UFO Stories

UFOs are back in the news lately.  It started with  the release of stories  about  and what is said to be a video of encounters between American naval jets and unidentified flying objects in 2014 and 2015. Then people got more interested when the government put out a statement  announcing that saying  more about the events would be a grave threat to national security. 

Here is my guess, and it is purely that - a guess.  I do not think we have  Russian or Chinese secret weapons. It is unlikely that anyone on earth could have developed technology to produce a craft capable of doing what the stories said the UFOs did.  Besides  if the Russians or Chinese had  aircraft  that could do those things, they probably would have used them or at least brandished them by now, because such weapons would have drastically changed the balance of power in their favor.

I also do not think there are  visitors from outer space. If there were, and if the government wanted to keep that fact a secret, it seems to me that the last thing it would have done is talk about grave threats to national security. That would have been like telling the public  in 1944 that we’ve got  something really big going on at Oak Ridge and Los Alamos, but we can’t say what because it’s too big. Instead we should have gotten stories about the video being phony or doctored, the radar malfunctioning,  the pilots making bad or inept identifications, and so on.

The way the whole thing has played out  seems fishy to me.  The armed forces always have secrets to protect and needs to confuse and mislead hostile or potentially hostile powers. My guess is that  people in the defense department  are running  this as disinformation for some reason of  their own having to do with some purpose of theirs and  nothing to do with foreign super weapons or space aliens. 

What’s yours?

Defining Heroism Down

A few days ago a policeman and a fireman in our town were killed in a car wreck on the side of a slick highway while working on another accident.  A third man was injured. On the basis of what is known, the men were two professionals doing a tough job under dangerous conditions when things went terribly wrong due to no fault of theirs. That is enough to earn people’s respect and sympathy. No drum beating or hyperbole would have been necessary, but we got plenty  anyway.   

 Local officials and people in the local media have tried vulgarly to turn the accident and its aftermath into something resembling   the three days between John Kennedy’s assassination and his funeral  in Washington.  It has not only been excessive. It also probably intentionally gave the impression that police and firemen are members of an elevated class of beings, and that something happening to one of them is far worse and more serious than harm to an ordinary human being. (A couple of young kids were killed this week in a wreck on the same highway, and pretty much nobody in town noticed or cared.)  This was not unusual. It goes on all over.  It is part of a general tendency to over-romanticize “first responders”.

Of course the men were called heroes.  Many people these days call all cops and firemen heroes ( and sometimes  throw in school teachers to boot).  In fact a hero is someone who does a great thing requiring exceptional  courage and effort.   Charles Lindbergh in 1927  was a hero, regardless of what he did later.  Audie Murphy was a hero. Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins were heroes. The use of language matters.  Heroism  is an important thing worth honoring, and the  appellation of hero should not be used carelessly or promiscuously as happens these days. Otherwise the meaning and distinction can be lost.

Seller's Remorse

It is not surprising  that most people in the  traditional media dislike and oppose Donald Trump. They usually favor leftists and Democrats and work against Republicans.  With  Trump however they have gone far beyond that to a consistent display of hatred for and obsession with the man that can seem hard to explain. Part of the reason for it  may be Trump’s  rude behavior and arrogant  personality. Some of it may be a reaction to his  harsh criticism of them.  However I  think a lot of it could be caused by feelings of remorse or even guilt, because they helped make Trump president.

In 2012 Democrats in Missouri had the problem of reelecting an unpopular United States  senator.  Their solution was to spend around a couple of million dollars running  ads intended to help the weakest  Republican candidate to win the primary election. It worked. Their choice, a man named Todd Akin, got the nomination and, after making some particularly absurd and offensive  statements and being disowned by many people in his own party, was easily beaten in the general election in a state where the Republicans won the election for president. 

