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: With this chapter, we begin our excerpts from the third book – Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volume III – which represents the third quarter of the first year of this unfortunate, hopefully fictional, presidency. In today’s episode, Joe Buckstop discusses space exploration with his newest soup aide, Columbus McFetridge.
Exploration, Indians, Taxes, and Space Soup
Dateline: July 20. Begin Transcript:
“Good evening, sir, may I come in with your soup?”
“Oh, sure, come in, come in…”
“This seems so odd. I would’ve expected three rows of guards, you know, sir?”
“Oh, that’s all outside. Nothing to worry about down here in the basement. What do you have for me?”
“Um… the cook called it Space Soup, sir. She said… uhh… it’s a spinach and meatball soup with outer space pasta, sir.”
“Oh, that sounds great!”
“It does, sir?”
“Well, sure! Sounds like fun! Let’s see the noodles. Ooohhh! They look like spaceships! Isn’t that cool?”
“Aren’t you an adult, sir?”
“Huh? What’s that? I didn’t catch that.”
“Oh, sorry, sir… must’ve been muttering to myself, sir.”
“Why do they all do that? All the soup aides do that. They all talk to themselves. It’s the weirdest thing…”
“Yes sir, if you say so, sir.”
“So is it good?”
“Well, it’s spinach and mushroom soup with noodles, sir… tomato based soup…”
“But is it good?”
“I haven’t tried it, sir.”
“Why not? Have a bowl! The cook will be happy to give you a bowl, kid!”
“No thank you, sir. I’m really fine, sir.”
“Oh well. Suit yourself.”
“Spaceship-shaped noodles for a grownup….. man…”
“Huh? What’s that?”
“Nothing, sir, nothing. Never mind, sir. Sorry.”
“You know, I was just thinking about outer space today, kid.”
“Columbus, sir.”
“Huh?”
“Columbus, sir. My name is Columbus, sir.”
“Oh. How’d you come up with a name like that?”
“Well, I didn’t, sir, my parents named me, sir.”
“Oh. Well, how did THEY come up with a name like that?”
“You really want to know, sir?”
‘”Come on, man! I asked the question, didn’t I?”
“Hmm… Yes, sir. Well, sir, my parents met in Chicago, sir, when they were in college. Their first date was at a big museum there, and they said their first kiss was while they were walking back from the museum on their way to dinner, sir. They stopped on the sidewalk near a great big Columbus statue and talked for a while, and they said, after their first kiss, they looked up, and saw Christopher Columbus up there. Dad said, ‘you know, now, if we get married, we’ll have to name our first child after him!’ And, well, they did, and they did, sir!”
“Huh?”
“They did and they did, sir. They did get married, and they did name their first child after him!”
“Oh? Who’s that then?”
“Umm…. me, sir. You asked where I got my name, sir.”
“Oh, right. So what is your name?”
“Columbus, sir! Columbus McFetridge, sir. We talked for an hour last night, sir!”
“We did?”
“Yes sir, we did!”
“Oh, so we’ve met before, then?”
“Last night, sir.”
“So did that other fella quit then?”
“I wouldn’t know, sir.”
“Oh. What’s your name again?”
“Columbus, sir. Columbus McFetridge.”
“So did that make you want to go into politics when you were growing up?”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“Well, you know, being named Columbus.”
“No, sir… I was certainly interested in exploring, sir, and I read all the kids’ books about the great explorers, but, no, I never thought about politics… Why would I be interested in politics?”
“Well, you’re named after Columbus! It’s a state capital! And Ohio is the birthplace of presidents, you know!”
“Oh, I see. Well. So that’s how your mind works, is it?”
“Huh? What’s that?”
“Oh, nothing. Just… interesting, sir. I’m named after the explorer, sir. Columbus. Not the city, sir. Christopher Columbus, sir.”
“I thought only Eye-talians named people after Christopher Columbus.”
“Umm well, sir, I just told you my story, sir. Can’t speak to the story of anyone else, sir.”
“Oh.”
“But yes, being named after one of the great explorers did certainly inspire me to read about them when I was a kid, sir. All the children’s biographies I could get my hands on, sir.”
“Oh.”
“My folks would take us to the library, and I’d take out books about Columbus and Vespucci, and Cabot and Cook, and Magellan and Raleigh and Drake… They were practically all I read about for a few years, sir.”
“Too bad. Sounds boring for a kid.”
“Boring? The great explorers? You’re kidding, sir, right?”
“Well… it’s not like they had cars or planes back then. They had to travel in boats. Boring.”
“Their lives were anything but boring, sir. Daring, courageous, inspiring… not boring, sir.”
“We’re taking down those statues nowadays, you know. High time. All the damage they did.”
“Damage, sir? We’re only here because of them, sir! We’re only here because brave men set sail westward, cutting new paths that Europeans had never attempted before (at least, not since Erickson)… they risked everything, sir, and they changed the world!”
“They didn’t belong here.”
“Well, sir, your ancestors weren’t Americans for the past ten thousand years, sir! Your ancestors were immigrants too; they came here from Ireland and England just, what, thirty, fifty, a hundred years before you were born, right, sir?”
“Well, yeah, but…”
“But nothing, sir. Your ancestors – and mine – could only come to America because other people blazed the trail first, sir. They made all the difference, sir.”
“They took land that wasn’t theirs!”
“The American indians didn’t have the concept of property rights, sir. And there was plenty of land for all of us at first, heck, for centuries. Still would be, if it weren’t for all the broken treaties.”
