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’s soup aide tries to see if the old man comprehends the consequences of his choices that week.
Afghanistan, the Taliban, and Chicken Pot Pie Soup
Dateline: August 16. Begin Transcript:
“Sir, are you ready for your soup?”
“Soup? Always ready for soup!”
“Of course sir. I knew you’d come out of your vacation for that…”
“Oh, right, I was supposed to be on vacation, wasn’t I? Hmm… maybe I can go back on vacation tomorrow…”
“I wouldn’t advise it, sir.”
“Oh.”
“Your cook made something called Chicken Pot Pie Soup, tonight, sir. It’s the ingredients of a pot pie, but with the crust broken up in the soup instead of surrounding it like a normal crust, sir. An interesting idea, sir.”
“What’s your name again?”
“Russell, sir. Russell Rhoades, sir.”
“Oh. I’ll never remember that.”
“So I’ve noticed, sir. Anyway, there’s your soup for this evening. Soup, crackers, napkins, spoons. I did mention to your cook that it’s already full of bits of crust, so wouldn’t crackers be overkill?”
“Oh no, I like overkill!”
“Well, now, sir, that does explain a lot.”
“Crackers are always good, no matter what.”
“Yes, sir, I should’ve realized that, sir.”
“Hmm… This tastes familiar. Like I’ve had it before. Hmm… Now, what does this taste like???”
“Perhaps it tastes like a slice of chicken pot pie, sir?”
“That’s it! Yeah, that’s what it tastes like!”
“Remarkable, sir.”
“You know, I remember having had chicken pot pie when I was a boy in Scranton. Don’t know if you knew this, but I was raised in Pennsylvania. Scranton. Yup, Scranton P.A. Quite a place to be a kid in. Bet you didn’t know I was born in Scranton!”
“I’m even having trouble believing you were born on earth, sir.”
“Huh? What’s that? Why do you soup aides always mumble all the time?”
“Sorry, sir. I’ll try to speak more clearly, sir.”
“Man. How would you like it if I did that? If I mumbled so much that nobody would understand a word I said?”
“I’d lay odds it’d be six months before anyone noticed the difference, sir.”
“Huh?”
“So, I heard you came back early from your vacation today, after all, sir, right?”
“Mmm… Yeah. They made me come back to read a speech.”
“So your staff wrote it without your involvement, sir?”
“I was on vacation!”
“Yes, sir. Of course. I heard a bit of it in the car, sir.”
“Mmm… How was it?”
“Well, sir, I tuned in during the part where you said that you wouldn’t have American soldiers risk their lives for people who won’t risk their own lives, sir.”
“Mmm… This is good soup.”
“Were you unaware, sir, that hundreds of thousands of Afghan fighters had fought on our side, and some 70,000 or so died on the battlefield in recent years, courageously fighting the Taliban?”
“I dunno. I didn’t write it.”
“And you know, sir, there were a lot of other troops and advisors there, sir, our allies, like a couple hundred English soldiers and advisors, for example, who were stranded when you gave up the airports and started abandoning the country, sir. I sure hope the English get out, sir.”
“Hmm. You know, I’m part English. Small part. Mostly Irish. Family settled in Scranton. Bet you didn’t know I was from Scranton!”
“Well, now, who’d have thought it, sir.”
“Mmm… you know, having both crackers and crust in the same soup is neat. I like crackers.”
“Just out of curiosity, sir, are you aware of who’s taking over Afghanistan this week, sir?”
“Huh? Sure, umm… the Afghan government.”
“The Afghan government fell to the Taliban, sir.”
“So now the Taliban are the Afghan government, right? So technically, I wasn’t wrong! This is good soup. Inspirational soup.”
“You know what I read, today, sir? A couple of the top Taliban leaders, who are now going to be running the government, are Al Qaeda generals, sir.”
“What kind of generals?”
“Al Qaeda generals, sir.”
“No such rank.”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“There’s brigadier general, and major general, and uhh, I think I’ve heard of a lieutenant general… oh, and then there’s just plain general.”
“Yes sir?”
“No alkaline generals.”
“Al Qaeda, sir. Al Qaeda generals, sir. I didn’t mean it was a rank. I meant a couple of officers from Al Qaeda were caught, spent years in GITMO, and then the Obama regime let them go, so they could go back to Afghanistan and plan for their return, sir.”
“No kidding?”
“Yes sir. So twenty years after Al Qaeda and the Taliban cooperated to attack New York and Washington in 2001, you’ve given them a new base of operations, sir. In much better shape than it was 20 years ago when we threw them out, sir.”
“Who’s that again?”
“The Taliban, sir?”
“No, the other one?”
“Al Qaeda, sir? Have you forgotten who they are, sir?”
“Uh…. remind me. I’m not always that great at remembering, umm, uhh, things, and, and stuff.”
“You must remember, sir… Al Qaeda is the terrorist arm of the Taliban, sir. The Taliban run the government, and Al Qaeda performs individual terrorist operations for them, sir. It’s like the relationship between the Democratic Party and the Ku Klux Klan, sir.”
“Oh. I see. Hmm… Wonder if they have soup there.”
“Well, sir, I don’t expect they’ll have much, now that the whole country has fallen under the Taliban, sir.”
“Oh, you think they’ll eat something else now?”
“If they eat at all, sir.”
“Oh, come on, man! Give it time. I’m sure it’ll all work out in the end. They’ll eat as well as we do.”
“Probably better. Unlike you and your team, sir, they won’t have to spend the rest of their careers eating crow, sir.”
Copyright 2021-2024 John F Di Leo
Excerpted 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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