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Generated Title: UFOs? More Like "Unidentified Distraction Phenomena" - We're Still Falling For It
Okay, so the Pentagon had a secret UFO program. Big deal. Newsflash: governments lie. Always have, always will. The fact that The New York Times "confirmed" this in 2017 just means they were finally allowed to say it out loud.
Mars: The Original Fake News?
This whole article's comparing our current UFO craze to the 19th-century Mars canal "discovery." Apparently, some Italian astronomer named Schiaparelli saw lines on Mars and called them "canali," which got mistranslated as "canals." Suddenly, everyone's an expert on Martian irrigation.
And the public ate it up. Lowell, some rich dude with a telescope, doubled down, claiming there was a whole civilization up there building canals to survive. Books, lectures, front-page news... sound familiar?
It's like… we want to believe in this stuff. We need it.
The Shrug Heard 'Round the World
The article asks why we aren't rioting in the streets over UFOs. Good question. Maybe because we're too busy dealing with actual problems like, you know, the impending climate apocalypse and whatever fresh hell Elon Musk is cooking up this week. Maybe because we're all so desensitized to bullshit that even actual aliens wouldn't register as a blip on the outrage radar.
Or maybe – just maybe – we've learned our lesson about trusting what we see in the sky. Remember that whole "Mars canal" fiasco? Turns out, it was just dust storms and wishful thinking.
This whole Mars canal thing reminds me of that time I tried to build a birdhouse from a kit. Instructions were crap, the wood was splintered, and I ended up gluing my fingers together. Is that what "alien contact" would really be like? A painful, frustrating mess?
The "Meaning" of the Martian Canals
Here's where it gets interesting. According to the article, the Martian canal craze wasn't just about aliens. It was about us.
"Lowell believed that the stronger Martians had survived to reengineer their planet, while the weak had perished."
Translation: Even back then, people were using space aliens to justify their own messed-up social Darwinist ideas.
And get this: some people thought the canals showed the Martians were socialists. Because, offcourse, massive planetary engineering projects are totally a product of collectivism.
It's a Rorschach test, ain't it? We see what we want to see. Always.
The article goes on to say that the Mars thing led to scientists studying climate change and past civilizations. So, at least something good came of it, I guess.
But let's be real. The whole thing was a distraction. A shiny object to keep us from looking at the real problems here on Earth. And we're still falling for it. As explored in In the late 1800s alien ‘engineers’ altered our world forever, this phenomenon isn't new.
So, What's the Real Story?
UFOs, aliens, whatever. It’s just another way for the powerful to keep us chasing shadows while they pick our pockets. Don't buy the hype.