Time Magazine published an excellent profile of DC Metro Police Mike Fanone and his struggles with injuries both physical and mental, his own inner doubts over his newfound “liberal-darling status”, against Republicans in Congress, and even fellow cops in the aftermath of the Capitol riot.
Here are a few key paragraphs:
“In meetings with GOP members of Congress, Fanone asked how they could claim to ‘back the blue’ while selling him out. They brought up Black Lives Matter and how they’d had the cops’ backs. ‘You guys don’t seem to have a problem when we’re kicking the shit out of Black people,’ Fanone recalls saying. ‘But when we’re kicking the shit out of white people, uh-oh, that’s an issue.’ He found himself explaining why attempting to overthrow a CVS was slightly different than attempting to overthrow the government. Why the peaceful transfer of power was a bigger deal than a few anarchists in Portland, Ore.”
“Colleagues he’s known for decades don’t talk to him anymore. Guys who never called to check in when he was in the hospital send him taunting memes about his liberal-darling status.”
“‘I had convinced myself, Mike, you’re vocalizing the opinions of thousands and thousands of police officers. But I’m starting to think I’m vocalizing the beliefs of just one,’ Fanone says one day over lunch, as his three young daughters dig into their chicken tenders. ‘While there are still some officers that are very supportive of me, I can count them on one hand. The vast majority of police officers – would they have been on the other side of those battle lines?'”
“His mission to defend his colleagues’ actions had morphed into something bigger and more daunting. What he had to do, he concluded, was not just to speak up on behalf of law enforcement. He needed to shake his fellow Americans out of their Trump-induced delusions, debunk the lies that had poisoned his friends’ minds. He needed to root out the hatred that led to Trump in the first place. ‘The greatest trick in history was Donald Trump convincing redneck Americans that he somehow speaks for them,’ says Fanone, who includes himself in that category. ‘He will destroy this country simply for the sake of his ego, just because he can’t accept that he lost an election.'”
Overall it’s a pretty jarring read and it gives me pause on how certain folk whom “The Resistance” valorized over the years had been swept up by the machine for ratings when they may not have been personally equipped and/or positioned to handle the outsized media and political attention.