Two recent streaming experiences further heightened my sensitivity to the ominous unethical forces around us.

1 Showtime’s “UFO” (2021)

I give up on almost all UFO documentaries because they have a tendency to get progressively hysterical and unhinged as they go on. Not “UFO.” It’s a shame J.J. Abrams produced it: having the director of “Fringe” and the Star Trek reboot heading up this project is not the optimum way to have it taken seriously. “UFO,” however, is superb. I know quite a bit about this topic, but the four episode documentary put the issue in perspective with disturbing clarity. The linchpin of the whole tale is the New York Times’ 2017 report, “Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program,”but the documentation, interviews and film footage is remarkable.

The most important takeaway from the show, I believe, has nothing to do with UFOs. The unavoidable conclusion one is compelled to reach, if one has the integrity and courage to reach it, is that the government engaged in a decades-long cover-up involving intimidation, lies, the destruction of evidence, secret and illegal black ops operations, official lies, “Deep State” abuse of power and pay-offs to hide information from the U.S. public because it felt it was in the public’s best interest to do so, and, most of all, the government’s best interest to do so.

Nothing encapsulates the fury I experienced watching “UFO” more than my nausea at watching the despicable Ethics Villain Harry Reid, interviewed in retirement, smugly taking credit for setting up the secret agency charged with investigating UFOs while thousands of American citizens continued to be ridiculed for reporting what the U.S. military and government officials continued to insist didn’t exist. “The project had to be secret,” Harry says at one point, smirking,”because Senators knew there would be a lot of public criticism if its purpose was known.” Oh! Well, then, if the project would be criticized, by all means make sure the public doesn’t find out about it! Asshole.

If the government, the Pentagon, Senators, governors, and administrative bureaucrats would devote decades to manipulating public opinion and using the power of the U.S. government to hide events, facts and official activities from the people they are supposed to serve in this area, why should it be trusted regarding its activities, motives and methods regarding anything else?

The political Left, which has become, in its latest toxic mutation, the pro-government power advocate to the verge of totalitarianism, routinely uses the label “conspiracy theory” to attack any opponents who question their virtue, honesty and wisdom. If “UFO” proves anything, it is that the government itself is capable of engineering massive conspiracies “for the greater good,” which includes “to ensure government power and control.”

Yes, “the truth is out there.” The truth right here at home, however, is both more important and scarier. Our government and the people who run it cannot and must not be trusted.

Now what?

2. “The White Lotus” (HBO)

“The White Lotus” is the entertaining though wildly over-praised HBO series coming up on its third season. Each season follows the experiences of multiple guests and hotel staff at a swanky resort chain in a different exotic locale: Season 1 was set in Maui, Season II in Sicily. I’d call “The White Lotus” an ethics show, as all of the characters face ethical challenges during the season or create them for everyone else, being ethics dunces or sociopaths.

In Season I, charismatic young actress Britney O’Grady (above) plays Paula, the mixed-race college friend of the obnoxious and spoiled daughter of a wealthy white family that has brought Paula along on its luxury vacation. Paula is generally portrayed in a positive light by the show (though she carries around illegal drugs and displays no gratitude whatsoever toward her hosts) because she’s a social justice crusader with absolutely no doubts about her world view and virtue. She looks at her “best friend’s” family with undisguised contempt because of their “white privilege.” She seethes with anger at the “imperialism” celebrated by the hotel’s very existence. After embarking on a sexual relationship with a Hawaiian employee at the hotel, she walks out on a dinner-time performance of Hawaiian music and dance, declaring that it makes her sick to see people of color whose land was stolen from them by white people having to perform for the thieves in order to survive.

Later, after learning that Kai, her temporary sex partner, belongs to a native family that once owned the land the resort is now on, she devises a scheme whereby he can steal jewelry from her friends’ family’s hotel room safe to use to pay lawyers to get his family’s property back. The arguments Paula uses to persuade Kai that this is a righteous plan echoes every flawed rationale for reparations you’ve ever read or heard. Paula is a racist: she tells him that all whites are the same, all are enemies of “people of color” (like her, though she is only at the resort, being fed, lodged and cared for through the generosity of the white family she finds so repulsive), and it is both reasonable and just to hold present day whites responsible and accountable for the sins of their race. Kai won’t be really be stealing, she tells, him, but righting a wrong and achieving “justice.” He’ll be taking back what is rightfully his!

She also is a Marxist: these white people won’t really miss $150,000 worth of jewelry, but it will change the lives of his family members, so the exchange is ethical and right.

Nice guy Kai is easily manipulated—it is her own resentment and anger he will be acting on—and reluctantly attempts the theft. He botches it, and ends up getting arrested. Paula, predictably, is worried about being connected to the crime but doesn’t take any responsibility for it at all. She is still convinced that her world view is the only correct one. As I saw it, the show’s writers are similarly convinced: Paula was presented as a sympathetic and even admirable figure. Predictably woke critics like Mitchell Kuga of Vox criticized “The White Lotus” for not expounding on the evils of imperialism enough.

[Aside: it’s moral luck of course, but Hawaiians should thank their gods every day that U.S. imperialists stole their land. Had they not, Hawaii would have been conquered by a far less accommodating nation, like Japan.]

Paula is a terrifying character. The show is supposed to be a black comedy and a satire, but there’s nothing funny or satirical about her: she is the product of a self-destructive U.S. culture that is indoctrinating its young into hating their own country and embracing “the ends justify the means” as their political philosophy. Paula is what most of our major institutions are trying to create; she is what Critical Race Theory aims for; hers is the attitude that has inflicted Diversity Equity and Inclusion on the culture. “It’s our turn to eat!” she sneers at her hosts at one point.

How many real life Paulas are out there, seething with hate, hardened with certitude, and willing to commit crimes harming innocent people in the name of “justice”?