BASTROP, Texas — Following this week’s conspicuously quiet conclusion to the endlessly controversial “Jade Helm 15,” many Americans in the Patriot Movement are now finding themselves asking an obvious question: “Well just what in the fuck am I going to do with all this velcro and shit?”

Sitting in the parking lot outside of “Remember the Alamo — And Great Deals, Gun Store LLC”, Nathan Gunderson takes stock of this summer’s now unnecessary tactical shopping spree. Strewn across the bed of his pickup truck are multiple assault rifles outfitted with a variety of night optics, lasers, and flashlights, none of which he has ever been trained to use. “I wanted to make sure those jack-booted thugs wouldn’t be takin’ us unawares,” said Gunderson, “but now I just have a shitload of jackboots, and nothing to boot them with.”

Gunderson then produced a number of edged weapons, including a serrated machete which he began to swing about in the parking lot. “I didn’t really even know why I bought this, it just seemed like the right thing to do,” he said.

What came to be known as “Jade Helm 15,” the U.S. military’s chosen moniker for a large-scale Special Operations training event across the sprawling American Southwest, also became a rallying cry for the paranoid and unemployed. Hundreds of self-styled Militiamen and Patriots became a fixture patrolling the desert in bizarre convoys, particularly in Texas, where the locals welcomed them with open arms.

But for the soldiers conducting the actual training, it was a different story.

“All we were trying to do was drive down the fucking road so I could drop the water buffalo and go to sleep one night,” said Army Spc. Katherine Gonzales, 21. “And all of a sudden all these fat dickheads start cutting us off in trucks and filming us with GoPros as they wave American flags and guns. One of them called me a tyrant. I told him I was from Oregon, and to eat a dick.”

As the likelihood of a full-blown martial law scenario steadily decreased throughout the summer, members of the Patriot Movement like Gunderson faced a worrisome possibility. If Jade Helm was not the start of an Obama dictatorship lasting for decades, when would it come?

“Just cuz we didn’t have to shoot none of them Feds, it don’t mean they still ain’t tryna take our guns. I can still use this stuff. Shit, I’ll just wear this plate carrier and AR-15 to Applebee’s and scare the shit outta some families,” Gunderson said.

At press time, Gunderson was waving down a passing U.S. Army convoy to request medical assistance following the accidental discharge of one of his weapons into his femoral artery.