Things Are Weird
And no one is really giving us reason to think otherwise.
Super Bowl LXVII was exciting and fun as far as the game went. (Differing opinions have been voiced on the commercials and the halftime show.) Either team could have walked away victorious. A holding call very late in the game roused speculation that the NFL chooses who it wants to win. Honestly, the game of football has always been about human actions, including how the referees call the game. (Instant replay has adjusted some of that, but not all of it.) There was definitely holding on the play in question; even the player on whom it was called admitted that. The argument was, should the ref have overlooked the penalty and let the last few seconds of the game play out? The ref chose to throw the flag. It’s that simple.
We don’t need to get too deep into controversy over things like the Super Bowl, especially since we have enough to be scratching our heads about in this country right now. Things are weird, and nothing that anyone says changes that.
A lot has been made about conspiracy theories over the last several years. Anything that is not confirmed to be true by the government and/or the media is labeled as inaccurate or false. Yet on more than one occasion, we’ve seen alleged misinformation at least partially overturned - as was the case with Hunter Biden’s laptop.
In some instances, it’s getting harder to decide what’s a conspiracy theory and what isn’t. Case in point: what’s been happening recently in the sky.
Two weeks ago, a giant white balloon was shot down off the coast of Myrtle Beach. It had traversed the country, often flying over sensitive areas like the Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, home to nuclear missile silo fields.
Initially, neither the government nor the media raised concerns about the balloon, which was said to be the size of three buses. One of the first articles published appeared to make light of Montanans’ alarm about the balloon; the article also noted that the Chinese insisted the balloon was a civilian craft taking meteorological recordings.
As the balloon made its way across the country, though, suspicions were raised. By the time U.S. forces shot down the balloon over the Atlantic, curiosity had been piqued.
According to CBS News, the State Department said that the balloon contained “collection pod equipment, including high-tech equipment that could collect communications signals and other sensitive information, and solar panels located on the metal truss suspended below the balloon, according to government officials.” Also onboard: equipment that was "clearly for intelligence surveillance.” In other words, it was a spy balloon.
Just a couple of days later, China admitted that another balloon, this one flying over Latin America, was theirs, but that it had deviated off-course. (China didn’t say where the balloon was actually supposed to be going.) Then China took the really mature approach of saying, well, maybe we did fly balloons over America, but the United States has flown its own balloons into our country without permission at least 10 times in the last year. “The U.S. should first reflect upon itself and change course instead of smearing other countries,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said. The White House rejected that claim.
More recently, the United States shot down “shiny, metallic objects” over Northwest Canada and Alaska and above Lake Huron. These balloons were of varying shapes and sizes, but none of them were as large as the one shot down in the Atlantic.
The sudden plethora of balloons spotted (and taken down) over North America raised many eyebrows, but the U.S. government was quick to try to alleviate fears. It’s not that there are more balloons up there, the government said; it’s that we haven’t been looking this closely until now. “In light of the Chinese balloon program and this recent incursion into our airspace, the United States and Canada, through NORAD, have been more closely scrutinizing [North American] airspace, including enhancing our radar capabilities, which . . . may at least partly explain the increase in the objects that have been detected,” explained National Security Council spokesman John Kirby.
Indeed, as Time magazine points out, the skies contain lots of weather balloons, drones and satellites. Most of these are harmless. That’s all well and good, but if the three most recent objects were innocently floating around, why shoot them down?
It’s possible that the defense department is trying to make up for past negligence. The Biden Administration recently noted that at least three Chinese surveillance balloons flew over the United States during the Trump Administration, although the information was not revealed until after Trump left office. Gen. Glen VanHerck, commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command said that the threats were not detected. "And that's a domain awareness gap that we have to figure out."
So how did the U.S. finally discover the “threats that were not detected” while Trump was in office? “…additional means…made us aware of those balloons that were previously approaching North America or transited North America,” Gen. VanHerck said. Translation: Our own country found out after the fact and through some other source that Chinese surveillance balloons were invading our airspace without permission.
With little concrete information to go on about “balloongate,” several theories began to emerge.
One of the least appealing involves World War III. "We know what the Chinese are doing," said China expert Gordon Chang. "They’re engaged in the fastest military buildup since the Second World War. They’re trying to sanctions-proof their regime, and most ominously they’re preparing China’s civilians for war."
According to the Military Times, “The popping of the balloon came on the heels of a leaked memo from an Air Force four-star general predicting a physical conflict between the U.S. and the People’s Republic of China starting as early as the next two years. At the time, it was rebuffed by critics as hyperbolic - and many still consider it so.”
Then there’s the theory that this isn’t about China at all, but instead about UFOs. That was quickly debunked by the White House.
Can you blame some people for wondering if extraterrestrial beings are making frequent visits to our planet? After all, just a few months ago Congress admitted that it was studying the possibility of “cross-domain trans-medium threats to the United States national security.”
At this point, it’s a tossup as to which sounds more appealing: World War III or alien invasion. It would be nice if both were declared conspiracy theories. The truth is, the public doesn’t know what’s going on. If the government knows what’s going on, it’s not telling us and that’s kind of scary. If it doesn’t know what’s going on, that’s even scarier. Until we get some real answers, we’re left to our imaginations. Now would be a really good time to think happy thoughts.