A Turning Point?

"Age of Disclosure" was released theatrically and on Amazon Prime five days ago, on Nov 21.  The theatrical release was limited to three theatres and apparently intended principally to qualify the film for Oscar nominations.  On Amazon the price of admission is 20-25 dollars, which has some people howling at the moon at a time when you can spend about that much for two fish filets and a large Coke at McDonald's.

What does the movie say, and will it "move the needle" as the saying goes?

The film says only a little that I did not know, and that other people steeped in the lore did not know, but the genius of its creator, Dan Farah, was to assemble 34 highly-credentialed people in government and the security apparatus who believe that non-human intelligence walks among us, or at least that the same security apparatus has been hiding secrets related to non-human intelligence from the American people for 80 years, in hopes that the US would be able to reverse engineer mind-bending and paradigm-shifting technology developed by "the Others" before the Russians and the Chinese do.  Because the 34 are so highly credentialed, one can choose to dismiss one or two of them as delusional or as psyop agents, but the picture remains the same.  Those people can be dismissed, but the premise of the film cannot.

Among the claims:

• The Roswell crash of 1947 was real.
• UFOs can operate beneath the oceans at speeds of hundreds of miles an hour -- far faster than any submarine or torpedo.
• Even presidents of the United States have not been read in to the entire story, because they are not considered to have the requisite "need to know."
• Notwithstanding this, George H.W. Bush in retirement told a prominent physicist, interviewed in the film, that NHI landed at Holloman AFB in 1964 and interacted with Air Force personnel.
• UFOs have repeatedly interfered with the functioning of both US and Soviet ICBMs.  An eyewitness to one such incident in South Dakota describes a craft, hovering low over a silo, that was "as large as a Walmart."
• The secret of seemingly impossible UFO maneuvers may lie in the ability to manipulate spacetime such that the craft operate in an independent "bubble," impervious to forces that would otherwise tear them apart.
• The craft are sometimes credibly described as being much larger inside than outside ("say again?").
• The whistleblower who narrates the film, Lu Elizondo, was told by friendly sources on Capitol Hill that they attended a meeting in which senior Pentagon spooks discussed the possibility of having Elizondo and one other person killed in order to prevent the secret from leaking.  (One of the attendees said that he was reduced to vomiting from shock and disgust after the meeting.)

My own position is that at this point skeptics need to do more than play the "three monkeys" game; they need rather to proffer an alternative "theory of the case" that has some plausibility, and for those who have bothered to marshal the salient facts, there is none.  

And yet, so far at least, the extraordinary claims made in the film have made barely a ripple in the public mind.  Jake Tapper has called the film Oscar worthy on CNN, and Bret Baier on Fox has more or less said the same.  Joe Rogan, whose podcast audience dwarfs all of the cable shows combined, spoke sympathetically with Farah and dove deep on the issues for a couple of hours.  Print media from the Guardian to Variety to the New York Times have touched the story.  But Chris Mellon, one of the 34 in the film, is right to call the story the most important in the history of mankind, and by all rights it should be as top of mind over Thanksgiving turkey at least as prospects for peace in Ukraine or the Epstein files, but the stigma and the squeamishness around the topic remain.

There is one wrinkle that could make this moment different, however.  Dan Farah and prominent whistleblower David Grusch are making explicit public pleas to Donald Trump to reveal what the government knows, rather transparently appealing to his narcissism and his desire to leave a lasting legacy.  Marco Rubio, J.D. Vance, Tulsi Gabbard and John Ratcliffe are known to be sympathetic to the cause (as are prominent Democrats like Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand).  And Trump, for good or ill, seems to love to "flood the zone" with crises and controversies, whereas his predecessor and his minions like Jake Sullivan are reported to have shied away from this topic because Joe Biden had more than enough on his plate.

So there may be some non-trivial chance that "Big D" disclosure arrives fairly soon in a form previously thought to be the stuff only of the sci-fi world -- an astounding announcement of some kind from the Resolute Desk.

UFO world is alive with fervent discussions of how the larger world would react to such news.  Many say that people would take it in stride; many others predict widespread panic.  My own thought is that there would be waves of reaction, with the real ontological shock coming only when the implications begin to crystallize.  To use only two examples (1) the Judeo-Christian myths, which I contend are as dear to the materialists and secular humanists as they are to the Talmudic scholars and the Vatican, will lose their underpinnings entirely; and (2) the possibility that we, homo sapiens, were bioengineered in the distant past by what we can only call demi-gods will have to be confronted.  We will need to start seeing ourselves as plankton in the sea rather than as apex predators blessed by an indulgent God.