I use the title with full awareness of its irony, since the original purveyor of that phrase has been fully co-opted. I use it without regard for whether or not it bears copyright protection. Since we have entered the phase of American decline in which rules and laws do not matter, I grab each metaphor, throw each image to the wind with abandon, and deliberately stop sucking it up, Buttercup.

I rarely use this meagerly read blogsite for anything political. I used to have an entire political blog, but a major hack and an accidental failure to renew its domain sent that into retirement. For a decade, I toyed with trying to live without complaint, but that site, too, succumbed to the fiends of the interwebs. I found myself dawdling here, trying to rebuild my writing life. In the meantime, the years crumbled and other projects waggled their various digits in my direction, vying for my strained and fading focus.

But recent events in the nation where I live demand comment. Canceling subscriptions and sharing excellent pieces by others no longer satisfies my need to contribute to the protest, though if I may recommend just one, it would be the emergency triad of Jonathan V. Last on The Bulwark. JVL writes as I once aspired to do, and seemingly without fear. So, let me be as clear as a seventy-year-old disillusioned Democrat can be: I do not know much, but I understand that we stand in the breach and no net has been raised to catch us. If we are to be saved, we must stretch our arms to each other and form the bridge which will carry us to safety.

I attended law school from 1980 through May of 1983 and got my law license the following September. In the intervening years, constitutional issues presented themselves only tangentially in my practice and my political involvement. But I have only forgotten a little of what I learned, though I recognize that the law evolves with the passage of time. I had to run a quick search to confirm that the 14th Amendment forces state and local governments to honor one’s First Amendment rights before answering a stranger’s query; and I concede that I could use a refresher course on the degree to which a teacher’s private life can be regulated. Quite frankly, the issue rarely arises in the family law arena where I spent the bulk of my active practice.

Now, though, such questions bombard me. So I depend on the writings of others for some of my analysis as I struggle to process contemporary events. But the ghost of Professor John Scurlock stood over me and shook my cage yesterday, demanding my attention to the “indefinite suspension” of Jimmy Kimmel from his television show for the mildest of criticism of the political party of the elected American president.

Make no mistake: Kimmel did not lose his audience because he disparaged a murdered man. Rather, the wrath flowed from a threat to his network’s license after he asserted that Trump’s party loyalists wanted to blame others for Mr. Kirk’s death and that Trump’s posture of mourning seemed childish. You can do an internet search for the exact quote, though you will find it most cleanly portrayed including with accurate headlines in the foreign press such as this article.

The number of times that I have quoted, cited, or alluded to “First They Came” by Martin Niemoller in the last six months surely tips the scale of decency. I find that I still have to goad myself into action. What do I fear? I have a job — will my employer’s client base shake their collective conservative fingers and demand my termination? I have a shop — will sales suffer? I have a law license, a driver’s license, and the modest savings of a stumbledore who gives to every charitable effort that asks and throws herself at countless failed projects. I don’t imagine that I have sufficient voice to draw any wrath whatsoever yet still I hesitated until they fired Jimmy Kimmel. Perhaps the haunting of my old Con Law professor finally penetrated the cotton with which I surround myself.

I don’t watch late night television except in short clips on YouTube days after its initial airing. I have no particular affection for Mr. Kimmel, yet the patently retributive termination of his show offends me. Like Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel criticized a politician and the politician’s party. He said nothing disparaging about a dead man; in fact, by all accounts, he voiced empathy for the man’s family. His joke about the current American president got him fired, as far as I can tell. Someone suggested that an entire network would be forfeit, so the sacrificial lamb faced slaughter. Make no mistake: Absent contravening facts, that narrative holds water and does not just smack of censorship but stinks of it.

The end of democracy as we know it draws ever nigh. Darkness enfolds itself around us with a hideous grin and an evil snicker. From within its dire embrace, we can squirm, we can writhe, we can moan but our escape will elude us. We must then cast a broad light before the swallow. We must join hands. We must stand firm. This situation long ago stopped being a matter of politics and began its certain morph into a dire situation from which our republic might not emerge. Cancel the network; cancel the subscriptions; follow the writers who speak against this fascistic flow. I still separate my worlds — the artists whose work I sell at the shop need me to do so; the small not-for-profit which I manage must remain apolitical. Challenge to neutrality rises, though, and my world shrinks. I cannot lament any backlash. If I stand for anything, it is truth, justice, and the American way.

Early in the semester during which I took Constitutional Law at the University of Missouri School of Law, the administration sent out a directive that students should no longer be allowed to consume food within the classrooms and lecture halls. The professors had to read the edict aloud to their students. Professor Scurlock did so, in precise tones. We sluggish young folks sensed something lurking in his voice, a reluctance that his clipped cadence could not disguise. He placed the printed page upon the table and faced us. As you know, he began, official curtailment of conduct and speech must meet certain standards to pass constitutional muster. We shifted in our seats. We sensed a lesson looming.

His face remained without expression as he continued. The complete ban of eating seems excessive to me, and so I have reflected on this new rule for some time before I shared it with you. He paused. In my classroom, we do not condone over-breadth of regulation as it violates the constitution which I hold dear. Therefore, during my classes, in this room, consumption of food will be permitted with certain rules that I consider reasonable. We waited. We knew him.

