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, in these early months of his “administration,” 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 28. Begin Transcript:
“Good evening, boss! How are you tonight, sir?”
“Terrible. I just had one of those damned vitamin shots. Damn, I’m tired. And it hurts… How are you?”
“Oh my. Well, umm, I was actually doing okay… I brought your soup!”
“Oh, goody. That’ll help. What is it?”
“It’s called Sunday Lunch Soup, sir.”
“But it’s evening… it’s past dinnertime…”
“Well, sir, it’s just the name. It’s not restrictive, sir. You can still serve it anytime you want…”
“Oh.”
“It’s like the Constitution, you know? You swear an oath to it, but you still do whatever the heck you want, right, sir?”
“Oh. I see what you mean.”
“So how is it, sir?”
“Hmm… pretty good. Chicken’s good. Potato, corn…. the chili peppers were a surprise.”
“Glad you liked it, sir.”
“Yup. This helps. Good stuff.”
“So, tell me, sir, why were you so depressed when I walked in, sir?”
“Oh, well, you know. They had that CPAC thing tonight.”
“CPAC? That still went on? How could they do it, sir? Everything’s locked down!”
“Right. They moved.”
“They moved, sir?”
“Yup. Florida. They held CPAC in Florida.”
“Oh, that’s right. The governor down there didn’t play ball, did he, sir…. pity.”
“It was infuriating. They had four days of speeches. People attacking me every day. Every hour, every minute.”
“Yes, well, sir, you’ve given them a lot to attack.”
“What’s that?”
“I mean, umm, you’ve done so much, they have a lot to argue with, you know, sir? So many appointments, so many executive orders… you’ve been very busy, sir, your first month. You’ve gotten a lot done. So I’m not surprised the Republicans had a lot to argue with, you know?”
“Hate it.”
“Oh, but sir, you’ve been around the block. You’ve been in politics fifty years now, sir. You’ve seen it all, done it all… I’ll bet there’s nothing new they can say, after all these years. I bet it runs off your back like water off a duck’s bill, or… ummm…”
“What’s that, son?”
“Oh, sorry, just trying to remember an old saying, sir. Something like that. Hmmm…. I know there’s an old people saying like that, my grandpa used to use it. Hmm.”
“Whatever. Look, here’s the problem. Four days of people beating up on the administration. I can’t stand it!”
“You mean all the lies, sir?”
“No, I mean all the truth!”
“Pardon, sir?”
“Oh, they have so many speakers. One after the other. Sometimes every twenty or thirty minutes.”
“Well, it is like a convention, right, sir?”
“But it shouldn’t be allowed! They just blast us up and down, on every issue, every day… nonstop!”
“Oh? I assumed it was one of those single-issue type groups, isn’t it, sir?”
“No. CPAC is just no-holds-barred attacks. Every issue. They have people who talk about economics, foreign policy, social issues. Man, I couldn’t catch a break!”
“Couldn’t you just, sort of, tune it out, sir? Not pay attention to them? Live and let live?”
“Come on, Man!”
“Well, sir, I mean, after all, it’s a free country, sir.”
“No it’s not! What kind of malarkey is that? This is NOT a free country! You think we spent a year shutting down the country to let a bunch of conservatives get together and plan their attacks together? We’ve gotta find a way to stop this from ever happening again.”
“Uh, sir, First Amendment says people have free speech, sir.”
“Nope. Community standards. Conservatives violate community standards. We can shut them up for that. First Amendment doesn’t protect everything.”
“Oh, sir. Hmmm… Well, sir… they do still have a right to get together. Free assembly, sir. Also First Amendment, sir.”
“Hell No. The virus. We’ll stop ’em next time. Get a federal HHS ruling that they’d be spreading whatever’s going around. Maybe the seasonal flu.”
“Oh. Well, they might be able to top us with the tenth, sir. There are things that the states can control on their own, as sovereign states. I really don’t think we can count on being able to stop them, sir.”
“Damn Bill of Rights. Always been more trouble than it’s worth, ya know that?”
“Umm… I wouldn’t know, sir.”
“We’ll find a way. Next year, we’ll make sure they can’t get a venue. I’ll just make sure nobody gives ’em the room to HOLD the damned thing! That’ll do it!”
“Can we do that from Washington, sir?”
“When you have the kind of power we do, of course you can.”
“Well, sir, umm, how?”
“Well… just think about what kind of problems convention halls have… or COULD have.”
“I don’t understand, sir.”
“Well, do they employ Mexicans? Central Americans? Other immigrants?”
“Probably, sir…”
“Then you threaten an ICE raid.”
“Oh, I get it, sir.”
“Or an IRS agent can threaten an audit.”
“But sir, what if all their employees are here legally? What if their taxes are all perfectly fine, sir?”
