Many Americans Are Googling ‘What is an Oligarchy?’ After Biden’s Farewell Speech


President Joe Biden used his farewell speech Wednesday to call out what he called a nascent oligarchy in the United States. Perhaps not surprisingly, Google Analytics shows that many Americans have no idea what he’s talking about.

“Today, an oligarchy has amassed in America so much wealth, power, and influence that it literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and liberties and a fair shot for all to— first,” said Biden, at his address. “We’re seeing the consequences across America.”

Biden compared today’s oligarchs to those who run the country during the 19th century. “More than a century ago, the American people stood up to the robber barons of yesteryear and broke up the trusts,” he said. “They don’t punish the rich. They just make the rich play by the rules that everyone else has. ” Biden added that making labor rights public “helped put us on the path to building the largest middle class, the most prosperous century of any country the world has ever seen.” He concluded: “We have to do that again.”

Confused by Biden’s use of the term “oligarchy,” Google search analytics show that there is a search surge for “oligarchy meaning” and “oligarchy definition.” In the top five states where the search for the term is the highestthree of these (Nebraska, Iowa, and Wyoming) were states that went for Trump during the election.

In a tribute to Eisenhower’s parting speech, Biden also used his speech to call out what he called “a tech-industrial complex,” which he said represented a dangerous “concentration of technology, power and wealth” in the hands of a few. “The American people are buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation that enables the abuse of power,” the President said. “The free press has collapsed. The editors are gone. Social media has stopped fact checking. The truth is covered by lies told for power and for profit. It is certain that the tech tycoons of Silicon Valley helped Trump win had some influence on Biden’s decision to include it in his speech.

There’s no telling if the people who voted for Trump are the same people who have never heard of “oligarchy,” although if there is a crossover between the two demographics it makes sense. The Trump campaign has not been particularly quiet about the fact that it plans to institute plans and policies specifically designed to benefit the rich while throwing the rest of America under the bus. How, 50 percent of voters he was still voted out.

Now that the Trump administration is taking a look, it is clear that this will be one of the richest administrations in the history of the country. Trump himself is a billionaire, as is his new political wingman, Elon Musk. Vivek Ramaswamy, Musk’s supposed partner for DOGE — the organization designed to subvert the federal government — is also a billionaire, as is Trump’s nominees to head the Department of Education, Department of Commerce, Department of the Interior, Treasury, and NASA.

Since being elected, Trump’s cronies have openly advocated for policies that benefit the wealthy at the expense of others. In their quest for a balanced federal budget, rightwingers have proposed making cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and other federal programs designed to redistribute benefits to Americans. At the same time, Trump promised lower taxes on the rich—a move paradoxically add trillions to the deficit. Trump also suggested termination of taxes of Social Security benefits, which can program revenue drying upthereby threatening a program that others 79 percent of Americans believes that “it should not be reduced in any way.”



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