A couple of days before the event, word began circulating online that Operation American Spring was actually nothing but a trap designed to lure millions of freedom-loving patriots to Washington, DC, where federal agents would then swoop down on them and round them up, Gestapo-style.

The problem with being paranoid is that it's not the kind of thing you can just turn on and off. If you're someone who sees invisible threats around every corner and who warns that vigilance and suspicion is what's always necessary to avoid becoming one of the hapless sheeple, you're not likely to trust anyone. And by anyone, I mean anyone -- even those you call your friends. After all, how do you know that those close to you who've gained your confidence really are who they say they are? How do you know the people who live next door to you, or maybe your own family, aren't in on the conspiracy? Spend every minute of every day immersed in elaborate fever dreams for which you have no proof, just a lot of baseless fear and paranoia, and you start to see the secret lie behind everything. "Trust no one," becomes the mantra you live by.

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It's this kind of thinking that leads to the dangerous, but admittedly amusing, infighting we've seen from the militia groups who've made Bunkerville, Nevada their home for the last month or so. In case you haven't been following now that their news cycle has rolled over, the militia presence near the Bundy Ranch hasn't diminished since armed cowboys held federal agents at bay on April 12th by pointing guns at them. On the contrary, the situation has in some ways only gotten more tense. Over the past month, the interaction between the various factions of neo-confederate Bundy supporters has at times bordered on slapstick, with accusations and counter-accusations being flung back and forth, all laced with military jargon and punctuated by cries of "deserter" and "traitor."

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The most entertaining bit of self-immolation came when one of the groups that had set up camp in Bunkerville, the Oath Keepers, "bugged out" because they'd supposedly received "credible intel" -- remember, these are mostly middle-aged white-guy nobodies spouting this muscular-sounding crap -- that the government was going to attack them using drones. This led another militia within the supposed Bundy Security Staff to accuse the Oath Keepers of treason and threaten to shoot them. The Oath Keepers responded, of course, by claiming that the other militia was in fact made up of "FBI infiltrators." Again, when you're shit-scared of every single thing it's impossible to put that aside, even for a few minutes, and cooperate in the name of some greater good. "The conspiracy is everywhere -- don't you see it?"

That brings us to last Friday's big revolution that never was. Operation American Spring, as it was dubbed, was a monumental failure by any standard. The Patriot Movement clowns putting it together promised at least 1.8 million people on the Capitol Mall, with estimates that the crowd could easily go as high as 10 million people or even 30 million. In the end, about a hundred old white assholes showed up. They swore their show of strength would be so impressive that it would by itself convince President Obama to drop what he was doing, forget he was elected to his office twice, and just step down, conceding defeat; instead, a couple of people shouted into a bullhorn for a few minutes then everyone went back to their rooms at the Motel 6 to sulk. President Obama remained in office. Show's over, folks -- nothing to see here.

But what if Operation American Spring actually was a huge success? What if the handful of people who showed up represented the real indictment of the government -- because it prevented the feds from carrying out their secret nefarious plan?

A couple of days before the event, word began circulating online that Operation American Spring was actually nothing but a trap designed to lure millions of freedom-loving patriots to Washington, DC, where federal agents would then swoop down on them and round them up, Gestapo-style. The original promotion for the event called specifically for attendees to be unarmed -- that, according to the Inception-level conspiracy-within-a-conspiracy, was the giveaway, because if the crowd was unarmed it would make it that much easier for Obama to unleash his jackbooted thugs on it. As you know, the reason it's imperative that you have your gun on you at all times, no matter where you are, is that you never know when danger will strike. An unarmed person is a sitting duck -- and that's just what Obama would've wanted.

"We are being asked to walk up to our enemy unarmed," said concerned YouTube LoyalToTheRepublic:

But that's just speculation and suspicion. Thankfully, David Chase Taylor has "facts" on his side. You might remember Taylor as the guy who claimed that Paul Walker was assassinated by a drone strike and that President Obama once plotted to blow up the Super Bowl with a nuclear weapon. He's so batshit crazy even Alex Jones won't go near him. Four days before Operation American Spring was to take place, he posted a lengthy, relentlessly detailed warning that well-meaning patriots were being set up by the CIA, with agents within the government planning to stage a coup and pin the blame on Obama's enemies so that a civil war could commence. (Don't think too hard about it; it'll just make your head hurt.) Taylor spelled out the series of ominous events that had so far led up to Operation American Spring and that convinced him something was wrong.

For example:

In what appears to be a pre-White House terror exercise, it was reported on May 6, 2014, that a car allegedly trailing President Obama daughters’ motorcade prompted a White House lockdown. Whether the lockdown provided the necessary cover for the installation of demolition explosives and/or weapons inside the White House is not known, but said explosives could be detonated via remote control at a future date (May 13-16?) in order to give the appearance of a coordinated coup or terrorist attack.

Sounds like a perfectly legit argument: "Look, the White House does exist and it is possible to detonate explosives by remote control, ipso facto, the CIA has probably planted explosives in the White House and they're going to make the Operation American Springers their patsies!" It's such a perfect illustration of how conspiracy theorists think, the way they're able through nothing more than absolute certainty in their own delusions and a healthy dose of confirmation bias to connect unconnectable dots.

Look, normally I'd just make fun of this crap and be done with it. But maybe the incident in Connecticut last week, where someone stole the sign from a Sandy Hook victim's memorial playground and then called to taunt the little girl's mother, was a reminder that the horseshit these people subscribe to has real-world consequences. Their insanity informs their actions and their worship of the irrational leads them to do irrational things -- things the rest of us then have to live with. It's admittedly a blast to watch the conspiracist crowd eat itself alive like an Ouroboros with Down Syndrome, but there's likely to be collateral damage involved at some point, and that shouldn't be forgotten and can't be tolerated.

Operation American Spring was always a non-starter, simply because those involved have always sorely overestimated their numbers, their tactics, and the resolve of very tired old men. But a dying animal can still be dangerous. As usual, nothing any of these idiots predicted came true: there was no revolution, there was no dissident round-up, and in the big picture they've all still got their guns because nobody's fucking taken them away. But I suppose that if they retroactively jump on the "It's a Trap" bandwagon it'll allow them to keep their delusions going strong and maybe even convince them that last Friday's embarrassment was, in fact, a victory.