Hunt for the Sane People

Towards the end of Colm Kelleher’s and Goerge Knapp’s Hunt for the Skinwalker, after the two men have spent 256 pages doing their damnedest to convince everyone that their studies of, amongst other things, UFOs, invisible beasts, Bigfoot, inter-dimensional doors, and ginormous, bullet-proof wolves on a remote ranch in Utah are in fact done under the scrutiny of true science – and you should be taking them seriously – they finally throw in the towel and wrap things up with a chapter entitled “Revolutionary Science.”

Up until this point they keep their bitterness in check, pausing only every now and again to criticize what they call “normal science,” and the mainstream’s propensity for not taking seriously people who insist they’ve had extraterrestrials probe their anuses. This criticism usually follows a particularly far-fetched episode in the book, like when one of their fellow “scientists” freaks out whilst watching a large creature crawl out of an inter-dimensional doorway, and skulk off across the ranch. At night. And the pictures they take don’t come out. And the creature leaves no proof it was ever there.

Typically at such points in the narrative, they remind the reader that even Galileo was considered crazy, so it’s bad form for any of us to consign their tales of telepathic ETs and blue, spherical UFOs to the This Is Total Rubbish file. At any rate, the “Revolutionary Science” chapter contains the following passage:

“People cannot help but wonder at the truth capacity of science if it completely denies the reality of a large number of their own experiences. Public opinion polls show that science and scientists are increasingly out of step with the people’s worldview.”

It’s hard to gauge the latter of the two sentences. You get the sense that they’re finally at their wits’ end and have decided, after staying up for 40 hours writing their book, fatigued and exasperated, to simply indict all of science for their inability to get anyone (outside of conspiracy theorists and UFO buffs) to take them seriously.

At the same time, you wonder if they have any idea how that one sentence so succinctly sums up the total insanity of the UFO/alien abduction/Bigfoot/Men in Black culture in America. It serves as a made-to-order bookend to Dover, PA Pastor Ray Mummert’s assertion that “we’ve been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of our culture.” The Pastor was referring to proponents of evolution who, in 2005, succeeded in blocking the Dover school board from teaching intelligent design in science classrooms. Stephen Amidon wrote that the Pastor’s statement “cut straight to the heart of America’s culture wars.”

I wonder if the Pastor knows he has close allies in two men who spend their days hunting Bigfoots from Other Dimensions, and invisible monsters that stampede entire herds of cattle. One guy thinks the Earth is 4,000 years old; the other two think that Bigfoots do the bidding of “short, almost effeminate” ETs “with large eyes and blonde hair.” All three charge that The People – The Majority – know what’s right and best, and science, with its attendant educated, intelligent, elitist scientists is malevolently preventing us from knowing The Truth.

I suspect these three men are largely the reason John Adams didn’t trust the salt of the Earth to hold high positions in the government. I don’t know if it’s possible to point to a date in American history and say, here is where we began heaping scorn on our universities and people who actually know what the hell they're talking about, and pushing to have the uneducated and disturbed run our affairs, but Hunt for the Skinwalker, as entertaining as it is, proves that it’s not just whack-job fundamentalist Christians who employ this ideology.

"Scientists are out of step with the people’s worldview." The same people, I’m assuming, who can’t even name all the American presidents? The same people who think Barack Obama isn’t a U.S. citizen? The same people who are hunting lions to extinction as we speak? The same people who rape and mutilate each other in the name of the invisible man? The same people who think aliens crash-landed in New Mexico even though there are, at last count, five different crash sites? The same people who thought, once upon a time, that the earth was the center of the universe? The same people who are forever adding the word “of” after “myriad?” The same people who think “irregardless” is a fucking word?

It’s a slippery slope pointing to “the people” as the last bastion of truth in this world, because “the people” are completely and hopelessly full of fucking shit. That’s why experts are important. That’s why we go to the educated “elitists” when we need help; it’s why we go to a mechanic when our car breaks down, and not a file clerk, and why we go to a doctor when we’re sick, and not a freakin’ campanologist.

I’ve done my part. I haven’t procreated. I’ve ended the bloodline. A toast to me.