Page 42 - Extraterrestrials, Foreign and Domestic

Anthropic Fallacies

Professor Heinzeit smiled.
“We are not going to argue with you about these photographs.
They are simply among the best of the images that citizens around
the country have provided us with over the years. In this case, it
would appear as if the occupants of the vehicle had made an
unscheduled stop to fix a sort of flat tire of their own.”
Ray Zorbach laughed, to Upchurch’s annoyance. This was not
the reception the preacher had expected from officialdom.
“That makes no sense to me. You—that is, the government and
the press—have been covering up an invasion of demonic aliens
from outer space, denying every credible shred of evidence,
treating eyewitnesses as crazy publicity-seekers, leaving innocent
citizens at the mercy of these hellish creatures. And now you’re
telling us that you believe these photographs are authentic?”
“That’s right. Shocking, isn’t it?”
Zorbach and Upchurch sat silently, nonplused.
“Yes,” continued the professor, stroking his wispy beard. “It is
one thing to indulge in reifying the darkest fears of the
unconscious, joining with other paranoids in a community of
alternating catharsis and outrage; quite another to deal with real
conditions of life on this planet. It is merely ironic that your sort
of person has seized upon the UFO phobia as a major issue, while
the more rational and pragmatic segment of society has ignored it
all as the latest tent show in the ongoing spectacle of revivalist
fundamentalism in America. But you are right and they are wrong:
an alien starship has landed on earth. We have been invaded.”
“But—but—why have we allowed this to happen?” Reverend
Upchurch’s aplomb had been restored by a large injection of
righteous indignation. “Not a shot fired? No missiles launched?
All the trillions spent on military hardware for national defense
and we gave up just like that?”
“This was not an enemy like the old Soviet Union,” said Buck,
“a paper tiger created for the prosperity of the munitions industry.
Publicly deploying our weapons would have accomplished nothing
but expose our impotence to the world; the alien communiques
made that clear. We even tested a couple of bombs on the
spaceship, out in the desert back in the Fifties, establishing its
invulnerability. Declaring war was out of the question. Instead, a

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