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As far as end-of-the-year news stories go, the drones-over-New-Jersey story has been a fairly fun source of intrigue. Federal agencies report having received several thousand tips from public sightings of moving lights in the sky in New Jersey and along the East Coast; the Federal Aviation Administration is taking the situation seriously enough that it has banned drones from flying over “critical New Jersey infrastructure.”
Much of the rash of sightings is, according to experts, likely attributable to a combination of legitimate, scheduled airplane flights, helicopters, legally operated hobbyist drones, and celestial objects, with speeds, sizes, and distances misjudged by the error-prone human eye. The federal government has assured the public that there is nothing unusual or inexplicable about the reports. Still, valid questions remain about at least some of the sightings, and the White House hasn’t exactly said what it knows. That’s left plenty of room for people to throw around theories with varying degrees of outlandishness—that these sightings could be the work of foreign actors, hidden government projects, or even angels.
Sensing the rising public interest, lawmakers have gotten in on the discourse as well: Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, for example, posted a video of distant lights—which seem to just be the constellation Orion—and complained that the federal government was not taking drone sightings seriously enough. “The American people deserve answers and action now,” he wrote. New Jersey Rep. Jeff Van Drew boldly speculated that they could be from an Iranian “mothership.” Donald Trump referenced the drones in a crude joke about the former governor of New Jersey.
The only realm of speculation politicians are staying away from? Extraterrestrials.
From a public-relations point of view, that makes sense, given that belief in alien life forms that visit Earth is considered, well, silly. But plenty of these politicians’ constituents are talking about aliens, if chatter on social media and casual polling are any indication. And you can bet politicians are hearing about space aliens from concerned citizens around the country. Because thanks to some fairly radical changes in how Americans assemble their personal creeds, the belief in extraterrestrial visitations has become far from fringe. In fact, more Americans believe in alien spacecraft than ever before.
According to Christopher Bader, a sociology professor at Chapman University who has polled Americans on their belief in the paranormal, some 35 percent of Americans believe that aliens have visited the Earth in modern times, and about a quarter of the population believes that at least some UFO sightings are extraterrestrial in origin. That number is well above where it was a couple of decades ago: A 1996 poll from Newsweek found only 20 percent of Americans were inclined to believe in alien UFOs; a Baylor religion survey in 2005 similarly found only 24 percent of people did. And Bader’s data isn’t an outlier: A Pew survey from 2021 found that more than 50 percent of people polled believed that “UFOs reported by people in the military are likely evidence of intelligent life outside Earth.”
That trend is not just about aliens. Overall, Americans are coming to embrace the paranormal in a multitude of ways. Bader’s polling found that a majority of Americans believe in hauntings—a 16-point increase from 2005—and belief in psychic powers, while still relatively low, has roughly doubled in the past 15 years or so. These beliefs, he said, have been slowly but steadily growing.
As Bader sees it, one of the main reasons behind the general American embrace of the strange and paranormal is the long-running and steady decline of religious institutions. Churches, he said, can often serve as a kind of dampener on paranormal beliefs: Part of the role of a denomination is to lay out a particular creed. That creed may be supernatural—God, after all, is beyond the realm of scientific proof—but institutional religious doctrine does not usually include any mentions of space aliens.
Now that fewer and fewer people attend religious services, “it’s common in surveys to find someone who says, ‘I believe Jesus is the one and only son of God, and also my house is haunted, and there might be a Bigfoot,’ ” Bader said. “People didn’t use to believe all those things. Churches would say, ‘Here is the correct package of supernatural beliefs you’re allowed to hold.’ ”
In recent years, faith has become more personal, idiosyncratic, and unpredictable. “UFOs and ghosts and psychic powers—as organized religion plummets, those are growing rapidly,” Bader said. “Once you no longer have your church telling you, ‘Here’s what you’re supposed to believe about the world,’ it frees you to explore other things.”
There’s a common misconception, he said, that Americans are becoming godless secularists; the reality, instead, is that Americans are leaving organized religion in droves but remaining believers, in some way or another. Many Americans who abandon their parents’ old denominations still pray, still believe in an afterlife, still believe in something beyond the physical world. Actual atheism remains quite rare—atheists are only about 5 percent of the population, according to Pew survey data. And committed atheists tend to be pretty skeptical when it comes to paranormal matters. But the vast middle category of spiritual or casually religious Americans are much more open.
This trend crosses demographics. The only real political element to paranormal belief, Bader said, is that people who attend more conservative churches tend to reject paranormal explanations of unexplained phenomena simply because those churches tend to teach that people should see strange things as demonic manifestations. (In other words: UFOs could be the work of the devil, but not aliens.) Otherwise, it’s all a matter of whether someone is casual enough about their religion to embrace the strange and surreal. (Bader did exempt Bigfoot— which he said is more of interest to an outdoorsy, gun-loving, and decidedly Republican demographic—from the nonpartisan rule.)
These changes in the American faith landscape help explain the public’s growing belief in the extraterrestrial—and presumably, the belief that the East Coast drones are exactly that. But the other major factor for growing belief in extraterrestrial spacecraft is the cratering of public trust in government. Decline in public trust comes with a rise in belief in conspiracy theories.
A huge portion of the New Jersey drone speculators appear to believe that shadowy government figures are hiding something from the public—no matter what the drones might be. Podcaster Joe Rogan has floated the idea that the drones are meant to inure the public to such aerial objects, to “normalize the idea of us being invaded” because “they know some real UAPs [unidentified anomalous phenomena] are on their way.” Other conspiracy theorists have revived an old claim that a staged alien invasion would provide cover to create an authoritarian global government.
MAGA Republican politicians are fanning the flames, seemingly in large part to amplify distrust of the Biden administration. (Fox News speculated, for example, that anger over the drones will turn New Jersey red.) “The government knows what is happening,” Trump said in comments to reporters on Monday. “Our military knows and our president knows. And for some reason, they want to keep people in suspense.”
The most emphatic element of the MAGA response is the final telling detail—one that truly reflects the American soul: Encouraging citizens to shoot whatever it is out of the sky.
“I’m going to tell you right now that if they try to tell us all to stay inside, stay home, shelter in place ‘FOR OUR SAFETY’ from the drones, there is no way in hell I will comply with that absolute bullshit,” Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote on Truth Social. “I’ll shoot the drones down myself along with every other red blooded freedom loving American.”
Here’s our future president’s post on the matter from Dec. 13:
Mystery Drone sightings all over the Country. Can this really be happening without our government’s knowledge. I don’t think so! Let the public know, and now. Otherwise, shoot them down!!! DJT
What does it all add up to? The American response to unexplained aerial phenomena is clarifying—not about what’s in the sky, but for who we are: mistrustful people, lovers of the paranormal, eclectic in our beliefs, and trigger-happy (in word if not in deed). The New Jersey drone mystery may or may not get a clear explanation. But it has already told us something important about ourselves.
