In the January 2022 issue of The New Criterion there is a debate about conservatism, its “merits and limitations”, its “proper meaning and vocation”.

The main difference of opinion is over whether conservatism needs to be focused more or less on “the common good”.  The argument – as always between thinkers on the same side of a wide political-philosophical division – is significant to those pursuing it, but likely to seem slight to the unengaged.

There is broad agreement that conservatism is struggling to survive.

The triumph of anti-conservatism  is undeniable. In Michael Anton’s essay, he gives an account of how the enemies of conservatism on the Left have ruined our institutions and every aspect of our culture. We think his horrifying description of the wreck is true. To the question whether conservatism can recover, he concludes no certain prognosis can be made. While he hasn’t entirely given up hope for it himself, he deplores the failure of his fellow conservatives to recognize the critical condition it is in.

In his introduction to the debate, the editor, Roger Kimball, quotes this by Michael Anton:

If conservatives are right about the importance of virtue, morality, religious faith, stability, character and so on in the individual; if they are right about sexual morality or what came to be termed “family values”; if they are right about the importance of education to inculcate good character and to teach the fundamentals that have defined knowledge in the West for millennia; if they are right about societal norms and public order; if they are right about the centrality of initiative, enterprise, industry, and thrift to a sound economy and a healthy society; if they are right about the soul-sapping effects of paternalistic Big Government and its cannibalization of civil society and religious institutions; if they are right about the necessity of a strong defense and prudent statesmanship in the international sphere—if they are right about the importance of all this to national health and even survival, then they must believe—mustn’t they?—that we are headed off a cliff.

And Kimball comments:

It seems to me that Anton was quite right when he went on to observe that it was “obvious that conservatives don’t believe any such thing, that they feel no such sense of urgency, of an immediate necessity to change course and avoid the cliff”. 

Conservatives, Kimball thinks, should feel such an urgency, such an immediate necessity, and should act to save conservatism from extinction:

Our basic problem … is not so much a poverty of understanding as a paralysis of will. The real problem conservatives face is not in formulating sophisticated principles but in effectively confronting the juggernaut of progressive usurpation. For decades we have been living with the one-way ratchet of liberal imposition. The harvest is a situation in which conservatives are considered legitimate only when they embrace progressive aims. Conservatives, in other words, have conspired in their own eclipse. Meanwhile, the true sources of value—not government but the family, the churches, and our educational institutions—have been twisted out of all recognition. The answer to this tyranny lies not in the framing of better arguments but in the deployment of a more efficacious politics.

We at TAC have an enduring difference of opinion with the majority of our fellow conservatives over religious faith. We do not think that the churches are, ever have been, ever will be or could be a “true source of value”.  We agree with the rest of Anton’s (and Kimball’s) summary of what conservatism is, what is good about it.

Is Kimball right that conservatism as a political force requires urgent action to save it from extinction?

Can it be saved from extinction by any means, or is it doomed?

It is possible that the horrible year 2021 will turn out to have done good.

The Left, by coming to power (through cheating and chicanery) and proceeding to impose its oppressive policies, may have destroyed itself.

It has taught America a lesson in practice, proving how fearful, dreary, insecure, costly, humiliating, lonely, brutal, sorrowful and sickly is life under Leftist rule. If the electorate has learned the lesson, it may not need to be taught again this century.

The misery is not yet over. But 2022 is an election year and may end with the defeat of the Left.

That is the nearest we can come to a cheerful message for our readers. It is a hope, and with that in mind, we wish you all a

Happy New Year!

We wish all our readers and commenters, regular and occasional visitors, applauders and denigrators, atheists and believers, optimists and pessimists, vaccinated and unvaccinated,

a very merry holiday season

despite the pandemic, loss of liberty, high prices, shortages, rough weather, Communist China, the House January 6 committee, rising crime, and the decline of the West.

There is a danger to democracy in democracy itself: majorities can vote against it.

Two recent articles express, in deep pessimism, the conviction that America has chosen its own irreversible doom.

Mark Steyn thinks it may be all over for America. Its system has brought in forces of self-destruction driven by trivial concerns over climate, race, and sex.

