ET Still Works for the CIA

The Trump administration continues to release tranches of previously classified documents on unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), the preferred term that includes traditional sightings of UFOs.  “Traditional sightings” is a strange admission, don’t you think?  Aliens and UFOs have been part of our national conversation for eighty years, long enough to constitute a “tradition,” even though the public has few answers for the questions this “tradition” brings.

Whether the U.S. government will ever provide real answers to unexplained events that have perplexed Americans for generations seems a secondary issue at this point.  The more pressing question is this: If our government has been in possession of critical information about the nature of our reality, why should it be empowered to decide what we know?  Or asked differently: Why should the government be permitted to keep secrets from us — especially when we are permitted to keep so few secrets from our government?

For decades, the U.S. military, FBI, and CIA dismissed reports of mysterious lights in the sky as hoaxes, misidentifications, or routine weather events.  Discussion of the 1947 Roswell incident was regarded as a “conspiracy theory.”  First-person encounters with non-human technology or even non-human, sentient beings were ridiculed as delusions.

Over the last fifteen years, though, a steady stream of former government employees — who describe themselves as “whistleblowers” — have testified both in public and under oath that they witnessed fantastic things that cannot be explained by existing technologies or accepted understandings of reality.

Although some of these people do have verifiable credentials, records, and careers that suggest they were in positions to have witnessed the extraordinary things that they describe, nobody can know for sure whether they are telling the truth.  Or said another way, nobody knows whether they are genuine “witnesses” to the existence of non-human intelligence or whether they are intentionally or unintentionally misleading the public.  If what they say is false, they are either active agents of disinformation or manipulated pawns being controlled without their knowledge.

What is most striking about this moment in history is that Americans are responding to the government’s rollout of these long-classified files — what UFO enthusiasts describe as “disclosure” — with something between a collective shrug and sheer disbelief.  For most of the last century, a vocal contingent of Americans has claimed that the U.S. government has been orchestrating a mass cover-up of the alien/UFO issue.  Americans have demanded answers.  Thousands of books and documentary movies have been written and produced about this phenomenon.

Hollywood has played with Americans’ imaginations by speculating that extraterrestrial aliens are real and that the U.S. government has long known that they are real.  Steven Spielberg has another alien movie coming out next month.  Now the U.S. government seems to be slowly admitting that UFO-enthusiasts have been right all along, but, instead of celebrating the news, many of those same enthusiasts are wondering whether the government is really telling the truth.  Perhaps Spielberg’s friends in the CIA are just helping him goose box-office sales.

Aliens, UFOs, UAPs, interdimensional beings — whatever.  What’s fascinating is that government authorities are so distrusted at this point in time that nobody believes what officials say.  Who could blame people for having such a dim view of the government’s capacity for honesty?  After all, ongoing UAP disclosures suggest one of two possibilities: Either (1) elements of the U.S. government have been waging an information war against the American people for most of the last century by covering up world-historic events of unprecedented importance, or (2) elements of the U.S. government are currently waging an information war against the American people by suggesting that non-human entities with vastly superior intelligence are real.

Pick your poison: Either the American government was maliciously lying yesterday, or it is maliciously lying today.  However the dust settles, rational people should agree: Government officials are habitual liars.

I don’t say that flippantly.  I think it’s important for citizens to understand that government is not their friend.  Government is, at best, a necessary construct to keep people’s worst impulses in check.  At worst, government is total oppression.  Somewhere in between, government enjoys a monopoly on the legitimate use of force.  It uses threats of violence or imprisonment to confiscate citizens’ property through taxation and to control citizens’ behavior through a system of laws, rules, and regulations.  Government grows only larger and more powerful over time.

It rarely chooses a scalpel over an axe.  Its army of bureaucrats operate as vampiric tyrants trained to drain an individual’s liberty.  Who would trust people who clothe themselves in institutional power and stand above the law?  Who would hold in high esteem government bureaucrats who disdain the natural wisdom of the people yet proclaim themselves “experts” in everything?

Many smart people abhor the left/right dichotomy of Western politics.  They correctly see it as a dialectical mind game used to divide and conquer populations.  The term “Uniparty” is often used to acknowledge that Establishment Democrats and Republicans in the United States are part of the same Leviathan preying on the American people.  While citizens are distracted by party politics, the Uniparty works to make Big Government ever more totalitarian.

Instead of left/right labels that often produce a distinction without a difference, it is much more helpful to ask whether a person worships or loathes government.

In the ‘90s, President Bill Clinton directed federal law enforcement agencies to target anti-government groups as domestic terrorists, a wholly un-American effort that President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder expanded greatly by using the unconstitutional powers of the USA PATRIOT Act to target political enemies.  Obama regularly mocks Americans who distrust government and insists that Democrat-controlled government is Americans’ best friend.

During his 2012 re-election campaign, Obama released a storybook called “The Life of Julia” that purported to show how his government would take care of every American from birth to death.  Likewise, President Joe Biden routinely mocks American firearm owners who believe that the Second Amendment is an indispensable check on government power.  In arguing that Americans should be disarmed, Biden claims that Americans stand no chance against the U.S. military.

Similarly, many of the Americans who voted for Clinton, Obama, and Biden seem to believe that government is some benevolent force that gives “free stuff” to people.  They cheer new government programs, agencies, and rules as if expansive bureaucracy were an inherently “good” thing.  When their political opponents take power, however, they immediately complain about government corruption.  It is perplexing how certain voters delude themselves into believing that Big Government is great when a Clinton, Obama, or Biden has power but awful when the wrong wing of the Uniparty takes control.

Those who choose to worship government find ways to recognize government corruption only when the “wrong” party holds office.  Those who rightfully distrust government understand that bureaucrats aren’t saints, “experts” aren’t priests, and governments aren’t gods.

In the two hundred and fiftieth year of America’s experiment in limited government and expansive individual liberty, it has never been more important for Americans to remember that their country was founded on an inherent distrust of power and authority.

Government is rarely a source of good because governments are comprised of men and women — not angels.  Government bureaucrats are not emancipators; they’re freedom-killers.  They keep secrets and tell lies.  They manufacture consensus.  They pretend that an uninformed population is somehow equipped to vote knowledgeably.

How can any society pretend to be “democratic” if its government perpetually keeps it in the dark?  If a government can’t be trusted to tell the truth about UFOs, why should it be trusted to tell the truth about anything?  Governments don’t give; they take.  Americans must open their eyes.