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: We continue reprinting roughly every other chapter from Volume Two. In today’s episode, Joe Buckstop is forced to discuss that universe’s analog of the city of Chicago in 2021, not exactly a stellar year for Chicago or its political class…
Big Cities, Small Minds, and Bubbie’s Chicken Soup
Dateline: June 22. Begin Transcript:
“Good evening, boss! Who feels like playing baseball?”
“Baseball? Come on, man! We’re in a basement!”
“Just kidding, just kidding, sir.”
“Who is that anyway?”
“It’s me, Rhett, with your soup, sir!”
“Oh, is it soup time?”
“Sure enough, sir! Bubbie’s Chicken Soup, sir!”
“What kind of a name is that?”
“It’s Yiddish for a grandma, sir. So it’s basically saying that it’s soup like your grandma might have made.”
“I don’t think my grandma made soup, in her day.”
“In her day, they may not yet have invented soup.”
“Huh?”
“So here it is, sir… soup, crackers, napkins, spoons.”
“Hey, this doesn’t look like soup… this looks like a tennis ball!”
“Well, sir, it’s basically a Chicago matzoball soup, sir. One big matzoball the size of a bowl.”
“Hmm… Well, let’s see… not bad… not bad… This is from Chicago, huh?”
“That’s what the cook said, sir. A Chicago recipe, sir.”
“They were just talking about Chicago today in one of our meetings. I wonder why.”
“Well, was it about politics, sir?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Was it about the economy, sir?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Was it about something in the news, sir?”
“I don’t know. I don’t read the news.”
“Hmm… well… then I don’t think I can help you, sir.”
“This is good soup.”
“We were talking to our cousins in Chicago last night, sir. We do those cellphone video calls so that everybody’s on the same call together.”
“Oh.”
“And they said Chicago’s worse than ever. Get this… fifty people were shot in Chicago last weekend, five of them fatally. Just in one weekend, sir!”
“Oh, well, it’s a big city, they’re going to have the occasional bad weekend.”
“No, sir, this wasn’t a bad weekend in Chicago. It was a normal weekend in Chicago, sir.”
“Huh?”
“My cousin said they were at 300 fatalities last week, sir. That’s 300 people murdered so far this year in the city of Chicago proper, sir. and we’re not even halfway through the year, sir!”
“Well, they have a lot of challenges.”
“They sure do, sir. Mostly of their own making.”
“Huh?”
“Like my dad says, ‘when you elect idiot governors and idiot judges, you’re the idiot if you stay!’ Uhhh, I guess you could say, my dad doesn’t mince words, sir.”
“Come on, man, be fair. Chicago has some real challenges. Tons and tons of unemployed people…”
“Because its politicians have driven out all the employers, sir.”
“Well, tons of poor Central American immigrants…”
“Because the city, county and state all declared themselves sanctuary zones to invite them all in.”
“Huh?”
“Well, sir, you know they’re a sanctuary city in a sanctuary state, right?”
“Well, I don’t know…”
“Take my word for it, sir, they are. Their politicians have all announced that they won’t card or arrest illegal aliens, sir. Like my dad says, ‘when you invite criminals to your dinner party, you can’t complain if you find the china and silverware missing in the morning.'”
“Now, you’re really being unfair. Chicago has all the high costs of all those roads and trains and rivers, with a shrinking tax base.”
“But, sir, the tax base is only shrinking because of Chicago’s OWN choices, sir! They keep raising their tax rates and setting criminals free, so their city has gotten more dangerous every year for decades. Why would any taxpayer stay there, sir?”
“Well, because it’s a great city!”
“Maybe it was, sir… maybe it was… but after you’ve been robbed, and your neighbor’s been robbed, and your friend has had his car stolen, and another neighbor’s been mugged on the way home, and another neighbor’s kid’s been raped at school… eventually, sir, you really just can’t keep on calling it a great city, sir.”
