Independence Day is not a great movie. As my readers know, that doesn’t stop me from watching. I’ve seen it a few times. Watching it post-UFO/AUP disclosure via the New York Times, I was struck by something. Even in the diegesis of the movie, where alien craft, clearly visible, hover over major cities, when Russell Casse tells the military he’d been abducted, people roll their eyes. Of all the stigmas our culture has invented that of the “crazy people” who see “flying saucers” is one of the deepest and most persistent. Even after the Times, and the US Navy admitted they were real, and their tech is not of human origin, people refuse to believe. I’ve followed this for some time. I read a book by Donald Keyhoe before I was old enough to drive. Like most thinking people on the topic, I kept quiet about it. Stigma.
When I received Luis Elizondo’s Imminent for a Christmas present, I was secretly very pleased. You see, the evidence has been in plain sight (Poe nods knowingly) for decades, for those who don’t accept ridicule as an immediate response. The Keyhoe book I read was published in 1955. It was my grandfather’s book. For sure, the stories casting doubt on Elizondo’s reputation and sanity began almost immediately after he cooperated with journalists in 2017 when a fraction of the truth made the New York Times. Between Keyhoe and Elizondo, many insider, “death bed” books had revealed that this was something we should pay attention to. People laughed. Oh, we love to laugh. Imminent, however, is quite a sobering book. I’m not sure full disclosure will ever happen, but it’s trickling out and a finger in the dam can’t hold forever.
Stigma as a means of social control is unfortunately effective. I’ve always felt that mocking what you don’t understand is a poor way to get smarter. Still, for those willing to consider the evidence over the years, there’s been plenty to study. Either there’s something to this or our government and military are filled with pathological liars (outside the Oval Office, I mean). It seems far more reasonable to examine the evidence, when it becomes available. There are contractors in the military-industrial complex (Eisenhower warned us about this decades ago) who benefit from keeping secrets. Imminent is an eye-opening book. Hopefully it will be widely read and the implications taken seriously. It’d be too bad if a catastrophe were necessary to stop the stigma, after it’s too late to do anything about it.
