Thanks to God's grace, the intrepid work of a few counter-revolutionaries and a governor smart enough not to believe the lies the military was spinning, Texas, barely, survived the menace that was Jade Helm 15 this summer. The U.S. Army Special Operations Command-led operation turned out to be military exercises, just as USASOC always said they would be, but that was only because of people like Alex Jones and his compatriot in rigorous intellectual examination, Texas Governor Greg Abbott.

Jones and his fellow conspiracists sounded the primary alarm about Jade Helm 15, firing up his rabid following with musings about President Obama using the guise of a military exercise to impose martial law, confiscate everybody's guns and force red-blooded Texans to move into FEMA-staffed internment camps hosted in abandoned Wal-Marts.

Abbott heeded Jones' call. In late April, the governor fed the fears of the small but vociferous band of Texans who believed that maps listing Texas as a "hostile territory" were something more sinister than mere training materials for the exercise. He instructed Texas Guard Commander Jake Beatty to monitor the soldiers in the state for Jade Helm to ensure that "adequate measures [were] in place to protect Texans."

Thanks to Abbott's bravery in the face of yet another attempt to force the United States' grandest bastion of freedom to get with the socialist program, Texas survived the exercises without falling victim to federal forces, or the Knights Templar-backed, gun-confiscating ninjas discovered in a San Angelo Sam's Club parking lot by citizen Jade Helm documentarian Kris Martin.

Jade Helm 15 went out with a whimper. Jones, by way of explanation, pivoted to describing the exercises as merely paving the way for the inevitable, full martial law takeover that would come at a later date, much in the same way that — as First Baptist Dallas' Pastor Robert Jeffress has said — President Obama is not actually the Antichrist, but laying the groundwork in order that the American people might accept the Antichrist. (By that reasoning, if, say, Ted Cruz or Donald Trump were elected the next president ... hmm ... could be.)

Monday, we learned both the dates of the next phase of the fed's inevitable domination of Texas and its name.

At its weekly county commissioners meeting, Bastrop County, one of the primary fronts in the Jade Helm 15 battle, approved a request from U.S. Special Operations Forces to conduct something called Unconventional Warfare Exercise 16 in the county. According to reporting from the meeting by the Bastrop Advertiser's Jillian Beck, Bastrop County Judge Paul Pape is dead set on avoiding the publicity that greeted Jade Helm 15. According to Beck, Pape said there will be no public meeting about UWEX 16, which will kick off in March, and no maps listing Texas as hostile territory.

“The fact that it became a media event last time doesn’t change my feeling that we need to support military training so the men and women in the military can effectively protect us and the freedoms we enjoy in America,” Pape said at the meeting, according to the Advertiser.

Pape went on to say that he doubted people would have as much of an issue with next year's campaign because "we don’t have a fancy, catchy name that can be sent around social media." It's up to us, Texas, to prove him wrong.

