It’s a shame that I am no longer living in Oak Harbor, and am forced to watch this ridiculous local drama unfold via The Whidbey News-Times online.

I am absolutely appalled, although not totally surprised at the community’s violent and intolerant reactions to something as simple as a young man standing on a street corner with a sign. He has done nothing to warrant your disrespect, your nasty words or your violence, but he dares to stand out of line in a Navy town so he must be “anti-American.”

How can so many local people be so dense as to assume that because he is against bombing Iraq that he is necessarily anti-American, or not in support of our troops? Living in a dominantly Christian/Navy town may have some of you believing that this world operates in black and white, so I will be the first to inform you otherwise: The political and ethical world we live in is colored in varying degrees of gray, and to assume an “If you aren’t for us, you’re against us” attitude is not only dangerous, but downright asinine.

It seems to me that many local people are looking for someone to release their aggression on, and unfortunately Jeremy Steinsiek has dared to question the patriotic extremist Norm that is Oak Harbor. And with this, he has naturally become an easy target for people who would otherwise have no means of expressing their shapeless intolerance for anyone who disagrees with them.

I wish I were there to stand with him, if only for the purpose of encouraging so many of you to abandon this ridiculous violent, senseless, and logic-void method of expressing your “patriotism” by means of hurling insults, throwing things from your cars, and assault.

I cannot believe anyone who is engaging in this sort of behavior against a protester can dare to point their finger at anyone else and call them “anti-American.” Please explain the logic in saying that while you trample someone’s First Amendment Right to free speech? I can smell the hypocrisy secreting off of you people all the way from Portland, Ore., and it makes me sick.

Dajah Beck, 20

Portland, Ore.