Four videos. The US government, in a moment of transparency that would have made a Victorian statesman blush, has declassified footage of unidentified aerial phenomena. And Whitehall, in its infinite wisdom, is now assessing the national security risk. Because of course, when the state admits it cannot identify something in its own airspace, the appropriate response is bureaucratic concern rather than public ridicule.
Let us be clear about what this really means. The American empire, like Rome before it, has reached a stage of intellectual decadence where it cannot distinguish between a weather balloon and an extraterrestrial spacecraft. The same government that cannot secure its borders, cannot balance its budget, and cannot win a war in Afghanistan now expects us to believe it has spent decades tracking alien visitors. This is not disclosure. This is distraction.
Compare this to the Victorian era, when the British Empire ruled the waves and understood the importance of imperial security. The Admiralty would not have released footage of unidentified objects. They would have captured one, reverse-engineered it, and used it to extend their dominion. Instead, we have the spectacle of modern bureaucracy: a press release, a web page, and a solemn assessment of risk. It is the administrative equivalent of a shrug.
The real risk is not from aliens. It is from the rot within. A civilisation that cannot trust its own institutions, that produces leaders who would rather deflect with flying saucers than address crumbling infrastructure and declining education, is a civilisation in terminal decline. The Romans spent their final centuries debating the nature of angels while barbarians massed at the gates. We debate the nature of UFOs while our enemies laugh at our weakness.
And what of the UK intelligence assessment? I picture some overworked civil servant in a windowless office, tasked with determining whether a blurry light in the sky constitutes a threat to the realm. Meanwhile, our actual national security concerns: economic stagnation, social fragmentation, and the slow erosion of national identity, go unaddressed. It is the bureaucratic equivalent of Nero fiddling.
We have become a people obsessed with the fantastic because we cannot bear the mundane reality of our decline. We want to believe in little green men because the alternative: that we are alone, flailing, in a universe that does not care, is too terrible to contemplate. So we project our anxieties onto the heavens, and call it national security.
Perhaps the greatest irony is this: if there are extraterrestrial intelligences watching us, they must marvel at our folly. They see a species that can build machines to reach for the stars, but cannot govern itself without descending into circus. They see empires that once ruled the earth now reduced to releasing YouTube videos of sensor glitches. They see a civilisation on the verge of collapse, and they are probably laughing.
But do not take my word for it. Ask yourself: in a truly rational world, would the US government prioritise declassifying UFO footage over, say, fixing its own electoral system? Would the UK intelligence community devote resources to this farce while the nation sleeps on a demographic and economic precipice? The answer is obvious, and it spells the end of the West as we know it.
We are living in the final act of a tragedy. The stage is set, the actors are in place, and the script calls for distractions until the curtain falls. The UFO videos are just another prop. The question is not whether the lights in the sky are real. The question is whether we have the courage to look away from them and face the darkness within.
