On June 24, 1947, Kenneth Arnold saw nine shiny objects around Mt. Rainier. Thus was born the modern interest in flying saucers.
As one would expect, the first flying saucer flap was of keen interest to Forteans--Thayer devoted most of Doubt's issue 19 to the subject. His (very long) introduction is interesting for a couple of reasons.
First, it is a nice distillation of Thayer's ideas and writing styles. He mixes reasonable critiques--of journalism, say--with extreme conspiracy-mongering: the bombing of Pearl Harbor was allowed by the U.S. government, he says, with no proof. He starts with an interesting metaphor--Forteans are treated as hysterics--but soon looses grip on the analogy, as newspapers become hysterical. He praises the 'masses,' effecting a kind of populist tone, but casually dismisses the death of someone's wife--because he is interested in bigger fair, the fate of nations and planets. For all that he can sometimes turn a phrase, he has a real tin ear.
Second, the editorial has a lot of parallels with today--indeed, it's not unlike reading a blog post. There's the criticism of the 'freeprez,' which is so much like blog critiques of mainstream media (or lame stream media). There's the claims that we were lied into war, and the U.S. government was in on the fix, like 9/11 Truther nonsense--at least the second part. We were lied into war this time. There's the concern the we are creating a world uncoupled from reality--amusing ourselves to death, one might say.
Anyway, below is the editorial.
As one would expect, the first flying saucer flap was of keen interest to Forteans--Thayer devoted most of Doubt's issue 19 to the subject. His (very long) introduction is interesting for a couple of reasons.
First, it is a nice distillation of Thayer's ideas and writing styles. He mixes reasonable critiques--of journalism, say--with extreme conspiracy-mongering: the bombing of Pearl Harbor was allowed by the U.S. government, he says, with no proof. He starts with an interesting metaphor--Forteans are treated as hysterics--but soon looses grip on the analogy, as newspapers become hysterical. He praises the 'masses,' effecting a kind of populist tone, but casually dismisses the death of someone's wife--because he is interested in bigger fair, the fate of nations and planets. For all that he can sometimes turn a phrase, he has a real tin ear.
Second, the editorial has a lot of parallels with today--indeed, it's not unlike reading a blog post. There's the criticism of the 'freeprez,' which is so much like blog critiques of mainstream media (or lame stream media). There's the claims that we were lied into war, and the U.S. government was in on the fix, like 9/11 Truther nonsense--at least the second part. We were lied into war this time. There's the concern the we are creating a world uncoupled from reality--amusing ourselves to death, one might say.
Anyway, below is the editorial.
“‘Hysterical’ is the term invented for the doctor’s use to shut your mouth when your wife is sick and he doesn’t know what’s wrong with her. For most rough and ready purposes it denotes the mildest form of insanity. ‘Hysterical’ persons are not really crazy, they just act as if they were. By extension, typical of this era of loose generalizations and to hell with details, the term has come to be applied to shut all our mouths whenever anything is going on which Science doesn’t understand. The editors of the freeprez have borrowed the gag from the doctors, and thus--by extension again--they place themselves on a level with the medicine-men, above the masses to which they minister, immune to the effects of their own jargon, amulets and incantations.
“One detail commonly overlooked by doctors and editors who lift themselves to the astral plane by their own bootstraps is the perniciousness of self-satisfaction. No rose that blows can be so captivating, so enchanting in its fragrance, as are--to an individual--the odors he creates himself. This matters very little in the case of a doctor in love with his own diagnosis. If your wife’s ‘hysteria’ kills her, that’s no great loss tot he world, whereas the fate of nations, civilizations, of the planets in their courses, may depend on the editors’ whims. The stench they raise daily is their ozone and it affects them much like opium, so that by constantly inhaling their own gasses they live in a perpetual dream-world of their own creation. Limiting ourselves to the local scene, they have set up the United States of Dreamland, whence this essay derives its title.
