising campaign.

Brian Lehrer: For a movie that, by the way, got mad reviews, but go ahead.

Jeet Heer: Both the novel and the movie are exactly on point. I would even go a little bit further than that. I think DeLillo as a novelist is very concerned with pollution. You're right to see that as a coming out of his formation in the '70s and '80s when people will remember the environmental concerns of that era were very focused on these airborne toxic events, or nuclear accidents, or the invisible chemicals and radiations around us. In the novel and in the movie, it does diagram the various responses of either denial or paranoia.

The denial aspect, Buttigieg's Adam Driver, then I would say the more paranoid characters in the movie are closer to Tucker Carlson or Fox News.

Because I think that's the other dynamic. I think in some ways if one sees it as a holistic thing, denial, and paranoia feed each other, that if you have one part of society that is denying a problem is happening, then another part of society gets even more anxious. Why aren't you noticing this? Then are you covering something up? That becomes all the worse if it's a government official.

Now, I should say, obviously I think it's imperative for government to follow the science, and I think the EPA is offering reassurances that as far as they can tell with the best information that they have, this is not affecting humans. There seems to be a lot of reports of animals dying but on the other hand, I think people have a very reasonable fear. They were A, evacuated B, the company Norfolk Suffolk, they gave the town $25,000, which is $5 per person in a town of 5,000. Convenience fee of $1,000 per person to evacuate, that is like, "Your airline is bumping you. We'll put you up in a hotel."

Brian Lehrer: "We'll give you extra peanuts."

Jeet Heer: Exactly. It's interesting I think both the denial and the paranoia exist together as part of the spectrum of response and going further I think that they really feed off each other. The more people are paranoid and worried, the more the Buttigiegs of the world are like, "Nothing to see here. Everything's okay, let's move along."

Brian Lehrer: I want to get to the point in your article about what Pete Buttigieg did and didn't do, enabling Tucker Carlson in the right, let me just do my top-of-the-hour legal ID here. This is WNYC FM HDNAM, New York WNJT FM 88.1, Trenton WNJP 88.5, Sussex, WNJY 89.3, Netcong, and WNJO 90.3 Toms River. We are a New York and New Jersey Public Radio and live streaming @wnyc.org at 11:02 as we continue with Jeet Heer, national affairs correspondent for The Nation, who's has an article just out this morning on the nation website, his particular take on the Ohio train derailment called Buttigieg’s Paralysis After Disaster Is a Gift to the Hard Right. Make that hard right Tucker Carlson enablement case.

Jeet Heer: Sure. I think it's good to start off with what the excellent point that you made about how the anxiety about airborne toxins is a 1980s thing and a very mainstream thing. People remember the era of the China syndrome and of rising awarenesses of carcinogenic. What's interesting is that the environmental movement as a whole has moved on because of our awareness of climate change to awareness of these larger systems, but within a spectrum of the American population that concern for toxic pollutants feeds into very nicely right-wing anxieties about invasion and outside forces entering into you.

In some ways, I don't think it's an accident that the conspiracy theories that we're seeing now about East Palestine came right after the balloon incident. That Buttigieg took off when he did appear on television. Which is that it's the same fear. There's something on the outside that is eating into us. If you go into the right-wing precincts, you'll see very wild things like this is either a false flag operation or a deliberate attempt. There's a racial element where there's a suggestion that people are ignoring this event because this is a White working-class area.

I think East Palestine voted for Trump 70%. Tucker Carlson was basically on TV saying that well, of course the Biden administration's going to ignore this. They don't consider these people to be human.

Brian Lehrer: Here's a quote from Tucker Carlson Show that you include in the article. He says, sarcastically, "It had nothing to do with equity or climate change. East Palestine," I think you say Palestine, I think-

Jeet Heer: Oh, Palestine, okay.

Brian Lehrer: -"is a poor white town that voted for Trump so honestly, who cares?" He's making the case that this is a disfavored community because it's low-income White people who voted for Trump, and that's why Biden and Buttigieg didn't do anything to protect them, which obviously makes no sense, but he's enabled.

Jeet Heer: Absolutely. He is enabled. Partially one could see that there might be a variety of reasons why the administration downplayed it. They had wanted to give local officials like Governor DeWine a chance to be at the forefront and lead the effort. Also to downplay hysteria. Tucker Carlson is one thing, but you go further on right-wing websites and there are, people, saying this is an American Chernobyl and suggesting that there are mass deaths that are being covered up. I really think that this is going to be a basis for a lot of conspiracy theories going into the future.

I would say, I do think that there's a way in which Buttigieg's passivity, his policy passivity of saying we're constrained and not wanting to hold industry accountable feeds into the Carlson narrative. It feeds into the idea that the problem is being ignored. It's being covered up. The government is on the side of powerful interest. Obviously, the right is going to take these things and give it an even harsher and I would say racist conspiratorial edge. It's part of the White genocide narrative that Tucker Carlson often trades in.

Brian Lehrer: USA Today did some good reporting on this incident. For example, it compiled stats that there have been over 5,000 incidents of hazardous materials spilling or leaking from trains that were either in transit or sitting in rail yards in the last 10 years, more than 300 last year alone, six of which caused injuries. It also says as railroad operators have faced more competition from long-haul truckers train companies have worked to decrease costs, including by cutting the workforce.

That brings me to my last question Jeet, before we're out of time, you don't refer in your article to the recent railroad worker strike, which most people probably heard of as being about the availability of sick leave, but as I understand it, sick leave and strict attendance policies that limit it became an issue because automation had led the railroads to start cutting staff in recent years, and less staffing can mean less safety. Do you know if that might have been an underlying issue here and that it actually ties into the recent railroad strike?

Jeet Heer: Oh, yes. No, with this specific incidents I would suggest that we need more reporting and government investigation to have it. I will say, I didn't mention the union angle because we had had another article in The Nation that actually took that up, which is that the rail workers through their unions have very much made safety and issue have been saying quite often that this deregulation, and making sick workers work and not providing sick leave, these are all safety issues.

The United States, as far as I can tell, has like an unusual usually large number of these rail accidents, for trains that are carrying the most dangerous thing. I think we should make a distinction between freight trains and passenger trains. I think it's particularly freight trains that are a real problem but even with passenger trains, I think the United States has a worse safety record than other comparable countries.

This is absolutely all tied together, and tied together with a larger economic system which is that it's not just trains are in competition with truckers but also that the train industry itself has done a lot of corporate buybacks.

Money that could have been spent to upgrade the brake systems so that the United States doesn't have civil war brake systems but 21st-century brake systems. That money was actually used for corporate buybacks to increase the wealth of shareholders and the corporate officers.

Brian Lehrer: Jeet Heer, national affairs correspondent for The Nation, his brand new article on the Ohio toxic event, Train Derailment is called Buttigieg’s Paralysis After Disaster Is a Gift to the Hard Right. Thank you for coming on for it, Jeet. Appreciate it.

Jeet Heer: Oh, thank you. It's a pleasure.

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