In the spring, Sharon and I visited our daughter and her family in the DC area. While there, I took one of my granddaughters with me one afternoon to visit a bookstore near Capitol Hill Baptist Church. After I treated her (and myself) to a few books, we walked down to the Eastern Market, where a bunch of vendors had set up their street-side stalls. We'd just gotten there when four National Guardsmen/Guardswomen walked past in a small formation. President Trump had deployed them to our nation's capital to address crime and squalor, and they have, indeed, been credited. through an independent study, with helping "to reduce opportunistic property crime in tourist areas” (pertinent to the influx of visitors for the 250th celebration).  

Through the years, tons of National Guard personnel have been sent overseas on combat missions, but these troops were serving in the "neighborhood." That didn't protect two from West Virginia, Sarah Beckstrom and Andrew Wolfe, who, in November 2025, were ambushed by an Afghan national who’d driven from Washington state to shoot them while shouting "Allahu Akbar." Sarah died from her wounds. (Thank you for your service, Sarah and Andrew.)

So far, these four we saw passing in front of us this year have escaped harm. But, in those uniforms, they stand out as compelling targets for evil and deranged (and evilly deranged) folks. 

I'm reminded of the Detroit Guardsmen to whom I spoke at a chain link fence back on March of 2021. They were stationed outside the US Capitol in response to the January 6 "attack" on the building, as if that event were a "storm the Bastille" insurrection, an existential threat to the nation, one requiring continuous vigilance, lest hordes make another and more "devastating" run on our "sacred halls." Forgive the snark, but, as I wrote in a follow-up piece on my conversation with those Michiganders, that was pure Democrat theater, indeed, theater of the absurd. And, as I wrote just after the “riot,” if anyone can be charged with “desecrating” those sacred halls, it was the Dems, the masters of bogus huff and puff.

In the Spring, Sharon and I visited our daughter and her family in the DC area. While there, I took one of my granddaughters with me one afternoon as I visited a bookstore near Capitol Hill Baptist Church. After I treated her (and myself) to a few books, we walked down to Eastern Market where a bunch of vendors had set up their street-side stalls. We'd just gotten there when four National Guardsmen/Guardswomen walked past in a small formation. President Trump had deployed them to our nation's capital to address crime and they have, indeed, been credited through an independent study with helping "to reduce opportunistic property crime in tourist areas."  

Through the years, tons of National Guard personnel have been sent overseas on combat missions, but these troops were serving in the "neighborhood." That didn't protect two from West Virginia, Sarah Beckstrom and Andrew Wolfe, who were ambushed by an Afghan national who drove from Washington state to shoot them while shouting "Allahu Akbar." Sarah died from her wounds. (Thank you for your service, Sarah and Andrew.)