“If the numerous editors created private worlds, like the thousands which revolve in Bedlams everywhere, they would be shut up with the other maniacs who think they are God, and although we might deplore their sad state, we should be protected from their violences. Unfortunately for us, the great editorial delusion does not create private worlds. Its false appetites are not satisfied until vast numbers of the sane are behaving AS IF the synthetic cosmos of the editors’ diurnal vaporings were bona fide. Like ‘hysterical’ women, the editors generally retain some faint awareness of reality, and like maniacs, they are cunning. Their faint awareness of reality is their yardstick by which they measure their power over the sane. Their cunning has inspired them to unite their efforts to extend that power by enforcing the delusion of a single dreamworld universally instead of a different one in each circulation area, and the means they have devised to this end are called the Associated Press, the United Press and the International News Service.
“These press associations and their member publishers own or control the means of broadcasting the ‘news’ by radio as well, so that any appearance of competition between the two media is the sheerest illusion. You never have heard a scrap of news over the air until after it was for sale, printed on the street, with the exception of sports events and a few rare accidents which have occurred under the eyes of an announcer already on the air. In this latter class, the burning of the Hindenberg and the crash of a plane into the Empire State Building are notable examples.
“Yes, the means of general communication in the world today is a monopoly held by a small group of madmen who call everybody else ‘hysterical’ and do everything in their power to make that wish-thought a fact. Rational humans who, conceivably, might wish to compare notes about events in the real world have not the slightest chance to do so. nowhere on the face of the earth today is there a single publication (of any significant circulation) which is not dedicated to the perpetuation of some pipe dream. So that in good sooth (for all practical purposes) the United States of Dreamland IS the reality. We, the people, have had forced upon us a notoriously false and scurrilous wood-pulp soul. And what the Devil do we do about it?
“Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the majority of the population were ashamed of the picture of ourselves which the papers send abroad. How would we go about changing it?
“The vast majority of us knew that Pearl Harbor was a put-up-job agreed to by the U.S. Government expressly to make the public ‘hysterical’ (only at that time the term was ‘war-minded’), but what could we--and what did we--do about it?
“Writing letters to editors doesn’t do any more good than writing them to Santa Claus. Nailing their lies doesn’t stop the chain-effect the lies have set in motion. No matter what percentage of the public is aware of a published falsehood, that awareness practically never gets into print, so that, say, 90% of the people in New York don’t know and can’t find out what 90% of the people in Chicago are thinking. Polls of ‘public opinion’ are engineered to substantiate any nefarious noxious nonsense the editors wish to foist upon us. The only publication of any potency which consistently exposes their frauds is IN FACT, a weekly, and IN FACT has an ax of its own to grind, and so circulates principally among groups which would like to control the United States of Dreamland, but never, never, never would permit the views of the masses to circulate freely. Nor does the limited potency of IN FACT stem the flood of falsehood in the slightest. On the contrary, each little exposure calls forth a smothering blanket of taller tales, so that the great stock of imposed hallucinations us weekly being squared to the seventh power.
“Thus was the world led into ‘war.’ Thus were the masses taught to fear ‘atoms.’ Thus--most recently--was a grand series of Fortean phenomena laughed out of the editors’ Dreamland. Reference is to the data which newspapers grouped hysterically under their flying ‘saucer’ or ‘disk’ scare-heads: June 24 at 3:00 p.m., between Mt. Rainier and Mt. Adams in Washington, 10,000 feet up, estimated to be moving at 1200 mph., nine objects, bright, “as if nickel plated,” no size stated: moved as if fastened together, ‘if one dipped, the others did too.’ Reported by Kenneth Arnold, of Boise, Idaho, when he landed at Pendleton, Oregon.
“One detail commonly overlooked by doctors and editors who lift themselves to the astral plane by their own bootstraps is the perniciousness of self-satisfaction. No rose that blows can be so captivating, so enchanting in its fragrance, as are--to an individual--the odors he creates himself. This matters very little in the case of a doctor in love with his own diagnosis. If your wife’s ‘hysteria’ kills her, that’s no great loss tot he world, whereas the fate of nations, civilizations, of the planets in their courses, may depend on the editors’ whims. The stench they raise daily is their ozone and it affects them much like opium, so that by constantly inhaling their own gasses they live in a perpetual dream-world of their own creation. Limiting ourselves to the local scene, they have set up the United States of Dreamland, whence this essay derives its title.
