Okay, I get it, we’re all sick of the drones. I went to two holiday parties over the weekend in the New Jersey suburbs, and it was all anyone wanted to talk about. The news coverage has been breathless, all-consuming, and most importantly, completely unhinged.
No one knows anything. The cops don’t know anything. The feds sure don’t sound like they know anything. Sure, everyone has a theory. Depending on where you fall on the DSM-5 spectrum for conspiracy-addled nonsense, they could be a few DJI Mavic enthusiasts having a laugh, a bunch of small planes, or a full-on alien invasion of our nation’s most consequential state.
But the people who are supposed to know things — the ones whose jobs are to have access to all the technology and equipment afforded by bloated law enforcement budgets, the ones who have security clearance and subpoena power and all the various trappings of authority that the vast majority of us can only dream of — don’t know shit. Actually, it’s worse than that: they think they know shit, and they are willing to confidently stand before the public and say as much, even when they actually don’t know shit.
Here are the best examples I could find of current and former elected leaders and government officials spouting utterly deranged nonsense about the drone sightings.
Jeff Van Drew is a member of Congress from New Jersey, where the bulk of the sightings have taken place. He’s also a member of the House Judiciary Committee, which entitles him to high-level security briefings. He should know shit! But alas, he does not, as evidenced by his completely factless musings about the drones coming from an “Iranian mothership” anchored off the Jersey Shore.
“I’m going to tell you the real deal. Iran launched a mothership that contains these drones,” Van Drew told Fox News. “It’s off the East Coast of the United States of America. They’ve launched drones.”
When someone says they’re going to “tell you the real deal,” you know you’re about to get body-slammed with some grade-A horsepucky.
The Pentagon denied this, but Van Drew doubled down, slamming defense department officials for treating us like we’re “stupid” and withholding information about the drones. And fearing that his fearmongering about Iran was insufficiently fearful, he broadened the scope to include “China” and “somebody else.”
Literally one day later, he walked the whole thing back in a tersely worded statement. (No Fox News appearances for embarrassing mea culpas, I guess.) He acknowledged that the Iranian mothership he previously said on national television was off the coast of the United States was actually — get this — still in Iran.
“This new information only brings us closer to figuring out what is really going on,” Van Drew said. Yes, congressman, thank you for your service.
The drone sightings hysteria has been a golden opportunity for politicians who like to get their hands dirty. If he was still in office, you could picture ex-New York Governor Andrew Cuomo in some flight tower, wearing a parka and a headset, operating the radar equipment himself.
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