- Lately, over the last couple of months, I've instituted
a personal attitude shift for myself that was a little more subtle for
me than it's going to be for another, perhaps. Three hots and a cot provided
by a small military retirement has provided me a lot of time to think (...out
of the box...) as I endure an unemployment born of pique and persecution,
unjustified and not of my manufacture. I've come to some interesting conclusions
as a result of that thinking that are serious about cultural criticism
(to facilitate a more efficacious reality), so, I'm trying to encourage
as many individuals as I can to *shift* with me. I feel it's the future.
-
- Why not? Each day that goes by seems to provide a little
more external validation for this invigorating attitudinal *shift*, so
bear with me if you can (...and can decipher the "personal code"
I've been accused of writing in...[g].) because the result, I think, is
the more timely acceptance of an unavoidable and quickly approaching ...future...
that we are ~all~ ignorant of... and for which we are generally unprepared,
myself included. I think we would do well to prepare, more, for this future.
Presently, we are being denied, by our conflicted culture (...its governments,
agencies, and institutions...), the tools and materials for that preparation.
That future could be wonderful, folks. We'd do well to be reasonably prepared
for it.
-
- Before my "attitude adjustment," and while
maintaining a general profile as a confident proponent for the extraterrestrial
hypothesis (...no apologies there!), I still endured an undercurrent of
personal embarrassment, actually, regarding any discussion I might try
to initiate regarding my ufological activities, projects, or concerns...
with the mainstream world I'm immersed in... forgetting for a moment the
off-line world of friends and acquaintances also sharing that mainstream
world with me. Prudence locally practiced... seemed indicated. Lack of
it, apparently, got me disqualified from a second career, after all...
I was a tad gun-shy...
-
- On sidebar, If "the man" is going to deny a
person a living wage for lawful thinking out of the box... what will "he"
do if a person persists? I intend to find out...
-
- Anyway, I used to be oversensitive and demonstratively
*understanding* (ironic, ~that~!) about the discomfort of persons around
me regarding the subject of UFOs, *indulgent* of their lack of ufological
interest, and *disappointed*, more than a little, by their own lack of
understanding -- their pitying or scornful expressions and abrupt subject
changes (...if I tried to bring the subject up cold?). What follows is
a brief composite conversation with the "mainstream," over the
years, for illustration...
-
- "I saw a strange light in the sky this morning doing
some really impossible things..." I might start... "Oh yeah..."?
...is the guarded response... "Yeah... it looked like the shuttle
or the space station going over, was brighter than Venus, and..."
"...It likely -was- the shuttle or the space station going over..."
he'd interrupt. "I've got an animated schedule from the NASA site
that ruled them out...," I'd counter. "Well -- it was some other
satellite, then... there's hundreds of them up there." "Well...
yeah," I'd concede, "but none as bright as Venus... I get forecasts
on those too. Additionally, these lights..." "...Still"
He interrupts quickly, "...it had to be a satellite, or a plane or
a balloon, or something..." He shakes an impatient head... "Well
-- it changed speed and direction, stopped, and was traveling more or less
due west..." "So"? "Well -- it was comparatively erratic
in flight and absolutely silent with no navigation lights, ruling out a
plane; balloons and satellites don't abruptly change direction, rate of
speed, and... stop. Moreover, satellites generally don't ~go~ west."
"...Um-hmm... so it must be aliens, then, huh?" His pitying smirk
begins its slow bloom. "Well, no, not necessarily... it just seems
to be a logical thing to wonder given that as the *impossible* begins to
be eliminated about UFOs... ...whatever remains, however improbable, might
be the truth about UFOs..."
-
- ...Blank look from the addressed, followed most usually
by a subject change or retreat, or even open hostility...
-
- ...Look. I know these people have lives -- families,
jobs, and mortgages. Further, I know that it's me making the waves, rocking
their boat, or kicking at the last-century wooden spokes of the wheels
on their aggregate cultural applecart. I know that I can be discomfiting
with regard to my ready willingness to question general reality or providing
for an invalidation of everyone's, too comfortable, status quo. I ~understand~
the need to believe in something rock solid so the ~night shadows~ are
held at bay, and I can appreciate that it's difficult to contemplate that
"*everything* one *knows* is *wrong*..."... That's what kept
me at bay with regard to a more strident and challenging approach in some
chance discussion with the ufologically unwashed. This is what embarrassed
me, reader, provided for my over-sensitivity to an another's arguably specious
or contrived sensibilities, and compelled an understanding, an acceptance
even, of their lack of intellectual bravery. I figured they were innocent
and victims in the social duplicity just like I was. I was worried about
~their~ feelings.
-
- It's not that way anymore. I would be remiss if I didn't
voice my concern, express my opinion, or make my contribution to the thought
pool available. It's the least I can do, reader, when I have the manipulating
and programming thoughts of others imposed upon me in an even more forceful
manner, and in an authoritarian way considerably less efficacious than
I would dispense or have dispensed to me. I'm expected to be honest, forthright
and dependable with regard to my society while my society is, plainly,
not honest, forthright or dependable to me in return. I have... difficulty...
respecting a society that has no respect for me.
