There is so much noise being spewed against the police, against law and order, calling everything racist.

And I just think we owe it to ourselves to listen to other viewpoints.

This seems to be the narrative, and I kind of am sick of that word, but it seems to be the theme that many in the media want to propagate.

But there are actual real people living in real communities who disagree and are seeing through all of that.

And our guest is one of them.

He is former, now retired, Army Lieutenant Colonel

Mike Russell. He has said that we should call him Mike. I like to read people the Twitter

bios that people post for themselves. Veteran, common sense conservative, father, husband, Catholic. He enjoys traveling and the gym and

loves his Weber grill. He also happens to be gay. So you take all of those things, a Catholic

conservative, a gay man, a black gay man who served in the military,

has run for office in Atlanta,

and is seeing firsthand all the craziness, the crime,

the lack of law and order, and what it's done to his community.

He has some great stories to tell and some great wisdom to pass on.

Mike Russell joins us next.

Welcome to the Michelle Tofoya podcast.

I'm going to get this out of the way for our listeners and viewers.

You have asked me to call you, Mike, even though you're a retired lieutenant colonel,

and I believe that when you earn that title, you should be called that, but you have requested,

right? Yes. Okay. All right, Mike, I'm so glad you joined us. You were recommended to me by a previous guest I had on this show who also lives in Georgia. And he is an activist and an

attorney and a friend of yours, Jeff Clegghorn. He was so thrilled that 34 years later,

you had an honor attached to you that he thought was 34 years too late. First, can you describe the difference

...