In case you’ve been preoccupied by things like COVID-19’s Delta variant, the U.S. House of Representatives requiring its members to wear masks while (A) vaccinated Canadians are prohibited from entering the U.S. and (B) unvaccinated illegal aliens pour across the U.S. southern border uninhibited, unmasked, and untested — or if you’ve been distracted by the U.S. Senate voting to proceed with an infrastructure bill that hasn’t been written (no text yet at all) — you might have missed some really big news: UFOs are back.
EDITOR’S NOTE: SEE PRIOR PARTS IN THIS SERIES BELOW⤵︎
Well, sort of. We can’t call them UFOs anymore more. Now we have to call them Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP). There are many reasons for that, of course. But good luck trying to get anyone to give you one, let alone one that makes any sense. In the absence of any such explanation, however, UAP have now been escalated in importance to a point at which the Office of the Director of National Intelligence or ODNI (national intelligence is my favorite part), has prepared a report entitled, Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. Said report was prepared:
in response to the provision in Senate Report 116-233, accompanying the Intelligence Authorization Act (IAA) for Fiscal Year 2021, that the DNI, in consultation with the Secretary of Defense (SECDEF), is to submit an intelligence assessment of the threat posed by unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) and the progress the Department of Defense Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF) has made in understanding this threat. This report provides an overview for policymakers of the challenges associated with characterizing the potential threat posed by UAP while also providing a means to develop relevant processes, policies, technologies, and training for the U.S. military and other U.S. Government (USG) personnel if and when they encounter UAP, so as to enhance the Intelligence Community’s (IC) ability to understand the threat.
The nuance that’s lost on most folks, the dots they fail to connect, is that the potential threat posed by UAP — in fact, potential threats in general — is much easier to assess and characterize than actual threats. That’s why people can die from COVID vaccines not yet approved by the FDA and nobody gives a shit. It’s why illegal immigrants can pour into the United States unchecked, undocumented, and unmolested — trafficking drugs, weapons, and human beings — and nobody gives a shit. It’s why politicians can promise trillions upon trillions of spending programs without any explanation of where the money will come from and nobody gives a shit. It’s why the most marginal players can call the most outrageous shots and nobody gives a shit.
If any of those things were recognized as the actual threats they are, something would have to be done about them. And we don’t have the appetite, political or otherwise, for doing anything about them, thank you. We’re quite content to abide our trivial distractions and make Kick the Can our national pastime. And what’s the big deal? It’s not like we’re going to live forever, right?
Life Imitates Art
On September 30, 1963, exactly four months before my 10th birthday, an episode of The Outer Limits aired. It was called The Architects of Fear. I watched it then and have never forgotten it. In it, a group of scientists fears the Cold War will escalate to a nuclear Armageddon. They decide to create the appearance of an invasion from outer space to unite humanity against a common enemy. After studying the environment on the planet Theta, capturing a Thetan from a downed UFO, and extracting proteins and enzymes from the Thetan, they draw lots to determine which of them will be surgically and physiologically altered to become a Thetan. The creature will then land at the United Nations with a laser weapon to stir the world to act as one against the perceived threat.
But the spaceship goes off course and crashes in a wooded area near the lab from which it was launched. Attempting to scare off three armed hunters, the creature disintegrates their car with the laser weapon. In retaliation, the hunters shoot the creature. The creature staggers back to the lab, collapses, and dies. The ending narration says this:
Scarecrows and magic and other fatal fears do not bring people closer together. There is no magic substitute for soft caring and hard work, for self-respect and mutual love. If we can learn this from the mistake these frightened men made, then their mistake will not have been merely grotesque, it would at least have been a lesson. A lesson, at last, to be learned.
Twelve years and 12 days earlier — on September 18, 1951 (I wasn’t even an idea yet) — a classic film was released: The Day the Earth Stood Still. In it, a human-like alien visitor, Klaatu, accompanied by a powerful robot, comes to Earth to warn us that our propensity for aggression and violence will not be tolerated by the intergalactic community — that if his message is ignored, Earth will be reduced to a burned out cinder.
Like The Architects of Fear, the purpose of The Day the Earth Stood Still was to identify the real threat of our propensity to destroy ourselves and to prevent that threat from becoming reality. Unlike The Architects of Fear and The Day the Earth Stood Still, the purpose of the present-day hubbub about UFOs or UAP is to use a potential threat to distract us from real ones. In this context, potential threat is synonymous with smoke and mirrors, legerdemain, chicanery, underhandedness, and hypocrisy. And it constitutes the blatant abdication of leadership and responsibility.
I’m not saying I don’t believe in UFOs. I’m not saying I don’t believe in life on other planets. I’m not saying there isn’t more intelligent life elsewhere in the universe than there is here. (How’s that for setting the bar low?) And I’m not saying I wouldn’t like to know more about UAP. But I’m not ready to assume we’re being threatened extraterrestrially in any way. Even if we were, the threat couldn’t be anywhere near as dire as the threat we pose to ourselves. And it certainly can’t be any more cataclysmic than white supremacy. Good grief.
What I am saying is that we’ll be hornswoggled every time we allow ourselves to be. This UFO/UAP stuff is hogwash. And its timing is no accident. Forewarned is forearmed.
How about now? Can we wake up now?
I noticed that we haven’t heard anything about Nessie in quite a while. I guess I now know why.
Don’t give up too soon, Charlotte. I believe Nessie’s due to make an appearance in the Tidal Basin in Washington, DC, any day now.