Leonard C. Goodman is a Chicago criminal defense attorney.
Republicans pretend to care about traditional values; they pledge to fight the woke liberals trying to control our lives. Democrats pretend to fight for the poor and working class. But behind the scenes, both parties serve the interests of the investor class that funds them and demands, in return, a high rate of return on their investment capital. The public feuding between the two corporate parties depicted nightly on our cable news shows is as phony and staged as the 1970s-era wrestling matches between The Sheik and Dick the Bruiser.
Working people have also noticed that after taking office, Biden immediately jettisoned every single one of his campaign promises that was opposed by major donors to the Democratic Party, including the central promise of his campaign: to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $15. This was hardly a radical promise by a president whom the establishment press describes as a “crusader for the poor.” (The press generally ignores the fact that Biden has largely been funded by corporate and financial services industry cash for decades.)
Recognizing the threat posed by unconstrained truth-telling and actual journalism, Congress has been summoning the chief executives of Google, Twitter, and Facebook before it, encouraging them to censor divergent voices. The goal is to disempower, deplatform, and demonetize dissenting voices by accusing them of advancing false claims or spreading extremism.
