To address the question of extraterrestrial visitors directly, I'd say I'm not aware of sufficient evidence to rationally warrant that belief, let alone the grand astrotheological conspiracy that they've been manipulating our species for thousands of years. However, it might be worthwhile to ponder the possibility, to err on the side of caution and to prepare for the worst-case scenario.

Paranoid conspiratorial-thinking is a thing, though. It was recognized at least as early as Richard Hofstadter's 1963 article, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," but it's been exacerbated by the internet, social media, and postmodern cynicism and relativism. So I'd say there are responsible ways of pondering scary sci-fi scenarios and there are irresponsible ways of doing so.

Stephen Colbert put his finger on one of the irresponsible ones when he made his point about truthiness to George W. Bush's face. We shouldn't take the likes of Bush as a model for how to think. Bush was Cheney's dupe, regardless of what Bush felt in his gut when he was performing his Texan swagger.

Nor should we follow the "proles," as you call the unenlightened masses, when it comes to philosophical matters. Their beliefs may be automated by popularity contests, so their earnestness is irrelevant (because they're not existentially authentic creatures).

My question about earnestness, though, was just whether the belief that aliens have visited our planet is currently rationally justified. Again, we can still ponder the question even if there's insufficient evidence, but we should be keeping track of the question's epistemic status so we don't get lost in hysteria.

Regarding whether we can trust reason, I was following up on what you said in your initial comment: "When we intellectualize it, codify it, moralize it, the division begins and becomes entrenched in a sports like arena of endless debate, thus perpetuating the very thing that we are supposedly trying to understand. This global non-human Hegelian Dialectic mind fuck has been played out since the beginning of recorded times and anyone who has ever warned humans about it has been destroyed. Let's sit with this for a minute without comment. Hmmm. Aliens?"

My point was that if the conspiracy includes the idea that the all-powerful aliens implanted reason in us to lead us astray, we're likely screwed. That scenario is very close to Gnosticism, the aliens being the Archons. The Gnostics sought esoteric passwords and secret knowledge to save them from the conspiracy against the human race, as Thomas Ligotti called it. Anyway, I don't think it makes sense to write off reason entirely in the Zen manner. Reason is a limited tool, but it points in many directions as led by the imagination and by leaps of faith.

You interpreted some of my statements as thought-terminating clichés. But I was trying to assess whether we're dealing with real thoughts in this cynical postmodern context. Thinking is one thing, and ranting or rapping is another. My old blog that I started in 2011, where I wrote for years before I switched to Medium, used to be called "Rants Within the Undead God" (link below), so I know something about the difference between thinking and ranting.

Ranting is spewing a speculative stream-of-consciousness. It's a performance like those free-form improvised poems. It can be fun and entertaining, but it's not the same as critical thinking. I do both in my writing, though. I go off on tangents now and again, but I try to keep in mind the logic of my worldview, the one I've built up by my more considered judgments.

Anyway, this is indeed a thought-provoking discussion. Maybe I should write something on the social implications of a secret alien invasion.

http://rantswithintheundeadgod.blogspot.com/2013/02/map-of-rants.html