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, from Bastille Day, 2021, Joe Buckstop’s soup aide, Porter Norfolk, explains the Vichy regime to the old criminal.
Puppets and Perpetrators and Vichyssoise
Dateline: July 14. Begin Transcript:
“Good evening, sir. It’s soup time.”
“Soup? There’s soup tonight? Oh, goody!”
“What, you didn’t think the cook would make you soup tonight, sir?
“Well, you know, you never know! People can’t always be trusted!”
“Well, you would know, sir.”
“So what’s the soup tonight?”
“It’s Vichyssoise, sir.”
“Really? I’ve heard of that… it’s French, right?”
“Good guess, sir. Yes, it’s French.”
“Oh, goody. Is it good?”
“Not usually, sir, but the cook served it hot.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’m not surprised, sir.”
“No, I mean, her soup is always hot, what’s the big deal?”
“It’s Vichyssoise, sir. Traditional cold French soup, sir. But it can be served hot, and your cook said, and I quote, ‘I wouldn’t serve cold soup to my worst enemy,’ sir.”
“Wonder why she chose it, then.”
“It’s July 14th, sir.”
“But why a French soup anyway?”
“It’s July 14th, sir.”
“Sometimes I think she puts some secret meaning into the soup she picks. Hmmm…. I wonder if there’s something she’s commemorating…”
“It’s July 14th, sir.”
“Why do you keep saying that? I know what day it is. It’s on my phone. And my watch. And my desk calendar. And my wall calendar. And my computer.”
“And none of them mention the significance of July 14, sir? Then they’re not much help, sir.”
“What’s your point?”
“This is the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, sir. The traditional beginning of the French Revolution.”
“Ohhhh….. I see. So is this one of those historical soups? Was it served at the Bastille?”
“No, sir, you wouldn’t want to eat anything that was served at the Bastille, sir.”
“Oh.”
“No, sir, Nobody knows how old it is, but it’s been around a very long time, usually served cold, but some stories say it started out as a hot soup, sir.”
“Well, if I don’t get started, my bowl will be cold anyway. Are there crackers?”
“There are always crackers, sir, especially at the Bastille, sir. Here you are, right behind the bowl of soup.”
“Yum!”
“I don’t think most Americans like the idea anymore because of the name, but it was popular for a long time.”
“Oh? What do you mean?”
“Well, you know, Vichyssoise. It’s named after the town of Vichy, so it naturally became an unpleasant name once the war got going, sir.”
“Which war?”
“Which war, sir?”
“Hey, no fair! I asked first!”
“World War II, sir. You know, the German occupation of France, sir?”
“Huh?”
“The Vichy government, sir?”
“Huh?”
“Well, sir, you remember how the Germans conquered France in seconds, then established a puppet government, sir, right? With a sort of temporary capital in Vichy, sir?”
“Oh. when was that?”
“During World War II, sir.”
“Come on, man! I was just a baby! I didn’t have anything to do with that!”
“Well, yes, sir, of course. My point is just that since the soup was named after Vichy – or at least, people assume it’s named after Vichy, I don’t really know if it is or not, myself – when Vichy became the capital of the German sympathizers, the soup naturally became unpopular, sir. That’s all.”
“Oh.”
“So it was getting really popular for a while, I guess, then came the war, and it wasn’t as popular anymore. Just became a joke, I guess, sir. People would make fun of the soup named after the puppet government, sir.”
“How did the puppets work?”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“You know, the puppets. Were they hand puppets? Sock puppets? The kind that dangle from strings?”
“You mean marionettes, sir?”
“Or full sized Marians, whatever…”
“Umm… no, sir, they weren’t any of those kinds of puppets, sir. These were real people, sir.”
“Oh, like Pinocchio?”
“No, sir. The Vichy government… well. It’s odd talking about this on Bastille Day, since it all happened 150 years later, but… well, it’s the same country, so we may as well, sir…”
“Sure, why not!”
“Okay, let’s see. When the Germans invaded France early in World War II, sir, France was defeated almost instantly. The country surrendered, and the Germans created a sort of fake government, made up of Frenchmen, hoping to fool the regular French people into thinking that it was legitimate, and that it was okay to be allies with Germany under the National Socialists, sir.”
“Oh.”
“They even convinced a once-great patriot to be the figurehead, a World War I leader named Marshall Petain, the hero of Verdun. The government was really a complete fiction, sir; all policy was really set in Germany, sir.”
“Oh. So… why are you telling me this?”
“Well, because I thought it was interesting how Vichyssoise was once such a popular soup, and then sort of fell out of favor, sir, because of the traitorous Vichy government, sir.”
“Come on, man! Just because they’re puppets doesn’t mean they’re traitors, you know!”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“Well, it’s not like they were Nazis or anything!”
“Umm… that’s exactly what they were, sir. They were Frenchmen, aiding the Nazis, taking orders from the Nazis, putting on a front so the Nazis could rule the country under a pretense of being welcome, sir. That’s what the Vichy government was, sir.”
