Gimme the good old daze
Pols spoil fun of flying saucers, X-Files, E.T.
UFO sightings were a fringe thing in the ’60s, a fun mainstream pursuit in the ’70s (a friend of mine staged one with a frisbee and a camera that produced a suitably grainy black-and-white image that could have been used on “In Search Of” and probably was) and took a regrettable detour into an obsession with alien bodycavity exploration techniques in the ’80s.
At the moment when the public decided aliens from the Fleepgort Star System probably didn’t travel 11 million miles to rummage around in the bodily orifices of National Enquirer readers, the UFO industry went the way of the “Star Trek” convention, and became a laughingstock. Those among us who still cared in the ’90s continued to get information from a documentary series called “The X-Files,” but otherwise things were pretty quiet on the spaceman beat.
On Tuesday, Congress held a hearing on UFOs, now known as Unexplained Aerial Phenomena so people won’t giggle as much, for the first time in 50 years: finally, a stimulus package for the imagination! (And one that didn’t cost much.) In opening statements, congressmen assured us that this is a really serious subject, y’all, and there was to be no joking around, nor was anyone to call anyone crazy.
Then Adam Schiff ripped off his fake humanoid skull and revealed that he actually has the head of a neon-glowing extraterrestrial salamander. But since this was not surprising, it wasn’t reported. (Don’t bother checking news sites; they’re all in on the coverup, plus Anderson Cooper is an actual Klingon).
“For too long, the stigma associated with UAPs has gotten in the way of intelligence,” noted Rep. Andre Carson (D-Ind.). “Pilots avoided reporting, or were laughed at when they did. DOD officials relegated the issue to the back room, or swept it under the rug entirely, fearful of a skeptical national security community.”
Proof with Lost Ark?
So let’s get things out in the open . . . but, erm, the good stuff is classified. “It’s important for the public to know,” said Carson, “that classification exists for national security, not to hide the truth.” Yeah, right. Roswell!!! We learned that up to 400 UAP were reported to national intelligence between 2004 and 2021 and 80% of them were recorded on more than one instrument. On 11 occasions, military planes have had “near-misses” with these objects, as Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence Scott Bray explained. “Near-miss” kind of sounds like “You can’t meet my girlfriend, she lives in Canada.” Where’s the hard evidence? Wouldn’t some of these things have crashed by now, if only by malfunction or battery exhaustion?
Sure, but if anything that was still Unidentified or Unexplained was discovered, we all know it’d go straight into that giant warehouse where they keep the Lost Ark. They’ll never tell us what they know. And because everyone is in on it, no one will ask senior intelligence officials tough questions like why so many aliens did prostate exams on all those hillbillies in the 1980s.
Just to make things extra-boring and earthbound, Rep. Darin LaHood (R-Ill.) badgered Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence
Ron Moultrie about “disinformation” and asked why there weren’t “legal consequences” for spreading lies about what’s in the skies.
He might as well have asked E.T. what he thinks of the filibuster. The whole point of this stuff is fantasy. UFOs are only fun to think about if they promise a link to another planet — or, if you like, an escape from this one. If it’s all just drones run by the Chinese/the Russians/that weird physics student with the homestyle haircut, UFOs aren’t fun anymore. They’re just one more once-promising technological breakthrough somebody is using to get rich from spying on us. Among UAP, there is a lot of “clutter, Mylar balloons and air trash,” says Bray. The truth is out there! And it’s garbage. A fair summation of our era.
But if we wanted to hear all about buzzing drones in Washington, all we’d have to do is tune into the next Chuck Schumer press conference.