Discussion and Commentary to follow:
~~~~~~~~~~~~
17:50 EST ...Safe to say neither will be bringing a knife to the gunfight.
I know about senior field grade officers wearing Combat Infantry Badges and Pathfinder wings, eh? Not to be trifled with. I know Rich Dolan.
As a military trainer for officers of ALL grades I can report that he is also not a person with which one should be encouraged to trifle. The irresistible force may meet the immovable object. What highly strange sparks could fly?
21:45 EST ...Verily... one of the guys showed up bare-fisted to the gun-fight and was summarily shot. Which one?
I'm reminded of the famous Friedman / Magaha debate of 2004 where Dr. Magaha, like Colonel Alexander, was reduced to a mouldering heap of hair, teeth, and myopic eyeballs in a similar fashion.
http://www.rense.com/general50/dayc.htm
Just switch out Friedman and Magaha for Dolan and Alexander to read a whole new paper, even if it is "Deja Vu all over again..." An excerpt:
Lately, over the last several years, I've instituted a personal attitude shift for myself that was a little more subtle for me than it's going to be for another, perhaps. "Three hots and a cot" provided by a small military retirement has provided me a lot of time to think—out of the box—as I endure a persecuting unemployment born of pique and persecution, unjustified and not of my manufacture. I've come to some interesting conclusions as a result of that thinking that are serious about cultural criticism—to facilitate a more efficacious reality—so, I'm trying to encourage as many individuals as I can to *shift* with me. I feel it's the future. Shift happens.
Why not? Each day that goes by seems to provide a little more external validation for this invigorating attitudinal *shift*, so bear with me if you can—and can decipher the "personal code" I've been accused of writing in—because the result, I think, is the more timely acceptance of an unavoidable and quickly approaching ...future... that we are ~all~ ignorant of... and for which we are generally unprepared, myself included. I think we would do well to prepare, more, for this future. Presently, we are being denied, by our conflicted culture (...its governments, agencies, and institutions...), the tools and materials for that preparation. That future could be wonderful, folks. We'd do well to be reasonably prepared for it. Before my "attitude adjustment," and while maintaining a general profile as a confident proponent for the extraterrestrial hypothesis—no apologies there!—I still endured an undercurrent of personal embarrassment, actually, regarding any discussion I might try to initiate regarding my ufological activities, projects, or concerns... with the mainstream world I'm immersed in... forgetting for a moment the off-line world of friends and acquaintances also sharing that mainstream world with me. Prudence locally practiced... seemed indicated. Lack of it, apparently, got me disqualified from a second career in teaching, after all... I was a tad gun-shy... On sidebar, If "the man" is going to deny a person a living wage for lawful thinking out of the box... what will "he" do if a person persists? I intend to find out... Anyway, I used to be over-sensitive and demonstratively *understanding* (ironic, ~that~!) about the discomfort of persons around me regarding the subject of UFOs, *indulgent* of their lack of ufological interest, and *disappointed*, more than a little, by their own lack of understanding—their pitying or scornful expressions and abrupt subject changes—if I tried to bring the subject up cold. What follows is a brief composite conversation with the "mainstream," over the years, for illustration... "I saw a strange light in the sky this morning doing some really impossible things..." I might start... "Oh yeah..."? ...is the guarded response... "Yeah..." I continue, "It looked like the shuttle or the space station going over, was brighter than Venus, and..." "...It likely -was- the shuttle or the space station going over..." he'd interrupt. I'd counter, "Right, but I've got an animated schedule from the NASA site that ruled them out...," The mainstream reflexively counters, "Well—it was some other satellite, then... there's hundreds of them up there." "Well... yeah," I'd concede, "but none as bright as Venus... I get forecasts on those too. Additionally, these lights..." "...Still" He interrupts quickly, "...it had to be a satellite, or a plane or a balloon, or something..." He shakes an impatient head... I offer, "Well—it changed speed and direction, stopped, and was traveling more or less due west..." "So"? "Well -- it was comparatively erratic in flight and absolutely silent with no navigation lights, ruling out a plane; balloons and satellites don't abruptly change direction, rate of speed, and... stop. Moreover, satellites