I have always felt that science-fiction provides perhaps the best means by which one can criticize and analyze modern society. The genre if science fiction allows the author to create a set of rules, a setting for the human interactions, partially or entirely removed from our own. In this way, parallels can be all the more clearly drawn between absurdities in the science-fiction world and absurdities in our own world. So, I’m not surprised that we are discussing aliens in a World Politics course.
In other news, the debate was fascinating. Both made great strides, with McCain generally appearing very old and Obama saying “Jim (Lehrer), let me just make a point. I've got a bracelet, too”, and using the phrase “orgy of spending.” Sarcasm aside, I think that Obama far and away won the debate. Generally, he just seemed far more presidential than his opposition.

So, let’s talk about pirates.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/29/world/africa/29pirates.html?ref=africa

To summarize this article: Russian arms (including 33 tanks!) headed for Kenya were intercepted by Somali pirates. The Somali government stated that they believed that the arms would go to Islamic extremists, and requested American assistance. Currently, we are planning on not interceding, even though interceding would strike a direct blow to terrorists. Are we or are we not conducting a war on terror? I suppose not, if we are unwilling to stop terrorists when we have the means to do so due to it being “potentially messy”. Make up your mind, America. Do you hold an ideal close to your heart, or do you only spout it when it is politically or economically convenient to do so?

Who Are We?

PTJ’s mention of the solution to questions of the zoo theory really struck me.  To refresh everyone, the zoo theory is that the aliens are waiting to come into contact with us.  It is likely that they will make contact when we reach a certain point of development.  However, if we are under the impression that the aliens are peaceful and all around nice creatures, it is very, very unlikely that we will reach any peace benchmark in our lifetime.  When the aliens check out our news resources such as the World News section on NYtimes.com, they will see “kill,” “arson,” “kill,” “chaos,” “kill,” “war,” “kills,” “arson,” “tragedy,” and “killed”.  I do not think aliens would want to enter into our knowledge when we cannot even deal with members of our own race (the entire human race) peaceably. 

            Now, I do not actually believe in aliens nor that there is intelligent life beyond Earth, but I think it is enlightening to look at our international situation as if from an outsider’s perspective.  I look at the news and I generally get pessimistic and depressed.  I think I can see why the aliens do not want to get involved.  On the other hand, when I see atrocities in the news, it also inspires me to someday get a job where I can work to end the evils humans do to each other.  This makes me feel that perhaps the aliens are more constructivists than liberals.  I am assuming they get that our perception of ourselves is the one the media portrays.  The aliens have been confused by our own confusion of the identity of the entire human race.  We do not even know whether our innate nature and instincts are good or evil.  We have not figured ourselves out, and perhaps the alien’s benchmark for interaction is for us to put aside religious, geographical, and racial boundaries and to discover who we are as intelligent life on this wondrous orb called Earth.  

Vigilantism on a National Scale

So watching Boondock Saints got me thinking about the moral quandary that is vigilantism. For those who don't know, the movie is about two brothers who kill mafiosi, claiming to be justified by God in their actions. It poses a moral question: when something is obviously evil, is it right for a person to intervene and stop this evil from happening? And in the context of the class, is it right for a nation to violate the sovereignty of another nation on principle alone?

Both questions can be answered at once: yes, idealistically, with pragmatic restrictions. There are situations where evil is so pervasive that even the most morally flexible of individuals can see it for what it is. The Holocaust is the most obvious instance; most today would argue that intervention was a moral imperative. Others include such cases as the Rwandan genocide, the purges of Stalin, various religious extremes of the pre-Westphalian era, or even the Japanese internment. These were instances where evil was clear; the difficulty arises in naming a perpetrator.

The Rwandan genocide is a strong case of where defining an actual criminal is difficult. Juvenal Habyarimana, the president of Rwanda, and his wife Agathe, the two responsible for instigating much of the Hutu-Tutsi hatred, were dead early into the genocide. Defining an actual leader of the conflict remains difficult; various genocidaires have been tried over the years for their crimes. Yet in the end, no one can walk away and name one perpetrator, one evil, one target of hatred in the Rwandan genocide. This is what makes post-genocide Rwanda so interesting (in only the most morbid of senses). Many Tutsis are forced to live next to men and women who killed loved ones, as the government pardoned all Hutus for their actions. Few will deny that the vast majority of the Hutu population openly participated in the genocide. But do we blame the Hutu race for their role in the genocide? Often forgotten was the genocide next door in Burundi, where Tutsis slaughtered Hutus. The moral twists and turns of the Rwandan genocide create one of those instances where lashing out seems too abrupt. There is no focal point of evil, like in the Holocaust. No face behind the slaughter. There were those like Hassan Ngeze who enflamed the rage of the Hutu population, but he was merely a mouthpiece for the ideology that drove the slaughter.

So now we ask: in the case of the Rwandan genocide, how would a vigilante find a proper target? This creates a moral limbo in which defining who is to blame for a crime is nearly impossible due to the nature of the crime itself and the manner in which it was perpetrated. The action was beyond any kind of doubt evil. Yet who is accountable? Where is the line in which vigilantism is justified drawn?

