We all know what things look like on our planet at ground level, but what if we are being observed from above -- high above -- from other beings in other worlds?

How would they view us?

I should say from the outset that you do not have to believe in aliens of the outer space variety to keep reading, but I am here to make an imaginitive point about the U.S.

Even our über-secretive government has finally come around to that possibility after denying UFO sightings and dismissing them for over 70 years as "swamp gas," "weather balloons" and other red herrings to throw us thinking Americans off the trail.

That said, what would all those extraterrestrial beings think of us if they had a 'glass bottomed boat' and were able to observe us in our natural habitat?

To set the stage, let's say that they have been watching the United States as we have moved from the freezing cold of the Ice Age 2.6 million years ago up to our cave-dwelling days starting about 11,000 years ago on up to the present day.

In those years, the ETs have seen human beings kill one another, often in large numbers, steadily develop ever more sophisticated weapons of war to do it more speedily and efficiently, and in some cases, use them. They have observed us as we embraced witch trials, slavery, and created ways for civil (not necessarily civilized) society do away with our criminals. While human beings in Europe were burning people at the stake, and here in the states hanging criminals and sometimes the unjustly accused from trees, or electrocuting them, having a superior humanist moral sense, they saw us in the comfort of our homes rationalizing our actions.

In the 18th century, they saw us revolt against our foreign occupiers and form a new nation out of whole cloth. Then, in the 19th century, they watched as U.S. Americans turned their guns on their own in the bloodiest conflict they have ever known with over 600,000 men dead at the hands of their fellow citizens, and additional women and children, too.

Shaking their alien heads, our observers wondered if violence was in our DNA and if they would ever be welcomed here on terra firma in the U.S., that is, if they chose to make the long trip.

In the 20th century, they saw us enter a world war far from our own shores, mismanage our economy several years later and slide backwards into poverty at times. Then they observed us go to war again after a brutal unprovoked attack from Islamofascist terrorists.

While this seemed wholly defensible, given what other countries were doing to other humans, it proved that we U.S. Earthlings had not evolved much beyond our caveman days.

Protecting one another (and our preferred systems of governance) became ample justification for violence.

High above, the aliens were discussing their game plan. They concluded that we weren't ready for a alien-to-person visit and instead kept watching us. They did, however, board their inter-stellar spacecraft and continued to make reconnaissance flights into our airspace. By doing so, they hoped we would shed our penchant for self-absorption and admit that there was a world or worlds more advanced than our own and that we should redirect our energies away from self-destruction and focus on our 'neighbors' who had been resisting intervening before we actually destroyed ourselves.

Unfortunately, that approach hasn't worked (as yet). We are still navel-gazing and our leaders are hellbent on pushing racial, ethnic, gender and ideological division over unification. It's as if a few hundred years, multiple wars, a freedom -- and a citizen-based Constitution -- hadn't even existed.

Americans had come full-circle and reverted to their cave mentality. During these last few years our neighbors above have become even more perplexed. They're shaking their alien heads every time they tap into our television waves and watch how we communicate with each other. If they hadn't been watching us for so long and had "just tuned in" to our television commercials as first-time alien observers, they would have thought that most of America's Earthlings were black instead of its 13% minority, that most of us sported shaved heads, wore earrings, and were adorned with tribal tattoos.

They would have surmised that we were all deathly ill and needed a plethora of pain medication and miracle pillows to survive another day. They would have seen that our country was being led by a (very) senior citizen who should have been playing shuffleboard on a cruise liner to Bermuda instead of being in charge of our nuclear codes. And for the pièce de résistance, they would have been confused by American youth's choice to be on a pilgrimage to self-imposed digital sequestration vis-à-vis their addiction to smartphones and social media.

Given the violence seen, they are not surprised that we allow mass shootings, carjackings, muggings, rapes and senseless beatings to occur with frightening frequency. What does surprise them, however, is that many of these crimes are going unpunished while the perpetrators are set free to assault again.

For answers, the aliens have been trying to get in touch with our Founding Fathers through time-travel wormholes. Unfortunately, none of them as yet has been willing take their call. Perhaps they are overcome with sadness at what their beloved United States of America has become.

So, the aliens keep watching and hoping that someday we will come to our senses and leave a few of our Earth's wonderful travel spots, unspoiled, and ready for a visit. Absent that, no visit will ever happen as the aliens know that there is no redeeming value in being a good neighbor in a bad neighborhood.

Stephan Helgesen is a retired career U.S. diplomat who lived and worked in 30 countries for 25 years during the Reagan, G.H.W. Bush, Clinton, and G.W. Bush Administrations. He is the author of fourteen books, six of which are on American politics and has written over 1,300 articles on politics, economics and social trends. He operates a political news story aggregator website: www.projectpushback.com. He can be reached at: stephan@stephanhelgesen.com

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