Zeynep Tufekci has a piece in The New York Times trying to explain the “drone panic” that has (supposedly) overtaken New Jersey. I live and work in central New Jersey, and have neither seen any drones nor encountered any panic, but am only too happy to borrow the premise.

Tufekci attempts a couple of explanations for the drone panic (and the drones), but conspicuously fails to mention one of the most prominent ones out there. About a week ago, South Jersey Congressman Jeff Van Drew vehemently suggested that the drones had been launched by an Iranian mothership, the implication being that they were imminently about to attack us, and constituted a major national security threat. He cited no real evidence for his claims, accused the Pentagon of covering up the threat, doubled down for awhile, and then retracted the whole thing. Van Drew is a standard-issue right-wing imbecile, but the explanation for making such claims is obvious. It’s called a guilty conscience. A belatedly guilty conscience.

After decades of sending drones abroad to terrorize and kill people, it’s now belatedly occurred to Americans, or at least to central Jerseyans, that they are not immune. Foreign powers have the same technology as we do, and have the same motivation for killing us as we claim for killing them. We’re afraid of them. They’re afraid of us. We’ve terrorized them and killed them. They might want to return the favor. No one wants to talk about it. No one has to.

In short, I have no explanation for the drones themselves, or whatever they are. I only know why the phenomenon has riveted attention. It’s because people are afraid to die, and the drones not only remind them of their mortality and vulnerability, but remind them uneasily of why they have good reason to remember those things. The reason is that lots of people want Americans dead. In other words, the people about to celebrate the birth of Baby Jesus and the Maccabean defense of the Second Temple are quietly being reminded that they are the Romans and Seleucids of the 21st century. I suspect that few Jerseyans remember how those powers fell, but maybe it’s enough to remember that they did.

Leave it to establishment journalists to evade the obvious, but it’s too obvious to miss. We don’t need Princeton professors or The New York Times to figure out which way the drones are blowing. To paraphrase the Weather Underground, wars eventually come home–first in imagination, then in fire. If Jeff Van Drew can figure it out, so can you. And you might want to. Sooner rather than later.