Analysis by Kyle A. Lohmeier
It’s Friday, President Obama just became the first sitting U.S. President to visit the Japanese city of Hiroshima, where, on Aug. 6, 1945 the first nuclear weapon used in war, an inelegant bomb called “Little Boy” was dropped on the city from a B-29 Superfortress dubbed “Enola Gay” piloted by Colonel Paul Tibbits, who named the plane for his mother. It’s a historic event and it seems to have brought a sense of closure to the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (which was hit by “Fat Man,” a more powerful implosion-type bomb, three days later); and was noteworthy in that president Obama didn’t offer an apology.
As I mentioned earlier, however, it’s Friday, and I’m just not feeling like wanting to delve into something serious today. So, I won’t.
Instead, I’m of a mind to discuss a piece that made it onto my Apple “News” app from the Daily Mirror, which claims that Obama will ‘reveal all the alien and UFO details held by the US before he leaves office.” The veracity of this claim is supported by the phrase “it’s been reported.”
“The US President is under pressure thanks to similar disclosure promises made by the campaign of Democratic candidate for Obama’s Replacement, Hillary Clinton,” the article says, adorably.
There is an awful lot of silliness crammed into that sentence. First, what pressure? Is anyone, apart from regulars on the “Ancient Aliens” discussion forum, really clamoring for this stuff to be released? And, I find it impossible to believe Obama feels “pressured” to do anything just because Hillary says she might do it, particularly on a matter this trivial.
My lack of optimism isn’t universal, however.
“We are going to get disclosure this year. I am not sure who will win the election, but I think Obama will be the disclosure president. He will be looking at a Nobel Prize for making an announcement like that,” effused Stephen Bassett, executive director of Paradigm Research Group, an organization that focuses on exopolitics (which means what you suspect it might but can’t believe there’s a word for), and not just “the lights in the sky, but the lies on the ground.” “I am 85 percent sure Obama will make the announcement before he leaves office and within days your Prime Minister David Cameron will follow,” Bassett added.
The supposed “pressure” being applied to Obama by Hillary Clinton is “evidenced” by her appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! back in March of this year where the host asked her, just as he did her husband, and President Obama, about declassifying files related to UFOs.
“Yes…well, I’m gonna do it, again,” Clinton told Kimmel. “I would like us to go into those files and, hopefully, make as much of that public as possible. If there’s nothing there, let’s tell people there’s nothing there.”
When pressed as to what would happen if there actually was something there, Clinton said that unless that information was a clear threat to national security, it should be made public.
I’m not sure where in that exchange, Bassett sees Clinton putting pressure on Obama to beat her to the proverbial punch and release a bunch of hitherto classified UFO data.
Maybe I’m wrong. Hopefully, however, I’m right. There are some things that should remain secret.
Now, hell knows I am all for government transparency. Hell, actually, I want government to be so small, weak and powerless that it cannot help be transparent because there isn’t much to it and it only has like, three or four jobs to do. It is wrong that the US Air Force, CIA and other organizations and institutions within the US government have amassed a cache of classified data on unexplained areal phenomena over the last several decades. But, they have.
And, because of that, words and phrases like “Roswell,” “Area 51,” and “Hangar 18” carry undeniable mystique with them. The “Roswell crash” and “Area 51” in particular have become cultural touchstones. Films, like “Independence Day” and “Men in Black” and entire TV series like “The X-Files” and countless more have made wonderful use of this cache of mystery to spin out engaging and entertaining tales. Area 51 can be whatever a writer wants it to be, because we only know its “cover story” as the place where experimental aircraft like the U-2 spy plane and the F-117 Nighthawk (aka “Wobbly Goblin) stealth attack jet were born. Is there a Hangar 18 at Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio? If so, what’s inside? Nobody knows. And that’s part of what makes me smile every time I hear that classic Megadeth tune of the same name.
As fascinating as I find groups like PRG and MUFON, as much as I loved “The X-Files,” as much as I love sci-fi and real science in general – I’m reasonably convinced that declassifying all the “UFO files” the government has will be akin to opening Al Capone’s vault live on air. There won’t be much there because the Earth has not, in all likelihood, ever been visited by extraterrestrial life forms. It hasn’t, for the same reason we haven’t visited other worlds beyond our solar system, or even, the next-nearest world within our own system – space is big.
“Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is. I mean you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.” – Douglas Adams, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”
Humankind hasn’t figured out everything about all the laws of physics that hold the universe together, but we’ve got a lot of it down pat, particularly the basics. One such basic is that you can’t weigh more than a photon if you want to go the speed of light, and even at that breakneck pace, it takes eons to get anywhere in space. Plus, the space outside the gravity wells of stars, known as “interstellar space” is a violently chaotic mess of radiation and stray bits of rock and ice zooming around at incredible speed, making it a rough place to attempt to operate a space craft. So, unless aliens have figured out some sort of Star Wars or Star Trek faster-than-light warp speed or hyperspace drive system to get here, they haven’t been here. And, if they had that technology, and are capable of visiting our quaint backwater in the Sol system, how is it we all don’t know about it?
Unless, the aliens really do just meet with top-level officials for trade and security purposes; and that’s how we got microwave ovens, as per “Men in Black.” Who knows, really?
None of us, really. That is what makes it special, and fun. Those files, “Project Blue Book,” and all the other legendary repositories of supposed alien “evidence,” are perfect as they are right now – tantalizing mysteries that serve as the springboard for all sorts of creative speculation that has provided us all with countless hours of entertainment. The “classified UFO files” in total, are this young nation’s cultural Wonder of the World. We don’t have ancient pyramids, or even amazing castles more than a millennium old and still standing, linked by Roman roads that are even older still. We’re an upstart nation of settlers that did all it could to wipe out the culture of the indigenous people we found here. We use their tribal names to name the places their tribes used to live, but that’s about it. We don’t have the sagas, or the Vedas, we don’t have Beowulf or Gilgamesh.
We have Roswell, New Mexico; Groom Dry Lake, d.b.a. Area 51, Nevada; we have Hangar 18 at Wright-Patterson AFB. We have “Project Blue Book,” and other mysterious and classified files on UFOs. Those are what they are because of the enigma that’s shrouded them for decades. Shine a light on it, take away the mystery and you will only serve to make it mundane. Not only will this take the gleam off of future stories that hinge upon extraterrestrials having visited Earth, but will make suspension of disbelief that much harder for films like “Independence Day,” etc.
Yes, we already know, due to the physical reality of space, that aliens likely have never come here. Likely. No one can say for sure, and I for one think we should keep it that way.
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