“Huh?”
“Eventually, sir, you have to admit that if it ever really was a great city, it sure isn’t anymore, sir.”
“Now, I know people from Chicago and they’re good people.”
“Maybe they are, sir. Chicago has a few safe neighborhoods for the rich and connected and important people to live in, sir. They have tall gated brick walls and privacy fences and alarm systems and guard dogs, sir…”
“Well, maybe…”
“And they make sure the police patrol those areas, no matter how much crime there is in town, because they have to at least keep some neighborhoods safe, sir. But that’s it; most of the city is so bad, the factories ran off, the stores ran off, the offices ran off… everybody fled to the suburbs, or over the border to Indiana or Iowa or Wisconsin, sir.”
“Hey, now! There are still some businesses in Chicago!”
“Probably won’t be for long, sir, if they keep releasing crooks, sir.”
“They only release criminals who have finished their sentences so they’ve paid their debt to society.”
“Oh, come on, sir, you know that’s semantics.”
“No, it is not cinnamon sticks.”
“No, sir, I didn’t say it was cinnamon sticks, sir. I said it’s semantics. You know, sir, just using different words, hoping to get around the truth, sir.”
“We have too many criminals in jail as it is.”
“Now, honestly, sir, what kind of a statement is that?”
“What do you mean?”
“How can you say we have too many criminals in jail, sir? There’s no magic number that’s the best or worst number of criminals to have in jail, sir.”
“There isn’t? But everyone says we have too many people in jail!”
“Sir, as long as people are still committing repeat crimes, we don’t have enough people in jail, sir.”
“Huh?”
“Well, sir, what’s the point of a criminal justice system? It’s to make the community safe by locking up the criminals so that the law-abiding citizens are safe! Otherwise, you get what’s going on in Chicago, sir. Like my dad says: ‘a smart businessman doesn’t stay to be robbed twice.'”
“Well, it’s a big city. That sort of thing comes with the territory. Businesses know that.”
“Sir, have you ever had a job outside of government, sir?”
“Huh? Why, sure… I worked as a lifeguard once…”
“For the park district, sir?”
“Oh… well, i worked as a public defender.”
“For the county government, sir?”
“Oh… well, I worked in a law firm for a little while…”
“Handling corporate accounts, sir?”
“Oh, no, umm, a little criminal law, and umm.. we managed the assets of our clients… and… i don’t remember much else. It was a long time ago.”
“And then you went into government, and you’ve worked for the federal government for the past 50 years, sir, with guards and capital police and now the secret service, sir, right, sir?”
“Well, if you look at it that way…”
“So, you haven’t worked for the kinds of businesses we’re talking about in Chicago, sir. The kind that are at risk of being broken into, the kind where they have to employ their own security to protect the cashiers, the kind where they pay a mint for insurance because there are so many break-ins, sir. The kind where you have trouble hiring employees, because people are afraid to park in your parking lot, afraid to walk to and from their cars, afraid to take public transit, sir.”
“Well, now, it can’t be that bad in Chicago!”
“Remember that statistic, sir? 300 killed in 2021 already, sir, and we’re not even halfway through the year.”
“Well, 300 sounds like a big number, but it’s in a city of a couple million people, remember. So it probably sounds worse than it is.”
“That’s just fatalities, sir. There’ve been 1600 reported shootings with injuries, sir.”
“But you said 300 a minute ago!”
“Yes sir. 300 fatalities, 1300 more injuries that weren’t fatalities, sir.
1600 shootings total, sir. Well over 10% over last year’s numbers.”
“Wow.”
“You know, I don’t want to be killed on my way to work, but frankly, I don’t want to be shot and live either, sir. I just don’t want to be shot at all, sir!”
“Well, they have good Democrats running that town. I’ll bet they’re working on it right now. If you turned on the radio, I’ll bet they’re reporting how the city council is talking about solutions to this crime problem.”
