A Dispatch from Drone Central
Something feels off, doesn't it? Let's pay attention to that feeling.
Finally, my adopted home state of New Jersey is leading the news, and not because of traffic or Chris Christie.
We are, in case you’ve been observing a news fast (don’t worry, this story is only a small snack), the epicenter of... well, it depends on what you think is going on: a bunch of drone hobbyists having fun, a surveillance operation by hostile powers, hysteria over nothing at all, a prank, space aliens, or, perhaps, a government operation to sniff out “dirty bombs” that have been placed around the state.
I, of course, am fascinated by this.
I’m fascinated by how we humans make meaning, how we reach decisions on who and what is trustworthy, and, well, anything having to do with religion, conspiracy theorizing, and the emotional alchemy that transmutes insecurity into elaborate explanation.
It’s also, I think, an interesting preview of the next four years.
What seems to be actually going on
If you believe the government and mainstream media, I feel compelled to disclaim, what’s happening in the skies is actually pretty boring. There were, starting on November 18, a few sightings of what looked like large drones. For some reason — more on this in a moment — the story caught on, and now everyone started looking suspiciously at the skies. And lo and behold, there have now been over 5,000 reports of UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomena, the new nomenclature for UFOs) in the last few weeks.
The F.B.I., Defense Department and Department of Homeland Security have investigated these reports. Of the 5000, they say that only 100 required any investigation at all; the majority were ordinary airplanes, some were small airplanes, and a few were hobbyist drones.
In other words, this is a case of pattern recognition, and of looking for a problem and thus finding one. In fact, our skies are always this crowded (there are over 1 million drones registered with the FAA) but we’re normally not looking at them – at least, not with this intention. People are seeing what’s always there.
As conspiracy debunker Mick West told the New York Times, “You see something in the sky, you have heard stories about it being drones, so you think maybe that is a drone.”
Why no one believes that
This explanation, of course, does not satisfy anyone who thinks they’ve seen an anomalous UAP. Why not?
First, we are culturally and evolutionarily wired to think that “seeing is believing” even though that is obviously not true. I’ve seen the videos, and, since I live here, I’ve looked up at the night sky looking for weird stuff. Sure enough, these things do seem to be behaving in strange ways. Of course, I don’t have a lot of expertise in identifying aerial phenomena, mapping small aircraft traffic patterns, or other relevant skills. But hey, seeing is believing, right?
It really isn’t, especially when emotions are activated. For example, I have a clear memory of Elijah’s Cup rippling at a family Passover Seder. Elijah is the Jewish equivalent of Santa Claus: he is said to visit every Seder, where he takes a sip of wine. (In fact, this is not how this tradition began; rather, there was a messianic hope that Elijah would appear, heralding the redemption, so Jews poured a cup of wine in case he showed up. But when I was a little kid, he was Santa.) I now assume someone banged their leg against the table. But then, it was definitely a ghost drinking wine.
Second, to understate the obvious, Americans don’t trust their public officials that much right now. This week, Secretary of Homeland Security Alexander Mayorkas went on CNN to clearly explain what was going on, providing the same explanation I set forth above: that this is all “a case of mistaken identity.” If you watch the video, he appears (to me, anyway) sober, rational, and eminently reliable. And yet, if you’re already primed to distrust the “deep state,” whether from the Right or from the Left, he is the embodiment of it. Mayorkas has also been a particular target of the Right; the House impeached him last February, though the Senate dismissed the charges out of hand and never held a trial.
So of course he’s going to lie.
Third, and to me this is the most interesting aspect of the whole phenomenon, the boring explanation just doesn’t feel right. Something feels off.
Here, I think, is the rabbit hole.
Something feels off
“Something feels off” should be the phrase of 2024. It embodies the vague unease felt on the Right, Left, and whatever horseshoe-diagonalist vibe the RFK crowd is into. I would submit that “something feels off” was a contributing factor to Donald Trump’s victory. After all, a lot of the economic data is quite good, even though prices are still high and working people are getting squeezed. But something feels off, doesn’t it? Back in May I called it “the spiritual psychology of economic dread.”
What is this feeling about? I think it’s partly leftover Covid trauma, still unprocessed and unexamined. The world went to hell five years ago, remember? More recently (remember, sightings began November 18), it is obviously related to the Trump victory and the strange, liminal period we’re living in right now, which surprised many Republicans and confirmed the worst nightmares of many liberals. We’re in a new world now, and we don’t yet know what it will be like. (More on that next week.)
But it’s also unease about AI and the disembodied, rapidly evolving world of technology. It’s the wars in the Middle East, the chemicals in the food, simulation theory, and the perennial human preoccupation with the end of the world, which I also wrote about earlier this year.
I even think “something feels off” is a useful way to understand the Right’s and Center’s concerns about gender and race, filtered through the rhetorics of transgender people and immigrants. And, perhaps, the realization among Gen Z and many millennials that the world their parents inhabited simply doesn’t exist anymore – not economically, and not climatically either. Something definitely feels off.
