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.
it’s been made abundantly clear that a lot of americans have no fucking idea what anyone is talking about
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 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
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
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.
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.
Sadly, they bought all the lies about Covid and now believe they are safe from it and that it magically disappeared. They believe the CDC’s “comprehensive guidelines” are enough to keep us all “safe”, when the actual guidelines are just base ideas, not anything of real value. They actually recommend people sneeze and cough into their elbows as if that’s going to stop an airborne virus. Yet they believe it all.
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?
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.
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.
Some Americans don’t even know how to spell it right, so I’m not sure they’ll even be able to look it up:
Wow, he couldn’t think of a single c based accusation to level at the Obama presidency?
Wasn’t Beck also one of the people who got super obsessed with Obama smoking crack or something in college?
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.
I don’t think your math quite works out. Voters who voted third party or didn’t vote and live in solidly blue states had no bearing on Trump’s election.
If you don’t vote or vote 3rd party in a presidential election, you are an idiot whether you end up being responsible for the outcome or not.
If you don’t exercise your right to vote, especially in an election like this, you are an idiot.
If you vote 3rd party when a 3rd party has absolutely no shot at winning, you are an idiot.
It doesn’t matter whether you live in a blue state or not. If for no other reason than contributing to the popular vote.
In 2016 we could at least say Trump lost the popular vote. Before this election Republicans had only won the popular vote once since 1988 and not since Bush Jr. The more the will of the people clearly gets ignored and the loser of the popular vote becomes president anyway, the more pissed off Americans are going to get about that, and the more support we get from Americans to pressure our representatives to fix this shit electoral process.
Not to mention these idiots could live in a state that’s blue but not solidly blue and that state could possibly flip red because they assumed blue was safe in their state. Do you think non-voters and 3rd party presidential voters are smart enough to keep an eye on that kind of thing?
Being in a solidly blue or red state does not absolve non-voters and 3rd party voters from being idiots.
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.
That’s a very… generous interpretation, but I’ll “allow it”, because it gives me some hope.
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.
