Now sure ... there is a UFO community that's believed in alien life for a long time and that feels we have plenty of evidence. But of course the topic has been largely poo-pooed and even ridiculed by mainstream thought.
But it took less than 4 months from that post and the solar eclipse for everything to change. In case you missed it, the mainstream media rolled out its collective story beginning on December 16. The UFO topic is being discussed in all seriousness.
For those who can't stand one of these news sources, I offer links to both "The New York Times" and Fox News:
http://video.foxnews.com/v/5688855197001/?#sp=show-clips
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/pentagon-program-ufo-harry-reid.html
For those who aren't fans of either news source ... I understand, and I'm sorry. But the articles and videos are still out there.
A more recent Newsweek article even quotes the head of the Pentagon program that was analyzing UFOs. "'I hate to use the term UFO but that's what we're looking at,' he added. 'I think it's pretty clear this is not us, and it's not anyone else, so no one has to ask questions where they're from.'"
But wait ... does this really mean we're acknowledging ET life around our planet now as absolute fact?
Nope. In fact, I've seen some interesting commentary that the video the above articles are based on is bogus, based on considerations like: there wouldn't be any outside wind noise from outside the jet because the microphone is inside a helmet; and the lingo isn't at all how trained pilots would be communicating.
Be that as it may, there's an interesting aside here: the Raytheon corporation references this story, saying that their technology was used to track this UFO.
Regardless of whether this video is legit, what this media coverage does mean is my favorite thing of all: we can start to speak more openly about what has been a ridiculed topic. And to me, that's the only time when we can progress and learn things. Ridicule comes either from closed minds or from special interests trying to drive an agenda, and either way it slows a true, scientific investigation of things.
By scientific, I mean an attitude that is open to any and all possibilities, and that will seek to explore them by gathering information with as little bias as possible. Yes, science will tend to interpret what it finds based on what it already knows (because every human does this), and sometimes this leads to mistaken interpretations because there's plenty we don't know. To me, that's ok.
What's not ok is when we're kept from the right interpretations because of agendas that favor the few. That's why I'm interested in the opening of this new conversation.
Of course if Smitty saw this happening, he'd immediately be suspicious: what's the media's agenda? Why are they opening this up for discussion now? What narrative will they collectively push, and to what end?
But in the best of circumstances, there's no conspiracy here. There's just a new conversation we can have. And that gives us up to three years to have this conversation before 2020 ends. Three years before, as D&S explains, we'll know for sure that they're here.