Another Elvis sighting

By Paul A. Ibbetson

"I just saw Elvis!" Even decades after the death of the legendary singer, people still exclaim these same words with detailed accounts of their personal sighting of "The King." I, along with most of the nation, mourned Presley's death in 1977 but for me, like for most people, that day was the closing of the living story of Elvis, not the beginning of the secret life of the musician/actor. When we look critically at the Elvis sighting phenomena of more than three decades, we can see a complex mental conditioning that allows certain people to come to a place where logic and reason are altered to a point where the next guy shuffling down the sidewalk in a pair of blue suede shoes could be "you know who."

Whether or not people are driven to denounced the obvious death of Presley because they love his records or movies or any other variation thereof is moot; the point is that some people find themselves predisposed to deny factual evidence (e.g.: death certificate, accounts of people who handled the body, the funeral, the burying of the coffin). Instead, they cling to fantastic, non-realistic, evidence that Elvis still lives, which can be found in reported cryptic songs by Waylon Jennings, crazy theory books, movies, and, of course, the person on the street that swears that Elvis just pumped their gas and checked the oil on his or her car. On a more magnified level, for the Elvis seer of today, the direct evidence that the musician must be dead is replaced with the theoretical evidence that he could still be alive if a series of less probable possibilities were to fit together properly. Thus begins the mysterious stories of conspiracy theories and the other grand creations that tantalize many, but have no true factual substance. Don't think for a moment that this is just an "Elvis thing."

In the political sphere we see the same psychological reality building that created the immortal Elvis scenario being used by the modern liberal. Wrapped within radical leftist organizations, such as PETA, the man-made global warming crowd, or the tax-and-spend liberals that Barack Obama faithfully leads, we see the same framing of non-reality that has brought some Elvis admirers to seeing the equivalent of jumpsuits and capes that don't really exist. The radicals at PETA ignore the fact that they exploit women to save chickens, and that their mission statement falls in diametric opposition to mainstream Christianity. The man-made global warming crowd disregards the direct evidence that their green initiatives will most certainly destroy the American economy and, of course, that the planet keeps getting cooler, in order to follow a socialistic game plan to "save the Earth."

When it comes to Barack Obama and his tax-and-spend philosophy, it's so expensive that even a scrap of logic left on the table causes major problems to the reality that is being spun. It's true that many of these groups have cross-over affiliations but they are all searching for their own personal "Elvis" sighting. That is, they search for something that is unattainable, not real, and there are going to be a lot of disappointed people in the end.

As the curtain begins to close, we are faced with some facts that shake, rattle and roll many of us, but it is time we face the music. In reality, Elvis will always be the "The King" in the music industry, but on this Earth, he is as dead as dead can be. On the other hand, liberalism, in all its facets and faces, will always be a dead philosophy that we dare not allow to become "king." I would say that the latter situation is painfully close to coming to fruition, and for that I have great concern for this country. Through years of mental conditioning, the liberal philosophy threatens to create a world where reality has truly left the building and our nation pre-destines itself for future anguish and woe far greater than the passing of the beloved Elvis Presley.

© Paul A. Ibbetson