Governments have terrorized their own people many times in history. They do so in order to rally support around policies that the public would not otherwise support like increased militarization and restrictions on civil liberties. In the United States, terrorism climaxes during the year a new president takes office. These facts, along with the historically low approval ratings for President Trump, suggest that the U.S. should be prepared for a major terrorist event in the near future.

In the last 24 years, every new U.S. presidency has been accompanied by increased acts of government-sponsored terrorism in its first year. It began with the 1993 WTC bombing only a month after the inauguration of Bill Clinton. As the New York Times reported at the time, it was clear that the FBI was involved in the WTC plot. According to an FBI informer, agents knew the bombing would happen and helped to prepare the explosives.

CBS News also reported that the informer had recorded many of his conversations with the Bureau and that those tapes were very incriminating. Apparently the tapes, which were never revealed to the public, went into significant detail about the FBI’s coordination of the bomb building.

In the years leading up to 9/11, the FBI’s support for terrorism continued. The Bureau failed miserably at preventing terrorism when preventing terrorism was its primary goal. Moreover, the actions of FBI leadership suggest that it was facilitating and covering-up acts of terrorism. When 9/11 happened, some agents accused their own agency of being responsible.

It is widely recognized that the crimes of 9/11 rescued George W. Bush from rapidly declining public and media support in his first year as president. After the attacks, his approval ratings rose 35% and his administration was able to implement many pre-planned policies that the public would otherwise have never supported including the Patriot Act and several wars. Evidence that Bush Administration members were involved in the attacks and the subsequent cover-up has become compelling.

In 2009, the first year of the Obama presidency, TIME reported that domestic terrorism hit a peak. While the government claimed to have foiled many of the alleged terrorist plots that year, news coverage of the events kept terrorism in the forefront of the public mindset.

By 2011, even mainstream media sources were catching on. Journalist Glenn Greenwald reported in Salon that the cases in which the FBI had supposedly stopped terrorist plots were actually instances of the FBI plotting terrorist acts and entrapping the young, naive suspects.

In the past few years acts of domestic terrorism in Western countries have exhibited a formulaic set of features. The pattern observed suggests that most or all of the incidents were false flag events. Meanwhile, the FBI and CIA were found to be engaging in contemptible abuses of American justice during the military trial of alleged 9/11 conspirators. Those abuses indicated that U.S. intelligence agencies have a vested interest in covering-up the truth about 9/11.

Last year, suspicions about FBI cover-up of the 9/11 attacks continued. New acts of domestic terrorism displayed the same indications of FBI involvement that have been common since 1993. Moreover, the group Human Rights Watch has documented that government agents are now “directly involved” in most U.S. terror plots.

As knowledge of the past grows, it is possible that citizens will prepare for opportunities to expose government-sponsored terrorism. For example, almost everyone has a cell phone with a video camera that connects directly to the internet. Once a terrorist event is first reported, it is feasible for those in the vicinity of the crime to document what is happening in order to better refute what is likely to become an obviously false official account. Citizen reporters could talk to eyewitnesses and photograph suspects and physical evidence, helping to reveal the deception.

With President Trump spiraling downward in public opinion polls, it seems that the only way to recover public support for his new government is through a major act of terrorism. Although this is a frightening prospect, and one that is predicted by the last 24 years of U.S. history, the next major terrorist attack could be the one that results in revelations that cannot be ignored. Whether this year or another, the public will eventually realize that willful ignorance of terrorism drives many of society’s biggest problems.