National Kill a Liberal Day

"It’s going to be a long day. And a long night."

Photo by maxx ❄ on Unsplash

by Rich Herschlag

It’s an unusually cold morning on April 20, 2025 as I shiver and peer out of a shed toward my own house. Bleary-eyed with slightly shaky hands I train an M4 rifle on an image that seems to cross from the silver maple tree to my front porch but turns out to be just a shadow from a swaying branch. The house itself is empty. I have a wife in hiding at her sister’s cabin and two grown kids hunkered down somewhere upstate in an unmarked cottage. Even the cats are at a shelter. On perhaps a half hour of sleep and limited remaining concentration I tell myself the next person who attempts to enter my home is a dead man, but who am I kidding? The fact is, I am the hunted.

National Kill a Liberal Day started as a bit of a joke when President-elect Donald J. Trump was asked in late November what his first order of business might be when he retook the Oval Office. He got a nervous laugh from the cub reporter at Fox News but the web–both the dark and the light kinds–within minutes were aflame with rumors. There seemed to be an early consensus that NKLD would be celebrated on April 20 because the irony of its being both Adolph Hitler’s birthday and the day typically left-leaning stoners called their own was not lost on the far right. Nor was the fact that the first ever NKLD would fall on Easter Sunday, a holiday on which this particular Jew might be crucified but definitely not resurrected. Finally, there was some agreement that each true American would be limited to a single left-leaning victim strictly within a 24-hour period that began at midnight. Or not.

There was still less clarity regarding the legality of a holiday that was declared somewhat tongue-in-cheek by the Commander-in-Chief but never got to a vote in the Senate after a slim margin of victory in the House. What Twitter trolls claimed was legality in a pure sense was likely a moot point in any case since the sheer volume of liberals slaughtered in a single day would easily overwhelm federal, state, and local law enforcement and result in a sort of far-flung, more diverse Tulsa Race Massacre—eventually the stuff of legend but never adjudicated. It would be a free ride for homespun right wing assassins as long as you could live with yourself, and based upon posts on Truth Social thousands upon thousands easily could.

When on March 14 President Trump was asked directly about National Kill a Liberal Day during a routine beheading of a longtime Clinton associate in the Rose Garden, his equivocation spoke volumes. “There are good people, great people, on both sides,” he told Maria Bartiromo. “I really wanna see how the people work this out for themselves. Because I had plenty of chances to kill Rosie O’Donnell and I didn’t do it not because the bazooka wouldn’t fire but because more people really if you think about it watched my show than watched hers and if you think about it the only people who really ever watched her terrible, terrible show were the gays and the Blacks.”

If there was a turning point it might have been March 27, when documents were leaked from the Supreme Court indicating that if the constitutionality of NKLD ever came before the justices the vote would be 5 to 4 in favor. A rough draft of a theoretical majority opinion penned by Samuel Alito stated “Under the Constitution both the Second and Fourteenth Amendments ultimately leave matters of mass liberal extinction to the states.” Meanwhile in far less abstraction countless MAGAs were posting detailed plans for April 20 including maps, bulk ammo discounts, and the names and photos of intended victims.

---

The Banter is 100% reader funded, and your membership is vital to our survival as an independent media outlet. Banter Members get access to all Members Only articles, The Emergency Meeting Podcast, and Member chat threads. Get 50% off today:

---

Still shivering on the morning of April 20 I consider which one of my personal assassin trolls is likely to come for me first. My sleepaway camp bunkmate from 1975 had called me un-American and unworthy of life at least a dozen times on Facebook and was even suspended for 30 days for one such comment. But he returned to the platform undaunted and in so many words resolved to take care of his old “camp problem” once and for all. Then there was the drummer I played with in a cover band for not more than four months back in 2006. His April 3 post read, “So disappointed. Thought you were a good guy. Thought you played like Geezer Butler of Sabbath but now know you’re pathetic sheep in wolf’s clothing. Have to take matters into own hands!”

Now as I stretch out the stiffness in my trigger finger I consider the ultimate tragedy of this entire affair. Not so much the coming apart of a once great nation. Or the potential loss of so many well meaning librarians, OBGYNs, yoga instructors, and self-taught urban rooftop gardeners. Or the fate of a 249-year experiment in democracy ending as all experiments in human kindness, dignity and integrity must.

The real tragedy is that my assailants never got to know the real me. The me who watched Magnum P.I. reruns. The me who favored a balanced budget if we could reduce frivolous corporate tax breaks in tandem with unnecessary entitlements. The me who once in a while preferred the missionary position. The me who against the onetime advice of a well respected local herbalist refused to throw away a Curt Schilling autographed baseball. Throw in a nearly complete ineptitude when in the presence of a beautiful, accomplished, intelligent woman and I was much more like my quasi-Nazi friends and acquaintances than they would ever have the pleasure of knowing.

But none of that mattered now. It was kill or be killed out here on my half-acre claim to suburban rectitude and I was likely the former not the latter, or the latter not the former, or whatever it was because I was beyond exhausted now and was having trouble keeping the correct order in my phrasing. What mattered now above all else was that at this very moment like the Mafia hitman’s bullet you never hear, the Tucker Carlson Joe Rogan Steve Bannon Stephen Miller Marjorie Taylor Greene Paul Gosar Lauren Boebert Michael Flynn Paul Manafort Rudy Giuliani Eric Trump Grim Reaper was coming for me and was now firmly in my left-center crosshairs. What’s more, he was wearing a brown shirt. A brown shirt. Like Himmler. Like Goebbels. Like Hitler. Like a thousand self-assured bullies, savages, and tyrants who thought someone who listened to the Spin Doctors in the 90s didn’t have the heart, the guts to aim, squeeze, and snuff out the life of a bloodthirsty fascist.

It is the slight jerk of a right index finger–my right index finger–that shifts the entire American political landscape in under one tenth of a second. In that not even one tenth of a second the pointy bullet from my M4 has left the barrel and ripped a hole in the right shoulder of the brown shirt who had come looking for me but who would leave in a pine box if at all. The shot heard round Easton, PA was one for our side. One for the little guy the other guys on the bowling team once teased mercilessly for ordering a BK veggie burger at Burger King.

But then I stop squinting and realize it was the UPS delivery guy. Yes, he had on a brown shirt but it wasn’t that kind of brown shirt. As he runs screaming from my porch to his big brown truck I yell sorry but I’m not sure if he’s heard me. It is then I remember in some sort of strange, ultimate irony, the package he had just left at my door was almost definitely the bulletproof Kevlar vest I had ordered on April 14. I feel bad. Yet I still desperately need the Kevlar vest. I crawl over toward it slowly and quietly on my belly and listen for any unusual rumbles from the nearby private entrance road.

It’s going to be a long day. And a long night.

Read the latest on The Banter (free):