Depending on who you talk to, this past week marked the 75th anniversary of either the most persistent conspiracy theory of modern times or the Earth’s initial contact with an alien life form: the supposed crash landing of a UFO on a cattle ranch outside of the town of Roswell, New Mexico.
Did the US government find a crashed alien craft in the desert of the Southwest? Did the military discover alien bodies – or even a live extraterrestrial in the wreckage? Has every major technological leap – from velcro to microchips to stealth aircraft – been thanks to back-engineering of alien technology? And is it responsible for everyone reading this paragraph using a conspiratorial voice in their head? The fact of the matter is, while an alien crash is possible, it isn’t probable. Our technological leaps are due to good ol’ human innovation, not alien invention. And you’re using that voice again, aren’t you?
Ahem, back to the subject at hand: Roswell. The Roswell conspiracy didn’t really take off until the 1970s, not coincidentally when cable television started to become ubiquitous around the US. Those new cable stations needed to fill airtime, and programs like “In Search Of…” and “Unsolved Mysteries” were popular shows which then led to today’s “UFO Files” and “Ancient Aliens”.
Our next technological leap – the Internet – led to a new round of conspiracy theories, these primarily relating to Bill Clinton, murders, and drug dealing out of closed Arkansas airports. (That last part was actually the work of Oliver North, not that the GOP will remember that.)
Now, 75 years after Roswell, we have the US government actually acknowledging that there have been recorded incidents of military personnel interacting with unknown vessels in the air and on the sea. And with the advent of smartphones, we’re getting another round of conspiracies: PizzaGate, QAnon, the Deep State and so on.
All these things have something in common: they stem from a deep distrust of government and government narratives. They were all disseminated using an emerging technology, and typically glommed on to by conservatives who didn’t understand how to properly vet information.
Is there an alien living at Hangar 18 or an underground bunker somewhere in Nevada? Probably not. They’re likely living in the Pacific Northwest with Bigfoot because, wouldn’t you? But we’re pretty sure that the next conspiracy theory to be mainstreamed will be from the next platform conservatives join en masse.
Additional commentary by Spartan: Remember the “Pee Tape” where it was alleged that in 2013 fat former President Trump watched some Russian hookers mark the territory of the bed in a Moscow Ritz Carlton hotel that Obama had once slept in, an act of defilement caught on camera by Putin’s goons for “kompromat” on the Donald? Yeah, it likely doesn’t exist. It’s at best a conflation of a story that actually happened at a live show in Las Vegas or was made up.
The fanboys cling to the shakiness of the pee tape story as a way to discredit real legitimate questions about Trump’s relationship with Russia, and act like the whole scandal was a hoax. To this day they say Trump never invited Russian interference in the 2016 election or had any connection to them whatsoever. None of the questions about why Eric Trump told a golf magazine writer the Trump organization gets all its financing from Russia or why Donald sold a mansion to a Putin crony for far more than it was worth in 2008 are real. It’s still the “Russia hoax” to them.
In that respect Roswell and all the other bullshit stories are kind of like the pee tape. Because if one UFO incident is an obvious hoax then all of them must be. The same obtusity that Trump apologists use to “debunk” his corruption is present in the UFO debunkers (who call themselves “skeptics”). Because we have stupid assholes who think all the technological progress of the 20th century is attributable to knowledge gleaned from the wreckage of a crashed alien spacecraft, it gives debunkers a license to accuse the more temperate believers among us of crackpottery.
The “debunkers” would have you believe China or Russia built drones capable of flying at 16,000 miles per hour and can execute a 90 degree turn on a dime somehow while also being incapable of controlling COVID-19 outbreaks and conquering Ukraine, respectively, rather than entertain the notion that an alien intelligence capable of superluminal spaceflight sent those drones here to observe us for the same reasons NASA sends probes to Mars and Jupiter. Just like with the Trump fanboys, the simpler explanation gets discarded in favor of a more elaborate, comforting narrative.
These things in our skies aren’t hallucinations. They show up visually, on radar, and cause interference with electronic communications. All the other shit about underground bases and government coverups is at best unsubstantiated. Alien abductions are murkier and probably far closer to fiction than fact despite some compelling accounts. These craft are out there though, and the US government and military are finally starting to take them seriously and soberly. It’s time for debunkers to do the same, and stop hiding behind nonsense like Roswell to maintain their refusal to entertain the idea that we’re not at the top of the food chain, however hard that may be.