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Summary
In his farewell speech, President Joe Biden warned of a growing “oligarchy” in the U.S., where extreme wealth and power threaten democracy.
Comparing modern elites to 19th-century robber barons, he called for reforms to hold the wealthy accountable, as done in the past.
Biden also criticized a “tech-industrial complex” concentrating power and spreading disinformation, weakening democracy.
His remarks sparked a surge in Google searches for “oligarchy.”
The speech comes amid rising concerns about policies favoring billionaires, like Trump’s tax cuts and potential cuts to social safety programs.
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Two things are true:
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He did a lot and still should have done more - still ends up as probably the most progressive president to hold the office. More of a criticism of this country.
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All of you claiming “too little too late” don’t think on the scale of history. Those things have never been said by that leader’s voice, In that leader’s office, broadcast on primetime TV to everyone, everywhere.
This is how progress works. Again, would have been better for him to say it from the start, but would have been fuel for the right (who doesn’t even really need credible fuel for the people they talk to) even more obstructionist, bad faith ghouls.
All the above considered, we were fucked as soon as election result came in. Democracy is over, if there was s cashed they wouldn’t try to literally draw and quarter Biden on the national mall in the next four years, this likely solidified it. Don’t think him saying those words are said without personal risk. I think he failed to live up to the full mandate of his election, but this is an old mmm an whip knows he’s about to die saying fuck it and pulling the pin on the grenade knowing he won’t outrun the blast. In his reality, that’s what this decision was.
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Biden became a good president… in his last month in office.
Or to be blunt: He’s being performative now when it doesn’t matter
Biden was a good president. And then he enabled Israel to go on a spree of war crimes, and also allowed Trump to, uh, live.
What is oligarchy?
Something you live in.
Maybe you should have fucking Googled it sooner.
To be fair, high school government/civics classes are probably so gutted that I’m happy when people understand the three branches of government.
I still think those classes are a myth, I never heard of anyone taking a civics class when I was in school 20 years ago.
Yeah, over 50% of voters voted for it!
Probably the same people who were googling why Biden wasn’t on the ticket on election day 🙄
USA is doomed
Everyone is so busy asking what is Oligarchy, nobody bothered to ask how is Oligarchy. Truly sad
I’ll do you one better, WHY is Oligarchy?
Why is no one asking Biden ‘why didn’t you do something about it?’
Oh he did- he leaned his full weight toward creating today’s reality for the last 55 years of his life.
Why is oligarchy??
Robert Reich has a great description of the times we’re in and how history is repeating itself: https://youtu.be/Nmq7QqqY4vo
The Gilded Age with Robber Barons
You might as well search for kakistocracy as well.
kakistocracy /kăk″ĭ-stŏk′rə-sē, kä″kĭ-/ noun
- Government by the least qualified or most unprincipled citizens.
- Government by the worst men.
- Government under the control of a nation’s worst or least-qualified citizens.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition
Ah, so that’s where “Heritage Foundation” comes from.
While we’re at it, lets throw in gerontocracy
I read Ken Klippenstein and he was heralding 2024 as the year of the gerontocracy starting to fail and be left behind and I’m like dude, we just elected a fucking 78 year old Hitler wannabe as president. The gerontocracy only gets worse.
Yeah, one of the major reasons the Soviet leadership failed too
Top kek, I mean kak.
kakistocracy - see South Africa. Lol
I think we have definitive proof that the American public, in general, are idiots.
Want definitive proof?
There are 244m eligible voters in the United States.
77m voted for Trump. Idiots.
2.6m voted 3rd party. Idiots.
90m didn’t vote. Idiots.
90+77+2.6 = 169.6
That means 170m of 244m eligible voters are braindead stupid. That’s 69.7%. So we essentially have a 70% failure rate amongst eligible voters for maintaining our democracy.
Yeah, Americans, in general, are STUUUUUUUUUPID.
Yeah, we’re in a declining nation and it’s probably not going to get better anytime soon.
Username checks out along with the math.
You might be downvoted but you’re absolutely correct.
I actually consider this really positive on a few fronts.
Firstly, people are trying to learn. That’s great.
Oligarchy is not a common word if your English level isn’t great and that’s true for lots of people. Even if you read books a decent amount it’s not something I think you’d come across frequently.
Also, for folks who don’t know what an oligarchy is, for them to find out they’re possibly living in one may change their world view.
I’m sure there are more.
Honestly, I am one of those idiots. I had to look up oligarchy myself, although I looked it up because it was being thrown around a bit on Lemmy, not because Biden said it.
I do not consider you an idiot one bit for what it’s worth. I definitely did not know that word for a significant portion of my life.
It’s not something that appears in books or something you come across in school.
That’s a very… generous interpretation, but I’ll “allow it”, because it gives me some hope.
Gotta keep that hope up!
We had that in November
Twice in November.
At least they’re trying to learn.
We knew that since Dexter Manly went to college illiterate
Becoming…? The country founded on the principle that only landowners and capitalists should be represented democratically is becoming an oligarchy?
Yes, because the early USA did not resemble an modern oligarchy but rather a plutocracy which despite its problems still has greater room for a merit based system than a modern oligarchy provides. We are intentionally concentrating a tremendous amount of wealth in the hands of very few people.
Plutocracy = rule by the wealthy.
Oligarchy = rule by the few.
