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 from the late summer of his first year in office, President Buckstop’s soup aide, Russell Rhoades, tries to get the old man to discuss illegal immigration.
Aliens, Immigrants, Borders, and Mexican Meatball Soup
Dateline: August 24. Begin Transcript:
“Good evening, sir! Are you in?”
“Who is it?”
“Russell Rhoades, sir.”
“Never heard of him.”
“That hurts, sir.”
“Put a bandage on it!”
“Sir, I’m Russell Rhoades, the guy who’s been delivering your soup for the past couple of weeks, remember?”
“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”
“Oh brother. Because I’m standing here with tonight’s tray of soup, sir.”
“How do I know you’re not just saying that? I don’t see any soup!”
“That’s because your door is closed, sir. I can’t exactly walk in on you without you saying okay, sir.”
“Why not?”
“Well, because, umm… Because of your job, sir! EVERYBODY knows you can’t just walk in on, well, on YOU, sir! You might be in conference. You might be talking about something top secret. You might be meeting with someone whom you don’t want the world to know you’re meeting with, sir.”
“Oh. Good point. I should probably do some of those things sometimes, shouldn’t I?”
“Well, yes, sir, even if only to feel like you deserve the title, sir.”
“What title?”
“Oh, never mind, sir… can I come in, please? The soup is getting cold.”
“Oh, right, come in! What’s the soup tonight?”
“Mexican meatball soup, sir.”
“Cool! What’s in it?”
“Um, meatballs… and it looks like, ah, carrots, tomatoes, some kind of green thing… I don’t know what else, sir. I’m sure you’ll like it, sir.”
“How do you know that?”
“Well, your cook seems to know your tastes pretty well, sir. You always like everything she makes, sir.”
“That’s true.”
“So here we go… let’s lay them out for you…. soup… crackers… napkins… and your three soft children’s plastic soup spoons. There you go, sir.”
“Mexican soup, huh? Wonder why.”
“Well, you know, sometimes she just finds a recipe she wants to try, and sometimes she has some ingredients she feels like using, and sometimes she hears something in the news that gives her an inspiration, sir.”
“Oh. What was it this time?”
“I don’t know for sure, sir, but maybe because Mexico’s in the news, sir? That could be it.”
“Oh? Why was Mexico in the news? Is there an earthquake down there?”
“No, sir.”
“A big party? I’ll bet that’s it. One of their great celebrations? Those Mexicans sure know how to celebrate.”
“No, sir. Not that I know of, sir.”
“Oh, lemme guess, lemme guess… Bulls! Was it the bulls? The running of the bulls? I’ve always wanted to see that up close. That must be cool.”
“Sir, the running of the bulls is in Spain, not Mexico.”
“Huh? What’s the difference?”
“I don’t know what you mean, sir.”
“Spain, Mexico, what’s the difference?”
“Well, I mean… umm… they’re different countries, sir.”
“What? Don’t be silly. They speak Spanish, don’t they?”
“Well, yes, but… Spanish came from Spain, but lots of countries speak Spanish, sir! Dozens of them, sir!”
“Really?”
“Yes sir. Ummm…. I’m sure you knew that, sir. Maybe you just forgot, sir.”
“Yeah, maybe…”
“You haven’t had your shot yet, tonight, have you, sir?”
“No, not yet. How did you know?”
“It’s not really just vitamins, is it, sir?”
“Huh? Oh yes. It’s vitamins. Special made. Formulated just for me.”
“Yes, I’ll bet it was, sir.”
“Huh? What’s that?”
“Nothing, sir. So anyway, yeah, your cook decided to make a Mexican soup, today, sir, and the only thing I can guess is that it’s because the Mexican border is in the news today, sir.”
“Oh, don’t be silly. I don’t have any Mexican boarders.”
“Excuse me, sir?”
“Yeah, I know, this house is so big, you’d think it was a boarding house, but it’s really not. It’s just a mansion. Single family. I mean, it’s bigger than most, I suppose, but it’s still not a boarding house. So no, I don’t have any boarders.”
“Umm, sir, uhh…”
“And even if I did, I don’t think they’d be Mexicans.”
“I beg your pardon, sir???”