This is obviously a question with no clear answer. As a result, I'm hoping to get comments on the topic answering these questions to get some good disussion going. Can a nation intervene in the affairs of another nation where the issue is not one of black and white?

I have vision...

and the rest of the world wears bifocals. Rest in peace, Paul Newman. Thanks for being a hero in my eyes.

Anyway, reflection time.

Friday...aliens. As much as science fiction writers would disagree with me, I feel like aliens have been discussed to exhaustion, or at least to the point of reluctance to care.

So I'll reflect on something else, that is entirely relevant, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who has been thinking about this, but may be one of the only ones to actually say something about it.

I have no idea how I'm doing in this class. None, whatsoever. Which, to be honest, is a little (very) frightening. The problem, I feel, is because how the class is structured is so subjective. Essentially, every single aspect of the class, from in class discussions, to both blog posts we can do a week, everything is just our opinions. While there is nothing wrong with opinions, the normal day-to-day goings on in this class rest on our ability to express our opinions. I personally think that I am good at expressing my opinions, but who knows? Maybe in this class, I'm not. It isn't then, that I don't have good ideas, it is that I can't adequately express them, be it in written or verbal form, and as such, my grade rests on the idea of me being able to convince some higher power (PTJ) that my ideas aren't as primitive as my words may make them seem.

Another problem, and this is a problem that isn't really resolvable, but simply exists, is in-class discussions. Let's say I'm raising my hand, waiting of the ball in order to be granted the permission to speak. Then, for whatever reason, the ball doesn't come to me, whether it is because there were many hands up, or someone else hadn't spoken in a longer time than I, or little plays of society taking place, and the conversation continues to evolve. During that time, my point, which a few minutes ago, becomes completely irrelevant, and then the ball is suddenly in my hand and, by the mere fact that the conversation has moved on from my thoughts, my thoughts suddenly seem out of place, rudimentary, and completely unimportant in this new level of discussion. And it isn't that I haven't been listening to what's been going on since my thought popped into my head, but it is that I believed my thought deserved to be voiced, and I may suffer as a result of me voicing it at too late a time. Yes, you could always just tuck that thought away into some pocket in your mind, post it later in your reflection, but sometimes, that simply isn't what you want to do, because maybe you don't want to reflect on that idea.

It isn't even that this could be a simple solution of going in and talking to PTJ. Once again, if I couldn't express my opinions sufficiently to begin with, how could one really be told how to do so? It isn't a solution of "talk more". Is it a solution of "talk better"? How do I "talk better" then?

I'm sure some people will say this is all just a microcosm of world politics, a intricate play on how politics and society works.

I'll say though, that this is my grade, and as such, it is one of the determining factors in whether I stay here, or whether I'll be going somewhere else (read: San Francisco State) next year. (I hate this economy.)

Simply, this is a class dependent on how I express myself, and I'm terrified my thoughts aren't good enough.

Was that clear?

[Apologies for any snarkiness in advance. Snarkiness isn't a word...but it describes what I mean very well. And snarkiness isn't intentional, just an unfortunate by product of me being frustrated at my cluelessness.]

If Aliens landed on the White House lawn, what would we do?

How would we react to first contact with aliens? Well, it depends on how advanced the aliens are. If they are more advanced than us, I predict an increase in favor for a stronger United Nations or similar organization as nations scramble to determine how to best protect their interests. Regional organizations are formed based on protection of and furthering of common interests; no matter what our various historical squabbles, we are all human, and would unite against a non-human force. However, I personally believe that this strengthening of both the United Nations and of regional organizations would happen anyways.

If they are less advanced than us, I predict that we will attempt to interfere in their affairs. This may take the form of proselytizing religion, spreading specific political systems, The various powers of the world will all have different ideas of what to do, and these will manifest themselves in yet another conflict. This would result in a situation surprisingly reminiscent of the status quo – with the entire world agreeing that Something Good should happen, but having such staunchly different opinions on A.) what the Something Good is and B.) how to accomplish that Something Good.
Essentially, I believe that the introduction of aliens into our political landscape would change nothing.

We All Die. (Well, dying in a nuclear explosion would be nicer than spider babies crawling out of you and eating you alive)

I noticed that most everyone’s posts are based on US reactions to alien invasions as seen in movies.  I think that because the majority of Hollywood productions portray aliens as forces of evil (Ewoks excluded) that the American people will be initially pushing for the government to destroy the aliens.  I usually do not think that the government always does what the people want, but I think government leaders would probably be paranoid about aliens too. 

The US government would probably kill/incapacitate the aliens as a first priority. If we did somehow manage to accomplish that, we would probably try to study them to understand what they are.  We would try to understand their anatomy and how their brains and bodies work.  Then we would try to steal some of their technology.  In the end, I think the US would destroy the alien race entirely before giving them a chance. 

