Evening Soup with Basement Joe, April 23, AD 2021

Overheard, in a basement in Delaware,

April 23, AD 2021:

“Good evening, sir! Happy Friday!”

“What’s happy about it.”

“Well, sir, for starters, you have some delicious soup heading your way!”

“Soup? Oh, goodie.”

“Beef Shank and Barley Soup, sir. Looks delicious, sir.”

“Are there crackers?”

“Why do you always ask that, sir? Your cook wouldn’t send me down without crackers, sir. She knows you like them as much as the soup. So here we go, sir…. soup, crackers, spoon, napkin, sir.”

“What did you say it is again?”

“Beef Shank and Barley Soup, sir.”

‘Oh. What’s in it?”

“Beef shank and barley, sir. I mean, I’m sure there’s other stuff too, but it pretty much looks like a great big sea of beef and barley, sir.”

“Oh.”

“You know, sir, that reminds me of something. I’ve been wondering, sir…”

“What?”

“Well, sir, you know that story about the attempted murder in Ohio?”

“Which one?”

“The story about the 15 year old who tried to kill another girl in the foster home she was living in, and the policeman who arrived just as she was about to kill her with a knife, so the policeman shot her. That’ story, sir.”

“Well, that’s not the way I heard it.”

“But, that’s what happened, sir.”

“No, the way i heard it, there was a knife fight, and the cop rushed in and shot one of the fighters. That’s not fair.”

“Sir, that’s not what happened at all.”

“Girl calls the police for help, and the police shoot her. It’s shameful.’

“That’s not what happened, sir. The policeman saved the life of the girl who called, sir.”

“Come on, man!”

“Sir, It’s on video.”

“It is?”

“Yes sir, it is.”

“What’s on video?”

“The whole thing, sir. It’s all over the internet, sir. You see the policeman drive up, in response to the phone call. He gets out of his car and sees two things happening… an adult beating up a kid, and that fat girl swinging a knife at the other girl. He clearly had to make a quick decision, and decided that the first thing to focus on was the killer with the knife. So he fired at the girl in mid-stab and saved her intended victim’s life, sir.”

“You sure?”

“Sir, it’s on the video. There’s no question about it, sir.”

“Well, how do you know she was going to kill the other girl?”

“The policeman heard her yell, ‘I’m gonna kill you’, sir.”

“He did?”

“Yes sir. As he was getting out of his car. You hear her on the video, sir. You can’t miss it. The girl was, at that moment, a homicidal maniac, sir. It’s obvious to anyone who watches the video, sir.”

“Well, the police shouldn’t be escalating things like this.”

“The police? What do the police have to do with it, sir? There was an attempted murder in progress when the policeman arrived. The policeman had nothing to do with it. Remember, the girl had called the police out of fear of the knife-wielding maniac. When this policeman arrived, he saw exactly what he had been told was happening; a homicidal knife-wielding maniac was attacking innocent, defenseless people. He intervened in mid-stab, sir. He saved the victim’s life, sir.”

“Well, but, uh, teenagers in the community have knife fights every day… they don’t need the police stepping in and escalating them.”

“How was this a knife fight, sir?”

“Huh?”

“Just that, sir. You called this a knife fight, sir. Valerie Jarrett and other politicians have been calling this a knife fight. How was it a knife fight, sir?”

“I don’t understand…”

“Well sir, you keep calling it a knife fight. Now, let’s set aside the premise for a moment, which, frankly, is horrible, that teenagers get in knife fights all the time, sir. If that’s true, it’s a horrible problem, and should be dealt with, not just accepted. But what makes a knife fight, sir?”

“I don’t know what you mean…”

“I think you do, sir. What’s a gunfight?”

“Well, when two or more people with guns are shooting at each other.”

“Right, sir. And what’s a boxing match?”

“Huh? Well, uhh, a boxing match is when two guys in boxing gloves meet for a fist fight.”

“Right, sir. So what is necessary for a knife fight, sir?”

“Uh, two sides with knives meeting to have a fight, using knives. What’s your point, kid?”

“Only one of these kids had a knife, sir.”

“Huh? You don’t know that.”

“It’s in the video, sir. Plain as day. This wasn’t like some after-school rumble like in West Side Story or Grease, where rival gangs meet up, equally armed, equally willing to have a fight, sir.”

“Oh.”

“This was a villain against a victim, sir.”

“Oh.”

“An armed predator against her innocent prey, sir.”

“Oh.”

“At first, people tried to spin it to make it look like the policeman did wrong, sir, but the video shows – clearly – that the policeman saved that innocent girl’s life. He literally arrived just in the nick of time, sir.”

“Oh.”

“So really, sir, this case brings into focus something that a lot of people have been noticing for years, sir.”

“Oh?”

“Why do politicians automatically take the side of criminals against their victims, sir?”

“What? Well, we owe people the right to a fair trial, and innocent until proven guilty, and, uh,”

“That’s not exactly true, sir. The court system is designed to presume innocence until proven guilty, sir… in the trial, sir… but the rest of us outside the court are not expected to shut our eyes and deny reality, sir.”

