Will UFO Report Change Anything, Everything?, June 2, 2021

By William F. B. O’Reilly

I saw a UFO once.

It was above the Tower Bridge in London in July 1983 — or so I thought.

A large crowd had gathered to marvel at the thing, a brightly lit, spinning sphere, dancing up and down in the night sky, provocatively, just like in the movies.

Then I saw the string. We all did, and laughter broke out. Some guy on the riverbank with a high-tech kite. Hilarious.

Most UFO stories end this way. There’s an eventual, earthly explanation for the Unexplained Aerial Phenomena — UAPs as they’re now called — that Steve and Mary saw above their shed that hot Nevada evening. But now government and military leaders are talking about UAPs, as are serious news outlets like CBS’s “60 Minutes” with nary a chuckle.

This month, U.S. intelligence agencies are expected to release a report to Congress, as ordered during the Trump Administration, on what they know about UAPs. Its findings could make 2020 seem like dullsville.

Some UAP buffs are expecting strange new metals from downed extraterrestrial aircraft and jarred alien corpses in formaldehyde to be presented along with the report. Probably a reach. What is expected, though, is confirmation that we are routinely visited by super technologically advanced aircraft, and possibly seacraft, of no known earthly pedigree. Former President Barack Obama all but conceded this in a recent news interview.

But what would that mean to our lives? I’m torn somewhere between everything and nothing.

For around a third of Americans who already believe in UAPs, according to Gallup, it’ll mean they weren’t crazy all these years. Expect them to be insufferable. Skeptics will remain skeptics, pointing to possible visual anomalies in video and radar equipment, and government conspiracy theorists, heaven help us, will have a field day talking about the deep state. “What else are you hiding?,” they’ll demand, and it’ll be a good question.

But what about society as a whole? What would confirmation, even quasi-confirmation, of a possible alien race or races visiting us do to our long-held human constructs? How would it be interpreted eschatologically by the world’s great religions and the billions of souls who follow them? Would the information be spiritually devastating or uplifting?

Also, what will other countries do if the report to Congress is affirmative? Will Russia and China release their own? Will it bring the world closer together?

On the other hand, this report could change nothing — just another mystery, like spirituality itself, that we can’t waste time getting our heads around.

I ask my youngest daughter, a high school freshman, virtually every day if her friends are talking about UFOs/UAPs, given all the recent news coverage. She looks at me as though I’m nuts. Not a single word about the topic has been discussed among her friends. Have you seen the latest Tick-Tock?

But still, one wonders, how an official government report on UAPs, provided it’s not mush, could fail to affect us dramatically. It would mark an important delineation in our human understanding.

Ever since that night on the bridge, I’ve had a rote answer to anyone asking my opinion about UFOs. I say of them what I say about ghosts: no such thing.

Soon I may be looking for that string.

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