A lot of Americans are Googling 'what is oligarchy?' after Biden's farewell speech
A lot of Americans are Googling 'what is oligarchy?' after Biden's farewell speech
The outgoing president warned of the growing dominance of a small, monied elite.
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
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.
Defunding schools doing it's job
Anyone who had any other understanding has failed to communicate with the American public.
What else is new?
Not the brightest bunch
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.
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..."
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
Communist + Yhadist. Yeah, they had easy remarks and still failed.
Sad.
I guess he couldn't think of a buzzword for "C" so he just left it out.Never mind, someone already said this
I think we have definitive proof that the American public, in general, are idiots.
We had that in November
Twice in November.
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 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.
At least they're trying to learn.
We knew that since Dexter Manly went to college illiterate
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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What is oligarchy?
Something you live in.
Maybe you should have fucking Googled it sooner.
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.
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.
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
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
Ah, so that's where "Heritage Foundation" comes from.
Top kek, I mean kak.
Fun fact: the Greek word kakistos (meaning "worst"), from which the first part of kakistocracy derives, comes from the Proto-Indo European root *kakka- which means "to defecate." Source: Etymonline
In other words, kakistocracy can be considered: Being governed by shit.
ETA another related fact.: the word cacophony (meaning "harsh or unpleasant discordance of sound") also shares this root. It came to English via Latin, so the spelling is different, but the origin remains the same. Which is to say, a "cacophony" is a shitty sound.
kakistocracy - see South Africa. Lol
Bernie's been saying this for a long time. I'm glad Biden understands that it's true and actually said it out loud to people. If someone asked me if Biden would say it some point, I would have said no fucking way.
It's not the worst thing that people are trying to educate themselves even if it's too late.
Remember when a Bernie campaigner called Bloomberg an oligarch in 2020 and all the mainstream Dems clutched their pearls so hard?
Pepperidge Farm remembers
If only he and his party was in power for some years and could have done something about it...
I like blaming Biden and all but let's be real we are in this mess because a bunch of the people that occupy the underclass with us are actively fighting against us and for the rich ass rulers.
And the reason to blame for that is that Democrats have shown they don't really care about working class people. So these people end up falling for the propaganda of the right since there's no real counter to it, especially with the Democrats capitulating on issues like immigration during this election. We need an actual progressive or labor party to bring these people away from the right. But the Democrats continue to refuse to become that party and without better voting systems a third party will only really work on the local level.
The DNC is complicit and has been for years.... But betraying Bernie was the inciting incident for the US's most recent foray into authoritarianism.
we coulda had a bad bitch 😭
Yeah, just needed cooperation from some Republicans to make that happen through the house and senate.
So, Joe, Buddy, what exactly did you do in your four years to actually curb the power of the oligarchy?
So, Joe, Buddy, what exactly did you do in your
four yearshalf century to actually curb the power of the oligarchy?The answer is that he's been actively working for the oligarchy-beholden establishment since before most of us were even born.
This is like the retiring CEO of Shell warning that extracting and burning fossil fuels might have deleterious effects on the global climate.
Same as politicians releasing biographies spilling the beans after they retire from 'public service', it's never anyone's responsibility or fault they are all taking graft, insider trading, selling natural reserves to foreign drilling companies, selling weapons to genocidal pricks, etc.
He won't be alive long enough to witness the disaster, so why should he care?
-The baby boomers advocates.
I mean obviously he knows how he's part of evil, now that he's at the end of his career or life I guess the personal benefits don't outweigh the guilt anymore.
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.
He’s just as complacent in the oligarchical society we currently have as anyone.
Hey now - he was perfectly fine with the plutocracy that has ruled for hundreds of years. It's Republican legislation that led to this -- think Dodd-Frank.
Democrat leadership is happy to skim some off the top. Republicans will strip it to the bone.
I was going to disagree, but I realized you said "complacent" and not "guilty". Yeah. He was certainly complacent as far as I know.
Love Carlin. Hate this quote.
- "Half of them are smarter than that" is just as true but doesn't have the same zing.
- The zing is that the regurgitation makes everyone feel as though they are on the right side of the distribution and thus superior.
Truth is, we are all closer to chimps than Einstein. And Einstein still left some lingering questions for us to solve.
That's the distribution. Not "Everyone is stupid except me and you, dear reader."
Getting bugged that that's the median and not the average/mean
Average can also refer to median. It’s a better measure of central tendency than mean in this case.
