Trump Train Crashes on Dead Man’s Curve

By Susan Bergeron

January 11: Every railroad worker knows about “Dead Man’s Curve.” It really only exists as a reference to any extreme curve that warrants caution and reduced speed when traversing it. There’s no one Dead Man’s Curve. There are many, each of them historically more devastating than the next. You can site Dutchman’s Curve in Nashville, the infamous crash of 1864 near Culver Station, Indiana at the height of the Civil War, or the awful crash at the Altoona Horseshoe Curve in Pennsylvania. They all killed. 

I’m a retired railroad conductor. I remember “Dead Man’s Curve” at Bridgeport in the 1980’s. I was working as a bartender on wheels back then, before I got promoted to trainman. I cursed the engineer under my breath, every time, as we swung the curve and I got tossed hard into the counter. Drinks got sloshed all over the passengers and down the front of my uniform. Dead Man’s Curve is real, but it’s everywhere.

Last summer we began to see the emergence of a phenomenon which quickly became known as “Trump Trains.” Remember the AP photos and video of deadly marauding packs of pick-up trucks out on our nation’s highways, emblazoned with huge Trump flags and “Blue Lives Matter” flags chasing after Biden campaign cars and buses? One such video sticks out in my mind, wherein the driver of a huge obnoxious black truck with Trump flags literally tries to run Joe Biden’s campaign bus off the road while he’s on his way to one of his last drive-in rallies. The truck actually strikes one of the Biden caravan of campaign cars, nearly causing an accident! “We were trying to escort them,” said the Trump liars. Mobs of these Trump Trains started to show up at Biden and Harris drive-in rallies and harass the Democratic supporters from the back of the parking lots. They tried to drown out the speeches by beeping their Trump horns and made loudspeaker announcements from their Trump trucks to try and disrupt the rallies.

 What really pissed me off about that was this: the Dems were already knee-capped by this damn pandemic, and they were trying to do the right thing and be safe. From the start, the Biden campaign made it a priority not to endanger their supporters by emphasizing safety and finding ways around traditional campaigning and rallies. Meanwhile, Trump is out on his Nationwide Superspreader Tour, spewing Covid-19 all over the country in a selfish bid to stay in power and stay out of jail. His Mask-less Bikers for Trump escorted many of the Trump Trains, like leather-clad demons straight of The Wild One. And if anybody believes the Covid-19 surge in our country this winter is coincidental to Trump’s actions in November, I’m sorry but that’s hardly possible. Surely, it was exacerbated by holiday travel and weather, but Trump was out to cause herd immunity---a concept pushed by the Flat-Earther Scott Atlas. Operation Warp Speed is turning out to be anything but that.

 Trump made sure the vaccine was hurried onto the doorsteps of the states, where they dumped it. Then they drove away, leaving the states holding the bag on how to get it into people’s arms. All Trump cared about was getting credit for the vaccine. He wanted it named after himself. Americans give credit to the dedicated doctors and scientists who quickly developed these vaccines for us, despite Donald Trump’s continued interference. As usual, he lost interest and went golfing, instead of following through with the hard work of seeing the Operation Warp Speed program through to its final phases.

Despite the Trump Train’s best efforts to derail Joe Biden’s extremely difficult campaign and his many challenges, the people spoke on November 3, 2020 and their decision was loud and clear: it’s time for Trump to haul his train back to the yard and “pull the pin,” as we say in railroaders’ lingo. You’re all done, Trump. Go home.

But he was a runaway train. There was no one at the controls. Ever see “The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3”? Trump tossed Mike Pence out the door of the cab and slammed a brick down on the Dead Man’s Pedal. He put Engine #45 in the Ninth Notch, headed for the massive curve known as the Well of the Senate. Away they barreled, crashing through the barricades that held for 244 years. Trump, the worst engineer ever, ran to the back of that train, jumped off the caboose and ran away like the coward he is. Then, before a horrified nation’s eyes, the Trump Train jumped the track at Dead Man’s Curve.