Conversations.

Greetings. The UFO topic is the subject of much discussion nowadays. Let's take a look at the situation.

In past decades, the UFO topic was only occasionally discussed, and usually during sweeps week on local television channels, with only a few stories appearing on the national broadcast media outlets. Now that has changed, and the change has been quite interesting, and in my humble opinion, very productive. 

I can vividly recall a time when the usual UFO story was set to the theme music of "The X-Files," segments which ended up being made light of, courtesy of the news personalities taking part. The news articles were invariably about a misidentified blimp, drone, or some other mundane event or phenomena. Serious articles about UFOs remained rare, and were certainly out of the ordinary. In my years of researching the UFO problem, I have watched hours of old interviews, some with witnesses, some with the major players in the UFO subculture at the time. The late Mike Wallace's 60 Minutes interview with the late Donald Keyhoe was a cornerstone broadcast, one of those rare times when the UFO topic was taken seriously and held front and center. But such broadcasts were not the norm.

Today, by contrast, the UFO topic is discussed on broadcast media at all levels, local and national, liberal and conservative. Just recently, U.S. Representative Tim Burchett (R-Tennessee) appeared on NBC's Face The Nation to discuss the need for government transparency concerning the UFO topic. Such an interview would not have occurred only a few short years ago, so the respectability of the UFO topic has taken some substantial steps forward, and that certainly is a good thing. In decades past, our elected officials could not publicly talk about UFOs, excepting the late Senator Barry Goldwater (R-Arizona,) and former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. During the course of a 2007 presidential debate, candidate Dennis Kucinich, a democratic U.S. Representative from Ohio, stated that he had personally witnessed a UFO, whereupon his poll numbers tanked. Times have certainly changed indeed. 

Now political figures from Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump to Barack Obama can openly discuss the UFO topic, without fear of paying a political price. Members of the U.S. Congress can now talk about UFOs, in public and on various programs, without fear of reprisal, or pushback from their constituents. All this talking has the public thinking, I hope, and such cranial activity is part of the process of exploration and of investigation. I hope it continues unabated. Let's keep thinking about the unexplained enigma that is the UFO problem. 

Thank you for your time and consideration.