It is the loss of confidence in national institutions to mediate ethnic and religious conflicts at the local level that pushes nativism on the national agenda. The events of 9/11—having happened after a contentious presidential race between Al Gore and George W. Bush and, at a time, when America was still grappling with its own role abroad as the world’s sole superpower and its identity as a multicultural society—occurred in just such an era, one of deteriorating faith in America’s democratic institutions of governance. … Put differently, democratic processes do not forge a cohesive national identity.

Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ Th…, loc. 270