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**OCTOBER 5, 2021**

Meyerson on TAP

To Infect and Serve

Real men, apparently, don't get shots. Well, OK, I'll concede that
before they're sent into harm's way, the Marines and Special Forces
become human dartboards, shot full of multiple serums to ward off the
viruses and infections that could befall them in distant climes. But the
cops? The firefighters? The EMTs? For tough guys like them, that's
sissy stuff. Elitist stuff. Democratic Party stuff. PC stuff. No
friggin' way.

As local governments struggle to protect their frontline workers and the
public those workers routinely encounter, it's the public-safety
employees who've been most resistant to public safety. In New York,
for instance, 74 percent of city residents have been fully vaccinated
,
according to figures compiled by

**The Washington Post**, while only 62 percent of police department
workers have braved the needles.

It's not as if cops are magically immune to COVID. On the contrary:
According to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, 182
police officers succumbed to the virus last year, which is more than the
combined total of those who died by gun violence or vehicle crashes. So
far this year, the total is 133.

Cops, firefighters, and EMTs are mainly working-class men, prey to the
same distempers that are disproportionately pushing that cohort into an
enraged right-wing fantasyland. Some of that can be ascribed to bigotry,
some to a sense of displacement in a new economy where manual labor
matters less and less, some to the partial overthrow of traditional
hierarchies in which their place on the social totem pole was higher
than it is now. Some can also be ascribed to the wraparound world of
far-right media, both traditional and social, which tells them that
they're under assault from liberal overlords and uppity underlings-a
sense of assault that police departments warn their cops they're prey
to every waking moment.

There's always been a number, apparently irreducible, of cops who like
to think of themselves as dangerous guys. Today, some of them are just
by breathing near you.

~ HAROLD MEYERSON

Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter

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