"I have heard more stories in the past 48 hours of Americans living in fear of their own government and their fellow Americans than I can remember hearing in five decades in politics."

While the U.S. military pursues its failing wars, interventions, and raids abroad, while the national security state develops ever more mechanisms for snooping, surveilling, and controlling populaces at home, many of the country’s citizens are increasingly living inside a fact-challenged fantasy of a country, a victimized superpower.

You don’t need to construct a plausible or even a coherent scenario to deploy scare tactics for political ends.