Shot them down!!!

 

Are we crazier than our grandparents?

Show trials in Moscow, Japanese troops in China, fascism surging through Europe, the world of 1938 was an anxious place when the Mercury Theater and its 23-year-old director presented a dramatization of H.G. Wells's 1898 novel The War of the Worlds on the CBS radio network.  The extent of the panic this caused has been a subject of study ever since.  A. Brad Schwartz suggested in Broadcast Hysteria:  Orson Welles's War of the Worlds and the Invention of Fake News that it was largely invented by newspapers which saw radio as an existential threat to their news monopoly.   A lot of people did grab the kids and head for the hills, but at least as many wrote to CBS to tell them how much they enjoyed the show once they realized it was a play.  (Welles's instantly recognizable voice was a giveaway.)

We may be in the "second time as farce" stage about threats from space as reports of nocturnal drones over New Jersey -- again, New Jersey -- roil the internet.  Here's one reasoned response from a person in Florida:

There are already so many tin-hat conspiracies in circulation, the drones or planes or whatever they are will have to find a place in the crowd.  Life was simpler in 1938 -- leathery creatures from Mars were here because they were here, zapping earthlings as a matter of course until defeated by earth diseases to which they had no immunity (as indigenous peoples were exterminated in past centuries, usually after the Europeans arrived).  Now there ought to be a competition to see who can weave the most all-encompassing theory involving UFOs, chemtrails, 5G technology, countries like Iran and Russia, one-world government, covid vaccines, the Deep State and that weird smell that still overhangs Secaucus.  At least two ex-governors are sure the whatevers are spying on them, as are Peter Doocy, Bill O'Reilly and -- say, why aren't the libs in a panic?  What do they know?

Once you decide it's time to worry, everything will worry you.  The mundane probable explanations -- planes landing, kids screwing around with drones -- are dismissed.  In a couple of weeks thousands of people will get drones as holiday gifts.  You can buy one from Amazon for under a hundred dollars and they look sinister as hell.  The ones with cameras could very well watch as you walk the dog or take out the garbage.  So could your neighbors.  So what?  Wave!  Why this impulse to shoot things down?   

One of the Fox bottle-blondes, Jacqui Heinrich, demanded to know if this is "potentially a Pearl Harbor moment, like with the Japanese submarines surveilling in the waters off Hawaii in the months leading up to the attack."  A Democratic Congressman named Jim Hines tried to talk her off the ledge:  "Our adversaries that would wish us harm have billion-dollar satellites over our heads right now that are capable of doing what we do to them, which is observing...they're not going to put technology over Newark, New Jersey, that could fall out of the sky and we would capture it."  Aha, so that's what the libs know!  They know how to think.

Remember the Chinese "weather balloon" that drifted across the country early in 2023 before an F-22 shot it down off South Carolina?  The recovered wreckage indicated that its spy equipment had not been activated.  It may have been the work of a relatively low-level official, as President Xi was unaware of it until informed by President Biden.  I realize this will not impress the conspiraciologists but by definition facts never do.  Keep watching the skies.  I will continue to rely on the professionals.