Earth Day Begets Universe Day: The Inevitable Embrace of Martians by American Politicans

I love the idea of each year on April 22 celebrating Earth Day promoting revitalization of our global environment. However, it does occur to me that when life on another planet is discovered, this will inevitably generate lots of political pressure to also celebrate a "Universe Day" once per year. And that, in turn, will burden many of us with yet another commitment to attend another major civic event---a figurative holding-of-hands ceremony with outer-spacers who are, in fact, quite invisible to us here on this planet.

"We should never ignore or neglect or fail in any way to adequately praise these noble and peace-loving inhabitants of other planets," as an elective official in the United States of America might someday declare during a Universe Day ceremony in Washington, D.C. "Those kindly extraterrestrial characters, as I like to call them, for they surely have exhibited remarkable character in building their own outer-space civilization, deserve the greatest of respect and appreciation on this special day of the year. To me, Universe Day is Alien Appreciation Day---and I'm not taking about illegal immigrants from Mexico, I can assure you!" (laughter from audience).

"Now, I realize that many of you are wondering why we even bother to honor these living and breathing contributors to the Universe who dwell so nobly on other planets. These inhuman inhabitants of the Universe don't vote in our USA elections and they don't pay taxes to our USA government, many of you are no doubt saying.

"Let me offer this for a response, and it is a response I offer with the greatest of humility. All of us human beings should feel honorbound to exhibit our own humanity toward the millions or billions of non-human --- and by non-human, I definitely am not implying 'sub-human' in any sense of that word (laughter from audience) --- inhabitors of other planets. We help to make our HUMAN race all the greater and more magnificent if we prove to other civilizations that we as enlightened homo sapiens do not exhibit any form of RACIAL arrogance toward these peacefully inhuman inhabitants of other planets. They may not be members of our own truly great HUMAN race, but they, like ourselves, are very honorable and fully legitimate members of this also-great race of all living and breathing inhabitants of our beloved Universe."

"Finally, let us all take this opportunity to express gratitude that these outer-spacers with great decency to them have chosen to coexist with us in a nobly peace-loving manner. These inhabitants of other planets are clearly not savages. Never once have any of those kindly outerspacers ever once attempted to invade this planet using military force of any type.

"It seems to me that preservation of Universal Peace is very dependent on there being good will by all inhabitors of each and every planet; and the very existence of Universal Peace today serves as convincing proof that something as remarkable as the Pax Romana from ancient history has in fact been forged for all of human and inhuman civilization on each and every planet of our entire Universe! Let us joyously celebrate this very special moment---not just in world history, but in the history of the entire galaxy and Universe!"