He writes:

Is America past the point of no return? The more lavishly funded any activity is, the more it’s a racket. Fresh from taking two decades to lose a war to goatherds and reducing itself to a global laughingstock to allies and enemies alike, the Government of the United States decided that what a six-star joke really needed was the first four-star transgender admiral.

Now we have an incoming vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff telling the world that what a bloated lavishly funded military that can’t win a war needs to prioritize is “gender advisors”. …

Chairman Xi was a no-show at COP-26, because he has no intention of joining the west in committing economic suicide. But, if Joe and Justin and Boris are so eager to tank what remains of their livelihoods, he’s happy to sell them expensive ineffective “green solutions”. In other words, having annexed American manufacturing and American high-tech and American intellectual property, Beijing is happy to annex American virtue-signaling and profit from that, too.

There is no equivalent (not even Rome’s) to America’s form of great-power suicide. Britain lost global dominance because, for eighteen critical months , London and the British Dominions stood alone among the great democratic powers in resisting the Third Reich. It was a sacrifice that exhausted and bankrupted a mighty empire, but it was at least for something recognizable as a great cause. America is exiting the world stage because it’s hot for trannies and MS-13 cartels: has there ever been anything more pathetic?

Paul Gottfried points out at American Greatness that many an oppressive regime is in power not because their power was seized illegitimately, but because they were voted for.

Regimes that embattled minorities are on the streets protesting are not there by accident. Voters made choices.

And even when they do their worst, they can safely submit themselves for re-election:

Majorities, and often overwhelming ones, voted for the ruling class; and if an election were held tomorrow, the same rulers would likely win. …

He gives examples of popular authoritarian rulers in America:

Bill de Blasio won a second term as New York City’s mayor in 2017 with 65.4 percent of the tabulated vote. On November 4, 2020, Kim Klacik, an earnest young black woman, ran against Kweisi Mfume, the longtime incumbent in Maryland’s seventh congressional district, which includes Baltimore’s inner city. Klacik promised to fight for more police protection, and, unlike Mfume, she pledged to bring the races together. Against a notoriously philandering politician who gave up his birth name to assume an African one, Klacik lost the congressional race by 40 points, although remarkably enough, she amassed a large war chest. Politicians such as Mfume, Lori Lightfoot in Chicago, Maxine Waters in Los Angeles, Gavin Newsom in California, and Bill de Blasio in New York have all reached high political positions for the same reason: they attract lots of votes. …

If it is argued that almost as many Americans have voted for freedom as voted for dictatorship, the inherent danger in democracy is only emphasized: the will of many can be frustrated by the will of a few more. The choice of democracy itself is the hazard.

In which case, since all other systems are worse than democracy, there is no way that a free republic such as the Founders tried to establish can be secured.

If the “Biden” administration came in by cheating, it means that cheating is not just possible but practicable in a democracy.

How likely is it that after this turn to oppression, with another election another day America can go back to being the free nation it has been in the past?

Even if it can, even if it does, what will preserve it?

Britain’s great conservative Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, said: “Britain was created by history, America was created by philosophy.”

What were the principles of America’s foundational philosophy?

• Freedom: freedom of the individual, and so, logically, freedom of conscience, speech, publication,  assembly; property ownership and a free market.
• The rule of law under which all are equal.
• Government by the people themselves to protect their freedom with the rule of law, and with military strength against foreign enemies.

All those principles are now being abandoned by usurping powers, to be replaced with contrary ideals.

The systems and institutions that proceeded from them are being corrupted and turned from their intended purposes to serve opposite ends.

Victor Davis Hanson writes at Townhall:

Conservatives now have lost their former traditional confidence in the administration of justice, in the intelligence and investigatory agencies, in the nation’s military leadership, in the media, and the criminal justice system.

Freedom is much diminished, especially with the forced quarantine and masking of the healthy in an epidemic of Covid flu, and threatened penalties for those who refuse vaccination.

The rule of law is scoffed at by those who should enforce it.

As Victor Davis Hanson says:

The American criminal justice system also used to earn the respect of conservatives. Prosecuting attorneys, police chiefs, and big-city mayors were seen as custodians of the public order. They were entrusted to keep the peace, to prevent and investigate crime, and to arrest and prosecute criminals.

