Do People Believe Crime Doesn’t Pay Anymore?

It’s getting hard to keep the faith.

I caught the movie Arrival on a random cable channel the other day. The movie is excellent, still, with a fantastic Amy Adams performance and a vibe of both menace and wonder that is intoxicating. (It’s no wonder director Denis Villeneuve was tasked with reviving both Blade Runner and Dune afterward, to smashing success.) I saw the movie with a friend of mine, when it came out on November 11, 2016, and I came out of the theater jazzed and excited the way one is when they’ve just seen a great movie.

My friend, though, didn’t have the same reaction. She liked the movie. But she was downright depressed.

“It won’t be like that anymore,” she said. “When the aliens come and we send our best scientists to talk with them, when all these professionals and geniuses put their heads together to figure out the right thing to do for the sake of humankind and the better angels of intergalactic commiseration … well, when Trump is President, it’ll never be like that again. He’d just shoot a nuke at them the minute he saw the spaceship.”

My friend could no longer get lost in a movie — to escape from reality — because reality was so bleak. To believe that we could communicate with extraterrestrials is to believe we are worthy creatures capable of…