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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 4, 2024

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Uh, it seems plausible to me that intelligence agencies actually select for the kinds of guys that wind up getting into this stuff. Like intelligence work is basically looking for a much more boring version.

I've theorized for some time that one reason why intelligence agency types and pilots tend to be so into UFO stuff and believe UFO lore explanations for potentially more mundane elements is precisely because that's the type of a profession you get into if you want to "learn the truth", make first contact, get into space to see the secret alien moonbase and so on. In intelligence agency types you get into more of an X-Files territory, in case of pilots it's more like getting into astronaut training and then enacting Rendezvous with Rama.

It’s not a coincidence that the CIA recruits a lot of Mormons from BYU, either, due to their lifestyle and loyalty choices; Mormons also coincidentally believe that there exists a race of infinitely many nordic-looking Supermen all living on their on planets, and that Joseph Smith upon receiving his first revelation from two of these beings was knocked effectively unconscious (not unlike many contactee experiences).

That’s a long-winded point to saying ‘you’re right’, by the by, but it’s just another piece of data that makes all these things weird (as the alien contactee experience, as independent from the causal influence of Mormonism, was something the IC legitimately investigated in the 50s.)