“Send in the clowns…” No, I meant balloons. No I meant clowns with balloons….
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“Send in the clowns…” No, I meant balloons. No I meant clowns with balloons….
Driving back and forth to the hospital a couple of towns away at all hours, with only the car radio as company, forces one to really realize that the public airwaves are a greater wasteland than the Mojave desert. Later in the day my reception was poor, and FM “Conservative” talk radio was all there was. So it was either listen to that, or ride down the highway at 70 mph with my head out the window, screaming in order to stay awake. So aside from the State of the Union hubbub, the next big mass hysteria news item was the Chinese weather balloon. The reporting was a little too hysterical, for me to take it seriously. I mean, the Chinese are already spying on us six ways to Sunday, so what did the Chinese not know about us that was so important that they had to use 1800’s era aerial technology (updated to be sure) to find out? And my my mind being somewhat fried from Herculean amounts of concern and caffeine, I wondered: the last time a “weather balloon” was surrounded by so much controversy was back in the late 1940’s, when the US Air Force declared to what they first referred to as a “flying saucer”that had crashed in the desert of Roswell, New Mexico, only to hurriedly walk it back the next day to it being a “weather balloon” that had crashed. 8 decades later, we’re (as a culture) still arguing, writing books, making movies and holding conventions over it. So I asked (in my delirium) what if it wasn’t a Chinese weather balloon at all, but a flying saucer that was shot down? Well, you might counter, there were eye witnesses who will testify to seeing a balloon. But then again, there are thousands of eye witnesses to UFO sightings who no one believes, so why should we believe those who say they saw the “balloon?” And if some massive Chinese spying operation “was” thwarted (after it had traversed the entire continental US) why aren’t we either hearing more about it, or, better yet, where’s the outrage? Now I really don’t believe our brave aviators shot down a UFO (remember “concern and caffeine”), but why has it just disappeared from the news, and largely, American thought? I’m to the point in my “Paine Wokeness” to automatically ask what’s going on behind the story? From what nefarious thing is the Chinese weather balloon distracting us? Perhaps that’s the more important question. What think ye?
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