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If the US government really had alien bodies, then the US president would know about it.
If the US president knew about it, then Trump would know about it.
If Trump knew about it, he would have told everyone, bragged about it, kept boxes of documents about it at Mar-A-Lago, etc. There would be a ketchup stained original photograph of an alien autopsy on the floor of his bathroom.
Since we haven't heard him brag about having seen a photo of an alien, we know that he hasn't seen one.
@mekkaokereke I … have misgivings about this logic? Americans seem to credit the POTUS with near-mystical powers of omniscience over a Federal bureaucracy with nearly 3 million civil servants, never mind the military, security, and other bureaucracies. I'm pretty sure they can hide ANYTHING in there simply by misfiling it or giving it an unfamiliar name. (It's not the galactic empire in White House briefings from the State Department, it's a "remote non-post-Westphalian state level actor".)
@cstross @mekkaokereke While this is very fair, it is also highly plausible that the first thing Trump would have said on taking office would have been "tell me where the aliens are" and then they'd have probably had to show him in plain terms...
And then of course, he'd have tweeted "Saw four aliens in a crash . Vehicle was seriously mangled and crushed their heads. Sad!"
@stavvers @mekkaokereke True, but i can't help remembering that during the Bush era the US intelligence bureaucracy got so arcane that they had to create another agency—the US Intelligence Community—just to organize liaisons between the nineteen classified agencies who admit to being members of USIC. They also have at least three space programs (not just NASA!), and their Navy has its own Army which in turn has its very own Air Force (the US Marine Corps Air Arm) with its own aircraft carriers.
@stavvers @mekkaokereke I have a REALLY BAD willing-suspension-of-disbelief problem with most SF, and especially Space Opera, because the interstellar governments/empires are insanely simple, efficient, streamlined, and lack any semblance of the baroque weirdness and dusty nooks and crannies you'd expect in even a medium-sized city's government.
@cstross @mekkaokereke Now you mention it, this really does seem like the most fantastic invention of SF, unless it's making a very specific point about bureaucracy, they really do just run like clockwork.
@stavvers @mekkaokereke I've actually tried writing about the US intelligence services realistically in my own alt-hist SF, but I'm not sure I did the insanity of the US Security State justice.
@cstross @stavvers @mekkaokereke I feel like Andor does a passable job of conveying this.
@Rhube @stavvers @mekkaokereke What's Andor? Is it a Star Trek thing? Or from Doctor Who?
@cstross @stavvers @mekkaokereke Not sure if you're teasing me (if so, please allow for my brain fog and be kind; I'm having a high-CFS symptom day) or equally if it's weird for me to suspect that.
Andor is a Star Wars TV spin off, but working at a whole other level to the others. Looking at the realities of organised rebellion and the imperial corruption/messiness in response to that. Unusually gritty for modern Star Wars; strong critique of the military industrial complex.
@Rhube @stavvers @mekkaokereke Yeah, I don't watch movies or TV drama. And Star Wars after "Revenge of the Jedi" is dead to me.
@Rhube @cstross @stavvers @mekkaokereke Yes, Andor is different from almost everything else in the Star wars canon. It actually feels like it was made for adults, or at least fairly intelligent older teenagers.
@cstross @stavvers @mekkaokereke It did come off as kind of utopian.
@stavvers @cstross @mekkaokereke one of the best things about Andor was the corruption and infighting in the Imperial Security Bureau. The turf wars over who had jurisdiction seemed realistic
@stavvers @cstross @mekkaokereke Once again, Jupiter Ascending has the most plausible SF bureaucracy in film.