Again, not so much now.

After 120 days of mostly unchecked riot, arson, looting, and violent protests during the summer of 2020, the public lost confidence in their public safety agencies.

District attorneys in several major cities – Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and St. Louis – have often predicated prosecuting crimes on the basis of ideology, race, and careerism.

In the current crime wave, brazen lawbreakers enjoy de facto immunity. Mass looting goes unpunished. Indictments are often aimed as much against those who defend themselves as against criminals who attack the innocent.

Government by the people has been corrupted by electoral fraud. And the military cannot be relied on to protect the nation:

Mention the military to conservative Americans these days, and they unfortunately associate its leadership with the disastrous flight from Afghanistan. Few, if any, high-ranking officers have yet taken responsibility – much less resigned – for the worst military fiasco of the last half-century.

Instead, President Joe Biden and the top generals traded charges that the other was responsible for the calamity. Or both insisted the abject flight was a logistical masterpiece.

Never in U.S. history have so many retired four-star admirals and generals disparaged their president with charges of being either a traitor, a liar, a fascist, or a virtual Nazi, as occurred during the last administration.

Never has the proper advisory role of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff been so brazenly usurped and contorted.

Never has the secretary of defense promised he would ferret out alleged “white supremacists” without providing any evidence whatsoever of their supposedly ubiquitous presence and dangerous conspiracies.

Worse, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff informed the hostile Communists who govern China that he would warn them if President Trump decided to attack their country with nuclear weapons.

Victor Davis Hanson concludes:

No one yet knows what the effect will be of half the country losing faith in the very pillars of American civilization.

Does it mean that the experiment of creating a nation from a benign philosophy has failed?

Some of the most recent topics under discussion:

Lament for the West – Cancel the Woke Before It’s Too Late

Event 201 – Pandemic or Scamdemic?

Now the Left – Whining, Racist, Spiteful – Urges the Use of Witchcraft

Klaus Schwab’s School For Covid Dictators, Plan for ‘Great Reset’

Tens of Thousands protest in Brussels against government anti-Covid measures youtube.com

YouTube Dislikes You

Mentally Fragile State Department Officials Broke Down Over Disastrous Afghanistan Withdrawal.

Please join us! We would like to know your opinion.

The splendidly clear-sighted researcher and writer and defender of reason Heather Mac Donald wrote this in a City Journal article, Spring 2020. Its truth abides.

The feminization of the university and the prominence of therapeutic culture [both of which she amply demonstrates to be facts] have created a perfect storm directed at free speech and reason. In a recent survey of college students, females were twice as likely as males to say that a controversial speaker should be canceled if the majority of students “feel emotionally unsafe or uncomfortable with the speaker’s content.” Males, by contrast, were more likely to support a controversial invitation in the name of academic freedom and the advancement of knowledge. …

The real crisis in academia is not mental health; it is the breakdown of universities’ understanding of their core mission. All other alleged crises follow from this one. Education exists for one main purpose: to pass on an inheritance of human achievement …  Yet faculty have lost the language for celebrating that inheritance; they have gone mute, or worse, when it comes to articulating the splendors of Western civilization.

College is not even about the promotion of happiness. That is too utilitarian a goal; knowledge is an end in itself. But even were student happiness a legitimate matter for colleges to concern themselves with, a therapeutic approach is the wrong way to cultivate it. The surest route to happiness is a passion for something outside the self. The only thing that kept Bertrand Russell from committing suicide during his adolescence was his desire to learn more math, he recounts in his 1930 book, The Pursuit of Happiness. As an adult, his “diminishing preoccupation” with himself led to growing contentment: “Every external interest inspires some activity which, so long as the interest remains alive, is a complete preventive of ennui,” he wrote. J. S. Mill, who also grappled with depression, agreed. “The only chance [for happiness] is to treat, not happiness, but some end external to it, as the purpose of life,” Mill wrote in his autobiography. …

Away with Women’s Studies (and Black Studies, Chicano Studies …)!

