Letters: KC readers discuss lessons of 9/11, gun safety and politicians on the take
What I learned
On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, I was a West Point cadet when someone ran into the gym yelling something about a plane and the World Trade Center. Hailing from Staten Island and belonging to a family full of firefighters, watching those towers fall felt particularly surreal.
Looking back, I hardly recognize my 18-year-old self. Then, I believed in pageantry patriotism — the notion of America as purely a force for good in the world. But I was the product of a hyper-masculine culture. After the towers fell, one of my greatest fears was that the expected war would end before I could join the fray.
Turns out, I had nothing to worry about there.
Once I graduated, I spent 17 years fighting ill-advised and ultimately hopeless wars — all of which made the world a far more brutal and dangerous place. In our vengeance and hubris, U.S. military intervention created more extremists, refugees and corpses.
It took my own complicity in our mad wars — and the realization that I could never explain to the family members what exactly the eight soldiers under my command had died for — to finally speak out.
This 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks is a time for widespread patriotic dissent.
- Danny Sjursen, Lawrence
Keep guns safe
Just last weekend, we had an incident of gun violence at a family-friendly festival in the Kansas City area. (Sept. 9, 9A, “Missouri gun culture makes kids shooting kids normal”) Unauthorized access to firearms is a major source of today’s gun violence. Also, access to unsecured firearms contributes to unintentional gun violence among children and teens.
This type of gun violence is preventable. Gun owners need to store their guns securely out of reach of children. Guns need to be stored locked and unloaded, with ammunition stored separately. It is important to ask each time one’s child visits the homes of relatives, friends or caregivers about storage practices.
We can never make assumptions when a child’s or teen’s safety is at stake. It is up to all of us to keep our children safe.
- Sylvia J. Swift Smith, Lee’s Summit
Our choices made
So the Supreme Court can now just obliterate the law of the land by doing nothing. Just being silent and complicit. Great.
So if a bunch of white men can just change whatever law they want with the help of the Supreme Court, what’s going to keep them from coming after our birth control pills? No more birth control pills, no more morning-after pills.
Oh, and what if they decide we can’t refuse to have sex with a spouse? Or go out in public? Or maybe we can’t go out alone? Or go to school? Or they decide we have to cover our bodies completely? Or we can’t drive?
What makes you think they won’t?
Are you getting this yet? God help us.
- Loretta Rood, Gardner
They’re paid off
Despite having the solutions to the climate crisis readily available, elected officials have not taken the necessary actions. Money in politics is to blame.
Politicians who take bribes (“campaign donations”) from industries that drive the release of greenhouse gases cannot act appropriately. They have ignored scientific warnings for 40 years. The recent 6th Assessment from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change sets our remaining carbon budget at eight years at our current rate of fossil fuel use to avoid apocalyptic climate chaos.
Step one: End pay-to-play politics by banning legalized bribery. The two parties that maintain this corruption won’t dismantle it. Only the Green Party refuses these bribes and is focused on the unprecedented challenge of the climate crisis.
When voters stop voting for parties that take these bribes, we can move from ineffective incentives and begging industry to do right to outlawing the technologies that threaten us all. We need visionary leaders with backbone, not compliant sycophants who can work only within the disastrous confines of free-market capitalist groupthink.
We must focus our political activity on the best interest of future generations and all of the earthlings who cannot act politically. They are all at our mercy. Every moment that we delay, their potential existence fades away.
- Nathan Andrew Kline, Kansas City
Let us all know
I want to support businesses that have vaccinated employees. Rather than declining to respond when asked if their employees are vaccinated, I suggest that businesses whose workers are doing the responsible thing publicize that fact.
I would drive further and change the shops and service providers I currently frequent to support businesses that have vaccinated staff. Employers, please put a sign in your window or a banner on your website. I know that many customers would join me.
- Linda Trout, Overland Park
No one watching?
The author of a Sept. 5 letter to the editor wrote, “I hope the day will come when governments realize they are not responsible for our health.” (19A) Many disagreements today become mired in the regurgitation of slogans instead of thoughtful discourse — aping, without contemplation, opinions from social media or talking heads that generate revenue by triggering the emotions of their audience.
Do we, as a society, truly want health inspections of restaurants to end? Do we not care if the people handling our food has washed their hands after using the toilet, or if the chicken that we are eating has been sitting out at room temperature all day? Is there really no reason to have an agency that can track down the sources of contaminated produce and issue warnings and recalls?
As for me, I want to make sure that the water flowing from my tap is not toxic. Safety standards on vehicles help ensure a less deadly commute, free from poor design and defective parts such as exploding air bags.
These are but a few examples of government concern with our health that I assume many of us agree we benefit from. So a little reflection before mindlessly repeating slogans is appreciated.
- Steven Brown, Kansas City
Tell our stories
Missouri is not an exclusively Christian state any more than it is exclusively Muslim, Jewish or atheist. I don’t believe the God who created me or the God I serve is glorified by pulling the display dedicated to LGBT history in Kansas City from the floor of Missouri State Capitol. (Sept. 6, 6A, “LGBT Missourians back into the closet in Jefferson City”)
All people are entitled to their own religious beliefs, but not at the expense of obscuring the history of marginalized people in Missouri. The exhibit should be where the most people can view it, not in the Lohman Building, across the street.
As a gay man, who also has great white privilege, it’s uncomfortable for me to learn about slavery and Missouri’s part in that, but that’s a necessary part of my evolution so I don’t act on unconscious racial bias.
It’s easy to judge people as “other” when you don’t know anything about them. Get to know an LGBT person. We don’t bite. I bet you’ll find you have more in common with us than you expect.
Let’s learn from our history. When we know better, we do better.
- Mark Hayes, Kansas City
This story was originally published September 12, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Letters: KC readers discuss lessons of 9/11, gun safety and politicians on the take."