East Palestine, Ohio needs toxicologists — especially environmental toxicologists — pronto.  Where will they be found?

Well, it won't be the federal government.  No doubt, the cadre of EPA toxicologists are already occupied connecting asthma in children to gas stoves.  And the EPA chief, Michael Regan, can't be bothered with real-time environmental catastrophes as he deems the only crisis worth addressing "environmental racism."  (Oh, the irony!)

Meanwhile, don't expect any white-skinned non-DIE toxicologists or other disaster response crews to be sent to East Palestine.  The so-called sec of transportation, "What-Me-Worry" Pete Buttigieg, has already complained that infrastructure construction crews have too many white guys.

Good luck to pathetic Pete in finding enough Black/African-American and LGBTQ++ toxicologists to assay East Palestine.  One demographic survey says fewer than 7% of all toxicologists are Black/African-American.  How many are environmental toxicologists?  Two percent?  One?  How many are LGBTQ++?

Whatever the number is, fixing the disaster in East Palestine isn't Pete's job — nor, apparently, anyone else's in the Biden administration.  Remember: Sec. Pete's priority is riding a bicycle to work, beaming to fawning cameramen/women/non-binary LGBTQ++/whatever following his testimonial to unserious faddism and celebrating his personal Hegelian geists, which have zero connection to his purported job or the needs of everyday Americans.

Soon enough, Sec. Pete, and his wingman EPA administrator Mike Regan, will blurt out the quiet part: that the betrayed and abandoned citizens of East Palestine have the wrong skin color to deserve attention.

It's the same story throughout the Biden presidency, where merit and competency are brushed aside for an ideology that is determined to crush everyday Marys and Joes while extinguishing any remnant of American exceptionalism.

Not a single Cabinet member or admin operative in the Biden orbit has any skill in technology, science, health care, chemistry, physics, engineering, economics, accounting, logistics, or commerce.  Biden & Co. qualifications and priorities begin with identity, gender, race, ideology — and end with talents in shameless lying, obfuscation, and deflection.  Nothing in between.

And so, Joe Biden is in Poland and Ukraine, promising to pay for Ukraine pensions; secretary of state Anthony Blinken offers $185 million in earthquake recovery aid to Turkey; Pete Buttigieg is counting skin tones beneath hardhats; and the EPA's Mike Regan  is on a global warming propaganda tour in Africa.

And don't expect the Norfolk  Southern railroad to be charged for its direct responsibility in salting the earth, for rendering thousands of acres in East Palestine uninhabitable for a hundred years.

No, instead, N.S. will be vilified for not having enough non-white and non-binary executives in its boardroom.  And the citizens of East Palestine will be refugees in their own land...while "the sedge has withered from the lake, and no birds sing..."

Image: Pete Buttigieg.  Credit: Edward Kimmel via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.