Posted on 02/14/2023 3:31:20 AM PST by RoosterRedux
Over the Super Bowl weekend, the U.S. shot down at least three UFOs, or as they’re now called, UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomena).
*snip**
But the good news is that pilots felt comfortable saying something—which has not always been the case.
*snip*
Imagine being one of those military pilots, knowing you’d seen a mysterious object that was potentially dangerous, incredibly technologically advanced, and very much worth investigating. Imagine never having seen any aircraft, military or otherwise, maneuver with such speed or dexterity. Imagine not being able to talk about it for 13 years, knowing you’d be ridiculed and perhaps fired if you did.
The U.S. government deliberately cultivated stigma related to UFO sightings during the Cold War. An uptick in reports in 1947 spurred the creation of the first official UFO investigation, Project Sign. A few months later, after it became clear that the Air Force couldn’t handle the number of reports coming in, it hired a scientist, J. Allen Hynek, to evaluate the information. Hynek couldn’t explain roughly 20 percent of the cases he looked at, but the Air Force didn’t want to probe further.
*snip*
The government created a monster with its handling of the UFO issue. The bias and shame surrounding 50 years’ worth of UFO sightings in the U.S. reinforce the need for the public to think critically, rather than succumbing to what Kean called the “pure irrationality” of the stigma. It also underscores how misinformation or disinformation starts at the top and filters down through the public, until it takes on a life of its own.
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
Perhaps it's time to stigmatize the stigmatizers.
Vice Adm. Roscoe Hillenkoetter, a member of the “Majestic 12” (among other appointments) and the man that raised my mother, stated on several occasions that he believed the phenomenon were not of this world. I’ve always believed him.
Did you discuss the subject with him?
I’d also suggest that the public association of UFOs with “alien life forms from outer space” — fed by generations of fictional books and movies —didn’t do the subject any favors.
Adm. and Madame Hillenkoetter were essentially our grandparents. Mom’s mom (my Nana) was their long-time (many decades) housekeeper, and since Mom’s dad wasn’t around, the Hillenkoetter’s helped to raise Mom alongside their daughter Jane.
His belief in the other-worldly nature of UFOs was something he expressed to family, but not directly to me.
On top of that, when the government engages in a campaign the goal of which is the obfuscation of a subject, it encourages conspiracy theories.
That’s still a wonderful legacy. Something to be proud of!
“But the good news is that pilots felt comfortable saying something—which has not always been the case. “
~~~
Military pilots?
I know this is technically peace-time, but I don’t think pilots should feel comfortable “saying something” about their missions and operations unless they are clear it’s not classified.
In other words, it is natural to use one's imagination (unless you don't have one).
That’s part of it, but I think it runs much deeper, every religion that I can think of that worships a supreme being like God, Jesus Christ, Allah, etc. have been taught since their inception that God created the heavens and earth and suddenly waking up to the idea of intelligent life somewhere else in the world could destroy all their religious tenants.
From my perspective, suddenly evidence of alien life forms visiting earth would do nothing but enhance my idea of God and Jesus Chris as being Supreme Beings, I couldn’t explain any other reason how and why some life form perhaps millions of years more advanced than earth was decided to visit and reveal themselves.
IMO, whatever happened on Earth to create life has to have been replicated millions of times around our universe, to me it’s impossible to not beleive in alien life somewhere, has it discovered Earth and decided to visit here I have no idea.
The stigma was never about military or commercial pilots running to the media after a sighting. It was about filing a report of what they saw to their superiors.
From Wikipedia:
Perhaps Hillenkoetter’s best-known statement on the subject was in 1960 in a letter to Congress, as reported in The New York Times: “Behind the scenes, high-ranking Air Force officers are soberly concerned about UFOs. But through official secrecy and ridicule, many citizens are led to believe the unknown flying objects are nonsense.”
My dad told stories of being scrambled in his F101 Voodoo to intercept craft that breached his air defense sector and having them disappear from his radar right before the intercept.
Colonel, USAF JAGC (Ret)
There are not from another planet either. They are from another dimension. God only created one earth
My father never told anyone but my mother of his experience encountering a UFO over Korea during the war….because of the so-called “ stigma” of being debriefed by …..
This is Slate, propaganda and lefty swing extraordinaire. So, I ask ‘Why?’ they’re pushing this narrative after being ostrich about the government destroying careers of civilian pilots who dared to speak of what they’d seen in the air.
I hesitated to post an article by Slate but, after reading the article several times, I couldn't see anything that was slanted in a Leftward direction.
What I did find (as someone who has followed this issue for a while) was an article that described the "stigma" problem clearly.
As I have posted on Twitter and Youtube many times, politics has no place in science or discovery. Of course, all such comments were aimed at Lefties who were trying to insert their politics. Conservatives, libertarians, and independents do not commit that sin.
As an aside, the most visible and important scientist involved in the UFO/UAP area, Garry Nolan of Stanford Medical School, has said many times that the greatest support for efforts to get at the truth in this area comes from the Right. The Left always wants to push their politics and the truth be damned.
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