My Thoughts On: UFO Hearings, and How the Right Manufactures Culture Wars

Good morning,

I’m in Chicago for the month; the setting of Hulu’s hit TV show The Bear. If you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend the watch.

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Onwards!

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On How Alien Disclosure Will Bring Transparency to the Military Budget

A few weeks back, I wrote about how Congress is taking legitimate steps towards the public disclosure of the potential recovery of extraterrestrial crafts and “biologics”. Should we as the public soon be presented with actual evidence of alien life, it would be a moment of true ontological shock. The existence of aliens would unravel everything we think we know and believe. In the cosmic scale of the Universe, it would make Columbus’ 1492 trip to the Americas the equivalent of a toddler discovering a cool looking stick on their front porch.

This past week, Congress has held some noteworthy public bipartisan-led committee hearings featuring testimony from former intelligence officer and UAP (Unidentified Ariel Phenomena = UAP, the fun new official name for UFOs) whistleblower David Grusch and others. Part of Grusch’s claims are that secret government groups and private military contractors have illegally withheld information pertaining to alleged recoveries of these crafts.

I want to explore this claim in particular, as it appears to be a thread Congress is pulling on.

One of my favorite quotes is that America is “50 developing nations in a trench coat with a military budget big enough to fight God”. Our military budget is well known to be massive. This year’s was approved at $816.7 BILLION dollars. But what I don’t think most people know is that roughly half of that money is sent to private military contractors like Boeing, Lockheed Martin and others. Half!

So the Government is regularly sending private industry nearly half a trillion in taxpayer funds each year, but in the entire existence of our military budget, the Pentagon has never, not even once, successfully passed an audit of these funds. As in, hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money is being dished out each year, and the government routinely fails to confirm it was spent in the way agreed upon. That is wild.

So what is interesting about these UAP hearings is that while the general public is hot and ready for alien confirmation, it appears the thread Congress is tugging on is more focused on the money and intelligence.

Basically, Congress may be less focused on the ~Aliens~ and more focused on the fact that private contractors who are receiving billions of taxpayer dollars are concealing potentially critical information. If they keep following this money, this thread, it is certainly possible they will bring to light some alarming corruption tied to that private military contractor piggy bank.

So maybe we don’t get Aliens after all this news, but maybe there’s a silver lining to this story in the form of a smidge of transparency into the black box that is our military industrial complex.

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Part 2: How The Right’s Attack on Transgender People is an Election Strategy

Last week I wrote about how all the inflammatory coverage, legislative energy, and general rhetoric about the Trans community is radically out of touch with reality. I felt it was important to lay a foundation about the experience this community has to live through and confront, and how bans on gender affirming care for minors actually hurts their health outcomes and well being. I wanted to set the stage with that information for this week’s Part 2 on this topic.

If you read last week and left wondering why in recent years this very small and misunderstood community has been so widely targeted by politicians and the media, then here’s your answer:

It’s an election strategy. One that seeks to enrage a large portion of the population. This rising ride of coverage and legislation against Trans people, drag shows, and outlandish claims about this community is at its core, one big orchestrated PR campaign. One that ties together private right-wing interest groups, policy think tanks, and politicians that is being broadcast to Republican voters to motivate a stronger showing in 2024. Because angry people are the most reliable voters.

The Supreme Court’s landmark ruling allowing for same-sex marriage in 2015 made a lot of conservatives really really mad. So mad, that conservative advocacy groups and GOP leadership decided to make it a focal point in their election policy and messaging strategy. A rallying call of sorts, aimed at growing and energizing their voter base. So they began scheming. They began strategizing on ways to push back against the acceptance of these communities to achieve greater Republican voter turnout, engagement, and influence. What we’re seeing now is this plan coming to fruition.

Let me break it down for you step by step.

The Legislative Approach

17+ bills have been passed banning gender affirming care, yet all of them have been written quite similar. So similar in fact, that its almost like they have all been written by the same people. And that’s because they are. According to AP, of the 130 bills across 40 legislatures put forth on this issue, almost all of them are essentially a quick copy and paste job of draft policy from the same set of conservative advocacy groups which include Do No Harm and The Family Research Council. These groups are drafting legislation, then shopping it around to Republican Governors and State legislatures. Right-wing politicians (who again likely have no idea what gender affirming care is) who bite on these bills then incorporate this draft set of policy and talking points into their campaigns, allowing them to advertise their support to their primed and angry voter base.

What is so nefarious about this legislation is that it is not drafted with an intent to improve the lives of these states constituents. No, it is specifically designed to agitate, alarm, and inflame the Republican voter base and drive turnout. But you need more than legislation and talking points to get policy passed. You also need voter trust.

Manufacturing Credibility

How do your further buy this voter base’s commitment? Credibility (or at least what appears to be credibility). One organization that has been advocating louder in the media against gender affirming care for the youth is the American College of Pediatricians.

Hold up, why is this official sounding organization of healthcare pediatricians speaking out so strongly against this care? That hurts my argument, right? Nope. because they are not the actual pediatrics society. The American College of Pediatricians is in reality a small far right-wing advocacy group of pediatricians who are against all abortion and medical rights for gay people, (they once even “accused” the American Psychological Association as being a “gay-affirming program”). In short, they are a bit extreme. 

So it’s not quite an actual medical society, but a political advocacy think tank with an official sounding name designed to confuse and mislead. The whole point of this group is create biased junk science that looks convincing to unassuming voters. This in turn further charges up and solidifies this voter base.

The actual Pediatrics Society is the American Academy of Pediatrics. Its the largest and most credible pediatrics association in the country. And they currently support gender affirming care.

Ready, Aim, Fire

What’s the last step of this campaign? You need a big propaganda canon, one large enough to deliver the payload of Craigslist shopped conservative policy and junk science through carefully curated PR messages that speak to the “dangers” of the Trans community.

That’s where newer conservative media channels like The Daily Wire, and legacy media groups like Fox News are primed and ready to fire.

The same Fox News who just settled out of a lawsuit for $800 Million for lying on air about the 2020 election being stolen. The same Fox News that was founded by billionaire right-wing media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, whose US citizenship was fast tracked by the Reagan administration in the 80’s because Republicans wanted to create a controlled media channel.

Remember what I stated at the beginning: angry people are more likely to vote.

The overturning of Roe v. Wade basically swung the midterms to the Democrats because enough of the country was downright angry or at least against the resulting abortion restrictions that they made sure to show up to the ballot to share their voice.

This is the result these right-wing groups want in 2024. This attack on Trans people and gender affirming care for minors is all so they may peddle strategically created “Look! We need to save the kids! Democrats are indoctrinating and grooming our children!” slogans. The whole point of the misinformation and “save the kids” campaign is to energize a bunch of voters, specifically swing voters, to vote R.

I realize this all might sound a tad conspiratorial, but this campaign is happening out there in plain sight, being reported on weekly. It sounds so needlessly cruel when you view the totality of this plan action. But as Jon Stewart once said, “the cruelty is the point”.

This topic in particular has alarmed me in recent years because of how effective this campaign has been. What’s alarming to me is just how clearly and utterly manufactured it all is, yet how appealing its been to a large minority of voters who appear to be taking the bait.

This stuff makes me sad. It is sad and disheartening to know that political leaders with enough power and influence will happily sacrifice one of our communities on the alter of greed purely to maintain that power. Instead of working towards solutions on important issues that impact our whole country, we’re now having to use immense time and resources to fight yet another culture war in defense of a community who just wants the right to exist in peace.