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Further developments on the ayy lmao front
You may recall a few weeks ago, former intelligence officer David Grusch came out with claims that the US has several alien spacecraft in its possession, and has been studying and reverse-engineering them for decades. While claims like this have floated around for decades, including from former government employees, Grusch was different because of his undeniable credentials, and because he is going through 'proper' whistleblower channels.
This was the latest act in a drama that goes back to 2017 (well, 1947, but let's not get ahead of ourselves), when Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal published a piece in the New York Times disclosing the existence of a pentagon program dedicated to studying UFOs, known as AATIP (or AAWSAP, depending on when and where) led by a man called Lue Elizondo. This sparked an apparent sea change in government, and UFOs and aliens, formerly dismissed out of hand, began to be taken more seriously.
Everyone from Obama to former CIA director John Brennan started dropping hints that hey maybe aliens might possibly could be here. Some apparently very sober Navy pilots came forward and shared their apparently inexplicable experiences on 60 minutes. Lue Elizondo did the talk-show circuit.
'UFOs' were rebranded 'UAPs' since over the past few decades, 'UFO' had become synonymous with 'flying saucer.' Congress held its first UFO hearings in over fifty years. A new office, AARO, was founded to investigate and classify UAP sightings..
Well, now the latest development. Chuck Schumer has sponsored a congressional amendment with bipartisan support mandating that, if it exists, any alien biological or technological material, or any evidence of non-human intelligence (and yes the bill uses those terms) held by any private or illegal government entity be turned over to congress.
I've been pretty skeptical about this whole thing. NY Post journalist Steven Greenstreet provides an alternative narrative, where this is the result of a small but fanatical, well-financed, and well-motivated group of UFO/paranormal fanatics that has been pushing all of this stuff for years in and outside of government, without any real proof to back any of it up. He has provided evidence that AATIP started out not as a 'UFO program' but as a pet project of senator Harry Reid, who in conjunction with Robert Bigelow, another big-time paranormal fan, wanted first and foremost to conduct a study of Skinwalker Ranch, which they believe(d) to be a hot-bed of supernatural activity, including werewolves and (as Greenstreet never tires of pointing out) "dinobeavers." While the media has focused on the apparently more grounded, sober claims of mysterious craft in the sky demonstrating apparent technological superiority to any known human craft, a lot of people don't realize just how closely aliens and UFOs are tied up with werewolves, bigfoot, demons, ghosts, remote viewing, and every other kind of woo.
That said, now that Chuck Schumer is sponsoring legislation that boils down to "show me the aliens!" it's getting harder for me to believe that this is all down to a small band of committed UFO nuts taking everybody (themselves included) for a ride. I'm still skeptical, and I still don't think this is going to end with a flying saucer being wheeled in front of congress. But it seems increasingly undeniable that something is going on here. The lazy counter is "it's a psyop" but one has to ask, "a psyop to what end?" To increase government funding for the military? I don't think the military needs to put on a dog and pony show like this to squeeze some extra dollars out of congress. To "distract us"? This stuff tends to not be front-page news, actually. I don't think a lot of people have even heard about this new amendment. To fake an alien invasion and use it as a springboard for a one-world government? I kinda doubt it. To scare Russia and China? That would be the most plausible version of the "psyop" hypothesis I think, but it still doesn't ring true for me.
Another possibility is this: it is known that the government has, for ulterior motives, psyopped people into believing in UFOs and ultimately driven them insane.. It's entirely possible that this is all 'sincere' insofar as, within the tangled web that is the US federal government, there are SAPs staffed at least in part by people who believe they're studying or have studied alien spacecraft or alien bodies, even though they aren't, because they've been lied to or misled by their colleagues and superiors.
IMO at this point, that's the most likely explanation.
Or maybe it really is aliens.
As to the culture war angle, interestingly, with the exception of Kristen Gillibrand, who is not the leftiest of dems, most of the representatives and senators who have been vocal and active in pushing for UAP transparency have been republicans like Marco Rubio, Tim Burchett, Mike Gallagher, and Anna Paulina Luna. If some government official does come out and say, "yes, okay, fine we have a flying saucer in the basement" it is interesting to think that aliens might become a new culture war battlefield, with aliens-are-real being right coded and aliens-are-fake being left coded. But seeing how in-flux political alignments were in the early months of COVID, who knows?
The X-Files captured a moment in time when conspiracy-theorizing was more bipartisan. Within the context of that content, the government and national leaders were mostly engaged in cover-up to hide the truth of the actual subject matter of those conspiracies, which were a giant nebulous "other." That stands in sharp contrast with today where the conspiracy-theories are much more niche, partisan, and point the finger at the government and real people rather than a fictional entity.
It seems quaint to think of a time when the biggest conspiracies a baby boomer would come across would be aliens, bigfoot, etc. I think part of the reason this stuff is given oxygen is because it harkens to a time when being a "conspiracy theorist" meant something completely different, and more benign, than it means today. Back then, that conspiracy mythos brought people together more than it pushed them apart, even people with different political beliefs could have a discussion about aliens or bigfoot. Now they just live in entirely different universes, and the "conspiracy theories" are that the other side is irredeemably evil.
Your comment reminds me of this video about Deus Ex in which the guy talks about how much the cultural baggage around the term "conspiracy theorist" has shifted since the game's release in 2000.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=UN1GJLBM8Wc
For anyone debating wasting 22 minutes watching this, it is a left-coded video essay about the author, having been subsumed into the successor ideology, becoming uncomfortable with his previous enjoyment of Deus Ex now that the subject matter is more right-coded. He goes on to call Gamergate and other grievances “conspiracy theories”.
If the exercise wasn't so depressing, I think I'd start collecting these sorts of videos for a documentary or something. There's a thousand things I find wrong with the successor ideology, and I think I could suffer through most of them, even the ones resulting in the loss of human life and lowering of living standards across the board, but brainwashing someone into putting away their favorite toy (publically!) hits me right in the heart.
The march of progress may continue unabated, but I think this sort of stuff is getting memory holed, and I'd like to force people to remember it.
Why the assumption that this person cannot make his own decisions and can only be "brainwashed"?
Why the assumption that brainwashing is contradictory with making your own decision?
I believe he's brainwashed for the same reason I believe Pavlik Morozov was. Not that "I don't like my favorite game, it's for rightoids now" is the same as selling out your own parents, and on the other hand it very well may be that Pavlik was a little rat psychopath who never loved his parents and communists just gave him an opportunity to shine, but assuming we're dealing with psychologically normal people, I believe that not only is it natural to protect the things you love, it's perverse to self-flagellate over having loved something. I've seen turned-away-from-the-life-of-sin-born-again-Christians who have more ability to enjoy media they find problematic. It doesn't help that his sudden realization that Deus Ex is problematic comes smack on top of the peak of the Brown Scare hysteria, this has peer pressure written all over it.
Is it not within your conception of the psychologically normal person that they can change their mind? Even about something they loved? Yes, sure, according to some worldviews no one ever changes their own mind, but just assuming you believe in freedom of will.
It's just that it looks like, according to you, there is no purpose for this forum as a platform for seeking truth, because everyone who's normal is just going to defend what they love instead of what's true.
Not in this particular way, especially about the things they loved.
That's not what I'm saying, and the question of truth doesn't even apply here. The idea that past enjoyment of a game is problematic is a moral claim, not a factual one.
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