“I mean, you know, this is an expensive property in an expensive neighborhood. If I did rent rooms… which I don’t, but if I did… I don’t think Mexicans could afford to be my tenants. Certainly not here!”
“Sir, before you insult ethnicities, you might want to know the heritage of the people you’re talking to, sir.”
“When I was in the senate, I had aides to do that for me. Not any more. Never realized how much I counted on those aides.”
“Yes sir, well, I can’t speak to that. All I know is what was in the news today about the Mexican border, sir.”
“We’ve been through all that!”
“No, sir, we haven’t. The Supreme Court slapped down your lawyers today and refused to let your regime continue to allow illegals by the millions to abuse the refugee system, sir.”
“Huh? Whaddaya mean, abuse? I don’t abuse anybody! I’ve never even been arrested for it!”
“No, sir. The border. The Mexican border. All those millions of people who’ve been coming up from Mexico and from central America and from South America and Heaven knows where else, sir.”
“What about them?”
“Well, the last administration had a logical approach to deal with the combination of unapproved people showing up at the border and claiming refugee status, sir.”
“They did?”
“Yes sir, they did. If somebody showed up at the border, they had to stay on the Mexican side until we could check them out, and if they claimed refugee status, we would evaluate the refugee status request while they were over the line in Mexico, sir.”
“That wasn’t working.”
“It was working fine, sir.”
“No it wasn’t, hardly any of them were getting approved!”
“Because hardly any of them merited a refugee status claim, sir!”
“It wasn’t fair.”
“It was perfectly fair, sir! The vast majority of them were not from countries where they were persecuted, sir! They were just poor.”
“So they were economic refugees!”
“There’s no such thing, sir.”
“Huh? Course there is!”
“Only because you people made it up, sir. It doesn’t make any sense, sir.”
“I didn’t make it up!”
“I didn’t say you did, sir. But your side did. Sir, if we just considered being poor to be grounds for jumping ahead of the line on immigration, almost everyone on earth would be here in the USA, sir. At least 90% of America’s immigrants have come here over the years because they were poor in their own countries, and they’ve come here for our economic opportunities.”
“See?”
“Yes, but only in absorbable numbers, sir! These hundreds of thousand of people per month, sir, we can’t absorb that, sir!”
“They were living in tents!”
“Yes, sir, and lots of people live in tents. Ever meet a camper, sir? I know tons of good Americans who live in tents for weeks at a time. There’s nothing unfair about it. And remember, they CHOSE to come here without an appointment, so to speak. Without our State Department having issued them papers showing approval, sir.”
“Papers!”
“You know, sir, we don’t OWE them anything. They can apply to be let in, but it’s not like we owe non-US citizens anything, sir. Immigration has to be based on how many people a country needs or can afford to let in, and about their desire to be assimilated. If they don’t want to be assimilated, we can’t let them in, sir.”
“But we do!”
“I know we do, sir. But we shouldn’t! It’s changing our country, sir. People who don’t understand or respect western civilization aren’t a good fit for the USA, sir. Or at least, to become a fit, it takes years of working on assimilation, sir.”
“What do you know. You’re just a temp!”
“So are you, sir.”
“Huh? No I’m not!”
“You’re only there for four years, sir. If you’re lucky. You could be impeached or forced to resign. Heck, sir, it’s one of the few jobs where there’s so much likelihood that it won’t work out, that they put a replacement right up there with you, so that if they have to get rid of the incumbent, there’s somebody to just slide right in. Handy, huh?”
“Umm…. huh?”
“Yup, you know, they say Coolidge was on vacation up north when he got the phone call that Harding died. His dad was a local judge, so his dad swore him in right there. Yup, the job is built to be temporary.”
“Wait a minute, that doesn’t happen often!”
“Well, depends on what you call often, doesn’t it? Let’s see now, Harrison, Taylor, Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, Harding, Franklin Delano Roosevelt that son of a bitch…”
“Huh? What did you say?”
“Oh, sorry, sir, that’s just how we were raised to say it in my house. We couldn’t leave that part off. Dad would say ‘It’s his proper name, you’ve got to include the whole thing.’ So I do, out of habit. Anyway, then there’s JFK… and then there’s Nixon who stepped down… Yup, the job is temporary. About one in five doesn’t make it through a full term.”