“Huh?”

“Well, this whole modern fixation on saying Alleged all the time, and pretending that an obviously guilty person is as pure as the driven snow until after the trial is concluded, sir… it doesn’t make any sense at all, sir.”

“Come on, man!”

“No, sir, I’m serious… I’ve thought a lot about this, all my life, and so have my friends… I mean, we’re not legal scholars or philosophers or anything, we’re just normal people… but we see something happen, on video, and we’re told that they’re innocent until after the trial, and the policeman has to deny the reality he sees in front of him, while doing his job… and it’s crazy. And we KNOW it’s crazy. And EVERYONE knows it’s crazy, sir. It doesn’t make sense, sir.”

“Look, uh, when I was a boy in Scranton… I don’t know if you knew this, but I’m from Scranton, grew up in Scranton…”

“Yes, sir?”

“When I was a boy in Scranton, one of the first things our teachers said was that the fundamental premise of our judicial system is that you’re innocent until proven guilty. I never forgot that.”

“Oh really, sir?”

“Right.”

“Well, what about the girl who was about to be stabbed, sir?”

“Huh?”

“What about her, sir? Isn’t she innocent until proven guilty, sir?”

“Um, yeah, I guess… I didn’t accuse her of anything…”

“No, but the killer did, sir. The knife-wielding demon in the video, sir. She decided, all on her own, that this other girl deserved to die. On what grounds, sir? Had she been accused, arrested, tried, convicted, sentenced?”

“Of course not! What are you talking about?”

“Well, sir, I’m just saying that the nasty fat girl, the attempted murderer, did exactly what you folks are always saying we shouldn’t do: she decided that her housemate deserved to die, over some kind of disagreement about chores or something, and she tried to carry out a death sentence, sir. All on her own, sir. Do you support that, sir?”

“Uhh, I’m confused…”

“Yes, sir, but that’s not important right now. Sir, this sort of thing happens every single day, all over the country. Criminals decide to rob or rape or beat or kill innocent people, and the politicians – well, frankly, sir, the politicians of just one party – always side with the criminal, sir. They never side with the victims, sir. Why is that?”

“Why is what?”

“Why does your side always take the side of the criminal, sir? Why doesn’t your team care about their victims, sir?”

“Hey, you lying dog faced pony soldier! We care! We care, uh, we care about everybody!”

“Sir, if you cared about everybody, wouldn’t you be cheering that that innocent Ohio girl survived, sir? Wouldn’t you be complimenting the policeman for being quick on his feet, and being a good shot, and stopping that killer before she could complete that stab? If the policeman had hesitated just another second or two, that girl would’ve been critically injured, or killed, sir.”

“You don’t know that!”

“Sir, it’s on video. The arc of the slash is visible, sir. You can see her arm swinging, you can see where the knife is headed, sir. There’s no point denying it, sir.”

“Sure there is.”

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

“Well, there’s always a point denying it.”

“I’m sorry sir, I don’t follow you…”

“We control the media, we control the prosecution, we control the courts. We set the narrative. There’s no point in you thinking you can outshout us. We’re the ones who buy ink by the barrel. We’re the ones who control the low of information.”

“Sir… umm, you know, you’re reminding me of something I learned in school… they called it, uh, what was it, the doctrine of The Big Lie, I think, sir….”

“No. It’s not a lie. that’s where you’re wrong.”

“No, sir, a lie is a lie, sir. We can see the truth on video, sir. With our own eyes, sir.”

“You’re not seeing it right. It’s not about lies, it’s about the truth. You’re not seeing the truth. The truth is that these cops are racist, and they’re always making things worse. That’s the truth.”

“But sir, time and time again, the police save innocent lives, and then they’re made out to be the villains… government needs to defend them, They risk their lives to save innocent people, and then they’re thrown to the wolves by the race hustlers, and…”

“No, no, you’re young, you don’t understand.”

“I can see it with my own eyes, sir.”

“You only think you do. Give it time, you’ll come around. You, uh, just don’t see the truth. Your vision is colored by your, uh, white privilege.”

“Sir, with all due respect, sir, you can’t make a person deny reality when he sees it with his own two eyes, sir.”

“Oh, you’d be surprised. We’ve barely begun. Give us four years, and you’ll believe whatever we want you to believe. You have no idea how much power we have.”

“Sir, you can’t possibly believe that the American public is going to fall for such outrageous spin. You can’t govern the narrative like that. You can’t get people to believe the impossible.”

“Oh no? There weren’t 80 million voters in this country to vote me into office, either… but here I am. Don’t fight it, kid. Eventually, you’ll believe what we want you to believe. So relax. Why don’t you go upstairs and ask the cook for some soup. Soup’ll make you feel better about all this. You don’t need to be so excited about these things. Have some soup,”

…end of transmission…

Copyright 2021 John F Di Leo

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