-
- I have solid ethics, myself, but my society, seemingly,
has no morals. This creates problems for me that are not of my manufacture...
-
- You see, it's not my problem that the scales have begun
to fall from my ~own~ eyes. It's not my problem that I still ~have~ a
bravery honed, refined, and made baldly mandatory in the social conditionings
of two decades of combat, combat aviation training, and troop leadership
in the armed forces. It's not my problem that another will choose to turn
a blind eye to a ~substantially abundant~ ufological evidentiary base...
and masquerade their equally blind ignorance with obligatory debunker-isms,
spoon-fed CSICOPian platitudes, and head-in-the-sand congested worldviews!
It's not my problem that people prefer to trust the realities manufactured
for them by a thoroughly corrupted lap-dog and imposter mainstream, or
put their faith and cognitive stock into the canted thinking contrived
for them by those who would try to manipulate them... to ends the manipulated
would ~not~ appreciate if we knew what those ends were... (...no apologies
here either! And remember: It's not my song, folks, and you'd be remiss
shooting the piano player. Do enough of that and pretty soon you won't
hear any music at all... with the exception of the state approved!).
-
- It's not ~my~ problem, friends and neighbors! Rather,
it's a problem inflicted upon me by an imposed, encouraged, or even nurtured
cultural naiveté (...I once gleefully supported...) that society
was ultimately ~predisposed~ to provide the greatest good for the greatest
number. Upon discovering that the truth was more... uh... ...*oblique*
than that (...that society was actually only interested in providing the
credible [and grudging] ~illusion~ of "providing the greatest-good-for-the-greatest-number"...)
I'm compelled to hold the mainstream authorities, their representatives,
and their faith-based apologists to the same fire that has been held to
me, and protest, stridently (...if needs be!) where they can be found to
be breaking the *rules*, advantaging themselves in the codification of
these *rules*, or selectively interpreting the *rules* to suit the aforementioned
few. That's a discredited CSICOPian charter, good reader! I'll have ~no~
part of it.
-
- The arguments and the credibilities of the *mainstream*
(and CSICOPia!) are dead, flatly, become more decomposed and odiferous
with each accelerating second, and can no longer be ~counted~ upon to be
the common-sense-retreat-to-traditional-solid-ground that a reflexive conservative
apologist might, shrilly, advise that they were. No. They're decidedly
~not~ a "step back to better times." They're a step back to ~medieval~
times of feudal social atrocity and the unrestricted lusts of cold-fish
and elitist psychopaths! Devoid of any responsibility for fairness, and
with zero regard for the sensibilities of individual persons ground up
in the institutional machines of these "neo-lords of imposed ignorance",
they destroy the middle class, supplant the "freer republic"
and replace it with an anti-individualist "new theocracy" every
bit as bad (for the rising and the advancing of the individual human spirit)
as fundamentalist Islam. ...Even worse in many ways.
-
- ...Which brings me, albeit the long way around, at last,
to the Friedman/McGaha debate at TSUM on January 24, 2004, or what may
come to be known as, "The Day CSICOP Died...".
-
- There is precious little hyperbole in the preceding and
the preceding is an apt citation in strong support of the ufological attitude
change (alluded to at the beginning of this essay). A "standing room
only" crowd witnessed the complete and total demolition of all of
CSICOPia in the person of one (decidedly ~less~ than intrepid) Mr. McGaha,
apparently the only person in all of CSICOPia willing to stand toe to toe
with Mr. Friedman in a controlled debate. The reader can witness the carnage
on tape, herself, for a small (tres reasonable!) fee. Goliath gets stomped,
again, by David.
-
- The, plainly one-sided, debate began with Mr. Friedman,
his usual faultless ufological rationality in full sail! He stuck to the
facts, outlined his justifications splendidly, and did one more significant
thing. He refrained from ~any~ gratuitous insult. Mr. McGaha failed to
perform in a, remotely, similar fashion. His facts were blustery proclamations,
his justifications were silly, specious, and unconvincing, and he was sneering
thinly veiled insult from one end of his unpracticed presentation to the
other, lightly intimating that Mr. Friedman was a fool to be discounted
out of hand.
-
- The reader will understand when I say it was perfectly
obvious who the fool, really, was. Mr. McGaha paid (and will continue
to pay) heavily, I'm sure, for his easy insolence and reflex disrespect.
He was rude, presumptuous, condescending, unclear, pedantic, arrogant,
patronizing, and not a little duplicitous where Friedman was the textbook
opposite of these things. Additionally, McGaha was a case study of Friedman's
Four Laws of Fraudulent debunkery... To wit:
-
- 1). "What the public doesn't know, we certainly
won't tell them."
