OP your point is salient. The potted history of the cold war is perhaps over-simplistic, especially the idea that any side possessed 'ready to hit the button' jingoism. But the fact that civil liberties worldwide have been eroded in the face of what in some places was a very old, containable threat, remains.
However, it probably still is government giving the public what they want rather than the other way round. People wanted knee-jerk reassurance, to "see" things being done regardless of what was already being done behind the scenes, and let's be honest the behind the scenes work has had scant regard for legality or rights for decades. The net result is that now we can't take handcream onboard an aircraft but we can take a ball point pen. Go figure.
