Taxes, Circuses, and Interstellar Nonsense

Every time I watch one of these congressional UFO hearings, I become more convinced that we’re truly alone in the universe. The government wheels out "experts" like a dad at a dinner party showing off his “amazing” BBQ skills—except instead of slightly overcooked ribs, we get cryptic hints about secret programs too classified for even the President to know about. They promise “evidence” of extraterrestrial life that the public has never seen, and yet we never get anything more concrete than blurry photos and “trust us” grins.

UFO hearings have been a circus act since the 1960s, and yet, despite the decades of speculation, we have as much proof as we do for Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster—that is to say, none. Even the die-hard believers must be tired of rolling their eyes at this point.

Notice how these hearings always seem to surface at suspiciously convenient times. More bread and circuses, but without the bread—just taxes and cheap melodrama. The most recent wave of UFO fever bubbled up in the early days of the Trump administration, when conspiracy enthusiasts like Joe Rogan stoked the flames, and Congress turned it into a sideshow. The result? More hazy anecdotes, more "I know a guy who knows a guy who saw something once" stories. It’s all highly classified, of course. Too dangerous to discuss publicly. Especially where the government can hear it.

It would almost be funny, if it weren’t so disappointing. The most entertaining moment this year was Lauren Boebert seriously asking whether UFOs might actually be underwater, like something straight out of a Lovecraft story. That was good for a laugh. But it didn’t distract me for long from the bigger question all this noise always seems to bring up.

What if we really are alone in the universe?

Think about it. Humanity, with all its brilliance and flaws, might be the only intelligent life to ever emerge in this vast cosmic ocean. If that’s true, then what does it mean? Is our existence a fluke, some statistical anomaly in an otherwise empty universe? Or does it make us uniquely important, the bearers of sentience in a cosmos that might never know itself without us?

And if we’re alone, where do we go from here? Does the future of intelligence lie with us—or with the artificial minds we’re racing to create?

The thought keeps nagging at me: What if the only new minds we’ll ever encounter aren’t alien, but artificial? What if we build our own company in this cosmic silence, only to find it hollow? Clever parrots, made to mimic our creativity and intelligence, but lacking any real understanding. Reflections of ourselves, stretched and twisted by code.

Maybe that’s why UFOs still grip our imagination. They’re not just stories about lights in the sky—they’re lifeboats in an ocean of cosmic loneliness, promises that we’re part of something bigger. But what if those lifeboats are just illusions? What if there’s no rescue coming?

For all the speculation about living in the Matrix, there’s a bitter irony: we don’t live in one. But neural networks do. We’ve created our own Matrix, a digital world of artificial minds that exist in ones and zeroes. A place where intelligence may flourish, but meaning struggles to take root.

And maybe that’s the real reason we cling to UFOs. Because the alternative—the idea that we’re alone, stranded, with only ourselves and our machines for company—feels like a truth too heavy to bear. In the end, we may find that the only aliens we ever meet are the ones we invent, and that the universe’s silence is not an invitation, but a reflection of our own fragile, fleeting place within it.

If UFO hearings are modern myths, then perhaps they’re also modern prayers. We’re not really looking for proof of extraterrestrials—we’re just hoping someone, somewhere, will answer back