♪ ”Up, up
and away…in our beautiful balloon…”♬
What is it with balloons lately? Literally all
aspects of the recent “Balloongate Saga” are utterly preposterous. First, the
U.S. lets a suspected Chinese spy balloon slowly traverse the length and breadth
of the country before finally shooting it down over the Atlantic Ocean off the
coast of South Carolina. After it had several days to leisurely transmit the
intelligence it gathered back home to the Chinese Communist party. (It deliberately
flew over several of our nation’s most sensitive military sites.)
Yet now the Biden administration, perhaps
chagrinned, is blasting anything and everything out of the sky, even
while acknowledging that these “unidentified flying objects” could be our
own weather service—or corporate—balloons. What the hell?!
Wouldn’t/shouldn’t we know if they were? Weather Service balloons are
launched by another branch of government, one closely related to the Department
of Defense…that shot them down.
The U.S.
government was, apparently, unable to detect the giant Chinese spy balloon.
That was left to citizens of Montana, who happened to look up into the clear
blue sky. The official explanation for why the government was picking up so
many unidentified objects is that, prior to this event, it was only looking for
larger objects, and has since tweaked its radar so as to detect smaller
objects. You’ve got to be kidding me. I get this picture of a commander at
NORAD approaching the big screen radar controls and turning one large dial
90-degrees to the right to bring in smaller objects and immediately exclaiming,
“Holy crap!”
The last
(as I write this) “UFO” the U.S. shot down was reportedly an octagonal
balloon-like vehicle with string-like appendages hanging down. It was drifting
slowly along at 20,000 feet over Lake Huron. And the first missile fired by an
Air Force plane missed it. How is that possible?!! A supersonic jet with
state-of-the-art technology and guided missiles missed an unmanned, unarmed,
slow-moving balloon?! Why not just sidle up to it and pop it? A bi-plane
and pilot with a .22 rifle could have brought it down. For that matter, why not
just tether the thing, capture it, and bring it down intact? If we knew it
posed no threat and really wanted to learn about it, wouldn’t it be better to
have the object on the ground and intact?
More
preposterous than all of this, hard as it is to believe, is the speculation,
even fear, among some that these balloons may be sent from—or even be transporting--
aliens from
outer space. Yes, forget the flying saucers and other amazing craft of
science-fiction, it’s probably a good bet that aliens chose to make the trek to
Earth from a distant galaxy…in a balloon. A “technology” we on earth
have had for over 100 years. Does Alpha Centauri have a good supply of mylar
and helium?
I see
balloons and blimps heading towards Earth from the far reaches of the cosmos,
wicker gondolas suspended below, 3-eyed greenies looking out over the basket
tops. Perhaps some balloons with flame
shooting upwards from a console, a hand on a lever next to it.
How many
light years would it take them to reach the Earth going 20-miles-an-hour? (And
toileting might be inconvenient.) Would
entry into-- and through-- the Earth’s atmosphere present a problem for these balloons
after their long interstellar trip?
And, after
all that, deliberately defenseless, they are shot down?
Not
exactly “The War of
the Worlds.”
Beam me
up, Scotty, there’s no intelligent life here.
Or
anywhere else, apparently.
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