Joseph Sabino Mistick stories, Page 12
Joseph Sabino Mistick: We can have an honest, if not perfect, election
In spite of the dust that is being kicked up, this Tuesday’s presidential election will produce an honest count. If each of us does our part by voting and then showing patience with the count, our election officials will deliver a professional, honest and transparent result that we can all...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: Defending our right to vote
In our history, the mix of guns and voting has only been associated with the goal of suppressing the votes of certain Americans. In the 1850s, the Know-Nothing Party, nativists who resented the Catholic immigrant population in Baltimore, used election violence to move the state’s electoral votes to Millard Fillmore....
Joseph Sabino Mistick: Life will go on after election
“Tricky Dick” is looking pretty good these days. Richard M. Nixon’s public stance after he lost to John F. Kennedy in the 1960 presidential squeaker makes him look like a real American patriot compared to what we are hearing during this presidential election. Nixon knew what we all still know....
Joseph Sabino Mistick: Coronavirus is the one big issue
Two hundred and ten thousand dead and counting. Millions infected, with millions more to come. The staggering toll of the coronavirus in America was the opening topic of the vice presidential debate between Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris and Republican Vice President Mike Pence. “The American people have witnessed what is...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: Painting fences and finding respite from politics
I painted my fence last week. It’s not a big deal to people who do that kind of work every day, but some of us got away from working with our hands, and fence painting revives those old memories without the likelihood of pulling a muscle or falling off a...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: Seeking serenity in hard times
You might think that Reinhold Niebuhr’s “Serenity Prayer” has no place in the crude arena that national politics has become, but Niebuhr would not have hesitated to invoke his prayer now. The public theologian believed that there is a core relationship between religion and politics. He immersed himself in all...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: William Barr’s sedition threat chilling
Something predictable happens when there is too much power in the hands of the wrong people. There is never enough for them. They always overreach. They can’t help themselves. In the summer of 1892, a great battle occurred on the banks of the Monongahela River at the Homestead Steel Works...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: Remembering, not belittling, our heroes
In our house there is an American flag, now a tightly folded triangle, that once draped the casket of a Navy veteran who returned from World War II, broken but hopeful, yet not healthy enough to live more than a handful of years once back home. The flag was presented...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: On Labor Day, recalling march for social justice
On Labor Day, I think of the valley where I grew up. It was best seen from the middle of the Westinghouse Bridge. As far as the eye could see and the ear could hear, furnaces flared and trains slogged on and machinery clanked and whistles and bells sounded around...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: Trump, too, owns what happens on his watch
It was a classic example of Donald Trump at his pugnacious best. During a back-and-forth with Jeb Bush over the Iraq War, Trump bashed Jeb and President George W. Bush by going where no other candidate dared to go in the 2016 Republican presidential primary debates. “The World Trade Center...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: ‘Shoeless Joe,’ Trump and cheating outrage
When “Shoeless Joe” Jackson was indicted for fixing the 1919 World Series, it rocked the nation. Jackson was a star player for the Chicago White Sox, a great hitter in his prime when he was accused of conspiring to throw the series to the Cincinnati Reds for $5,000. “Shoeless Joe”...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: Sticks and stones flung at Kamala Harris
When Joe Biden announced that Sen. Kamala Harris will be his vice presidential running mate, Donald Trump and his supporters responded with a barrage of frantic personal attacks. It was as though someone had dropped the flag and said, “Let the hysteria begin!” When you were a kid, you knew...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: What can you do for your country? Wear a mask.
The most tragic problems with this pandemic are the result of Americans who don’t seem to get it or don’t seem to care that they are putting others at risk. Without masks or social distancing, they crowd into bars and onto beaches, and even try to force themselves into stores....
Joseph Sabino Mistick: Pass the Voting Rights Act bill for John Lewis
To many of those watching the horse-drawn hearse take the body of U.S. Rep. John Lewis across the Edmund Pettus Bridge one final time last week, the most remarkable moment came when Alabama state troopers snapped to salute as his casket passed. What a contrast to 55 years ago. Lewis...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: Conspiracy theories come to life under Trump
If you thought that those conspiracy theorists were nuts when they ranted about black helicopters and secret paramilitary troops taking over our towns and rounding up Americans without probable cause, you better think again. The so-called militia members who have warned us about this usually imagine an international conspiracy, some...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: We need more than tweets to solve our issues
Presidential campaigns are complicated. Election Day comes after years of political maneuvering, primary elections scattered across the land, late summer nominating conventions and televised debates that are part policy and part showbiz — all ending in November after months of media coverage. While some of that will be different this...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: Medicine and science, not politicians, will keep us safe
There must be a reckoning. For some public officials, it may be as soon as the next election, or it may come with the judgment of time and history. But sooner or later, those who have led us away from prevention and safety and toward calamity during the coronavirus pandemic...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: We can do this, a lesson from Stacy Smith
Stacy Smith has seen a lot. The award-winning KDKA-TV news anchor has met the pope, interviewed presidents and reported from the scenes of human disasters. He has covered princes and paupers. When interviewing a Missouri congressman in the U.S. Capitol, Stacy sat in the chair that a stunned Vice President...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: Ulysses S. Grant, American champion
This is a good time to talk about Ulysses S. Grant. As president of the United States and commanding general of the Union Army before that, Grant fought for freedom and equality and the end of slavery, giving it his all. That is why it was hard to understand, really...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: One more Civil War battle
The death of George Floyd under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer has sparked a national examination of conscience that has Americans marching in our streets and demanding an end to systemic racism. Criminal justice and police practices are the top candidates for immediate change. But so much has...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: Voting and justice
In 1965, President Lyndon Baines Johnson said, “The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.” Congress passed Johnson’s Voting Rights Act then, outlawing any measures that would deny...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: George Floyd, 1974-2020
When Aristotle said, “Towns should be built so as to protect their inhabitants and, at the same time, make them happy,” it was no mistake that he put “protect” first. People will never be happy unless they feel protected and are, in fact, protected. But, since the days of slavery,...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: Trump walking the high wire on coronavirus
Lately, Donald Trump has been missing the mark, one that he usually hits without fail. As a brilliant counter-punching tactician, he could take down his opponents with a cutting nickname. He could enflame his supporters’ passions by finding just the right distortion of his opponents’ records and dominate news cycles,...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: On Memorial Day, honor all by providing care for all
Since just after the Civil War, Americans have set aside one day to honor the men and women who died while serving in the military. As our country fought new wars, newly fallen soldiers were added to the day of remembrance, starting with World War I and then World War...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: Paupers and kings and coronavirus
The danse macabre was a theme in medieval art that provided some comfort to regular folks during wars and plagues by portraying people from all walks of life dancing together towards their final resting place. It was clear then that death did not discriminate during a catastrophe. Aristocrats and paupers...
