The UFO Iconoclast(s) - The Ufoological Equivalent of the Big Mac

Ahhh, the UFO Iconoclast(s) aka the RRR Group. They may not have anything useful to offer ufology, but they are an important part of ufoology.

The latest, a little post called "The New Wasteland":

"Television was called the vast wasteland by one-time FCC Chairman Newton Minnow many years ago. But the epithet applies nowadays to blogs and blogging, with UFO blogs becoming one of the most arid categories in the new wasteland. UFO bloggers can’t stick with investigating UFOs but invariably resort to critiquing other UFO blog or bloggers.That’s a useless exercise but it is ubiquitous in the UFO community. This goes to the inherent defensive posture of ufologists, who are looked at askance by “normal” society so they try to make a psychological corrective by attacking fellow bloggers and like-themed blogs, trying to give the appearance that they – the attackers – are really objective and decent folk, without the flaws and glitches that betray the bloggers they are attacking. Communists used to apply the technique: commies accused others of the very malfeasances they were committing. UFOs are not fecund enough to keep UFO bloggers entranced, as might have been the case in the late-40s and into the late-60s. UFOs have become boring, so ufologists have turned cannibalistic, eating their own offspring or others in their tribe. This merely worsens “ufology” in the eyes of government officials, the military, the scientific arena, media, and the public at large. Internecine ufological attacks provide the excitement that UFOs themselves do not. It’s a sociopathic problem more than anything, but real ufologists have gone underground, leaving the nitpicking to the cretans who, since don’t have enough moxie to resolve the UFO mystery, have descended into the world of ad hominems and character assassination. Like UFOs need another category of weird to make them anathema to sensible, intelligent people."

Hahahahaha... all this coming from the same bunch who made their mark by attacking ufologists. Indeed, that was what the RRR Group blog was basically all about (as more than a few of us, who continually gave them the benefit of the doubt, found out to our ultimate chagrin).

The latest incarnation, the so-called UFO Iconoclast(s), is apparently no different. They have nothing positive to offer to the serious study of the UFO phenomenon. They are anarchists, lobbing their little bombs willy-nilly, at anyone and everyone they don't like, don't agree with, or are just plain jealous of. They fall firmly into the "methinks they doth protest too much category".

I have to give them credit, however - it takes a certain type of moxie / chutzpah to criticize people for using ad homimem attacks while at the same time calling them "cretans who don't have enough moxie to resolve the UFO mystery". This is either irony, or hypocrisy... or perhaps a bit of both. The former is no doubt unintentional, the concept of irony being beyond their intellectual abilities (such as they are) to grasp, while the latter is fairly representative of who they really are, and what they represent. Either way, they put the "fool" into ufoology.

They do amuse, however, which - so long as you don't take them seriously - provides a certain redeeming value. They are the equivalent of ufoological junk food. After all, a McDonald's Big Mac will fill your stomach in the short term, but offers very little in the way of nutritional value. Ditto the Iconoclast(s), only substitute "mind" for "food", and "intellectual" for "nutritional".

Paul Kimball