 |
January 1, 2001 Days of Mircle and Wonder:
by Stephen Bassett These are the days of
miracle and wonder The modern, mainstream version was launched by JFK in 1961. What a concept. Take two years of your life, leave the country and work on behalf of some distant people’s need in some countryside where the cockroaches are as big as hamsters. The baby boomers, the same group Paul Begala excoriates in the April 2000 Esquire (“The Worst Generation”) as “the most self-centered, self-seeking, self-interested, self-absorbed self-indulgent, self-aggrandizing generation in American history” (What is his problem?), flocked to the Peace Corps, creating an international phenomenon. Who knew the idea would spill over and add to the line of buses streaming into the segregated south? There activist youth lost their lives trying to save the south from itself, ending the American apartheid and turning Democrats into Republicans in droves. Most societies find it difficult to appreciate activists in their lifetime, or afterlife time, for that matter. Yeah, sure, they change the world for the better, sacrifice their interests, face down huge obstacles. But they are usually a pain in the ass. The very nature of activism is to cram a new point of view down society’s throat when society is not hungry – much like worming a German Shepard. The dog appreciates that the pills banished the worms, but can’t quite lose the idea of ripping your arm off. By the late sixties, the majority of Americans knew in their gut the war was a disaster. They supported its end but were not comfortable with, what were to them alien life forms, marching on anything with Greek columns and screaming obscenities at their cherished institutions. “Yeah, we know it needs to be over, but would y’all mind jumping back into your VW buses and let nature take its course. We’ll win the damn thing at whatever cost and regret it later.” Activists rarely listen to reason. Decades afterward the leaders of the anti-war movement, and the civil rights movement as well, were regarded with ambiguity. It’s always that way – women’s rights, labor, environment – the accolades are slow in coming as if the middle class doesn’t want to be reminded of another painful transition. There’s renewed notice and some acceptance when a Jerry Rubin does a one-eighty. More common is a relegation to a state of underachievement where men and women, who, sans the activist path, would have reached another level of influence and position, but are only permitted a lesser status. Tom Hayden and Julian Bond come to mind. Sometimes it ends in the bedroom of a modest house with a Seconal cocktail, as with Abbie Hoffman. Societies need new ideas pumped in like airliners need fresh air. Cut off new and challenging thinking, and the intellectual air grows stale, the passengers sickly. Activists are the pump, and greater appreciation for what they do will keep the air flowing. It’s been five years since this author arrived in Cambridge, Massachusetts to begin a mid-life activist’s journey into a world unlike any other. Compared to the careers of many in the field, this is not a long time. But it’s long enough to appreciate what the old timers have gone through – 10, 20, 30 years up against a world view thousands of years in the making. Nevertheless, given what is about to happen, it’s hard not to feel like Rosie Ruiz*. Perhaps some others feel the same way. As the saying goes, lie down until the feeling passes. It’s time to rock. Or rant. After five years of wins and losses, grief and glory, obsession and compulsion, this is a good opportunity to clear the deck before starting fresh in the new millennium. So, if you don’t mind, the author would like to get a few things off the chest. Then they will be put away, in a little lockbox, and hopefully never revisited again. Let the venting begin. Lighten Up Ufologists are too
hard on each other. Ufology is too hard on
itself. One is reminded of the classic
Bill Cosby routine with a football team in emotional high dungeon at half-time ready to
hit the field and lay waste to the opposition.
“Let’s go,” the coach screams. They lunge for the door – it’s
locked. One assumes this
hapless team finally gets the door open and finishes the game. Not so with the UFO/Disclosure movement since
1947. Here the door remains shut,
nowhere to go, weeks pass, the team in frustration trashes the locker room and then beats
the hell out of each other. The
government locked the door 53 years ago. Don’t
pound on each other. Find the key
and open it. The Boys in the
Band Of course, it has
been suggested that some in the field wear brass knuckles because that is their job, paid
or otherwise, to keep the pot and the minds boiling – some patriotic subversion for a
good cause. Note to such: better check with headquarters and get up to
speed. You don’t want to be
perched on the ramparts waving your arms and belching about the planet Venus, swamp gas,
lying Lt. Colonels and nano-mechanical ice crystals while your brethren are setting up the
chairs at the press conference announcing a million year old alien presence in your world. Painful Moments One occurred
poolside in 1995 in San Luis Obispo at a time of deciding whether to leave one life behind
and drive cross country to Cambridge to begin another.
