New Jersey is now subject to nonstop and often sensational civilian reports of swarms of nocturnal drones crossing city skies and violating the airspace of airports and military bases.
Terrified thousands demand to know what these drones are doing and to whom they belong.
In response, the Biden administration had initially kept mum.
Then, under mounting public pressure, it assured the public to be calm, given that most of the drones were likely launched by hobbyists and private citizens.
When that narrative failed to convince many, spokespeople pivoted to claims of mass hysteria and mistaken identity.
Amateur sightseers, they inferred, were subject to panic and hallucinations — supposedly wrongly confusing normal civilian and airline planes with drones.
Perhaps.
But as the sightings continued, more government narratives followed that the drones were unidentified but assuredly still harmless and certainly not foreign-operated.
Still, the mysterious sightings continued.
And the public’s initial curiosity soon turned to fear and finally to anger at their government’s silence, subsequent gaslighting and final mendacity.
In its characteristic stonewalling, the Biden administration has only fueled speculations and occasional conspiracy theories when it could have at least reviewed logical theories and welcomed legitimate questions.
Is a controversial government agency — perhaps the CIA or the EPA — surveilling installations, areas or people that would either be too embarrassing to be revealed or otherwise might set off panic?
And for the public good, or consistent with this administration’s weaponization of government?
Or are these drones the work of foreign surveillance in the mode of the 2023 Chinese spy balloon?
A government that long ago lost all its credibility could not reassure the people of the truth even if it wished to.
For nearly four years, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas assured the American people almost weekly that “the border is secure” — even as a reported 12 million illegal entrants easily crossed it.
White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre asserted weekly that President Joe Biden was vigorous, in full control of his faculties, and always “sharp.”
In fact, she knew that the American people grimaced as their president slurred his speech, suddenly went mute, tripped, fell and wandered aimlessly.
In late January and early February 2023, a huge Chinese surveillance balloon traversed across the United States. Public outrage grew as the administration changed its excuses by the day.
It variously assured the public that it was a mere weather balloon, that it would be too dangerous to shoot it down, that it did not transmit any of its photographic capability to China and that its trajectory did not cross key military installations.
All those excuses were either half-lies or untrue.
In late July and early August 2021, it became clear that the Biden administration planned a massive, previously unannounced and abrupt withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Rumors circulated that Biden rushed to claim that he alone had ended the messy Afghan war misadventure after 20 years and would celebrate his triumph on the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
To assuage public fears, our top generals assured us that the Taliban was at bay, Kabul was secured and the withdrawal would be orderly.
But within hours, sheer bedlam broke out.
Thirteen servicemembers were murdered by terrorists.
There were no audits or background checks on Afghans who were flown to America. Meanwhile, loyal Afghan interpreters and American contractors were ignored and left behind to fend off triumphant terrorists on their own.
Even as Americans watched the disaster on their screens, the Biden administration boasted of a supposedly heroic and Herculean effort to evacuate tens of thousands — in what the public saw instead as the greatest US military humiliation of the last half-century.
So, the American public understandably no longer believes much of anything the waning Biden administration says — not after its other chronic lies about denying the role of the Wuhan lab in the COVID-19 pandemic, only “moderate” inflation, and assurances that Hunter Biden would never be pardoned by his father.
This administration knows that any time there is a scandal or embarrassment on team Biden’s watch, it wheels out megaphones that ignore inquiries, gaslights critics by claiming they are hallucinatory, defames them as conspiratorial, or simply flat-out lies and stonewalls.
No one yet knows what, if anything, these drones are, what they are doing in our skies — and much less whether they pose any threat at all.
But almost everyone assumes the Biden administration knows, and yet expects that it will likely deceive us that it doesn’t.
Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness.
