Welcome to the Islamic Scare era, in which the nation becomes engulfed in a Donald Trump- induced fear of embedded Muslims planning terrorist attacks against the homeland. The United States has been through a phase like this before.
It was called the Red Scare, and we are all the poorer because of it.
The Red Scare, generated post-World Wars I and II, set off a chain of nasty behavior and excesses that trampled civil liberties and the freedoms we were taught to cherish. To be sure, there were American communists in the '40s and '50s who advocated the overthrow of the U.S. government and who worked as spies for the Soviet Union. The record of convictions is there to prove it.
But so, too, is evidence of the damaging effect that the Red Scare had on this country - lives turned upside down by false accusations and blacklists; political repression that walked all over freedom of expression and association.
A climate of fear can do that to a country.
Which is where we are now.