anyone remember the FBI and CIA talking about UFO sightings?

this isn't about that, it's about something a lot older.

back in the 2010's, some dude called a crazy talk show host and started panic-ranting about "extra-dimensional beings" being aware of "dangers to come", and their ability to bring everyone to safe areas but refusal to do anything, their desire to cull population centers, and their involvement in the US military specifically. They correct themselves and say government, I guess to stay on the talk show or something, but their first instinct was military.

i could spend a couple hours typing out a whole essay here about how freakishly reminiscent it is to Covid, you could respond by saying it was probably just a symptom of 2012 "end-of-the-world" paranoia, but for now, i think it would be better to talk about the more interesting thing. this stuff was super popular with conservatives back then. ufo sightings showed up on fox news a lot and conservative conspiracy theorists are still common nowadays. but despite this, and this dire warning of mass depopulation, conservatives still prioritize abstract notions of freedom and independence over survival choosing instead to make up conspiracies about the vaccines and masks. this makes no sense to me. do conservatives truly have such a small attention span what happened?

  • newmou [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    “ PAHRUMP, NEV. — There’s a call on the Area 51 Caller Line. Art Bell answers on the air, unscreened as always.

    A panicked, nearly hysterical man says he was let go from the top-secret government compound deep in the Nevada desert. The man cannot divulge his location. He is in a hurry. “They’ll triangulate on this position really soon.”

    “Give us something, quick,” Bell urges.

    Through the miracle of satellite technology, the talk show host transmits the disturbing call to more than 400 radio stations across the nation -- more than any other radio show but for Paul Harvey, Rush Limbaugh and Laura Schlessinger. Bell broadcasts from a beige easy chair, sitting alone in a tiny bedroom of his double-wide trailer deep in the desert, one mountain range away from the mysteries of the black-budget Air Force base known as Area 51.

    “What we’re thinking of as aliens, Art, they’re extra-dimensional beings that an earlier precursor of the space program made contact with,” the caller blurts out. “They have infiltrated a lot of aspects of the military establishment, particularly Area 51. The disasters that are coming, they -- the government -- knows about them. . . . They want those major population centers wiped out so the few who are left will be more easily controllable. I say we g -- “

    The man is weeping now, and suddenly there is only silence. One, two, three, four, five seconds of dead air -- a radio eternity. “Coast to Coast AM,” Bell’s program, has vanished into the ether. And then Bell’s theme music swells, and the host’s calm, resonant voice returns:

    “Weird, weird, weird stuff. In all my life . . . . My uplink transmitter was dead as a doornail.” For the first time in all his years of broadcasting, Bell had lost his connection to the transmitter. Smack in the middle of that call.

    Later that night, Bell offers listeners his take on the event: “That’s beyond coincidence. It was done to you.”