Can We Chill A Little?

From The Migration Policy Institute:

The reality is this: The United States has resettled 784,000 refugees since September 11, 2001. In those 14 years, exactly three resettled refugees have been arrested for planning terrorist activities—and it is worth noting two were not planning an attack in the United States and the plans of the third were barely credible.

As the more than 4 million refugees who have spilled out of Syria overwhelm neighboring countries and roil Europe, many Americans have been asking what more the United States can and should do to help cope with this crisis. Fewer than 2,000 Syrians have been resettled in this country since the Assad regime’s crackdown on peaceful protests ignited a savage civil war in 2011.

The most common arguments against resettling more Syrian refugees, made by some Republican presidential candidates and members of Congress, is that the resettlement program could be a path for infiltration into the United States by ISIS or other terrorists. But the refugee resettlement program is the least likely avenue for a terrorist to choose. Refugees who are selected for resettlement to the United States go through a painstaking, many-layered review before they are accepted. The FBI, Department of Homeland Security, State Department, and national intelligence agencies independently check refugees’ biometric data against security databases. The whole process typically takes 18-24 months, with high hurdles for security clearance.

So lemme see - 3 bad guys outa 784,000 is ... uhmm ... less than .0004%

We're gonna let some short-fingered vulgarian like Trump get our panties in a bunch over something that's about as likely to happen as dying in a shark attack at the YMCA in Topeka?

Y'know, that .0004% figure seems to pop up with some regularity.  I'm thinking that's the same number we get when we look empirically at "Voter Fraud"(?)  Hmmm.  I'm not ready to say there's a real pattern, but there seems to be something - a kind of threshold ; or more like a Bullshit Benchmark; an upper limit that indicates that this is so unlikely to happen, it's safe for us to jump all over it and then take credit for "preventing it".

And here's how I see that working now, btw (this keeps Glenn Beck and Alex Jones and certain god-knobbers in bidness, and bidness is fucking great): 

• First, you "warn" the rubes about the stoopidest shit you can think of - radicalized librul UFO pilots are plotting to swoop down on our homes while we're at church and spike our favorite frozen breakfast entrees with MDMA and fluoride so we'll be dull-witted when Obama's secret Muslim Citizen's Patrols break down our doors to confiscate our guns and rape our house pets.
• Wait for a bit, while being diligent and watchful - reporting "further details as we learn them".
• When it's run its course - and you know this because your marketeers and their army of unpaid recently graduated "interns" tell you the donations tied directly to that particular impending disaster start to drop off - you make a splashy presentation about how your good-and-loyal-real-American listeners have once again thwarted the evil genius du jour, and you're just so darned proud (but humbled) to have the privilege of leading and I hafta stop this now before I make myself puke.

And there ya have it.  The less likely something is to actually happen, the more we can expect to be loudly and wildly "warned" about it by people who have nothing more in mind than looking for their next shot at fleecing the rubes.

Try not to be the rube.