Evening Soup with Basement Joe, April 22, AD 2021

Overheard, in a basement in Delaware,

April 22, AD 2021:

“Good evening, sir! Rhett Snapper here, sir!”

“Oh, hello again. Do you have soup for me?”

“Yes indeed, sir! Spicy Shrimp with Ramen, tonight, sir.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

“Spicy Shrimp with Ramen, sir. Asian, I guess. Maybe Chinese, sir?”

“Where is he?”

“Who, sir?”

“Rahm.”

“I’m sorry, sir, I lost you. There’s nobody here but you and me, sir.”

“You said Rahm was here to eat soup with me. Where is he?”

“I’m sorry, sir, umm, I didn’t say anything like that, sir.”

“You lying dog-faced pony soldier! I haven’t completely lost my hearing yet! You said I was gonna be eating Spicy Shrimp with Rahm in here!”

“Oh, uhh, oh I see, sir. No, sir, I don’t know who you’re talking about, sir, but I said Spicy Shrimp with Ramen, sir. Ramen noodles. You know, Chinese noodles? They look a little like spaghetti or capellini, sir?”

“Oh. Damn. I could use some advice from him.”

“Who, sir?”

“Rahm. Rahm Emanuel.”

“Sorry, sir, I don’t know the name. Is he important?”

“I should say so! Congressman, White House Chief of Staff, Mayor of Chicago… a real fixer.”

“I wouldn’t know, sir. When was he the Chief of Staff, sir?”

“Uh, let’s see, that’d be, uh… 2009.”

“I was ten, then, sir.”

“Oh.”

“At ten, sir, I barely knew who the president was; I certainly wouldn’t have heard of a Chief of Staff.”

“Oh.”

“Besides, if he wanted to be famous, he probably shouldn’t have been named after a wet noodle, sir.”

“Oh.”

“So anyway, sir, how’s your soup so far?”

“Pretty good, pretty good…. not what I’m used to, but it’s good. Can never have enough crackers.”

“You know, sir, this may be the first time anyone’s ever eaten this kind of a soup with crackers. I feel like I should call the folks at Guinness.”

“What does this have to do with beer?”

“Beer? Nothing, sir. OH, you mean… no, not the beer, sir. The Guinness book of records, sir.”

“Oh. How do you reach them?”

“Oh, well, I’m not really going to call them, sir.”

“Then why did you say you would?”

“Not seriously, sir. The folks at Guinness wouldn’t care about a thing like this, sir. Saying you’d “better notify the folks at Guinness” is just a saying, you know? It’s just something you say when someone does something unusual, sir.”

“Oh. Huh. I hear people say it to me all the time. Always wondered what that meant.”

“As long as we’re talking, sir, umm, I’ve gotta ask… well, is it okay if I ask a question sir?”

‘Mmm. Go ahead. Can’t promise I’ll know the answer, but shoot.”

“If Congress was going to let a teenager give a speech on the floor of the House, sir, why not a US citizen, sir?”

“Huh? What are you talking about?”

“Well sir, the other day, that mentally ill Swedish girl took the microphone to yell about the climate, sir. On the floor of the House, sir!”

“Oh. Yeah. So what?”

“Well, sir. I don’t want to badmouth the kid… but she’s obviously got problems, you know? And they have her addressing the United States Congress, as if she’s important, sir!”

“Yeah. So what?”

“Well, doesn’t that sound weird to you, sir?”

“Why?”

“There are 330 million Americans, sir. Our country was founded on the idea that we had a representative system, you know? One in which you could talk to your government representatives as equals, sir.”

“Yeah, So what?”

“Well, sir, I think we all understand that in a country of 330 million people, there’s no way that all of us could address Congress with our concerns, sir. But… if anyone did… If they ever decided to allow an outsider to speak to the entire House or the entire Senate, well sir, shouldn’t it be an American?”

“I don’t see your point, kid.”

“Rhett, sir. My name’s Rhett. Or you can call me Snap.”

“Oh. Anyway, I don’t see your point. Who cares who talks to the Congress? None of them listen anyway.”

“That’s not the point, sir. It was televised! I mean, there are millions of American teenagers who’d be honored, sir, overwhelmed, sir, at the opportunity to address the US Congress. They’d understand the, uh, what’s the word… the solemnity of it, you know? And this weird Swedish girl, who’s never done anything in her life but yell at people, gets to be the teenager who addresses the US Congress. It’s surreal, sir. And… umm… not in a good way, sir.”

“I don’t see what the big deal is.”

“Sir, maybe from being in Washington so long, you’ve lost, umm, some of the awe, sir. But this is the US Congress, sir. The idea of an ordinary person addressing that room, it’s just… wow, you know? And she didn’t appreciate it one bit. You could see it in those beady little deranged eyes of hers. She hates everyone, hates the world, hates people, and just goes from hall to hall, yelling at people as if she had something real to say. If she were a nicer person, I mean, you could feel sorry for her. But she’s not. She’s nasty.”

“It’s just a photo op for a cause. Don’t make such a big deal of it. Have some soup. The cook’ll be glad to fix you a bowl.”

“It’s just that, well, sir, I wouldn’t have thought of it, but when I was in high school, I knew a couple of kids, smart, patriotic, really devoted to one cause or another, whether it’s literacy or history or STEM or things like that, you know, valedictorian types, who would have given their eye teeth to speak to Congress. It would’ve changed their lives, you know? Opened doors… man, it would be the credential that takes you from being a nobody to being a somebody. And Congress gave that opportunity to this idiotic kid who just yells at everybody. It’s like, Congress took what could have been a really great moment, and turned it into garbage. Worse than a waste of time, sir, it was, well, totally destructive, sir.”

