Vodka_Octopus

It's not the mentality of the political process, it's our election system. In a First Past the Post voting system you'll always end up with only two parties that have power just because of how human psychology works. It's pretty much a mathematical formula at this point.

Some of the questions on this AMA are serial killer-ish...

Yikes, the cult paradigm. For some history, I was involved with the whole David Icke movement when an extremely close and dear friend of mine got involved with it and it takes an absolute deluge (hah, ancient astronaut pun for those who get it) of scientific information and instruction on logical thought to pull people out of that mindset.

There's a couple things I'd like you to look into:

The book Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History by David Aaronovitch. It's a great book that explains why people believe in conspiracy theories and it also does a passable job debunking some of the less and more common conspiracies (moon landing hoax, Kennedy assassination, death of Princess Diana, 9/11, etc.).

This book applies greatly to the Raelian/Annuna/Sumerian gods as ancient astronaut theories and should give you some insight into the why behind your father's beliefs.

I'd also like to give you some advice on this plane: You cannot debunk the ancient astronaut theory to these people. Despite evolution being the obvious answer supported by mountains of nigh indisputable scientific evidence, the ancient astronaut theory is still more likely than virtually any religion when it comes to the questions of the origins of life (be it cellular or intelligent) on Earth. It is pointless to argue this point beyond the fact that there is no credible scientific evidence to support this viewpoint. What makes things worse is that the whole ancient astronaut community is usually tightly intertwined with the more extreme elements of the New Age Movement which, as I'm sure you know, bases nothing on fact but instead pseudoscience and nonsensical mystical gibberish bastardized from Indo-Chinese mystical traditions (and on occasion mystical traditions from the Abrahamic faiths such as Kabbalah).

I know you didn't come here for options (and obviously there are many more) but I would like to make two suggestions for how to proceed from here:

1) Let your dad believe his crazy beliefs and just move on with your life.

2) Read up on exit counseling (the non-violent version of cult deprogramming).

If you're interested in exit counseling then I suggest you start with this Wikipedia article and from there you should be able to find good books on the subject with advice on how to find counselors that could be of help to you.

I hope everything goes well with you and your dad, whatever decisions you decide to make.

Me and some buddies went to school near Cheetah and we once ran into one of the strippers from there at a Denny's with her "brother" meeting a "friend". After some boring chit chat she basically spills the beans that she's meeting a John and the guy playing her "brother" is her husband. It was fucked up (and the John was easily in his late 60s early 70s.)

Even though I've never been, according to that chick Cheetah doesn't allow any funny business.

I actually had a roommate that worked as a pattern designer for build-a-bear. Why does it take the like 6 months to get prototypes shipped out to the artists?