September 11 [CW: Language, imagery]

A lot of people want to commemorate 9/11 today. I won't deny them that. I won't downplay it. But - as a New York City native - I wanted to give you a little perspective.

For most people 9/11 is a disaster.  But for some people, it's porn. I don't mean they're fapping to falling bodies. I mean it's an opportunity for them to get weepy or to get angry without any personal loss. It's as real to them as John Wick's dog or Inigo Montoya's father - no more, no less. And politicians use it for their personal gain.

I remember when the 9/11 anti-terror funding bill was pushed through to give the states money to protect themselves against terrorism...BECAUSE EVERY STATE GOT AN EQUAL SHARE. Wyoming, population 492,976, got the same amount of money as New York - the center of the tragedy, with a population of 19 million and more high-profile terrorist targets than any other state in the union.

I remember the same politicians, who wept crocodile tears about the tragedy of 9/11 at every hoedown and country fair, fighting tooth and nail, year after year, against the reauthorizations of the Zadroga Bill - which mandates lifesaving money for the healthcare of the 9/11 responders who suffered permanent, chronic damage from smoke inhalation, injury, and exposure to toxic chemicals in the poisonous smoke of the towers.  [In case you're curious, here are three of them: Mitch McConnell, Rand Paul, and Ted Cruz.]

And I remember those politicians using it as an excuse to invade two countries that had nothing to do with 9/11. [George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Ari Fleischer, David Frum, Karl Rove.]

 Now I'm watching the GOP mouth platitudes about 9/11 again, and I have to ask - which of them will actually do something about what's happening right now - something that has already killed sixty times as many Americans as al-Qaeda? Because they have done nothing...

...except try to distract us.