There is a now infamous picture of six members of a ragtag group of Michigan militia called the Wolverine Watchmen, standing against the wall of the Michigan State Capital Building, decked out in full battle regalia, staring balefully at the camera. Their AR-15 long guns are visibly brandished, combat ready. They are part of an armed protest staged on April 30th, 2020. Fury and outrage are in the air. Why are they there? Because Governor Gretchen Whitmer, like numerous other governors in the country, was using her authority to affect the greatest good and safety for the greatest number by shutting down her state and mandating mask wearing in the face of the deadliest pandemic in a century. The Wolverine Watchmen believed this warranted dragging her into the street and hanging her. But first she must be exposed. Social media was flooded with photo shopped images of Whitmer with her head on Hitler’s body, and another with her head on a porn actress’s body with the caption, “Gross slut fucks whole state.” Oh, such witty wordsmiths these Watchmen be! The delicious irony. Nazis depicting Whitmer as a Nazi. Do they know what a Nazi is? Do they know who they are? Or perhaps they were deliberately engaging in irony, as wordsmiths are wont to do.

Questions abound. Doesn’t this reaction seem, well, perhaps an eensy bit excessive? Whitmer is relatively young, attractive and one of the few women governors. Would such a draconian response be levied against a gnarled old man? The Wolverine Watchmen, brave patriots all, felt compelled, for the good of the country and preservation of the Constitution, to take action. Drastic action.

The main stream media, according to Watchmen member Adam Fox, had grown overly harsh towards militias, those stalwart sentinels of the American Way (as in way back, before the Civil War). As he so eloquently expressed on a clandestine recording, “They (the media) fucking called us domestic terrorists,” he stated, hurt and incensed. “We want to take that stigma off and let them know who we are because we’re not fucking racists, we’re not White nationalists. We just want our fucking Constitution and we want all these lawless fucking tyrants out of fucking power. It’s that simple.” Could Patrick Henry possibly have stated it better?

Extreme times demand extreme measures. The measure? Well duh. Whitmer must be kidnapped and executed. Plans were drawn, including maps, surveillance and videos of the governor’s property. There were practices and dry runs in the woods. A bridge would be blown up as a diversion, then the governor’s house would be breached and she would be snatched and grabbed. Lickety split. Easy as pie. Yeah. Pulling off the kidnapping and murder of a governor of a major state would be problematic, to say the least, for the Mossad or Seal Team Six. But were not the Watchman highly trained and intelligent operatives, knowing who to trust and when not to talk? As another of the Watchmens’ eloquent orators was recorded as saying if Whitmer was in his clutches, “I’m going to do some of the most nasty, disgusting things that you have ever read about in the history of your life.” Ah, nothing like a suave urbane assassin, radiating charm, a real lady killer if you will.

But, as fate would have it, early on an FBI informant had infiltrated the group, and, perhaps unsportingly, had worn a wire at all times. Soon thereafter multiple FBI agents had infiltrated, and the Watchmen were surrounded from within. At some point, one of the more observant Watchmen could have pondered, one might think, “Who in the hell are all these new guys?” But nay, perhaps they were so focused on their plan that their peripheral vision became blurred, plus those FBI boys can be so ingratiatingly brotherly.

By October 8th, 2020, while training near a barn, the doors burst open and The Watchmen were swarmed by FBI agents. Thirteen men were arrested and charged with plotting to kidnap Whitmer and violently overthrow the state government. Were they White Supremacists? No. Not even White Mediocratists.

And so a glimmer of hope. The dark forces of hate, racism and misogyny may be plotting and conspiring to wreak havoc on our increasingly precarious democracy, but alas, are probably too stupid to pull it off.