“Doesn’t matter. Nobody wants a visit by ICE. Even if they’re compliant, everyone in the neighborhood will see ICE raiding them, and they’ll assume the worst. Nobody wants an IRS audit; even if their taxes are perfect, just making them photocopy seven years of records is a nightmare. You threaten an audit and then offer them a way out of it, you will have the people eating out of your hand.”
“Wow. Clever, sir. I had no idea.”
“And then there’s Customs.”
“Customs? What could you do with Customs, sir?”
“These hotels always have people coming in and out of the country. You let the word out that smugglers, drug dealers, international counterfeiting rings are using their hotel as a base, and it’ll kill their bookings. And they know it. They’ll do whatever you say.”
“But sir, how do you make up charges like that? Frame their guests, sir?”
“Don’t have to. There are so many criminals in the world, they’re always checking in and out of hotels. You just take a week of any hotel’s log, and you’re sure to find some embarrassing people in the list. It’s just the sheer numbers! You’re bound to find ’em! Then you make your deal with the hotel. You can make sure nobody’ll touch that conference with a ten foot pole.”
“Would you really do that sir?”
“Well, we could. That’s the important thing. We could. I’ve gotta remember to make a note of this so I don’t forget to plan this for next year…. Yeah. That’s the thing. We can stop ’em. We SHOULD stop ’em.”
“Gee, sir, that’s hard to imagine, Not exactly what we’re taught in school that government is for, you know, sir?”
“That’s EXACTLY what it’s for, boy. Government is power. If you don’t flex it, you lose it.”
“But sir, if they caught the administration doing something like this, setting up this kind of harassment, wouldn’t that have terrible PR consequences for us, sir?”
“Never did before.”
“Huh? When has this kind of thing been done before, sir?”
“Well, do you remember the Tea Party? Ten-twelve years ago?”
“Well, not really, but I’ve heard about it, sir. I was just a kid, you know.”
“Well, we slow-walked the non-profit applications through the IRS so that tons of groups could never participate in a couple of election cycles. We were caught dead-to-rights; nothing ever happened to us. Heh heh.”
“Wow.”
“And you ever hear about Ruby Ridge?”
“Um, I think so, sir.”
“There was this backwoods redneck the government wanted to frame. So ATF went out to his house and engaged in a little old fashioned entrapment, shot and killed the guy’s wife and son and dog in plain sight. Still put him in jail. He spent sixteen months mourning them from his prison cell. That’ll teach him to disobey the ATF.”
“Good heavens, sir!”
“You ever hear of Leona Helmsley?”
“Umm…. no, sir?”
“This rich bitch made somebody mad in Washington. I don’t remember who, I don’t remember how, it was 30 years ago now. But she was one of those huge multimillionaires – hotels, hospitals, real estate, ya know. They got her for evading $1.7 million in federal taxes. Threw her in jail when she was 71 for it. Left her 83 year old husband to die alone while she was in jail. Heh heh. That was fun.”
“Well, I guess if she stiffed the government on almost two million in taxes though… then she deserved it, right?”
“Heh heh… Oh yeah. She deserved it. Heh heh.”
“What’s so funny, sir?”
“She paid something like $60 million in taxes in the two years they were focused on. So if you say ‘this lady cheated the government out of $1.7 million in taxes’, it sounds so huge that the public agrees she belongs in jail. But if you say ‘this lady just underpaid her taxes by 3% and said her accountants made a mistake,’ well, then you’d side with the old lady, right?”
“Wow. I see what you mean.”
“But we decided to squash her, so we squashed her. Because we can.”
“Wow.”
“So the point is, WE set the argument. WE have the bully pulpit. WE decide what the message is. WE decide who can have a conference and who can’t even get a room at the inn. WE decide who gets to do what, and who doesn’t get to do a damn thing. That’s why we’re here. That’s why we run, and that’s why we win.”
“Umm, yes sir. I see sir. Wow, I don’t think I really realized, um, well, all this, sir.”
“You’re in Washington, now, boy. We have power, and we use it. It’s who we are, it’s what we do.”
“I see, sir.”
“And that’s not gonna change, even if some damn orange hotel builder tries to stop us. We’ll crush him like a bug.”
“Yes sir. I see sir.”
“Boy. I’m getting dizzy though. I’m gonna sit back down now.”
“Yes sir. Sit down sir. Be comfortable, sir.”
“Hey, there was soup, wasn’t there?”
“Yes sir. A new one, sir. Sunday Lunch Soup, sir. You said you liked it, sir.”
“Yeah, yeah… umm.. could you get me another bowl?”
“Certainly sir. Right away, sir. See you shortly, sir. I’ll head up to the kitchen and I’ll be back in a jiffy, sir.”
“Yeah. Now, lemme see now. There was something I was gonna do. I was gonna write a note. For, umm.. for next year? What was that now…. Soup? Maybe I was going to write a note about my soup? Hmm… yeah, that must be it… where’s my pencil now… oh, here it is. Let’s see. Sunday… Lunch… Soup…. Please make again… There we go…”
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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