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, March 22. Begin Transcript:
“Good evening, sir! How’s your Monday?”
“Monday? Is it Monday?”
“Yes indeed, sir! Another week has begun; the sun is shining and the birds are singing!”
“Don’t tell me you’re bringing me some kind of songbird soup tonight, son. I couldn’t take another of those weird ones tonight.”
“Well, then, sir, you’re in luck. Tonight we have Fall-Apart Beef soup.”
“Come on, Man!”
“No, really, sir, it’s not weird. It’s just a vegetable beef soup, that’s all… perfectly normal. They call it fall-apart beef soup because the beef is so tender, sir. That’s all.”
“Hmm… that does sound good. A nice normal old vegetable beef soup…”
“Here you are, sir; I had a cup upstairs, sir, it’s good.”
“Oh… hmmmm… yeah, this is pretty good, reminds me…. mmmm…. reminds me, umm…”
“Of growing up in Scranton, sir?”
“Yeah, exactly! Oh, did you grow up in Scranton, too?”
“No, sir, I just knew you did, and thought you might mention it, that’s all, sir.”
“Oh, yeah. Well, it’s good… but you know, in Scranton… they always served crackers with soup.”
“Oh, yes sir, of course, sir. Right here. It was blocked by your briefing book, I guess. Must’ve been just out of your field of vision, sir.”
“Hmm… briefing book. Right. I was supposed to read that.”
“Oh? Was that the subject matter of the day, sir?”
“No… it’s for tomorrow. We have to talk about it tomorrow.”
“Cryptic title, sir. It just says ‘Fossils’ on the cover. What’s that about, sir, the U.S. Senate’s senior members?”
“Huh? What was that, son?”
“Just wondering what the briefing book is about, sir.”
“Oh, fossil fuels. Gotta meet about it tomorrow.”
“Oh, I see, emergency efforts to change policies to stop the fuel prices, sir?”
“Huh? Why?”
“Well, sir, because fuel has been skyrocketing, sir! That’s why you’d be meeting about it, right?”
“Oh, no, I don’t know why we’re meeting… maybe… all I know is that we are. I don’t know why. Hell, I don’t know why we do anything around here…”
“Well, sir, since November, gas prices at the pump have gone up by over half, sir. In some places, it’s more like it’s doubled, sir. So naturally, people are worried, because whatever your policies are, they sure aren’t working… begging your pardon, sir….”
“What do you mean they’re not working?”
“Well, sir, skyrocketing gas prices could hardly be intentional, sir….”
“Why not? We know what we’re doing, boy!”
“I’m sorry, sir, I must be missing something…. people are having to pay half again as much to fill their tanks as they did just two or three months ago, sir. People are really hurting, sir.”
“Well, then don’t fill up.”
“I’m sorry, sir, I don’t understand.”
“Don’t have to go anywhere… if you can’t afford to go anywhere, just don’t go. No skin off my nose.”
“But sir, if people have to go to work…”
“Take a train.
“But sir, not everyone has a train line on their way to work. Hardly anyone does, sir.”
“Build more trains.”
“But sir, they cost a mint to build, and take years and years, sir!”
“Take a bus.”
“Not every community has buses, sir, and most people aren’t on bus routes to their jobs.”
“Take a cab.”
“People can’t afford to take a cab to work every day, sir!”
“So stay home.”
“But sir, not everyone can!”
“I stay home. Hell, I stayed in my basement practically all through 2020. Barely ventured outside to see the sun. And I did fine.”
“Well, sir, have you considered that you were in a rather, um, singular situation, sir?”
“How’s that?”
“Well, sir, you were a presidential candidate with the DNC supporting you, sir, and tons of pre-designed organizations in every state. You didn’t have to do stuff, sir, the campaign did it all. Regular folks don’t have that luxury, sir. Regular folks have to go to the store, the factory, the office, the distribution center, sir.”
“They can walk.”
“Huh? I mean… I beg your pardon, sir, but…. Walk???”
“Well, sure. If you live near your work, you can walk. If they don’t live close to work, they should move close to work. Then they can walk. Problem solved.”
“Umm… sir, people live where it make sense to live, and work where it makes sense to work, sir. Those aren’t always the same place, sir, you know that. If you’re single, you live where the apartments are. If you’re married with kids, you live where the schools and park districts are good. If you’ve got mobility issues, you might live in an assisted living kind of place. If you’ve got elderly parents or aunts or uncles to take care of, you live near them… You can’t just choose all that easily, sir… sometimes people have long commutes for really good reasons, sir.”
“Come on, man! If people choose a stupid long commute, how it my fault that they don’t like it?”
“Well, sir, back when you were a senator in the 70s and 80s, sir… where did you live?”
“Delaware.”
“And where did you work, sir?”
“The Senate, of course!”
“Which is about a hundred miles each way, right, sir?”