“Wow. I never thought of it that way.”
“Yup. You never know how much time you’ve got, sir.”
“Man. This is depressing.”
“Well, I don’t mean to depress you, sir. I just think it’s interesting that you’re so confident that you’re right, and courts keep slapping you down, sir. Isn’t that interesting?”
“What?”
“Well, sir, let’s think about the so-called refugees at the border. Almost none of them are from Cuba, they’re not here as real refugees from persecution, and yet your administration wants to call them refugees anyway.”
“Well, yeah!”
“And then when you do get applicants for refugee status who come from Cuba, the people who really truly ARE escaping persecution, people who often have hand-made attempts at crude boats to facilitate their escape from Cuba, your administration refuses them. Literally the only country on this hemisphere that’s so blatantly obvious as a justification for refugee status, and your team refuses to let them in. Simply insane, sir.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I know, sir. We’re all used to that. Anyway, sir, now that this has been going on for months and months, there’s a ton of data at our command on these people, sir.”
“Oh, yes, I remember Commander Data. Great character. Don’t remember what that has to do with this, though…”
“Data at our command, sir. Data. Statistics. Information, sir. The knowledge of their economic condition, their criminal records, their health records…”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, sir… let’s look at it this way, sir. What does your regime insist that the country do in response to the Covid virus, sir?”
“Wear masks, of course! And get vaccinated! and keep your distance!”
“And is that what you’re requiring of these alleged refugees, sir? About half of them have either the Covid or some other communicable disease like tuberculosis, sir. Half of them.”
“Well, now, let’s not confuse the issues…”
“I’m not confusing the issues, sir. Either you care about communicable diseases or you don’t, sir. Even if you’re wrong on one or the other, people usually forgive; they’re decent folks… But your regime’s hypocrisy is really on display here, sir.”
“Gee…”
“We have doubled our population over the past 60 years, sir… almost entirely by immigration, legal and illegal, sir. We are allowing immigration far beyond our ability to absorb them. It’s crazy, sir.”
“You’re just not compassionate!”
“Compassionate, sir? I’ve known people who’ve had drug overdoses, people who were afraid to go home at night because of gang activity in their neighborhoods. It’s almost entirely because of these imported gangs like MS13, sir. Every big group of alleged refugees includes some criminals, often, some who belong to MS-13 or other gangs.”
“That’s not my fault!”
“Fault? I don’t know whose fault it is, sir. I only know that if there are a thousand people at the border, and ten or twenty or more of them might be members of a violent drug gang, then I just don’t want that group coming into the country until my government has had a chance to check them all and make sure there aren’t any gang members in there, sir.”
“Aw, don’t you care about those poor people in those tents, kid?”
“Sir, everybody cares about somebody. Maybe that’s the difference between your side and the other side, sir. Your side cares about those people who are trying to gate-crash without the slightest right … and the other side cares about the people likely to be their victims. I know which side I’d stand with, sir. Is it really that difficult for you, sir?”
“Umm. No, it’s not that it’s difficult… it’s just that… uhh… why did the Supreme Court have to go and get involved?”
“Because that’s how our system works, sir. Judicial issues rise to the highest court in the land, sir.”
“I’ve gotta fix that somehow…”
“You can try, sir. But you’re awfully close to a rebellion now, and if you try packing the Supreme Court, the public will never stand for it!”
“There’s gotta be a compromise here.”
“There is, sir. Leaving them on the other side of the border, in tents, WAS a great compromise, sir. The tents protected the caravans from the elements, while our forces vetted them. Pretty good deal, sir. They need to get vetted, and it’s better outside than in.”
“I wish I could get to see a vet. I haven’t been feeling well myself lately.”
“I wouldn’t recommend it, sir.”
“Why not?”
“Well, sir, lots of people are upset at you right now, and frankly, three quarters of the country is putting you down every day, sir, one way or another.”
“So? I’m a politician. I’m used to it.”
“Yes sir, but if you were to see a vet, it would be a more serious risk, sir. You really don’t want to be put down by a vet, no matter how much the rest of the country might agree with him.”
“Huh?”
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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