“Huh? What treaties?”
“All the treaties with the indian tribes that were negotiated during the early days of the United States, sir… all the treaties negotiated by the Federalists, that were then broken by Democrats, sir.”
“Come on, man!”
“Well, you brought it up, sir. Don’t blame me.”
“Oh, I did?”
“Sir, the Washington administration negotiated lots of good treaties with peaceful indians, and we could have coexisted in peace, but the Jeffersonian crowd – you know, the group that eventually settled in to be called Democrats – broke all those treaties as fast as they could, sir. Expanding into their lands, raiding and fighting… It’s so sad, really. General Washington tried so hard to start everything off on the right foot.”
“Look, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but it doesn’t sound right to me!”
“Well, look it up, sir. Do you have access to the internet, sir?”
“Of course I do!”
“Well, then please do some reading on the Washington administration, sir. This problem goes back 230 years, sir.”
“All old stuff. All dead issues about dead people. Old dead white males.”
“Um, sir, not to be impolite, sir, but what do you have against old white males, sir? You’re an old white male, yourself, sir! What’s wrong with that?”
“It’s that old white males didn’t belong here! They should’ve left America to the American, umm, uhh… what do they call it now… The natives.”
“You wish there had been no era of exploration, sir?”
“It just spread toxic whiteness.”
“Speak for yourself, old man.”
“Huh? What’s that?”
“Exploration is wonderful, sir! It was transformational! It brought people from all over the world into this great melting pot of a country. It enabled western civilization to expand, to mix and mingle, creating a whole new kind of people, sir.”
“Well, I don’t know…”
“And it’s the natural drive of humanity, sir! To explore, to reach out … to see what else the world offers!”
“I don’t know about that…”
“Well, look at Jeff Bezos, sir!”
“Who?”
“Jeff Bezos, sir. The businessman, sir.”
“Who?”
“The founder of Amazon, the internet retailer, sir.”
“Who?”
“The founder of Blue Origin, the aerospace company, sir.”
“Who?”
“Owner of the Washington Post, sir?”
“Who?”
“Come on, you’ve got to have heard of him!”
“Oh, probably. Doesn’t mean I’d remember.”
“He was in the news today, sir, going into outer space, sir. In his own rocket, sir.”
“Today?”
“Yes, sir! You must have seen it on the news!”
“No.”
“You do watch the news, sir, don’t you?”
“Well, you know, I’m going to play MarioKart against my granddaughter again one of these days, so I’ve been practicing…”
“Not all day, sir!”
“Oh, I don’t know. All day, all night, what’s the difference. It all runs together…”
“But your administration even talked about it, today, sir… People were talking about how expensive his rocket is, and how much it cost him to fly into space for just ten minutes… how he’s spending all his money on this sort of thing, sir…”
“Oh, I remember now! We talked about that in a meeting today. We’re thinking about taxing people for space flights.”
“Excuse me, sir???”
“Well, you know, if they’ve got billions of dollars to blow on a trip to outer space, we may as well get our cut, huh?”
“Your cut? What cut? You don’t deserve a cut out of somebody else’s space trip! If he’s building the rocket himself, with this own money, what business is it of the government’s, sir?”
“Well, we need cash! We always need cash! So if he’s got that much, he can spare some!”
“What the heck are you talking about, sir? He’s already doing more for the country the way he’s spending it than you politicians would do with it!”
“Come on, man! He blew all that money on a pleasure trip for himself! You can’t defend that!”
“Is that so, sir? Well, think about what he spent on this business. All those millions… maybe it’s billions, I don’t know… created jobs for scientists, engineers, designers. It created factories, or created work for existing factories, to custom-build whole new vehicles. It created jobs for all the vendors who supplied parts for the rocket. it created jobs for all the people in his office who’ll be selling multi-million dollar tickets to future trips, sir!”
“What are you talking about?”
“He’s kind of a modern day explorer himself, sir! Not in terms of discovering a new place, but in terms of creating a new route for people to travel, sir! His money – in his hands – is doing good, by creating jobs and building a whole new industry, space tourism, sir.”
“But think of all the good he could have done if he had donated that money to some good cause!”
“Oh, he wouldn’t do that, sir. He donates all the time, and usually to really awful causes. He pours money into the most radical charities… Oh no. He’s not a guy we’d want to donate any more. I’d rather he never wrote another donation check. He supports terrible groups.”
“But you said…”
“I said, sir, that his business endeavor in space is great. It puts tons of good people to work, making everything from a little dial on the dashboard to the entire hull of the ship. He’s created more work, and more wealth for people, than any welfare program you politicians ever came up with.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I know you don’t, sir. The whole country knows. Don’t worry about it. Just remember the big picture, sir. When a business has money, it can create work for other people, and create tons and tons of lucrative activity for tons of different kinds of vendors. You can’t beat that, sir!”
“But wouldn’t it be easier if they just built some free parks or homeless shelters for people in need?”
“Well, sure, sir, it would be easier… but not right, not as rewarding. It’s all about creating real work, work that can grow to become experience for a future job, and even more importantly, work that could help bring back manufacturing here. Stranger things have happened, sir!”
“But how do I get my cut then?”
“Oh, you don’t have to worry, sir. From what I’ve read, sir, you’re sure to find a way to get a cut out of it, sir.”
“Oh, umm, well then…”
Copyright 2021-2024 John F Di Leo
Excerpted with permission from “Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volume Three: How Is This Not Over Yet?”, 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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