Aliens Moved My Cheese

China and the United States rarely agree on anything, except that the U.S. owes China a lot of money. And that Chinese food is a great alternative for dinner. That’s why a rumor about a joint U.S.-China naval exercise in the Pacific Ocean designed to test preparedness to defend the world against a hostile extraterrestrial attack had a lot of traction, suggesting that the world’s leading military powers know something we don’t, namely the aliens are coming, and that the aliens are pissed. Or possibly use pineapples to fuel their spaceships, or are actually giant pandas with a hankering for bamboo. While the furor over a “secret” joint war against aliens in the Pacific has now joined the core of walking dead conspiracies that shamble mindlessly about the internet (although the original article that effectively broke the story that everyone is citing is unintentionally hilarious I particularly recommend the comments section if you want to lose all faith in humanity).

This got me wondering about what other odd military exercises might have really happened or continue to happen. Here’s a sample:

Since 1959, Brazil, Canada, Columbia, The Dominican Republic, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and the United States have conducted joint naval exercises simulating the invasion of the United States through Key West. Key Lime Pie prices soar each time.

In February 2012, the U.S. Marines and forces from eight other countries conducted an exercise in which an unnamed enemy (which we’ll call, oh, Iran) staged an amphibious marine landing in Virginia and North Carolina. Presumably to secure tobacco supplies.

Armored vehicles and tanks descended en masse on St. Louis residential neighborhoods in June 2012 in an exercise designed to test ability to drive tanks on highways and city streets, proving beyond a reasonable doubt that tanks always get the right-of-way.

In 1942, during World War II, over 3500 Canadian soldiers participated in a simulation of the Nazi occupation of Winnipeg in what was dubbed “If” Day. It served as a fundraiser to sell Victory Bonds. Not surprisingly, the Canadians remained polite.

Recently, a joint Russian-American exercise involving Russian paratroopers simulating seizures of CIA headquarters, the NSA, and Denver Airport was conducted. How long do you think it was into the exercise before somebody shouted “Wolverines!”?

Weird military exercises are pretty much par for the course, so what is so appealing about the idea that we’re actually preparing for an alien invasion? There have been tasty bread crumbs left for those who lean toward the paranoid schizophrenic side of things such as Ronald Reagan’s 1980’s comment, “that if the people of the world were to find out that there was some alien life form that was going to attack the Earth approaching on Halley’s Comet, then that knowledge would unite all the peoples of the world,” or Nobel laureate and economist Paul Krugman’s recent observation that the United States economy would benefit enormously if the government began spending bushels of money on anti-extraterrestrial defense, or the government-approved appearances of U.S. Air Command and Staff College professor Paul Springer on international television discussing (in earnest) the fact that the military does plan for things like alien invasions. Aliens, whether they exist or not, are the ultimate anthropological “other”. Not only are they not part of our tribe, they aren’t even from our planet. Anthropologist Mary Douglas, in Purity and Danger, hypothesized that the “other” was a fundamental natural symbol, and that symbolic boundaries are the essence of cultural meaning. As culture is increasingly globalized (for instance, when in Curacao, I heard a pack of tween Dutch girls singing “Call Me Maybe” word for word, in perfect English, without actually being able to speak English – I realized first, that the technology of ambient findability has made a global culture possible, and second, that we are all doomed), who then can be identified as the anthropological other? That’s correct. Aliens, whether they exist or not being totally irrelevant. Maybe the reason we need an “other” should be our true concern. Unless of course, if there is anyone else like me out there laboring under the suspicion that insects are forming a super-intelligent hive-mind and intend to unleash the dogs of war upon us. That would be number one priority. I worry about stuff like that. Is that wrong?