generally don't ~go~ west." I get a blank stare, then "...Um-hmm... so it must be aliens, then, huh?" His pitying smirk begins its slow bloom. "Well, no, not necessarily... it just seems to be a logical thing to wonder given that as the *impossible* begins to be eliminated about UFOs... ...whatever remains, however improbable, might be the truth about UFOs..." ...Blank smirk from the addressed, followed most usually by a subject change or retreat, or even open hostility... ...Look. I know these people have lives—families, jobs, and mortgages. Further, I know that it's me making the waves, rocking their boat, or kicking at the last-century wooden spokes of the wheels on their aggregate cultural applecart. I know that I can be discomfiting with regard to my ready willingness to question general reality or providing for an invalidation of everyone's, much too comfortable, status quo. I ~understand~ the need to believe in something rock solid so the ~night shadows~ are held at bay, and I can appreciate that it's difficult to contemplate that "*everything* one *knows* is *wrong*..."... That's what kept me at bay with regard to a more strident and challenging approach in some chance discussion with the ufologically unwashed. This is what embarrassed me, reader, provided for my over-sensitivity to an another's arguably specious or contrived sensibilities, and compelled an understanding, an acceptance even, of their lack of intellectual bravery. I figured they were innocent and victims in the social duplicity just like I was. I was worried about ~their~ feelings. It's not that way anymore. See, I would be remiss if I didn't voice my concern, express my opinion, or make my contribution to the thought pool available. It's the least I can do, reader, when I have the manipulating and programming thoughts of others imposed upon me in an even more forceful manner, and in an authoritarian way considerably less efficacious than I would dispense or have dispensed to me. I'm expected to be honest, forthright and dependable with regard to my society while my society is, plainly, not honest, forthright or dependable to me in return. I have... difficulty... respecting a society that has no respect for me. I have solid ethics, myself, but my society, seemingly, has no morals. This creates problems for me that are not of my manufacture... You see, it's not my problem that the scales have begun to fall from my ~own~ eyes. It's not my problem that I still ~have~ a bravery honed, refined, and made baldly mandatory in the social conditionings of two decades of combat, combat aviation training, and troop leadership in the armed forces of the United States. It's not my problem that another will choose to turn a blind eye to a ~substantially abundant~ ufological evidentiary base... and masquerade their equally blind ignorance with obligatory debunker-isms, spoon-fed CSICOPian platitudes, and head-in-the-sand congested world views! It's not my problem that people prefer to trust the realities manufactured for them by a thoroughly corrupted lap-dog and imposter mainstream, or put their faith and cognitive stock into the canted thinking contrived for them by those who would try to manipulate them... to the unsettling ends the manipulated would ~not~ appreciate if we knew what those ends were... (...no apologies here either)!
And remember: It's not my song, folks, and you'd be remiss shooting the piano player. Do enough of that and pretty soon you won't hear any music at all... with the exception of that which is "state approved"! It's not ~my~ problem, friends and neighbors! Rather, it's a problem inflicted upon me by an imposed, encouraged, or even nurtured cultural naiveté (...I once gleefully supported...) that society was ultimately ~predisposed~ to provide the greatest good for the greatest number.
Upon discovering that the truth was more... uh... ...*oblique* than that —that society was actually only interested in providing the credible [and grudging] ~illusion~ of "providing the greatest-good-for-the-greatest-number"— I'm compelled to hold the mainstream authorities, their representatives, and their faith-based apologists to the same fire that has been held to me, and protest, stridently (...if needs be!) where they can be found to be breaking the *rules*, advantaging themselves in the codification of these *rules*, or selectively interpreting the *rules* to suit the aforementioned few. That's a discredited CSICOPian charter, good reader! I'll have ~no~ part of it. The arguments and the credibilities of the *mainstream* (and CSICOPia!) are dead, flatly, become more decomposed and odiferous with each accelerating second, and can no longer be ~counted~ upon to be the common-sense-retreat-to-traditional-solid-ground that a reflexive conservative apologist might, shrilly, advise that they were.
