A post seen last week on Bluesky truly resonated with me: Trying to act like a functioning adult while my soul is busy filing a mental complaint against humanity.
That’s pretty much what my Other Worldly novels are, a complaint against humanity. My literary reality primarily depicting humans as the problem, not extraterrestrial beings.
Yet never has that been more real than in the past few weeks. As my OW protagonist Rowan Layne would say, boy howdy. Rowan and I both struggle to maintain faith in our fellow humans. And Rowan has even testified before several silly members of a congressional committee who decry alien citizenship in Alien Sensation, informing them of how ridiculous it is to be anti-alien.
Which is why I wish Rowan Layne could testify to this Congress for real. Especially because I find myself at odds with the strange juxtaposition that at least some congressional Republicans appear to be pro-alien when everything else about them screams they most certainly would not be if confronted with actual extraterrestrial beings.
As Rowan says in the upcoming Aliens Watch, anti-alienism is the new racism on steroids.
Republicans are nothing if they aren’t looking for others to hate, vilify, and blame for everything they themselves perpetrate and are guilty of. Why would aliens of the extraterrestrial kind be an exception when Republicans already detest what they deem illegal aliens from other nations?
Yet congressional Republicans persist in demanding the truth about UFOs when they aren’t interested in learning, identifying, and speaking the truth about literally everything else taking place on Earth. Case in point: this month’s latest showboat of a congressional hearing.
As if Congress had nothing more pressing to be concerned about in this travesty of an election year, a hearing was conducted on November 13 by two House oversight subcommittees in yet another push for supposed government transparency about UFOs.
Normally I’d be thrilled with the focus if these folks weren’t so utterly devoid of credibility, accountability, and basic human decency in every other aspect of their existence. And if our democracy and human rights weren’t in the process of being destroyed by them.
In that recent hearing, former government and military officials stated UFOs were real and Americans deserve to know the truth. Yippee. Except half of all Americans believe every hate-filled conspiracy thrown their way by Republicans and Fox News, so how on earth would anyone think they could embrace such a profound and earthshattering truth about the existence of entities among them who are not of Earth?
“We should not turn a blind eye, but boldly face this new reality and learn from it,” said retired US Navy Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet. A man who claimed to see a video of an inexplicable flying object during naval training exercises nearly a decade ago.
Turn a blind eye? That’s all Republican members of Congress do when it comes to treason, corruption, and utter depravity rampantly existing within their own ranks. At this point, I’m not interested in hearing from Gallaudet about UFOs—or UAP for Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena as ridiculously deemed by DoD—he said others saw while in the Navy. Because what really matters in terms of credibility these day is who he supported in the recent presidential election. I could hazard a guess, based on the seriously vile chairwoman of one of the committees holding the hearing.
Republican Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina claimed in her opening remarks, without specificity or proof, that “some people” didn’t want the UFO hearing to happen because they feared what might be disclosed. “But we stood firm,” she said. “No amount of outside pressure would ever keep me from pursuing a subject.”
No amount of human decency can keep Mace from pursuing and spewing blatant bigotry either. Her latest gambit this week was basically declaring transgender women aren’t human and therefore shouldn’t use restrooms on Capitol Hill. Any guesses on how Nancy effing Mace would view aliens among us? Ya think she’d welcome them into any restroom anywhere?
But the ultimate hubris in this subcommittee farce of a UFO hearing came from one Luis Elizondo, a former Department of Defense official, who testified that the US and some of its adversaries are in possession of UAP technology and are keeping it secret that we are not alone in the universe.
During questioning by Mace, Elizondo claimed the government has a secret UAP crash retrieval program to identify and reverse engineer alien aircraft, and that the government retaliates against whistleblowers by harassing them and trying to destroy their credibility.
Credibility? Elizondo actually urged Congress and the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump to be more transparent about the government’s UAP programs. “I believe that we as Americans can handle the truth,” he said. “And I also believe the world deserves the truth.”
It would be funny if it weren’t so disturbingly tragic. Like the president-elect is going to tell him or anyone else the truth about anything, much less how the government reverse engineers extraterrestrial technology. What planet has this guy been living on the past ten years? Anyone hazard a guess where he gets his “news”?
Folks like Gallaudet, Mace, and Elizondo likely aren’t really interested in learning about potential extraterrestrial life among us. They seemingly seek the spotlight to crow about federal government coverups and potentially existing technology others might exploit. The kind of folks who aim to go to Mars for the resources to be plundered from it. You know, that guy.
It’s painfully obvious that anyone supporting or associated with the incoming administration isn’t interested in their fellow human beings, much less alien beings. They are for themselves, and their greed alone.
Here’s what Rowan Layne had to say to folks of such ignominious ilk when she testified before Congress in Alien Sensation:
“One cannot control the universe. There’s a whole world out there you know little about, beyond this room, your office, and the state you came from. Humans first tried to control entities already on this land called America, plundering in the guise of Manifest Destiny, claiming to be first in time. Well, you don’t control time either. But you somehow think you can. You seek to control nature, Earth, and the space within which it exists, while remaining willfully ignorant of reality.
“And when you become intimidated by the vastness of what cannot be controlled, you claim no one else but you has a right to exist. You pigeonhole my friends into your idea of that it means to live and breathe within this environment we call Earth. Only capable of comprehending your concept of what matters, where someone was born.
“Have you stopped for one millisecond to consider that others in the vast galaxy don’t give a damn about what state you were born in? It’s one tiny speck on a planet that is one tiny orb among billions. Trillions. Infinity. Your scrap of ‘legal’ paper means nothing to a species that sees you clearly as not capable of recognizing others exist who don’t look or think or believe that they alone are entitled to occupy space.”
Nancy Mace doesn’t think other humans should occupy space in a flipping bathroom. Tell me again that she really gives a damn about UFOs or aliens. Or government transparency while she squanders time and government funds on charades to detract from dastardly deeds occurring in real time, right before our eyes.
At this point, like Rowan Layne, I have far more faith in aliens than in humans.