"“Ancient Aliens” deployed its anti-scientism earlier than the G.O.P., and beat out Donald Trump’s beliefs about birth certificates by a full two years. Both they and the show rely on an attitude that Hannah Arendt called “vulgarity,” which, “with its cynical dismissal of respected standards and accepted theories carried with it a frank admission of the worst and a disregard for all pretenses,” something that viewers, whether of Fox News or “Ancient Aliens,” take not as a criminal condescension, but which they “mistake for courage and a new style of life.” The courage of “Ancient Aliens” lies in telling its truths in the face of the “scientists” and “mainstream historians” that Clotworthy sets up and knocks down. It is brave in the same way that Trump is brave when he spits on the establishment, that Jeffrey Lord and the other conservative hacks are brave when they spit into the wind. And as I slogged through the show’s twelve seasons, that vulgarity became a full-on assault against truth, something as absurd to see on the History Channel as it has been in the White House."