First Person

Our Baffling Indifference about UFOs

Why isn’t everyone crazy excited about UFOs? The government finally admitted they’re real. This is a big deal, right?

AS A KID I “BELIEVED” IN UFOs. I was fascinated with science fiction, and space in general. Aliens in flying saucers just kind of made sense in that context. I remember being thrilled when my first grade class watched a slide presentation about the space shuttle program and I learned that we’d be running regular flights to the moon and building a moon base there by 1980. This was not the only thing I was taught in school that didn’t pan out. (I was also taught and tested on the metric system for 12 years because the United States was “going metric.” After graduating at age 17, I got a job as a carpenter’s apprentice and had to learn feet and inches and sixteenths of an inch from scratch).

Growing up, I gradually became more analytical and started to think that UFOs were in the same category as fairies, elves and hobbits. I paid no attention to the topic, and the people I knew that were really into UFOs did nothing to persuade me otherwise. They generally believed in all kinds of goofy things, and I didn’t take any of them seriously. To be clear, I’ve always thought that extraterrestrial life could exist, and if it did exist, that they might visit Earth…but I didn’t believe all the Jerry Springer show-type stories about people getting anal probes on Zeta Reticuli and the like. I didn’t really think that a civilization capable of crossing interstellar space would have any more interest in humanity than I have in, say, mold or algae.

Revelations

Then, in December of 2017, I read the New York Times article about UFOs and thought: “Huh. Well, that’s interesting. Maybe I had this thing all wrong?” But what really sent me down the rabbit hole was listening to Joe Rogan’s interview with Cmdr. David Fravor. I believed every word that man said — and I still do. A close friend of mine is a retired Navy aviator. I know that the fact that a person is a military pilot doesn’t mean they can’t lie or make a mistake. But in my experience, people whom the military trusts to fly fifty-five million dollar warplanes tend to be very level-headed, sane, focused individuals. As opposed to, say, Tom Cruise playing Maverick in Top Gun.

Bottom line: If Cmdr. Fravor says he saw a Tic Tac shaped vehicle doing things no machine built by humans could even remotely duplicate, I believe him completely. I was stunned by this interview. I’d been wrong about UFOs for most of my life.

The floodgates opened, and I started to immerse myself in the topic. And I couldn’t understand why most of the people I talked with either didn’t know, or seem to care, about UFOs. So, I mostly kept quiet about it. It started to feel kind of… lonely. Aside from the question “what happens when we die?,” I can’t think of a more profound question than “are we alone in the Universe?” It’s becoming increasingly apparent that the answer to the second question is: “No, we aren’t alone.” Which leads immediately to “Who, or what, are they?”

As the Covid-19 pandemic set in, I ended up having more time than usual to read books, poke around on the internet, and learn about ufology. (Of particular significance to me were the excellent pieces right here on Trail of the Saucers about Roswell and the Twining memo by Bryce Zabel. Definitely read them if you haven’t yet.) It was a good mental escape from an increasingly depressing news cycle. As winter 2020 gave way to spring and summer, I waited on the edge of my seat for the official UAP report which was sadly underwhelming. But it was also the first time the US government had admitted that our military was seeing things flying around in controlled airspace that they could not identify. Frequently.

My Dinner with Cognitive Dissonance

A few weeks after the report came out, my wife and I went to a dinner party hosted by one of her friends. This woman is a high-powered executive type with a job I don’t completely understand. Nice person, but not typical of my normal blue collar social circle.

During dinner conversation, she was talking about her ex husband, and how he’s “always into nutty conspiracy theories, like UFOs.” This got an amused laugh from everyone present but me. I couldn’t stop myself from saying, “You know, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton both recently said on television that there really are unidentified flying objects, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence just published a report — ”

She interrupted me by saying, “Oh, Josh, I totally believe UFOs are real, and I bet the US government even has a few of them hidden somewhere. It’s just that my ex is into really out there stuff like lizard people running the New World Order!” And everybody laughed again, and then they all started talking about shoes and TV shows and then someone opened another bottle of wine while I sat there with my mouth open, stunned.

Really? Really? You think we’ve been visited by some alien race and the government is hiding recovered alien technology and you’d rather talk about whether or not you should re-watch Game of Thrones and your new Jimmy Choos?

And, as I’ve come to find out, the answer to that question is “yes.” And she’s not the only one.

So, What’s Really Going On?

For many months now, I’ve been trying to parse the reasons behind this attitude of “yes, there are UFOs, but I can’t believe the Seahawks lost yesterday and I want tacos for dinner.” For starters:

• There is a global pandemic happening, after all.
• The United States is more politically polarized than any time since, perhaps, the Civil War, and the so called “culture wars” are raging. Many other countries have similar challenges as well.
• Whatever side you’re on politically, you have to admit the previous administration was nothing if not colorful, distracting, and bandwidth-absorbing.
• Repeated cries of “fake news!” have eroded many people’s faith in journalism as a whole. Many people seem unsure of what to believe as a result.
• Decades of official gaslighting the UFO topic with denial and ridicule have been extremely effective.

In other words, the current zeitgeist is skeptical, stressed, worried, distracted, and burnt out. Understandably so. Seen through this lens, the average person might not want to contemplate yet another murky, complex enigma. And, as my wife said to me recently: “Okay, so what am I supposed to do about it?”

Of course, if you’ve spent any time on the topic, you know the answer. Write your Congressperson! Raise awareness! Get the word out there and put some pressure on those bastards! I realized as we were talking that I haven’t done any of those things either, of course. Maybe at least partially because I’m experiencing all of the challenges and woes listed above just like everyone else.

Perhaps whoever is driving the slow drip of government disclosure we seem to be experiencing now was canny enough to foresee that these troubled times would distract the majority of the citizenry to the point of barely paying any attention. Well played, if so. Well played, indeed.

Trail of the Saucers, published by Bryce Zabel and Stellar Productions, focuses on UFO/UAP news, history, culture and analysis. Here are some articles from our archives —