OUR COLLECTIVE NERVOUS BREAKDOWN

I don't know what has happened to America.  We seem to go from hysterical situation to hysterical situation., like last year's panic was over Ebola.*  We were urged not to panic, but we did.  Now we have gone just crazy over a possible terrorist hidden in Syrian refugees.  Peggy Noonan, who is susceptible to hysteria writes in the Wall Street journal, "...pause the refugee program, figure out how to screen those seeking entrance more carefully, and let in only the peaceable.  If it takes time, it takes time."  Well it already takes 18 mo. of screening.**  The word "pause" is actually a ruse that actually means "permanently stop."  Even some bright people don't believe the experts know anything, not how Ebola is transmitted, not how to screen immigrants.  Of course you can't guarantee that no terrorist will manage to creep through any screening process.  Nor can you guarantee that none of the refugees will be radicalized after living in the U.S. for awhile, but so far as I can find out, no refugee has turned out to be a terrorist so far.

Not surprisingly the hysteria over terrorists is alive and well in our politics.  Donald Trump, for example, wants all Muslims to be registered.***  John Kasich says we should have an agency to spread Judeo-Christian values around the world that seems to violate church and state (He has since toned down on this.).***  Though Kasich is a Evangelical, he has been pretty good up to now to keep his religious beliefs pretty much to himself except for his belief that Christ has said we should look after those less fortunate than ourselves, a belief that is constructive.  Can it be long before some candidate proposes "internment camps," as a polite term for "concentration camps," or expelling all Muslims from America?

Why is it that we tolerate about 30,000 automobile deaths and 30,000 gun deaths a year in America and brush off things like the Auroa, CO, movie theater  New Town, CT, shootings, but make ourselves sick over the possibility of some sort of terrorist attacker.  We should be vigilant, of course,and do all that is reasonable to prevent terrorist attacks, but let's be rational about it.   But we have a long history of hysteria.

* More than half of U.S. adults worry that there will be a large-scale Ebola outbreak across the next year, according to a new Harvard poll conducted last week and released on Tuesday. Most of them are nervous that they’ll get sick with Ebola, or someone in their family will. ..... But at the same time, scientists and public health officials have repeatedly urged Americans not to panic about Ebola. (http://www.forbes.com/sites/dandiamond/2014/10/16/ebolas-very-contagious-ebolas-also-hard-to-catch-confused-heres-how-to-understand/)
** http://abcnews.go.com/International/officials-fear-syrian-refugees-pose-threat-us/story?id=28930114
*** http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/gop-rivals-denounce-trumps-call-muslim-database-n467201;http://api.talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/john-kasich-govt-agency-judeo-christian-values