The UFO’s had better land pretty soon because we’re fast running out of scapegoats.

Fighting among ourselves all these long centuries, we’ve gone through just about all possible human scapegoats. We’ve had the Christians scapegoating the Jews, the Romans scapegoating the Greeks, the Athenians scapegoating the Spartans, the Japanese scapegoating the Chinese (now there’s a mismatch for you), the Nazis scapegoating the Jews, the Hindus scapegoating the Muslims, the Muslims scapegoating just about everybody, the American Christians scapegoating the homosexuals, whites scapegoating blacks, yellows scapegoating whites, whites scapegoating reds, and on and on and on.

If you want to get simplistic, it’s easy to see the vaunted panoply of human history as a long string of bullies looking for—and usually finding—somebody to pick on.

If patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, then the scoundrel’s war flag generally bears the image of this or that 97-pound weakling who is blamed for all the wrongs in the scoundrel’s world.

Think about it. In the last 2,000 years how many armies have the Jews assembled, how many armed crusades have the homosexuals mounted against their detractors?

You got a country or a religion and for whatever reason (boredom? greed?), you got an itch to fight? A peaceable kingdom is not enough for you?

No prob.

Select an enemy, preferably smaller—a lot smaller—than you. Demonize the chosen enemy in speeches, sermons, inflammatory tracts, and before long you’ve got a populace that’s mad as hell and isn’t going to take it anymore.

In that populace you’ll have a bunch of strapping, hormonally driven 18-25-year-old males who really, really want to fight. Conscript them, suit ‘em up in fine armor to catch all the girls’ eyes, and send ‘em off to war.

For the belligerent among us, it’s a scenario that’s worked well, time and again, across the centuries.

Only problem is that we live on a finite, fairly small planet which, as is now well-recognized, technology is rapidly turning into a village. Village-wise, the old scapegoating scenario just doesn’t work very well because it’s so hard to get all your preferred bad guys isolated in one area so that when you destroy them you don’t also destroy a lot of the rest of the village including a passel of your very own good guys.

But that’s the place we’re getting to pretty rapidly, planetarily speaking.

Sure, the demonizing is still going on.

The present rogue-American regime has pretty well satanized Muslims (and vice-versa—talk about another mismatch). And there’s probably going to be more homosexual blood spilled before the conservative Christians and other like-minded non-thinkers get tired of beating up on them.

But overall, as soon as the various current, tragic unpleasantnesses are resolved one way or another, we’re going to be plumb out of possible scapegoats.

Given the central role of scapegoatery (see above) in human history, what then?

Will some 22nd century George W. Bush or Osama bin Laden be content to try to actually govern wisely and well instead of tromping about the globe planting mines and bombing innocents?

Will the various bombastic religionists forego vengeance against their manifold enemies and suddenly embrace the unsaved with loving tolerance?

I don’t think so.

Which is why the UFO’s better land soon. Talk about the ultimate scapegoats! Why, they won’t even be human. And if, as seems likely, they turn out to be smarter than we are, well, you can imagine what homo sapiens’ super-patriot leaders will make of that. We’re talking something so far beyond the classic "Satan’s spawn" of the old days that our demagogues will have to think up a whole new vocabulary of demonization!

Give us one E.T. on the White House lawn and you’ve got enough new scapegoat potential to last another thousand years. Especially if the E.T. turns out to be homosexual with black skin, slanting eyes, a huge penis, and a religion we can’t make heads or tails of.

What a war cry that’ll give us: "Kill a queer chink nigger heathen from hell for Jesus!"

And if they don’t land soon? What then, eh? Maybe, finally, we’ll be forced to look carefully, long, and hard at ourselves and our own naked, bloody behavior, bare of the convenient, beribboned decoration provided by the dreaded, evil Other, and actually begin figuring out how to live in peace.