What’s flying over New Jersey?

The nightly news is replicating Orson Welles’s 1938 broadcast of War of the Worlds, which scared Americans by describing an invasion of space aliens. Listeners who tuned into the broadcast a little late didn’t hear the disclaimer that it was fiction. Now, they are tuning in on time and hearing real broadcasts about mysterious objects flying over our skies. And people are asking the same questions they asked long ago, “What are those things?” They have heard the government’s disclaimers, but they are not sure whether to believe them. 

The public is frightened, and bland reassurances from Washington aren’t helping. Neither is a wagging finger from the government’s PR flaks, who don’t give citizens any real information but tell them to calm down, that they are overreacting. 

Maybe they are, but the TV reports and web pages are filled with home videos of sightings. Print reports come with photographs. It’s not just one or two pictures or videos. It’s dozens and dozens of them from different sources. They are often accompanied by interviews with people who have seen the objects, then reported their sightings to local, state, and federal authorities and heard back nothing except “we don’t know anything” (from local officials) or vacuous words of comfort (from Washington). 

When you unpack the obfuscation, White House officials are making two basic points. The first is that we don’t know what the objects are or where they came from. The second is you shouldn’t worry about it. The two statements are inconsistent, and the public knows it. 

White House spokesman John Kirby qualified the “we don’t know what’s up there” point in one interview, saying that many of the sightings were merely airplanes. Another way to put that is, “You dumb yokels. Don’t you know an airplane when you see it?” 

Again, Kirby may be right but the people who have seen these objects — dozens and dozens of people and sightings — say Kirby is not right about all of them. There may be some airplanes, they acknowledge, but lots of objects look different and move in ways airplanes do not. They aren’t buying what the White House is selling. 

The government’s main response is to shrug their shoulders and say “we really don’t know.” They concede they cannot explain all the sightings. That answer and the implication that it is mass hysteria has infuriated the governor of New Jersey and officials on Capitol Hill, who can hear the roar of their constituents and don’t appreciate standing in front of them without answers. 

Those officials and their voters are none too happy with the administration’s second point, either. That point is, “Don’t worry. These flying objects don’t present any threat at all.” 

That might be right, but here’s the problem. Points one and two collide. If you say you don’t know what the flying objects are or where they came from, how can you possibly tell us that there is nothing to worry about? You might be right, but you haven’t given us any evidence to support that conclusion or believe your comforting words. 

That brings us to the third point. Citizens are receiving this reassurance from a government they no longer trust. Not after it suppressed an honest discussion about the Covid pandemic, fed us misinformation about how thoroughly we would be protected by vaccines, and needlessly shut down the entire country over the experts’ exaggerated fears. Not after Joe Biden and a phalanx of former intelligence officials told us Hunter Biden‘s laptop was simply Russian disinformation, even though the FBI knew it wasn’t and kept silent. Not after President Biden repeatedly said he would refuse to pardon his son and did so anyway. Not after the people surrounding the president deliberately hid his serious cognitive decline for over two years running — and still won’t admit there’s a serious problem. Put bluntly, no one knows who’s really in charge today at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. It’s one of the biggest scandals in American history and will eventually be recognized as such. 

Here’s a tip: when you keep lying to the public, they won’t trust the next thing you tell them. They won’t trust you even if you are telling the truth. Not after your record of deceit. When the public thinks you are untrustworthy, they need more proof than just your word. 

They aren’t happy about the government’s inaction, either. They can see Washington is doing nothing to stop the swarms of objects flying over New Jersey, at least nothing we know about. That inaction matches how the Biden administration handled the Chinese spy balloon, which flew, uninterrupted, across the entire United States, including over some of our most sensitive military installations. The Biden team finally shot it down after it had completed its American transit and was out over the Atlantic. That bungling performance doesn’t exactly reassure the public that the current administration knows how to act decisively or deal firmly with surveillance by hostile foreign powers. 

Even if the flying objects are entirely innocent — a genuine possibility — the Biden administration’s lethargic response is worrisome. Hostile powers and terrorist groups have seen the confusion and delay. They will undoubtedly consider how to take advantage of it before they face a much tougher administration in January. 

For now, though, we have both a failure to communicate honestly with the public and a collapse in confidence that this administration knows what the problem is or how to handle it. One thing the public does know: it has real questions and it’s not getting good answers.