Close Encounters
What is an alien, anyway?
A few weeks ago I was asked whether I would like to join various “experts” in submitting a question to Robert Kennedy, Jr. in advance of his confirmation hearing in the Senate. Finding the offer flattering, I suggested asking what RFK thinks about the use of laptops in elementary school classrooms. This turned out to be too philosophical. I ought to have remembered that the purpose of posing questions to people in congressional hearings is to try to show them up, not to discover their actual views or how they might have arrived at them. If given another opportunity, I shall instead propose a question about the rate of measles vaccination among the Amish population of Belize. That should stump him.
Speaking of Kennedys: In a few weeks here we will finally be able to read the last remaining files related to the assassination of JFK. As the sole living proponent of the Lone Gunman Theory, I do not expect the Kennedy papers to reveal anything of interest. Ask yourself—if you were in charge of planning a president’s murder in conjunction with the CIA, the mafia, and what we now call the LGBT community in Dallas and New Orleans, would you have dictated all the details to your beehived secretary? Wouldn’t someone have leaked it to the Washington Post by now? The mind reels.
If some people have their way, UFOs will be next on the list for mass declassification. Here my views run in the opposite direction: I fully expect in the next half-century to be solemnly informed by the military and intelligence establishment that we have convincing circumstantial “evidence” of something called “extraterrestrial life,” which is almost the dictionary definition of a category mistake. Anything to distract us from more pressing questions about Chinese and Russian interference in our airspace.
There was a time when I was more open to the possibility of aliens among us. In 1997, I first logged on to that fabulous invention of Vice President Gore, the World Wide Web, via Netscape Navigator. While a handful of results showed me grainy bitmap images of crop circles and mutilated cattle, most of the pages had something to do with a person called Pete Wilson and his plans to prevent (for reasons which I could not understand) E.T. and Chewbacca from receiving health care or applying for a driver’s license.
I have never actually understood the arguments against the use of “alien” in reference to foreigners, unless it is simply a concession to the UFO maniacs. It is much easier to understand the objection to the adjective that used to precede it. Strictly speaking it is not the immigrants themselves but their presence in this country which is “illegal.” Fair enough. But the various proposed fudges are no better. “Undocumented,” for example, in addition to being vague, is strictly speaking false, especially in sanctuary jurisdictions. “Unauthorized” smacks of the hall monitor; “unlawfully present in the United States” is a mouthful.
The back-page column is not the place for a serious conversation about immigration. In the absence of a shared vocabulary it is no longer an issue that many of us are willing to discuss anywhere. When a bishop, who is probably just quoting the bureaucratic text in front of him, utters the word “undocumented,” MAGA chuds call for his laicization; when administrative lawyers employ the word “alien,” which has a precise statutory definition, they are accused of hate speech. Immigration should not naturally lend itself to such intransigence; it is, or should be, a matter of prudence rather than of first principles. Unlike in the case of abortion, for example, no one ever tries to carry his position to what might seem like its logical conclusion—that is to say, in an unlimited right to immigration for all persons, subject to no restrictions, even in the case of previous criminal records or terrorist sympathies; or as the case may be, in the immediate deportation of all foreign nationals, including, say, the holders of agricultural visas. Yet we all somehow think that our own opinion is the only moral one. This includes yours truly.
Here is another opinion, one that will be even less popular: It is a good thing that the Kansas City Chiefs have made it to three Super Bowls in as many years. While I can understand hating the Chiefs for the same reason people hated the Patriots for so many years, I have no patience with the anti–Taylor Swift crowd. I am old enough to remember when conservatives told journalists to “stick to sports.” The people who spent years bellyaching about Colin Kaepernick can afford to be consistent where our national pastime is concerned. Besides, I for one like feeling smug about the fact that, in comparison with the audience of the National Football League, even fans of the world’s most famous pop star constitute some kind of mutant subculture. Also: Who doesn’t like rooting against Philadelphia? My prediction for next season is that the Chiefs represent the AFC for the fourth time in a row and lose to the Detroit Lions.
The post Close Encounters appeared first on The American Conservative.
