Obama and Extraterrestial Intelligence

Why Russia, not America? The answers to this sacramental question are quite diverse. Nevertheless we can trace them to the most convincing answer: “Just because!” It won’t get any more convincing than that. Yet the final clarity still eludes us. And now, it seems, there is finally a chance to clarify the situation, and with a concrete example at that.

The people of the boundlessly spacious former Soviet Union eagerly entertained the question: “Is there life on Mars?” since the time of Eldar Ryazanov’s “The Carnival Night.” It was also approximately since that time that the opposite question has preoccupied the Americans: Are there inhabitants from Mars or other alien civilizations on our planet? And that’s what we end up with.

In our case, we have a typically Gogolian setup with Kifa Mokievich and Mokiy Kifovich.* The lecturer of the “Knowledge” society presented the most abstractly philosophical point of view with his unrivaled take: “Is there life on Mars, is there not… what’s the difference?”** On the other hand and at the same time, we faithfully sang “And on Mars apple trees will blossom!” and believed in it even more than in communism.

Which is typical. Since those times and until today we still have not definitively chosen between “What’s the difference?” and turning Mars into an apple garden. And the Americans?

Starting from the middle of the last century, they have methodically, rumor by rumor, fact by fact, and story after story collected evidence that something uncanny is happening on our planet. Something strange. Even a profession has appeared — ufology. No small number of people come forth when they hear something, see something, or even interact with extraterrestrials. It seems a whole community has arisen — “the abducted.”

An entire film industry has thrived off this theme. One that includes a film with Bill Clinton starring as himself!

As a result, more than 50 percent of Americans are convinced that extraterrestrial presence is a fact. 80 percent believe that the government is hiding the truth from them about this phenomenon.

So we’ll pose the question the other way around: “Why America, why not Russia?” The answer will be the same, “Just because!” We refer to a perfectly concrete reason, one that is typically and unfailingly American.

Without vague dreams about apple trees on Mars, a research initiative called Paradigm Research Group has organized a petition for Barack Obama on the White House website and collected 12,078 signatures. The point of the petition is to demand that the truth be uncovered about what the extraterrestrials have been doing with the human race. The people, states the petition, “have a right to know.” The people, it continues, “can to handle the truth.”

If it seems to anyone that this borders on insanity, and that’s a shame. This is the norm, and this is perfectly normal for America.

A petition with 10,000 signatures from American citizens will usually receive an official response, and it will do so. Official representative of the White House Phil Larson responded to his fellow citizens sincerely, and without any mockery, that despite the statistical calculations of scientists and mathematicians who allow the possibility of life on a planet analogous to Earth in the infinite cosmos, the likelihood of contact with extra terrestrial intelligence is negligibly small. And the fact remains, the White House has no reliable evidence of extraterrestial intelligence engaging the human race.

We’ll see how the American public deals with this truth. The wait will take just less than a year. If Obama is reelected, American must have believed him.

*Translator’s Note: These characters are from Gogol’s “Dead Souls.”

**Translator’s Note: This was a very comical exclamation of the inebriated lecturer-protagonist.