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Comment by narrator | Hacker News Reader

This is a good thread to catalog red herring techniques.

  * The government has previously used X to divert attention therefore there is no X.
  * The person saying X is an accomplice of X and cannot be trusted.
  * Demanding the answer to the question about X is dangerous because national security.
  * X is a distraction from something bad Trump did.
  * X is a distraction from something bad Biden did.
  * X is a distraction from the recent Supreme Court decisions.
  * X could never be covered up by the government - refuses to believe copious whistleblower testimony about X with no reason than it's impossible for the government to be able to cover X up.

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- it was swamp gas

- it was a reflection in the windshield

- I debunked it from seeing this YouTube video because those Air Force pilots and those government whistleblowers definitely don’t know what they are talking about !

I am always surprised by the amount of confidence those « debunkers » radiate when what they mainly do is just express doubt with zero cost to them in terms of reputation or even work.

This is precisely why I've always been most fond of the explanation that "the UFO thing" is a training ground for US psychological warfare officers. We're target practice for US disinfo campaigns.

This is such a ludicrous idea that doesn’t pass even the most basic reality checks. It’s explicitly illegal for a start amongst a whole host of other problems where the incentives make zero sense.

The government lying to us and manipulating the population with psychological warfare is a much more germane, plausible, and historically aligned proposition than the suggestion that aliens are visiting earth. In fact if you assume aliens are visiting earth, then you must also assume the government has been lying to us about it. So either way, the government is lying.

> It’s explicitly illegal

Lol. When has this ever stopped any government agency, ever? The FBI conducted over a million illegal searches last year. The NSA lied for decades about its dragnet surveillance program. You think the DIA information office (Lue Elizondo's "former" workplace) is against fabricating some conspiracy theories in an effort to corral the people most susceptible to them? They could even justify it as a defensive maneuver against hostile forces who would otherwise propagandize the same people ("distract them with Lue Anon so the Russians can't target them with Q Anon").

Obviously nobody is going to convince you that you have a complete crackpot view of the world, that’s kind of the definition of the situation you find yourself in.

It’s just incredibly clear that you actually don’t have any kind of meaningful understanding about how the military or intelligence agencies work and you are left yelling about a world that exists in your mind. The entire comment is just Swiss cheese to anyone with even a passing familiarity on any of those topics.

Wow, very convincing argument, you must be a professional spy with all your more-than-passing familiarity with intelligence agencies, I bow down to your totally rational viewpoint on the world where government agencies follow all laws and aliens routinely crash their flying craft for our venerable government agencies to recover and (legally, of course!) keep secret from us for seven decades.

This is like talking with a child. I’m going to leave you to it. Good luck.

You offered nothing of substance in any of your comments other than bragging about your familiarity with intelligence agencies.

I'd like to hear your explanation for the subject of the article that doesn't involve the government lying or breaking the law in some capacity.

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