“Wait, you said they were helping the National Socialists!”
“Yes sir. They were, sir.”
“But now you said they were Nazis. Stop changing your mind!”
“They’re the same thing, sir.”
“Come on, man!”
“What did you think Nazi stands for, sir? Nazi is a German abbreviation for National Socialist, sir. They were the socialists, the enemy, the villains, the killers, sir. And the Vichy government was on their side, working with them, supporting them, destroying their own country from within, acting as a plant for a foreign enemy power, sir.”
“Oh.”
“That’s the very definition of treason, sir. Providing aid and comfort to the enemy. Doing their bidding. Undermining your own country and your own people in the service of the enemy, sir.”
“Oh. Well. Glad that sort of thing couldn’t happen today.”
“Oh? Why couldn’t it, sir?”
“Well, with the internet, everyone would see it happen. They couldn’t get away with it. Lucky we don’t have any risk of that today, huh, kid?”
“Porter, sir. My name is Porter.”
“Oh, right. Well. I’ll never remember that.”
“I suppose not, sir.
“Pretty good soup though. You said this is usually served cold, though?”
“Yes sir, it is.”
“Like revenge, huh?”
“I suppose, sir.”
“So tell me more about this guy who ran the French government when I was a kid. I never learned about that. I was a baby in Scranton during the war. Don’t suppose you knew that. I was born and raised in Scranton. I’m a Scranton boy!”
“Yes sir, I think I’d heard, sir.”
“Oh.”
“So, well, there isn’t much more to tell, sir. Marshall Petain was very old and some people think he was getting senile, and others think that’s just an excuse and he wasn’t senile at all. Nobody really knows, sir.”
“Really? How old was he?”
“Well, he was in his early 60s when he commanded in World War I, so he was about 84 or so when he was picked to be the figurehead at Vichy, sir.”
“Oh. And they call ME too old to be a head of state, and I’m just 78. Heh heh!”
“Yes, sir, well, Marshall Petain isn’t exactly a poster child for the concept, sir. Remember, he was a traitor.”
“Well, maybe so, but he still held the office, right? That’s what counts!”
“He was a puppet, sir.”
“He appointed people!”
“They were selected for him by his handlers, sir.”
“Well, he gave orders!”
“They were written for him by his staff, sir.”
“Well, he got to be regarded as the head of state by the country!”
“He basically napped in his basement, sir, and just got trotted out when the Nazis needed him to give a false appearance of French support on things, sir.”
“Oh.”
“He was a pawn of one of the most evil governments in history, sir, no better or worse than Communist Russia, Maoist China, the Mullahs’ Iran or Castro’s Cuba, sir.”
“Huh?”
“And after the war, when the war crimes tribunals began, he and his staff were properly tried for treason and convicted, sir.”
“Huh?”
“And Marshall Petain was condemned to death for treason, sir. They didn’t carry it out; he was dying and senile anyway, so they let him die of natural causes, for some reason, but yeah, they condemned him to death.”
“Wow.”
“And that was a man who had once been a war hero, in a previous war. Imagine what would happen to a guy who did that, without having once been a hero. Imagine if a puppet of an enemy state had been a reprobate his whole life, without any honorable service to help partially redeem him, sir.”
“Well, then, I guess it’s good that such a thing couldn’t happen nowadays, huh?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that, sir. There are still evil enemy countries in the world, sir – Maoist China, the Mullahs’ Iran, the Castros’ Cuba, the Kims’ North Korea. Lots of evil enemies out there, sir… and lots of governments, and heads of state, that they would like to control, sir.”
“But surely you’re not saying that such a thing could happen today!”
“I don’t know, sir. Is anyone a puppet of a foreign government today, sir? Is there a prime minister or president, somewhere in Europe or the Americas, who’s disregarding the best interests of his own country, in order to help the autocrats of Beijing or Tehran or Havana, sir?”
“Well, uh, what are you looking at me for, kid?”
“You’re the only other person in the room, sir.”
“Oh, umm, right, yeah…”
“How’s your soup, sir?”
“Oh, it’s good, very good. Glad it’s hot. Don’t think I’d like it cold.”
“They serve cold soup in prison, sir, from what I hear, sir.”
“Oh.”
“Field Marshall Petain spent the final seven years of his long life in jail for his crimes. Died in prison, in misery and shame, a convicted traitor, for selling out his country to the ChiComs… oops… I mean, the Nazis, sir.”
“Huh? What was that?”
“Slip of the tongue, sir. Never mind. Anyway, Petain died at 95. Charles DeGaulle said of him that Petain’s life was ‘successively banal, then glorious, then deplorable, but never mediocre.’ To sell out your country to genocidal megalomaniac bigoted monsters. I can’t even imagine doing such a thing.”
“Uh, you know, this is good soup….”
“Glad to hear it, sir. Vichyssoise. I’ll tell the cook you liked it, sir.”
“Uh, yeah. Thanks.”
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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