Republicans and UFOs/UAPs
Republicans and UFOs/UAPs
Why stop with election and vaccine conspiracy hype?
The Hill has a report on the Republicans new concern with UFOlogy. Or do we call UAPology now?1
Since much of their constituency is currently embracing cultish Trumpism and the Big Lie about Trump’s landslide victory in the 2020 Presidential election, why not encourage a golden oldie conspiracy theory like the Great UFO Conspiracy?
The link to the video is below2 but I’m not embedding it here. It has no intrinsic value on the topic of UFOs/UAPs. But it’s one example of how the Republican party is going back to a favorite conspiracy-theory topic that’s been around for well over a century.3
What is the gubment hiding from us?4
On the UFO/UAP topic itself, it’s notable only as an example of how very little the basics of UFOlogy conspiracy pitch has changed over decades: vague claims about things pilots have seen and some people have photographed; titillating conspiracy theories about the evil gubment is keeping fantastic space secret from the public; shadowy forces at work, etc.
UFO conspiricist Republican Congressman Tim Burchett of Tennessee says (after 25:00 in the video) that “military intelligence is a whole lot like Congressional ethics. It doesn’t exist.”
This may be cute coming from a drinking buddy. But from a sitting Congressman, it’s not exactly reassuring. Since he’s essentially asking us to give credibility to fantastic and unproven claims about extraterrestrial vehicles and life forms and the gubment conspiring to keep it all a sinister secret - then using a throughaway line about Member of Congress have no ethnics at all doesn’t necessarily make his argument more persuasive.
It also doesn’t help that he says we should believe one witness because he’s a veteran, and down yonder in Tennesse that means a lot. He goes on to say he doesn’t trust the Pentagon because they are “war pimps.” Maybe he means that to apply only to non-veteran civilian employees there?
Another featured guest is UFO enthusiast Ryan Graves, head of a group called Americans for Safe Aerospace.5 In the report, he describes how his own testimony on UFOs is just the “tip of the iceberg.”
One of the two journalists conducting the interviews is from The Hill, the other from the conservative-leaning NewsNation. Their questions are, well, less than probing. Later in the segment include UFO conspiracist Republican Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna and Democratic Congressman Jared Moskowitz.
The only semi-skeptical guest included is the last one, Greg Egigian, who takes a rhetorically Mugwump position on the whole thing. Here is an example from 2021 in which he comments on a 2021 government report that jumpstarted the current UFO/UAP fad:
In the end, the preliminary assessment proved a mixed bag. Enthusiasts could be buoyed by the government’s admissions that most reported UFOs were real objects, that only 1 in 144 could be definitively explained, and that fear of ridicule had thus far stymied witnesses and thereby inhibited effective inquiry. Debunkers, on the other hand, could point to the fact that most reports suffered from a lack of “sufficient specificity,” that the overwhelming majority of UAP demonstrated conventional flight characteristics, and that there remained a great many mundane explanations for the phenomena. All sides felt vindicated, all could claim victory.
And so, ambiguity reigns. To anyone familiar with the history of unidentified flying objects, this represents a familiar state of affairs.6
If the Republicans get bored with this theme, they can always hold hearings on how evidence from seances implicates Hunter Biden in innumerable crimes.
Somehow in the 75-minute “journalistic” report, no one managed to include a sentence like: There is no credible evidence in the public record of sentient extraterrestrial life on Earth or in its skies.
The Trumpista cult and other UFO afficionados wouldn’t believe it. But it would have been, you know, journalism to include it.7
UFO=Unidentified Flying Object; UAP=Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon
The Truth Is Out There, UFOs & National Security. What Are The RISKS? The Hill YouTube channel 08/17/2023. (Accessed: 2023-08-008).
Bartholomew, Robert (1990): The Airship Hysteria of 1896-97. Skeptical Inquirer 14:2, 171-181. <https://skepticalinquirer.org/1990/01/the-airship-hysteria-of-1896-97/> (Accessed: 2023-01-08).
Cover of Fantastic Stories 4:1949.
Former US Navy lieutenant, Ryan Graves describes how his testimony regarding UAPs is just the 'tip of the iceberg'. Deccan Herald 08/08/2023. <https://www.deccanherald.com/world/former-us-navy-lieutenant-ryan-graves-describes-how-his-testimony-regarding-uaps-is-just-the-tip-of-the-iceberg-2639165> (Accessed: 2023-18-08).
Eghigian, Greg (2021): UFOs and the Boundaries of Science. Boston Review 08/04/2021. <https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/ufos-and-the-boundaries-of-science/> (Accessed: 2023-18-08).
Skeptics Remind News Media: Keep UFO Reporting Grounded in Reality. Center for Inquiry 06/24/2021. <https://centerforinquiry.org/press_releases/keep-ufo-reporting-grounded-in-reality-advise-skeptics/> (Accessed: 2023-01-08).