I do not know if that would be possible, because the aliens will most likely be more intelligent and technologically advanced (let’s hope they are vulnerable to water/the common cold!).  In this case, we would probably try to nuke them, and then everyone else with nukes would launch them and we would blow ourselves up.  Then the aliens would repopulate our dead planet.  THE END!!??**#@!!!!!!

Danger, World Politics, danger! (Flail arms accordingly)

"What do you think the US government (and world governments) would do if aliens came and landed on the White House lawn?"

Being a child of the 90s, my knowledge of aliens (and I'm going to define aliens as extraterrestrials, not my relatives across the border) is comprised of videos popped into the VCR, then Netflix, then TiVo. That said, we're taking a cinematic approach to "when aliens attack/land."

Going through decades of film, here are pretty much the collective options garnered from Hollywood:
1) We can attempt to kill them immediately. (…No film would actually kill the aliens immediately, because that means a 10 minute movie. Still, it is an option.)
2) We can (attempt to) kill them after they harm us (even if possibly we caused them to attack), and some options of how to kill them INCLUDE: playing Slim Whitman songs (Mars Attacks!), or Ronny Desmond songs (Attack of the Killer Tomatoes), freezing them (The Blob), electrocuting them (The Thing from Another Planet), pouring water on them (Signs), shooting them (Men in Black), using a computer virus to infiltrate their mainframe, then blowing them up (Independence Day), letting Mother Nature take its course (The War of the Worlds), using high pitched frequencies (Earth vs. The Flying Saucers) and blowing them up (Invaders from Mars, Predator [although Predator blows himself up…], Killer Klowns from Outer Space).
3) We can attempt to kill them even though they did nothing wrong, and in fact were trying to help us (The Day the Earth Stood Still).
4) We can form some sort of relationship with them, including setting up an ambassador program with them (Close Encounters of the Third Kind) or creating an agency that allows them to live on Earth (Men in Black), or just let them chill after we persecute them and then they save the world (Transformers).
5) We basically just let them hang around a bit (maybe try to capture them, fail/they escape), then they leave (Cocoon, It Came from Outer Space, E.T., The Abyss, The Rocky Horror Picture Show [although…they kill their leader then rocket-house back home]).
6) We can do nothing. They’re already here. You’re next. (a la Invasion of the Body Snatchers)

Alright, maybe blockbusters and B-movie films aren’t the best way to go about figuring out what to do in the event that aliens just happen to land on the White House lawn. However, movies are great at providing what if scenarios, and what if is exactly the question we’ve been poised with.

So what would we do? WWUSD? Immediately, get the President, First Lady, VP, cabinet members all to their safe locations, while simultaneously securing the area, and begin evacuating civilians from the area (although probably not telling them why…unless they see the spaceship and are like, “Yo, it’s a UFO.”). This could be considered a realist measure, placing security first, however, it is doubtful staunch liberals would be “hey, they’s cool, no worries, we’s all chill, party on the lawn!”

After that…not sure. It depends on whether or not the aliens immediately decide to kill us (which is War of the Worlds style, in which case, we revert to Independence Day status), if they do nothing (probably roll it out like The Day the Earth Stood Still) and just wait till they do something. I doubt the US would attempt to make the first encounter, since it could be safely assumed that the aliens have more advanced technology, and while perhaps not necessarily true, more advanced weaponry. However, if after an extended period of time (1-2 days sounds about right), we would probably attempt to make the least antagonist contact possible. No idea what that is, but we’d do it. If they do attempt to contact us, then we’d…probably have some convoy prepared to meet them. I’m relatively sure the government does have a list of people who’d be in a convoy to meet extraterrestrials, probably including a polyglot, a top “extraterrestrial” scientist, a top space technician, an expert mathematician, a doctor, a psychologist, and some of the top trained soldiers, yet not blatantly dressed as such (once again, non-antagonistic).

As for the world governments' responses...that is a bit harder to say. Places like Russia, China, and other countries that practice more realism than liberalism would go on the defensive, and could easily move into the offensive if they feel their security is endangered, which they always do. Other, more liberal countries, like Sweden or Iceland, would undoubtedly stay quiet, since pacifism is usually their route. Other countries that are more "mixed" in theories....I don't know, probably something along the lines of the US, I suppose. On the defensive, but willing to be open to what happens. Unless the aliens are BAMFs, in which case, that is an excellent excuse to blow various nations/factions up. Because, as in Invasion of the Body Snatchers how do we know that they're even human anymore?

Listen, we're thinking in what if scenarios here, and this is something unprecedented. Much like the economic crisis right now...coincidence? Nope. This is a conspiracy theorist post, and I don't believe in coincidences. (I want to believe.)

In both situations, we don't know what to do, and even similar experiences in the past can only help us so much. Luckily, aliens landing remains in the hypothetical realm; terrifyingly, the economic crisis doesn't, but we're facing the same hesitancy. As Klaatu says, "I am fearful when I see people substituting fear for reason. "

...If we're all fearful though, how do we know what is reason, and what is fear parading around as such? Who knows our best interests then, when no one is sure of our interests now? ....Frightening.



And yes, I have seen every single film I mentioned.