As they say, “all politics are local”. But what about the political nuances of relations with extraterrestrials?

I speak, of course, of the nascent field of “expolitics.” I was blissfully unaware that expolitics even existed until this morning, when my friend Rachel alerted me to story about how Paul Hellyer — Canada’s Minister of Defense from 1963 to 1967 — has officially requested that the Canadian government “hold public hearings on Exopolitics — relations with ‘ETs.” Hellyer is apparently convinced that aliens are regularly visiting our planet, that the government knows about this, and that the coverup is so profound that “the vast majority of U.S. officials and politicians” aren’t in the loop. Now, if you were a former high-level Defense official possessed of knowledge that aliens walk among us, what would you do? Run screaming with photographic proof to the media? Fire the proton torpedoes? Reverse the polarity?

Nope: Convene a multinational commission and figure out our policy response. Thus was born the first-ever Expolitics conference, held last September in Toronto, my hometown and a virtual magnet for the howlingly weird. One of the upsides of Canada’s famed reputation for tolerance is that the country has one of the highest ratios of UFO-investigators-to-regular-citizens of any nation on earth — so it probably makes sense that it would be the natural home for expoliticians. And with expolitics, holy moses does the rabbit hole go deep. Go to one of the main Expolitics web sites, and you’ll find an enormous stack of essays on the subject, including this one on “The Weaponization of Space and the Targetting of Extraterrestrial Vehicles”:

The national security threat posed by extraterrestrials is a covert one that exists through the classified agreements established by the secret government with some extraterrestrial races. The motivation of extraterrestrials that have entered into these agreements is very questionable and gives considerable cause for suspicion as to their overall intent. Certainly the great number of abductions that have occurred give rise to the ‘take over’ scenario promoted by Jacobs and other researchers.

I love it: Midwestern farmers are getting anal probes while these guys debate whether the agreements between the Shadow Government and aliens are, y’know, legal? For more fun, check out the essay written by expolitics expert Michael Salla on the “Typology of the Most Significant Extraterrestrial Races Interacting with Humanity”, in which he outlines 57 different races and their astropolitical motivations — including these reptilian dudes who totally roll twenties:

The most controversial ‘whistleblower’/’contactee’ reports concern an off-world ‘master Reptilian race’ described as the Draco-Reptilians who are claimed to originate from the Alpha Draconis star system which is 215 light years distant and was formerly the pole star. According to Alex Collier, the Draconians or Dracos have two main castes, the first of which is a warrior caste that are in the 7-8 foot range, who are apparently feared throughout the galaxy for their fighting abilities.

I believe I recently had my ass kicked by one of those in Everquest.

(Thanks to Rachel Sklar for this one!)