The marvelous book, The Holographic Universe by gifted writer
Michael Talbot, had been read just a few weeks before.
At a time when you are about to make a major decision, you look for
anchors. Something about this book and
its author held a powerful resonance. Here
was a visionary man with amazing life experiences trying to see the world in a new way. There was so much more to learn, and he was
talented, published and only 40 – I thought. Being
50, there seemed ample time to discover a new universe and make a difference. Time even to meet this wonderful writer on
the other side of the continent. So that day,
reading Whitley Strieber’s Breakthrough under a warm, California sky, moving
through the chapter entitled “Michael’s Gift,” a numbing cold descended as
it slowly became clear the chapter was about Michael Talbot, and he was dead of leukemia
at 37. What could those
at the pool have thought of a middle aged man blubbering into the pages of a book? Did they know how precious time can be when
you suddenly have a passion to use it? Did
they know that a few weeks later, while driving in twilight across the vast expanse of New
Mexico, approaching Roswell and staring into the darkening and beckoning mysteries of the
government captive desert, there would come a
sense of elation never felt before in a life of small consequence, a sense of certainty
and purpose so powerful, all fear fell away?
Which was good,
because there would be more painful moments. § Learning in April of 1998 that Representative Steven
Schiff was dead of cancer at 51 and feeling like a fool, being the “UFO
lobbyist” and never securing a meeting with one of the few members of the House to
ever stand up to the cover-up. § Learning of the death of Shari Adamiak, Karla Turner and
Phil Corso, the latter more so because the Army and the top media had successfully dodged
dealing with his memoir and public statements while he was alive and able to respond. § Watching from a distance an unbelievable assault via
radio and internet on Art Bell and his radio program.
§ Hearing on the phone the uncontrolled, screaming anger
of a suicidal colleague as a life collapsed and another marriage fell apart under the
pressures of the work and the frustration.
This pain is revisited every time another
skeptic/debunker/operative rants on about con artists milking a gullible public. This against a backdrop of early
deaths, heart attacks, heart arrhythmias, cancers, busted bank accounts, and years of
persistence by researchers and authors earning a fraction of what their talents would
command in the “acceptable” segments of the business and academic world. § Learning that Paul Allen had thrown $20 million down the
drain of the SETI science propaganda project, while the disclosure movement confronts the
military industrial complex with nickels and dimes.
This pain is compounded by the fact that the few individuals in and
around the field with the wealth to truly make a difference will not direct a penny toward
the politics of disclosure. Lessons Learned
Anger The very nature of
ufology assaults the underbelly of human vulnerability – fear, shame, ego, and need. The most difficult discipline has been ego
management. After that comes anger. In all of five years very few times
has there been real burning anger and they have been put aside. Only one item remains to be extinguished. When the amazing
story of this 50-year struggle is written, aside from any grotesque acts by the government
in defense of its little secret, within the public arena one piece of mischief will stand
out. It is the circumstances by which
members of a skeptic organization contrived to set up a distinguished college professor
and destroy this professor’s work, career and reputation. They used a vulnerable third party to carry out
the plan and then compounded the crime by inviting the professor to give a good faith
presentation at their organization’s annual dinner – only to spring the fruits
of the plot on their guest. It will come to be
known as one of the most despicable acts in the history of modern science, directed at
someone who had done more in a lifetime of work to help humanity than any score of their
kind combined. It has been said
that ufology has suffered most from its “inability to conduct proper science.” Not true.
It has suffered most from the quality of the skeptics that rose to challenge
its findings. Putting aside Carl
Sagan, more complicit than skeptic, there hasn’t been a media active debunker worthy
of carrying the tape recorder of the typical field investigator. There, we’ll just take that over here and put it in the little lockbox with the other stuff. Ah, yes, that feels better. Much better. Happy New Millennium. Back to Article Index Copyright © 2000 Stephen Bassett |
| "Most societies find it difficult to appreciate activists in their lifetime, or afterlife time, for that matter. Yeah, sure, they change the world for the better, sacrifice their interests, face down huge obstacles. But they are usually a pain in the ass." | |