Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Vol II – Episode 97: Crime and Punishment and Pasta e Fagioli
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’s new soup aide, Porter Norfolk, tries to school the old man about America’s crime problem.
Crime and Punishment and Pasta e Fagioli
Dateline: July 12. Begin Transcript:
“Good evening, sir. Are you ready for soup?”
“Soup? There’s soup? Excellent!”
“Yes sir. Pasta e Fagioli, tonight, sir.”
“Huh? What’s that? Is that one of those Eye-Talian soups?”
“Yes sir. It is Italian, sir.”
“Hmm… It sounds familiar, but I’m not sure I’ve heard of it.”
“Oh, you’ve heard of it, sir. It’s also known as ‘pastafazool,’ sir.”
“Huh? That’s a real word? I thought it was just one of those made-up words that the Eye-Talians use.”
“No, it’s the real name of a soup, sir. Vegetables and meat, usually with lots of beans, and either ditali or similar tube noodles, sir.”
“Oh. Is it good?”
“It’s very popular, sir.”
“Hmm… Lots of things are popular without being good.”
“We don’t need to get into public opinion polling and election results this early in the evening, sir, do we?”
“Hmm. It’s pretty good. Are there crackers?”
“Right here, sir. Right behind the bowl of soup, sir.”
“Oh. Goody.”
“So, how was your day, sir? Anything interesting happen in your little basement today, sir?”
“Mmmm… Yes… met with some police. And city people, mayors, I think. Talked about cities.”
“Oh. What about the cities, sir?”
“We talked about crime.”
“I was afraid of that, sir.”
“Oh, you don’t have to be afraid of crime. This basement is safe. Well guarded. Safe as you can get.”
“Well, yes, sir, but the other 300 million Americans don’t have Secret Service guarding them 24/7, sir. I’m thinking more about them, sir.”
“Oh. Well, I’ll tell you what, son.. What’s your name again?”
“Porter, sir. Porter Norfolk.”
“Hmm.. you ever think about going into journalism?”
“No, sir, why?”
“Because you have the perfect name for a columnist. Porter the Reporter. Wouldn’t that be great?!”
“No, sir, it wouldn’t.”
“Oh. Well then… anyway. What was I going to say?”
“Nobody ever really knows, sir. Even when you use a teleprompter.”
“Oh, yes, you were telling me about the other 300 million people, and how they don’t have Secret Service protection.”
“Yes sir.”
“Here’s my advice about that: Never worry about the other 300 million people. They really don’t matter.”
“What’s that, sir?”
“Just don’t think about ’em. They’re depressing. Their situation is depressing. There’s nothing you can do for them anyway; best not to let it bug you.”
“Um, sir, my understanding is that the reason people go into politics in the first place is to somehow help other people, preferably by protecting them from government overreach. That was in fact the whole motivating thesis of the United States – that government should be instituted to protect people from government.”
“Oh, well, I’m just talking about today. I wouldn’t know about that old history stuff. Not my specialty.”
“Is anything, sir?”
“What’s that? Can’t hear you when you mumble, son.”
“Oh, right, sir. So what did you discuss with these big city representatives, sir?”
“Crime. They’re always complaining about crime in the big cities. Can’t imagine why.”
“Well, maybe because they live every day in fear of being beaten, raped, robbed or killed, sir.”
“They do?”
“Yes, sir, in the big cities, they do.”
“Well, don’t they know that if you just stay out of the bad neighborhoods, you don’t have anything to worry about?”
“That may have been true once, sir, but it’s not true anymore, sir.”
“Come on, man!”
“The criminals don’t just stay in their hellish neighborhoods anymore, sir. They band together in flashmobs to rob stores in high-end malls… they go together as gangs to take over parks or basketball courts or intersections… they go to areas where lots of people go to restaurants or nightclubs and have to walk a few blocks to find parking. The criminal element has spread out in the cities, sir. Very few areas are truly safe now, sir.”
“Well, I don’t see what they expect me to do about it.”
“You could make a speech making the case to bring capital punishment, sir, so that killers once again fear getting caught, sir.”
“Not gonna happen!”
“Well, you could make a speech advocating for longer, tougher sentencing, like you used to support when you were younger, to at least keep hardened criminals locked up longer.”
“Oh, no way, man! Not gonna happen!”
“Okay, well, you could close up the border and recommit the federal government to at least keeping foreign-born criminals out.”
“Not gonna happen, man!”
“So, what you’re saying is, you’re more committed to keeping your radical base happy than to helping make our neighborhoods safe for American citizens, sir.”
“Well, sure! Gotta keep your base happy, you know!”
“I see sir. Well then, what are you proposing to do, sir?”
“Well, we’re putting money into grants for these cities to get federal money for hiring police!”
“Not really, sir… these funds are like the funds a decade ago in the Obama stimulus, sir: It’s money for the first year or two or three, but then it creates an obligation on the part of the cities, an obligation that in a few years, they probably won’t be able to meet.”
“Not my problem.”
“It’s a shell game, sir. You’re setting them up. That’s really not very fair.”
“They’re asking for it, so I’m giving it to them.”
“Charming, sir.”
“Huh?”
“And your plan also has tons of federal money being sent to the cities to repurpose police to do things other than police work, like turning them into social workers, sir.”
“It’s called community policing, and it works.”
“It’s called turning police into little girls, sir, and it doesn’t work at all, unless you’re on the side of the criminals, sir.”
“I’m not on anybody’s side. I’m everybody’s representative.”
“With your thumb on the scale of the big city politicians and labor unions, right, sir?”
“Well, you have to support your friends!”
“I see, sir.”
“Look, I’m here to help these cities. They ask for money, we give them what they ask for. That’s why we’re here.”
“Sir, the fact that our cities are run by fools doesn’t mean that our federal government has to be as well, sir.”
“Huh?”
“It’s not like we all live in Chelm, so nobody can see through these things, sir.”
“You can’t?”
“No, sir, we can. We all see through these efforts, sir.”
“What efforts?”
“Your regime’s efforts to use federal tax dollars to keep the city governments dependent on Washington and distract the public from the reality of a federal-local conspiracy to keep crime high by keeping known criminals on the street. Sir.”
“I didn’t understand a word.”
“Of my last paragraph, sir, or of anything you’ve heard the past few years, sir?”
“What’s your name again?”
“See my point, sir? I keep telling you my name, sir, and you don’t even try to remember it. Porter Norfolk, sir. Porter Norfolk, sir.”
“Oh. Well. Hmm.. You’re right. I’ll never remember that.”
“Sir, all I can say is what everyone I know has been saying all my life: In America, we catch practically every criminal eventually, it’s murder to prosecute them and win a case, but we do, we eventually do… and then we sentence them to probation and put them back on the street.”
“What’s your point?”
“That the only real solution to a crime problem is to keep the criminals away – and that means enforcing the border and when you get a conviction, keep them in jail for decades, don’t let them right out. Nothing else will help, sir. Nothing else. Understand?”
“Hmm… I wonder. I have a half a bowl of soup left. Do you think if I put this half stack of crackers in there, they’ll still stay crisp as I eat?”
“I haven’t the faintest, sir. But you’ve certainly inspired me to do something with my life.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
“I think I’m going to need to buy some bulletproof clothing.”
“What for? Where are you going?”
“Out where your side of the aisle wants the criminal element to be.”
“Where’s that, son?”
“Anywhere at all, sir. Anywhere at all.”
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.
His newest nonfiction book, “Current Events and the Issues of Our Age,” was just released on July 1, and is also available, in both paperback and Kindle eBook, exclusively on Amazon.
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