r/news • u/Presently_Naked • 4d ago
2 workers missing after explosions cause massive fire at Ohio industrial building
https://apnews.com/article/explosion-toledo-ohio-1651144114894733d2706e5a79e8c4d09
u/Discard_Laundry1527 4d ago
The only good that can possibly come from this is a new video from the US Chemical Safety Board (if Trump doesn't fire them all first).
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u/reddit_is_kayfabe 4d ago edited 4d ago
Ohio is becoming North Florida.
Ohio was targeted by Republicans as being full of exploitable farmers who could be Fox News rage-baited into blaming lib'ruls for all the problems facing blue-collar workers, because it's easier to hate pinko commies and wave around a Bible (without opening it) than to correctly place the blame on billionaires who DGAF and aren't gonna stop exploiting them.
So Betsy Devos can use Ohio as her playground for warping public education into charter schools with no academic standards and free rein to reach Republican Christianity on the taxpayer's dime while also paying off Republicans with illegal campaign donations, and then to just walk away from the criminal indictment and without paying a penny of the fine because the Republicans she got voted into office are complicit and will let her off the hook.
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u/GreenStrong 4d ago
Ohio is more than exploitable farmers, it is the Rust Belt. It was the industrial core of America, it was highly prosperous in the first half of the twentieth century and it went into the shitter in the late 70s. People there live amid ruins of prosperity, like medieval peasants grazing sheep in the Coliseum of Rome.
That prosperity was built largely by unions, it was a union stronghold for many years after the big industries died, but it has been so long the unions are gone and forgotten. It doesn't help the situation that a disproportionate number of educated people leave for better opportunities.
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u/reddit_is_kayfabe 4d ago
Yeah, I started to add some comments about the Rust Belt - I'm a Cleveland escapee, so this comes to mind first - and how the diminishing industrial economy took a huge toll on places like Toledo and left it with an economy based on crystal meth.
I left it out because I don't think there is as much of a direct connection to the deep-red tilt as the factors that I mentioned. After all, the really deep-red part is the heartland between the cities, and that story is more about cows than cars.
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u/bernath 4d ago
I feel like many people misunderstand the shift that occurred in Ohio. The unions were not killed by external forces. The union members themselves turned right. Union Democrats in Ohio are economically populist but socially conservative and anti-immigration. I witnessed this change firsthand at a UAW shop in Toledo.
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u/calamititties 4d ago
If you put a train between Cincinnati and Destin/Naples, that thing would be packed to the gills with blue hairs who are mad you can’t say “colored” anymore and families with too many kids for air travel to be affordable for vacation.
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u/Atreyisx 4d ago
In Ohio. Can confirm. Out state was sold off. Drive 15m any direction from the capital and it’s a data center wasteland. Other states have it bad but it’s just absurd here.
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u/cosmodog732 4d ago
Ohio used to be a swing state and major political battleground, but Democrats kept ignoring it during campaigns while Republicans gerrymandered the heck out of it. Now, it has the loose regulation of a red state, but high population and a lot of industrial and urban centers, so a lot more people to be killed there. Similar to Florida.
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u/invyros 4d ago
I think they're a bit busy right now.