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 first year of his regime, the old man is called out on his staff’s sharing of confidential information.
Nukes and Numbers and Soupe de Poisson a la Rouille
Dateline: October 6. Begin Transcript:
“Good evening, sir! Are you ready for some fish soup?”
“Come on, man! Fish soup? That sounds weird!”
“Oh, sorry, sir, would you prefer some Soupe de Poisson a la Rouille?”
“Ooohhh, now THAT sounds good! Sure, bring it in, kid, bring it in… Hmm… Do I know you?”
“Yes sir, I’m Will Peotone, sir. I’ve been bringing you your soup for a few days now, sir.”
“No. No, I remember, umm, somebody else… last night, uhh, it was some kid named, umm… Stewart? Steward? Stuart?”
“You were in Michigan, sir. I didn’t serve you your soup last night, sir.”
“Why not?”
“You were a thousand miles away, sir. They hadn’t told me either. I drove over at the appointed time, and the cook said you weren’t here.”
“I wasn’t? Where was I?”
“You were in Michigan, sir. But it worked out okay; I still got paid for the night since it was their mistake, and your cook and housekeeper invited me to join them for pizza.”
“I don’t care about that. Give me my soup. What’s it called?”
“Soupe de Poisson a la Rouille, sir.”
“What does that mean?”
“Rust-red Fish soup, sir.”
“It is?”
“Right, sir. I think the color is from the tomato in the broth, sir. Fish in a smooth broth. It’s really good, sir. A famous French soup.”
“Are there crackers?”
“Yes sir. I have them right here, sir. Your crackers, sir. … and here are your napkins and your children’s soup spoons.”
“Mmm. Fish. Reminds me of when I was a little boy. I was a boy in Scranton, PA, you know. Don’t know if you knew that. We had a river in town. Lots of fresh fish. It was great.”
“Yes sir. I’m sure it was, sir. So did you enjoy your trip to Michigan, sir?”
“Oh, I don’t remember much of it. There were some people, and there were, uhh, some signs. Don’t remember much else. Oh, they were chanting, so that was cool.”
“What were they chanting, sir?”
“Couldn’t tell. My hearing isn’t the best. I’m 78 years old, you know! Must be some local welcome, I don’t know. But it was nice.”
“Well, that’s interesting, sir.”
“Don’t remember much else. The plane, the talk, the teleprompter, you know. Sometimes there’s a tour, but I never remember those. They’re pretty boring.”
“Sorry to hear that, sir.”
“It’s all right. As long as there’s soup. Anything happen here?”
“Well, sir, I saw an interesting interview, sir. Apparently your Secretary of State announced to the OECD yesterday exactly how many nuclear weapons we have, so that was strange.”
“That’s not strange! It’s transparency!”
“But it was so precise, sir! He talked about how in the first 25 years after the Iron Curtain came down, we demolished eleven and a half thousand warheads… and then President Trump didn’t announce anything during his term to keep it unknown, so Secretary Blinkin announced how another 700-something more were disassembled during the Trump administration… and then he even gave a flat total and said that there are exactly 3750 left now, sir. 3750 warheads. I don’t get it. Why share that kind of information with our enemies, sir?”
“He was talking to the OECD. They’re not our enemies!”
“But it was published, sir. It was reported in the free press. That means the information is available to everyone, sir, both friends and enemies, you know, sir?”
“Oh, what’s an enemy, anyway. When my kids were little, I remember one of them coming back from school with a wonderful saying. An enemy is just a friend you haven’t made yet. We can learn so much from our children.”
“Sir, isn’t it a bit of a stretch to apply that approach to nuclear war, sir?”
“Oh, we’re not in a nuclear war!”
“Well, not now, sir. But we could be, and then the enemy would know exactly how many we have. I’m not a military guy or anything, but I’m pretty certain you don’t let your enemy know how much ammunition you have, you know, sir?”
“Sure you do. It’s all about transparency, kid. Like this soup. Hmmm… No, not like this soup. This is pretty thick broth; you can’t see through it. Good soup though…”
“I don’t understand, sir. Could I ask, sir, how many Americans have died so far in Afghanistan since you started the pullout, sir?”
“That’s classified.”
“How many Americans and allies are still stuck in Afghanistan that we weren’t able to get out in those final days because of the closure of Bagram air base, sir?”
“That’s classified.”
“Well, sir, how many of the former Haitians who’ve arrived in recent weeks are you allowing to stay in our country, sir?”
“Oh, that’s classified.”
“How many terrorists have been found this year among the border crossers who Customs has been able to check? How many terrorists so far, sir?”
“Come on, man! That’s classified.”
“How many Al Qaeda terrorists that we used to have at Guantanamo but we released over the years have now joined the senior ranks of the Taliban, and now hold senior positions in the Afghan government and army, sir?”
“That’s classified!”
“Yes, sir, I figured it would be. But how come we won’t be transparent with any of that information, but your team insists on being totally transparent with the number of nuclear warheads we have, sir?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, sir, our enemies have always based their own growth of their nuclear weapons programs on an understanding of how many we have… and they’ve always based their assessment of their own potential wartime success on statistical modeling of what their chances would be if they can destroy a certain percentage of ours on a first strike, sir.”
“How did you know that?”
“Well, sir, this isn’t hard. My dad talked to us all about this sort of thing when we were little. He always began by saying, ‘Time to discuss the information and decisions that will guide your choices when you’re old enough to vote.'”
“We need to get rid of them all.”
“Not as long as other countries have them, sir!”
“This is good soup.”
“Yes sir. French fish soup. It certainly should be good, sir. So, I guess the thing is, sir, what I don’t get is, why say it out loud, you know? Maybe working quietly with China and Russia to reduce our nukes simultaneously might make sense, sir… You know, I don’t think I’ve heard China mentioned in that discussion, sir. Is China dismantling their nuclear warheads too, sir?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Well, sir, isn’t the whole willingness to dismantle some of ours based on the idea that we would be doing it simultaneously with Soviet Russia, so we’d be cutting ours while they’re cutting there’s, you know, sir?”
“That was in the old days, in the 1970s…”
“Yes sir, but history translates to the present… What are we doing now that’s similar, sir? Since China has lots of warheads pointed at us, sir, aren’t we making them reduce their stockpile, sir? Aren’t we? I mean, what’s the point of any of this if we don’t get China to dismantle some nukes, sir?”
“This is good soup. I think I’ll have some more. Oh, and crackers too. Lots of crackers. What did you say this soup was called, kid?”
“Soupe de poissons a la rouille, sir.”
“Right. This is good soup.”
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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