And because they are so opaque, even abstract, the drones can reflect anything at all.
On the Right, probably the silliest response was by Rep. Jeff Drew, who said that he’d heard from “high sources” that Iran is controlling the mysterious objects. “Iran launched a mothership probably about a month ago that contains these drones. That mothership is off … the East Coast of the United States of America. They’ve launched drones into everything that we can see or hear,” Drew said. “And again, these are from high sources. I don’t say this lightly.”
Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) agreed, saying on Saturday that “the elusive maneuvering of these drones suggests a major military power sophistication that begs the question whether they have been deployed to test our defense capabilities — or worse — by violent dictatorships, perhaps maybe Russia, or China, or Iran, or North Korea.”
The Pentagon denied all of this. But then they would, wouldn’t they….
On the Left, I’ve personally heard people say that the drones are (a) the Trump administration already launching a national surveillance system, (b) a kind of false flag that the Trump administration will use to impose martial law (cf. Attack of the Clones), and/or (c) a governmental effort to sniff out bombs. Whatever we’re afraid of (or want other people to be afraid of), that’s what the drones are.
And then there are the crazies, including the chief crazy, Joe Rogan, who reposted a video by the CEO of a remote aircraft systems company, claiming that “the only reason why they would be flying, and flying that low, is because they're trying to smell something on the ground,” referring to a gas leak or radioactive materials. Said Rogan, “This is the first video about these drones that has got me genuinely concerned.”
The drones are the perfect cipher. They can stand for any conspiracy, any malevolent actor. You can project anything onto them. They are “something feels off” embodied in the sky.
The New Paranormal
There is something new, though, about how politicians are responding.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul, for example, is a rational, moderate Democrat. So is New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy. Yet both demanded the government be more transparent and take more actions – this after Mayorkas’s media appearance and numerous statements from government officials. This seems new to me, and very post-2024. Hochul and Murphy seems to believe that it’s better not to oppose widespread popular sentiment and try to be the voice of reason. And maybe they’re right; Kamala Harris tried that and look where it got her. At least this conspiracy theory isn’t blaming Haitians for eating cats. It’s not leading to pogroms. So, maybe better to go along with it.
To be sure, there have been voices of calm. Senator Cory Booker said that the government should not allow “misinformation to spread, or at least fear. We should know what's going on over our skies.” But Democrats have learned not to stand in the way of a conspiratorial mob.
Less surprising, but more important, is Trump himself.
Asked about the drones at a Mar-a-Lago press conference, he said, “Something strange is going on. For some reason, they don’t want to tell the people.” Trump then continued, “They’re very close to Bedminster. I think maybe I won’t spend the weekend in Bedminster. I’ve decided to cancel my trip.”
This is, in many ways, classic Trump: jumping on the conspiratorial bandwagon, blaming an unnamed ‘they’, and of course, making it all about himself.
But one wonders: When Trump is in charge, no one’s around to stop him, and Democrats calculate that it’s better not to get in the way, what happens next? Could there be an international incident with Iran, Russia, or someone else because of . . . absolutely nothing at all? Would a small plane get shot down by the military because someone thought it was an enemy drone?
And with mainstream media delegitimized, with responsible scientists sidelined and bullied by the new administration, who will the ‘voices of reason’ be and how will they be heard?
These drones are like a trial balloon of our new paranormal reality. Though maybe that’s just me projecting what I’m afraid of.
Not to validate Godwin’s law here, but it makes sense, historically speaking, that this time of widespread unease has brought us an authoritarian ruler who is, himself, deeply superstitious. The same was true, yes, of Hitler, who was obsessed with the occult, planned important actions based on astrology, and was fascinated by magical predictions (from Nostradamus to contemporary seers) of his own rise to power. Several books have been written about this odd blend of modernist technological rationalism and pre-modern occultic superstitions from pre-Christian pagan religions and the Atlantis myth to parapsychology and the quest for miracle weapons. I’m not saying Trump is Hitler. I’m only pointing out that these things go together. Raiders of the Lost Ark was based partly on reality.
Authoritarianism and magical thinking are, perhaps, two sides of the same obolus coin. Taking refuge in the strong leader and having recourse to conspiracy theories or superstitions both seek security in a time of chaos, change, and the sense that “something feels off.”
This can’t just be the way things are, we say to ourselves. There must be some explanation of the disorientation we feel. Something, we tell ourselves, that means something.
And that’s the report from Drone Ground Zero. I hope this piece ages well, since the alternative is indeed unpleasant to consider.
In other news, I urged President Biden to “Pardon Everyone” for MSNBC here.
If you’re not on a news fast, I encourage you to read Robert Reich’s analysis of how social security will be largely dismantled. Can’t say we didn’t tell you so, Trump voters!
On the psychedelics side, my colleague Swayam Bagaria just did a fascinating interview on
on Hinduism’s lasting but perhaps overstated impact on psychedelic mysticism, among other things.Keep warm, wherever you are.