It's hard to quibble with Rachel's outstanding segment about a "fake alien invasion" being the catalyst for transformational change that would end our political and economic troubles in a flash. But Rachel, Ronald Reagan never considered his hypothesis of an alien threat from some other planet "cartoony" much less a fantasy. In fact, Reagan pushed back against removal of the alien passage from his speech by insisting that it be reinserted. How interesting that he wrote "fantasy" within quotation marks, as if to emphasize he didn't consider it a cartoonish flight of fancy at all. This is Reagan's handwritten note to his speechwriter, to that effect:
“And toward the end perhaps I still would like my "fantasy" — how quickly our differences world wide would vanish if creatures from another planet should threaten this world. RR”
Reagan clearly indicated in his handwritten comment he was well aware of the implications of his words and disagreed with anyone who may have called it a "fantasy". Rachel's video clip omits Reagan's most controversial part of the speech, one seized upon by UFOlogists to argue he knew more about the "fake alien invasion" than he was letting on. Of course, they omit the last sentence, which places the second — the clincher about "aliens among us"— in a different, less cosmic, if not more benign context:
“I occasionally think, how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world. And yet, I ask, is not an alien force ALREADY among us? What could be more alien to the universal aspirations of our peoples than war and the threat of war?”
It's too bad the burro-DEMO-cratic, techno-DEMO-cratic Ed Rendell was selected as the guest to close out this magnificent segment on somewhat of a down note — we all love Ed, but Rachel, couldn't you have chosen a guest, a creative thinker, on a par with this awesome segment instead of boring old Ed ... Paul Krugman, perhaps, to expand on his headline-making comment? Anyway, why quibble with perfection when you come pretty darn close to it. Thumbs up!
of you have sat, and perhaps thought, with us!
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