Debunkers and naysayers across all areas of what I call Weirdness – including the JFKA, UFOs and almost all types of anomalous phenomena – are really quite fascinating. They pride themselves on being exceedingly rational critical thinkers, but they are actually the opposite.
The first tactic is to dismiss all testimonial accounts as “not evidence.” Evidence, you see, is only that which can be falsified. This is an artificially narrow definition that is not even the standard in the hard sciences.
One then points out that in many areas of weirdness, including UFOs, there are literally thousands and thousands of highly detailed reports spanning decades from witnesses as unlikely as Aborigines and African tribesmen to highly trained military observers, pilots and professors. Many, many reports involve multiple witnesses and withstand intense scrutiny. Can this vast body of testimonial evidence simply be dismissed? Yes, it can – it’s “not evidence.”
But wait, you point out: Many, many of those reports are accompanied by physical evidence – radar reports, electrical interference, damage to ground and foliage. Here, the debunkers play a bit of a shell game. The physical evidence receives some mundane “explanation” that is completely at odds with what the witnesses reported – but that’s OK, because what they reported is “not evidence.” The radar was malfunctioning, cars and generators sometimes just quit, a family of moose caused that damage.
There is also the game of trying to pigeonhole the phenomenon: UFOs are pigeonholed as “space aliens,” even though this not what most serious students of the phenomenon believe (or least accept as a full explanation of the phenomenon). Why the pigeonholing? Oh, because the pigeonhole is always phrased in a way that sounds slightly silly and is a relatively easy target because many of the most mysterious aspects of the phenomenon can then simply be ignored.
Lastly, the debunkers and naysayers seldom – almost never – really know what they are talking about. They have no depth of knowledge because they assume the subject is beneath them, mere entertainment for credulous cranks. Credulous cranks like Nobel Laureates and the Pentagon. Ya think?
When the Pentagon itself releases videos that observers of the highest caliber agree show “Something” exhibiting performance characteristics that are far beyond any earthly technology and that defy the known laws of physics, what do we get? Still, “Not evidence.” Or perhaps, “Don’t know what it is and don’t really care, but it ain’t space aliens 'cause there ain't no space aliens.”
It’s a bizarre, head-in-the-sand approach to a subject that is of potentially far greater significance than any in the history of mankind. I can only attribute it to fear. It is anything but rational critical thinking. The fact that these folks portray themselves – and perhaps even view themselves – as hard-nosed critical thinkers is literally comical.
I think there’s a lesson here for discussions of the JFKA as well. It’s less a lesson for CTers than for LN zealots because the latter seem to be the ones who exhibit the debunker mentality I’m talking about. I have said that hardcore LN zealots are more puzzling to me than rational CTers (or at least rational questioners of the LN narrative), but I guess I shouldn’t be too puzzled because I’ve encountered this mindset across the entire spectrum of Weirdness and religion.
