Oh, it was a huge part of Trump's strategy. Scare the shit out of the middle class white people that the terrorists are going to get them. Islamic terrorists kill about twice as many Americans as hot air balloon accidents. Trump really knows how to scare his base into voting for him.
I know what you mean. I do think scare tactics worked, but I'll tell you what: As a liberal, it's been a little humbling to have President Trump ascend to the Office, and that's because I've realized that while I know we can fault ignorance of those middle class white Americans for falling for his fear-mongering, we also have to fault our own left's arrogance in neglecting working white Americans in terms of their economic situation especially in Rust Belt states and also for not properly addressing the underlying fears of his base with logic and rationale instead of simply repeating Islam is peace when news reports have given coverage to specific incidents of terrorism against innocent people that left an indelible impression on our humanity's collective minds. Therefore, for the left, it wasn't simply sufficient to say that Islam is peace but explain the holistic picture of what's happening in that part of the world and why terrorism is occurring on our soil.
As a Muslim, I'll also tell you that while I do believe Islam is a peaceful religion, it's not a pacifist religion and therefore it is not a coincidence that some extremists and terrorists are able to take specifics within Islamic texts and use them out of context to justify political violence for political ambitions when they see droning of their lands. And also, I personally fault the media for not giving adequate coverage to the breadth of Muslim world's condemnation of terrorism. For example, I know Islamic scholars have globally unanimously condemned
Daesh and terrorism in general and also written treatises and
fatwas (rulings) on the subject; however, I have extremely rarely seen any coverage of any such instances and so of course President Trump's base then feels that terrorists are out to get them.
Also, it's not a coincidence that we have so much anti-Muslim sentiment thriving in the United States because Islamophobia is a multimillion dollar business, and University of Berkeley and Council of American-Islamic Relations released a report that estimated that
74 organizations are promoting Islamophobia and of them 33 is especially vitriolic and even paring the 33 to only the some that can be called "the core group" funding Islamophobia had access to $206 million dollars of funding between 2008 and 2013. I completely believe in the aphorism, "
When in doubt, follow the money."
And a 2013 article, relatively old considering it's 2017 now, even names specific elite individuals that for very specific reasons are funding Islamophobia which I found personally quite informative. The truth is that while we can blame ignorance of people, if we refuse to educate them, then we can't blame just simply their ignorance but we also have to at some point own up to our own arrogance in not giving them the knowledge that would enable them to draw saner conclusions.
Peace.