James Morrow: Little green men or not, the truth is out there, it’s just a shame no one is telling it

What makes the mysterious drone swarm besieging the US so compelling, no matter what they turn out to be, has been the response of the government, writes James Morrow.

Who knew that the hottest item on everyone’s Christmas list this year would be drones?

Or more specifically, answers to the question, Just what is up with the countless reports of mystery drones buzzing suburban homes, military installations, and even one of Donald Trump’s golf courses in suburban New Jersey just outside Manhattan?

For those just catching up to the story, locals – mostly in suburban New Jersey – have been complaining about weird swarms of drones or other flying objects buzzing through their skies every evening, from sunset to about 11pm.

Some of the reports have been alarming: craft the size of 4WDs hovering, zooming off, and disappearing.

Other claimed sightings have been bizarre, including suggestions of unexplainable glowing “orbs”, possibly from another dimension, acting as interstellar advance parties before the little green men show up.

It barely needs repeating that the New York area has enough to cope with already managing the flow of aliens from right here on Earth.

A shot of what is said to be a drone over New Jersey. Picture: X

But the weirdest thing – and what makes the drones story so compelling, no matter what they turn out to be – has been the response of government.

Remember Leslie Nielsen’s police detective character in The Naked Gun telling a crowd, “please disperse, nothing to see here” as a fireworks factory went up in flames behind him?

The government, or at least the Biden administration, has been about as believable.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, already considered one of the Biden adminstration’s least trustworthy members for his “this is fine” response to the border crisis, has given a series of strange and contradictory answers about the drones.

“We know of no foreign involvement with respect to the sightings in the Northeast,” Mayorkas told a weekend political chat show Sunday, a day after he said that they didn’t know what the drones were, except that they were “no threat.”

A little later Mayorkas suggested that a change in rules allowing drones to operate at night might be behind it all. OK, sure.

Got that?

We don’t know what they are, we know that they are not foreign, we know that they are not a threat.

It does not take an advanced degree in logic to see the problem here.

And this is why this story is more that a question of what all these lights in the skies are all about, and whether there is something sinister going on or whether they are just plain planes.

Not only does the ongoing saga of UFOs over the suburbs tickle all sorts of quite natural fears about government incompetence and fears of foreign invasion or terrorist attacks (around 750 New Jerseyites died on 9/11).

It also serves as an illustration of the gap between an officialdom that is addicted to lying to stay in power and ordinary citizens who are regularly accused of spreading misinformation or being a threat to democracy when they don’t play along.

No wonder Donald Trump, who is about to return to office on a promise of dismantling self-serving and truth-obscuring government agencies, weighed in Monday.

US Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Picture: AFP

“The government knows what is happening … something strange is going on,” he said.

And he’s probably right: It is simply impossible that deep in some secure conference room, officials aren’t briefing the true story, whatever it is.

In the meantime and in the absence of anything more reassuring or at least official, plenty of folk are assuming the worst.

One popular theory is that the drones are fitted with gamma ray radiation detectors, preparing to deal with an impending terrorist “dirty bomb”.

A variation of this notion suggests they are fitted with sensors trying to find a nuke that went astray in 1994, back when Ukraine gave up its atomic weapons after the fall of the USSR.

Others think the drones are coming from an Iranian mothership off the coast, though given what we’ve seen of Tehran’s warfighting competence in recent months, that seems to be a bit of a stretch.

That said, given the way the Biden administration lied about – and refused to shoot down – a Chinese spy balloon hovering ovder sensitive areas like an ICBM missile field in Montana, you get where people are coming from.

Add to this the recent spate of drone incursions over military facilities and civilian airports in the US and UK, and other bizarre stories including a Jordanian national on a terror watch list who tried to breach security at a crucial Marine base outside Washington, and things start to look more suspicious.

Little green men or not, the truth is out there.

It’s just a shame no one is telling it.