America's Real Illegal Alien Problem
I have to admit, I did not have “Blaming Joe Biden for a UFO alien invasion of Earth” on my Bingo card. That’s an oversight on my part, I totally missed it, though I don’t have any plans to shoot it down.
I’ve posted a few comments about this on social media, and I feel a bit stupid each time. Stupid for feeling I have to explain to someone that, no, this is not an alien invasion, it’s a balloon – and stupid for making the effort because it’s a near-certainty they won’t believe the explanation, will also have another “But what about…?!” reason ready in their hip pocket, and most of all I’ll be blamed for being a gullible stooge and part of the dark government cover-up.
Still, it’s hard to resist at least the basics. Like, “So, you’re saying that aliens flew a craft across the entire galaxy that went totally undetected the entire way, and what they chose to send with all their advanced alien technology to accomplish this was a balloon.”
That’s about the limit of how far I’ll go. On a rare occasion, if the spirit moves me, I might possibly ask, “So, when this alien world decided to send their balloons to attack Earth, why do you think they’re all over the United States, and not anywhere else?” One would think a better battle plan for such a highly-advanced society would be to take out all the world powers. I can imagine the Great Alien Leader saying, ‘So, wait, you’ll telling me we put a many decades-long war strategy in place to send our balloons across the galaxy to Earth, and oops, forget about all the rest of Earth?? We forgot about Russia, China, England, France and Germany?? And Bali? Let alone New Zealand, Brazil, Argentina and Hobbiton? Heads are gonna roll!!!’” (Assuming the aliens have heads.)
What I most love is the suggestion that this is all happening because Joe Biden is so weak. I don’t even have it in me to not how long it takes to travel across the universe, and Joe Biden has only been president for two year. Not because pointing that out makes rational sense, but because I just don’t want to hear back about “Don’t you know about hyper warp, loser? They can be here in seconds.” Yet they still just sent balloons…
There are many options here. And the four we hear the most are –
1. These are known balloons that pose no threat.
2. These are balloons that cannot yet be identified, but don’t appear to be a threat.
3. These are spy balloons whose transmitting signals, once identified, are being blocked.
4. Aliens.
Go figure that followers are the anonymous QAnon have opted for Door Number 4.
My dad said that he heard the Orson Welles “Martian attack” radio broadcast in 1938. He said he knew it was just a radio show and not an actual attack because there’d been an ad for it in the paper, and also because, after changing channels from Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy during a break, he heard Orson Welles’ introduction from almost the beginning. In addition, I should note, he wasn’t a lunatic.
As I’ve mentioned previously, when I was at Northwestern, I took.an astronomy course, "Highlights of Astronomy" which was taught by an eminent professor there -- J. Allen Hynek. Prior to teaching there, Dr. Hynek had been the civilian astrophysicist in charge of Project Blue Book, the U.S. Air Force program to study the phenomenon of Unidentified Flying Objects. (He was also the advisor to Steven Spielberg for Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and even got a cameo close-up in the film in the final sequence of scientists gathered at the landing.)
I don't remember much about the class after all these years, other than I enjoyed it. And enjoyed when he devoted two days to U.F.O.’s. I do recall three things:
One is that Hynek said that the Air Force eventually wanted to close down Project Blue Book, but they weren’t allowed to until every case was classified. So, what the Air Force did was classify these 30 cases as "unidentified" -- and then closed down the program.
The second thing I recall is that Hynek said when he realized the Air Force was going to shut down the program, he was concerned that the papers would be buried, so little by little every day he made copies and sneaked them out.
And the third detail is that Hynek made clear that while he didn't believe there was any proof of UFOs, he felt it was foolish of us to think that in the mass vastness of the universe we were the only planet with living creatures.
I can only imagine his reaction to conspiratorialist on the far right freaking out that alien balloons were attacking Earth…
But then, I can’t even imagine his reaction to such great scientific minds and strategists like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, who he might consider evidence of an alien lifeforce on Earth.
By the way, Greene’s suggestion is that maybe it’s China sending a strain of the coronavirus, or perhaps the balloons contain a nuclear bomb. Of course, we already have the coronavirus here in the U.S., as does the entire world, along with vaccines. So, dropping an existing virus from eight miles up in the sky seems poor strategy. And a slow-moving balloon with a nuke does not seem the most elusive target to stop.
On the other hand, Boebert’s suggestion is it’s President Biden’s weakness that brought about the balloon “attacks.” Of course, this whizbang theory ignores the reality that there were three Chinese balloons discovered during Trump’s time in office – which he wasn’t even told about, since they were determined to be no threat. (As well as perhaps concern that Trump would over-react.) But then, ignoring reality these days is a far right feature, not a bug.
What is known and seems most rational is that such balloons have been flying over the United States for many years. They haven’t been reported to the public or shot down because they were benign and posed no threat. And some are weather balloons. And some are commercial balloons doing land surveyal or transmitting WiFi signals to areas without Internet coverage. Or other commercial purposes. And being no threat, we weren’t looking for them, but now that the Big Chinese Balloon made such national news, scientists widened the scope of what radar should look for, and as a result more benign things are being spotted and reported.
Or, it's aliens from outerspace.
The good news is that, at least so far, we haven’t had Trump insist that if he was president, he’d build a wall in the sky to keep the illegal aliens out, and promises he’d get the planet QuatronX of the Zebulon System to pay for it.
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