Editor,

What has happened to our country? From Carl Sandburg’s “Broad Shoulders of Chicago” in the 1920s, we have now arrived at a time when many of our people have become whining, sniveling victims with a “poor, poor, pitiful me” attitude on their horrible existence.

Can you imagine if these people had to live in London during the Blitz, or the siege of Leningrad in which a million people died, or suffered the fate of perhaps 300,00 Chinese during the “Rape of Nanking”?

No, they have to suffer a far worse fate — the sound of the EA-18G Growler. From their utterly selfish point of view, they fail to see one thing — a naval aviator is at the top of his game, or is at the bottom of the ocean.

Training is the name of this game.

Even a so-called staunch supporter of the Navy, Rep. Rick Larsen, calls for less training. I guess anything for a vote, even if it means the obvious to some of our pilots.

I, like so many others, am at a point where COER and like-minded individuals, who probably never served, should just pack up and move to some remote, quiet place. After all, the Navy was here long before most of them were even born.

Should they eventually get the Navy out of Oak Harbor, it wouldn’t be long before tumbleweeds would be blowing down State Highway 20, most of the businesses closed, hundreds of houses vacant, and a collapse of the local economy.

The community cannot survive on tourist dollars and pot shops alone.

Bill Schoonover

Oak Harbor