a reply to:
Raggedyman
Raggedyman, it just is not true that nobody cares anymore.
I think it is far more likely that people simply have not got the emotional and mental stamina to keep chipping away at the problem, unless some
light at the end of the tunnel is seen. There IS a pretty big difference. I would argue that the first responders on the day, many of whom are sick
and or dying from complications arising from exposure to pulverised material from the buildings which collapsed, care a great deal about what was
really going on that day. I would argue that their families, who have dealt with the trauma both physical and mental, experienced by those first
responders, care very much about what really happened.
But they also care about getting the support that those first responders deserve from government, the sort of assistance that allows a firefighter or
a police officer, or one of those thousands of people who picked over the rubble of the Ground Zero site, looking for survivors and recovering bodies,
to combat the physical and mental illnesses that many of them developed as a result of the events of that day, and those requirements are immediate,
having to do with their ability to survive.
It can be argued that those concerns about the ability of first responders to survive, are rather more pressing for those families, their friends,
and their friends and families and so on, than are the details of how a building untouched by the assault, was able to collapse under stress applied
to it from a bit of burning flat pack furniture. You and I both know that the whole thing stank to high heaven, and I care very much about the truth.
You and I are not alone in that. But there are more pressing, time sensitive concerns to deal with just now, namely the fact that the people who tried
to save lives and worked tirelessly at the site in the days and weeks afterward, are dying because they cannot afford treatment for the illnesses they
developed as a result of their heroic efforts. While I share your distrust of the official line with regard to the events of that day, people are
still dying, preventable deaths, because they have been abandoned by a nation which hailed them heroes, justly, for carrying out their duties under
inhuman stress loads, while mourning thousands of dead, while clambering upon the atomised remains of buildings and human beings, clambering across a
vision of hell. Minds and bodies broken by the event in question, these people are collapsing under the weight of what they did in those days
immediately after the attack. Their lives are not infinite, they will run out of time, and therefore their needs for closure and proper treatment from
the state, are, in my view, somewhat more pressing than the matter of WTC 7.
Prioritise. The United States, for all that its current leader is making every effort to destroy the only decent things about the country, will still
be a country within the next five to ten years. Many of the first responders will no longer be alive by then, because they are not receiving the
assistance they need to heal their wounds, to treat their cancers, to overcome the mental trauma, all of which, under the broken, corrupt system of
healthcare in the states, costs fortunes to achieve. The government must pay these people, and it must keep doing it for the rest of their lives, no
matter how unpopular it is or what it does to deficit reduction projections. That is urgent...
The nation can wait for the truth, but the heroes who sprang up to do what they could to help in the aftermath of 9/11 cannot wait to be properly
treated. Their needs are more urgent.