Lehmberg, as many of you who read these UFO blogs know, is either respected and liked, or considered a “troublemaker” (At best. After all, he did win the
2006 Zorgy Award for ‘best UFO/paranormal troublemaker.’)
The usual division continues: the dysfunctional skeptics attack, and in typical fashion, respond with outrage when called on their stuff. Those that respond to the chronic skeptic’s actions are harassed, stalked, followed, insulted, mocked, hacked, lied to and lied about. One anti-UFO, chronic skeptic has a banner on his blog: The Lehmberg I Hate You Foundation, which doesn’t make sense to me, but then, much of the skepti-loons insults and humor is full of non-sequitors.
Another suffers from the paranoid delusion that I have “sent” Lehmberg to his blog to act up and “fight” on my behalf. (If only I had that kind of power! )
Others call him a loon, and worse. Even those who still can’t make up their minds if they’re in or out regarding UFOlogy don’t get it: they take issue and end up siding with the Pelicanists when it comes to Lehmberg. That’s not surprising though; for if they weren’t in the position of fence sitter and hill hopper they wouldn’t be so confused to begin with.
So the lances are still being thrown at the rest of us, and when we pick them up and throw them back, we’re accused of “name calling”
on the same level of a racist flinging slurs, and stirring up trouble simply because, (they accuse, and falsely) we have nothing better to do. All kinds of arrogant, paranoid, and defensive behaviors rise up like some ugly, slime covered, multi headed sea monster. Like some ugly, slime covered, multi headed possessed sea monster, for they do not give up. Not ever. They trail behind them grudges, old insults and injuries, and when they can’t reach back there to pull one out, they simply lie. They may flag, but they never quit.
A recent program on
20/20 (which I never watch, but just happened to catch the last few minutes of recently) reenacted the famous psychological Milgram experiment (That is a whole other topic for a very different column.) Among other things, the new experiment suggested that a moral/ethical voice, a positive voice, even if in the minority, can change things for the better. That one lone voice can change the actions of others. That’s a very good thing of course, and in the context of UFO Land, a reason to encourage others, as I always say, to speak up. To tell their stories, their experiences. And to speak up against chronic skepticism.
There have been some recent comments on pathological skepticism from other bloggers,(including myself) - it’s about time. Daniel Brenton’s
An Open Letter to the UFO Community is one.
In the January issue of UFO Magazine, Alfred Lehmberg’s column An Alien View, is titled CSICOPING a Feeling. (Of course, the recent news is that CSICOP, in a sort of Keystone Cops kind of move, renamed itself CSI )
Whenever one of us goes on about all the types of skeptics; all the qualifiers and modifiers: skeptibunkies, chronic skeptic, fanatical skeptic, skepti loon, pathological skepticism, irrational rationalism, etc. one thing that always happens is the knee jerk denial. “Why, I’m a skeptic! How dare you call me that?!” and no matter how many times you explain to the hopping little Pelicanist that “if the shoe doesn’t fit, don't wear it” they can’t hear it. All the games played around the disingenuous denial that they are a skeptic are just that: games. Designed to distract, deny, and most of all, discourage.
Lehmberg writes:
”True skeptics are never the issue,reader.
I know that, many of you know that, but the ones that need to know that don’t. Skeptics, Lehmberg writes, are a good thing. But it is not skeptics he is holding up for the thick minded thugs they are; it is, to repeat:
”Skeptics[tic are not to be confused with scurrilous skepti-bunkies, ponderous Pelicanists, or insipid CSICOPians and scurvy klasskurtxians.”
Lehmberg addresses many aspects of CSICOP and their lie that they are concerned with skeptical thought:
”Since the very beginning and as typified by the Dennis Rawlins imbroglio over the StarBaby paper, any research critical of or in opposition to that CSICOPian party-liners remains remarkably non-included in these not so efficacious bibliographies. Why was StarBaby published in FATE Magazine and not in the Skeptical Inquirer?
Good questions. There are more:
Why can’t Dr David Rudiak get a peer review for his Mogul-balloon investigative work in the same canted CSICOPian rag? Frank Feschino for Shoot Them Down? Stanton Friedman for MAJIC? Robert Hastings for UFOS and Nuclear Missiles? Richard Dolan for UFOs and the National Security State?”
As Lehmberg notes, “why indeed.”
Excellent article. And UFO Magazine overall this month is very good; in fact, since they went back to the newsprint and once a month format, the magazine is better than ever.
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