“Oh.”

“And all she does is spout the same lies all the time, sir. That fuel is bad, that global warming is real. That we’re killing the planet. All this hogwash. Lie after lie after lie.”

“Oh?”

“I don’t even know if I should call them lies, because she may not KNOW they’re lies. she’s just repeating what she’s been fed. But she falls for this garbage, and Congress gives her a platform to say it, and what are the people watching to think, sir? Innocent, well-meaning people all over the world watch it on TV and figure that if the US Congress gave this little psycho a microphone, then it must be true, otherwise why let her say it all, you know?”

“I’m not following you, son.”

“Sorry sir, it’s just… well, it’s like this. When I was a kid, my folks read me this editorial from an old newspaper, some time in the 1800s, sir. This kid had written a letter to the editor asking a question, totally trusting the paper to answer it truthfully. The little girl said, I think she said that her dad had told her, if I remember right, that ‘If you see it in the Sun, it’s so.'”

“Oh.”

“Can you imagine having that kind of blind faith in a source, sir? So the editors went ahead and wrote their response very carefully, out of respect for her respect for them. My problem with this crazy move this week, sir, is that it shows that Congress either doesn’t know the level of authority they ought to have, to take these things seriously, or worse, that they KNOW they have it, and they don’t respect it. They don’t respect the respect that the public has for them, sir. Or they wouldn’t give that little idiot a podium, sir.”

“Come on, man. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sorry, sir. Well, what it comes down to, is that Congress gave somebody a megaphone who abused the privilege, and that shows that Congress doesn’t respect their audience.”

“Oh.”

“It’s like my dad always says whenever the House or Senate has hearings on C-Span, sir. He says ‘Half the time when they give some jokers a soapbox, what they really oughta be doing is to wash the jokers’ mouths out with the soap inside,’ sir.”

“But we do need to fix the climate. You may not like her, but her message is important.”

“Well sir, for one thing, she can’t be separated from the message now, sir, they’ve merged into the same big lie. But the whole thing is crazy, sir. You can’t believe that people have the ability to change the earth’s climate, sir. It’s insane. You know that.”

“But the hockey stick…”

“…was proven to be a sham from the beginning, sir. You know that, sir, everybody knows that. This is the earth, sir, the most alive planet in the Solar System. Our climate is affected by sunspots, and the gravitational pull of the moon, and the movement of our tectonic plates, and volcanos… our climate isn’t affected by some girl spraying her hair with an aerosol hair spray, or people driving around in cars. To imagine our cars and our spray cans can alter the climate of our planet, sir, well, it’s just peak lunacy, sir. Talk about self-importance. “

“Umm…”

“This earth was here millions of years before people arrived on it, and it’ll still be around millions of years after we’re gone, sir.”

“Oh.”

“There was a time when the environmental movement cared about pollution, but they don’t anymore, sir. That’s the problem.”

“Huh? Come on, man, the environment al movement is all about pollution!”

“No, sir, it’s not,. Haven’t you noticed that all they complain about now is carbon dioxide, which isn’t even a pollutant in any way, shape or form?”

“Well, but they say it is…”

“Right, sir. And why? WHY would they say that carbon dioxide, which every human being produces and which every plant on earth depends on to live, is a pollutant?”

“Uh, you lost me.”

“Because they know who really pollutes, and it’s not the USA, and it’s not the western world anymore, sir. We took care of it. For the most part, the western world is like the shrimp, you know, the bottom feeders of the seas. Just like shrimp can take the junk of the sea and make use of it, we people – in Western Civilization anyway – have found ways to filter and recycle and clean everything we do. A petroleum refinery puts back water cleaner than it took it out. A recycling plant makes use of garbage so it doesn’t pollute. A modern factory puts the air back cleaner than it took it in, thanks to modern purification systems, sir. We don’t pollute.”

“Oh.”

“But you know who DOES pollute? You know who DOES still produce tons of stinking, foul air, smoky cities and gunk-filled rivers? The kleptocracies of the third world, sir. Red China, North Korea, places like that. Filtration systems cost money, and they’re cheap, because they want to keep stealing the manufacturing jobs of the West. So they skip all those steps and have the old dirty manufacturing methods of a century ago, sir.”

“Oh.”

“Remember the Beijing Olympics a couple of years ago, sir? How people wore masks all over town to stop some of the gunk in the air from making it into their lungs, sir? Well, that’s who pollutes nowadays.”

“Gee. I never thought about that….”

“And the environmentalists stopped talking about black smoke and gunk in rivers, because to do so, they’d have to stop complaining about Europe and North America, and they’d have to start calling out Beijing. And they can’t do that, because that’s who funds them.”

“Well now, not completely. I mean, we fund them too.”

“Who, sir?”

“Well, the US government. The environment is very important. We fund those groups in many ways, through grants and research funds and hosting conferences…”

“Well sir, that reminds me of something my dad said the other day when he was watching one of those environment speakers in congress on TV.”

“Oh?”

“Well, sir, my dad said, ‘When a scientist looks for pollution, he needs expensive equipment. When a politician looks for pollution, all he needs is a mirror.'”

… end of transmission…

Copyright 2021 John F. Di Leo

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