The modern UFO movement is a little bit beyond my usual area, but this post over at the Above the Law blog seems worthy of a few comments, especially since I’m not yet able to start my review of Scott Wolter’s new book due to yet another shipment delay. UFO activist Ed Komarek believes that major law firms will soon team up with UFO disclosure activists to open up government UFO archives when they realize that disclosure lawsuits will pay better that acquiescing to U.S. government conspiracies. Komarek believes that “huge amounts of profit” can be made both from suing over UFOs and offering “protection from” UFO lawsuits. The rapid disclosure of extraterrestrial reality will surely create economic hardship for many nationally and globally but it will also present many opportunities. There will be those people and industries like the legal industry that will flourish and profit greatly from the upheaval. Komarek, who believes that the U.S. fought against aliens during World War II, also believes that the U.S. government is concerned that any disclosure of extraterrestrial beings will cause political and social chaos, which I suppose puts it somewhere between Edward Snowden and Obamacare on the scale of things various groups believe will destroy America. Those nations, companies, and citizens that have prepared themselves for possible catastrophic economic instability and renewal after UFO/ET disclosure will be able to take advantage of new opportunities. These will flourish in such a time of upheaval while those that continue to remain brainwashed will suffer greatly. While Above the Law treated this as the silliness it is—joking that lawyers are all Freemasons, so they would never betray the conspiracy—I was surprised by how closely Komarek’s apocalypse to mega-profits claim mirrors those offered by the gold-securities industry, especially as represented by Glenn Beck, in preying on some Americans’ fears of economic collapse. The calls to buy gold aren’t as powerful as they were last year, due largely to a drop in gold prices, but Beck’s apocalyptic views remained intact, as he stated back in August: The only thing I have to fear is the government, quite frankly. The government lying to you, the media not telling the truth. I mean, gold is the original gold standard… […] You better have a plan and know what you and your family are going to do in the time of more difficult days ahead. Obviously Glenn Beck and Ed Komarek are operating in completely different realms, but their language and their ideas are remarkably similar and draw on the same idea of the apocalyptic tradition found in Western belief from Revelation down to today. Revelation 21:1-2 tells us that a New Jerusalem will descend on a devastated world to replace the old heaven and the old earth, much as the Norse Ragnarok would create a new heaven and a new earth and cleanse the world of evil. Many scholars have traced this kind of apocalyptic thinking and its effect on Western culture, but I think it’s probably safe to say that the internet and the media have made it possible for more people to believe that the always-coming, never-arriving End Times are actually happening right now. Last year, polls found that 1 in 7 people worldwide believes that the end of the world will happen in their lifetimes, but 22 percent in the United States believes the same thing. It seems that Komarek’s giddy longing for an apocalyptic revelation of extraterrestrial truth is just another secular counterpart to the endless wait for the Second Coming. The glee at complete collapse of the old order stems from the belief that starting fresh, with supernatural aid, will somehow cleanse the earth and provide true believers—but not sinful doubters—with a reversal of their current fortunes, and place them at the top of the social and economic pyramid. If you are wise enough to hoard gold, or to jump on board the UFO disclosure train, you, too, will be among the new elite. It’s like the apocalyptic expectation outlined in H. P. Lovecraft’s “Call of Cthulhu,” where, literally, the return of the aliens is expected to usher in a libertine paradise and rites of social reversal—an endless Saturnalia: That cult would never die till the stars came right again, and the secret priests would take great Cthulhu from His tomb to revive His subjects and resume His rule of earth. The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom. Lovecraft, modeling this on and inverting Revelation, intentionally cast the Second Coming of Cthulhu as horrifying to traditional morality, but it captures some of the expectation inherent in the Apocalypse that the overthrow of civilization by supernatural means will free the believer from oppression and restriction. Thus, for the true believer, the End Times are a consummation devoutly to be wished, when the believer will be rewarded and the doubter punished.
Or, in short, the aliens are once again replacement gods.
32 Comments
Gunn
10/3/2013 07:39:16 am
...the belief that starting fresh, with supernatural aid, will somehow cleanse the earth...
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kennethos
10/3/2013 08:20:38 am
@Jason:
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Shane Sullivan
10/3/2013 01:07:10 pm
Those lawyers are going to have their hands full, what with Earth's native shapeshifting reptiles laboring at every turn to keep mankind's collective head buried in the sands of mundanity.
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Thane
10/3/2013 01:23:38 pm
Soooo, the Lawyers are going to get rich suing governments...
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BigMike
10/3/2013 08:41:50 pm
I think that what Komarek means is that Law firms will soon realize that there will be tons of money to be made suing the government after the government actually discloses that "yes, aliens exist and are here." I mean after that bombshell who wouldn't want to sue the government for lying to us.
