Sometime very soon, one hopes, the Biden administration will
attempt to explain to the American people what they think fighters shot down
over Lake Huron and northern
Canada and off Alaska, be they balloons or drones
or something somewhat stranger.
اضافة اعلان
If that happens, we will take a meaningful step toward
solving a long-standing, conspiracy-shadowed mystery: What, exactly, are all
the unidentified flying objects — sorry, sorry — unidentified aerial phenomena
that our military keeps encountering in the skyfields above planet Earth?
But maybe it will not be as big a step as one might hope.
Maybe some of the debris will not be found at all (as the administration is now
hinting), or we will not fully identify some of the objects. Maybe the
government will classify the details, or the objects will be officially
identified as drones or balloons, but their origins will remain uncertain.
Maybe the takeaway will just be that we have very little idea of what goes on
in our own skies, making more outlandish theories seem, if anything, more
credible than they did a few weeks ago.
This would fit one of the patterns of our era, which is what
you might call the incomplete reveal. Sometimes a phenomenon goes from being
the subject of crank theories and sub rosa conversations to being more
mainstream, but without actually being fully explained or figured out. Or
sometimes a
controversy takes center stage for a little while, a great deal
seems to hang upon the answer, and then it is not resolved and seems to get
forgotten. What is at stake in these kinds of cases is not a conspiracy theory
(though they may give rise to them) but a question or a secret — something that
is acknowledged to matter, that is theoretically knowable, but that slips away
from reach.
Sometimes a phenomenon goes from being the subject of crank theories and sub rosa conversations to being more mainstream, but without actually being fully explained or figured out.
The UAP story so far has been an obvious example. In the
last few years, the US government and the media have finally acknowledged the
existence of a genuinely strange phenomenon. But there has not been sustained
mainstream pressure (because that would be too weird and paranoid) on public
officials or institutions to get closer to the bottom of what is going on.
What are some other examples? Glad you asked. Here is a
list:
Who blew up the Nord Stream pipelines?Earlier this month, Seymour Hersh published a story on his
Substack alleging that US Navy divers planted the explosives that sabotaged gas
pipelines linking Russia to Germany. There are good reasons to doubt the story,
starting with its apparent reliance on a single source and working through
various factual and plausibility issues. Hersh is famous for breaking important
stories and also for getting other stories badly wrong.
But somebody blew up the pipelines. Was it
Russia? Parts of
Western officialdom suggested as much at first, but after months of
investigations, we are still waiting for compelling evidence or a compelling
argument for why it would be in Moscow’s interest to make it much more
difficult to quickly restart the flow of energy they are trying to use for
blackmail. Was it the US, acting to force Russia into a deeper isolation by
weakening their immediate energy leverage over Europe? The Biden administration
denies any involvement, and it would have been quite the act of recklessness
for an administration that has been very cautious about direct engagement with
the Russians.
“In today’s increasingly transparent world,” the Carnegie
Endowment’s Sergey Vakulenko wrote soon after the sabotage, the truth of
whodunit “might not stay buried for long.” But many months later, we have got
Hersh’s dubious claim of excavation and not much else.
What were Jeffrey Epstein’s secrets?Set aside the did-he-kill-himself debate: More than three
years after Epstein’s apparent suicide, it is the larger mysteries about the
predator-panderer that still hang unresolved. We do not fully understand how he
made his money; the story of his ascent, as an adviser to clothing-retail mogul
Leslie Wexner, still feels like a sketch with crucial details missing. We do
not fully understand why he received such leniency in his Bush-era go-round
with law enforcement and the courts. Epstein “belonged to intelligence” — that
is how Alexander Acosta, the Florida prosecutor turned Trump administration
secretary of labor, allegedly explained his own part in that leniency. But we still
do not know the truth about Epstein’s possible ties to the
US government or
others, how his alleged methods of blackmail and surveillance worked, and so
on.
Also, speaking as someone with a cautious interest in outré
spiritualities, I would like to know more — or even just something — about the
weird, templelike structure on one of his private islands, whose inspiration
and intended purposes is still obscure.
Did COVID-19 leak from a Chinese laboratory?Here the obstacles to certain answers are obvious: The
crucial evidence is controlled by an increasingly uncooperative authoritarian
state, the scientific debate is shadowed by the vested interest that some of
our own health and science institutions have in “gain of function” research,
and the question has been entangled from the start with the Trump-era culture
wars.
“In today’s increasingly transparent world…” the truth of whodunit “might not stay buried for long.”
But imagine if, several years after a major earthquake
struck Los Angeles or
San Francisco, we still did not know whether it was a
normal quake or a demolition accidentally induced by geological experiments
conducted by a major geopolitical rival. That is basically where we stand today
with the entire pandemic, and our uncertainty about its origins is linked to
crucial questions about the likelihood of future outbreaks, the wisdom and safety
of publicly funded scientific research projects, and, of course, our
relationship to China. However much energy our institutions are putting into
resolving this question, it seems like more would be a good idea.
What exactly happened between Brett Kavanaugh and
Christine Blasey Ford?This is a case where partisans on both sides are sure they
know the answer, and everybody else has moved on — and maybe moving on is just
the reasonable thing. But Ford’s partisans are still at work, convinced that
what has been lacking is a wider net, more allegations beyond hers: A
documentary on the case from Doug Liman, the director of “Swingers” and “The
Bourne Identity”, apparently focuses anew on allegations and alleged incidents
from Kavanaugh’s time at Yale.
Whereas what I thought during the 2018 Senate hearings, and
still think now, is that Ford’s initial accusation should be more amenable to
focused investigation. Meaning that, whether Ford was telling the truth or
lying or misremembering in some important way, we should be able to get at
least a little more certainty from all of the different people who were
connected to the alleged house party — from the names on Kavanaugh’s calendar
to Ford’s own family to Kavanaugh and Ford’s mutual
connections and more. I thought
then that somebody in greater Georgetown knew more than what had been revealed,
one way or another, and I still think that today.
At the very least, I would like to read the final FBI report
that senators read before they voted, insufficient as it may have been.
And who knows — maybe I can find that report buried under an
altar in Epstein’s temple or attached to one of the strings that our pilots
thought they saw dangling from the UAP around Lake Huron just before they shot
it down.
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