Dream Boyz

When Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had dreams, they were visions of a better future for all humankind. When I have dreams, they’re just very strange narratives that leave me lying awake, wondering who it is that lives in my head at night.

Last night’s entry in the annual Academy Awards for Political Unconciousness went like this: I was an adviser to President Obama. My main function consisted in saying two things: “Sir, I really wouldn’t do that” and, “No, sir — that would be unconstitutional.” The President would smile back — not with his shit-eating, speechifying smile that always seemed to say, “You people finally get it now, don’t you?,” but with a grin that said, “these fuckers have no idea what I’m sending their way.

“Now watch this drive…”

Then he’d tell me not to worry so much. “I got this, Jack. It’s all gonna be fine.”

I would mutter and fret my way back to my office, which was a broom closet off the third hallway to the Oval Office, wired for worldwide telecommunications. Most broom closets are, these days.

The Constitution was something we talked about a lot, the President and I. My old-fashioned view of civil liberties wasn’t flexible enough for a modern age, he would say. He had it under control, he would say. There was a long-term plan. It was all rolling into place.

“Remember,” he said, “when I said I wouldn’t detain any real Americans indefinitely, even though Congress practically begged me to by forcing an indefinite detention clause into my defense budget during wartime?”

I grumbled something about it always being “time of war” lately.

“Don’t worry,” the President said, adding a broad, Palin-style wink to his rakish grin, “I got that covered, too.”

What could possibly go wrong?

The next time I poked my head out of the broom closet, President Obama’s praetorian guard, the soldiers of the “Old Guard” Third U.S. Infantry Regiment, had performed a bloodless takedown of the U.S. Congress.

Every Representative and Senator who had argued or voted for indefinite detention of U.S. citizens, on any committee or in a full session, was head-bagged, flex-cuffed and dragged off to Guantanamo Bay. It took a while, but they finally found Speaker Boehner hiding in the interns’ lavatory, sobbing real tears for once.

I ran to the President’s office, where a pair of burly young squaddies promptly pinned my arms. They put a knee in my back and a rifle at the base of my skull. Squinting up sideways, I recognized Specialist Wallace from Mosul, now a staff sergeant.

“Hey, man, I thought you were dead.”

“Yeah, me, too.”

“No, no, it’s okay,” the President called out from behind his gleaming desk. “Let him in, guys. He’s with us.”

I stumbled into the executive sanctum, blinking like a cave worm in the light.

“Sir, I really don’t think…”

He spread his hands wide, palms up, interrupting me with his trademark, for-the-public smile. “Didn’t I tell you, Jack?

“No real Americans.”