My first response was that this government, as long as I can remember, has always kept the people in some sort of continued state of emergency or crisis.
We had Vietnam in the 1960s, we had the energy crisis in the 1970s, AIDS, the war in Lebanon, Grenada, Libya in the 1980s, the war in Panama, Gulf War, Somalia Civil War, Bosnian War, and illegal drug wars in the 1990s. Then, in 2000 the Afghan War, the Iraq War, The Syrian War, Y2K was going to destroy EVERYTHING... 2001 it was Anthrax that was going to kill us, 2002 West Nile Virus was going to kill us, 2003 SARS was going to kill us, 2005 Bird Flu was going to kill us, 2006 Ecoli was going to kill us, 2008 Financial collapse is going to destroy us, 2009 the Swine Flu was going to kill us, 2012 the Mayan calendar predicts the end of the world, 2013 North Korea was going to cause World War 3, 2014 the Ebola virus was going to kill us, 2015 ISIS was going to kill us, 2016 Zika virus was going to kill us, 2020 the Coronavirus is going to kill us (Deuteronomy 28:21). Get the point? (Jeremia ...