• KnitWit@lemmy.world
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      22 hours ago

      He did do this during the first term. There wasn’t anything interesting, but it did distract the conspiracy folks.

      • redsand@infosec.pub
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        19 hours ago

        The pullout was weird at the time. Handful of censored videos, talk of more then nothing. A couple of senators or house members suddenly became disinterested for no reason in particular and it died.

    • WoodScientist@lemmy.world
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      17 hours ago

      Honestly, if there were alien craft zipping around, I can imagine why no government would want to disclose them. It would basically be an announcement of, “these damn craft are flying around the atmosphere and the space around Earth. They’re utterly beyond anything we’re capable of. We’re not sure if they’re aliens, time travelers, beings from another dimension, literal angels or demons, or something even stranger. But we are utterly at their mercy. They’re spying on us constantly, for purposes unknown. Oh, and occasionally they’ll just abduct people and carry them off for God-knows-what reason. I’m sorry, but there is literally nothing we or any human being can do about this. They’re basically gods to us, and we know next to nothing about them, where they come from, or why they’re here.”

      What leader would ever want to give that speech? I don’t consider it likely we are being visited by non-human intelligences. But if we were, it wouldn’t be anything like Roswell and Area 51. We wouldn’t have a base full of downed or crashed alien craft. They simply wouldn’t crash, and we would have no ability to shoot them down. A real announcement of alien visitors wouldn’t be the reveal of some vast secret government project, a revealing of secret strength. It would be us saying, “we’ve been working on this problem for nearly a century, and we’ve learned nothing. All we know is that they’re there, and we can’t do a damn thing about it.” It would a confession of weakness and utter helplessness, a government openly admitting it’s completely powerless to protect its people from an unknown outside threat. Can you imagine a president telling the public, “yeah, you might get abducted by aliens. Sorry, that just happens sometimes. There’s nothing we can do about it.”

      It would represent a complete shattering of our species’ sense of value and security. And voters tend not to like politicians who tell them the unvarnished truth.

      • we are utterly at their mercy. They’re spying on us constantly, for purposes unknown. Oh, and occasionally they’ll just abduct people and carry them off for God-knows-what reason.

        Sounds like the sort of thing this administration would be proud of. It’s what their supporters voted for!

      • arrow74@lemmy.zip
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        14 hours ago

        They simply wouldn’t crash

        Why would that be assumed? Yes flying across space is a level of technology we can’t comprehend, but unless these beings have truly become gods, technology breaks. Something can always go wrong.