Suppose you're a scientist who believes in remote viewing, and you have a government program manager who also believes in it. He still can't fund you unless he can convince his higher-ups. The top of that pyramid is congress, and all their imperatives are about public perceptions, and the desires of their campaign donors and the companies they trade stock in. If you can't harness your research in a way that will make someone a lot of money, or which will be popular in the eyes of the public, people will talk about it but it generally won't happen. I have a hard time believing that remote viewing can pass either test for a sustained period. I think I'm relatively strong psychically, but I can't do anything with it that would be considered 'useful' using any of the metrics that people care about. And I haven't seen indications that other people can either. I think its probably just as well, for now anyway.
I used to work in a building which, from what I read on the internet, contains alien artifacts. Its ridiculous, secret government agencies aren't really like that. Agencies like NASIC are flush with money, but if someone tried to explain what they do in detail, you might be mildly horrified by the civil liberties implications, but other than that it would put you to sleep.
Most people think of 'the government' as if its a godlike personality with a will. Its really a collection of hundreds of thousands of individuals with their own personal goals relating to pay and job security. It has a tremendous amount of inertia, with no over-reaching, conscious agenda aside from whatever keeps the machine grinding along. The President is nominally in charge, but to a large extent is captive to the interests of the different agencies and the information they provide. For example, from my perspective, most of the leaks and political back and forth about the war in Iraq was part of a turf war between the Department of Defense and the State Department, it wasn't even being driven by domestic politics or politicians in the way it appeared to most people from afar.
One of the bad things about secret programs is since there's no public visibility there's almost no accountability, which is why most secret programs are so disfunctional. On the upside, that helps prevent a worse abuse of power.
I didn't "hear" this anywhere, its based on my own experience. Of course that experience is limited, and other people will have other experiences. But mine seems to be pretty common in the 'military industrial complex', even though you won't hear such things from people who are still trying to cash in on it. Most people can't stand a lot of strong moral contradiction. Generally speaking, if they do national security work they're either sociopaths, consciously cynical and publicly dishonest, or they do their best to sedate themselves with patriotic and religious blinders because they've got to take care of their families. Usually both dynamics are in play. That's how I see it anyway. Yes, that's a dark thing to say, but I'm quite thoroughly pissed off by what I've seen and experienced.
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