April 19 and 20 Just Went By. And Nothing Happened.

I wonder if anyone else noticed. Maybe it's better that nobody makes a big deal out of it. Excuse me then.

But I couldn't help but notice that April 19 and 20 have gone past, and no right-wing militia and no crazed idiots have taken advantage of those pseudo-sacred dates and gone out and attacked someone, somewhere, guns blazing. At least I've seen no reports to that effect.

April 19 is the date of the showdowns between the colonists and British at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, the first time such battles took place in what would be known as the American Revolution. That's also the date of the 1995 sabotage of the federal building in Oklahoma City, Timothy McVeigh's revenge for the deaths of his fellow radicals at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and the abuse-rampant fortress in Waco, Texas.

April 20 is the date of Adolf Hitler's birthday. It is also the date of the rifled ambush perpetrated at Columbine High School outside of Denver in 1999, in which more than a dozen students and a teacher were murdered, out of sheer meanness and nihilism. It would be the first of many copycat school shootings to follow, including the incredibly disgusting slaughter of some 20 first-graders and five adults working at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012.

What the hell? With the recent proliferation of fascists and gun-toting libertarians roaming so many of our states, with the blown-up kidnapping hopes of the governor of Michigan by some of these knuckleheads, you'd think that they'd have their attention squarely on these dates as an excuse to start, or re-start as it were, some kind of organized rebellion against Democrats, gays, trans-people, Biden, or critical race theory--take your pick.

Certainly, they weren't all in on the insurrection of 1/6/21, which has resulted in some of the most- and some of the least-known reactionary dolts being tried and jailed for breaching and damaging the Capitol building. There have to be a bunch of them out there, dragging their knuckles, waiting for the next opportunity to lurch at enormously imagined dangers.

Maybe, heaven forbid, they consider themselves sufficiently established as an entity in American life that they don't have to use those dates to celebrate their status as "real" Americans any longer. They're already being noticed, already have grown to numbers too big to ignore. I wonder.

Their real impact will have to wait for the upcoming Congressional elections, in which the rampant gerrymandering and legislative subversion of the voting processes of several states will officially take hold. I fear that if the Republicans, some might say miraculously, fail to take control of at least one house of Congress, there will be what will become a typical round of weeping and gnashing of teeth amidst claims of more electoral sabotage by bogus machines or plots to hide ballots or plots to create ballots. Or something.

Then they will pick up their guns and start brandishing them again, much like Michigan, where such bozos thought they could intimidate people. This time, though, some of them may start shooting.

Then we will see the effects to which this insidious, extra-Constitutional cadre has penetrated the ranks of those who are supposed to be defending the rest of us more rational creatures against those who would skirt the law to de facto become it--the police, state troopers, and National Guard. That it is happening cannot be doubted. That it is pervasive remains to be seen.

Carol Leonnig's recent book Zero Fail, in which she writes that some Secret Service members went cockeyed and substituted their oaths to defend the Constitution with blind fealty to ex-, incredibly scary as that is, cannot possibly be the limit to which this cultish behavior has permeated law enforcement. Indeed, the concept of "constitutional sheriffs." in which the county sheriff believes him- or herself to be the representative of the Constitution as they see it within their jurisdiction, has been well-established pre-ex-, if contrary to what their definitions of "lawful" are supposed to be. You can guess where their loyalties lie.

So no: with surreptitious as this subversive establishment is, there's no longer any need to focus upon one day or another on the calendar as a jumping-off point for some sort of additional sedition. The time for that will come soon enough. They will certainly be ready. Will we?

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark