The Parliament of Ghosts

We’ve done it, America. We’ve reached a deal to extend the debt ceiling. As a member of the OVERSEER corps, these long hard days of bipartisan compromise have finally come to fruition and I can now present to you the details of this unprecedented legislation:

• Two trillion dollars of government spending will be cut – These cuts will largely come in the form of simple waste elimination. For example, do we really need a Department of Education and a Department of Justice? Instead, efficiency will be created by consolidating all departments into the Department of Departments, which, since they would have to change the least amount of stationary, will be run by the Department of Defense, who will be trusted to impartially distribute the money they get to whatever they want.

The Aggro Crag's existence is actually mandated by the U.S. Constitution. Look it up!

• Medicare and Social Security will not be cut – However, there is a ‘trigger’ provision wherein a special deficit reduction committee will be formed and the programs will be cut if they fail to make it through a series of increasingly difficult physical challenges that finally culminates in an attempt to scale the formidable Aggro Crag.

• Medicare and Social Security will be cut – On the condition that Republicans feel like they should be cut.

• There will be no cuts to any other important social programs – However, there is another ‘trigger’ provision in the bill where if the Democrats and Republicans fail to reach a deal by November to cut conservative programs or raise taxes, then the cuts will all come from important social programs the Democrats like.

• Obama’s signature health care reform will not be repealed – Because the Republicans forgot to ask for that.

If you find yourself satisfied with this compromise for even a moment, a puppy much like this one will die.

• Nobody will be happy with the results of this bill – This is not a projection, but an actual part of the deal as it exists. Both sides agree that they hate everything about this compromise: the Democrats hate that they had to agree to cuts to everything important to them, and the Republicans hate that Democrats still exist. The President hates that he had to make all the cuts he wanted to from the beginning of the negotiations, and the Tea Party hates that BLACK PEOPLE. In the event that anyone, anywhere, is discovered to be pleased by the outcome of these negotiations, they will be given a puppy, that will then be taken from them and drowned in front of them. In the event that this does not cause the person to suffer but instead gives them an erection, they will automatically win re-election to Congress.

• The debt ceiling will be raised by over two trillion dollars – Everyone is unsure how this provision got into the bill. The most popular theory is that somebody used an old sheet of paper when printing out the bill that had this on the back of it, but at this point somebody would have to run to Office Depot to get a new thing of toner and, well, it’s just as simple to leave it in.

So those of you who were following Spacklecube at all are, at this point, almost certainly not doing so any longer, because I may have accidentally stopped updating for a couple of weeks. I am not trying to say that I am the only person on Spacklecube anyone follows, I am simply saying that I was one of the few updating fairly regularly each week, and also I am the best. Humility aside, I have a very good excuse for my sudden absence, and like most of the problems with our country, it’s Barack Obama’s fault.

See, I was a pretty fervent supporter of Obama back when he was lying to everyone about the things he would do if he became president, and I ended up signing a lot of petitions and fake birth certificates and naturalization forms for Kenyans and what-have-you, and I guess that, at some point down the line, I must have checked a box I shouldn’t because suddenly I find a black bag over my head and next thing I know I’m in a dingy basement manacled to a desk with some paper in front of me. Turns out that the EULA for one of the many grassroots sites devoted to spreading the important message that Obama was running a grassroots campaign using iPhone apps or whatever legally obligated me to be drafted into a private force at the command of POTUS. I kinda figured that technically he ran the military, but whatever–that’s not the point.

The point is, I had inadvertently signed up for part of Obama’s Volunteer Emergency Reserves for Supervising Executive Espionage on Republicans, which was apparently designed to figure out who should be put in his massive socialist re-education camps, but was now being used to fill out minor bureaucratic positions when most of the executive branch was devoted to working on the president’s re-election campaign, which has apparently been the case since Februrary 2009.

Anyway, I had been drafted into the OVERSEER corps to negotiate on behalf of the White House for these debt ceiling negotiations that have been going on. Apparently, if we don’t raise the debt ceiling, we will all be killed by Alan Greenspan’s vengeful ghost or something? I don’t know, and, more importantly, I didn’t have to know, because, for the brief moment I saw David Axelrod before he went back to raising money from Goldman Sachs executives to finance commercials about how grassroots Obama’s campaign is, I was given a flowchart and told that if I deviated from it I would be executed. I complained, but when I read the EULA I had agreed to by visiting the Obama 2008 campaign website, I realized I had given them that right.

So that’s what I’ve been doing for the past two weeks, negotiating with various officials on behalf of the White House in an attempt to raise the debt ceiling. Since that hasn’t given me much time to work on Spacklecube, I figure I can just post the flowchart I was given and use that as an update. After writing a 500+ word introduction.