Our civilization is engaged in an unprecedented experiment: turning on its own accomplishments with shame and contempt. American students growing up today are given reason to be proud of their heritage only if they have had that rare nonconforming teacher who still honors the past. Otherwise, students are taught to see in the monuments of Western thought and imagination a thinly veiled power grab. They themselves are either oppressors or the oppressed, either category spirit-killing. …

The university’s comparative advantage over all other institutions should be the promise of real knowledge. But as the therapeutic culture has spread throughout the university, the language of reason and evidence has been replaced by claims of emotional hurt. In any controversy, the person who can express the deepest outrage or injury wins the day …  “I feel like” substitutes for rational argument.

Of course women are the emotional sex. Their feelings rule them because their physiology torments them. Their temperatures go up and down as the moon waxes and wanes.

Dear Patriarchs,

Thank you for still being there.

Please don’t put women at the helm of the ship of state. Do not put their fingers on “the nuclear button”. Do not seat them in a passenger-jet cockpit. Do not send them to the battle front. Do not give them the job of defending the innocent or prosecuting the guilty in a court of law, or judging guilt and innocence.

Do not give them power.

There are exceptions among them who are capable of reason. Those few will make themselves known. As a general rule –  be nice to women but remind them that there are only two sexes, and they’re the sex that’s destined by biological evolution to feel the tragedy of life, while you can laugh at its comedy.

Let them weep and wail. Out of earshot.

You? Discover and invent.

America is governed by an oligarchy. Has been for some time, with a four year interruption when Donald Trump was president. The oligarchs are rich and powerful and determined to stay that way. (Donald Trump, though rich, was not one of them but, unacceptably, a patriot.) Their only willing change will be to become more rich and more powerful. They are the elite, and they see their interests, being rich and powerful and ever more rich and powerful, as naturally best served in an international,  or “global”, alliance of the rich and powerful, whoever and wherever they may be.

Most of the oligarchs are not in government. They resent the power of governments, even of those that belong in the alliance – chiefly those of the US, the EU, Britain, and China.

In the implementation of the Great Reset, an agenda issued by the World Economic Forum from a mountain top in Switzerland, private powers will be in close partnership with governments. They call it public-private partnership. The private part will be the dog, and the public part – government – will be the tail. The dog will wag the tail. 

Ivan Wecke writes, at OpenDemocracy, a skeptic’s view of the Great Reset – and he finds that the horrified reaction to it of us ordinary citizens is not irrational or unjustified:

The Great Reset conspiracy theories don’t seem to want to die. The theories were triggered by the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) summit last year, which had the theme The Great Reset …

The set of conspiracy theories around the Great Reset are nebulous and hard to pin down, but piecing them together gives us something like this: the Great Reset is the global elite’s plan to instate a communist world order by abolishing private property while using COVID-19 to solve overpopulation and enslaving what remains of humanity with vaccines.

Such laughable nonsense, the writer implies. So –

Intrigued by the palaver around last year’s summit, I decided to find out what the WEF’s Great Reset plan was really about. At the heart of conspiracy theories are supposed secret agendas and malicious intent. While these may be absent from the WEF’s Great Reset initiative, what I found was something almost as sinister hiding in plain sight. In fact, more sinister because it’s real and it’s happening now. And it involves things as fundamental as our food, our data and our vaccines.

“Almost as sinister … In fact, more sinister …”?

Then tell us, please, what the real Great Reset is all about.

The magic words are ‘stakeholder capitalism’, a concept that WEF chairman Klaus Schwab has been hammering for decades and which occupies pride of place in the WEF’s Great Reset plan from June 2020. The idea is that global capitalism should be transformed so that corporations no longer focus solely on serving shareholders but become custodians of society by creating value for customers, suppliers, employees, communities and other ‘stakeholders’. The way the WEF sees stakeholder capitalism being carried out is through a range of ‘multi-stakeholder partnerships’ bringing together the private sector, governments and civil society across all areas of global governance.

The idea of stakeholder capitalism and multi-stakeholder partnerships might sound warm and fuzzy …

No it doesn’t. It sounds sinister like those conspiracy theories the writer has dismissed.

