While Elon Musk continues to prove that “smart” and “dumb” are not necessarily mutually exclusive terms as he and nutcase former Hollywood star Mel Gibson grind the wheel with various QAnon conspiracy theories, Republicans in the House of Representatives continued their “deep state” conspiracy hearings with a comic turn, as their “serious” investigations have been floundering haplessly. This time they are wasting taxpayer money “investigating” the “concealment” of “evidence” of UFOs, now with the appellation “unidentified aerial phenomenon” to make such sightings sound less like comic book material.
House Republicans dug up some guy named David Grusch, a former Air Force major, who claimed he was tasked during the Trump administration to “investigate” reports of UAPs since the 1930s, and he claimed, among other things, that “non-human biologics” had been found at an alleged crash site, and the U.S. government has been attempting to “reverse engineer” alien technology. This is really “exciting” stuff, gushed Republican Rep. Glenn Grothman, according to a report on the hearings in TIME magazine.
Of course, as closer inspection reveals, like the rest of the complete waste of taxpayer money that is Republican representation in the House, this was all for “show,” nothing about anything of serious concerns about the problems confronting the country, like climate change and its destructive impact. There were more holes in Grusch’s tales than a machine gun blast into tissue paper, and every request for names or evidence was greeted with “classified” or “not authorized to speak.”
The Pentagon was quicker in its reaction to Grusch’s testimony than it was to the January 6 insurrection, asserting that there is no evidence of extraterrestrial life or materials that has been recovered on this planet. We can assume that Grusch got his information from the usual conspiracy types that only the true believers still listen to.
TIME, however, noted that while there may be no physical evidence of a visitation by “alien” life, that doesn’t mean that “aliens” haven’t visited this country, and not of the kind that white nationalists like Laura Ingraham think of (the invasion of subhuman alien vermin crossing the border), but uninvited visitors like that Chinese “weather balloon” that crossed over the country recently, or the ones China (or it’s fronts) is apparently planting with the purchase of mostly worthless “farmland” near U.S. Air Force bases.
Now, I am not one of those who poo-poos the theory that there does exist extraterrestrial life forms that are at least as smart as us (which isn’t saying much). After all, I am a child of the Seventies, and the National Enquirer had stories about UFO sightings almost every week. There was even the Project Blue Book investigation that was conducted by the Air Force that ultimately came up with a list of sightings that could not be explained completely. But like the Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories, only the “possibility” was there, not any actual evidence that it was so.
Of course it makes “sense” to believe that extraterrestrial life actually exists in the seemingly endless galaxy (if there is evidence that the human mind’s belief in its own existence was planted by a higher being, that is a good place to start). It would seem “logically” foolish to believe that we are the only intelligent beings in the whole of the universe, but they are likely no more “advanced” than we are, unless they had a few thousand years head start on us and didn’t destroy their homeworld and themselves first, like we seem destined to do.
What are the chances that intelligent life has visited this planet from another world? Well, there is certainly a “chance” that has happened; in my youth I would have put the chances at 50-50. But I have grown more cynical in my old age, and today I put the chances of that as next to none, but I am willing to accept being “wrong” if proven so—and so far there is no real “proof.”
When I was 13 or 14 and living in rural Wisconsin, I was sitting in the backyard when I observed a strange bright light moving slowly to the right near the horizon as the sun was setting, and suddenly it seemed to dart rapidly to the left, and then just “vanished.” I never told anyone about having seen this “UFO,” and remembering it now makes me think that it had a “natural” explanation, since whatever it was only appeared within a fraction of my field of vision. Not that I was seeing something that wasn’t there, but likely an optical illusion of some sort.
I kind of wish
that there was actually more intelligent life in the universe that would pay us
a visit and take me away from this shitty world we have turned this place into, like in the Ron Howard film Cocoon,
but that isn’t any more likely to happen than the human race being intelligent
enough to “fix” the planet we already live on, seeing that most people are
completely self-absorbed within their own narcissism to look further ahead than their own noses.
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