“The reason is ISIS.”

An NBC News report on the latest round of security alerts, which have put the United States at a high alert level despite officials conceding there is zero evidence of any actual plot as the Fourth of July holiday begins.

Terrorists have not used July 4 as a particular date of significance to carry out attacks, but indeed haven’t used a lot of the other dates that officials seemingly arbitrarily declare heightened security for either, and a lot of the bulked up security is seemingly hysteria for its own sake.

It also appears to be canceling some events, with a US Air Force planned celebration at British airbase RAF Feltwell cancelled because of “local threat assessments” which, like the ones in the US, don’t include any intelligence on actual threats.

Officials are talking up the high number of arrests of potential “ISIS” plotters in recent weeks, though these have almost exclusively been Americans who were courted by FBI informants who gave them fake explosives and then arrested them for planning to try to blow stuff up with them.

If ISIS is keen to attack US assets, there are much more convenient targets in the Middle East, particularly with the Pentagon sending a number of ground troops to the outskirts of Ramadi for “training” operations, meaning US forces are just a stone’s throw from a major, ISIS-held city.

As for attacks on US soil, there doesn’t seem to be any particular reason why ISIS might want to launch such an attack now, particularly with US officials doing a good job of terrorizing themselves about the mere thought of such attacks.