Even in a political year in which we have come to expect the unexpected, who would have guessed that the political world would be transfixed by a metaphor involving Skittles.

Democrats and others consider a tweet with a picture of a bowl of Skittles to be the latest example of the foul nature of Donald Trump’s campaign. The candy was employed as a metaphor in a tweet issued by Donald Trump Jr. in which he analogized a few possibly poisonous Skittles amid other good ones to terrorists who might be found among a larger population of Syrian refugees. This was widely condemned—including a stern rebuke from the manufacturers of the candy—as just one more example of the Trump clan’s insensitivity to the suffering of the refugees if not, less plausibly, a nod in the direction of white racists.

But coming as it did the day after a series of domestic terror attacks involving Muslim immigrants, the great Skittles debate exposes what must be acknowledged as a new fault line in American politics between those who are responding to the public’s concerns and those who are trying to ignore them. Foolish though the analogy may have been, it reflects a not unreasonable fear about the spread of terror. The refusal of those who are tut-tutting about the alleged awfulness of Trump Jr.’s analogy to comprehend why Americans are afraid tells us a lot about why the billionaire has what polls now show as an even chance to win the presidency.

Trump has demonstrated indifference to Syria and even publicly supported the Russian involvement that has added immeasurably to the suffering of Syrians. So it ill behooves his son to do anything that seems to trivialize what has become the greatest human-rights catastrophe of the 21st Century. If anything, Trump’s policies toward Syria seem likely to be a continuation of President Obama’s disastrous approach, in which the U.S. has abandoned its responsibility to act. But while those tweeting pictures of the faces of real Syrian refugees and contrasting them with Trump Jr.’s bowl of candy are signaling their virtue, sensitivity to Syrians’ plight isn’t the only issue to be discussed in 2016. To pretend otherwise misses the point about why Americans are scared.

If the latest attacks did not produce more horror, it was, as our Noah Rothman wrote earlier, due more to luck than anything else. In the case of Ahmed Khan Rahami, the suspect in the New York and New Jersey bombings, there was ample reason to suspect him, but he slipped through the safeguards that might have stopped him before he struck. It may well be that the FBI, which investigated him, is not at fault. But that is of little comfort to those who were wounded by his efforts and might have been killed had he been a luckier terrorist.

So it is far from unreasonable for Americans to ponder the question of admission of Syrian refugees to this country, especially since the FBI has conceded that they don’t really vet any of them. The dudgeon about Trump’s tweet is a thin cover for an effort to claim that empathy for the Syrians must overwhelm common sense concerns about the possibility that a minority of those admitted to the country might harbor sympathy for ISIS or other radical groups.

The same goes for the dismissal of Trump’s talk about the need for profiling by law enforcement officials to protect the country.

Let’s specify that much of what Trump says about profiling is neither correct nor helpful. Despite his assertion that the U.S. should copy Israel’s successful profiling efforts, what the Jewish state actually does is more in line with existing American practices. Both countries profile possible terrorists based on suspicious behavior, not, as Trump advocates, on strictly racial or religious grounds. To do as Trump preaches would likely undermine efforts to uncover potential threats.

But even as we correctly label Trump’s proposals wrongheaded, the backlash against him and his son’s tweet seems to be rooted in a sensibility that brands all such concerns as racist or fear mongering. Such a view is just as unhelpful as that of the GOP candidate. What Trump has tapped into is a broad-based, rational concern about the spread of Islamist terrorism.

Though Trump’s statements about banning Muslim travel are prejudiced and do real damage to the war against the terrorists, his opposition to more Syrian immigration under the current circumstances is sensible. The solution to that problem involves ousting the Assad regime in Damascus (something Trump’s friend Vladimir Putin has prevented) and then defeating ISIS, not allowing a mass immigration from a country that has been thoroughly infiltrated by Islamist terrorists.

Indignation against Trump Jr. or his father is no substitute for a smarter Syria policy or allaying the justified fears of Americans.