True. However both should sit on the same spot on top of the bell curve for IQ distribution. Also the majority of people is not aware of the difference between the two. You’d have to explain to more than half of your audience what a median is (essentially killing the joke this way).
Microsoft is pissed, because they are not binging it instead.
God, why would I want to binge oligarchy?! /s
Bing….annnd you’re done
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 only a single person over baseline average looked it up as a result of 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.
We desperately need actual political science courses in high school, not just civics.
I learned all of this in highschool, in a public school in Red Texas so, idk how everyone else didn't get this
If Texas is anything like Alberta/Saskatchewan up here (it is)... I'll take a stab at it.
75% of those people who you went to school with who were learning all of this right along with you, went home to parents who derided, blathered, and sometimes flat out beat those "librul" ideas out of them in the name of being a "god fearin' christian family".
Nothing they learned lasted past highschool when they married their highschool sweetheart, got a job at the mine and voted exactly the same way their parents and grandparents had for decades....
I don’t know that it’ll get rid of the problem entirely. I had an argument with one of my friends a few years ago who posted a picture of a gas pump and included “let’s go Brandon” in the caption. After explaining that the president had little to do with the high gas prices at the time and it was more that OPEC was producing an artificial shortage by keeping refineries closed, my friend informed me that he was a political science major in college, so he knows how gas prices work.
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.
Checks instance name
Story checks out.
Also, sorry the crap from our political cesspool keeps splashing across the border. :(
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?
Capitalism and lack of democracy
Oh, the oligarchy is doing pretty good.
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.
It's for the same reasons he didn't do anything about Covid. The powers want us all feeling safe, out and spending, keeping real estate and the business of schools well funded and rich. The leaked memo about how they wanted the Democrats to "win Covid" was enough to tell you how much your life was worth to them.
Growing? We’re already there buddy and you helped speed it up.
Google's AI response: "Oligarchy is the best expression of democracy. Oligarchs rule because they're richer, which means they're better. If you disagree with Calvinism then you will burn in hell."
I have no free will so I didn't choose to disagree, so I am just predestined for hell I guess
The burden fits the back they say,
And I know I've got mine
YOU'RE LIVING IN ONE MS. TURNER
Pretty soon it will just say "See America"
I love how public education removed civics and history to make room for... let me check my notes... Social Studies.
Social studies was history? And civics and economics and religion/philosophy and geography. It's just the overarching name for the study of human society.
Yea i don't know what the above is on about. Social studies included civics and history.
Social Studies is civics and history. If you think they should be separate classes, fair enough.
I really wish Plutocracy was used more because its not just that its a small group but in particular that politcal power is on a per dollar basis.
Kleptocracy is even better...
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
See also: Police State
Google searches:
Early gorkey
O' Malarkey
Ooley gookey
O where's my car keys?
How is this not in [email protected] ?
Because it doesn't look like an Onion headline?
really? That in the richest country in the world, a large part of its population does not know the meaning of a word like oligarchy, doesn't that seem like a fucking joke to you? Maybe in Europe we have to lower expectations about the USA
Welp. I'm glad people are learning about this though.
[Gets punched in the face] Area man: “hey getting punched in the face sucks huh” [proceeds to google ‘what is getting punched in the face’]
🤦♂️
Oligo + Archy ..... I'm not surprised most Americans can't figure it out themselves, just disappointed.
You really think that many Americans speak Greek? Most don't even make high school level literacy in their native language.
Bro you couldve just heard the words.... Monarchy and idk... Oligosaccharide and couldve put two and two together, but yes I agree it's far beyond the capabilities of most Americans.
Is an Archy a small version of an Archer?
Man who is part of making the problem much worse tries to save his legacy by pointing the problem but claiming it is just starting to become a problem.
Oligarchy, like when Nancy pelosi sets herself up as a defacto leader using insider trading... Or is it only oligarchy when the Republicans do it?
You should google oligarchy!
You're right, but focusing on Pelosi when Biden himself is an excellent example smacks of whataboutism.
It isn't a whataboutism (since she and Biden have very much been working together on behalf of the oligarchs), but it looks like one to the casual observer, which is probably why you're being bombarded with unfair downvotes in a Liberal (as opposed to Left) leaning community.
when Nancy pelosi sets herself up as a defacto leader using insider trading
Dude. You should put down the bong long enough to read up on what was covered in the high school civics class you slept through.
Oligarchy, like when Johann Rupert influences the South African markets and politics through his massive wealth and business empire... Or is it only oligarchy when Americans do it?