Trains, Boats, and Drones – Stop Lying to Us

There has been study after study about the “art of lying.” So many that you would believe that those who lie the most would be better at it than they are. Apparently, among politicians – particularly those at the highest levels of the government – lying is a necessity of life. Lying is basically the oxygen which sustains the life of government officials. And amongst many of them lying has become so regular that they themselves can no longer distinguish between their lies and the truth. As my father would say about another local lawyer: “He lies when the truth would serve him better.”

And while it is to be expected that Presidents lie periodically to avoid the truth, it is virtually impossible to absorb the fact that an entire Administration lies regularly about everything. Worse yet they are so bad at it that their audience is always incredulous – eye-rolling, mouth-agape, fist-balling and red-faced. Not so much from the lie itself but from the audacity to tell it yet again. And yet that will be President Joe Biden’s (D) legacy – a whole administration of inept liars. Take the latest kerfuffle over the drones that have been spotted flying at night over New Jersey and surrounding areas as a prime example. Administration officials including the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the military have offered various and contradictory responses. At various points we have been told:

• That there are no drones and thus you should stop believing your lying eyes
• That they don’t know what they are but we are safe so just ignore them
• That most of the sightings are civilian aircraft without acknowledging those that are not.
• That they are not military, ignoring that they could be contractors for the military
• That they are not Russian or Iranian, ignoring the fact that they could be Chinese or any “client state” of Russia, Iran, or Communist China.
• That there is no connection between these drones and the Chinese Communist “balloons” that traversed the states previously
• That they are not from one of our intelligence services while ignoring the fact that our intelligence services have a long track record of spying on our citizens.
• That they are not launched from the sea while ignoring the fact that you cannot rule out the sea unless you can identify from whence they come
• And finally, that they are not from space aliens while ignoring that until you can determine what they are you cannot rule out anything.

All of these “opaque” deflections and yet we are told that the United States possesses satellite imagery capable of telling whether a dime dropped in the desert is a head or a tail. That we have the capability of intercepting, decoding, and tracking communications from all over the world. That we can track the movement of ships, missiles and military men and equipment all over the world. That we “own the night” meaning that the fact that these drones only fly at night is irrelevant. In other words, the belief that Mr. Biden and the military establishment don’t know the “who, what, where and when” of these drone flights is pure bat guano. In point of fact, President-elect Donald Trump made the same point at his press conference on Monday – acknowledging that our intelligence capability is so great that we can identify the very time and point of departure and return of these drones. The government knows but they have chosen to lie instead. It is an instance in which Mr. Biden has set the tone of lying when the truth would serve the nation better and his administration has adopted as its first line of response – always.

The result of all of this is that the nation has lost confidence in its government. A representative democracy requires trust in the government otherwise it leads to either anarchy or totalitarianism. I say this not as another example of Mr. Biden’s ineptitude but rather as a reminder to Mr. Trump that the nation will never recover unless the people recover their trust in their government. There is nothing we can do about Mr. Biden – the totality of the mess he has created and the lies he has told will eventually be known. There is plenty that Mr. Trump, his administration and the members of Congress can do to re-establish trust. And it needs to proceed each and every decision they make.

And frankly, it is never too early to begin – even to the point of telling the American people what is behind these drone sightings once he has been sworn in as President and thus the final arbiter as to what is, or is not, classified.