Malicious Balloons Attack!

A person on a beach in San Clemente notices a strange balloon in the sky. They borrow binoculars from a local tourist to get a better look and see a white dot. They discuss different possibilities with the tourist, including government surveillance and unconventional forms of surveillance. The conversation becomes heated and they end up going to a bar to drink. Later, there are reports of someone popping balloons at a birthday party and chasing pigeons while shouting about violations of the Constitution. These incidents cause unrest. Malicious balloons attack. Overhead optics? Or innocuous floating flim-flammery? There I was, standing on the beach in San Clemente, thinking that if the world was indeed flat, I'd be able to see Japan. When a binocular's-wearing local tourist exclaimed with an expletive that something aloft was amiss, I turned to decipher what he was declaring. Balloon! It's one of those consterned balloons that steals what's ours only. With all we spend on the government, you'd think they could do something about them. As I squinted into the vast, wide-open wild blue yonder, I couldn't see anything. After letting the aforementioned Sky Sentry know my eyes were lacking the wherewithal to make out any strange, out-of-the-ordinary shapes, spherical or otherwise, he let me know his opinion by questioning my ability to see. Here, take these things, he said, handing me the binoculars. Now look up over there, where my finger is. I took the field glasses and looked in the direction he was pointing. After a moment of visual adjustment, I could make out a white dot. After relaying my discovery to my new alarmist aide, he regaled me with conspiratorial views of government misbehavior. His proclamations ran the gamut, everything from, it's a false flag operation to distract attention from the military-industrial complex robbing us blind, to the current president not having the mental acuity of a common houseplant and some foreign entity accomplishing espionage while he wanders the White House aimlessly in his pajamas, or something to that effect. When I asked if the distant white dot might be an unmoored giant marshmallow advertising drifting boondoggle or an oversized high school experiment gone awry, he again openly questioned my ability to perceive reality. After an animated discussion, yielding no learning at all by each of us, we endeavored to find common ground by availing ourselves to a local public house, to belly up to the bar and imbibe in a few fermented concoctions meant to render us slightly demented. It was during this time of getting inebriated to the point of befuddlement that the conversation turned to what made up a surveillance contraption. My conversationalist companion held the common belief of conventional information-seeking control apparatuses, ones that fly in space and in our atmosphere. The point I tried to make was there might be other forms of supervisorial machinery, ones that had the appearance of what a bird might represent, or a bat, or a wombat perhaps. A familiar creature that wouldn't raise a second thought at first glance. A computerized cat or a robotic dog. We could use all for security of movement of the unsuspecting sort. That point raised his ankles. I could tell by the look that flashed in his eyes. Alarm pervaded his countenance, or perhaps his visage. He slammed down the last bit of his beverage and took action to retrieve a wallet from his rear pocket. Once he laid out a few bills on the bar to pay for his libations, he was off with haste and without a word. Later that evening, there were reports regaling the patrons of the tavern of some maniac popping balloons at a child's birthday party. The purveyor of pizza chased the purported popper from his parlor. Then, there were tales of a loony chasing pigeons in the park while shouting tropes of violation of our beloved Constitution by those that are sworn to uphold it. And people wonder why these reported occurrences cause unrest.