“If the numerous editors created private worlds, like the thousands which revolve in Bedlams everywhere, they would be shut up with the other maniacs who think they are God, and although we might deplore their sad state, we should be protected from their violences. Unfortunately for us, the great editorial delusion does not create private worlds. Its false appetites are not satisfied until vast numbers of the sane are behaving AS IF the synthetic cosmos of the editors’ diurnal vaporings were bona fide. Like ‘hysterical’ women, the editors generally retain some faint awareness of reality, and like maniacs, they are cunning. Their faint awareness of reality is their yardstick by which they measure their power over the sane. Their cunning has inspired them to unite their efforts to extend that power by enforcing the delusion of a single dreamworld universally instead of a different one in each circulation area, and the means they have devised to this end are called the Associated Press, the United Press and the International News Service.
“These press associations and their member publishers own or control the means of broadcasting the ‘news’ by radio as well, so that any appearance of competition between the two media is the sheerest illusion. You never have heard a scrap of news over the air until after it was for sale, printed on the street, with the exception of sports events and a few rare accidents which have occurred under the eyes of an announcer already on the air. In this latter class, the burning of the Hindenberg and the crash of a plane into the Empire State Building are notable examples.
“Yes, the means of general communication in the world today is a monopoly held by a small group of madmen who call everybody else ‘hysterical’ and do everything in their power to make that wish-thought a fact. Rational humans who, conceivably, might wish to compare notes about events in the real world have not the slightest chance to do so. nowhere on the face of the earth today is there a single publication (of any significant circulation) which is not dedicated to the perpetuation of some pipe dream. So that in good sooth (for all practical purposes) the United States of Dreamland IS the reality. We, the people, have had forced upon us a notoriously false and scurrilous wood-pulp soul. And what the Devil do we do about it?
“Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the majority of the population were ashamed of the picture of ourselves which the papers send abroad. How would we go about changing it?
“The vast majority of us knew that Pearl Harbor was a put-up-job agreed to by the U.S. Government expressly to make the public ‘hysterical’ (only at that time the term was ‘war-minded’), but what could we--and what did we--do about it?
“Writing letters to editors doesn’t do any more good than writing them to Santa Claus. Nailing their lies doesn’t stop the chain-effect the lies have set in motion. No matter what percentage of the public is aware of a published falsehood, that awareness practically never gets into print, so that, say, 90% of the people in New York don’t know and can’t find out what 90% of the people in Chicago are thinking. Polls of ‘public opinion’ are engineered to substantiate any nefarious noxious nonsense the editors wish to foist upon us. The only publication of any potency which consistently exposes their frauds is IN FACT, a weekly, and IN FACT has an ax of its own to grind, and so circulates principally among groups which would like to control the United States of Dreamland, but never, never, never would permit the views of the masses to circulate freely. Nor does the limited potency of IN FACT stem the flood of falsehood in the slightest. On the contrary, each little exposure calls forth a smothering blanket of taller tales, so that the great stock of imposed hallucinations us weekly being squared to the seventh power.
“Thus was the world led into ‘war.’ Thus were the masses taught to fear ‘atoms.’ Thus--most recently--was a grand series of Fortean phenomena laughed out of the editors’ Dreamland. Reference is to the data which newspapers grouped hysterically under their flying ‘saucer’ or ‘disk’ scare-heads: June 24 at 3:00 p.m., between Mt. Rainier and Mt. Adams in Washington, 10,000 feet up, estimated to be moving at 1200 mph., nine objects, bright, “as if nickel plated,” no size stated: moved as if fastened together, ‘if one dipped, the others did too.’ Reported by Kenneth Arnold, of Boise, Idaho, when he landed at Pendleton, Oregon.