I’m not very good at saving myself work.

CLICK FOR THE FULL VERSION

It’s been a little while since I last updated with anything that wasn’t one of my cool videos.  In fact, Spacklecube as a whole has been kind of dead, with only David’s truly insane dreamworld and Alex’s incredibly banal dreamworld breaking up the boredom.  For my part, I’ve been busy, and unlike some people, I don’t have a cushy office job where I can just sit around all day and not update Spacklecube.  No, I do the work of a real man: trying to justify my existence to myself.  Well I have managed to stop doing that for almost TWO WHOLE HOURS and now I can present you with some of that brand new Spacklecube content you have all come to know and love with:

10 Amendments in the Renewed USA PATRIOT Act You Might Not Have Known About

could you honestly say you would give a shit if these things got waterboarded

1. The Sessions-Baucus Amendment legally redefines terrorists from “enemy combatants” to “a fairly persistent species of spider,” which means they no longer have human rights. Bush Lawyer John Yoo long pushed for this provision, now embraced by the Obama administration. His legal basis for the argument was that, “nobody cares about what happens to spiders, because they are fucking terrifying.”

2. After a difficult weeks-long procedural battle the Paul-Sanders Amendment was adopted. This amendment specifies that provisions of the PATRIOT Act can only be used on suspected terrorists.

3. After a 3-minute meeting in the White House between Lindsay Graham, Barack Obama, and Harry Reid, a rider was added to the Paul-Sanders Amendment defining a “terrorist” as “an individual who has done something that may or may not be bad anywhere, ever,” and “suspected” as “literally anyone.” After meeting with Chuck Schumer, the subclause, “who makes less than $1,000,000 in pre-tax revenue per year” was added to the provision. The amendment was passed while Senators Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders were waiting at the park behind the Capitol Building where they had been told that pretty girl they have a crush on wanted to talk to them.

seriously, fuck this guy

4. The Feinstein-McConnell amendment adds provisions on leaking classified information. The Subversive Nationals Implicated in Trafficking Classified or Harmful Executive Secrets Get Secret Trials, Interment, Two in the Chest, and Hospital Emergency Services Amendment prescribes harsh penalties for anyone accused of leaking classified information. When asked about the SNITCHES Get STITCHES Amendment, Sen. Feinstein said, “Bitches best watch who they talk to, ‘fore they find themselves in solitary confinement six feet deep.”

5. The Lieberman Amendment requires that somebody, anybody, pay attention to this sad little sack of pig excrement.

6. The Default Classification Amendment now instantly classifies all use of the English language by government employees. Any use of the English language in a building where “government business is conducted” is immediately classified as SECRET/NOFORN. Any conversations with the President or White House Press Conferences are classified as TOP SECRET.  The sponsors of this bill are unknown, as their sponsorship was retroactively classified by the passage of the bill.

a FOIA request can be filed to read the constitution but unfortunately FOIA is also classified now

7. A rider added by Sen. Inhofe expands the Default Classification Amendment to include the constitution.  All public versions of the Constitution now read “We the people, [REDACTED].” Citation of the Constitution in open session of congress can now be prosecuted under the Espionage Act.

8. The Look Out Behind You Amendment specifies that the American public be informed if the calls are coming from INSIDE THE HOUSE!

9. The Huge Subsidies to Bribe Senators Who Pretend to be Principled Amendment, also known as the Lincoln-Nelson Amendment, specifies that Blanche Lincoln and Ben Nelson be allowed to “back up a truck to Fort Knox and take whatever they want as long as they stop talking to the media right now.”

10. The Internet List-Based Comedy Amendment specifies that “lists of items intended for either comedic effect, the provocation of discussion, or both” are “incredibly fucking lazy” and that anyone who produces one “should just fucking kill themselves.” A rider was added noting that, “if Google would change their algorithm so suicide increased a site’s page rank, we could solve this problem overnight.”

At the end of The Bridge on the River Kwai, there’s a moment where Col. Nicholson, played by Alec Guinness, realizes the enormity of what his obsession has done to him. The bridge to which he has devoted so much is, as it has always been, a tool of the enemy. By protecting it, he has betrayed his allies. His singular focus has blinded him to the larger world, and the ramifications for that become clear as he hears the whistle of the approaching train. “What have I done?” he asks.

* * * * *

Our response, as Americans, to the death of Osama Bin Laden, is saddening but not entirely unexpected. The action movie mentality that has pervaded our entire War on Terror demands a climax in which the villain is made to pay for his crimes. That’s what we’ve gotten now, after ten long years, and it’s even been delivered like a true action movie climax, with Navy SEALS storming a terrorist compound and killing the leader in a firefight. The problem is, the denouement is indefinite, and the results of our actions over the past 10 years will not disappear as the end credits roll.

