Political Conventions and Alien Abduction

"I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened. Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope―Obi-Wan Kenobi 

This past Wednesday evening I felt a lurch, a twist in my gut, vertigo. It happened about half way through a performance of Saturday's Voyeur.  It had nothing to do with the performance!. A small stroke? Had the space/time continuum stalled for a quantum moment deciding if it should continue expansion or just say "screw it" and collapse? Was it the distortion alien abductees say they felt when they were wrenched from their beds, sucked out of a shopping mall, or vaporized out of their cars? I think I know how they feel because I feel the same way this morning; the first day this side of a tumultuous political convention. 

The lurch happened about the time, Wednesday evenings, when Senator Cruz, speaking at the GOP convention, said: "I congratulate Donald Trump on winning the nomination last night,"  But the Senator didn't endorse Trump! He went on to say something like: ". . .vote your conscience." And if you believe anything Trump has said and endorse his less than collegial respect for anyone not like him, you probably agree with his words when he said Cruz was an alien, a few months ago. 

Friday morning at breakfast, I felt vertigo again. The feeling happened reading the Salt Lake Tribune headline. The paper quoted the bombastic, misogynist, racist, newly crowned Presidential Nominee as saying: "I am your voice." How many delegates had cold shivers zipping up and down their spines when he spoke? I didn't have shivers but his words increased my uneasiness because of the "legitimacy" his malformed ideas grant some of our narrowly focused population.

Trump nor any politician or other person speak for me. I alone am responsible for my feelings, my actions, my thoughts, and my words. From Horace:  "nullius addictus iurare in verba magistri." Roughly translated: "I owe no allegiance to the words of any master." But I understand how difficult it is to practice critical thinking. I know people--many in my extended family--who after a long day of working at an often pointless job, fret about making ends meet, are worn from worry about the futures of their children, even their own futures. I've walked that road.

I'm in more fortunate circumstances but I can still feel the angst. It's tempting, when you're worn down, to blame other ethnicities, religions, the Spector of Big Government, for your circumstance. It's easier to pop a beer, kick up your feet, zone out with the TV and believe the Wizard of Oz promises that many politicians spout to win your support and vote. It takes a lot of energy to find your own solutions or, at the least, to dredge up the will to question the validity of their words and veracity of their promises. And, in the moment, we forget the disappointment and sense of betrayal, that unfulfilled expectations from past political promises, left in our lives. 

Saturday's Voyeur cast Donald Trump as the Heavenly Father. It was slapstick, imaginative, creepy, a bit scary, and very funny in-spite of the negative racially loaded comedic lines when Trump/Heavenly Father spoke.  I'm uncomfortable when anyone uses those terms including a comic or a Presidential hopeful. Because Trump is insensitive enough to use those words doesn't grant validity for using them in a comedy. But I got over it. So, go see the play!

My hometown of Durango, Colorado has been a UFO hotspot for decades. Between Durango and Aztec New Mexico, UFO's apparently came and went--in that rugged, arid place--with great regularity and impunity. I've camped, hiked, and ridden horseback in those weathered canyons. At night, the only bright lights I saw were the clearance lights atop oil rigs on distant mesas. The thrumming sounds and faint vibrations weren't UFO engines warming up or winding down. The sounds were pump jacks pulling oil from the huge oil/gas field under the Four-Corners. 

Some alcoves sheltered evidence of the Anasazi. At the time of my exploration of the area, everyone--including me--from the Four-Corners, had heard the UFO stories. Some swore seeing them. I never saw signs of extraterrestrial camps, landing or launch pads, experiment stations, convention halls. My grandfather said aliens were BS, that most high-office (Wash DC) political candidates were full of it, and that the Anasazi were real. Were the enigmatic Anasazi, who several hundred years ago occupied the now vacant cliff dwellings witness to the comings and goings of strange beings? 

