Below is a letter to the editor I just submitted to our local newspaper. Feel free to do with it whatever you want. It clocks in at 299 words on our newspaper’s website, but results will vary.
The metaphor regarding nighttime bombing and luminescent idiots who serve the enemy belongs to Hunter’s diary earlier today.
Douglas County, Oregon has a very high and increasing infection rate, and our local politicians have done an inadequate job. One, Dallas Heard, is awful; but others are competitively horrid.
Nighttime, again.
Enemy bombers overhead, again.
Once again, we check our blackout curtains, and tape against any leaks. We turn off every light in the house, and step outside to see our beloved neighborhood. We can hear the bombers' roar but they fly so high that we cannot see them, so tiny above. We can see what they do though, those mindless death-machines. Dead bodies, maimed bodies, destroyed families, ruined lives.
Next door, we can see our neighbors' house. They put up blackout curtains, too, but they have their lights on inside, and we can see a lot of leaks. Are they enough for the bombers overhead? Hardly matters. The neighbors across the street have put up their Christmas lights--in August! Flashing. Are these people crazy? They told us yesterday that the bombers were a hoax, or maybe they are all part of a plan to impose tyranny on our little town. Or something.
A couple of months ago, some guy named Barrington said it was best to let the bombers do their work, while protecting as much as possible the most vulnerable, older buildings. Barrington said if we and the rest of the neighborhood were thoroughly bombed, that would be a good thing.
The leaders in our community knew the bombers were real. They encouraged blackout curtains and tape, but made no requirements. We still had to drive on the right side of the road and stop at stop signs, but nobody could tell us to do anything about the death-machines above.
The death-machines were not always accurate. Our dark, blackout-curtained home was less likely to take a bomb, but if the whole town were dark--no freaking flashing Christmas lights in August!--we'd all be safer.
Safer, too, if those local leaders and Barrington had never come to town.
As I indicated, feel free to use any of it in letters to the editor, social media, whatever.
Had I more space, I’d have added something about Barrington being spelled Burying-a-ton-o’-our-dead, with the o’-our-dead being as silent as, well, our dead.