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…
Icelandic Lamb Soup
Dateline, April 18. Begin Transcript:
“Good evening, sir, are you hungry?”
“Huh? What’s that? Is someone there?”
“Yes, yes, just coming down the stairs, sir, be there in a moment, sir…”
“Oh. Is it soup time?”
“If it weren’t, i wouldn’t be using these stairs, sir. If I were just sending you throw pillows, I’d just toss them down from the top step and give these old knees a break.”
“Hey, you’re the cook!”
“Well, sir, bonus points for being perceptive.”
“I mean, don’t you have a guy you send down to deliver it?”
“I did… but you keep driving them off, sir. Remember?”
“Oh, right. Sorry about that… I don’t know what I do wrong…”
“I’ve asked HR to look again for a part timer, sir.”
“Don’t tell the Doctor that I’m responsible for them leaving! Please don’t tell her! I don’t want the Doctor to hit me again…”
“Your secret’s safe with me, sir.”
“Oh, thank you.”
“Well, here you go, tonight’s soup. Icelandic Lamb Soup. It’s sort of the national dish of Iceland, so they tell me, sir.”
“Is it cooked in a hot spring?”
“That would be rather difficult to do, in a kitchen in Delaware, sir…”
“Oh. I guess so.”
“Soup, crackers, napkins, spoon, sir. Everything’s right there, sir.”
“Wait, don’t go yet, it’s boring down here. Tell me what’s happening up in the world!”
“Umm, sir, you should know more than I do, about what’s going on in the world, sir. I mean, I play the radio and surf the internet, sir. You get intelligence briefings.”
“No I don’t.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Oh, I haven’t had an intelligence briefing since,… OH, wait, umm, never mind, I didn’t mention that.”
“Wait a minute, you don’t get intelligence briefings, sir?”
“No, wait, I didn’t say that! You have to forget I said that! I wasn’t supposed to mention it to a soul…”
“Well, sir, actually, umm….”
“Oh don’t tell the Doctor I told you.. I don’t want her to hit me again…”
“Uh, sir, look, I’m not talking to anybody, I just turn on my TV and I cook my soup, that’s all, sir. Really.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“Umm, speaking of which, sir… there WAS something I saw on TV that I was wondering about, now that I think about it, sir…”
“Oh?”
“Well, sir, remember when you had that press conference with Mr Suga?”
“Oh?”
“The Prime Minister, sir?”
“Oh?”
“Of Japan, sir?”
“Oh?”
“It was on Friday, sir. The day before yesterday, sir?”
“Ohhhh…. no wonder I didn’t remember it. Umm, go ahead… what about it?”
“Well, sir, you and he were both talking about that climate change, stuff, sir.”
“Oh.”
“For a really long time, sir.”
“Oh.”
“Well, sir, I was wondering… is that some kind of code, sir?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, I figured that, but I thought it was worth asking anyway, sir…”
“Go ahead.”
“Well, sir, the question is, sir… with all the trouble over there… between Red China and North Korea, saber rattling to beat the band, sir…”
“Oh?”
“Well, I was wondering if you were trying to signal that you were working together on that sort of thing, providing a mutual defense and all that, without actually saying so out loud, sir?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t follow.”
“I mean, was all that stuff about climate change just cover, sir, a way to say you’re working together on mutual defense without being publicly provocative, sir?”
“Come on, man, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Well, sir, you can’t possibly actually be serious about that line, de-carbonizing the planet, can you?”
“Oh, de-carbonizing. Yes. Right. That’s the thing. The new imperative.”
“You’re actually serious, sir? You want to eliminate all carbon from planet earth, sir?”
“Oh yes. Gotta be done. You know, to stave off, umm, uh, you know, the thing… global warming, yeah, that’s it. Gotta do it. Gonna happen.”
“Sir, do you understand the concept of carbon-based life forms, sir?”
“Well, I didn’t do all that well in that kind of class, ma’am, to tell the truth…”
“Sir, to decarbonize the earth, that is, to remove all the carbon from planet earth, sir…”
“Oh?”
“You would have to eliminate all the flora on the planet, sir. All the flora on earth is carbon-based, sir.”
“Well, we’ve gotta do what we’ve gotta do.”
“Then there’s fauna, sir. To eliminate all the carbon on earth, you’d also have to eliminate all the fauna, sir.”
“Well, we’ve gotta do what we’ve gotta do.”
“Umm, sir, do you recall what flora and fauna, are, sir?”
“Well, not at the moment, no, but if they’ve gotta go, they’ve gotta go.”
“Um, sir, the flora and fauna are plant and animal life, sir.”
“Oh.”
“You’re advocating wiping out all plant and animal life on earth, sir.”
“Oh.”
“Including human beings, sir. We’re carbon too, sir.”
“Well, we’ve gotta do what we can.”
“Sir, do you know what planet earth is made of, sir?”
“Uhhh… rock?”
“Sort of, yes. It’s made of carbon, sir. Oxygen, silicon, Iron, copper, nickel, magnesium, and carbon, sir.”
“It is?”
“The earth has about 1.85 billion tons of carbon in it, sir.”
“Come on, man!”
“So you see, sir, to de-carbonize the earth, you would have to destroy it, sir. You’d have to pulverize it. Wipe out all life and blow up the planet. There just IS NO WAY to de-carbonize the earth, sir. There’s too much carbon to remove, sir.”
“But, well, maybe if we did it a little at a time?”
“You’re not getting my point, sir. Look, all I do is prepare soup, right? That’s my job, sir. I take pride in it, sir. I use broth, and vegetables, and meats, and flavorings… and virtually every ingredient except water has carbon in it. And that’s fine, sir. It’s a good thing, sir.”
“Oh?”
“Because carbon itself is a good thing, sir. This crazy religion of banning carbon is nuts, sir. Absolutely bonkers, sir. It makes no sense and it’s terribly destructive, sir.”
“Oh.”
“You would really do your party and the country a great service if you were to disassociate yourself from that silliness, sir.”
“Oh?”
“There are a lot of pollutants out there, sir, and carbon isn’t one of them, sir.”
“Well, my staff would disagree, ma’am.”
“Well, then, sir, they’re as nuts as their theory, sir, with all due respect.”
“Well, don’t much care one way or the other, to tell the truth.”
“You don’t, sir?”
“Naahh…. as long as we purge all the carbon off the planet, I don’t care how we do it.”
“Umm, sir, uhh… well, I don’t really know what to say, sir.”
“You know, this is good soup. I like it. What did you say it was called?”
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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