From 9/11 to covid-19, I have seen how terror leads to fear, and fear to hatred

Those days when the TSA searched my bag twice at the checkpoint and once at the gate, and regularly pulled me — at random, they said — out of line to be wanded and frisked, when strangers eyed me with suspicion anywhere I lingered too long, seem mostly to have passed. Too middle-aged now, too often accompanied by my spouse and kid, even when I grow a beard, I don’t attract the same attention.