The X-Files In The Stupidest Timeline

I do not believe that UFOs are aliens, but I was expecting some weird lightning phenomena or maybe an experimental weapon testing. Not a poor paint job from NASA.

Scully looking skeptical — Image Credit: Fox

On Friday, the U.S. Department of War released 161 government files pertaining to Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs), the new name for what we used to call UFOs. As someone who grew up with the X-Files, let me tell you that fact is stupider than fiction. My argument is that we are in the stupidest timeline after all!

Why the release?

The obvious is this just aims to distract from how poorly the war between Israel and the U.S. versus Iran is going. The Strait of Hormuz is still closed; the effect is only starting to be felt in the West, so this seems like a good way to fill some headlines. Yet, there are more layers of stupidity.

What prompted Trump to push for this release? Obama. The former president stated in an interview that he believes aliens are real (in a "statistically, in the vast universe there must be life" kind of way), and Trump obviously needed to one-up him, so he instructed the release of UAP-pertaining government files. The first batch is published.

Anything fun in it?

Nope. They could have at least found something that makes you go, "Ok, I can't explain that," or something that seems legitimately odd. I was particularly curious about the several Apollo files and images in the batch, given that NASA stuff is public. And oh my god, it is stupid.

There is a transcript from Apollo 17 where someone has highlighted some exciting dialog where the crew is discussing some bright, shiny things visible outside the window.

"There are a whole bunch of big ones on my window down there – just bright. It looks like the Fourth of July out of Ron's window," Lunar Module Pilot Harrison H. Schmitt added.

Now, if you only read that, it would seem that Schmitt (who is the only known person to be allergic to moon dust) is seeing some UFOs, some light spectacle outside the spacecraft. Then you read on and you realize that they are talking about either ice on the upper stage of the Saturn V rocket, or maybe paint that has peeled off from it. Historian Amy Shira Teitel rightfully points out how all this NASA "unclassified" stuff has been publicly available for literally decades and how silly it all is.

I do not believe that UFOs are aliens, but I was expecting some weird lightning phenomena or maybe an experimental weapon testing. Not a poor paint job from NASA.

There is an excellent memo from 1963 about the possibility of an encounter with alien life that is worth reflecting on, though. In its conclusion, it says:

There likely is nothing to be done at the moment to prepare for these possibilities (the only body of writing on the subject available in an emergency is science fiction), because no one of consequence is going to take this rubbish seriously unless it happens. At that point, our policy will be determined in the traditional manner of grand panic.

Excellent words from Maxwell W. Hunter II. Suggesting that maybe we have been on the Stupidest Timeline for a very long time.

The truth might be out there, but I'm afraid it's way less exciting than Chris Carter might have led us to believe!

Why the release?

Anything fun in it?

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