Page 41 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - September 2021

UFO Mania Is Out Of Control 41

UFO Mania Is Out of

Control. Please Stop.

Continued from Page 40

Instead, it offered five distinct categories of
explanations: “airborne clutter, natural
atmospheric phenomena, [U.S. government] or
industry developmental programs, foreign
adversary systems, and a catchall ‘other’ bin.”
But despite the inconclusive nature of the report,
it received robust news coverage and much
attention on social media. From the New York
Times: “U.S. Has No Explanation for
Unidentified Objects and Stops Short of Ruling
Out Aliens.” From Reuters: “Watershed U.S.
UFO report does not rule out extraterrestrial
origin.”

The report was greeted as something of a
triumph by people who are active in UFO
research. “The UFO Report is out. The
implications are profound. UFOs, as we have
Then the mythology took an interesting turn: witnesses by the government, or maybe the
known for a long time, are real, defy
People started getting abducted by aliens. It news media, private corporations, the globalists,
conventional explanation, and until more is
learned, pose a serious potential threat to U.S. happened in their sleep. Science fiction writer etc. Or even by the aliens who are secretly
Whitley Streiber wrote a book, “Communion,” running everything.
national security,” wrote Christopher Mellon, a
former Defense Department official who had that claimed that such an abduction happened to
him. Then a Harvard professor, John Mack, Science is often mistaken for a list of things we
pushed for the disclosure of UFO sightings. He
wrote a book saying that the reason people know. It is really just a system, a set of
added, “But don’t just take my word for it,” and
linked to the U.S. government report. believed they were being abducted by aliens is techniques and principles for investigating the
that they were, in fact, being abducted by aliens. world. It’s extremely successful as a method of

What UFO proponents have long wanted is for They came from … another dimension? interrogating the natural world. It revealed,
among other things, that the universe is
the government, the media and the scientific
That mythology ran its course, maybe after imponderably vast and marvelous.
establishment to take the subject seriously. The
intelligence report does that. It says that some of being so thoroughly narrativized by “The X-
Files.” Now we’ve come full circle: Pilots are Unfortunately, this system, although able to
the reports appear to involve real objects,
because they were observed by multiple once again seeing things they can’t understand. penetrate the cosmic darkness, is less useful for
The difference is this time there are videos. detecting things conjectured to be in some
instruments or witnesses. There’s something
manner cloaked, or able to duck into a different
there; it’s not imaginary. So, yeah: Unidentified
flying objects do exist! The “republic of science” is engaged in the dimension or parallel universe. Maybe the aliens
study of “observable natural phenomena.” I traverse the universe in wormholes that are

This UFO moment is strikingly reminiscent of have lifted both phrases from Richard Rhodes’s invisible to us. But how would you know?
monumental book “The Making of the Atomic
how the UFO mythology began in 1947. On
Bomb.” This is why science and science The UAPs may turn out to have prosaic
June 24 of that year, a pilot named Kenneth
Arnold reported seeing nine mysterious objects journalism are not well equipped to fact-check explanations. In fact the intelligence report
religious beliefs. Religions typically involve mentions many of them. Consider the first two
traveling near Mount Rainier at high speed.
Arnold said the objects “flew like a saucer events that are neither natural nor necessarily of the five explanatory categories:
observable on demand. And that is where
would if you skipped it across the water,” and
science runs into trouble with UFO reports. The “Airborne Clutter: These objects include birds,
the media took it from there, inventing the
concept of “flying saucers.” Soon the whole videos and photos are ambiguous to say the balloons, recreational unmanned aerial vehicles
least. Eyewitness reports, even from credible (UAV), or airborne debris like plastic bags that
nation was quite obsessed. Not long afterward, a
balloon-borne military surveillance instrument witnesses, are not the same as having a piece of muddle a scene and affect an operator’s ability
an alien spaceship to scrutinize or, better yet, to identify true targets, such as enemy aircraft.”
crashed on a ranch near Roswell, N.M., and
some alien DNA.
even though it looked nothing like a flying
saucer or, for that matter, anything remotely “Natural Atmospheric Phenomena: Natural
The republic of science has some cultural norms atmospheric phenomena includes ice crystals,
extraterrestrial, the debris somehow
spontaneously generated a series of increasingly and ground rules. One of them is openness. That moisture, and thermal fluctuations that may
means you have to show your data. Also, register on some infrared and radar systems.”
dramatic narratives, culminating in a sturdy
scientists have to be honest. They are allowed to
hoax about recovered alien bodies and reverse-
engineered alien aerospace technology. be wrong, but they can’t be liars. There’s a great Let us all agree that plastic bags, birds, ice
deal of trust that’s built into the scientific crystals, moisture and thermal fluctuations are

In those early days of ufology, the classic story enterprise. not exciting explanations for mysterious
observations. What’s exciting is alien spacecraft.
involved something in the skies seen by pilots or
And so, scientists (and science reporters) tend to Which is why the Times, in covering the
ordinary citizens. Mysterious lights. Scientists
would weigh in and say this was due to some be wary of conspiracy theories, which have intelligence report, wrote, “There was no
secrecy as their essential, defining feature. Most affirmative evidence that the unexplained
kind of perceptual error. People were fooled by
Venus, by the moon, by “swamp gas.” Intensive UFO narratives are conspiracy theories of sorts. phenomena are alien spacecraft in the report.
They posit not only the existence of who believe they could be.”
investigation by government experts and the
extraterrestrial visitors, but also a conspiracy of
Pentagon failed to find any evidence of alien
spacecraft. silence, obfuscation and intimidation of (Continued on Page 42)