Does anyone really think that if a Chinese or (I daresay) Russian fighter jet or drone managed to enter American airspace without detection we would admit it publicly? Of course our leaders, relying upon Boomer mysticism and millennial credulity, would blame aliens. Why risk being embarrassed when you can deflect failure and undermine the uniqueness of man’s terrestrial destiny in the bargain. Which brings me to the second reason I doubt that extraterrestrial beings have anything to do with the apparent outwitting of American military personnel, which is that it is too convenient, not just for politicians but for the rest of us. As I write this there are millions of Americans who are homeless or addicted to drugs or both, people who are mentally ill, the elderly, the homebound, the handicapped, untold thousands in so-called “detention facilities,” and goodness knows how many unborn children who, as far as the rest of us are concerned, might as well be from outer space. In a decadent society it is easy to project our anxieties about the planet and its inhabitants into the black void. Somehow we find it easier to imagine teeming colonies of millions sharing their moon boxes with vaguely hominid gray monsters or six-footed insect beasts or even insensate archaebacteria than we do making San Francisco a place fit for human habitation again. We indulge ourselves with golden visions of interstellar tourism even as we accept that the science fiction future that awaits us looks a great deal more like WALL-E, with its obese screen-addicted masses being entertained by the devices they cannot escape than, say, The Empire Strikes Back.