{"id":2077,"date":"2026-06-13T19:36:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T19:36:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=2077"},"modified":"2026-06-13T19:36:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T19:36:08","slug":"how-alien-conspiracy-theory-got-respectable-and-brought-america-back-to-magical-thinking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=2077","title":{"rendered":"How Alien Conspiracy Theory Got Respectable \u2014 and Brought America Back to Magical Thinking"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\t\u201cDisclosure\u201d has become a cult word. It shouldn\u2019t be, since all it means, technically, is to reveal something. But the new wave of alien conspiracy theorists have made \u201cdisclosure\u201d into a teasingly passive-aggressive code word. They will say: We\u2019re awaiting disclosure<\/em> \u2014 which means the day the U.S. government bows down and releases all its files and hidden information, its secrets<\/em>, relating to UAPs and alien visitations. (Or the day a whistleblower does it.) I agree that the government should release all this stuff. Let\u2019s see it, put it out there, finally clear the air about what\u2019s up in the skies.<\/p>\n

Read more Colman Domingo on Working With Steven Spielberg on \u2018Disclosure Day\u2019 and Believing in Aliens: \u2018It Can\u2019t Just Be Us\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tBut if \u201cdisclosure\u201d simply meant \u201cLet\u2019s see what\u2019s in those files,\u201d<\/em> it wouldn\u2019t have that self-righteous 1960s edge, that weaponized sense of asking for The Truth<\/em> that The Man<\/em> refuses to show you. What \u201cdisclosure\u201d really means, in today\u2019s everything-is-a-conspiracy world, is: We<\/em> demand\u2026that you<\/em> disclose\u2026the revelations we know<\/em> you\u2019re hiding. The evidence of spaceships! And aliens! And all the good stuff you\u2019ve gotten to see that we haven\u2019t! In 2026, to believe in \u201cdisclosure\u201d is to believe the Deep State is hiding the truth, and that the day of reckoning is upon on. Because we the people demand it!\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAll of that is wired into the attitude of the new alien-conspiracy theorists, who are a lot like the old alien-conspiracy theorists, though with a key difference. In the \u201970s and \u201980s, alien-conspiracy theorists were mostly seen as crackpots. They were on the fringes, and the building blocks of their belief system \u2013 crop circles, grainy 8mm footage of lights in the sky, tales of alien abduction \u2014 were like the \u201cclues\u201d to the more out-there conspiracies of the era, from Paul Is Dead to the theory that Stanley Kubrick faked the moon landing.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tToday, however, cover-up and conspiracy is the air we breathe, whether it\u2019s Donald Trump peddling his stolen-election scenarios to the MAGA faithful or those of us on the opposite side of the political spectrum feeling \u2014 knowing \u2014 that the truth is out there\u2026in the Epstein files. (How about a disclosure day for them?<\/em>) What we\u2019re all searching for, in this age of maximum corruption and minimum transparency, is the Hidden Information That Will Set Us Free. It\u2019s an understandable impulse, but it\u2019s also one that\u2019s turning into a religion.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt first became a religion, at least for some, in the aftermath of the JFK assassination, when the belief <\/em>that Lee Harvey Oswald couldn\u2019t have acted alone \u2014 and that the government we trusted was therefore a hotbed of treachery \u2014 became a yardstick of faith, even as the very thing we were spurring ourselves to believe in was (ironically) the loss of faith. We believed, with holy fervor, in our new lack of belief in America. It\u2019s as if a reverent cynicism about the malfeasance of the government replaced the old reverence toward government. We now believed in conspiracy as fervently as we\u2019d believed in the institutions the conspiracy was designed to take down.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cDisclosure\u201d is a lot like that, though with an added layer of fanboy wonder; that\u2019s part of what makes it cultish. It\u2019s people saying to the government, \u201cYou are liars. You have hidden this reality from us for 79 years. But now, you shall reveal it. The power has shifted to us. The power of disclosure<\/em> now trumps the power of your secrecy. And in the process, we will get to learn that \u2018Star Wars\u2019 was real! Which will be totally fucking cool.