In presidential elections, traditionally it’s the economy, stupid. But if there’s one thing that trumps the economy, it’s whether you live or die. And as events play out in New York, New Jersey and Minnesota (not to mention Iran, Syria, Libya, etc., etc.), it seems more than ever that for 2016—it’s the jihad, stupid.

There’s little question the Obama administration has done an horrendous job dealing with Islamic terrorism. The rise of ISIS is significantly on the president’s hands, not just because he inanely called the mega-terrorists a JV team, but because his failure to keep sufficient U.S. troops in Iraq gave the Islamic State the opportunity to grow and thrive.

The success of the Islamic State has given rise to a worldwide epidemic of so-called “lone wolves” who aren’t really alone, but local players (sometimes banded together) who take their inspiration from ISIS. They don’t care whether the Islamic State is controlling Mosul or even Raqqa. They care about jihad. And there seem to be more of them every day, in all corners of the world.

As I write this, five men have been taken into custody near the Verrazano Bridge. Are they jihadists? I don’t know, but I wouldn’t bet against it. Meanwhile, after Saturday’s IED explosion on 23rd Street and the near tragedy at a Marine charity run in Seaside Park, New Jersey, more pipe bombs have been found near the train station in Elizabeth, New Jersey. (Are there pipe bombs everywhere now?)

By all rights Hillary Clinton, an obvious principal in the development of this ongoing disaster, should have no chance at the presidency in a rational world. But an extraordinarily biased and morally narcissistic media, unable to face their own inadequacies or change a narrative seemingly set in stone, apparently will do anything to see her elected.

Coming soon is an electoral showdown the likes of which we have never seen—and it will largely be over how our country handles the jihad. Do we want to live like this for the rest of our lives? Do we want ongoing terror attacks, large and small, to be the new normal for us, our children and our children’s children?

The time has come to take a serious look at Donald Trump’s “extreme vetting” of Muslim immigrants. So far it is the only proposal that would have much of effect on the status quo. I haven’t seen a single other suggestion of much relevance, especially since there is little appetite for a full-scale war in the Middle East. You can “see something, say something” until you’re blue in the face, but there’s no way everything can be caught.

Unfortunately, “extreme vetting” is, as we are constantly reminded by that same media, a form of discrimination against Muslims. The problem is, allowing a free flow of immigration, or anything close, is discrimination against everyone else.

I could fill the rest of this page and a half-dozen more with all the nationalities and religions that are not waging jihad. There is only one that is.

Until that ends, they must be stopped. We simply have no other choice. Otherwise we will be like Europe before we know it—and the European situation has become almost untenable. We may already be untenable ourselves. The sad events in St. Cloud attest to the great resistance their Somali community has to assimilating. We cannot have more of this. We must shut it down before it overwhelms us.

To say that is not Islamophobia. It is reality. We will actually benefit the Islamic world by closing our borders to their immigrants. Give them an escape-valve and they will remain forever as they are, adrift in the modern world, destroying each other.

If you want an actual definition of “Islamophobia,” this is the best one I’ve seen: “A word created by fascists and used by cowards to manipulate morons.” Most of those cowards are in our media and the academy. They are our adversaries in election 2016. The battle is about to be joined.

Roger L. Simon is a prize-winning novelist, Academy Award-nominated screenwriter and co-founder of PJ Media. His most recent book is—I Know Best: How Moral Narcissism Is Destroying Our Republic, If It Hasn’t Already.