Political Satire: Having trouble surviving these times? You’re not alone. Join us in columnist John F. Di Leo’s exploration of an alternate universe, where we imagine the impossible:
Joe Buckstop, an aging, corrupt old fool, somehow becomes president in his basement, and every night, an aide has to bring him his soup and discuss the events of the day as he prepares to receive his nightly meds…
Dateline, February 24. Begin Transcript:
“Good evening, boss! How about some soup?”
“What’s that?”
“I have your soup, sir! Mushroom, sir!”
“Rush Room? Come on, Man! I’m not going to a Rush Room!”
“Beg your pardon, sir?”
“Look, I don’t care what I said about uniting last month, I’m not going to a Rush Room! Those people don’t like me! They quote laws and numbers and things…. They demand results… I hate those people!”
“Err, umm, Rush passed away last week, sir. I wasn’t recommending that you go to a Rush Room, sir.”
“Then why did you say to?”
“Mushroom, sir. I said your soup is mushroom. Cream of Mushroom, sir.”
“Well why didn’t you say so? Don’t think I’ve had that in a while. Sounds good.”
“Here you go, sir!”
“Are there crackers?”
“Of course, sir, I just got ’em out of the cracker barrel myself!”
“Oh, we can’t go there either!”
“Beg your pardon, sir?”
“We can’t go to the Cracker Barrel! That’s a Republican chain!”
“Umm, yes sir, I know, sir… I meant, I just took them out of the cracker barrel upstairs, sir. The big tin in the kitchen that they keep your salted crackers in, that’s all. I didn’t go to the restaurant.”
“Oh. Good. Hmm… This is good. I should have mushroom soup more often.”
“Well, glad you like it, sir. Mushrooms are great.”
“Good soup. Always feel crummy after a vitamin shot. They just gave me one before you arrived. Soup helps. This is good soup. Almost makes up for my day.”
“Oh? Bad day, sir?”
“When isn’t it a bad day? Damn Congress.”
“Oh? What happened in Congress, sir? Republicans causing trouble again, sir?”
“No, they can’t do anything. This was our own Democrats. Our side. Dammit.”
“Oh? What did they do today, sir?”
“I got a letter from the House saying they wanna take away my football. The bums.”
“Sir? Maybe they’re right. I mean, you are 78, sir. That’s a bit old to play football, sir.”
“What? Too old?”
“Well, sure. I mean, unless you’re playing the Browns. Or the Bears.”
“What? No! No, I’m not talking about the game. The football, the nuclear football, the briefcase with the launch codes in it!”
“OH, I see. Who wants to take it away, sir?”
“Jimmy Panetta. From California.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about one minor congressman from California. The rest of the House has probably never even heard of him, sir.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“It’s not like the guy has allies on a crazy effort like this, sir.”
“Oh, he does. 30.”
“Beg your pardon, sir?”
“Thirty allies. There were 31 signatures on the letter. Turncoats. Bums.”
“Oh, well, where’s the ringleader from, sir?”
“Carmel by the Sea, Monterey, Salinas. He represents that stretch along the Pacific they call the Central Coast.”
“Sounds nice, sir.”
“Yeah. He should stay there.”
“Well, look at the bright side, sir. If there’s ever a nuclear war, his part of California will break off into the sea, and he won’t be able to cause you any trouble anymore, sir!”
“What’s that?”
“Oh, um, sorry, sir. Just kidding, sir.”
“You don’t kid about nuclear war, young man. Ever.”
“Right, sir. Of course, sir. So, um, what did the letter say, sir?”
“It said that it’s dangerous to have the nuclear power in just one politician’s hands. That the vice president and speaker, at least, should all sign on to using nuclear weapons.”
“Why, sir? Did they give a reason?”
“Yeah, they talked about how a lot of people thought that Nixon and Trump were going loony and erratic at the end of their terms.”
“Well, sir, you’re just at the beginning of yours, so we should have lots of time!”
