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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?
@DaseindustriesLtd 's 'psyop overcapacity' thesis, which is a less extreme version of this, remains the most likely scenario. It's not for a one-world government, it's to keep the Pentagon or the wider intelligence community's capability for domestic propaganda sharp without running into any political disputes or 'culture war' topics. They know the 'Voice of America' content is amateur hour compared to what China or possibly even Russia are producing for domestic consumption, there needs to be some kind of feedback mechanism so that people who've spent 50 years working on this stuff know whether it works. UFOs and similar stuff let them test what works, what doesn't, what people like, what memes succeed etc.
It is extremely unlikely that the US alone has all the world's supply of UFOs and/or that the US has agreed with every other government that had UFOs land in its territory never to reveal anything to the public. Even if such a thing had happened, that nothing ever leaked from the archives of the USSR or any non-Western or non-US country that these UFOs presumably also landed in seems equally unlikely.
The whole logic of (alien) UFOs existing but being kept secret doesn't make sense. They're secret because the USG is worried about what other countries might do with UFO technology...but that doesn't explain why other countries wouldn't also have UFOs. It doesn't explain why every major world government would secretly - and only on this one issues, seemingly - cooperate to hide this from everyone else. It doesn't explain why so much of the world's alleged UFO activity happens in the US, which makes up just 6% of the earth's landmass. ('Only the US can shoot them down' doesn't make sense, because the allegations iirc are of largely intact, ie. landed UFOs.) It doesn't explain why, if other countries do know about UFOs, they wouldn't just make the information public, since at the point when China/Russia/etc all know, there's no longer any military or technological reason not to inform the public.
Didn't you just say Chuck Schumer is sponsoring legislation that would force the USG to inform congress about aliens? I doubt 535 people are keeping their mouths shut on this issue. (Apparently, it would actually allow the senate to appoint a panel to declassify UFO reports).
I think the NY Post article is the best bet. A lot of senior congressmen, military/pentagon and intelligence officers are literally UFO nerds because they grew up during the Cold War in the peak UFO-mania period. Now they have power they're obsessed with combing through intelligence archives trying to find the secret black box ultra-classified program run independently of any other agency that's storing the alien spaceships in the Nevada desert, and they're getting ever more desperate.
Because it's a proto-religious movement, it doesn't have to make a lot of sense in worldly terms. It doesn't seem like it because it uses all these science-y terms, but every religion started with concepts plausible to the populace; how else would anyone believe? Regardless, things seen in the sky having an importance on worldly affairs is not a new religious concept.
Of course, not everyone involved is motivated for this reason, but I think that's the most comprehensive, logical explanation for its start, functioning, and persistence. UFOs are a fantastically adaptive tool for a myriad of central religious questions, as proven by their influx in new religious movements. Even outside that, it's very difficult to escape all the talk about the governments hiding these awesome technologies, obviously piloted by enlightened beings- but just you wait, the truth will come to light; and not see the parallel with the good-evil duality mytheme that still persists in the west.
The reason why government is interested is because it's a useful tool for distracting attention from new military technologies.
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