American-Made Aliens

A recent, nation wide poll shows that 45 percent of Americans today believe Unidentified Flying Objects   (UFO's) have visited Earth in some form (Rhodes 18).   The same poll taken in the 1950's shows that under four percent of the US people believed aliens even exist.   What could have caused the American people to go from under four percent believing in the existence of UFO's in the 1950's, to almost half today?   This question is easily answered when one opens a TV guide or checks the newspaper when deciding what movie to see on a Friday night.   With the mass media hype, the ever-increasing movie production, and the millions spent on new merchandise every year, it is not hard to see how so many Americans today have been fooled into believing Aliens exist.

Some time during the first week of July 1947, a local New Mexico rancher, Mac Brazel, was on his way out to check his sheep after a long, hard rain and lightning storm the night before.   On his way out to the pasture, he noticed a large amount of unusual debris.   As he looked closer, he noticed there was a long gouge several hundred feet in the ground with strange, unrecognizable debris all over the area (Missler 54).   Brazel gathered a few of the pieces, took them to his neighbors to ask them what they thought it might be, and eventually decided to drive into Roswell, the local town, and show the pieces to the sheriff.   The sheriff, George Wilcox, contacted the Roswell Army air field, and began investigating the matter.   It wasn't long after, when the military stepped in, sealed off the area for a few days, and gathered all the debris, flying it to a different air field in Dayton, Ohio.   Because of the way the military had covered up the findings, and the secrecy involved, it wasn't long before the press got a hold of the incident, and took off with it.   Before a week had passed, almost all the locals of that Roswell town were believing that an alien space craft had crash landed in Mac Brazel's pasture, and...