“Come on, Man! I’m in worse shape than Nixon or Trump ever were, you know that! … (don’t tell anybody…)”
“Oh, of course not, sir. Never, sir.”
“They think before we can launch nukes, even in a response, we need a council with a bunch of politicians. It’s insane.”
“Well, sir, that sounds reasonable, doesn’t it, sir?”
“NO it’s not reasonable! Think about it. If we’re thinking about launching, it’s because nukes have already been launched. Moscow or Tehran or Beijing have already fired hundreds of nukes at us. We only have a couple minutes to retaliate before it’s too late.”
“Tehran and Beijing, sir? I thought they weren’t really a threat, sir?”
“Oh, don’t be stupid. Of course they’re a threat. Every weapon they have is aimed at us.”
“But, um, but, I thought you got along with them? I thought you wanted to make friends with them?”
“Well, sure, but that’s just for me, and my friends, you know… they could still fire on us. They could still go to war with us.”
“I don’t understand, sir.”
“This is Washington. You take care of your family, you take care of your friends, you take care of your cronies. But in the end, China still wants to reduce us to rubble.”
“I never thought you’d say that, sir.”
“Neither did I. Hm.. What the hell was in that vitamin shot….”
“Umm, anyway, sir, I still don’t see the problem with additional signoffs to the nuclear strike, sir.”
“Think about it. How often do the vice president and the speaker travel together, say, on Air Force One?”
“Umm, never, sir, come to think of it. Isn’t there a rule about it?”
“Exactly. To protect the line of succession, some of us are usually apart. And the president and the veep are never on the same plane. So how do they get concurrence from the veep and the speaker to allow the president to give the order? It can’t be done. It could be ten, twenty, thirty minutes before you can notify everyone and get concurrence. And by then, half our launch sites could’ve been wiped out.”
“You mean they know where they are, sir?”
“Well, sure. They’ve always known where most of our nuclear sites are. Reagan tried to push for an MX system, to have underground tunnel systems so that the enemies would never know for sure where our nukes were, but we stopped that.”
“Gee. Sounds like a good idea, why did you stop it, sir?”
“Politics. Couldn’t let that warmonger get a win, you know?”
“But, sir, if the win was good for the country…”
“Don’t talk like that. Now let’s see. Where was I?”
“Air Force One, sir.”
“Oh yes. The three people who Panetta wants to jointly give an order are hardly ever together, making a timely decision-making process absolutely impossible.”
“Gee. I see, sir. That does make sense. So what’s the solution?”
“I don’t know. But we’ve had nukes for 75 years and we’ve never had an accidental or ill-advised launch in all that time. So do we really have a problem to solve here? Aren’t there other problems, bigger problems, out there?
“I see what you mean, sir. Interesting. Gee, one of those things they don’t teach you in school.”
“I don’t remember. Been so long since I’ve been in school…. in school… ‘scuse me a minute. Getting dizzy. Gonna sit back down. OUCH!”
“What’s wrong, sir?”
“Oh, nothing… I just sat back on where I got my last shot. That was something new. It really helped… for a while, but now I just feel pain… and tired, all of a sudden… I’m so… well… tired… ya know?”
“Sure, sir. I understand, sir. I’m sorry, sir. Can I do anything for you, sir?”
“Yeah.. you know what’d be nice right now? Some soup. Some nice soup.”
“More soup, sir? but you just…”
“Right, soup. Maybe mushroom. That’d be nice. Think they could whip up some mushroom soup? For some reason, I’ve really got mushrooms on my mind tonight… nice big mushrooms… really big mushrooms… Mmm….”
Copyright 2021 John F Di Leo
Excerpted with permission from “Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volume One,” from Free State West Publishing, available in paperback or eBook exclusively on Amazon.
John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation and trade compliance professional and consultant. A onetime Milwaukee County Republican Party chairman, he has been writing a regular column for Illinois Review since 2009. His book on vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel) and his political satires on the current administration (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I and II) are available only on Amazon
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