-
- A look of flawless innocence on his moon-like face, he
resold the "Robertson Panel" and the "Condon Report"
as straight-up peer reviewed reports born of balanced science... instead
of the admitted torpedoes to serious ufology they were first designed to
be and then actually were! There were dozens of these anecdotes proffered
by Mr. McGaha... some of them real head-scratchers... He claimed, for example
that the sheer volume of reports regarding different UFO appearances was
proof they didn't exist!!! All the descriptions of UFOs should be the
same to demonstrate verity, McGaha seems to think... ??? Astonishing.
-
- 2). "My mind is made up, don't bother me with the
facts."
-
- His nose thrown high in almost laughing scorn he pontificated
during one of his pompous verbal faux pas that there was "...zero
physical evidence of UFOs... PERIOD," and this was after Mr. Friedman
talked about what constituted physical evidence, indicated some 5000 trace
cases, and showed some slides of same. What a feather-brained and oblivious
thing for Mr. McGaha to do and say.
-
- 3). "If one can't attack the data, attack the people.
It is easier."
-
- A large portion of Mr. McGaha's presentation was taken
up with insult to those of us decidedly not in Mr. McGaha's camp, deriding
the abduction community, or dismissing the rest of anyone else with an
open mind (...forgetting those thoroughly convinced, like myself...) ...as
malingering "little" people trying to connect to something "big",
patent misleaders, the credulous mislead, or the weak-willed mentally ill!
Finally, dismissing the noted professor Dr. Peter Sturrock (...a trained
scientist with more courage in a nail paring than can be found in a gaggle
of pelicanists...) as a thoughtless "believer" was simply infuriating.
-
- 4). "Do ones research by proclamation rather than
investigation."
-
- I don't think Mr. McGaha answered one question asked
of him that evening, at all, that sparks didn't just fly like angry bees
off the CSICOPian axe he ground in the answering of them! Additionally,
he was clear as churned mud with half of what he said all evening, too--
all of it airy proclamation of his scientistic (sic) faith, bland misinformation,
and pointless ideological saber rattling.
-
- Moreover, his overuse of the expression, "Period,"
was amateur, ill-informed, and unconvincing. He used it like it was a
citation when all it really was, was a demonstration that he ~had~ no citation.
"There are no UFOs... (wait for it!) ...Period"!
-
- Oh, OK... Mr. McGaha said, "Period"! Everyone
turn in your tin-foil hat and laser pointer! We can at last disband and
go our separate ways"! Such is the verity and validity of McGaha's
citation: "Period"! Mmm-no...
-
- Doing more harm to his denialist CSICOPian position than
would have been forecast, Mr. McGaha's strutting patronization pointed
up the paucity of his facts, his startling ignorance regarding the topic,
his reliance on fallacy and misdirection to make his point, and, finally,
illuminated the certainty that the hallmark of CSICOPia is *reflexive thinking*
in support of the suspect status quo... and not *reflective thinking* in
support of the advancement of individual human spirit.
-
- He and his knee-jerk reactionary institution are the
fuel on the fire of my rejection of same! He allows me (...nay, compels
me... provokes me... tasks me!) to pull off my gloves and be solicitous,
no longer, of the specious sensibilities of persons with a ready sneer,
a complacent ignorance, or a self-closed mind!
-
- He's put me in a situation where I have to "start
scaring the straights," (to quote Bill Murray), too, and that's regrettable...
but, it's not me kicking the spokes out of their cultural wheels, but that
their spokes were bad (or missing altogether) to begin with! Couple the
preceding with the stark refusal of these persons to perceive that their
*emperor* (or Mr. McGaha for that matter) is decidedly without a ~stitch~
of clothing... and a mandated shift in ufological attitude is ~more~ than
justified!
-
- Shift where (...if it hasn't been clear...)? Shift from
the apologetic and unsettled *fringe* as a reviled and dismissed "believer"
(as purposefully degraded by Mr. McGaha), ...to the brave and un-conflicted
individual... comfortable and confident that ~he/she~ holds the higher
rational ground, would do the purer, more courageous science (given tools
and fundage), is more in line with where the mainstream ~should~ be, and
so should ~be~ the mainstream, in fact! These *new* mainstreamers can be
secure in their more supportable convictions regarding the *reality of
things* as it pertains to the ufological and its peripheral issues... based
on a stunning mass of "six kinds" of evidence for same(anecdotal,
photographic, historical/artistic, physical, scientific, and personal)!
-
- Unfounded and unsupported criticisms of canted and denying
bias from the *former* mainstream remove ~it~ to the "real" fringe,
friends and neighbors, and the higher pressure open-minded move in to supplant
the resulting void! That's when we take off in this new millenium, fellow
motes, and not before! My feelings.
-
- It's a new age. Prepare to live in it. There's no other
choice. Oh, and pleasantly surprise both of us and try to do something
more than persecute me for reminding you of the just preceding, and thanks.
Regardless, I'll give as good as I get. Sincerity and supported convivtion
is ~my~ protector.
-
- To close: Buy the Friedman/McGaha debate tape by contacting
Stanton Friedman at fsphys@rogers.com... I'd wager Mr. McGaha won't be
providing them. Read on.
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- alienview@adelphia.net www.AlienView.net
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