my guess is that about 50% of the US population think that the government has evidence of alien visitation which they are withholding -

this is bi-partisan - in other words, they think that both Kerry and Bush are actively participating in a cover-up of ufo's in the basement...

your insults are all fine and all, and I'm sure they make you feel really really good, as they satisfie your need to demonstrate an intellectual superiority (which indicates an insecurity in this area), but they do nothing to resolve the problem...

These folks are people too, some of them very nice people, and your solution of simply insulting them will do no good...

You have to look to the fundamentals. Why do they need alien visitors? What emotional needs are satisfied?

Consider for a moment an example immediately at hand. Back in the 1950's and earlier it was commonly believed by most people that Mars was Earth-like; this despite Huxley's analysis of 1910(?) or so that demonstrated that it was physically impossible for Mars to be Earth-like.

Some emotional need led to this willful ignorance, which ended generally in 1976, but for the leadership quite a bit earlier, at the time of Mariner IV.

Amazingly enough, this pathology still persists today among a very small portion of the total population... a fair number of them can be found at the uninHabitable Zone...

THE FACE ON MARS FOLKS ARE JUST THE MOST EXTREME MANIFESTATION, AND REALLY NO DIFFERENT THAN THE REST...

oh well...

LL