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…
Note: This is the last sample from Volume One, introducing a new soup aide. We will begin sharing episodes from Volume Two shortly…
Perch Chowder
Dateline, April 19. Begin Transcript:
“Hello? Is anybody there?”
“Yes! Over here! Who is it?”
“Good evening sir, I’m Rhett Snapper. Uh, folks call me Snap.”
“Snap?”
“Yes sir.”
“Oh.”
“I’m, uhh, I’m here with soup for you, sir.”
“Oh, soup. Goody!”
“Where, umm, where do I put the tray, sir? That table, or your desk, or…”
“Right here, on my desk. I eat at my desk. Umm, I’m a busy man.”
“Oh, of course, sir. I’ll just move these joysticks out of the way then, sir.”
“Game Controllers. They’re called ‘game controllers.'”
“Oh, right, of course, sir.”
“What do we have tonight, then?”
“Oh, right, she said you’d ask… umm… darn it, I don’t remember…. no, wait… perch? RIght, that’s it, perch soup, sir. No, Chowder? That’s it, it’s a perch chowder, sir.”
“Really. Didn’t know they made soup out of perch.”
“Um, yes sir, I’m sure that’s what she said, sir.”
“Who?”
“Your cook, sir. She said it’s a perch chowder, sir.”
“Oh.”
“And she said you’d want extra crackers so I should let you know that there are two bowls of crackers. She said you probably wouldn’t notice if I didn’t point them out, sir.”
“Oh.”
“And your spoon and your napkin, sir, are right over here, sir.”
“Oh.”
“I’m talking too much, aren’t I, sir? Am I talking too much?”
“No, no, fine… let’s see… mmmmm…. this is pretty good. It’s just fine.”
“Glad to hear it, sir.”
“Mmm..”
“So, uh, they didn’t tell me very much, they just said I should bring down your soup. What else do I do down here, sir? Do I sweep up, or vacuum, or something, sir?”
“Oh, are you new?”
“Yes sir, remember, I just introduced myself?”
“Oh. Right. Well, I’m Joe.”
“Yes sir.”
“Does the cook’s knee still hurt?”
“The cook? I don’t know. This is my first day, sir, I really don’t know anybody on the staff yet, sir.”
“Oh, first day, huh? What did you do before?”
“Oh, I’ve been unemployed for a few months, sir. I was in college, but then came covid, you know, and I got a job at a little fast food place, but then they closed down a little after the election, sir.”
“Oh? Why?”
“Well, it was a franchise, and the boss just said they weren’t going to wait for the government to bleed them slowly. As soon as the electoral college met in December, they closed the doors, gave us all a severance check (they were real generous, sir, I mean, I’d only been there a couple months), and they shut the doors and moved south.”
“That’s terrible!”
“Not really, sir. I mean, it’s lousy for me, but… they had a little fast food place, and they said they depended on the nearby mall and office buildings for business. They said once they realized that this covid thing was never going to end, so the mall would never come back, and everybody in the offices were going to be working from home forever and ever, as the boss put it… they figured they’d be better off cutting their losses and starting over someplace sane, sir. At least, that’s what the boss said, sir.”
“But you’re out of work! Aren’t you bitter about that, boy?”
“Why would I be bitter? He did what he had to do. He started a business, saved up his whole life to do it, and he had to get out before he lost all his savings. He has a family to take care of. I can’t blame him. Hope he’s successful wherever he winds up.”
“Where did he move?”
“He said he’s taking the family and going to Florida, sir.”
“Oh.”
“So I’ve been on unemployment for a couple months now. I signed up with a temp agency and they found me this. So this is my first day, sir.”
“Oh.”
“I’m supposed to be here for four hours, and then I’m going to meet my buddies at the bar later, sir.”
“Oh?”
“Nothing fancy, just, you know, just a local neighborhood tavern, sir. Shoot some darts, have a drink, some boneless wings.”
“Oh.”
“And hope nothing goes south, like that Wisconsin place, right, sir?”
“Wisconsin?”
“Yeah, you know, that Wisconsin place, sir?”
“What Wisconsin place?”
“Umm, haven’t you heard? Big story last weekend in Kenosha?”
“Where?”
“Kenosha, sir, just south of Milwaukee?”
“Where?”
“Just north of Chicago, sir?”
“Oh.”
“The bar fight, sir? The shootings?”
“Oh.”
“It’s been national news, sir. How could you have missed it, sir?”
“Well, you know, I’m a busy guy…”
“Oh, well, sure, yeah. Sorry, sir.”
“We sure do need gun control.”
“Gun control, sir? What on earth for, sir?”
“Well, to stop the shooting!”
“But sir, these folks shot back. That’s probably why there were only three deaths, sir. If they hadn’t shot at him and forced him to flee, he might’ve stuck around to kill even more, sir!”
“So what happened?”
