Joseph Sabino Mistick: Resolve to pay attention in this new year

Anyone who writes a newspaper column welcomes the holidays as good column fodder. New Year’s Day is an opportunity to write about new beginnings, leaving the tough parts of the past year behind and starting fresh with the turn of the calendar page. It’s almost formulaic.

My 2021 New Year’s Day column quoted the Italian proverb on the chalkboard at La Prima Espresso in Pittsburgh’s Strip District, which said, “L’anno nuovo cancella il vecchio” — the new year cancels the old.

For New Year’s Day in 2022, I wrote about those well-intentioned folks that Marco Machi of Bloomfield’s Exercise Warehouse calls “the resolutioners.” They want to make a clean break with the past, leaving behind their bad habits so that they can get into shape.

Those positive attitudes will still serve many of us on a personal level. But we have bigger problems. Some of the 2023 problems that we all have faced on the larger stage will still be with us in 2024, and they are likely to get worse. For these problems, turning the page is not an option.

Donald Trump continues his flirtation with the words and policies of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, tantalizing those of his followers who think that a dictator is just what our country needs. Echoing Hitler’s words in “Mein Kampf,” where Hitler talks about racial purity and “blood poisoning” by other races, Trump has repeatedly accused immigrants of “poisoning the blood” of Americans.

Trump continues to praise his favorite authoritarian leaders — Hungary’s Viktor Orban, China’s Xi Jinping and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. He told Sean Hannity that he would be a dictator only on “day one.” He repeatedly tells his supporters that he is being persecuted on their behalf, promising them, “I am your retribution.”

He has said that he will pardon a “large portion” of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists. He wants to strip civil servants of their job protection and make them loyal to him. He suggested that former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and now retired Gen. Mark Milley would have faced the death penalty in earlier times for trying to avert an accidental war with China.

While he continues to spread his “Big Lie” that the 2020 election was stolen from him, he claimed on his Truth Social media platform that the U.S. Constitution should be terminated. “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” he wrote.

His anti-American Constitution remarks got some rare rebukes from Republican officials. Republican Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio condemned Trump’s remarks and said they should be a factor in the presidential race. Republican Sens. Roy Blount and John Cornyn, among others, criticized Trump’s remarks.

Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a longtime Trump critic and not one to pull punches, tweeted, “Suggesting the termination of the Constitution is not only a betrayal of our Oath of Office, it’s an affront to our Republic.”

And, while it is a dark virtue in his case, Trump often does exactly what he says he is going to do. I believe him.

All of this is just the short list. Here’s a good 2024 resolution for anyone who loves America and the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution: Pay attention to this election from the very start of 2024. And vote.