Culture and Disclosure

 By A. T. Roberts

In the past several years, a steady stream of UFO-related information has inundated our cultural landscape. Some wavetop events are as follows:

-          2017 - Former Blink-182 front man Tom DeLonge establishes To the Stars.

-          2017 - The New York Times and other legacy media outlets break a story on the existence of AATIP, a government-funded program to investigate UAPs (their term).

-          2018 - The documentary Bob Lazar: Area 51 and Flying Saucers is released, breathing life into the story of Lazar and substantiating some of his previously dubious claims.

-          2019 - Video footage is released, via To the Stars, of U.S. Navy fighter pilots encountering UAPs off the coast of California and the Eastern Seaboard in 2004 and 2014-15, respectively.

-          2020 - The documentary The Phenomenon is released, featuring government officials openly speaking about the existence of UAPs.

-          2021 - Congress releases report on UAPs.

This relatively short timeline dwarfs any release on the subject in the decades preceding it. Though it seems as if we are on the precipice of a new era of data sharing and disclosure on behalf of those in power, a comparison to well-known events throughout the history of UFOlogy as well as a more careful examination of current events unfolding may suggest otherwise.  

Government

Several of the highlights listed above that pertain to the federal government have all the trappings of administrative obfuscation behind them. For example, they’re not UFOs anymore, they’re UAPs. Though it's been suggested that the new acronym was created to build distance from the stigma surrounding UFOs, what it really feels like is the government making up new words to make it seem like they’re making progress on the issue.

The Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), which, in recent years, has made waves in the news cycle, should also be examined with caution. For anyone even remotely familiar with bloated bureaucracy and inflated government spending, $22 million—spaced over five years—seems like a pretty small budget to figure out what’s really occurring in the skies above us; if that was even the government’s plan in the first place. To put it in perspective, congress spent the same amount of money throwing parties to celebrate victories in Iraq and Afghanistan. (1). The whole program rings eerily similar to the now-infamous Project Bluebook, the Air Forces token response to Cold War era UFO sightings; initially run, not by a general (O7-10), but a lowly captain (O3). It’s a feign to show, “Here, we’re taking this seriously, see?” Also, it's not AATIP anymore, it's the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF); another terminology change.

The upcoming congressional report release is another example of hype over what likely amounts to no new information. The government is admitting that yes, something is happening and no, they don’t know exactly what it is—which, in and of itself, can still be viewed as significant since they’re not saying it's swamp gas—but nothing will change, no substantially new information will be revealed.

The main outlier is the creation of the Space Force. Politics aside, it is nothing revelatory to state that President Trump faced a leviathan and unprecedented opposition in almost every venture he undertook while in office. Highly organized resistance came from the media, private industry/NGOs, various levels of state and federal government, and even his own party. Whether it was an incomplete border wall, lengthy hearing up to the nomination of a federal judge, or a two-year investigation into foreign collusion; any and all plans were thwarted, stalled, or obstructed. Outside of rather quickly produced entertainment-based mockery (2), Trump managed to stand up an entirely new military branch with little-to-no resistance.

The formation of a military branch whose domain co-exists with the recent debuting of the unknown phenomena mentioned above harkens back to the creation of the United States Air Force in the same time frame of foo fighters, Kenneth Arnold’s now-famous sighting, and Roswell.

What makes this massive administrative change significant in the world of UFOlogy is the fact that it was done without the explicit mention of its decision having anything to do with UAPs. If the government said, “yea, we're standing up the Space Force to defend the country from aliens,” Ufologists and enthusiasts alike would obviously freak out, since that would implicitly pay credence to the government’s awareness of the non-terrestrial origin of them; but they didn’t say this. Instead, they told us about AATIP (via the media), career bureaucrats talked on big-budget documentaries and the Joe Rogan podcast, and they released a few videos captured by fighter pilots (via To The Stars).

Media

The 21st Century marks a low point for trust in media institutions. A 2020 survey shows that one third of Americans have zero trust in mass media; a record high, having gone up nine points from merely a year earlier (3). If you also distrust polling data, simply scroll through the comments section of an online advertisement for a legacy media outlet and read the cynicism for yourself. Coupling this notion with the fact that we live in an era of an unprecedented media-government-corporate alliance not seen since WWII, it is almost bizarre how much trust UFOlogists put in the release of the New York Times piece on AATIP. Yes, the program existed; but the public being made aware of its existence should not be thought of as groundbreaking, but rather potentially calculated.

To The Stars, at its core a media company, also has its parallels in UFOlogy folklore. Jamie Shandera comes to mind; a television producer who had the now-infamous “Majestic-12” documents mysteriously appear at his doorstep. The idea that someone who makes a living producing stories was suddenly given allegedly hard-proof evidence as to the existence of a secret government group responsible for the safeguarding of UFO information was taken seriously is almost silly in retrospect. Furthermore, the idea was advanced by Bill Moore, another individual with a predilection to all-things UFO-related. Moore later went on to claim that he was used by the government to spread disinformation.

 Culture

            Maybe one of the most cringe-worthy aspects of everything mentioned above is its dovetailing with the mainstreaming of what was long-considered “nerd culture.” If you’ve seen a movie, watched a television show, or gone on the internet in the past twenty years I’m sure you’ve noticed that what was once nerdy or geeky has officially entered pop-culture, in a truly hyper-capitalist fashion. Aside from the “in before you” whines of real or wannabe nerds claiming that their culture (term used very loosely) is being appropriated, what all this amounts to is a token interest in the fields associated with actually discovering what’s going on in the skies above us. Examples: people with zero interest in aerospace walking around in NASA shirts, the theocratizing of science, the release of more big-budget movies and documentaries on the subject, and so on. Though one might argue that this is all beneficial since it gets more people generally interested in subjects either directly or loosely pertaining to UFOlogy; what it really amounts to, as alluded to above, is a repackaging of old lore in an effort to, on the media front, profit; and on the government front, potentially increase compartmentalization and consolidation of information. This, particularly in the example of media, dilutes the field rather than bolstering it. Are we really any closer to truth as a result of increased UFO/sci-fi popularity, or just the next “storm Area-51” Facebook circus event?

 (1)    https://www.heritage.org/budget-and-spending/report/50-examples-government-waste

(2)   The show Space Force premiered on Netflix barely six months after the founding of the DoD’s six branch of the military.

(3)   https://news.gallup.com/poll/321116/americans-remain-distrustful-mass-media.aspx

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A. A.T. Roberts is a military aviator and freelance writer. As a lifelong UFO enthusiast, he enjoys reading, writing, and conversing on all aspects of the subject. Contact him at atroberts.author@gmail.com