- cross-posted to:
- technology
- cross-posted to:
- technology
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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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!
People think that voting either doesn’t matter, or that it’s like choosing to be a fan of a certain football team. They won’t realize their mistake when the rug gets pulled out from underneath them…but they might when they hit the back of their head on the polished concrete floor.
Unfortunately, we (the world) are paying for their medical bill. Climate change policy will regress. Trade and economic policy, too. Peace will be undermined. And regional wars will flare up and get worse as people fight for water and other resources.
I think we have definitive proof that the American public, in general, are idiots.
We had that in November
Twice in November.
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.
Gotta keep that hope up!
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.
Right? I’ve known the word for a long time but I was definitely well into adulthood and definitely looked it up. It’s a “college word” y’all people have to look up simple words all the time.
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.
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.
You might be downvoted but you’re absolutely correct.
At least they’re trying to learn.
We knew that since Dexter Manly went to college illiterate
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
Lol, that’s fair. Maybe I should really feel surprised that people paid attention enough to Google it.
“Who the fuck is Ollie Garky?”
It’s scary how much old tv media sways public conversation…and how incompetent they are
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
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.
Defunding schools doing it’s job
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?
I think user rumba meant in regards to the OP post…
“it’s been made abundantly clear that a lot of americans have no fucking idea what anyone is talking about”
…that anybody who thought otherwise about the american public has never really talked to its representants.
Whereas I think you understood rumbas’ comment as like he wrote about the people who knew better about the threat of the coming administration failed to communicate it to the average ignorant us citizen. With you replying that those trying to enlighten didn’t have a chance to succeed with that anyway.
Now shake hands and unblock. You’re on the same side.
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
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.
The Supreme Court: Nothing the President does is illegal
Everyone: Even ordering Seal Team Six to Mar-A-Lago
Biden: Cool, goes for ice cream and does nothing with this information
I don’t count any of them as “good president” with a 800B annual military budget. Or the rest of the totalitarian federal budget they rubber stamp without fail. There’s a lot of shit baked into the federal government that they never, ever veto in the budget, dark as all fucking hell, that Americans just ignore.
I would say, the genocide revealed who he already was, in a very clear way, but the signs and the evil deeds were already there.
“Look at all those slave masters posing on your dollars.”
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.
The one directly inspired by Rome, an oligarchy with strict class systems and slavery?
Yeah, I read that and was like… “Ya know, you’re only about 260 years late…”
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.
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:
Bruh, he missed the perfect opportunity to call Obama a communist.
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?
It was just pot
I guess he couldn’t think of a buzzword for “C” so he just left it out.Never mind, someone already said thisCommunist + Yhadist. Yeah, they had easy remarks and still failed.
Sad.
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
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
Ah, so that’s where “Heritage Foundation” comes from.
Top kek, I mean kak.
kakistocracy - see South Africa. Lol
Huh, this actually seems legit. Compared to my ultra-scientific Google trends comparo it was half as popular of a search as Taylor Swift at its peak, which seems pretty big.
Oh damn, just comparing it to ‘oligarchy’ and it’s much bigger.
Just to add, this proves:
- that Americans in general aren’t following along on their own
- that Biden could have influenced the discourse and been a force for good IF HE HAD BEEN COMMUNICATING LIKE THIS ALL ALONG. Unfortuntately they decided to ‘show not tell’ and let Trumpism fill the communication void with their lying bullshit for four years. Joe’s biggest failure and one we shouldn’t forgive him for.
Americans in general aren’t following along on their own
This was also shown on election day when people googled “did Joe Biden drop out”. Many voters had no idea Kamala Harris was even running for president.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/search-interest-did-joe-biden-211913111.html
I get a lot of folks are busy, working two jobs, dealing with childcare and healthcare and whatnot, but how deep do you have to bury your head in the sand to be so unaware or disconnected from an American Presidential election? It’s unfathomable to me.
Holy F*CK. I live in another continent altogether, and couldn’t filter out the American elections spam even if tried (and oh did I try…)
They’re broke and desperate. Also, racist and sexist.
His handlers didn’t want him appearing in public. But that’s where the bully pulpit is,
I swear he could have been communicating like this all along and it wouldn’t have mattered. The average person tuned out election coverage completely and even if they didn’t, the news would have hardly covered it.
You could sure be right. I am convinced it would have made a difference though. The thing that really infuriates me though is that they barely tried.
The thing that infuriates me is that the only two people allowed to run on the Democrat side were people Democrat voters didn’t really want to vote for. I’m sooooo tired of voting for “at least they’re not [other candidates]”
(Don’t get the wrong idea, I sure as hell voted anyway)
The average person in the US was too busy trying to figure out how to get a 500 dollar paycheck to cover 300 in groceries, 200 in rent, 100 for electric, and 200 for gas to get to work. While also paying 300 for baby formula.
Yeah, exactly. When your life is on fire, putting out the flames is a lot more pressing than finding who started it.
Anyone who is only making $500 a paycheck needs to look for a new job, that’s just self owning themselves.
That’s just reality for a ton of Americans. Where do you suggest they get these new jobs, since most pay about the same? Or should they just get multiple jobs? Because that sounds like a great way to keep more Americans uninterested in politics…
Apparently they heard him this time. It would be interesting to know why they paid attention now.
Coverage. A lot more coverage. Farewell speeches happen once every 4 years so it’s much more novel than the constant campaign trail news (which was largely dominated by whatever distraction the other side was cooking up)
Exactly. The media runs the country. Murdoch runs the media.
Moral victories rather than actual victories to stop or slow this down was their focus. And it still is.
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.
Oh, the oligarchy is doing pretty good.
Why is oligarchy??
Probably the same people who were googling why Biden wasn’t on the ticket on election day 🙄
I was overwhelmed,so I just stayed home.
Jesus fucking Christ. 🤦♂️
All these dumbfucks will be Googling “What is a Great Depression?” in about a year too.
May Bird Flu thin the herd.
Don’t worry. We’ll be defunding public education soon.
Soon? We have been!
Ugh, one of my right wing Farcebook “friends” recently made a simpleton comment about paying back student loans, and I couldn’t resist saying “why stop at college? Defund public schools, if little Timmy can’t afford it, send him to the mines” and of course he agreed, the irony was completely lost on him. No, his kids do not go to private school.
Eh, at least they’re trying to learn more about the subject. I think the real concern is people that don’t know what’s going on and don’t care to find out.
COVID killed so many of the believers of bullshit. I don’t think it helped
USA is doomed
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
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
Lemmy is not a person.
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.
