Lost in fantasy worlds
09/02/22, I received this e-mail from hard-right Congressman Steve Scalise.
For background, the Supreme Court had recently released its Dobbs decision, rescinding the decision of Roe v. Wade. As I understand it, the reasoning in Dobbs was that since the Constitution does not mention abortion, it is up to the states, not the federal government, to allow or prohibit that practice. Justice Alito wrote the majority opinion. In a concurring opinion, Justice Thomas said that based on that same reasoning, the court should also re-examine and possibly rescind decisions that made contraception universally available and made the permissibility of gay marriage also the law of the land.
There was a reaction. Some folks wanted to find some way to impeach, or somehow otherwise remove, Justice Thomas from the Court.
So, now, here is this fear-mongering message from Steve Scalise, ultimately asking me to donate to I-can’t-tell-what. He gives this image of Thomas together with every right-winger’s hero, Donald Trump, although Donald Trump has nothing to do with Thomas’s presence on the Court; on the contrary, Thomas was nominated by Trump’s enemy George H. W. Bush. Scalise speaks repeatedly of the Court’s current “conservative majority,” whereas I have always understood that the Supreme Court is to be above partisanship. He refers to “Radical Democrats” as if all Democrats are radical. It is extremely questionable, for example, in fact, that “Radical Democrats control the House.” And Joe Biden can’t just “replace [Thomas] with a far-Left activist:” anyone Biden may nominate must be confirmed by the Senate.
If you scare social conservatives enough, they’ll send money. That’s what this is all about.
Meanwhile, they’ll also live in a fantasy world of continual anxiety over alleged threats to the American way of life; the diabolical plans of the Democrats; and so on, and so on.
Then came this, on FaceBook.
Whatever possessed me to click on that, I can’t now imagine. I knew better. I did not choose the best.
The Anunnaki came to fame through the 1976 book by Zecharia Sitchin, The Twelfth Planet. Originally, they were the gods of ancient Sumer. Sitchin posits that they were, instead, space aliens from a planet he called Nibiru, which he said has a highly elongated orbit, coming into the vicinity of Earth once every 3,600 years. Before human beings came to be as such, he said, these aliens established a colony here to mine for gold. The miners becoming impatient with their lot, the Anunnaki genetically engineered a new race to take their place, that new race being human beings.
Only during the present writing, has it occurred to me that there is a problem of anachronism: Sitchin’s book only being published in 1976, it is extremely unlikely that any text attributed to the Anunnaki would have appeared in 1958.
In response to that insight, I located another copy online of what appears to be the exact same article. Now, there are issues in referencing and attribution, since this article is about that article about that one. The headlined article says the “message” first appeared in a UFO magazine in 1958, but that source says it actually appeared in a different UFO magazine in 1947. The original attribution of the “message” is undoubtedly to the “space men” who pilot UFOs, but I have no reason to believe the 1958 article or the 1947 article used the word “Anunnaki.”
The ”message” is surprisingly articulate; it references atomic weapons and UFOs. Why and how the aliens would have sent this to humanity in 1958 or 1947 is anyone’s guess; given that their three-dimensional spaceships made of massive matter supposedly can only come into our region once every 3,600 years.
The same source, Deshinews.com, linked me to stories about the “secret space program” and Corey Goode’s claims to having participated in the same for 25 years, including time inhabiting an Earth colony on Mars.
So, here is another fantasy world in which people who choose can take up residence, speculating with wide eyes and wonder about propositions that have no basis in fact; escaping, in more ways than one, the humdrum of day-to-day life in the real world.
It’s not that much different from the fantasy world of Trumpism.
Why are the aliens all bipeds?
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