“Oh, they’re working, sir. They’re burning the midnight oil, sir.”
“See?”
“But not on the crime problem, sir.”
“Come on, man!”
“My cousins told me about it yesterday, sir. Apparently, they’re having a really huge fight over the question of whether or not to rename Lake Shore Drive.”
“The what?”
“Lake Shore Drive, sir. It’s a highway that runs along the lake, sir.”
“Lake? What lake?”
“Chicago is on Lake Michigan, sir.”
“Oh.”
“So they’re thinking about renaming Lake Shore Drive to name it after Pierre DuSable, sir.”
“Who?”
“Some 18th century fur trader from the Caribbean, sir. Supposedly part French, part black, sir. They say he founded the city of Chicago, sir.”
“Well, then that’s respectable. That’s what a city council does. It names roads after local heroes. Nothing wrong with that.”
“Sure, sir, it’s normal enough, unless it’s a road that’s known all over the world by its current name, sir.”
“I didn’t know it.”
“You’re not exactly a good control for such a study, sir.”
“Oh.”
“Like my dad says, ‘only the Chicago city council could take a break from watching their city burn to the ground to argue over the naming rights for one of its boundaries,’ sir.”
“Well, maybe the people of Chicago really care about this issue.”
“Sir, I have a feeling they’d rather live through their next commute, sir, than care about the name of Lake Shore Drive.”
“Oh.”
“Besides, sir, Chicagoans are famous for never changing street names in practice, sir. They keep on using the old name for a road or highway for twenty years after it’s formally been renamed, sir.”
“Oh.”
“So this is basically a big waste of time, but by naming the road after a settler who may have been part black, they think they’re helping their community more than if they controlled crime or helped bring jobs back into the city.”
“May have been part black? What do you mean? If they’re naming the road after a guy, they must know!”
“Sir, we’re talking about a semi-apocryphal fur trader who died 200 years ago, sir. He had a French name, and he came from the Caribbean, so people figure he was probably part black, sir.”
“Well, what do his portraits look like? Can’t you tell from his portraits?”
“We asked what he looked like when we talked to our cousins last night, sir. Get this: He never had a painting of himself in his lifetime. People didn’t start sketching what he might have looked like until years after he was dead, sir. Maybe from memory, maybe not, sir.”
“Oh.”
“There’s no Ancestry .com to look at, no blood tests, no DNA samples to take, no descendants to talk to. A few alleged, maybe imagined relatives, sir. But no descendants. Much of his biography is just fanciful, sir. Legends.”
“You mean he didn’t really exist at all? Come on, man!”
“No, sir, he existed. But that’s all we know. We know he existed, and he started a settlement in Chicago, and a little more, I guess, but most of his biography is hopeful guesses, sir. Tons of things in Chicago are named after this guy and they don’t know much of anything for sure about him!”
“Look, I’m busy. I don’t know why you’re telling me all this. I just want to eat my soup….”
“Oh, certainly, sir. I just thought you might be interested in how your party’s mayor – and your party’s city council in your party’s county and your party’s state – how they are spending their time in these days of record crime waves, sir. I thought you’d be interested, sir.”
“Well, i guess, maybe… oh, look, It’s Chicago. You and I both know it doesn’t really matter what happens to them; they’ve stayed there a hundred years; they deserve whatever they get.”
“Really, sir? My dad said almost the exact same thing, sir, but I never thought you would, sir!”
“I really just want to eat my soup.”
“Certainly, sir. I’ll leave you your matzoball soup, sir. In your nice safe house, in your nice safe neighborhood.”
“Right.”
“Unlike the people of Chicago tonight, who still have to fear muggings and drive-by shootings and gang hits, while their city council argues over putting up a new sign on Lake Shore Drive, sir. Priorities, sir, huh? Good night, sir… sleep well.”
Copyright 2021-2024 John F Di Leo
Excerpted with permission from Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volume Two, 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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