“Well, I wanted to live at home with my kids!”
“Yes, sir. Of course, sir. So you had a good reason for where you worked, and a good reason for where you lived, and a good reason for the commute, sir. ”
“Damn right I did!”
“And so do lots and lots of other people, but lots them aren’t conveniently located on an Amtrak Line to help with that commute.”
“Oh.”
“So they have to drive.”
“Oh.”
“And that means buying gas, sir. Do you begrudge all those millions of other people their right to have a commute from home to work, just like you did, sir?”
“Well, umm… if you put it like that…”
“I think it’s the only way to put it, sir.”
“Well, they don’t have this problem in Paris! Or London! Or Rome!”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“We were briefed on this by some experts from Singapore who talked about how you can completely eliminate any need for cars if you just want to bad enough.”
“Umm… sir… Singapore is the size of a postage stamp. This is America, sir.”
“So?”
“It’s huge, sir. We have distances that those other countries can’t even imagine, sir. We need our cars, sir, not because we’re greedy or wasteful or mean or anything… but just because, we’re in a huge country. We have big distances to cover, sir. We need our cars.”
“Oh.”
“I didn’t want to say anything about this, sir, but I’ve actually been thinking of quitting, sir, because of the gas prices.”
“Come on, Man!”
“No, really, sir… I’m in law school, you know, and this is a part time job, sir. The coolest part time job ever, in a way… when I tell people what I do, they can’t believe it, sir… but still, it’s a lot of driving around. There’s no public transit that meets the need of my peculiar mix of home and school and work, sir. I have to drive.”
“So?”
“Well, sir, I put on some miles for this job, sir. I can’t move for a job that may only last a few months; I live with my parents while I’m in college… so I drive a decent old car and put on a lot of miles, sir.”
“So?”
“Well, sir, the first night I brought you soup, sir, I paid $2.00 a gallon. Today, sir, I paid $3.50. That’s an increase of 75%, sir!”
“Well, at least it didn’t double…”
“That’s not the point, sir! I mean, I’m sorry, sir, I beg your pardon, sir, but… this really hurts, sir! When you drive a real car and live in the real world and have to deal with real life… a 75% increase in the cost of fuel for your car is a killer, sir! This is really hard, sir, I’m not sure how long I can keep this job!”
“Well, damn it.”
“Yes sir. I say that a lot, sir.”
“Well, you just have to give up something. Law school. Give up law school.”
“You’re kidding, sir, right?”
“Oh. Right. Well, you could get a second job!”
“You’re kidding, sir, right? I’m in law school. I can hardly keep up on my reading and homework with this one job, and it’s part time, sir!”
“Oh. Well why not get a more convenient apartment?”
“Sir, I live with my parents for free. Even if I found a perfectly convenient apartment, sir, it would cost more than the additional gas money I’m trying to avoid.”
“Well then, that’s simple. Leave it alone.”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“Don’t make any changes at all, and then you won’t have the additional cost of the new apartment!”
“But, sir… I never WAS going to get a new apartment. That was your idea, sir, not mine, sir. I can’t afford gas, sir.”
“Oh. Maybe you could get a loan.”
“Sir, I shouldn’t NEED a loan. I have a job, free housing, and law school. I was doing fine until the cost of my commute almost doubled because the oil industry got spooked.”
“Yeah, it’s their fault. It’s the oil industry.”
“Well, sir… they got spooked because your administration closed the Keystone Pipeline, and you’re talking about banning drilling on federal lands, and banning fracking, and all kinds of things. We can’t blame the oil industry, when the government isn’t letting them get the product out of the ground to sell it, sir!”
“Why don’t they just import it?”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“Well, when things are expensive in the USA, we just import them. That’s how we do everything else, why not this?”
“I’m sorry, sir, you’ve lost me.”
“Well, why not buy cheap Chinese gas, son?”
“Where, sir?”
“I dunno, wherever you buy gas, I guess. The store?”
“Sir, umm, oh… oh, sir…”
“Look, I remember one time when I wanted to buy my parents a transistor radio. I couldn’t afford the American one, but I found them a cheaper Japanese one and it worked just fine. Why don’t you do that, son?”
“What, buy a transistor radio?”
“No, just buy some Japanese gas for the car.”
“Sir, have you had one of those shots today?”
“Not recently…”
“I think you need one, sir. Here. Have some more of your Fall-Apart Beef soup, sir.”
“That is a goofy name, boy.”
“Well, sir, it’s fitting. The country’s falling apart, and everybody who drives a car has a beef with you.”
“What’s that, boy? You keep mumbling. I didn’t catch that.”
“Oh, sorry, sir. Your hearing is always causing you trouble at this hour, isn’t it, sir… Enjoy your soup… I’m going to go clip coupons somewhere…”
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, II, and III), are available in either eBook or paperback, only on Amazon.
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