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Can’t We all Just Get Along?

Can’t We all Just Get Along?

Last updated on: June 16, 2014 at 9:19 am by William Hamblin

Can’t We all Just Get Along? 2014-06-16T09:19:31-07:00 William Hamblin

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A friend of mine sent me this interesting new report:

Sunday, July 15, 2014

Republican’s Modest Proposal Risks Eviction From Party

Scranton (New Jersey) Tribulation and Coupon Saver, A-1

(REUTERS) Pamela Printzmetal, a member of the Republican Party, has cried foul over reports that the party may expel her.

Printzmetal has been a long and vocal advocate for the addition of a plank—advocating the forcible collectivization of agriculture—to the Republicans’ party platform.

Party leaders and rank and file have been overwhelmingly opposed to the notion. Undeterred, Printzmetal assembled a small group of self-declared “party delegates,” and announced her intention to seek access to an October 2013 delegates’ meeting during the party caucus. When informed by the Republican Party that she would not be admitted, Printzmetal vowed to come anyway, declaring that she and her unelected fellows intended to “demonstrate that we are ready and able to be caucus delegates,” though none have been elected to that post according to party regulations. Printzmetal, her followers, and several television cameras which just happened to be in the area were turned away from the meeting.

As the April 2014 caucus meeting approached, Printzmetal again indicated her intention to attend the delegates’ meeting. She encouraged other non-delegates to also attend, and distributed colorful posters reminding them that this was an excellent opportunity “To face down class enemies and running dogs—both literally and figuratively!”

In a public and private messages from party leadership, Printzmetal was asked to cease and desist from her plans. Republican leaders indicated that her plank was currently an unacceptable option, and urged her to avoid creating a disturbance at the delegates’ meeting and distracting from the important party business to be conducted. She ignored these requests, and now says she inexplicably faces ejection from the party.

“It caught me completely by surprise,” she declared, adopting the look of a deer about the meet the blade of a snowplow during a solar eclipse. “My local party chairperson told me that I was no longer allowed to spread my economic theories using party buildings or stationary, and I wasn’t to represent myself as a member of the Republican party in good standing. He told me if I didn’t disclaim my public calls for the forced collectivization of all farmland in the United States, I might be ejected from the party.”

“So,” she concluded, “I thought we’d simply agreed to disagree about economic theory. I could never have seen this coming.”

Printzmetal has declined to meet with party leaders to discuss her status, saying that although she was happy to make the journey twice from Snowflake, Arizona to attend the delegates’ meeting in Scranton, New Jersey to which she had been told she would not be admitted, it is simply too costly for her to travel from Scranton to Snowflake to meet with party leaders. “That’s an awfully long way to go for something with a predetermined outcome,” she observed.

“I’m heartbroken,” Printzmetal confessed. “I was born into a Republican family, and I’ve been a Republican all my life. I believe deeply in the principles of Republicanism, including the violent nationalization of the means of production and the need for the Worker’s State to raise all children in kibbutzim.”

“After all,” she continued, “This attempt by a jack-booted party leadership shows they simply can’t tolerate differences of opinion. Being a Republican isn’t about accepting a certain view of the world and its economic relationships. It’s not about a philosophical stance toward right and wrong in human affairs. It isn’t an organization where participation is voluntary. It’s really more of a genetic sort of thing. Next they’ll be telling me I don’t have an inalienable right to be a member of Sam’s Club. It’s crazy talk.”

Other agree with Printzmetal. Julia Ramsey-Hunt, director of what she calls the People’s Republican Center for Dialectical Materialism, called the Party leadership’s threat to Printzmetal’s membership “medieval.”

“It’s a sad day,” said Ramsey-Hunt, “I mean—except for the fact that this is a private entity instead of a government church with unchecked power, the multiple public and private warnings to her of the consequences of her continued protesting, the complete absence of the risk of economic disenfranchisement if she’s expelled, the lack of any real possibility of vigilante acts to get her to comply, the freedom to speak for herself and provide evidence in the party disciplinary process, the right for her to call witnesses in her own behalf and examine the witnesses and evidence against her, the fact that Printzmetal could form her own party if she wanted to, the reality that the Republican Party can’t compel her to meet with them or even acknowledge their instructions, the fact that they have no right or intent to seize her property or money, and the near certainty that there will be no judicial use of torture—except for all that, this scenario is exactly like the Middle Ages. The parallels are chilling.”

Printzmetal sees the case as a clear threat against her right of free speech. “I haven’t taught false economic ideas,” she said. “I haven’t taught economic ideas at all. All I’ve done is speak the truth: the bourgeoisie need to be put up against the wall when the world Proletarian Revolution comes to usher in a Workers’ Utopia. I thought we were supposed to speak the truth in the Republican Party. What are they afraid of?”

Printzmetal also noted that, given the well-known stranglehold monopoly which the Republican Party has on the media, the Internet, social media, and all the nation’s printing presses, she didn’t see much chance that her right of free speech could be salvaged if she is, in fact, excluded from the party’s membership rolls.

J Swift contributed to this report.

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