I’ll admit it: until recently, I had not taken demons seriously enough.
Like many Americans, I assumed that if demons were real, they would remain where they belong—in medieval paintings, heavy metal album art, and the more decorative passages of Revelation. I did not expect them to reenter public life through the office of the Vice President of the United States, delivered in the calm tone of a man discussing soybean tariffs or monetary policy.
And yet here we are. The Vice President has informed us that the unidentified things in the sky are not aliens, but demons. Not metaphorically. Not as one possible lens among many. Just demons. Which means that I, as a citizen, a father, and a man with at least a passing respect for governmental hierarchy, have no choice but to respond with the gravity this disclosure deserves. I am now living in a state of heightened infernal awareness.
This is not panic. Panic is erratic. Panic is sprinting into the yard with a flashlight and a crucifix purchased at a gift shop in Santa Fe. What I am practicing is preparedness—quiet, sober, suburban preparedness. For too long this country has focused almost exclusively on material threats: economic instability, cyberwarfare, foreign adversaries, microplastics, podcast hosts. Meanwhile, we have apparently left ourselves scandalously exposed to the possibility that glowing aerial phenomena are in fact demonic entities drifting over cul-de-sacs and chain restaurants.
Since receiving this information, I have begun implementing reasonable household measures. I have walked the perimeter of my home more than once, not because demons are bound by property lines, but because it feels important to project seriousness. I have become suspicious of unexplained drafts, emotionally ambiguous shadows, and sudden silence among birds. One corner of the house has been designated a provisional sanctified zone, though at present it contains little more than a flashlight, a folding chair, and a granola bar. Preparedness, after all, is a process.
I have also drafted a basic Family Demon Contingency Plan, which I believe every responsible American household should now possess. It includes several common-sense guidelines: do not open the door after dark unless the visitor appears to possess a stable and measurable body mass; do not respond to whispers from the laundry room; do not purchase antiques described as “haunted but charming”; do not engage strange lights over the backyard unless two adults are present and one of them is taking notes. Any child experiencing levitation is to report it immediately.
I did not seek this responsibility. I had errands. I had a life. I did not wake up aspiring to become a mid-level domestic coordinator for airborne spiritual threats. But once the Vice President suggests that the skies may be populated by demons, you cannot in good conscience continue living as though throw pillows and recessed lighting are a sufficient defense against cosmic malice. You adapt. I no longer look casually into mirrors after sunset. I have become more intentional about thresholds. I am reevaluating the spiritual vulnerability of open-concept floor plans. It is dawning on me that much of modern American design has been optimized for resale value and natural light, not resistance to principalities and powers.
Our ancestors, whatever else may be said of them, understood this. They knew a home was not merely a place to keep your belongings but a statement to the universe. There were symbols. There was iron. There were muttered phrases in dead languages. Nobody in the 14th century said, “Let’s remove all visual barriers between the kitchen and the den and just trust the energy.” We, by contrast, have video doorbells but no gargoyles, essential oil diffusers but no wards. We replaced protective folk ritual with clean lines and optimistic beige, and now, apparently, our reward is to be told by senior leadership that the sky may be haunted. I blame minimalism.
Naturally, I have begun assembling supplies. Nothing extreme. Candles. Batteries. A notebook. A more robust respect for Latin. I considered holy water, but the modern marketplace is flooded with spiritually branded products, and in times like these one must be discerning. The last thing any family needs is to discover, in the middle of an authentic demonic incident, that they have accidentally purchased an artisanal room spray marketed by a wellness influencer with no serious eschatological credentials.
This is why I believe the federal government must act—not with censorship or force, but with guidance. A pamphlet. A website. A calm, bipartisan document titled So Your Vice President Thinks UFOs Are Demons. Is that really too much to ask? Must every American family reinvent spiritual civil defense from scratch? Where is FEMA on this? Where are the public service announcements explaining the difference between a demonic incursion, a military drone, a sleep-deprivation episode, and whatever keeps happening in the Nevada desert? Where is the modest but reassuring federal seal for approved anti-possession materials? We prepare children for tornadoes with more administrative clarity than we prepare the nation for airborne infernal activity, and this feels like a gap.
And yet I write not in anger, but gratitude, because the Vice President has given us something rare in public life: clarity. Unhinged clarity, yes. Gift-shop-near-the-cathedral clarity. But clarity nonetheless.
“I don’t think they’re aliens. I think they’re demons.”
It is, in its own way, a perfect sentence, a small masterpiece of interpretive confidence. It should be bronzed and placed in a museum dedicated to the collapse of boundaries between governance, theology, and comment-section cosmology. It contains the full architecture of a particular American impulse: to encounter the unknown and immediately file it under the oldest supernatural category available.
And I confess, there is something almost moving about that level of certainty. Not admirable, exactly, but impressive in the way a man on a unicycle playing bagpipes is impressive. You may not want him managing complex systems, but you cannot deny the commitment. That, more than anything, is what has changed me. I am more alert now. I study the treeline. I do not entirely trust unexplained humming. I have begun mentally sorting unusual phenomena into four categories: weather, military, demonic, and other. I understand, at last, that the modern citizen must be prepared to pivot without warning from grocery shopping to light exorcism.
I did not choose this path. It descended upon me from above, and I will walk it. I will remain vigilant. I will keep my family safe. I will maintain a respectful but firm posture toward the lower heavens. And if some glowing object appears over my neighborhood tonight, pulsing with ancient malice and bureaucratically inconvenient implications, I will meet the moment as any patriotic American should: with cautious resolve, incomplete information, and a labeled storage bin full of emergency supplies purchased during a bout of semi-ironic spiritual escalation.
Because this is what the moment demands: not panic, but discernment, and perhaps a few more gargoyles.