If there were aliens, any government would love to tell the story. The people would instantly forget all their petty complaints and gaze toward the stars, while in fear supporting their government no matter what. The president who could first get a photo-op with an alien would be remembered for all time, no matter what else he had or hadn't done.
Are there aliens? "Millions of stars," we hear, but people always forget that there's also billions of years of time. Billions of years does the universe exist - scientists believe it is 12 to 14 billion years old at this point, and it will keep existing for at least that long. How long does an intelligent lifeform live? A million years? Let's say a million years. That's one thousandth of a billion, a blink of an eye in the universal timeline. And that blink of an eye is supposed to coincide with ours?
If you think about it, it's absurd.
Draw a line from London to Hong Kong - that is 8,252 miles. Times 3 that is 24,756 time units that will represent the millions of years the universe could exist - 24,756 million years. A third of a mile represents a million years. (In this case, well over half the timeline would have already passed by now. But it is likely that the universe will exist much longer than that.)
Now get a ball, and jump into a jet. Fly from London across Europe, across the Middle East, across East Asia, until you reach Hong Kong. Along the way, completely at random, you drop the ball, let it fall to the ground.
Now call a friend in London and tell him to travel the same route, but don't tell him where you dropped your ball. He travels across Europe, the Middle East and Asia, and like you he drops the ball somewhere along the line, not knowing where you did so - maybe in France, maybe in Greece, maybe somewhere near Iran, or in Tibet?
What are the odds of these two balls ending up within the same third of a mile along this distance?
Those are the odds of a million years of human life coinciding with a million years of alien life, in a universe that exists for about 24 756 million years. (And in reality, it will probably exist much longer.)