…  until we dig deeper and realise that this actually means giving corporations more power over society, and democratic institutions less.

As we said, the Corporations Dog will wag the Governments Tail.

The plan from which the Great Reset originated was called the Global Redesign Initiative. Drafted by the WEF after the 2008 economic crisis, the initiative contains a 600-page report on transforming global governance. In the WEF’s vision, “the government voice would be one among many, without always being the final arbiter.” Governments would be just one stakeholder in a multi-stakeholder model of global governance. …

Multi-stakeholder partnerships are public-private partnerships on the global stage.

Who are these other, non-governmental stakeholders? The WEF, best known for its annual meeting of high-net-worth individuals in Davos, Switzerland, describes itself as an international organization for public-private cooperation. WEF partners include some of the biggest companies in oil (Saudi Aramco, Shell, Chevron, BP), food (Unilever, The Coca-Cola Company, Nestlé), technology (Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple) and pharmaceuticals (AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna).

Instead of corporations serving many stakeholders, in the multi-stakeholder model of global governance, corporations are promoted to being official stakeholders in global decision-making, while governments are relegated to being one of many stakeholders. In practice, corporations become the main stakeholders, while governments take a backseat role …

It is coming. For sure. No, wait … Oh good grief! it is already here!

The multi-stakeholder model is already being built. In recent years, an ever-expanding ecosystem of multi-stakeholder groups has spread across all sectors of the global governance system. There are now more than 45 global multi-stakeholder groups that set standards and establish guidelines and rules in a range of areas. … These groups, which lack any democratic accountability, consist of private stakeholders (big corporations) who “recruit their friends in government, civil society and universities to join them in solving public problems”.

Multi-stakeholderism is the WEF’s update of multilateralism, which is the current system through which countries work together to achieve common goals. The multilateral system’s core institution is the UN. The multilateral system is often rightly accused of being ineffective, too bureaucratic and skewed towards the most powerful nations. But it is at least theoretically democratic because it brings together democratically elected leaders of countries to make decisions in the global arena. Instead of reforming the multilateral system to deepen democracy, the WEF’s vision of multi-stakeholder governance entails further removing democracy by sidelining governments and putting unelected ‘stakeholders’ – mainly corporations – in their place when it comes to global decision-making.

Put bluntly, multi-stakeholder partnerships are public-private partnerships on the global stage. And they have real-world implications for the way our food systems are organized, how big tech is governed and how our vaccines and medicines are distributed. …

And all other commodities. Because by controlling resources over the whole world, they will have more power and more money. (Read more about that here).

Another landmark in the development of stakeholder capitalism can be found in the Big Tech sector. … It’s not easy to find a list of stakeholders but after some digging a long list of ‘roundtable participants’ for the roadmap includes Facebook, Google, Microsoft and the WEF.

Although the functions laid out for this new body are quite vague, civil society organizations fear it will come down to Big Tech creating a global body to govern itself. This risks institutionalising these companies’ resistance against effective regulation both globally and nationally and increasing their power over governments and multilateral organizations. If the body comes to fruition, it could be a decisive victory in the ongoing war GAFAM (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft) is waging with governments over tax evasion, antitrust rules, and their ever-expanding power over society.

More than 170 civil society groups worldwide have signed another open letter to the secretary general of the UN – this time to prevent the digital governance body from forming. The secretary general was approached for comment but had not replied at the time of publication. …

So … something fishy really is going on in the realm of global governance. If you value your right to public health, to privacy, to access healthy food or to democratic representation, be wary of the words ‘stakeholder capitalism’ when they pop up at the next Davos summit.

Must we now accept that the age of democracy is over? You may still have a vote, you may even help elect a government of your choice, but it will have little power.

There will not be “world government” – that’s just conspiracy theory – but there will be “global governance”.

There will not be “communism”, but there will be “equitable redistribution” – aka communism – and it will be called “stakeholder capitalism”.

There will be?  No, there is. As the man says, it has started.

… to all our readers, visitors, fans and critics!

Let’s be thankful to the philosophers of the Enlightenment that we atheists may carry our atheism openly, and point out absurdities of religious belief such as these:

Jews believe that Moses set down the ritual laws of a Temple that was conceived and constructed about 300 years after his death.