A little smile began to curve his mouth. You may consume food in this classroom. However, in order to accommodate what I assume to be the goal of the overly broad directive, to wit, cleanliness of environment, you must also eat the wrapper.

A few weeks later, a terrible accident put me in the hospital for several months. Professor Scurlock came to see me while my parents visited and my little mother stood to shake his hand. You’re the professor that lets them eat in class as long as they eat the packaging, she remarked. A broad grin filled his face and he replied, Reasonable restraints, ma’am, reasonable restraints. We all laughed.

It’s not funny anymore. The other shoe has dropped. The restraints exceed all reasonableness by more than a tolerable amount as government coerces private actors to aid in its erosion of our freedom. The dubious concept of agreeing-to-disagree cannot be invoked to excuse rank abridgement of the Bill of Rights for the most unreasonable of bases. Vote how you will; advocate the economical principles that you favor. I will, as they say, defend to the death your right to say any damn thing you want — including that the emperor stands buck-naked before you. But when that emperor comes for you, please ask yourself whether you spoke out, and who you watched the goons drag away while you stood silent.

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley

The Missouri Mugwump®

I turned 70 last week, and as though to honor my age, the evenings grow cool. I sit on my porch with coffee in the morning and need a sweater; over a glass of cold water or wine in the evening, I throw a shawl around my shoulders. The sun still warms the daytime air, but as darkness gathers, we open our windows for the freshness of the .moonlit air.

In a month, my seven-year anniversary as the backdesk of a California estate planning firm dawns. A month after that, I celebrate eight years to the day that my house arrived in the California Delta. On the heels of that November date crowds the anniversary of my own arrival in late December of 2017. Though it would be another twelve months before my habitation turned permanent and full-time, I will mark those eight years over a tiny Christmas tree in the Delta winds.

My emotions vary as I contemplate my metamorphosis into a California dreamer. I like the weather and the progressive politics although my little pocket here leans Libertarian. Knowing that if I get a day off, I can drive to the ocean comforts me. I do not miss the sweltering heat of a Midwestern summer, with its disregard for the turn of a calendar’s page. But posts on social media remind me of First Fridays in the Kansas City art district. I linger over the photographs before reminding myself of the richness of the art collective that we created in the small town near my rural community. Resourcefulness might not be my middle name but we claim distant cousinhood.

A recent reorganization of my tiny bedroom gave me a chance to declutter anew. Inspired by the gift of an antique chest, the project took two of us to orchestrate and three weeks to complete. In searching the boxes that had been stored for my entire tenure here, I gasped time and time again at new discoveries. One entire box held publications from my early writing life — magazines and newspaper articles in which my by-line testified to my early aspirations. I understand how the detour occurred. I push regret away. Yet still: Finding an entire manuscript of a novel that I wrote more than twenty years ago thrilled me. It had been stowed in a box under a yellowing copy of a magazine in which my first, and only, published poems appeared.

As summer draws to its inevitable end, I also muddled through the day that would have been my mother’s 99th birthday. Someone asked me how she died. I gave my usual answer: Medical malpractice. The questioner did not probe further. If she had, I would have explained that my mother presented with symptoms that turned out to be uterine cancer. Her doctor prescribed hormones, treating her with the disdain that medicine reserves for post-menopausal women. Even in the day, even forty years ago, the state of medical arts included the certain knowledge that pharmaceutical estrogen caused uterine cancer to metasticize. Whereas ninety-percent of women with such cancers could survive, my mother died within eleven months. She did not see her fifty-ninth birthday, or my thirtieth. I honored us both with a party to raise money for the local public library and could not have been more proud.

Summer’s wane triggers my customary nostalgia tinged with mild melancholy. I miss my son, my sister, and my friends. I miss my hundred-year-old bungalow. I long for autumn leaves and bonfires in black trash barrels at the end of cul-de-sacs following Dumpster Day in the neighborhood. From time to time, I wonder if I miss a life that never existed. Then I crack open another stored box and photographs spill on the floor. I kneel down and lift one after the other. My eyes grow misty. That world did exist, and I did matriculate along its splendid contours. When someone asks me why I left, I typically dismiss the question with a shrug. It’s a long story, I tell them. It would take a lot of alcohol to navigate the whole account. We leave it.

In my tiny bedroom, just before sleep, after I turn out the light and silence the phone, I ponder my life’s journey. From the first essay for which I received $5.00 to expound upon “God as An It” to the publication of my essay collection in 2022, I have always and ever been a writer. I’ve been a daughter, a lawyer, a wife, and a mother to greater or lesser success. My tendency to record my thoughts never stopped. Where some struggle to string ten words into a sentence and ten sentences into a paragraph, I bargain with myself to staunch the flow long enough to tend life’s obligations. Possibly those other roles suffered for my unrelenting focus on the printed page. If so, I hope I have now acquitted myself with sufficient glory to qualify for redemption.

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley

The Missouri Mugwump®

Summer’s End, by John Prine (whose death stands as one of the greatest losses of the early pandemic)