Inauthenticity is endemic in American politics today. The political backrooms where I spent much of my career were just as benighted as my personal life equally crowded with shadowy strangers and compromises truths I hoped to deny. I lived not in one closet but in many.
Should we find a second form of life right here on our doorstep we could be confident that life is a truly cosmic phenomenon. If so there may well be sentient beings somewhere in the galaxy wondering as do we if they are not alone in the universe.