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Varika
10/5/2013 10:51:18 am
...not to mention that they HAVE disclosed all they know about aliens, which is to say, "We have know knowledge of extraterrestrial beings visiting this planet." TBH, if extraterrestrials WERE coming here, I' not sure it could actually be KEPT secret. Especially if they're coming down all over the planet. Who else here thinks that if the US told Russia or China to keep aliens secret, Russia or China would hold a press conference the INSTANT they could make a phone call? *raises hand*
Narmitaj
10/3/2013 11:22:12 pm
How come the large UFO/ET Conspiracy, threatened with being exposed and losing trillions in lawsuits yet possessed of unearthly powers, has managed to allow conspiracy theorists to publish their theories and attacks so openly for so long, revealing the big secrets and attracting more followers, when the Conspiracy could simply deploy some of those alien powers and Disappear their irritating opponents?
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Paul Cargile
10/4/2013 02:44:27 am
And then that is just the cover up hoax of an even bigger hoax of what it really, really going on, which masks the true conspiracy at the deeper lever, and so its turtles all the way down.
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Paul Cargile
10/4/2013 02:57:54 am
It's an interesting assumption that the people of the world would be so distraught about either the existance of aliens or the governement lying about aliens that societal collapse would happen. I think it would largely be a nonevent. Most people already believe that intelligent life is possible elsewhere in universe so an actual visitation would be something to marvel at, but not riotously shocking.
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Varika
10/5/2013 10:58:05 am
I think that extraterrestrials landing would be a media circus, honestly. Not a violent confrontation--at least not as long as the ETs don't start it--but I can't see CNN going, "....meh" about it. Still, not a non-event, just not a catastrophic even.
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10/5/2013 04:06:49 pm
I recently had the unexpected pleasure of presenting information on the Billy Meier UFO contacts, ongoing in Switzerland for over 70 years, in an interview conducted by two rather nice skeptics, Michael Marshall and Hayley Stevens, in the UK.
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terry the censor
10/7/2013 08:27:44 am
@Michael Horn
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10/7/2013 09:30:37 am
Well, let's see. I named Michael Marshall, Hayley Stevens and Billy Meier...but not myself. Since I am the authorized representative for Mr. Meier, and since people typically claim that Langdon's "images" are the equivalent of duplicating Mr. Meier's photographic evidence - which they're not - I hope you are sniffing some smelling salts.
Only Me
10/7/2013 02:01:42 pm
"I corresponded with him for a few years, encouraging his efforts to do the best he could"...oh, really? You mean, like this?
terry the censor
10/9/2013 09:53:49 am
@Michael Horn 10/7/2013 02:18:27 pm
Context, timing and...attitude are kinda important, since in the FOUR years that I corresponded with Langdon we spared plenty and were cordial as well (see below).
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Only Me
10/7/2013 04:01:13 pm
*Insert uncontrolled laughter here*
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10/7/2013 04:26:23 pm
Try inserting your…real name. Anonymous jokesters aren't very impressive, as you amply demonstrate.
Only Me
10/7/2013 05:41:14 pm
Let's see...a publicist demands my name and credentials, simply because I don't believe the press surrounding Billy Meier, his evidence or gift of prophecy. Follow this demand with insults, as if that will give you the moral high ground you desperately seek. 10/7/2013 05:59:09 pm
Methinks thou dost protest too much.
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Only Me
10/7/2013 07:21:25 pm
Very well, let's inform, shall we?
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10/8/2013 04:08:21 am
Yaaaaaaawn.
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JAM
10/9/2013 06:36:00 am
When one learns that the CIA first scoffed at the idea of investigating UFOs, and then later realized the potential the idea of UFOs had to hide their Oxcart program, should pretty much end the Government hiding UFOs controversy. Context is everything and a slim, silver plane flying 2700 mph in the 1950s is a UFO to any lay person witnessing it! At that speed, it streaks through the heavens and has no discernible shape. The thing needed something like the distance from Big Sur to Santa Barbara to turn around!!! What was the average person to think? UFO for sure!
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10/9/2013 10:34:44 am
Referring to the CIA - as if they WEREN'T also in the disinformation business - is amusing.
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10/9/2013 10:43:48 am
Terry,
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terry the censor
10/9/2013 11:43:14 am
@Michael Horn
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10/9/2013 11:55:28 am
terry the censor
10/9/2013 01:59:05 pm
@Michael Horn 10/9/2013 12:03:07 pm
P.S. Maybe, possibly and...hopefully, if you contemplate what this fellow has accomplished:
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10/9/2013 02:09:49 pm
Well, Terry, I guess even though this link to the New Documentation:
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10/9/2013 02:08:37 pm
While I appreciate the comments on this post, please continue it in the forum rather than here since it is no longer relevant to the blog topic.
Reply
10/9/2013 03:27:24 pm
Jason,
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AuthorI am an author and researcher focusing on pop culture, science, and history. Bylines: New Republic, Esquire, Slate, etc. There's more about me in the About Jason tab. Newsletters
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