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 are sharing approximately every other story from Evening Soup with Basement Joe, and are now sampling Volume Three’s ninety chapters. In today’s episode, President Buckstop is forced to recall the position he took this morning on electric vehicles and Little League baseball.
Electric Vehicles, Auto Workers, and Root Vegetable and Barley Soup
Dateline: July 30. Begin Transcript:
“Hello, boss! How are you doing?”
“I don’t know. How do I look like I’m doing?”
“You look the same as you usually do, boss: dazed and confused.”
“Well, don’t blame me, blame this game.”
“What about the game, sir?”
“Too many weird buttons on this game controller. I just can’t figure it out.”
“That’s because it’s not a game controller, sir. You’re holding the TV remote again.”
“Oh? Am I? Darn. I thought it was just wireless.”
“No, sir. It’s just a remote.”
“I can’t re-moat the place. I wanted to put in a moat, but I couldn’t get a permit. Something about local ordinances against pet alligators.”
“I see sir.”
“I told them they wouldn’t be pets. But they still said no.”
“Here. This might help, boss… Some root vegetable and barley soup.”
“Does it have alligator in it?”
“No, sir.”
“Darn. I like alligator.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, sir.”
“Are there crackers?”
“There are always crackers, sir. Soup, crackers, napkins, spoons. Here you go, sir.”
“Could’ve used this a few hours ago, when I was talking to the UAW. Man, that was exhausting.”
“Why is that, sir? What’s exhausting about the UAW, sir?”
“Mostly, the mufflers they make.”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“Mostly the mufflers they make. They’re exhausting. Old auto industry joke. Get it?”
“Did you use that in your speech, sir?”
“I don’t know. Think so. Maybe not. Don’t remember.”
“Well, why were they upset, sir? Were you trying to convince them of something? Or were they trying to convince you of something, boss?”
“I was just talking about how we need to get rid of the internal combustion engine. They didn’t like it.”
“They didn’t like the engine, or they didn’t like the commitment, boss?”
“Huh?”
“What didn’t they like about your speech, boss?”
“Oh. I don’t know. I just told them we need to get to 40% electronic vehicles by 2030. And the audience wasn’t as excited about it as we were.”
“Gee. How strange, sir. You were proposing a change to their manufacturing output that leaves their expertise behind and switches them to an unproven market that might leave them bankrupt, jobless and unemployable, and you don’t understand why they were nervous about it.”
“Well, yeah… Our best experts say the change will be great for them.”
“For who, sir?”
“For them. For everybody. For all of us.”
“Are these auto industry experts, sir?”
“Huh? No… I have economics experts, social justice experts, environmental experts. Everybody agrees that a 40% electric vehicle minimum by 2030 is reasonable.”
“Reasonable for who, boss?”
“What? Ummm…. Reasonable for the planet, I guess.”
“So you were talking to a manufacturing industry in Detroit, about a political commitment that you hope to benefit the world, without concern for how it would affect your audience specifically. Right, boss?”
“Well, sure, why not?”
“Well, sir, do you think maybe these folks are a bit nervous that they couldn’t sell that many electric vehicles, and they might lose their jobs?”
“Why would that happen?”
“Well, sir, if they can’t sell all these new electric cars that you want them to make, then the people who make the unsuccessful new cars would lose their jobs… And the people who made the successful gasoline powered cars before, that you forced them to stop making, would lose their jobs too…”
“Huh?”
“So a lot of union members would be losing their jobs, if this idea doesn’t pan out, sir.”
“Huh?”
“Might that be why they are nervous?”
“What does that have to do with anything? I’m talking about policy here.”
“Yes, sir, but it’s policy that affects people’s livelihoods, sir.”
“I like riding hoods.”
“Excuse me?”
“You mentioned riding hoods. I like riding hoods.”
“What are you talking about, sir?”
“Riding hoods. Little red riding hood. She was cute. Did you ever see ‘Into the Woods?’ I get to watch a lot of TV down here, and I saw it on cable, and there’s this girl in a red riding hood and she sings this song…”
“No sir. Livelihood. We were talking about livelihoods, sir.”
“Oh.”
“About how these auto workers make their livings, sir. And how your policy might affect their livelihoods, sir.”
“No policy ever affected my livelihood, you know… Why would it affect theirs?”
“Well, sir, maybe because you just held elective office for 50 years, and they actually have to work for a living at a job that turns a profit every day.”
“Come on, man! I turned a profit every day.”
“I don’t think getting a cut of your children’s and siblings’ business ventures counts the same way, sir.”
“Why not?”
“Well, sir… For one thing, you didn’t pay taxes on it.”
“Oh.”
“And for another, sir, The union’s rank and file membership didn’t have access to the kinds of deals with foreign countries that your rather unique experience offered you, sir.”
“No? Well, they should have been more clever.”
“Besides, sir… How has your office reconciled this plan with the fact that we can’t produce enough energy to operate that many electric vehicles, sir?”
“Who says?”
“Well, most people who know about energy, I suppose.”
“But that’s why my infrastructure plan calls for installing charging stations all over the country.”
“But, sir, even if you install all those charging stations, there isn’t enough energy in the grid to provide the power for them.”
“Well, that’s why you plug it in. You only get the power when you plug it in.”
“No sir, I mean, there isn’t any juice when you plug it in, unless the grid provides power, sir.”
“I don’t think you know how charging stations work. The power is in the charging stations. It goes from the charging station into the car, when you plug it in.”
“I know, sir. But the power has to get into the charging station first, in order for the car to draw it out, sir. Where do you think the energy comes from?”
“Well, that’s why we need the infrastructure bill… we have to build the charging stations.”
“You’re going around in circles, sir.”
“And wouldn’t it be great if you could go around in circles without burning fossil fuels?”
“I’m talking about what happens before you plug the car into the charging station, sir. There has to already be energy in the charging station. It had to come from a coal plant or a nuclear plant or a hydroelectric plant, or a petroleum plant, sir. There has to be a flow of energy from power plants into these charging stations.”
“Did I ever tell you about when I played baseball in Scranton? I grew up in Scranton you know. Nice town. Good place to grow up. Played ball there.”
“No sir, you haven’t told me about your baseball days, sir.”
“In Scranton.”
“In Scranton? Didn’t you move away from Scranton when you were ten?”
“I did?”
“Yes sir.”
“Well, you go up to the plate, and you have a bat, and you swing. Nobody worries about where that ball is going to come from. Because there will be a ball. There’s always a ball.”
“Excuse me, sir?”
“There’s always a pitch. You just have to give the pitcher something to aim at.”
“So, you’re saying, sir, that if you put an electric car in front of the charging station, there will be power in the charging station, just because there’s a car there waiting for it?”
“Huh? Oh. That’s good too!”
“You mean, that’s not the analogy you were going for?”
“What analogy? It’s summer. I was just thinking about baseball.”
“So, you really don’t have any idea of where the power is going to come from to power of these charging stations, sir?”
“What charging stations? They don’t have charging stations on the baseball diamond. You’d trip on them while rounding the bases!”
“Umm… now, sir… if you want to change America‘s auto industry to be 40% electric vehicles, then the grid has to provide power for those vehicles, or they will be useless. People won’t be able to go anywhere in them, sir!”
“Oh, people don’t need to go anywhere anyway. You can do everything you want to from your basement now. You can work, watch TV, play games, eat soup…”
“So you’re saying, sir, that you don’t care if there’s no energy to power these cars? Because you figure nobody’s going anywhere anyway?”
“Well, I’m certainly not going anywhere…”
“That’s for sure, sir. That’s for sure.”
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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