Joe Biden had called a press conference at short notice. He was flanked by Nancy Pelosi and Kamala Harris. There was much excitement in the air. Was it about Taiwan, about Russia? Is it about inflation? Why were there no White House staffers milling with the reporters? They were ususally there much before Joe, “softening” the press. Joe is prone to making gaffs. He is also prone to going off-script. It is the job of the WH staffers to prepare the press about such mishaps and do damage control before damage occurred. But this time it was different. Instead of the staffers, there were democratic party officials standing around with an arrogant air. To all nudging about the likely Presidential announcement, they just said, “It is something important.” It has to be important if the POTUS calls the press at short notice.
Joe appeared with the air of a boxer who had just devised a punch that will knock out the mightiest opponent. We have to make only one brief announcement, he said. One could feel the weight of silence as Joe waited to let that sink in. The reporters were incredulous; ‘we’ meant that the bombshell will not be from the White House. Are Joe and Kamala resigning together, paving the way for Pelosi to take over as President, as the Constitution says? Some reporters were already dreaming of telling their grandchildren half-a-century later that they were present when that momentous event took place, a first in history. Others were thinking of writing a book on the singular event.
Joe moved away from the lectern and Pelosi moved in. All the dreams were dashed; the Preisdent has to make the announcement himself if he intends to resign. It is about the Party, one reporter at the back whispered loudly. Pelosi cleared her throat and thanked the reporter. Well guessed. Yes, it is about the Party. We have decided to rename the Democratic Party. What! The world’s oldest active political party that is just six years short of two centuries since its founding. Your cannot do that to such hoary tradition. Some reporters, the left leaning ones, were crying. I hope the new name has something to do with being progregressive, liberal, one moaned wiping his nose. The few right-leaning reporters, Biden did not invite most of them, were smirking; the fig-leaf is about to drop.
Pelosi again cleared her throat and said, it is now Freedom Party. What differrence does it make, shouted the reporter at the back who had correctly anticipated earlier? Pelosi elaborated, “Democratic” is becoming a much abused and misused word with Xi and Putin, Kim and Castro all claiming to be democratic. Our party is based on the quintessential part of being democratic – Freedom. The Party supports freedoms of all kinds and our opponents, who call themselves Republicans, oppose all those freedoms. By the way, it is time for you to ask Trump why he is not changing the name of his party when China says it is a Republic, as do Russia, North Korea, Cuba, Turkey and all the rogues’ gallery of nations. Anyway, we called this presser at short notice so that America’s rogue Party does not grab the name “Freedom”.
What are the freedoms you support, asked a conservative reporter. Since you ask what is obvious to “our” reporters, let me list these for you. We support the freedom of children to change their gender without the consent of their parents. We support the freedom of teachers in their endeavour to support this freedom for children, even for toddlers. We support transgenders in their right to go to women’s prisons and women’s washrooms. The Republicans allege that these transgenders commit rapes in women’s prisons and washrooms. That shows their lack of understanding of the very concept of freedom. Freedom includes freedom to rape and be raped. It is an individual’s freedom to decide and nobody should decide it for the individual by excluding the other gender. We support the freedom of transgenders to participate in women’s sports. Why should we not; we have more transgenders than Russia and China. The day our support for this freedom is adopted by the International Olympics Committee, all the medals in women’s events shall be ours. If the unpatriotic Republicans do not rejoice at this prospect, it is for you to ask them.
By now, Pelosi was in her true element, fully pumped up to take on the Republicans. We oppose oil and gas because we support the freedom of Amerricans to walk and cycle. We support the freedom of auto-workers to shift to making clean cycles instead of dirty cars. Even electric car-making is dirty work because these have dirty batteries. We support the tribes of the First Nation in their demand to be free of oil pipelines because, in any case, the tribes do not have cars. Most of them do not have even cycles. We are waiting for cars to vanish from American roads so that we can give cycles to the tribes. Giving just now with all these dangers on the roads will be cruel and may make our party liable.
We support the freedom of women to get pregnant when they want and to get rid of the pregnancy whenever they want, till the time of actual birth and maybe, even thereafter. Republican call the simple procedure as murder of the foetus. If it is that, so be it; we prefer murder of the silent, not-yet-a-voter foetus to the murder of freedom of loud, voting women. We support the freedom of IRS to raid homes to find out about unpaid taxes so that we can have more people living on the streets, people who do not have any unpaid taxes. We support the freedom to snort, inject or gulp whatever one wants and end this draconian criminalization of drugs that simply provide recreation for the average American. We support freedom for the Americans, who fall foul of the law, with our slogan, “no jail, no bail”. We support freedom for the night prowlers and muggers by our slogan, “defund the police”. We support every prisoner’s freedom from shackles and bars and we support their freedom to convert the hated prisons into re-education, I mean, recreation centres where physical comforts and recreation drugs will ensure for the former convicts the freedom to be happy . We support freedom for the Democratic, err, the Freedom Party to ensure all this without interference from the unelected judges by putting more of freedom-loving judges on the Federal Supreme Court. The Republicans complain that we want to “pack” the Court. Yes, we want to pack the court with the idea of freedom.
Joe moved back to the lectern. Since Nancy has answered all the questions that you wanted to ask, now you have the freedom to go to the Republicans and ask them when they are changing the name of their party as “Freedom from Trump” Party.
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