In 2016 Democrats and their supporters in the traditional media  had the problem of electing an unpopular and very unlikeable candidate for president. The Republicans had several candidates with good qualifications and political skill and appeal . They also had a man who looked like another Todd Akin, Donald Trump. Walker, Rubio, Cruz and most of the other Republican candidates were more qualified than Trump, but during the primaries Trump was the one who got the most coverage, attention, and boosting in the media.  He eventually  got the nomination, and it seemed that the Republicans were stuck with another Todd Akin, this time in a campaign for the presidency.  However Democrats and their allies in the media underestimated both how unlikeable their candidate was and how many people wanted a change after Obama, and  Trump was elected. Polls showed that he won by doing better than Clinton among voters who liked neither of them.

Media people may not have played Gene Wilder’s role in making the monster, but they probably at least performed Marty Feldman’s. That could be tough for them to live with.

Their Business

A person does not have to be a pedant to finds reason to notice some of the lousy ways English is being used in public discourse these days. All he has to do is watch TV or read articles at web sites – including those of large media companies. There is a  lot of bad, awkward, ungrammatical, and sometimes hard to understand stuff coming from people with jobs and  titles that would make a person think they should know better.

One of the worst and most common examples  is  the use of  “their” as singular when the sex  is not specified as  in “an employee is expected to wash their hands  before returning from the restroom”.  (Whose hands would that be, and would the employee have to wait until they showed up in the restroom before going back to work?) There is nothing wrong (though nothing imperative  either) in abandoning the old custom of usually using the masculine term when the sex is indeterminate or where the statement applies to people of both sexes.  There are some acceptable replacements for it.  One can use “he or she” and “his or her”.  One can follow the simple convention of male authors using “he” and “his”  and female authors using “she” and “her”.  One often can finesse things by making everything  plural as with “employees are expected to wash their hands before returning from the restroom”.  Such usages may be awkward at times, but they are better than "their" as singular.

The EIghteenth Brumaire of Nancy Pelosi

“Hegel remarked somewhere that all facts and personages of great importance in world history occur, as it were, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.”   -

 Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

It would be a gross exaggeration to call the deposing of Richard Nixon a tragedy, but the politicians who arranged it were able to create an impression of grave and serious business being conducted by grave and serious people  answering the call of duty  and accepting the hard  burden of their responsibility soberly and even reluctantly. They were surely helped by eager supporters in the traditional media and the aid or acquiesce of some Republicans and the pathetic ineptitude of some others,  but Rodino, Ervin, and some of the rest put on a fairly competently run  and generally convincing show.  All that  gravitas may have been pretentious, tiresome,  and often phony, but it mainly worked. They won, and did not look too bad doing so. I would guess that most people thought then, and most people think now that Nixon was treated fairly  and got what he deserved.

Nancy Pelosi has not been so lucky. She has gotten to direct and star in the farce.  Part of her problem was in her cast of characters. Many big city politicians are vulgar, unscrupulous,  party hacks, but Nadler comes across as a nearly epitomical vulgar, unscrupulous,  party hack.  Most politicians are liars, and many are repulsive scoundrels, but Schiff is such a continual and unconvincing liar and so obviously a scoundrel that, as the old joke goes, other politicians have noticed. As a group  Democrats showed  a nearly complete inability to pretend effectively that  they were doing anything soberly or reluctantly or as a matter of duty even as Pelosi knew they needed to do so.  (Her  order for Democrats to show up for the vote in funereal garb was a delightfully ridiculous touch.)    She had most of the people in the traditional media working for her just as the Democrats did in 1974, but that mattered far less than in those days. Public opinion did not move in the Democrats’ direction.  The Republicans in the house  were unanimous in opposing the impeachment, and much of their criticism of it was reasonable, to the point, and convincing. Then there was the problem of the absence of a crime, let alone a high one. It seems clear that the Republicans (and perhaps a few Democrats) in the senate will vote to acquit Trump, perhaps by an outright dismissal of the charges.

There is however one sad if not all  the way tragic aspect of Pelosi’s farce.  Precedent, tradition, and unwritten rules have their uses in political life. The Democrats have set a precedent for the house impeaching a president for no better reason than that a majority of its members dislike him. That is not good for the republic.