I once saw an unidentified flying object, or “UFO.” I was a passenger on a commercial airliner on an overnight flight. I awoke in the middle of the night, looked out the window, and saw a lighted object flying near the airplane. I couldn’t identify it.

The object kept perfect pace with the airplane, as if it was shadowing us. Once in a while, it blinked, as if it was signaling us. Maybe the blinks were an extraterrestrial form of Morse Code?

In my half-awake stupor, it thrilled me to realize that we are not alone.

But after a few minutes of gradually waking up, I realized that what I was looking at was the light on the end of the airplane wing. It was an object and it was flying and for a few minutes it was unidentified, at least by me, and so it was a UFO.

Mind you, I was not an 11-year-old boy at the time. I was in my 20s and was an aerospace engineer for Boeing.

The point of my little story is that my eyes and my mind played a trick on me.

I’m not alone, even if we are. Thousands of people have reported UFOs. Such things have now been re-branded “unidentified aerial phenomena” or “UAPs,” apparently because these things are typically not objects at all, but instead lights or reflections in the air.

Personally, I like the old term, “UFOs,” because there’s a well-earned stigma associated with that term. Let’s not rebrand “UFOs” into “UAPs” the way the Democrats keep rebranding socialism into “liberalism,” “woke-ism” and “progressivism.” Some things deserve the stigma they earn.

Notwithstanding the stigma, many people believe in UFOs with a fervor normally associated with sports events and Revival Meetings, These people believe UFOs are close encounters of some kind with “flying saucers” which is a layman’s term for . . . [drum roll] . . . aliens.

And I don’t mean the kind from Guatemala who clean toilets unburdened by any immigration documents. I mean the tall, pale kind with big heads and long fingers driving a spaceship from across the galaxy. The kind that kidnap you, take you to that spaceship, and perform – shudder! – secret experiments. On your body. 

Then they let you go home. To tell everyone about them and their secret experiments that they performed. On your body.

UFO reports have been reviewed and re-reviewed ad nauseum. Most of the “sightings” are perfectly explainable, as in the manner of my own “sighting” of the airplane wing light.

Some UFOs are not explainable, but are extremely unlikely to be aliens. After all, we see lots of things on this planet that are not explainable, such as people with a taste for brussels sprouts, men who pretend they’re women, and dogs that chase frisbees. Just because something is inexplicable doesn’t mean it’s extraterrestrial.

Think about it for a millisecond. If we were being visited by extraterrestrials who’ve flown across the galaxy (Lord knows why), then they would either (1) want us to know about them, or (2) want us not to. If the former, wouldn’t they just hold a press conference? If the latter, wouldn’t creatures smart enough to fly across the galaxy faster than the speed of light in a flying saucer be smart enough to conceal themselves from us?

Speaking of creatures that want us to know about them, there’s the attention-getting, influence-peddling, pod-casting, You-tubing Bill Maher. Until now, Maher has made a name for himself by being a Democrat who says Republican-ish things occasionally.  

That strategy is a proven click-generator. Republicans and Democrats love it when they hear Republican-ish and Democrat-ish things from a Democrat or Republican, respectively. (To map this out for you, I’m saying that Republicans love to hear a Democrat endorse Republican positions, and Democrats love to hear a Republican endorse Democrat positions.)

When that happens, it seems to show that “the other side” has suffered a defection. No one loves a traitor, except the side to which he trades himself, and they love him a lot. Clicks follow a traitor like flies follow dung.

The problem with this marketing strategy is that it’s self-limiting. If a Democrat like Maher endorses enough Republican positions, Republicans stop loving him as a traitorous Democrat because he’s become just another Republican.

So, Maher has a new click generating scheme. He has gone FULL UFO. He’s announced that UFOs are indeed alien spacecraft.

Like the fake traitor scheme, this new scheme is a proven click generator. Say something crazy, and people will tune in, for a few minutes anyway. On the right, Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens have this down pat in their Jew-baiting conspiracy schticks. Before that, on the left, were the Russian collusion schticks.

The scheme originated in the entertainment business. Remember magic acts? A “magician” would stand on stage and “do magic” by making things disappear and re-appear, or by pretending to saw a woman in a box in half, or by pulling rodents out of a hat.

Of course, nobody actually thought this was “real” magic. After all, by definition there’s no such thing as real magic. But people were willing to pay to see the show.

Welcome to Bill Maher’s magic show. Let him entertain you. Pay him a nickel or a click. But don’t take him seriously.