“Well, sir, by all accounts, sir, it was a normal night at a normal pub, sir, people drinking and talking, probably shooting darts or playing pool or something, when a fight broke out. This one guy got asked to leave… and he comes back a little while later, guns blazing, kills three and injures three more! Big manhunt all over southeastern Wisconsin on Sunday, sir.”
“Did they catch him?”
“Oh, yeah, they finally found the guy. Exactly what you’d expect, sir.”
“What do you mean?”
“Age 24. Bunch of prior arrests. Multiple states. At least two felony convictions.”
“So? What’s your point?”
“Well sir, my dad always says, to know what a criminal did, look two notches above the convictions.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, when he was about 14, he was arrested for having a gun as a juvenile. How did that get noticed? The police don’t see a 14 year old in his room cleaning his gun. So if he was arrested for possessing a gun as a juvenile, then that must mean that he was caught committing some crime with it, and they only charged him with this to give him a break. See, sir?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, sir, for the police to notice him, he had to be DOING something. Maybe he robbed somebody. Maybe he was threatening somebody, sir. Maybe he was caught running from a burglary, or about to commit one. Maybe he was fighting and slugged the other guy with the gun. Maybe he was trying to collect a debt for a gang. I don’t know. But he had to be doing something illegal WITH the gun for him to be noticed. See what I mean, sir?”
“Um, uh huh.”
“And then, sir, when he was, oh, I forget, 18 or 19, it must have been, he was convicted of illegal use of a weapon, sir.”
“Well, that doesn’t sound so bad.”
“Again, sir, HOW could he get caught for that? What does illegal use of a weapon mean, sir? It means he was caught doing something bad, and they plea-bargained it down. I don’t know what. But he used the gun in a crime, and in order to get a quick conviction – this is Missouri now – they dropped it down to the weapons charge because they could get a quick and easy conviction for that. But you just KNOW he must have done something way worse in order for this to be a conviction. Make sense, sir?”
“Um, I uh, oh, mmm?”
“Then there were a couple more firearms charges and a gun charge back in Wisconsin, a couple years later. When he was about 21 or so. Total, a couple of felonies, a couple stints in jail, and here he is with a ten year long criminal record by the age of 24, sir.”
“Oh.”
“Well, sir, my dad always said, ‘lift up a weapons charge and you’ll find a robber, rapist, or killer underneath.'”
“Well, that sounds like you’re jumping to conclusions, son. You admitted you don’t know everything about the case! There might be another side to it!”
“Another side, sir? I listened to the sheriff’s press conference, sir. It was on the radio and TV, then I saw it on the internet. I just told you what the sheriff shared with the audience. I’ll bet there’s way more than that, sir.”
“What makes you think so?”
“He’s in Wisconsin, sir!”
“So? What does that have to do with it?”
“Wisconsin is one of those states that happily hides juvenile records, sir. We probably don’t know half of what he’s done, because he was an active criminal while he was a kid, sir.”
“Oh, well…”
“Like my dad always says, sir, ‘juvenile detention is full of two things: bad kids and worse secrets.'”
“Well, don’t jump to conclusions. You don’t know how he’ll turn out when he grows up!”
“Of course we do! We just saw it all last weekend, sir! At the age of 24, the punk shot up a bar and killed three people over a petty argument, sir!”
“Well, I suppose that evening doesn’t show him in the best light…”
“The question, sir, is, Why was he free in the first place?”
“Huh?”
“Well, sir, if he’d been arrested so many times over the past ten years, why couldn’t the system make it stick better? Most likely, if it weren’t for repeatedly giving him a break, and plea bargaining downward, this no-good punk would’ve gotten a real, serious sentence somewhere along the way, sir.”
“Well, what difference would that make?”
“What difference, sir? Well, if he’d received a good ten year sentence anywhere along the way, sir, he would’ve been in jail where he belonged, last weekend, and he wouldn’t have been free in the first place… so he couldn’t have gone to that bar, he wouldn’t have been there to blow his top and go on a shooting spree, sir.”
“Oh.”
“Yup, there’s no doubt about it, sir, and this is as good a case as any for it: we need tough sentencing again. We used to have real sentencing, sir, and we had safer streets then. If we’d send the bad eggs to jail sooner, sir, and keep them in there longer, it would be a much safer world, sir.”
“Well, now, we don’t know that for sure… There are a lot of unknowables…”
“Unknowables, sir? This case proves the most important knowable of them all, sir. Like my dad says, ‘Even the most malevolent thug in the world can’t shoot up a bar outside, if he’s locked up behind bars inside.”
“I, uh… well… I have no response to that.”
“Oh, just as well. it’s late, sir, I suppose I should be getting back upstairs, sir. Can I take your tray?”
“Uh, no, no, I’m not done yet…”
“Suit yourself, sir. Good night, sir! Enjoy your soup!”
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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