It's still the same country in which the top military brass and CIA arranged to have the president murdered because they were poisoned by their own propaganda and paranoia, and he had deluded himself into thinking he was the president. (No one makes quite the same error any more.) Also the same country in which the patriotic media and investigating bodies fell in line with the subsequent cover-up. Also the same government that then went ahead with a genocidal invasion of Indochina, killing two to three million Asians. In which counter-intelligence programs were used to undermine movements for change, and often to murder their leaders. In which the people were successfully whipped up into electing Nixon, and Reagan, and the Bushes. He'd seen the anti-communist hysteria, and even participated in it, so he'd recognize today's new hysterias about terrorism and Muslims and drugs and crime.