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…
Simple Russian Soup
Dateline, April 15. Begin Transcript:
“Good evening, sir, are you ready for soup?”
“You again?”
“What’s the matter? Not happy to see me, sir?”
“Look, I’ll tell the truth. I don’t remember why, now, but I’ve got a funny feeling about you, kid.”
“Well, that goes for both of us, sir. But if you don’t want your soup right now, that’s okay, I’ll just bring the tray back upstairs and you can get it when you’re hungry, sir. Good night.”
“Come on, man! Don’t be hasty! Umm, what’s the soup tonight, anyway?”
“The cook said it’s called Simple Russian Soup, but I don’t know if that means it was made BY simple Russians, or FOR simple Russians, sir…”
“I don’t understand.”
“Then let’s hope it’s the latter, sir.”
“What’s that?”
“Never mind. So the cook said this is called a Simple Russian soup, and it’s made with seasoned chicken, some veggies, and angel hair pasta. Doesn’t sound very Russian to me, but that’s what she said.”
“Oh.”
“Frankly, sir, it looks a simple chicken noodle soup to me. Nothing exciting, nothing weird.”
“Oh.”
“So I’ll just leave this here and get back to my route, sir. Let’s see… soup here, crackers here, spoon and napkins… there ya go, sir.”
“Mmm, Russian soup. You, uh, you want to go get a bowl and join me? She always makes a lot…”
“I thought you disliked me, sir?”
“Well, I’m in a basement all day, and well, it’s nice to have company sometimes….”
“Oh, you have plenty of company, thanks to zoom calls and phone calls, don’t you, sir? I just heard you had that big call with Vladimir Putin the other day, for example. How did that go?”
“Oh, well, you know him. Gotta be careful with him.”
“Why’s that, sir?”
“Well, you know Putin. He’s a killer.”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“You know his history in Russia? Both before and after the USSR fell? He’s a killer.”
“Umm, sir, haven’t pretty much all the commentators, on all sides of the aisle, been saying that you need to stop calling Putin a killer, sir? I mean, he takes it as an insult, sir. Understandably, sir.”
“It’s true, isn’t it?”
“Well, diplomacy is at least partially about leaving some truths unsaid, so as to avoid ruffling feathers, sir, isn’t it?”
“You ever been an ambassador, kid?”
“Have you, sir?”
“I’ve been in the Senate!”
“Just because a lot of ambassadors belong to a country club, sir, just belonging to the world’s most exclusive country club doesn’t make you an ambassador, either, sir.”
“Hey…”
“I’m just saying, sir, that all the reports are that you upset him by calling him a killer, and we don’t exactly need trouble with Russia right now, when Red China is stamping out dissent and gearing up to attack Taiwan, sir. We don’t need trouble on two fronts, right, sir?”
“Well, of course not.”
“And besides, it’s not like you have any moral high ground in calling Putin a killer anyway, sir.”
“Come on, Man!”
“You’re a Democrat, sir. You really don’t want to go around calling other people ‘killers,’ sir, when all people have to do is open any history book at random to see the pain that the Democratic Party has caused, ever since the beginning.”
“You lying dog faced pony soldier! What are you talking about, kid?”
“Come on, sir, I’m just trying to help you avoid trouble with Vladimir Putin. If you keep your party’s past history in mind, maybe you won’t shoot your mouth off and escalate the problem, sir.”
“Oh.”
“For example, it was the Democrats who ordered the Trail of Tears, in which thousands of American indians were basically herded and driven to death in violation of treaties that the Federalists had negotiated to honor their property rights, sir.”
“Well, uhh…”
“And it was the Democrats who insisted that slavery not only be retained but expanded into new territories, then started a civil war by separating from the Union, leading to a war in which over a million Americans were killed, sir.”
“Well, uhh…”
“And it was the Democrats who, after the Civil War, started the KKK which became notorious for such crimes as cross-burnings and hangings of innocent people.”
“That was all a long time ago!”
“True. It’s worse now.”
“What?”
“Well, sir, it’s been Democrat policy over the past fifty years to minimize sentences for convicted villains, and even throw open prison gates for the flimsiest of reasons, sir, just to flood the inner cities with recidivist criminals, so they can rob, rape and kill again. It’s not Republican governors who do that, sir. It’s Democrat governors who never met a jail cell they didn’t want to empty.”
“Hey…”
“And it’s Democrats who have thrown the border wide open, inviting in foreign gangs like MS-13 to flood the cities with drugs and take over neighborhoods, turning commuter rail lines into crime zones, turning safe poor neighborhoods into 3rd world hellholes like the places the thugs came from.”
“Hey…”
“And it’s Democrat governors who forced hundreds of known Covid-19 patients last year into nursing homes, causing the ultimate in super-spreader events as the innocent, vulnerable patients of those nursing homes were subjected to an overwhelming viral load, causing thousands of utterly unnecessary deaths, sir.”
“Well, now, they didn’t know…”
“Of course they knew, sir, and in some cases, they covered it up, sir.”
“Well, uhh,”
“Criminally, sir.”
“Oh.”
“And then there’s abortion. How many millions since 1973? Untold millions, dead at the hand of the Democratic party, sir.”
“Now wait a minute, the party doesn’t do any of that…”
“No? But Planned Parenthood and the rest of the abortion mills fund the Democratic Party, and in return, the Democratic Party ensures that every candidate for every public office from local to federal is on the side of the abortion lobby, right, sir? And every federal judge appointed by the Democratic party has to be irrevocably committed to the abortion lobby’s policies, right? And what’s the one plank in the Democratic national platform that can never even be questioned, sir? Come on. 50 million innocents killed since 1973, before so much as getting a chance to take their first breath.”
“Now, umm, I don’t think it’s fair to act as if the whole party is guilty of all this stuff, you know… a party is a broad coalition, and… uhh…”
“Right, and that broad coalition burned city after city last year, ever since the so-called pandemic started, without the Democrat mayors, city councils or governors ever doing a thing to stop them. If anything, your party cheered them on as they set fires, destroyed businesses, looted and killed people unfortunate enough to be in the neighborhoods… And it continues today. Sir.”
“Well, um… now that’s not, uhh,”
“Look, all I’m saying is if you didn’t like hearing this from me, in private, you probably don’t want to hear it from Vladimir Putin in public, do you?”
“Of course not!”
“Well then, maybe you’ll want to avoid calling him a killer if you have that summit you’re talking about, sir.”
“Um, you may have a point, uhh, from a PR point of view, I guess…”
“I have to get back to my route, sir.”
“Umm, yeah, right, you do that…”
“Enjoy your soup, sir.”
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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