A lot of Americans are Googling 'what is oligarchy?' after Biden's farewell speech
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.
https://gizmodo.com/a-lot-of-americans-are-googling-what-is-oligarchy-after-bidens-farewell-speech-2000551371Open linkView original on lemmy.world956
Comments201
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?"
"Klepto crazy? Never heard of the guy, must be Greek 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
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.
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
What else is new?
Anyone who had any other understanding has failed to communicate with the American public.
How in the hell did you get that as a take away from what I said?
Blocking a troll. got one less problem without ya...
I think user rumba meant in regards to the OP post...
...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.
Not the brightest bunch
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.
Laws? Down to the depths whatever man that thought up.. laws!
That would be the Romans, sir. Maybe even people that preceded them, but they Romans perfected it.
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.
I mean give capitalism long enough we might be left with just one guy standing. I do mean guy. An immortal white shriveled dude, alone in a utopia of bots serving him.
And I just meant this whole “ah we’re not an oligarchy! We’re a plutocracy” thing is just dumb. What is even the difference in these peoples heads? It’s practically the same thing. And it IS the same thing under capitalism. The few who rule are the wealthy.
That’s the whole point of the system… capitalISM? The owners of CAPITAL rule?
Nah, they're not immortal and all tech has problems. I get this is like the wet dream of the tech bros to be self-sufficient masters of robot armies, and I hate to kink shame, but it won't ever happen.
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 thisI 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.
Username checks out along with the math.
You might be downvoted but you're absolutely correct.
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.
Cool. That still doesn't absolve them from being idiots for not voting or voting for a candidate that literally, as in literally, cannot win.
I didn't say they did. I said they were idiots. My math was calculating how many idiots there are in America to determine how fucked we are. And I stand by my math.
But he still won the popular vote. The first Republican to do so in 20 years. Which alters the discussion about the will of the people not wanting Republican leadership. And non-voters and 3rd party voters helped to make that happen.
Lol. No I'm not. I'm calling non-voters idiots for not exercising their right to vote, which people throughout history have killed and died for. I'm calling 3rd party presidential voters idiots for voting for a candidate that LITERALLY CANNOT WIN. Those are both decidedly idiotic things to do. And again, my math is calculating how many idiots are in America, using this election as a litmus test. And I'm stating those idiots affected the popular vote, which they did. And I'm stating that, for all they knew when they made their idiotic decision, they were making the difference between who won.
Your logic is like saying "well, the boy threw the kitchen knife at his sister, but it didn't end up eviscerating her, so let's just drop the subject and let the boy off scott free". Again, they went into the election, making their stupid decisions, not knowing if they were going to make that difference or not. That is some idiot shit.
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.
At least they're trying to learn.
We knew that since Dexter Manly went to college illiterate
Two things are true:
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.
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.
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.
2005 grad here. I definitely had a civics class.
2002 here, same, in 8th grade.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
Top kek, I mean kak.
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.
Given the choice between kids in cages, outrageous nepotism and kakistocracy, insurrection, blatant authoritarianism, and LITERALLY ANYTHING ELSE, nobody should need to convince you to choose "anything else". It should be self evident.
Democrats may suck, but "I voted for pre-hitler because you didn't sell something I wanted to buy" looks way worse on the voters who just can't see the value or the difference. You are right we should have better options, but I reject the idea out of hand that the rise of trumpism rests solely on democrats not being exciting. Likewise I wouldn't say they are the ones voting against their own interests.
It's not solely resting on that but I think it's a large part. There's a lot of people who just don't vote or care about politics at all because there's no good options. Many of them were excited and drawn out by Obama but ended up getting burned when he didn't bring the real change they were looking for. They then got excited for Bernie but again got burned when he didn't win and was pushed back on by the entire party. So now these people are just staying home and not voting. If you promised and carried through on many of the popular issues like healthcare for all you would activate these people and not have to worry as much about the maga movement since you would have a lot more voters excited to go out to vote for you. People aren't as excited about going out to vote against Trump which is why we saw much lower turnout this year. Democrats just can't really excite people and until they can they are just relying on people hating Trump enough it motivates them to go and vote.
Of course Democrats care about working class people. The party is just currently run by a bunch of overly educated elites that don't have an interest in listening to the workers. Because when they do listen they hear complaints that are all over the place. The Dems moved to the right a long while ago, and around the globe liberal parties are all facing major setbacks, and our liberal party here in America is farther right than most of our democratic peers. My point is that neither of our political parties will ever do what you are asking for without being forced to action by the people.
Except our electorate is so broken that 30+% of them voted for the billionaire party and are waiting patiently with their hands cupped for that sweet trickle down. Except they are more than likely about to get austerity before they get dental coverage. I really don't know how to get through to some of these people, they either don't understand a ton or have fundamentally different values. Values that are in opposition to the basics of a liberal democratic system. Part of me wants to shake every one of the taxes are theft post tea party MAGA clowns and take them on a tour of where the real theft is... like say any of the multiple private space companies that launch rich assholes into orbit and sadly bring them back.
A big part of the problem is the underclass republican supporters are just little authoritarian tyrants themselves. Given the chance they are all too ready to pull the ladder up behind them.