No. They're decidedly ~not~ a "step back to better times." They're a step back to ~medieval~ times of feudal social atrocity and the unrestricted lusts of cold-fish and elitist psychopaths! Devoid of any responsibility for fairness, and with zero regard for the sensibilities of individual persons ground up in the institutional machines of these "neo-lords of imposed ignorance", they destroy the middle class, supplant the "freer republic" and replace it with an anti-individualist "new theocracy" every bit as bad (for the rising and the advancing of the individual human spirit) as fundamentalist Islam. ...Even worse in many ways. I'll have no part in the support of such. I offer that the reader is not best served in that support either.
The rent comes due, friends, as the roof leaks, the appliances break down, and the air-conditioner blows societal hot air. We deserve better.
Alfred Lehmberg
19 Comments
Reader Comments (19)
I didn't get to listen. Hopefully it will be available for download soon. Although, I am quite sure that Dolan mopped the floor with Alexander.
Imagine the asteroid that ended the age of dinosaurs 67 million years ago. Now imagine the resultant crater...
It was an amazing debate, with crater-sized holes in Alexander's logic. Well worth listening to when they make it available.
I really wish they would make the Inception site easier to navigate. Totally didn't find where to download past shows. However, it looks like the debate will be streaming at least for the rest of tonight, which means I can listen later. The bad part about that is it seems to start wherever the stream is at that moment and not at the beginning.
Dolan must be hearing the lamentations of the Colonel's fanboys! He was organized, objective, constructive, comprehensive, flexible, acceptable, specific, and thoughtful. His opponent... not so much. Alexander was glib bupkis oozing a politician's droning babble as unclear as it was empty and as meaningful as a Republican debate. w0000000t!
I have to say, too, that Leslie Kean was masterful as the debate moderator: able to effortlessly summarize the opponents contributions succinctly and accurately and so providing a clarity to the affair that would have been less obvious otherwise. Well done Ms. Kean!
...And I have to add that Jamie Havican's IRN went way beyond the call of duty in the production of the best debate of its type in recent memory. Though, sincerely, once again typified in the preparation of the participants: why do the skeptibunky denialists always make such a production of being under-prepared, prone to fallacy, astoundingly illogical, historically inaccurate, over-petulant and annoyingly officious? Every time! Every. Time.
LOL yea skpetics are notorious for that. At least my wife will just plain admit she's a lazy skeptic when she dosen't care to believe or even consider topics. I mean I have been in the same room with her when we have had objects move during an investigation and she STILL wont own up to there was something abnormal about it. Always a oh it was a micro quake or the wind... and quick to say well you dont have any pic's of before and after so we cant tell if it moved. /facepalm
Alexander is boooooring and predictable. I have no idea how he stays relevant. Needless to say I just sealed my fate for not every getting him to come on as a guest. Oh well, chaulk it up on the big board of faux paus.
I suspect Alexander only apes relevancy because he's all his side has to represent same, eh? He goes south for me for an additional unrelated reason... as the "all but inventor" of the non-lethal weapon paradigm he takes weapons of a somewhat reduced lethality and proclaims them "Non-lethal." These weapons are more readily used, consequently, and then provide for, I submit, more lethality than was evident before Colonel Alexander's dubious contribution:
http://youtu.be/FjaTkPFybGc
I wonder what the Colonel's bottom line is on this. What's his end... forgetting for a moment that these weapons he has gleefully facilitated can also be used for kicks and torture.
I was able to listen to the Alexander & Dolan debate a couple of days ago and came away especially impressed with Leslie Kean's fine ability to moderate, as Alfred had noted. Well done to Ms. Kean!
Did you find the Colonel as underwhelming as some of the rest of us found him? Dolan rolled over him like a truck tire rolls over a toad... and Dolan was ill at the time.
"I have to say, too, that Leslie Kean was masterful as the debate moderator: able to effortlessly summarize the opponents contributions succinctly and accurately and so providing a clarity to the affair that would have been less obvious otherwise. Well done Ms. Kean!"
No, Ms. Kean, little Miss Abduction Propagandist, not well done.
Your military experience seems to have impacted your critical acumen. You should do a little less saluting and a lot more thinking, Lehmberg. Or shall I tell you how high to jump?
I get it. You're just following orders.