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more No Drama Required: The Emmys Movie Category Proves Comfort and Fun Can Win Statues<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tWhatever you think of it as a movie, Steven Spielberg\u2019s \u201cDisclosure Day\u201d is designed to lend credible resonance to these thoughts and emotions. You might say that \u201cClose Encounters of the Third Kind,\u201d 49 years ago, did the same thing. As I argued in my review of \u201cDisclosure Day,\u201d \u201cClose Encounters\u201d had a more profound impact than many realize in shaping our dreams of extraterrestrial visitation. All the sci-fi alien movies before it (the 1953 \u201cThe War of the Worlds,\u201d \u201cThe Day the Earth Stood Still\u201d) just looked like stodgy backlot fantasies with ancient FX hardware. But \u201cClose Encounters\u201d was a vision<\/em>, and the image of the extraterrestrial at the end of it helped set the template for the alien-abduction \u201980s.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut back in 1977, you could love \u201cClose Encounters of the Third Kind\u201d without thinking it was real. \u201cDisclosure Day\u201d has a different vibe. It\u2019s presenting itself as an imaginary docudrama of what it would look like if all the alien fanboy conspiracy theorists had their wet dream of disclosure come true. And Spielberg, in the interviews he\u2019s done to publicize the film, has suggested that he believes in all this stuff \u2014 though watching him closely, I don\u2019t actually think he does. I think he knows it\u2019s hokum, but that he\u2019s tapping into the \u201creality\u201d factor of it all to lend gravitas to his movie.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cDisclosure Day\u201d surfs the wave of the new credibility that surrounds alien encounters, which was given a shot in the arm by last year\u2019s po-faced documentary \u201cThe Age of Disclosure,\u201d which featured scientists and U.S. military higher-ups \u2014 official white men with titles! \u2014 testifying that they\u2019d seen shit that would blow your mind. (They had seen the real \u201cStar Wars!\u201d) Spielberg\u2019s movie includes all the theories, trendy and otherwise, about what is being covered up and how: that the first landing was at Roswell in 1947, that we have alien bodies and possibly live aliens in our possession, that we\u2019ve reverse-engineered alien technology, and that private corporations are leading the way (because they\u2019re now more sinister than the government). Spielberg\u2019s older alien movies (\u201cClose Encounters\u201d and \u201cE.T.\u201d) both featured government cover-ups, but the difference is that \u201cDisclosure Day\u201d doesn\u2019t present itself as the new \u201cClose Encounters\u201d \u2014 more like the new \u201cErin Brockovich.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tI would probably have no objection to this if the movie had more of a compelling otherworldly heft to it. Powerful art is its own reward. But when you see \u201cDisclosure Day,\u201d it feels like Spielberg is just recycling the conspiracy \u201cevidence\u201d that\u2019s already out there. On the one hand, there\u2019s a lot of evidence \u2014 at least, of mysterious spacecraft in the sky. I watch footage of it every day on social media. Yet this isn\u2019t 50 years ago. We now live in a society that\u2019s laced with surveillance cameras, where everyone in the world has a camera on their phone. I persist in asking the question I did when I reviewed \u201cThe Age of Disclosure\u201d: If these really are alien spacecraft, and the aliens have truly arrived, why don\u2019t we have a single definitive image of that taken by some random citizen? Why is the evidence only in the top-secret files?<\/p>\n

\n\tMaybe the truth, if revealed, would turn out to be a lot more down to earth. Yet in the yearning that has made \u201cdisclosure\u201d into a serious political slogan and maybe a movement (now given added credibility by a prestige Hollywood movie), we have elevated the belief in aliens into a cutting-edge \u201cpolitical\u201d issue, as if this were Watergate or Iran-Contra or the JFK files or the Epstein files. We have turned magical thinking into \u201cscientific\u201d reality. In doing so, it\u2019s legitimate to ask whether we\u2019re aiding and abetting the forces of unreality.<\/p>\n

Read more Tyra Banks Sues Netflix for Defamation, Alleges \u2018Surgical Manipulation\u2019 of Her \u2018Reality Check: Inside America\u2019s Next Top Model\u2019 Interview<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alien conspiracy theory is getting respectable (with a little help from “Disclosure Day”), and it has helped bring America back to magical thinking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2076,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1771],"class_list":["post-2077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-film","tag-close-encounters-of-the-third-kind"],"yoast_head":"\nHow Alien Conspiracy Theory Got Respectable \u2014 and Brought America Back to Magical Thinking - Relocation Observer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=2077\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How Alien Conspiracy Theory Got Respectable \u2014 and Brought America Back to Magical Thinking - 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