Have you noticed that Utah doesn’t seem to be worried about a military takeover?

This was not a sentence I had ever envisioned writing. Yet here we are. A military training exercise is in the works for the Southwest this summer, and conspiracy theories are abloom. It’s hard not to be enthralled when Walmart denies that tunnels are being built under its stores to ferry troops into Texas where they will tear up the Constitution and confiscate everybody’s guns.

Hey, no laughing matter in Texas.

“This military practice has some concerned that the U.S. Army is preparing for modern-day martial law,” said Representative Louie Gohmert, a Texas Republican.

He understands. He’s worried about tons of things, like whether Al Qaeda is camping out with Mexican drug dealers along the border. He’s exactly the person you’d want on speed dial if you had news about political apocalypse. So it’s not all that surprising that he said his office was “inundated” with alarmed calls.

Much of the hysteria focused on a map of the seven states where the military training is going to take place, colored to show how friendly the imaginary inhabitants are supposed to be for the purposes of the exercise. Texas is red and “hostile.”