Christians believe that a Jewish man executed by the Romans as an insurrectionist was the creator of the universe.

Muslims believe that the sister of Moses was the mother of the Jewish man who was executed by the Romans as an insurrectionist some twelve hundred years after her death.

These are called “truths”.

Ashli Babbitt was not the only person murdered in the Capitol by the police on January 6, 2021.

She was shot dead in cold blood by police officer Lt. Michael Leroy Byrd, and Rosanne Boyland was beaten to death by another police officer, badge number L359.

Julie Kelly reports at American Greatness:

In 2018, after a local news crew filmed Ryan Nichols rescuing dogs abandoned by their owners after Hurricane Florence, the former Marine appeared on the Ellen DeGeneres Show. Not only did DeGeneres commend Nichols’ longtime work as a search-and-rescue volunteer, she donated $25,000 to the Humane Society in his name and gave Ryan and his wife, Bonnie, a $10,000 check to pay for the honeymoon they had missed the year before so Ryan could assist rescue efforts in the wake of Hurricane Harvey.

But instead of heading to Hawaii, the Nicholses used the generous donation to buy a rescue boat. With his Marine buddy and best friend, Alex Harkrider, at his side, the pair has participated in “dozens of hurricane rescues and disaster relief efforts” according to Joseph McBride, Nichols’ attorney.

Three years after his appearance on the DeGeneres show, Nichols was featured on another program, but this time, Nichols spoke from the fetid confines of a political prison in the nation’s capital. And instead of telling a heroic story of saving dogs drowning in rising flood waters, Nichols told Newsmax host Greg Kelly a harrowing tale of what he saw at the U.S. Capitol on January 6.

“We showed up in good faith . . . to protest the election results but never would have imagined we would encounter the horrors that we did on the west terrace and in the tunnel that day,” Nichols explained to Kelly in a phone interview on November 9. “When I saw women being beaten and in distress, my rescue instinct kicked in and I knew I had no choice but to help rescue them.”

Nichols’ account is detailed in an appalling new court filing that confirms what American Greatness has reported for months: on January 6, D.C. Metro and Capitol police assaulted nonviolent protesters with explosive devices, rubber bullets, tear gas, and in some cases, their own fists and batons. A tunnel on the lower west side of the Capitol building became a dangerous—and, likely for at least one protester, deadly—battle scene as police viciously attacked American citizens on the “hallowed” grounds of the U.S. Congress.

Nichols, of Texas, has been behind bars since his January 18 arrest; he sits in the D.C. jail specifically used to house January 6 detainees, charged along with Harkrider with multiple offenses including assault of a police officer, civil disorder, and unlawful possession of pepper spray.

So, what on Earth turned two decorated veterans with a history of helping people in crisis into “insurrectionists” who “attacked” police officers? It was what they saw when they approached the tunnel around 3 p.m. on January 6. “They hear people screaming in pain and crying for help—women and old men are bloodied and injured,” McBride wrote in a motion seeking Nichols’ release. “Training and instincts kick in and they head to the tunnel …”

McBride viewed three hours of surveillance video captured by Capitol security camera—the extensive system captured at least 14,000 hours of footage that the Justice Department and Capitol police are desperate to keep away from public view—and described for the first time what happened inside the tunnel where a combination of D.C. and Capitol police, ostensibly, were stationed to prevent protesters from entering the building:

“[Just] after 4:00 pm, Ryan is sprayed multiple times by an officer standing on a ledge in the tunnel,” McBride wrote in a November 1 filing. “He is also separated from a woman who stood next to Ryan at different times at the Western Terrace. She was middle aged and nice. Ryan promised to keep an eye on her. The woman was wearing a red shirt and a MAGA hat. Shortly thereafter, officers begin terrorizing people in and around the tunnel. People are screaming and getting crushed. There is a pile of human beings stacked on top of each other at the tunnel entrance. People are trapped and there is nowhere to go.”

