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, arrives downstairs with the latest news from the battles between the state capital of Georgia and Atlanta’s local bureaucracy.
Georgia Elections and Broccoli and Almond Soup
Dateline: September 2. Begin Transcript:
“Good evening, sir! Happy Thursday!”
“Why are you always so chipper?”
“Me, sir? Well, it’s a nice day, we’re on the right side of the ground, we’re still breathing without mechanical assistance, I’d say there’s no reason to be glum, sir!”
“There’s always reason to be glum. Bad things are happening.”
“Bad things are always happening, sir. And so are good things. The question is, Is the glass half empty or half full, sir?”
“What glass?”
“You know, sir, it’s rhetorical, the philosophy of positivity or negativity, sir. The question of how you see the world?”
“But where’s the glass?”
“There isn’t any actual glass, sir…”
“But you said there was!”
“Sir, it’s a saying. You must have heard of it before, sir. People say it all the time, sir!”
“Not to me. People who know me know not to tell me there’s a drink without there actually being one. I’m an old man. That’s just cruel.”
“I don’t know what to say, sir.”
“You could apologize, you no-good lying dogfaced pony soldier.”
“Sir, we’ve talked about that saying of yours before. That’s not nice, sir.”
“What isn’t?”
“Calling someone a lying dogfaced pony soldier, sir. It’s rude, sir. It’s impolite, sir.”
“Well, you promised me a drink then you took it back.”
“I DID NOT, SIR! I just came down here to bring you your soup, sir, and then you launched into this war against rhetorical sayings, sir!”
“So where’s my soup?”
“It’s right here, sir. Broccoli and Almond, sir.”
“What’s in it?”
“Broccoli and almond, sir.”
“Oh. I like almond cookies. They’re tasty.”
“Yes sir. And how about broccoli, sir?”
“Never had broccoli cookies. Doesn’t sound very good.”
“No, sit, that’s not what I meant, sir; there aren’t any broccoli cookies.”
“What is it with you tonight, kid? Promising me things and then taking them away….”
“Look, sir, I uh… oh, forget it. Here’s your soup. And here’s your bowl of crackers, sir. And a stack of napkins and your usual three soft plastic kids’ soup spoons.”
“This is green.”
“Yes sir. It has broccoli in it, sir. If weren’t green, you’d worry, sir.”
“Oh.”
“So have you heard the rumors about Georgia, sir?”
“I don’t have any roomers in Georgia.”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“I don’t own any apartments in Georgia, so I can’t have any roomers there, you know.”
“No, sir, We’ve been through this before. Rumors are gossip, sir. Thinks we hear on the grapevine that haven’t yet been confirmed, sir.”
“Ooohhh, I like grapes. Especially seedless ones. You have any bunches of seedless grapes?”
“I don’t have any grapes, sir.”
“But you said…”
“No, sir, I used a saying, sir. On the grapevine, sir. It doesn’t mean there are actual grapes. It’s just a reference to overhearing news reports that are going around but haven’t yet been confirmed, yet, sir.”
“There you go again.”
“Oh, eat your soup, sir.”
“Mmmm…. Not bad. But it’s green. Soup shouldn’t be green.”
“Lots of soup is green, sir. Split pea. Broccoli and Almond. Kale soups, Green bean soups… it’s not that uncommon a color for soup, sir. ”
“Come on, man!”
“Oh, give it a chance, sir. It’s good for you. Like the rumors in Georgia, sir.”
“Huh? What’s going on in Georgia?”
“The rumors are that the state legislature has finally had it with Fulton County, sir.”
“What about Fulton County?”
“Well, sir, it’s the most populous county in Georgia, sir. About a million people there, sir, in cities like Atlanta and College Park and Alpharetta, sir.”
“Yeah. What about it?”
“Well, sir, remember all the allegations of vote fraud there, sir?”
“Wasn’t any fraud. No fraud at all. No way.”
“And then, after the election, in the ongoing counting after the polls closed, remember how they claimed to have stopped counting for some water main break that never actually happened, and then they started up the counting after they’d successfully conned the election observers into leaving, sir?”
“No. I don’t remember a thing. I was busy. Uhh… I was busy having my suits pressed. Yeah. That’s the ticket. I was having my suits and pressed, and uh… yeah. I was busy.”
“Well, sir, there were a lot of election irregularities, sir. People voting who didn’t live there…”
“Lots of people move right before an election and vote from their last address because they haven’t had a chance to re-register.”
“Yes sir, but these are people who didn’t live in Georgia at all. Lots of people who had never lived in Georgia, people who just registered illegally out of a friend’s apartment or office or storage locker or house, sir, just so they could get ballots mailed to them, sir.”
“There’s no evidence!”
“Actually, sir, there is. There’s evidence in the emails and similar correspondence and advertising in which one party – guess which one – encouraged people all over the country to do just that, sir.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Well, sir, you sure profited from it, sir.”
“I’m innocent. I wasn’t there. I uh, I’ve never been to Georgia. Never in my life. I have witnesses.”
“To 78 years of behavior, sir? Who’s been around you for 78 years, sir? I can’t imagine anyone surviving that, sir.”
“Whatever it is, I didn’t have any thing to do with it. I was in my basement. Haven’t left it for almost two years now.”
“Well, sir, the word is that the Georgia state legislature is so furious at the runaround they’re getting from Fulton County – refusing to provide the required records, refusing to provide equipment and ballots for the state audit, etc. – that the state legislature is considering taking drastic measures.”
“They can’t do that! I mean… can they? What are they trying to do?”
“Well, sir, you know how a state can grant home rule privileges to a city or town, sir?”
“No.”
“Well, sir, states can decide whether a city or town can be trusted to do basic things, like to provide schooling, or to provide safe roads, or to manage its police and fire department, or to set its own tax rates and property valuation, sir, or … to run its own elections.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Well, sir, if a city or county or town doesn’t do things right, doesn’t obey the state’s requirements, or violates a state or federal law or constitutional requirement, the state can decide to withdraw the locality’s permission to perform one or more such tasks, sir.”
“I lost you at the bakery.”
“Well, sir, the point is, Fulton County has been stonewalling the state for over eight months, sir. The state legislature would be within its legal rights to simply issue an order that the state will manage that county’s elections in the future.”
“Can they do that?”
“Yes sir, of course they can.”
“If they take away Atlanta, we’ll never win another Georgia election!”
“If you say so, sir.”
“But this is awful!”
“Depends on your point of view, sir. If you’re into honest, clean elections, sir, as opposed to fixing the ballot count to ensure one party’s victory despite the resulting… then yes, sir, it may be awful for the people who’ve been cheating for years, sir.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Well, sir, it’s not a done deal, sir. It may go either way, at this point.”
“Oh, it has to. We can’t make it without Georgia!”
“Well, sir, you can still win if you honestly convince a majority of real people that your policies are the better ones, sir.”
“We’re doomed.”
“Well, sir, look at the bright side. If you lose the cities, sir, ‘Mister White Guy from Delaware’… you’ll finally know what it’s like to be a minority, 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. President of the Ethnic American Council in the 1980s and Chairman of the Milwaukee County Republican Party in the 1990s, 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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