Alien Life, Coming Slowly Into View

I guess I need to get out more. I saw the headline, above, in the New York Times, an article by Ray Jayawardhana, and thought, “Oh, an article about the recent invasion of the nation by Republicans." I assumed the article was going to describe the Grand Vision of our newly elected barons . . . you know, eliminating decent public education, elimination of all social safety nets, and returning the Nation to third world standards, where we have two classes—the rich, and everyone else.

But, no, it was instead an article about actual alien life (no, you doofuses, real aliens, not Mexicans) , that might exist on what are known as exoplanets—planets that sort of resemble the earth in ways that suggest at least the possibility of life. Then it made me wonder whether alien intelligent beings on some other planets are doing the same thing—scouring the universe looking for other intelligent life forms. And, on what they might be saying to each other if they stumbled across us. I mean, would they think of us as intelligent life forms?? Seems unlikely huh? I guess it depends on your definition of “intelligent”. I assume they might wrestle with this issue a long time. Would actually intelligent life forms act this way—blowing themselves up, destroying the very planet on which they depend for their future existence? Surely not they would think . . . So they might be forced to conclude that, while we might have begun a while back (some would say 6,000 years ago) as intelligent life forms, something must have happened along the way to corrupt the genetic pool, turning out this collection of moronic, highly destructive savages. They might even conclude that we are a highly dangerous species, toxic one might call us, and that we need to be eliminated, sort of like kudzu, or those nasty Asian carp threatening our rivers. Wouldn’t that be too bad?

On the other hand, perhaps they’re right.

And on yet another of those alien planets, Donald Trump—you know THE Donald, decided that he will probably toss his hat into the presidential aspirant ring. It is said that, as soon as he heard that Michelle Bachman had just declared, he said, “hell, if we’re that desperate for talent, I might as well give it a whirl. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen?”