There’s a big difference between being realistic and fearmongering. For instance, if there was no history of domestic and foreign entities utilizing astroturfing to undermine democracy and people were saying it’s happening now, that’s fearmongering. Considering that there is, however, and that it seemed to work last time, it’s naive to assume that it wouldn’t happen again, especially when similar patterns of behavior emerge, including the presence of a new hot-button topic that can be utilized. That’s realism.