Just Because You're Paranoid . . .

Around June 1948, Tiffany Thayer offered a paranoid theory about flying saucers in Doubt:

 “Naturally, YS is asked daily what the Fortean Society thinks about the discs, but we have no answer.  At least three types of data overlap inextricably, and even the simon-pure discana--as reported by so many police officers, public officials, aviators and newsmen--have inspired the members with scores of hypotheses.  It would be highly presumptuous and extremely un-Fortean to adopt any of these as the Society’s ‘official’ opinion.  Permissible, however, is some expression from Your Secretary’s vantage point in this clearing-house of data.  As the pallid tatterdemalions totter past they suggest:-

1. That the destructive potential of the so-called ‘atom bomb’ is not nearly so great as its power to overwhelm with fear.
2. That this force is being exemplified at its maximum today--that further actual explosions would tend to decrease its prestige--but that its present maximal awesomeness is still insufficient for the purposes of OSS.
3. That several angles are being developed to amplify the persuasive powers of atom-yabber, and that among these angles are such fabrications as (a) ‘radioactive clouds’, (b) rockets that defy gravitation, (c) guided missiles ‘with homing devices’, (d) jet-propelled tax collectors, and (e) the DISCS.
4. That the purpose is not so much to frighten any foreign government as to completely over-awe Homer Sap in all languages.
5. That the magi did this for centuries with sleight-of-hand and abracadabra, that the priests did it for subsequent centuries (in collusion with their contemporary politicians) with original sin, the sacrament, and miracles, and that now the scientific priestcraft is following in the same tradition, and with precious little more control over alleged ‘natural laws’ or elements (or ‘atoms’) than either group of their predecessors.
6. That the several pothers kicked up in the past about the loss of the ‘atomic’ formula, (a) outside a telephone booth, (b) through a couple Army non-coms, (c) by Red Canadian diplomats, (d) blue-prints found on a lawn in Beverly Hills, had the primary purpose of making Americans dread the most publicized piece of horror fiction since Dracula.
7. That the several ‘grape-vine’ yarns current, (a) atom-bombs can be made from information which has been in general circulation since the day after Hiroshima, and (b) a machine which will duplicate the work of that plant in New Mexico has been built by a high school boy at a cost of $165, and so on, are part of the whispering ampaign to further jellify what used to be your brain.
8. That at the strategic moment all U.S. wypers will announce that Russia has the secret and is making bombs a mile a minute.
9. That then it will be announced that only underground shelters lined with four-ply platinum or something equally expensive can possibly save the civilian population from being wiped out, and the war-tax to provide these elaborate shelters for a hundred million people will be so much greater than any previous tax ever levied that some digits will have to be borrowed from the astronomers.
10. That the makers of air-conditioning apparatus will then be In Clover.
11. That the fur trade will also be in clover because most of the ‘discoveries’ of raw materials for World Fraud III have been found in very cold places.  Argentine and Chile are already aligned against Great Britain in claims to Antarctic bases, and our own Admiral Byrd hasn’t been commuting to those parts to give the penguins singing lessons.  On the other hand, some of the ‘elements’ needed are reported in Australia, Burma, Ceylon, South Africa, Manchuria China and the Philippines.  Is it simply coincidence that the natives of these now precious districts are not caucasians, not conformists, and not even yet in the market for durable goods?
12. That YS was rash to jest in DOUBT No. 17 about how to conduct World Fraud III.  The suggestion was that the U.S. keep its armed forces at home to kill their own families, and to let Russia do the same  We should get the better of that deal because our men with their superior skills can be so much more destructive.  OUr subsequent building boom will be the greater.
13. That the politicians of the world have seized upon that inspiration and improved upon it by eliminating its only bug, ie, its damnable economy.  The economical factor is eliminated IF the military keeps the dodge a secret--which is easy.  Nobody is permitted to go near any military emplacements now.  Who is to say that batteries at White Sands are not aiming at Moscow but at San Antonio?  If Forrestal and Lilienthal say that those discos are being projected toward Russia and guided by radio to strike the Kremlin (and that it costs a million dollars each to put them in Stalin’s lap), how are you going to prove differently?  When you wake up and find a disc in bed with you--a disc bearing Russian characters--how are you going to prove it was made in New Jersey and projected from Bronxville?  When a gun on Governer’s Island sent a rocket crashing into the cornice of a Wall Street building, and the Army said it was an accident, could you prove that it wasn’t?  Could you even prove that the ‘accident’ was in hitting Wall Street or that Chinatown was the target?
14. That a goodly portion of the newsmen’s hysteria about discs had the purpose of convincing you that missiels could be projected and guided for thousands of milers--even from Russia.
15. That the object picked up in Texas (if it ever was) bearing a Spokane address (if it did), was not despatched from Spokane at all, but from--say--Fort Sam Houston.  That the purpose was to increase the public awe to the point where it was swallowing anything.

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