Certainly I've had the experience of thinking a person was one thing, and finding out they were another.
Some guys say beauty is only skin deep. But when you walk into a party, you don't see somebody's brain. The initial contact has to be the sniffing.
Today, the US spends less on defense as a percentage of our economy than we did at any time since he Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. For the world's only superpower, that is an invitation to very serious trouble.