Right now, swarms of drones on the eastern seaboard are captivating Americans each night. Spotted in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and Maryland, the flying pests often appear near military installations and other national security hotspots. While everyday Americans share videos of the crafts on social media, they are not being dismissed as “conspiracy theorists” or “kooks.” The interlopers hovering in America’s skies have equally intrigued politicians, law enforcement officers, and news reporters.
What is most interesting about this event (barring the emergence of little green men from the aerial vehicles before this essay’s publication) is the public’s general disregard for the federal government’s “official” explanation. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby has dismissed thousands of sightings as overreactions to “manned aircraft that are being operated lawfully.” Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas insists, “We haven’t seen anything unusual. We know of no threat.” Meanwhile, millions of Americans who have either witnessed the drones firsthand or watched recordings of their flights online are spurning the government’s response as horse manure–laden propaganda.
Empire of Lies
Best Price: $6.79
Buy New $18.86
(as of 12:01 UTC - Details)
Who can blame them? Something’s going on. Maybe amateur pilots are pulling a prank. Maybe Russia, Iran, or China wants us chasing our tails. Perhaps Putin is reminding war hawks in D.C. that expanded missile strikes into mainland Russia come with a price. Or maybe Joe Biden and his Deep State handlers are keeping Americans distracted from the nauseating stench of White House pardons, unchecked inflation, and the growing prospect of WWIII. While disparaging the drone sightings as a form of public hysteria, Mayorkas took the opportunity to push for greater government authority over drone operations in the United States. So perhaps the whole thing is just another Intelligence Community psy-op meant to scare Americans sufficiently (à la COVID) to justify new government powers.
A similarly revealing public reaction has come over the last few years with regard to Congress’s increased interest in Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) — unexplained sightings including crafts formerly known as Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs). After spending most of the last century dismissing UAP as hoaxes, meteorological events, classified military programs, or mass delusions, members of Congress are now openly investigating whether some faction of the U.S. government (think Deep State) has long covered up evidence of — or even contact with — extraterrestrial beings.
One might think that public statements from former members of the military and broader Intelligence Community attesting to extraterrestrial visitation, contact, and even decades-long black budget appropriations dedicated to reverse-engineering alien technology would herald the most important news story of the twenty-first century. Instead, the American people have largely given the bombshell reports a collective shrug. Why aren’t they transfixed by the paradigm-shattering revelations before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence? Why aren’t they demanding answers from the White House? Why aren’t they at least busting out their old X-Files paraphernalia and screaming on social media, “I want to believe”?
I think the answer is that nobody trusts what the highest-ranking members of the U.S. government have to say. As the public’s horrified reaction to Orson Welles’s “The War of the Worlds” radio broadcast in 1938 suggests, had President Franklin D. Roosevelt used one of his “fireside chats” to tell Americans that extraterrestrial entities are among us, the American people would have surely believed him. If the U.S. Army had told Americans in 1947 that it had recovered alien remains and technology near Roswell, New Mexico, most people would have accepted the announcement as astonishingly true. Eighty years later, neither the White House nor the Pentagon is seen as trustworthy.
Lie Too Big to Fail: T...
Buy New $28.95
(as of 08:51 UTC - Details)
A lot has happened over the last century. Historical researchers have collected enough documentary evidence to suggest that Roosevelt and others had advanced knowledge of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. A majority of Americans believe that the CIA likely played some role in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Costly wars in Vietnam and Southeast Asia, Central and South America, Africa, Afghanistan, Iraq, and much of the Middle East have caused Americans to doubt the U.S. government’s official reasons for war, its prosecution of ongoing conflicts, and its capacity for truthfully reporting international events.
For half a century, Congress and successive presidents have promised to secure America’s borders and end the dangers and financial costs associated with illegal immigration. Nevertheless, during Joe Biden’s presidency, illegal immigration has reached unprecedented levels. If you’re a lifelong Democrat, you most likely believe that President Nixon deserved not only removal from office, but also imprisonment for his alleged crimes. If you’re a lifelong Republican who has watched how Democrats use lawfare to take down political opponents, President Nixon’s resignation probably looks, in hindsight, a lot like a Deep State plot to remove a man who had just won a landslide political mandate to curtail congressional spending and shackle parts of the administrative state.
In the background of all these sordid events (and many others) that chipped away at Americans’ trust in government are the exponential growth of the unelected bureaucracy, the unchecked authority of the private Federal Reserve System to print dollars and manipulate markets, and the increasingly obvious collusion between the corporate news media and the Deep State. If Americans no longer believe what the U.S. government has to say, that’s because the federal government has spent the last century lying to, undermining, endangering, and betraying American citizens.
