In my last post I touched on the Silent Narrative or those headlines “that are never allowed to become breaking news and/or even get the proper coverage to establish the meanings and motives…and potential implications today and down the road a bit. In many cases, these tend to be the stories that would provide the proper contextual backdrop for future breaking news events and storylines.” Well…today, as you sit there likely fully aware of what Meghan was wearing at the Queen’s service or, slightly less important, what book the Never Trumper in your favorite on-line Member Feed is pushing to fill the space between Trump sightings in lieu of discussing policy or actual important current events, you may very well be completely oblivious to the fact that in just over twenty-four hours we may be facing the largest economic disruption ever not caused by Fauci and Birx:

Amtrak Cancels All Long-Distance Trains as Potential Railway Strike Looms

If BNSF, Union Pacific and CSX and unions representing some 115,000 freight railway workers cannot come to an agreement by Friday, the workers plan to strike. …

I suggest that this story should have been firmly on everyone’s radar for at least the last 4-5 days. (Imagine the fever pitch it would be at now if Mr. Trump was in the big chair. But I digress.) But the part I want to focus on first is this from the Instapundit link to the story:

We live in a country where the (currently) ruling political party and most of the national media have a symbiotic relationship…. One of the problems with this dynamic is that when the ruling class decides something is important — say, emphasizing the issue of abortion as the midterm elections approach — it tends to squeeze out everything that the ruling party doesn’t want emphasized.

Don’t get me wrong; abortion is a hugely important issue to many Americans. You can read more about the abortion bill South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham proposed yesterday from Alexandra DeSanctis and Charlie Cooke and John McCormick and Kathryn Jean Lopez.

But there are a lot of other things going on in this world, and one issue that seems spectacularly under-covered — a ticking time bomb, if you will — is that starting at 12:01 a.m. Friday, about a day and a half from now, if there isn’t a new labor deal between freight-rail unions and employers, the U.S. economy will be . . . derailed.

Maybe there will be an eleventh-hour deal; I suspect many casual observers simply assume that a deal will get done because the consequences of even a brief work stoppage would be so far-reaching. But freight companies are already halting certain shipments in preparation for a potential strike, so in some ways, the consequences of a strike are already here.

As important at this may be in the coming hours, I do find it interesting that the coverage I do see tends to focus first on the impact this is going to have on…of all things…Amtrack. Even at the NR link above. My kingdom for a journalist who can think deeper than the third grader.

(H/T: Instapundit)

I also find this little bit of arrogance from that NR story (good-gosh that is an annoying web page) to be par for the course with our out-of-touch beltway overlords:

Republicans plan to introduce a bill by Senators Roger Wicker of Mississippi and Richard Burr of North Carolina that would require both sides to accept the contract recommendations made by the presidential panel in order to avoid a crippling shutdown of U.S. freight railways. …

The Republican legislation, which would only force both sides to adopt the board’s recommendations in the event that an agreement is not reached by the Friday deadline, may have difficulty advancing in Congress as it is unclear whether Democrats would support the measure.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Tuesday that he believes both sides should agree to the board’s recommendations.

“The president’s board has made a recommendation as to how this should be settled, and unless [President Biden] changed his position the president apparently supports the position of the presidential board,” McConnell said. “That seems to me to be the perfect place to get the strike settled.”

Well, I may be wrong but…given the strained social fabric of the American Republic and the abuse it has taken from this corrupt, dismissive, and did I say corrupt ruling class over the last decade, I wouldn’t be so sure that another heavy handed edict from our parliament on those distant shores of DC will “settle” well with the workers or the railroads. Just think, your livelihood is now pushed to the brink of a strike as man-made, non-transient inflation is eating away your savings and buying power…and in walks, none other than, Big Mitch to devote a whole 30 minutes of his time to “settle” these massive issues with as little effort as possible. (Not a single thing has emerged from this White House that can be taken as good-faith and the senior elected official of the opposition party appears to accept the unreported details of the recommendations from an anonymous presidential panel as just that with little more than a wave of his hand. We are in the best of hands…)

Alas, Mitch seems to know the other players at the table:

McConnell: Dems own a railroad strike now that Sanders, progressives blocked GOP proposal to stop it

His arrogance is still noted…and the fact that it is all just part of the bigger political game to him is too.

These people really do make me sick.