Why has the existence of non-human, intelligent life-forms been hidden from the citizenry for the last 50 years?
4/12/2000
The Politics of UFOs -- Stephen Bassett discusses the political implications surrounding the presence of extraterrestrials in our world.
For the best part of 50 years, when the biggest story of all time and the seminal event in human history phoned in, the .fourth estate. was screening its calls. -- Stephen Bassett
Washington, DC - Discovery is the end process of the scientific method. In an ideal world, it would not be political. Three generations of Americans have passed through and now coexist in the greatest age of discovery in history. The sum of human knowledge doubles in but a few years. We revel in the fruits of these discoveries and take them to be our heritage. We create and trust institutions to carry out this process and pay them handsomely to do so. We expect science to be pursued openly and fairly. Often it is.
And often it is not. Huge portions of science and technology were classified by the military-industrial complex, in an effort to service the prosecution of the Cold War. More portions were made secret by businesses protecting their commercial interests. So now much of science is hidden from us . only to turn up when, and if, it is considered appropriate for it to be disclosed. The act of disclosure is almost always political.
The greatest scientific discovery in history . the existence of non-human, intelligent life-forms with interstellar propulsion technology . has been hidden from the general citizenry for more than 50 years. The justification for this has varied from decade to decade and at times violated the laws and the Constitution of the nation.
For disclosure to take place on the public.s terms, the grassroots investigative efforts of the last half-century must marry up to institutional action, with political initiative presiding over the wedding. If we are to regain our trust in the societal structures that have failed us, those same structures must be part of the process of correction. Right now, the most critical of these is the media.
A quick look at the overall record
Someday in the aftermath of disclosure of the extraterrestrial presence there is certain to be an intense assessment of how our formal institutions . the ones we have spent 224 years and billions of dollars perfecting . have acquitted themselves.
The military and civilian agencies will be severely criticized, but a host of reasons will be brought forward in their support. National security, the Cold War, the specific circumstances in 1947 at the beginning of the cover-up, and fear of destabilization will be considered as acceptable justification by many. Of particular interest will be the actions of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA. The space agency will be able to point to the intelligence community and its obligations to the Department of Defense under the 1958 Space Act, and claim a damned-if-we-came-forward, damned-if-we-didn't dilemma.
As for the elected officials in the House and Senate, their failure to pay attention will be laid to the campaign finance demands of the modern .politics of money,. where votes are bought as never before. With some House seats going for millions and Senate seats for tens of millions, the fear of alienating funding sources with anything approaching independent thinking has led to paralyzing effects. This paralysis translates into a Seinfeldian .politics of nothing,. with Congress awash in petty, personal bickering, and all major sociopolitical change hostage to vanity and loathing. To paraphrase loosely the famous Dire Straits song, this situation can also be called the .politics of money for nothing.. Dire straits, indeed.
Religious bodies will claim ignorance and point to the "separation" doctrine to explain their non-involvement in the disclosure process. It was, after all, a message they were not particularly eager to hear anyway.
The university system and the research structures they contain will be targeted for some of the heaviest rebuke. The very essence of the scientific method is a continuing exploration of new facts, new understanding, and new perspectives on nature and the universe. Department heads, university presidents, and individual scientists will plead their hands were tied. Science in America is now as much about money and grants as it is about unfettered search for understanding.
School administrators will profess their sheer terror at the prospect of losing grant monies and reputations had they dared show any public interest in the unfolding extraterrestrial phenomena. Scientists, by nature conservative, were largely defenseless against the government-driven disinformation campaigns that created the infamous .laugh curtain..
The institutions of politics, religion, and science have indeed dropped the ball. But another in particular has failed spectacularly. This institution has violated every fundamental precept upon which it is founded. It has gone against a host of self-interests: money, prizes, huge increases in customer base, and rammed its head into the sand.
This institution is the media.
Next Wednesday: In part two of this column, Bassett explores the role of the media in the politics of disclosure