Dramatic Pomposity

Tonight's fantabulistic letter to the editor:

The questionably-motivated efforts of misguided and ill-informed people were thwarted on election night by the voice of the electorate.

If not for the tireless persistence of those of you who took time away from yourselves, your friends and your families, we would now be looking upon a dark period in the history of not only our state but also our country.

Though the marriage amendment passed leaving bigots to enjoy the product of their prejudice, a woman's right to command her own body and life and the balance provided by the judiciary in our representative democracy are still intact after a long and harrowing battle against the less-enlightened who plague our society with their hateful and narrow-minded dogma.

Among the casualties in their fight were our time and money, and also our relationships.

Family arguments were the norm for some of us, and some had friendships torn along the line separating faith from reality. But, this morning we are still strong, standing tall within our hearts looking with determination to a future where freedom, equality, and liberty again can assume the offensive and press the forces of tyranny and oppression back into the primitive recesses of human error from which they were born... Knowing that they'll come again spreading lies and ignorance, keep your vigilance... Let us never again retreat from this tempered bastion named liberty.

--Ryan Larson

I don't believe I've seen such propaganda since browsing the Cliff's Notes for Mein Kampf.

Bulleted in no particular order...

• The gracious "winner" of an electoral process doesn't often refer to the opposing side with the terms "misguided," "ill-informed," "bigots," "prejudice," "less-enlightened," "plague," "hateful," "narrow-minded," "their fight," "separating faith from reality," "tyranny," "oppression," "primitive recesses of human error from which they were born," and the anticlimactic "lies" and "ignorance."
• I think I can see how Mr. Larson may have damaged some relationships in this round of voting.
• "Dark period in history?" And convenience-driven termination of human life is...light?
• "A woman's right to command her own body and life" supercedes the rights, bodies and lives of yet-to-be-born women (and men). Asinine.
• If one is to use words of ostentatiousness in a letter to the editor in Podunk, SD, I, for one, would prefer they be presented with satiric creativity rather than dramatic pomposity. A humble request.
• "...a future where freedom, equality, and liberty again can assume the offensive..." If abortion is equivocated with freedom, equality and liberty, I do indeed find that offensive.

Whenever people say 'We mustn't be sentimental,' you can take it they are about to do something cruel. And if they add 'We must be realistic,' they mean they are going to make money out of it. --Brigid Brophy, writer (1929-1995)