On the night of February 20, 1954, while he was vacationing in Palm Springs, California, then US President Dwight Eisenhower disappeared. Fortunately, he reappeared the next morning and attended a church service in Los Angeles as scheduled, but there were several hours during which the president’s whereabouts couldn’t be accounted for.
According to the president, his staff, his wife Mamie, and one bleary-eyed dentist, Eisenhower’s absence could be explained by the need for an emergency dental procedure following a tooth cap mishap at dinner. I think, however, it might be worth considering another possibility.
According to conspiracy theorists, a bunch of people who refer to themselves as UFOlogists, and the son of a US Navy Commander witness, what actually happened that night was that the president traveled to nearby Edwards Air Force base for a clandestine meeting with some blue-eyed aliens.
To be clear, I am not suggesting this other possibility has a great deal of merit or anything. I count myself pretty firmly in the camp that assumes if there is life on other planets, its only use for us is as the villainous visitors in stories about midnight abductions and anal probes. That’s assuming that said aliens possess anuses, which I certainly wouldn’t swear to.
But I do think it’s fun to talk about the possibility of aliens, because there’s an awful lot of scary stuff happening on this planet—stuff that divides all of us humans with our widely varied cultural outlooks, political ideologies, and beliefs about the universe and our place within it. In light of all that, alien life still seems like a relatively safe, apolitical, uniting topic.
And maybe that’s the reason that all of the mainstream media outlets in the US suddenly decided last week to spend their time talking about UFOs and alien visitations. UFOs, known to people in the know who do not refer to themselves as UFOlogists as UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomena), have evidently been appearing to military pilots. Frequently. For years.
So says Luis Elizondo, alleged former member of a super-secret government Pentagon project called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program and former president and armchair UFOlogist Barack Obama. At least one of those sources seems credible. And actually, both kind of do, because neither has said that we have definite proof of extra-Earth astronauts (which those of us schlubs outside the UFOlogist and secret government communities simply refer to as aliens).
What they’ve said is that sometimes we see stuff and upon further inspection, we’re still left scratching our heads. Personally, I am in favor of a Pentagon project to figure out what all these pilots are looking at and if Congress wants a little more information coming up next month, I’m okay with that, too.
I’m not sure why it all had to be super-secret, or why it suddenly has to claim top billing in the news cycle, but I don’t mind amid all the chaos down here on Earth, taking a little time to look at the skies. It’s significantly less worrisome up there. Because if we can believe the UFOlogists (and why wouldn’t we?), Eisenhower worked out a treaty with our alien visitors back in 1954.
Author Sarah Angleton 
Love this post. I’ve often wondered why so many think aliens are going to be monsters, except, as you said, for the purposes of fiction. If one believes that God made Heaven and Earth and the beings in His likeness, wouldn’t it also follow that the beings on other planets (which make up the heavens), are similar to us (adapted of course to survive in whatever atmosphere exists)?
Great way to get the old brain pumping this morning. Thanks!
All good points. I once heard an expert (in what field, I couldn’t tell you) asked why we always assume that aliens will be built more or less like us? The answer was that it’s a good design. But also that we’re a little bit self-obsessed.
I saw a ‘UFO’ once, as in a flying object I couldn’t quite identify – a bright flaming object, almost horizontal to the horizon, trailing sparks and visibly moving. It broke up into a trail of glowing blobs that quickly faded. The reason it was unidentified was because it was on the precise track that most satellites take over New Zealand, so there was a chance it was a descending rocket stage and not a meteor – I couldn’t tell which. It had to be one or the other.
How harrowing!
Well, according to the Weekly World News, the world’s only reliable newspaper, Aliens have been visiting US Presidents fairly regularly. I can remember when I saw a cover in the old print edition of an actual photograph of President Clinton shaking hands with an alien.
That’s why the men in black refer to it as “the paper.” Though I have actually met one of the former editors of the Weekly World News, and he didn’t seem to be as dedicated as one might expect to the notion that it was strictly a factual source.
lol. What a hoot. I used to embarrass people in the grocery store by reading the headlines out loud. “Hillary Clinton Adopts Alien Baby!” Then I’d turn to my kids and say, somewhat loudly, something like, “See! There it is in black and white. With a picture. It has to be true or how could they print it?” They always rolled their eyes at me and gave exasperated sighs. Then there started doing it. I think we only ever offended one person, who had a copy in their cart along with the other tabloids.
Great post. I think apart from the movie ‘Contact’ with Foster, ‘Arrival’ is something I could imagine being something like an encounter with an extraterrestrial being. Have you seen them?
I haven’t seen Arrival. I’ll have to check it out. I’ve always really liked Contact.
I’m not a big fan of the actress in this, and the first time I saw it I wasn’t overly impressed until I thought about what it was trying to say. The subsequent occasions I have seen it, I enjoyed it more. Let me know what you think if you get around to seeing it.
I reposted your posting on a blog on my home planet (the blog is called Hkhsdflk Lkjgdjfdjgkl if you can get access to it). There are many comments but the most relevant is: If we don’t have anuses where does she think we put our food when we eat? In our mouths?
Thanks for the repost. And the fabulous information. I always learn so much from you.