THE LESSON has :



ALIENS SHMALIENS


The military as usual among themselves are split into two opinions on alien involvement in anything unexplainable. There is a sort of sarcastic yet playfully serious theme to responses at any mere mention of aliens. Many officers are adamant deniers, they deny belief in and involvement in operations dealing with the ‘alien question‘. Meanwhile, certain officers are admittedly responsible for anything, reports, rumors, on an operational basis, even though they may profess to be non-believers. Thus the ‘EXTINT’ designation, that means they are assigned to gather information about other people’s intelligence about alleged extra-terrestrial aliens whether they believe them or not. Quite aside from the regular military scuttlebutt structure this acts as a sort of alien specific rumor central network. Lately a big part of the military complex boom is in striving to meet the potential of an as yet un-encountered inter stellar enemy. So, say that you think you had seen an alien to a comrade or superior and soon you would be talking to an EXTINT Officer. To file a report or not is the choice. The choice to not file a report is respected, though noted, basically because no one could be forced to relate what was perhaps not going to be believed by half the military anyway. And so as there is yet no officially discovered enemy that one could have been in contact with, then there is no reason to however gently coerce anything out of a ‘contactee‘. Still the presence of such a policy, of accommodation of these types of ‘events’ and accounts highlights the value placed in the threat that the more paranoid military elements perceive.

The first major alien scare took tremendous hold onto the world popular psyche. It shaped the face of the politics, the structure of society, the military, and the lives of all citizens.
On Tuesday the 12th of May, a date burned into the history of Soltera, a respected popular NA President gave a speech. It was a speech that should have been of the routine political lying manipulative variety. The audience was ten thousand members of an info wars veteran’s organization. Well into the laudatory speechifying he said:

“What I have to say next will ring in the ears of history. I have met a being not of our Earth, an alien creature from outer space. And I am thoroughly convinced that there are other intelligent civilizations aware of our progress. They are not all hostile. I say to you tonight that we must be vigilant and address the threat that any hostile superior technologies represent. War if necessary must be prepared for.”

Speculation had been that he had slipped this into his prepared remarks unbeknownst to his staff of handlers. The immediate spin attempts ranged from confirmation to denial by sweating sputtering nervous press reps that appeared hilarious and desperate. A commission was formed to study commitment to a policy of opening Government files of the event that had been referred to by the President. Another commission was set up to study the President to make sure he was fit and sane. This President was not nearly as crazy as many took him to be. Secretly he had filled out all the proper lami forms relevant to the release of secrets. His reasoning seemed rational. His speech though clearly crazy to give put the right to the military to be prepared. This dropped the contracts worth billions into the hands of a myriad of corporations.

Despite endorsement of a NA President there was still plenty of room for denial, and many thought that this was some potential ‘red herring’ tossed out to distract attention from some truly critical crisis. Several contemporary Senior researchers went to work. Their reports remain un-filed.
That President had thought the world was ready for this knowledge. It was not. The alien anti-alien debate raged throughout the world media. Whether believed or not the fact that such a statement was uttered by a NA President was enough to make everyone talk endlessly about it.

No aliens came forward voluntarily to verify the executive assertion. No comments were heard from other politicians or religious leaders to confirm him. The Christian Roman Catholic Pope in VC IT SE said nothing. Privately the Presidents political advisers severely chastised his public disclosure, he agreed not to mention it again even though he was asked about it constantly.

This Presidents popularity was a roller-coaster. Eventually the true terrible crimes that he had attempted to distract everyone’s attention from came to full light. Resignation, humiliation, prison made his May alien speech seem all the more the desperate ploy of a failing criminal professional elected popular politician.

The military, meanwhile had perceived a potential threat, that pointed out by the Commander In Chief, even a manic depressive disgraced imprisoned one, must be acted upon. This began a contract signing spree competition to acquire military technologies from all the departments and services of all SOLSYS alliance regions. A worldwide economic boom ensued. A total bull market fed by the nun too subtle huge capitol shift into a waiting military industrial complex geared to create the products a Government must use in any war with an ‘alien‘.

The next person elected NA President denied any presence or existence of any aliens, denied having any secret files or artifacts. No one really believed her.

Many years of simmering conjecture absorbed the lesser minds of popular commentary. Two distinct public opinion camps evolved, those that felt that there was a specific threat from space, that there was no verifiable confirm-able contact was taken by these people as evidence of alien dastardly motives, versus those that doubt, doubt, doubt to the point of very violent skepticism.

Over fifty percent of those polled by major opinion organizations have adamantly denied belief in aliens or alien visitation. They aligned with the political party of Ms. President. Denial was the policy statement. They worked hard to undo the anti-alien initiatives of her jailed predecessor.

This set the stage of events for the pro-readiness opposition. They stressed a perceived technology gap between the human world and the aliens. The most glaring gap being that they could apparently travel to here freely while we still didn’t even know who ‘they’ are or where ‘they’ come from.
The pro-anti-alien invader politicians won overwhelmingly at the next elections, fear of the unknown being a great vote getter. The sweeping victories allowed their supporters to join the Government contract signing feast.

A new President would also deny that he had seen any evidence of aliens. But he would later avoid questions by saying that he couldn’t comment for security reasons. This was a denial and not a denial. It was enough to seem a credible endorsement to the pro anti-alien profiteers. They used this security excuse to enrich themselves.

