Is the government hiding ET information? Survey says yes

Photo by Stephen Leonardi on Unsplash

The truth (as they said in "The X Files") is out there.

A caveat to that saying: According to about half of Americans, "out there" means "hidden in government files."

A recent survey by Morning Consult and Politico revealed that 62% of American voters believe there is extraterrestrial life. Yes, ETs. To emphasize, that's not 62% of all people, it's 62% of those who cast votes for elective office. In other words, 62% of people who not only qualify to vote, but have voted recently. 

That percentage isn't the end of the facts. Of those who believe, nearly four out of five (79%) think the government has concealed the existence of UFOs from the public. In other words, almost half of all voters (my math says 79% of 62% is 49%. If I'm wrong, don't tell me, tell my calculator) believe the government knows about extraterrestrial life and conceals it from us.

That belief is consistent across political parties, ages and gender, with one mild outlier: The older and more conservative you are, the less likely you are to believe in ETs, but by not much a lower level than the general public. (In related news, the older and more conservative you are, the more likely you are to believe that old cars were better, the NFL was better when players didn't complain about concussions and that it was better when you could go to the movies for 50 cents.)

The survey was released as Congress prepared for a late-May hearing on unidentified flying objects – a naming convention that exposes Congress as a place filled with older people. Who says UFOs anymore? UFOs were a big deal in my childhood. We now say ETs, although I'd never heard the term extraterrestrial until the movie "ET" arrived in theaters.

Back to the point. Around half of voters believe not only that extraterrestrials exist, but that the government knows about it and keeps it secret.

To be fair to the majority who believe the government is covering up proof of extraterrestrial life, they have plenty of ammunition: Decades of rumors. Area 51 in Nevada. Dozens of sci-fi movies. All those hill people who claimed to have been captured by UFOs (do ETs have a catch-and-release program?).

Meanwhile, the government hasn't exactly extinguished rumors. In 2007, the Department of Defense launched an ET-seeking initiative called the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program (AATIP), which is a poorly chosen acronym. The government could have gone with something like Mass Arial Research Tracking Interstellar Aerial Navigation (MARTIAN).

But anyway, the feds launched AATIP in 2007 and didn't acknowledge it until 2017. That's suspicious, too, right?

Perhaps the point of the survey has nothing to do with whether extraterrestrial life exists or whether the federal government knows something and is concealing it from us. Perhaps it shows how much skepticism we have about our leaders.

If they're actually humans and not ETs wearing human skin.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.