So back in 1983, two mini-series and a television series that last for just one season graced the airwaves of NBC. “V” and “V: The Final Battle” showed us what life could be like if aliens from Sirius descended upon us and promised to be our friends. The Visitors looked like us, seemed to act like us, and wanted to live in harmony with us. They had our best interests in mind. They claimed they brought with them a cure for cancer. They would show us their technology. They just needed a little bit of water and a few minerals in exchange.
They manipulated, and eventually took over the media. They formed youth-corps to foster cooperation between humans and The Visitors. They had big press conferences and said grand things. All the while, they were capturing entire neighborhoods of people to be processed as food, grabbing every ounce of water they could pump up to their mammoth motherships, and plotting the destruction of human civilization.
Wide swaths of the population continued to support The Visitors. They claimed to be our friends. It was the dissenters, the Resistance, that was messing things up. The Visitors came down on humans, eventually strolling the streets with laser guns, commandeering the media, and taking control of the government, all while quieting the scientists or making them disappear entirely.
Back in 1983 I couldn’t fathom how the humans who followed The Visitors as these benevolent beings could do so willingly.
It is now 2020. What we saw in “V” and the follow-up shows isn’t so far-fetched after all. Many humans, especially many Americans, will do anything for power. And they will go to great lengths of bending or discarding morals, turning a blind eye to the obvious truth, or discard any shred of scientific evidence, in any attempt to keep themselves to be perceived as powerful.
One has to wonder if anyone in The White House eats a mouse from time to time.
