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such evidence is no easy task, but as shown by existing radar and video images, as well as chemical analyses of a few UFO "landing sites," it can be done. Any serious attempt to satisfy these requirements will require considerable technological infrastructure (radar installations or other monitoring equipment) and large amounts of money. Normally one would expect the state to provide such capital. Although every effort should be made to bring this about, our particular theory of the UFO taboo—that it is a functional imperative of modern, anthropocentric rule-necessarily makes us pessimistic that world governments will act anytime soon. As such, it seems important strategically to consider, alongside efforts to enlist the state, alternative ways of establishing a science of UFOs. Whether tackled by the state or by civil society, or both, the problem of UFO ignorance is fundamentally political before it is scientific, and as such a truly militant agnosticism will be necessary to overcome it. Even then, there is no guarantee that systematic study would actually end human ignorance about UFOs; that must await the science. But after sixty years of official denials about this potentially extraordinary phenomenon, it is time to try. CHAPTER 28 A deeper understanding of the unconscious aspects of the UFO taboo - the ones otherwise beyond our reach - is essential if we are to finally close the door on old ways of thinking and move this issue forward. The provocative ideas presented in the previous chapter may not answer all the questions, but the two political scientists make an intriguing and persuasive argument. They state _that the fundamental problem afflicting true ermA argument. They state that the fundamental problem afflicting true understanding of UFOs is ignorance, not secrecy, and that this ignorance is accepted because it serves a political purpose. Hidden forces and fears lurking under the surface of this political ignorance sustain it, while also transforming it into something far more potent: an active denial and zealous prohibition against even considering UFOs as a serious subject. The problem is more energized, more confrontational than simple ignorance, as we have seen. It manifests as the familiar taboo, something so accepted and taken for granted that most of us have never thought twice about it. true more That political purpose is a powerful one: to maintain the imperative that we must avoid facing the possibility that any UFOs could be extraterrestrial. For if they were, that would mean that these miraculous craft, vehicles, objects of unknown origin—whatever they are —are generated by a more powerful "other" from somewhere else. Such a concept is simply unacceptable, and can generate a primordial terror in human beings. We take care of this through the political strategy of FACING AN EXTREME CHALLENGE state that the ‘confrontational