First you recommit to hypnosis. Now Leslie Kean is a trustworthy source. Miss Kean, correct me if I'm wrong, was Budd Hopkins's stenographer. Do you ever source your affection? Is your memory that short? Have you been abducted? Because the aliens apparently have control of your critical faculties. I don't think Miss Kean can rely on your devotion because if she waits a month or two you'll be frying her up for breakfast.
There's a cover-up all right. Admit it. You're a hoaxer.
Would there be any other explanation for the bizarre retrofit you perform on your stances? Perhaps the only thing consistent with you is your commitment to a religious faith that necessitates your vertigo-inducing about-faces. Forward march.
I look forward to your re-embrace of David Jacobs.
"I have to say, too, that Leslie Kean was masterful as the debate moderator: able to effortlessly summarize the opponents contributions succinctly and accurately and so providing a clarity to the affair that would have been less obvious otherwise. Well done Ms. Kean!"
No, Ms. Kean, little Miss Abduction Propagandist, not well done.
In as much as she was there to perform the function of competent debate moderator she performed as I described. I trust she carried none of her personal baggage into the exercise as you appear to do.
Your military experience seems to have impacted your critical acumen. You should do a little less saluting and a lot more thinking, Lehmberg. Or shall I tell you how high to jump?
Remembering you insist on confusing apples with oranges, persecute the most tangential guilt by association, and prosecute the most servile of the authoritarian all-or-nothing prerogatives yourself, Sir, I'm not surprised to find you think you could. It remains you have yet to do so.
I get it. You're just following orders.
Whatever gets your flag to the top, you know?
First you recommit to hypnosis.
So you say.
Now Leslie Kean is a trustworthy source.
No... I say she is a competent debate moderator. You say she is a Trustworthy source.
Miss Kean, correct me if I'm wrong, was Budd Hopkins's stenographer.
...So was Ms Rainey! ...Your point being? Maybe we should start rounding up everyone who ate dinner with Budd Hopkins or Dave Jacobs and give them all a shot to the groin?
Do you ever source your affection?
Will you never perceive the destructive and intrinsically non-constructive nature of your turgid absolutism?
Is your memory that short?
Are you actually this emotionally conflicted, socially retarded, and a boor?
Have you been abducted?
Are you an insentient moron?
Because the aliens apparently have control of your critical faculties.
I suspect the closest I come to aliens generally is encountering persons much like yourself.
I don't think Miss Kean can rely on your devotion because if she waits a month or two you'll be frying her up for breakfast.
Mayhap!
There's a cover-up all right. Admit it. You're a hoaxer.
...And there you go... sailing off into babble-land again when you'd think the myths of "Black" and "White" have already discredited themselves... as YOU have.
Would there be any other explanation for the bizarre retrofit you perform on your stances?
Apart from that they are entirely of your invention? No.
Perhaps the only thing consistent with you is your commitment to a religious faith that necessitates your vertigo-inducing about-faces. Forward march.
Again, and for the reasons already iterated right here on this board, you'd be more expert with that line of tedious thought than will I.
I look forward to your re-embrace of David Jacobs.
Can't see that happening, actually, but I never say never so I won't rule it out. New information is new information you see, and only a FOOL binds himself to his convictions where his justifications for them are shown to be in arrears. I suspect you may be that kind of fool.
You're a suck-up. A walking military UFO with a sputtering antigrav drive. Maybe that's why you jerk your allegiances around so much.
You sell fear porn for a living. It is no wonder you hang with its pornographers.
...And you're a "fuck-up," a tedious male harridan with emotional management issues. Maybe that's why you cling to unreasonable and irrelevant convictions and just come off as a regrettable pain in the ass... like all spring-butt reductionists.
I suspect you live a homocentric lie and, bereft of an efficacious imagination, live in terror that everything you think you know is wrong. The good news? Everything you think you know is wrong! Moreover, you sell obnoxious certitude for no gain at all. That's why you hang with the Cartesian "drongos." Next!
Interesting to note, too, that the only one ever to accuse me of disloyalty is you, eh? When I am compelled to sail south of someone for cause, they're the FIRST to know.
"Anonymous" lacks the integrity to sign his/her name to such obsessive, personal attacks. Not surprised though and the writing sure is familiar.
Yes...He does have a "style," n'est ce pas? [g].
^ That's for sure! ;-)