Closed encounters of the dumb kind

For decades, the American government treated so-called unidentified flying objects or UFOs the way Filipino politicians treat offshore bank accounts: Deny everything, release nothing and look offended that anyone would even ask.

Then suddenly, after 80 years of secrecy, congressional whispers, grainy photographs, missing files, dead pilots, Area 51 mythology and enough conspiracy theories to keep three cable channels alive indefinitely, Washington — thanks largely to Donald Trump — finally sighed and said: “All right. There are strange things flying around, and we still don’t know what they are.” That was it.

Humanity waited generations for confirmation that we are not alone in the universe and received instead the administrative equivalent of a customer service email stating: “The objects appeared metallic. Further study required.”

Naturally, some people suspect this may yet be another Trumpian wag-the-dog maneuver, conveniently arriving after the Iran quagmire and the lingering Epstein circus. Governments, after all, have long understood the political value of spectacle. When the streets grow restless, distract the audience.

“Let them eat cake.” Remember?

Ferdinand Marcos Sr. understood this instinctively. As revolutionary tension thickened in the air during the dying days of his regime, his Experimental Cinema of the Philippines relaxed censorship and screened rated-R films in cinemas.

Perhaps the UFO disclosure is simply the digital age version of that old trick. Instead of “bomba” films, we now have Pentagon footage of glowing Tic-Tacs darting across the Pacific Ocean.

The truly funny part is not the possibility that aliens exist, but rather the idea of extraterrestrials finally arriving here after traversing impossible distances through time and space, only to discover what humanity actually turned out to be.

Suppose you are an advanced life form capable of crossing galaxies and bending gravity. You arrive expecting enlightenment and wisdom, only to discover grown men arguing online whether birds are government drones while uploading dance videos to TikTok. 

You encounter Congress; you discover influencers. You learn that a significant portion of humanity believes the Earth is flat despite having satellites capable of photographing the Earth every day from space.

At some point, the aliens probably just looked at each other and quietly put their craft in reverse. Frankly, the greatest evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence may be their refusal to establish contact with us.

But perhaps the greatest cosmic joke is this: what if we ourselves are the aliens and simply do not know it yet?

Civilizations rise and vanish. Continents drift. Memories disappear. Entire species forget their origins. Maybe humanity is merely the surviving amnesiac colony of some ancient migration buried beneath layers of myth, religion, and time.

Maybe we were spores from outer space and Earth was simply unlucky enough to have us land on it, setting off the primordial bubbling soup.

That possibility, oddly enough, may be less absurd than the US Congress explaining extraterrestrial life through a subcommittee hearing livestreamed on social media.

And somewhere beyond the stars, an alien civilization probably took one long look at Earth, watched Congress, our very own, pretending not to take the Palace cue to impeach Sara Duterte, and decided to keep going.

Pass.