Militarily space had always intrigued and scared the Admirals, Generals, Ministers and Secretaries charged with war preparations. Superiority in space was deemed necessary at all costs. Control of higher ground is an old military adage and no ground is higher than rocks spinning in space.

It seems to me that the alien question is one of memory and repetition. How often the question comes up is the result of the answer that looms the largest to oneself. Answer the way that allows acceptance of belief and soon the reasons to believe pop up everywhere. It’s confirmation bias. It is a self-confirming belief that implores us to look for reinforcement of it wherever. This is part of a natural human mechanism for acceptance. Mention aliens long enough till doubt creeps in. If you attest to belief and offer speculative confirmation or slim solid proof or ambiguous corroborating statements a true believer will look to confirm the premise by the best means of the media milieu or imaginative self experience. Of all of us few will seek through personal experience to confront the unknown of outer space, to do this they must have already confronted the alien question and reconciled the possibilities.

All of this alien talk is a social mechanism to get us prepared for what rational logical thought says is inevitable. After an interval the people who will not accept considering the question become fewer. It is inevitable that we will encounter other than earthly aliens eventually. Whoever makes contact first will surely be famous forever, their story becoming the stuff of legends and myths.

It is as if, that as soon as we, all of humanity are ready the answer will be revealed without a question, the question of it will be moot. It won’t matter that there is no question, the answer, the aliens the reason of it will be obvious and uncontradictable.

Despite the fear of cultural disintegration, destruction of civilization, religious values and traditions we seek the truth of extraterrestrial life. Though some will insist that any artifacts or evidence of aliens must be suppressed and kept completely secret for the benefit of humanity. They fear that advanced aliens would conquer us as easily as Europeans conquered natives of the Earths western hemisphere, though that to do it completely took about a full four hundred years. So now this would make this the most secret of secrets and any rumors are denied to the point of irrelevance as a procedure of policy. Aliens have visited us, yet no one knows. No one knows if post contact social disintegration has already begun. Though knowing human nature and history if aliens were already here we would be selling them either cheap souvenirs or weapons or slaves.

Good topic for a liaison meeting.
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Aliens! Aliens smaliens! You think some super intelligent advanced life form that can overcome the depths of space would be interested in your worthless life! Ha!”

“Ok so no one knows for certain about aliens. I mean we might have them among us or not. Or, I mean maybe they just drop by to check up on us. They would be much more welcome as tourists then as enemies.” Ya think?

“Aliens! Hey you’re nuts! The President is not an alien! The Government is not controlled by aliens, if it was we would not be making weapons to greet them with but building gift shops. We’ve been buzzing around out there in space …what, quite a while now, right? Still no green bug types anywhere! Just iffy microbes! I say if there were aliens visiting us they’d be vacationing at the beach or hanging around Lupe’s in NNY NY NA.” He said this as: ‘ninny Nye nah’.

“Well how do you know they aren’t there right now? Hanging out sipping a Marstini at Lupe’s? Anyway when were you ever at Lupe’s or at a beach? Hey you could be an alien for all I know!”
“How stupid! If I could fly across the Galaxy and go anywhere I wanted why would I want to sit here with you arguing about this stupid shit? Science? To study us? To steal your mind? Our humanity?”

“Humanity! You clone of a mutant sub-human lab specimen canned minus…”

“Look we’re all valuable our…”

“As a specimen in a jar maybe.”

“I heard that it was the aliens that were keeping us from building good fighting robots and keeping us from flying faster than light. I read that aliens could make duplicates of people on Mars and send them back to Earth. I saw this vid thing all about it…”

The second large alien scare was directly the result of one Major Dirk Larkin retired of the Soltera Space Marines. At the beginning of the episode he was apprehended by police bleeding and delirious after shooting up a ninny Nye nah Central Park Transtube station. No casualties resulted other than Larkin but the place was pretty much destroyed. Major Larkin insisted he had been battling aliens who were intent upon overthrowing the world popular Government to enslave humans as a food source.

Once recovered he proceeded on a promotional publicity appearance tour that crisscrossed the planet. Everywhere he went he said aliens were among us plotting our immanent subjugation and processing. This was a popular distractive propaganda timed to profit from a recent difficult military industrial economic cycle and a long history of alien humi-agriculture stories.

Major Larkin’s weakness was his inability to get any confirming support from anywhere, much like the jailbird ex NA President, no one had as yet been verified to have been eaten. He was challenged to produce a hungry alien or some leftovers. This sparked a wide debate on the ethics of kidnapping by force and displaying an other-worldly person who was just looking for a meal anyway. This seemed to some an awful way to greet someone who had traveled so far to get here. Others said that an alien illegally hunting humans for food surreptitiously entering our Soltera-tory was obviously up to no good and should upon capture if still alive be detained and studied. The military waited for this.

Meanwhile other groups of citizens and scientists without Government funding carry on the long unanswered invitation to friendly communication with anything alien that can answer, even human eating ones. Of course they have only their own expectations to shape the means of communication. They have not been answered mainly because probably no-thing out there in space can hear our primitive squeaks or is itself still too primitive to hear us. At least that’s what the ENTVID show I saw said about it.