* * * * *

Obama’s announcement was a political speech. It wasn’t an address to the nation about the accomplishment of a long-held security goal, it was the launch of his 2012 re-election campaign. That’s why he spent so much time telling us how much we have lost, and how much we have sacrificed in the name of this war. He made it about our sacrifices, how great we are as a nation, and how just. Clearly, if Bin Laden was the bad guy, whoever kills him must be the good guy, right?

The whole speech was patronizing, and only compounded by the reactions to it. When a shot of the crowd gathered outside of the White House briefly showed two stereotypical “bros” chest bumping and high-fiving one another, I immediately thought of Obama’s words about how “Americans understand the costs of war.” Do we really? Some of us do, certainly, but overall the vast majority of us have been insulated from these costs. Would the people out on the streets be celebrating this event like a sports victory if they actually did know the costs of war?

Of course, it’s not entirely our fault. The costs have been hidden from us, intentionally, or levied against the vulnerable and defenseless of our nation. The caskets of returning soldiers were not allowed to be seen. The responsibility for our national debt was laid at the feet of the working class. The deaths of civilians in other nations were intentionally muddied so that when the truth finally came out, the news cycle had moved on, if it had even bothered to pay attention in the first place.

* * * * *

8,813 – That’s a conservative estimate of how many civilians have been killed in Afghanistan since September 11. The final death toll for September 11 was 2,997. We’ve almost revisited threefold upon the population of Afghanistan what was visited upon us on that awful day. We don’t have to worry about that, though, because our cause was right. We know what sacrifice is, because that’s what we’re told.

Sacrifice is something we do to other people.

* * * * *

That figure doesn’t even include civilian casualties in Pakistan. Or Iraq. Or Yemen. Our actions over the past decade have cost nearly one million civilian lives in the Middle East. Imagine what you would do to somebody responsible for the death of your mother or father, your wife or your husband, your daughter or son. If every single innocent who has died in the Middle East has just one person who cares for them the way you care for your loved ones, consider how many potential terrorists we have created. Consider how much they would hate us, and consider if you could even blame them for it.

In the process of hunting down and killing Bin Laden, our various detours have undoubtedly caused more people to hate us than the insane rantings of that fundamentalist lunatic ever could. No wonder he had a mansion in Pakistan. He could retire, because we were doing his work for him.

* * * * *

Omar Khadr turns 25 in September.  It will be his 9th birthday spent in Guantanamo bay—over a third of his life. When he is finally released, over half of his life will have been spent imprisoned by the United States, by us.

When Khadr was 15 years old, he was involved in a firefight between American troops and Afghani militants. He is alleged to have thrown a grenade that killed one of those soldiers.  Being blinded by shrapnel and shot twice would seem to be more punishment than any 15-year-old would deserve for an act of debatable criminality—the U.S. was an invading force, after all—but it seems that’s not nearly enough punishment for us.

First, he was taken to Bagram Air Force base and in all likelihood tortured. It is alleged that he was denied pain medication for his gunshot wounds, and even that he was intentionally denied surgery that could have prevented the loss of sight in his left eye. From Bagram, he was taken to Guantanamo Bay and likely tortured again.  He participated in hunger strikes as the government worked on their case against him, the first trial of a child soldier in the modern era, for the crime of throwing a grenade on a battlefield.

Khadr recently plead guilty to the charges against him in exchange for an eight year prison sentence. But when the government has made it clear they believe you can be detained indefinitely, can any plea bargain that results in less than life imprisonment be genuine?

How sick and twisted must a society be when it looks at someone like Omar Khadr and sees not someone who needs help, but someone who deserves punishment?

* * * * *

This, of course, changes nothing.  It’s been a consistent refrain in the discussions of Bin Laden’s death but never followed up on with the obvious question: if this changes nothing, why did we do it? The only answers that make any sense are the least flattering. We did it for revenge, for pride, maybe even for politics. We didn’t do it to make ourselves or the world safer.

* * * * *

So, we see the death of Bin Laden and we celebrate, because we cannot see the death and destruction our obsession has wrought. It is kept far from us, away from our sight, and what little does make it to us is hidden or obfuscated. The sacrifices we do encounter are ephemeral concepts like liberty and justice, things we don’t realize the value of until we need them—and by then it’s too late. We’ve also made it possible, and even easy to ignore the chaos and destruction we’ve created.

We need to stop ignoring it. We need to ask ourselves, “What have we done?”

We won’t like the answer, but what we learn will be worth it.