Dr. Michael E. Salla, PhD, founder of the Exopolitics Institute, along with members such as Jeff Peckman and others in the exopolitics movement are utilizing Examiner.com as a means to publish information on the web in support of the exopolitical agenda. They are, following in the ideological footsteps of Steven Bassett, actively attempting to propagate the meme that the Obama administration will be the one to finally revoke what Basset calls the 'truth embargo' and formally disclose the existence of ET operating in Earth's biosphere.
Seasoned observers of the UFO/ET phenomenon and the political landscape in America wonder whether or not the exopolitical movement is sufficiently grounded in terrestrial political reality to be conducting such a program with any hope of success. Given the number and magnitude of the crises facing Barack Obama and his administration, the last thing it needs is association with an issue that opens them to ridicule. The Republicans are already resorting to politics as usual, broadly labeling the stimulus package with the catch all denigration of "wasteful government spending". It would be counter productive, conventional wisdom has it, for the administration to even bring up the subject of UFO's, much less endorse it. Henceforth, any idea presented by the administration would somehow be rhetorically and dismissively linked to memes of 'little green men' and 'UFO conspiracy theorists'.
Indeed, the exopolitical advocates might pause to consider whether the fusillade of news stories linking Obama and UFO disclosure are making it easier or harder for Obama or his administration to make a move in the direction they are encouraging.
Exopolitical advocates counter with the argument that it is precisely because of the unprecedented nature and scope of the issues facing the nation and the planet that the time is ripe for a departure from existing public UFO policy. The presumed benefits of advance energy generation technologies available in a technological exchange with diplomatically recognized ET races would solve the intractable problem of peak oil and avoid a malthusian correction. The situation is so dire, they argue, that only radical and novel political calculus will resolve the factors to a term satisfying to the future of the nation.
Whether or not recognizing ET would result in free energy remains to be seen. Certainly it's difficult for a President to endorse a phenomenon where evidence is so elusive and 'proof' so difficult to arrive at in minds entrenched in a paradigm that has to ask 'are we alone?'.
More importantly, the faction of society that does know of ET existence has a huge vested interest in the status remaining quo--the multinational energy, food and media conglomerates are based on a world economy driven by oil revenue.
What conventional wisdom does not take into account is the emerging impact of the internet as a many-to-many, two way medium, an unprecedented development in communications history. Books, movies, television and political speeches are one-to-many broadcast style mediums allowing mass communications with varying degrees of speed and scope, but only in one direction, from the speaker to the audience. Telegraph, telephone, and i-chat are bidirectional, interactive mediums that allow a dynamic, interactive exchange of ideas, but are limited to two or three individuals.
Only very recently has the true power of the internet emerged as a revolutionary medium that incorporates both widespread, instantaneous broadcast and dynamic, two way idea exchange. This comprehensive universality of medium—and its implications, both social and political—were first fully identified by incisive Internet thinker and author Clay Shirky in his book Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations
'. In it, Shirky examines how novel use of the existing technology, specifically the inclusion of several names on the CC field of an email, leads to the ad-hoc formation of self-defining operating groups. Indeed, it is that exact mechanism that fostered the development of the exopolitics news advocacy group, which formed as a result of Peckman's communications on the Exopolitics mailing list.Shirky's example of collective action resulting from the insanely easy group forming ability of Web 2.0 is a story of political action in Belarus. In 2006 a flashmob assembled in October Square Minsk for the activity of eating ice cream. This would be innocuous enough were it not for the fact that it is illegal to act in concert in October Square—a political mechanism intended to quell dissent. The flashmob concept was reengineered from quirky ad-hoc street theater into quirky ad-hoc political protest. As Shirky puts it, "Nothing says dictatorship like arresting people for eating ice cream."
When you stop to consider that substantially more people believe the government is not telling everything it knows about ET/UFO activity or believe that there is life operating beyond earth than voted for Obama in the first place, it becomes clear that there may not be a political downside to disclosure for the administration—not from a widespread self-informed public, at least. And remember that this is an administration who won what once seemed like an impossible election victory in no small part through its concerted and savvy use of Web 2.0 technology. Online Media Daily stated that Obama was the "first occupant of the White House to have won a presidential election on the Web."
While many politicians are just getting up to speed on the concept of having a website and running a browser, the vast, immediate and personal power of social networking is changing the nature of modern social reality.
Facebook is the killer app for disclosure advocacy. If a Facebook enabled constituancy can elect a President, it can enable disclosure. Social networking applications, from MySpace down to Twitter seem trivial at first glance to media observers used to the booming power of a newspaper press running at full tilt or the constant and pervasive visual dynamics of a television broadcast network. But social networking applications are what the military would characterize as a 'force multiplier', magnifying the effect of the ideas Salla, Peckman and others present and turning them into instant memes.
What remains to be seen is if the exopolitical advocates can persuasively make the case to the American technoliterati that ending UFO secrecy, denial and ridicule is in the the collective best interest of those who know how to twitter. If so, and if the novel mechanisms Shirky illustrates evolve to address ET denial, it could dramatically alter the political calculus the administration would use when contemplating the most paradigm changing policy shift since the country renounced slavery.
If large numbers of average Americans, fed up with the cost of gas, pollution, environmental damage, the lies, secrecy and denial were to begin to flashmob the local capital building as a result of spontaneously generated citizen advocacy, acknowledging the existence of ET would eventually become a mere formality for the administration.
And something like that is what it would take, conventional wisdom has it, for the Obama adminstration to take such a dramatic step forward in public UFO policy.
If they do, then the world could proceed to the next logical question:
What do we tweet when we twitter ET?
Or would that be a TwET?
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