The Arrogance of Dismissing Aliens

It is not often that congressional hearings launch a golden week of memes. Last Wednesday, a subcommittee began questioning former Air Force intelligence officer David Grusch, who has accused the US Department of Defence of concealing a long-standing programme that retrieves and reverse-engineers alien spacecraft that crash on Earth. Congressmen are struggling to take him seriously. The tone of the chair, Wisconsin’s Glenn Grothman, was facetious, telling the capacity crowd that they were watching “the most exciting subcommittee in Congress this week”. But Grusch’s claims have inspired an enormous amount of interest, as well as a lot of jokes.