The wealthy are the few. And with increasing wealth disparity, they are comparatively even fewer than ever before.
Not really any meaningful difference.
Maybe if we keep going with the concentration of wealth we can boil it all down to just one guy and then drown that guy in the bathtub like Republicans wanted to do with the federal government.
Ps: As far as your oligarchy vs plutocracy thing goes, we’re just both.
Yeah, I read that and was like… “Ya know, you’re only about 260 years late…”
The one directly inspired by Rome, an oligarchy with strict class systems and slavery?
Ye’s best start believin’ in oligarchies.
Yer in one!
What we call laws are more like guidelines than actual rules we abide by…
Nah, laws are the things that bind the working class while not protecting them; and at the same time protects the oligarchs without binding them.
Growing? We’re already there buddy and you helped speed it up.
He was taking orders from rich people too just different ones than the next guy lol now he thinks it’s an issue but when they all pushed Bernie out it was fine.
Assholes
Lemmy : get old white men out of politics!
Also Lemmy: vote Bernie!!
Pick a lane
Lemmy is not a person.
Funny how Jews are white when it’s convenient, and not white when that’s convenient.
Convenient for the speaker, I mean; generally the opposite of convenient for the Jewish person in question
I never said anything about old white men. I was trying to say that Bernie has been warning about this for a long time but the Democrats were benefiting from it so they kept it going
This is click baity. People don’t exclusively look up things they have no idea about. I’m constantly searching terms to reaffirm my understanding or to get a more precise definition of them. Oligarchy in particular doesn’t have a measurable identification which of course people are going to want to dig a little into it. Hell there’s a comment on here that made me dig into it since they’re stretching it’s definition way past it’s meaning
Hell, I looked this up just now fully knowing what an oligarchy was because a) I was curious about the formal definition and b) I wanted to learn more about the history
Additionally, any mention of a word in a speech like that will result in an uptick in search usage – but that doesn’t let anyone quantify anything.
You’d see an uptick if a single person over baseline average looked it up from the speech, and everyone else understood it.
“X is trending in search because people don’t know it” is always a fallacy. See also: reporting on increased search for “who are the presidential candidates” a few days before the election.
This can be said about almost any article that claims people type a specific word into a search engine after someone says it. There were a lot of articles about people looking up jury nullification after Luigi was arrested. Or people looking up the word tariff after trump said it. It’s just a quick way to find more information about the specific instance the word was used in. I didn’t search the term tariff because I didn’t know what it was, i searched it because I wanted to know what trump and his supporters thought it was.
it’s been made abundantly clear that a lot of americans have no fucking idea what anyone is talking about
Defunding schools doing it’s job
I genuinely can’t believe that there is any overlap at all with the maybe 500 people who actually listened to his speech or even read an article summarizing it and those who don’t know what the meaning of “oligarchy” is.
How does anyone get engaged enough in the political process to watch a speech from Biden and not recall Bernie Sanders saying this every day of his life for the last 30 years?
I often get confused between oligarchy, kleptocracy and plutocracy, that’s why I would look it up. I do understand how we can all be a little ignorant. We should do better.
Well, to be fair, a kleptocracy is a poverty mindset applied to wannabe plutarchs or oligarchs. Oligarchy is the DEI version of Plutocracy because it’s not just wealth based. Edit:/s
There is nothing diverse, equitable or inclusive about oligarchs, quite the opposite, but I see your point.
Sarcasm tag added
I follow these things closely on my own time, as I assume is common for nearly everyone on lemmy.
But I saw coverage of Biden’s farewell address randomly at the gym. And also at a local restaurant. The media now is putting that word “oligarchy” in front of people’s eyes, as a summary of his speech. I would guess most people googling it are checking if “the oligarchy” is a country in the middle east or something
It’s scary how much old tv media sways public conversation…and how incompetent they are
Lol, that’s fair. Maybe I should really feel surprised that people paid attention enough to Google it.
Probably depends on your life style and what you do for work. I work in front of a computer so I browse on the side and see stuff, but take a teacher who is focused on kids all day doesn’t have much of a chance to get caught up on stuff
My friend is an HVAC guy and spends a lot of his days in the basement of high rises with no service. He gets home and has 2 kids to take care of and by the time he’s done, physical labor has taken its toll and he’s too sleepy to do much besides watch a comedy special before bed.
I have WFH computer job so I get to stay informed but it feels like the average American just doesn’t have time to keep up with the insanity of modern politics.
The best my brain ever felt was when I worked in a corner of a building that was a dead zone. No distractions unless I sought them out and physically went to them.
Americans have been so fat and happy that they’re literally sick. They need a few more LA fires and pandemics to wake up from the intellectual coma they’re in.
Anyone who had any other understanding has failed to communicate with the American public.
communication requires participation by both the sender and the receiver in order to take place. are you saying that if everything you tell someone is dismissed as “fake news” and ignored, then it’s your fault that nothing was communicated?
participation by both the sender and the receiver in order to take place. are you saying that if everything you tell someone is dismissed as “fake news” and ignored, then it’s your fa
How in the hell did you get that as a take away from what I said?
has failed to communicate with the American public.
what did you mean by that, if not exactly what you said?
Blocking a troll. got one less problem without ya…
Blocking a troll. got one less problem without ya…
lol if i was blocked i wouldn’t see that…
but yea. bye.
What else is new?
Not the brightest bunch
