On the fifth anniversary of the January 6 insurrection, The Atlantic’s staff writer Jamie Thompson examines why a former Marine and retired NYPD officer would assault a fellow cop that day––profiling both the insurrectionist, Thomas Webster, as well as an officer who was assaulted on January 6, Daniel Hodges. Thompson’s piece, “Is This What Patriotism Looks Like?,” The Atlantic’s February cover story, is accompanied by editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg’s “The Triumph of Indecency,” on the importance of being appalled by Donald Trump’s pardoning of the insurrectionists. Goldberg, who attended the January 6 rally on the Ellipse, writes that “the pardoning by Trump of his cop-beating foot soldiers represents the lowest moment of this presidency so far, because it was an act not only of naked despotism but also of outlandish hypocrisy. By pardoning these criminals, he exposed a foundational lie of MAGA ideology: that it stands with the police and as a guarantor of law and order. The truth is the opposite.” Goldberg continues: “Much has been said, including by me, about Trump’s narcissism, his autocratic inclinations, his disconnection from reality, but not nearly enough has been said about his fundamental indecency, the characteristic that undergirds everything he says and does.” Thompson’s cover story begins in the early-morning hours of January 5, 2021, when Thomas Webster, then 54, drove south on I-95 toward Washington, D.C. Thompson writes that Webster had been conflicted about whether to attend the “Save America” rally, “but Donald Trump had used the word patriot. Webster had joined the military at 19, taken his first plane ride to boot camp in South Carolina, gotten his first taste of lobster tail on a ship in the Mediterranean. He loved the sense of purpose he’d drawn from the oath he’d sworn when he joined the Marines: I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Once a conventional Republican who’d thought Trump “said some crazy-ass shit,” Webster had over the course of the pandemic shutdowns of 2020 gotten drawn “more and more deeply into the MAGA camp.” He believed Trump’s claims that the 2020 election had been “stolen,” and on January 6 he used a flagpole to assault MPD Officer Noah Rathbun. Thompson writes that at the sentencing, in September 2022, “a prosecutor acknowledged that people like Webster might have been pawns in a political game, but added: ‘Even if he didn’t know better than to believe Trump’s lies, he knew better than to assault a fellow cop, no matter the circumstances.’” After serving a little more than two years of his 10-year sentence, Webster was pardoned by Trump on his first day back in office. Thompson writes: “Webster says he barely recognizes the version of himself who drove to D.C. five years ago. Who was that man filled with so much bravado that he thought he could save the country? His days of charging into the fray are over, he said. Sometimes he feels guilty about the life he has now. So many of the J6 defendants have been divorced by their wives, disowned by their kids, fired from their jobs. By Webster’s count, at least five have died by suicide. Yet he still views Trump as the best hope for cleaning out the deep state. ‘He’s the one person I still kind of believe in,’ Webster said.” Webster’s story is contrasted with that of Daniel Hodges, an officer who was assaulted while defending the Capitol that day: “Hodges was trapped, his whole body getting crushed. His arms hung uselessly at his sides. He effectively could not move his legs. A man wrapped his hand around Hodges’s gas mask, violently shoving it back and forth and then ripping it off, shouting what sounded like ‘How do you like me now, fucker?’ As Hodges stood there, scared and vulnerable, the man grabbed his baton and bashed him on the head with it, rupturing his lip and smashing his skull.” Hodges tells his story publicly because he thinks it’s important to prevent history from being rewritten. When Thompson told him that Webster still believes the election might have been stolen, Hodges was not surprised. “He doesn’t think people like Webster will stop lying to themselves anytime soon. ‘They can’t,’ Hodges said; the cognitive dissonance and moral pain would be too great.” Thompson continues: “Accepting reality would mean reevaluating everything they thought they knew—that their actions were ethical and justified, that they are great patriots. Accepting the truth of January 6 would require coming to grips with the fact that they supported a con man and participated in a violent plot to subvert democracy.” “To grapple with these truths,” Hodges told Thompson, “would, in a very real way, unmake them.” When Americans reelected Trump, Thompson writes, “Hodges felt a deep sense of grief. During 11 years of policing, he’d seen people do terrible things to one another— shootings, stabbings, maimings. But the election results strained his faith in humanity more than any of that. After all Trump has done? Hodges thought. After all we know about him?” Both Hodges and Harry Dunn, a former Capitol Police officer, “long ago grew tired of talk about the ‘shifting narrative’ of January 6. ‘Ain’t no narrative,’ Dunn likes to say. ‘Play the tape.’” Jamie Thompson’s “Is This What Patriotism Looks Like?” and Jeffrey Goldberg’s “The Triumph of Indecency” have published at TheAtlantic.com. Please reach out with any questions or requests. 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