You've immunized yourself from any possibility of entertaining this information. Many people sharing it aren't republicans, including senators.

Senators are humans, and the selection process prioritizes charm over knowledge. Many people share all sorts of silly ideas.

I'm very prepared to look at evidence of aliens visiting Earth, but it better be damned good evidence.

Where do you draw the line for sufficient evidence? Are congressional hearings on recordings from US armed forces insufficient? It isn’t like the videos lack provenance like something random from youtube.

> Are congressional hearings on recordings from US armed forces insufficient?

Have you watched a congressional hearing? They serve primarily as evidence that politicians like to hear themselves speak.

I draw the line at "we have conclusive evidence that it is extra terrestrial", not at "we don't know what it is", and I would say they are categorically not the same.

Nobody definitively says it's extra-terrestrial. In fact, the common thread seems to be that the entities are from Earth or from a dimensional space where that concept is potentially invalid. Other people speculate that they may come from the ocean. Regardless, I don't see much interest in the "they came from outer space" hypothesis, which makes sense, as it is very big out there and we already know a planet/region that sustains life and it's the closest planet of them all.

What isn't in contention is that there are unexplained phenomena to varying levels of description (president Obama confirmed the lowest level of description, i.e. that they exist and that they cannot be definitively explained).

A common additive to this contention is that these phenomena have intelligence and motives. You needent accept this, in fact I encourage you to not trivially accept it, but there is growing evidence that it is true. Is this a complete mind-fuck? Yes. Does that 'matter' in any real sense of the term? No, not really.

An additionally common follow-on from here is that the motives of the aforementioned intelligence aren't good and we cannot counter them using our technology, and this justifies the veil of secrecy. A lot of people seem very convinced by this. I can plausibly come up with some scenarios where this might be true, i.e. scenarios where knowledge would completely collapse the government, but I still think I'd prefer to have the information than not.

Anyways, the very concept you're highlighting is actually what is in the accepted UAP record. Theories, inconclusive evidence as to origin.

I have a feeling that the actual phenomenon relates to physics and the mystery of dark matter, and it's also probably a still very very small part of an even infinitely more complex, "higher" noumenal world, but I'm just speculating.

> A common additive to this contention is that these phenomena have intelligence and motives. You needent accept this, in fact I encourage you to not trivially accept it, but there is growing evidence that it is true. Is this a complete mind-fuck? Yes.

Why would "things that are most likely drones" moving with intent be a "mind fuck"? We see it every day in the trenches of Ukraine.

Aside from the deliberate obtusity it bears emphasizing that you aren't in the trenches of Ukraine.