Public figures face a more dangerous America

“You might want to stay back and call the federales, I have explosives,” warned a man occupying a green tent on the steps of St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington, D.C. It was roughly 6:00 a.m. on Sunday, October 5 (roughly an hour before sunrise), and officers from the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) had arrived to secure the area before the cathedral’s annual “Red Mass,” an invocation service for the U.S. Supreme Court’s fall term, which some justices historically attend.

When an officer from the MPD bomb squad told the man he had to move because of a special event (the “Red Mass”), the man replied, “I’m aware of that,” but he refused to budge.

The man, 41-year-old Louis Geri, threatened to throw a bomb into the street, claiming, “I have a hundred-plus of them.” Thus, he created a pre-dawn stand-off with law enforcement officers. When the police said they would remove him forcibly, Geri threatened that “several of your people are gonna die from one of these.”

Geri then handed over a nine-page manifesto, which “revealed his significant animosity towards the Catholic church, members of the Jewish faith, members of SCOTUS and ICE/ ICE facilities,” police said. As he handed over the pages, Geri flicked on a butane lighter with his other hand, warning, “You [had] better have these people step away, or there’s going to be deaths.”

Fortunately, Geri’s threats of destruction came to an anticlimactic resolution when he was betrayed by his own bladder. When he left his tent to urinate on a tree, three officers apprehended him without incident.

Nevertheless, the subsequent investigation showed that MPD had been wise to heed Geri’s threats. Inside the tent, they found “a large cache of handmade destructive devices.” In an affidavit submitted Monday, a bomb technician said the cache contained “over 200 devices,” and “the devices appeared to be fully functional.” The explosive devices were reportedly of the Molotov cocktail variety, consisting of bottles filled with explosive chemicals with an ignition mechanism.

Providentially, the attempted perpetrator is better described as a prolific bomb maker than a mastermind criminal. Originally from New Jersey, Geri had spent the past several years living in an Arizona motel, during which time he spent nine months in prison for indecent exposure. Before his futile standoff with police on the cathedral steps, Geri had previously been barred from the premises. And his ill-timed, arboreal “pit stop” was an amateurish mistake. Geri likely deserves pity for an evidently hard life, but praise God that his incompetence resulted in no loss of life or property!

The deeper irony of the tale also portends ill for America. Even if Geri had more competently executed an explosives plot against the Mass frequented by Supreme Court justices, he would have missed his targets on Sunday. According to the National Catholic Register, “due to security concerns, no Supreme Court justices attended this year’s Red Mass.”

Quick-witted readers may begin to discern a pattern. Only two days into the court’s term, conservatives canceled a customary rally outside the Supreme Court during oral arguments in a case over whether counselors can be forced to push gender ideology on their patients.

Once again, security concerns were the issue. “Experienced security professionals warned that the threats of violence at an outdoor event were too great,” wrote ADF CEO Kristen Waggoner. “Our allies sponsoring the rally couldn’t simply ignore those threats. We’ve all witnessed the wave of violent attacks in recent weeks — many of which are politically motivated, with apparent ties to radical gender ideology. And that ideology is at the center of this case.”

When public figures cannot attend worship services or hold outdoor rallies due to safety concerns, it suggests the level of political violence now presents an existential threat to America’s system of representative government. This level of fear and uncertainty is unacceptable, unsustainable, and either the violence or the country must eventually give way.

These cancellations mark a low point in American civic life. Let us pray that this low point is America’s nadir, not the beginning of a deeper slide.

Originally published at The Washington Stand.