Anasazi rock art doesn't seem to report such contact. But, we probably don't know what to look for when we try to read, decipher, or interpret the shapes, figures, squiggles, circles, etc, painted and scratched into the sandstone walls. It is plausible that these semi-mysterious people were brainwashed by UFO aliens and not allowed to report the facts, Could it be that they had bombastic alien leadership who censored the rock art and forbade painting pictures of their deep space alien masters? Experts suggest that the Anasazi built cliff dwellings to escape some vicious enemy. Other tribes? Impacts of climate change? Was it to escape the aliens; to escape alien leadership? Political bully's? An attempt to live above the hot wind blowing from political conventions?

Brainwashing seems to have dribbled through the centuries into our culture, It may be why we resist facts that contradict word spinning, believe the unrealistic pontification and promises made by many politicians running for office, and worse, don't trust and act on our instincts. Maybe the Anasazi didn't draw aliens on rock walls, not because they lost free will or the ability to think for themselves, but because they were brainwashing themselves into believing that the aliens didn't want them to draw their own facts. We seem to do that to ourselves each election cycle. We dispense with common sense, thinking for ourselves, looking for facts, questioning promises made in speeches. 

It was on our farm in SW Colorado, 25 miles west of Durango, where I witnessed one event that I might argue was a UFO sighting. My oldest son was with me. He was 13 or 14. I had had a couple of glasses of a very nice Pinot Noir. We were standing in the wooded part of our property looking at stars.

It was a habit I learned from my grandfather, when I was a child, something I still do nightly. He pointed out constellations, planets, and told me about things, that in his lifetime, he had seen in the night sky: eclipses, bright meteors, and when he was a child, Haley's Comet. My grandfather said that some of the stars were so far away that their light had just reached us after millions and millions of years. And, he said, some of the stars and their planets had been gone for a long time, even though we were just seeing signs of their existence. Poof! Cosmic vapor! This made me worry a bit about our own sun.

"Look," My son said, pointing at what looked like a very bright star.

"It's just a planet," I said.

"But it just moved a little bit," he informed me. He was an imaginative kid so I gave him my brightest condescending smile and went back into the house for another glass of wine. When I returned, a few minutes later, he was still staring intently at the sky.

"It keeps moving," he said.

"Planets look like they're moving because of the rotation of the earth. They rise in the east and set in the west just like the sun, stars, and moon."

"Which way is east?" he asked. I pointed into the dark.

"But that star just moved east. Then it zigzagged and came back"

That got my attention. I focused my binoculars on the object. It appeared to be two short lines of flashing lights glued together one over the other. I'm willing to entertain the idea that the wine and my son's insistence sublimated frontal lobe, analytical processing of my observations. I don't know what we saw but after a few minutes the light-bar extinguished, blinked out, like a firefly saying goodnight. The experience left me a bit uneasy. 

The Presidential race this year makes me likewise unsettled. I don't know why. Maybe it's from being released from the UFO that sucked me into space a few nights ago from the Salt Lake Acting Company play. It isn't partisan politics because I'm an unaffiliated voter. I am loyal to an idea or person because I am solely responsible for the fall-out of investing myself and my trust. I'm sure I can't support a racist, misogynist, bully, however,  I don't completely trust the alternative, but I will vote this fall. The Republicans have a tough choice; to support Trump unconditionally or "vote their conscience." My grandfather said: "It's like having to choose between a jab in the eye or a jab in the ass with a sharp stick. Either way it's going to hurt, it's going to cost you something, and you may never get over it." 

I feel disoriented about my choices this fall, not unlike the feelings that UFO abductees or the attendees at the GOP convention must have felt when they regained consciousness, set their feet back on solid earth. Does Trump have a third eye in his forehead, covered by a nictitating membrane like that in reptiles and other species? Is he alien spawn?  Will I have the same disorienting lurches in space/time when the Democrats gather next week? Perhaps I'm feeling uncomfortable this election year because I'm definitely alien spawn; the descendant of illegal emigrants who skulked their way into this country over four centuries ago.