Thu., Oct. 26, 11:33 AM ET Cambridge, Massachussetts
Neoconservative pundits William Kristol, Michael Ledeen, and Paul Wolfowitz today confirmed what a handful of people have long suspected: The President of the United States is a humanoid construct cobbled together in Kristol’s basement.
“You must admit, he’s a pretty convincing piece of work,” Wolfowitz said, playfully patting his drone on the shoulder at a press conference this morning at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology.
The achievement – fooling not only most of America but most of the world, for years – has drawn a round of hearty admiration from most roboticists, although a few eminent experts are less impressed by the accomplishment.
“Physically, I must admit that this….thing… is a remarkably convincing simulation of an actual person. But in designing it they seem to have forgotten what the ‘I’ in ‘A.I.’ stands for,” objected one computer scientist. “I must say, though, that if nothing else, at least this revelation allows me to renew my faith in human beings.”
Nitpicking did not dampen the mood of the three techno-wizards as they regaled reporters with the story of their amazing creation. The Bush robot – affectionately dubbed, “The Decidenator” – is the culmination of work done during a neoconservative research conference on “Selenoid Operating Controls for Promoting Unconditionally Pretaliatory-Interventionist Technology.” In layman’s terms, the goal of “pretaliatory-interventionist technology” is to usher in a new era of American greatness, to make the Land of the Free into a beacon of hope for the world.
Yet in truth the Project for A New American S.O.C.P.U.P.I.T. itself began much more humbly, like so many world-changing ideas – with a group of really smart think-tank employees having an enlightened conversation while insulated from the meaningless inconveniences of reality.
“We were chatting over cappuccino in the Decaf-Despot Coffeehouse about how well we could rule the planet, and then Kristol brought up the never-ending obstacle, ‘Yeah, but what kind of ding-a-ling would give clout to a trio of Jacobin keyboard-commandos with Napoleonic complexes?’ ” reminisced Ledeen.
“‘Right, right – no man is that irresponsible,’ I conceded at the time. ‘Come to think of it, no woman, either.'”
And so a light bulb came on, as Kristol explains: “It hit me like a ton of bricks. Talk about inspiration. I realized we could build a ding-a-ling. Our own ding-a-ling, a superior, electronic ding-a-ling with none of the vulnerability to common-sense that might handicap a human ding-a-ling of flesh-and-blood.”
But being only amateur roboticists with limited resources, they were compelled to improvise with some good-old Yankee-Doodle know-how.
“Well, when we got around to assembling the brain we had pretty much run out of parts and taxpayers’ money,” Wolfowitz said. “So we used the guts from one of those 1980’s Asteroids arcade games, and some stuffing from a beat-up old sofa that Mike was gonna toss.”
“And a half-eaten bacon-cheeseburger from White Castle that I couldn’t finish,” put in Kristol, admitting: “So strictly speaking, it’s not a ‘robot’ but a cyborg – for it does have organic components.”
The three acknowledge that this fly-by-night approach has led to some glitches, along with some anxious moments.
“Just prior to the 2000 presidential debate it froze up, and wouldn’t do anything except shoot smoke out the ears and hiss, ‘Free-dom,’ in a voice like Darth Vader.” said Ledeen. “We made it do shots of battery-acid to unfreeze its CPU. Luckily the debate was with Gore anyway, who would make a garage-door opener look like Cicero.”
Wolfowitz also shared some war-stories about the challenges of running a robotic presidency: “For the first month after September 11th it paced the corridors of the White House every night repeating the phrase, ‘Danger, Will Robinson!! Danger!!’ over and over again. And no matter what we tried, dogs still put their tails between their legs and snarled whenever it came into a room. I really think some of the Secret Service agents nearly caught on to us.”
“Especially when they caught you and Kristol in the Oval Office, tormenting the poor thing by playing Keep-Away with its head,” interjected Ledeen, light-heartedly rebuking his comrades.
Critics have objected that having US foreign policy dictated by an intellect derived from decaying circuitboards and leftover sandwiches may have some bearing on current problems in the Middle East. Others go even further, questioning whether neoconservatives themselves might bear some measure of responsibility for the quagmire in Iraq – charges which the pundits easily refute, by denying them.
“And I suppose if I had told Truman we needed to drop an atom-bomb on Japan, you’d hold me accountable for birth defects in Hiroshima,” snorted Kristol derisively.
Wolfowitz is more generous, if more melancholy. “Some people are just player-haters,” he sighed.
And as Ledeen noted: “We commanded the Decidenator to conquer and dominate, sure; but we didn’t command it to conquer and dominate badly.”
When asked by a reporter for its own opinion regarding neoconservatives distancing themselves from difficulties in Iraq, the unit merely turned to its creators and queried submissively: “Merrrp. Masters? Urrrk. With. Us? Or. Grzzztt! Against-Us?”
The three hurriedly assured the mandroid that the reporter fell into the “Us” category, thus sparing the journalist from being on the receiving end of the “hunter-killer” subroutine of the machine’s democracy program.
According to Kristol, Walt Disney Corporation is interested in purchasing the device for inclusion in “The American Adventure," a popular animatronic-show at Epcot Center.
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November 6, 2006
