Fourteen years after 9/11, the United States remains in an artificially sustained state of emergency best encapsulated by the oft-repeated Orwellian catchphrase: "If You See Something, Say Something™."  This ubiquitous edict and its variants still appear in transportation hubs and public buildings across the country, nudging us to never take anything at face value, treating every perceived oddity and fleeting discomfort as a potential threat.

It was this poisonous mentality that was at work Monday, when school administrators in Irving, Texas, had a Muslim teenager arrested for bringing a homemade digital clock to school after a teacher said it looked like a bomb. Ahmed Mohamed, a talented 14-year-old with a well-known aptitude for electronic tinkering, told the Dallas Morning News that he built the clock in 20 minutes the previous night to impress his engineering instructor. By 3 p.m., Ahmed was suspended from school and being escorted out of McArthur High School in handcuffs.

The Dallas paper reported that police "may yet charge him with making a hoax bomb" and had an "ongoing investigation" into the device, despite being clearly and repeatedly shown that it is, in fact, a clock. But this easily verifiable fact hardly mattered. The school immediately called the police. Upon first meeting Ahmed, the paper reported, one of the officers exclaimed, "Yup. That's who I thought it was," making Ahmed feel "suddenly conscious of his brown skin and his name."