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There was an incomparably—rich lode of understanding to be mined from precisely the interactive factor which everyone seemed hell-bent on suppressing, i.e. the very circumstance that Betty's mindset was so stringently fundamentalist that—on the formal surface of things—certain certitudes would never be budged even by the wildest chain of events ever reported by mortal man! And yet that very fact, held in the context of Betty's own unadulterated grasp of things, took on a Hue.power—the authentic capacity to function as a real measure, an index of the actual influence and degree of transformative "leavening" to which she may actually have been exposed: for one of the unsung principal virtues of so rigid a conceptual mode of ongoing interpretation as "Christian fundamentalism" resided i in the fact that it furnished an unquestionably 1 . c oan o 1" cium 1 65 gy", in physics terms), a particularly rugged and leathery insulation through which to measure the force of any applied current; therefore if /ittle—to—no transformative energy were being inducted through Betty's "mind/body circuit" in the course of these otherwise disconcerting Earth—nappings, that fact would surely show up with uncommon ease: the fundamentalist perspective would have its usual brittle, natively—inflexible character, and in fact might even in the face of such fearful events and "unknown" factors take on a more reactively—rigirf and contractile mold—which if nothing else would tend to show that the beings in question, while posing under the religiously—appropriate and acceptable guise of Biblical persona were doing so only in order to gull Andrcasson's confidence and render her sufficiently docile in bovine compliance to "Christian" requirements as to make it maximally easy to extract from her everything they wished to extract, in return for which she would receive only delusionary reinforcement of her doctrinaire belief-systems and therefore effectually—nothing: the very definition of exploitation, thus conferring the Orion-style signature with no further inquiry being necessary! Whereas if the "caretakers" in question really had "care", there should take place a discernible mellowing, an artful toning of the fundamentalist edge making of it an uncommon interpretive tool rather than, as in its unrefined ordinary Earthstate, an instrument strictly usable for b/udgeoning the truth. There would nor necessarily, or even possibly, be in evidence a total transformation or wholesale changeover from the "Christianfundamentalist" stance (an occurrence devoutly to be wished and presumed as minimal positive evidence, obviously, by certain interested parties); such total change from the most intimate and integral of early, inculcated ideas might itself be taken as proof of a "brainwashing"—a type of peremptory overhaul; it could itself be taken as proof of malevolent coercion. Whereas the more subtle evidence of a refined adaptation within the given context of the cherished identity—pattern—which did, after all, make the ego—personality what it identifiably was—tended very strongly to stand as testimony of a careful caretakership unerringly steering in the direction of truth while being delicate not to disturb the integrity of the given vehicle, no matter of what such "integrity" might consist. This agile tight—wire act was, indeed, what MT perceived as emanating both from Betty's speech, and from her "aura" (cf. issue 3, Vol. 2 T-Bird, "T-Bird Meets the Phoenix II" subheading "A Hokey Ogle") during the course of their Jack—in—the—Box interview. While she "talked the tongues" of fundamentalist patois, and while there was obviously nothing either on Earth nor in heaven that could shake her from certain of her treasured conceptual models, such facts within the overall composition of her personality—makeup were benignly beside—The—point. What proportion of significance should we attach to the respective facts, for example, that Betty proclaimed her conviction re the conformance of her little spacebeings to the static "creationist" model, and that she repeatedly affirmed the Jove of life and respect for its sacred character as counter to the cavalier way in which it was being wantonly wasted for the sake of a "profit" that soon—enough 136 T-Bird_Vs_The_Flying_saucers.htm What Kind of Care Would a Caretaker Take If a Caretaker Didn't Take Care? pronounced medium of resistance (i.e. requiring an exceptionally powerful "band-gap ener-