I sent the following to exopolitical writer Michael Salla after an exchange I had with UFO whistleblower Corey Goode. The exchange with Corey was prompted by his excusing his copyrighting of certain terms related to his narrative and my polite suggestions he rethink his approach. Salla and I had had an exchange awhile back when I alerted him to accusations being made by other UFOlogists that he had committed to Corey and therefore would not hear any information that casts doubts on his motives.
I myself continue to defend the value of Corey and other of the fantastically styled alleged whistleblowers. But I find myself in the minority of people who can do so without taking an either/or, true/false stance. I wanted to appeal to Salla, the leading intellectual in this camp, who has expressed receiving a lot of pressure to distance himself from Corey, but remains “committed” — going as far as to completely swallow the “Qanon” conspiracy information that even many in the conspiracy community see is at least partially Trump propaganda.
Salla has previously shown signs of being able to glean information from accounts without necessarily taking them at their word, but like most people in the field, he seems to lack the philosophical sophistication to rise above the black and white thinking that leads so many of them to reactionary politics.
To Salla:
“Hello again. Thank you for addressing my concerns mentioned above about your commitment to Corey Goode.
Though I never saw anything publicly addressing the point made, basically that you were taking an “all in” stance. If I may offer some feedback, (since this seems to be something you are still considering, given your most recent informative article on Goode), I will just say a few things.
Is it not possible to do your work, which has its strength in your open mindedness to so many points of view, without completely adopting their point of view?
You do express a certain amount of critical distance in your writing, which I appreciate. But it seems to me that you feel pressured to take sides in ways that go beyond the sympathetic analysis you are so good at.
When the conflict model devolves into melodramatic terms that demonize the other, we are in the realm of propaganda. I have always appreciated yours and even Corey’s more nuanced and mature conflict modelling, than, say, what Mr. Wilcock is usually drawn into. But that seems to have gone out the window now, especially with Corey’s moves in the legal arena and the widespread and uncritical adoption of the Q narrative framing, which is clearly using questionable propaganda techniques, whatever the actual truth of the material may be.
Though I imagine it must be difficult to express subtlety in a community so prone to frame everything in such starkly opposed terms. The “us vs. them” frame is obviously destructive but it rests on deeper epistemological assumptions of an either/or logical substructure, an unproblematic separation between True and False. People in the UFO community seem unable to question anything without scapegoating it as evil, disinfo, completely made up, etc…
Which is a shame because it negates the history of esoteric philosophy, immanent metaphysics and Theosophy which has often dealt with these occult subjects with an appreciation for the necessity of perspectival, contextual thinking and the importance of both narrative and truth… that is, both finding value in and critiquing narrative, whatever the truth may be (which is often impossible to decide on absolutely or at least separate from the narrative context).
That is my perspective anyway, for whatever it is worth. I am a philosopher writing a book on alternative physics, esoteric science and the semiotics of the occult, but I have hopes that these developments you are part of will bear transformative fruit in the future. I appreciate what you do, however you choose to do it. Best of luck to you.”
After a brief response from Salla about exopolitics being a puzzle and about him listening to whomever can put the puzzle pieces together for him, I sent him the following:
“Fair enough. You paint a good picture. I am just concerned that the puzzle picture being presented is being painted too much by a specific faction with motives that aren’t being questioned.
For instance, right now the future of journalism is being decided in the minds of the public concerning what we will tolerate with journalists being arrested for doing their job. Q has so many of the people that would otherwise be outraged at Assange’s arrest, told it is “part of the plan”.
Wikileaks finds all this comical and has stated so clearly. Don’t you think that is an important fact to mention? Or not, because it doesn’t fit the puzzle Q has created? Q’s narrative makes sense in their puzzle picture but within a larger context it makes much more sense that they are doing everything they can to keep Trump’s base in religious devotion to him. Perhaps there is much truth in their agenda, but the narrative is so saturated with manipulative semiotics, I think it would help the UFO community if you tempered their devotional nationalism and melodramatic eschatology with some political realism.
Thank you for hearing me.”
