Free Republic

America Is Undergoing a Political Realignment When I was growing up, the left regularly criticized Big Pharma and its influence on American politics. As recently as 2015, progressive stalwart Elizabeth Warren had “Big Pharma in her sights.” The right, meanwhile, was slow to criticize pharmaceutical companies. That dynamic was even evident in lobbying, with about 55 percent of Big Pharma’s political contributions going to Republican candidates from 1989 to 2020. Yet today, that dynamic has been completely reversed.In 2020, Big Pharma gave over 60 percent of its political contributions to Democrats. Party leaders promptly backed COVID-19 vaccine mandates across federal...

It seems impossible to deny that powerful forces are conspiring to suppress basic freedoms and impose top-down control over American society. Intelligence agencies team up with Big Tech to censor information, governments are marking political dissidents as “terror threats,” and presidential candidates are hand-picked by party elites.Looking around, I can’t help but feel that the American way of life is under attack. Yet at the same time, I know that research shows that successful people don’t believe that their lives are subject to control by distant powers.Instead, they believe that effort is rewarded; they have an internal locus of control...