McBride focused on the conduct of one officer in particular, with badge number L359 and wearing a white shirt. The unidentified officer begins “to beat a man for no apparent reason . . . [and] beats the man so badly that the man crawls over to the woman with the MAGA hat.”

At this point, according to the security video, the officer turns his sights on the woman. “Then for reasons that no fair minded or decent human being will ever understand—[the officer wearing the] White-shirt turns his attention to the woman and begins to pulverize her,” McBride explained. “The weapon this officer appears to be using is a collapsible stick, designed to break windows in emergency situations. This stick is neither designed nor to be used against another human being.”

For the next several minutes, between 4 p.m. and around 4:15 p.m., the officer in the white shirt relentlessly beats the woman; McBride furnished a literal blow-by-blow account in the court document. (The time stamp is based on a three-hour video clip, not time of day.)

2:07:01: White-shirt hits the woman in the head with his baton five times in seven seconds;

2:07:22: The woman is sprayed directly in the eyes by officer on ledge;

2:07:24: White-shirt uses his baton to hit another person with a mask on;

2:07:30: The woman and others are still being maced and hit by White-shirt and ledge officer;

2:07:38: Blood is visibly coming out of the woman’s head and can be seen on the white hoody;

2:07:55: White-shirt and other officers are randomly assaulting people for no apparent reason;

2:08:17: White-shirt makes his way to front of crowd again and targets woman who is attempting to escape;

2:08:30: White-shirt spears and pokes the woman with his baton about the head, neck, and face so as to inflict maximum pain;

2:08:46: White-shirt beats the woman with his baton striking her eight times in six seconds;

2:09:13: White-shirt punches the woman in the face, with his left-hand, landing five punches in five seconds, with all of his might;

2:09:35: Another officer joins in and starts beating the woman in the head with his baton, landing twelve strikes in seven seconds;

2:10:47: If you pause the video here, you will see the welts on the woman’s face along with a disturbing look of helplessness;

2:10:54: Officers push the woman around the tunnel;

2:10:55: The woman briefly collapses;

2:11:13: White-shirt follows the woman to the front of the tunnel and beats her with his baton as she’s falling;

2:11:24: The woman is taken to the back of tunnel and is never seen again.

These assaults occurred about 10 minutes before the lifeless body of Rosanne Boyland was seen lying on the ground, just outside the tunnel. Most of the violent brawls between police and protesters take place near this tunnel in response to what McBride calls “overwhelming police brutality and misconduct”. 

Body-worn camera footage released by the courts and seen here show Boyland on her side not moving as her friend, Justin Winchell, begged for help. “She’s gonna die!” Winchell tries to scream while holding on to Boyland. He turns to the crowd. “I need somebody, anybody,” he pleads. “She’s dead! She’s dead!”

McBride then confirms another report by American Greatness: “Roseanne (sic) Boyland’s body is dragged into the tunnel at 4:30 p.m., and is never seen again.” In September, I reported that, according to his congressional testimony, Officer Aquilino Gonell appears to be the person who handled Boyland’s body after she died, dragging her inside the building where he is then met by Officer Harry Dunn.

Dunn told the January 6 select committee in July that he carried an “unconscious woman”, presumably Boyland, into House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer’s office.

The D.C. Medical Examiner’s Office concluded Boyland died of a drug overdose but that autopsy result is highly suspicious considering the video footage and first-hand accounts of others about what happened to her that afternoon.

Joe Biden’s Justice Department, with compliance by D.C. District Court judges, are keeping several eyewitnesses to the terror in the tunnel behind bars awaiting trials delayed until at least the middle of 2022. Nichols’ hearing for bond is set for December 20, at which point he will have been incarcerated for more than 11 months.  He has no court date.

The acquittal of self-defender Kyle Rittenhouse on charges of homicide which should never have been brought against him, has revived hope that the rule of law will not be abandoned in America – despite many signs that the very idea of it has already been rejected by the present government – and even some hope that equality under the law may return as a firm principle.

If that were to happen, the policemen who killed Rosanne Boyland and Ashli Babbitt, and those who gave them their orders, and those who are keeping innocent people in prison under cruel conditions for “staging an insurrection” which they did not, may yet be made to answer for their crimes.