If progressives were as united as the bigots the ratchet could turn the other way but it won’t because their are so many voters that are too busy cutting off their nose to spite their face while hiding behind false bravado that doesn’t accomplish anything.
The ratchet isn't gonna turn the other way until the problem of money in politics is dealt with. Until then there won't be a real progressive candidate to rally around as in the case of Bernie they get pushed back against by the donors and the rest of the party. I do think there are some problems with people not wanting to unite under one candidate but we're not even really at the point where that's the main problem as the bigger problem is donors and the establishment of the Democratic party.
Who is going to vote for less money from lobbying?
No one in government except the few progressive Democrats who are routinely demonized and belittled by the rest of the party. The only way I see it happening is if Bernie or someone like him can pull a Trump and win the presidency and completely overhaul the party.
I wonder, could lobbying be ostracised from the ground up, like 3rd party support or voting reform?
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.
Poor weak dems can never do anything, their hands are always tied! And they will always be tied because the corporate overlords don't want effective leftwing politicians so we only get the feckless ones
This is a point I think more people really have to consider. How come the Republicans will use every ounce of power they have to get things done but Democrats will give up at the first sign of a challenge. I think it's because the Republicans actually have leadership that actually wants to do their insane policies with their donors supporting them. While Democrats have leadership that only takes on leftist points begrudgingly to try and win their votes and donors that don't want those things to happen. So a rotating villain always pops up ready to block all progress and even if they lose reelection cause of it they still have their nice cushy lobbying job waiting for them on the way out.
I’d like to take a moment to remind you that while I wholeheartedly disagree with the entirely of your statement, and pretty much your entire ideology-
you’re allowed to share it here.
Seriously. Take note of this, because if you check the modlogs of the .ml mods and admins, people actually get banned for “anticommunism” and just simply disagreeing with the hive.
And no, this isn’t intended to be an “us vs them” thing. It’s simply pointing out something that I believe should be considered.
Also, while these differences may be cause for anger in some people, I’m actually glad that you have the ability to share your opinions here.
Lemmy shouldn’t be walled gardens. And we should be able to share our opinions-
regardless of how stupid they are.
You have no response so you complain about mods. Lots of good posts get removed by .world mods you don't see me bringing that up when I'm losing an argument
LMAO! Dude… What response could there be? To me, it seems as if you’re just rattling off from a list of generic far left rhetoric. In my opinion, it’s mostly just meaningless nonsense. My apologies, but… There is little content there that I felt was worthy of a response.
I’ll digress though:
I suppose I could have responded with the fact that you had nothing worth responding to, but instead I chose to point out something I thought would be more helpful:
The fact that here, you’re allowed to say dumb shit. As long as you remain within the rules. Elsewhere, you’re not. And unlike you, I have the modlogs to back up what I’m saying. Go ahead and compare.
.ml admins override your mods all the time. Like ALL the time. Nearly all the actions in the form of removals and bans are handed out by just two people. There’s a shit-load of irony in that, it that’s for another time.
Again, checking the modlogs, you can see that world admins step in rarely to only moderate troll instance bans and spambot removal. Mostly, the mods handle the rest. Go on, look it up… On the surface, .ml mods seem to have very little say in anything. Whereas .world seems to allow moderators to work independently with little interference.
Is .world perfect? Oh hell no! FAAAAAAR from it. But my intent was not to rub this observation against perfection. It was to make a simple distinction.
And I believe I’ve done just that. Thanks for allowing me the platform to express this point. I wouldn’t have been able to say this on .ml.
-Oh, and for the record… I wasn’t losing an argument. We haven’t ever spoken prior to now.
So, Joe, Buddy, what exactly did you do in your four years 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.
"Look at all those slave masters posing on your dollars."
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.
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."
Yes, I certainly am.
Until it comes to fixing something with my hands. Run a new cable through the wall? How the hell do I do that? You can just... make a new wall? Help, my car no go.
Ya, everyone has their "until" moments.
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....
Add to that the 80% or so of students who never paid attention to a single lesson then 5 years later post to Facebook "wHy DiDnT wE lEaRn ThIs In ScHOol???"
Oh god yes...
50% never leave the small town they grew up in. Spend their evenings spending the majority of their paycheque on booze and playing the VLTs in the local bar (which is on the bottom floor of the town's ONLY hotel, BTW) while their wife takes care of the kids and wonder where her life would be if she hadn't gotten knocked up immediately after highschool.
But their shit life is ALL the Liberals (Canada) / Democrats (US) fault, apparently.
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??
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.
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
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
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
You were just waiting and ready to throw out “the Jews!” Argument out there huh? I didn’t even once think of that but I guess you are just overflowing with hate towards Jewish people
What are you talking about?
What the hell have Jews got to do with anything?! It wasn't even hinted at!
Lemmy is not a person.
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.
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
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...
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.
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?
[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’]
🤦♂️
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.
Wrong again lefto the downvotes are because they're all the same oligarchy but yes on the whataboutism. Also I didn't downvote them
Is only ever the start of replies containing valid and useful points 🙄
Right again leftoid
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?