Not Without Incident: Questioning Big Brother's Platitudes

Biden’s Legacy: A Fitting End to Decades of Service to the Permanent Regime II

In his preposterous and fumbled farewell address, Joe Biden pompously warned of a growing oligarchy, a “tech industrial complex” where social media companies are saturating the information space with lies for profit.[i] He also considered the potential risks and opportunities of AI, and he said that it must be the US, not China, who lead the way in AI research and development. Many latched onto his claim that in America, there is a burgeoning oligarchy. Conservative elites saw it as an attack on Elon Musk. Illiberal liberals saw it as a recognition of Donald Trump’s affiliation with the ultra-rich, as at the inauguration Trump was surrounded by not just Musk, but other billionaires like Mark Zuckerburg.

In his speech, Biden remarked that “Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.”[ii] He later referred to the concentrated wealth during the age of robber barons, and how this was amended through antitrust actions. Biden patted himself on the back for doing the same during his presidency. While it is true that he did pursue antitrust cases, handled by his chair of the Federal Trade Commission, Lina Khan, he and the Democratic party did not reverse the trajectory towards a professional/managerial party that started with Bill Clinton’s administration.[iii]

The Clinton regime slashed welfare, expanded the Community Reinvestment Act, got rid of Glass Steagall through the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, and through the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, he allowed big banks to change subprime mortgages into ‘mortgage-backed obligations’, which would later become collateralized debt obligations, or CDO’s.[iv] He also passed NAFTA, which completed the transition from a party that championed the plight of the working class to one that existed to stymie and shaft them, becoming part of the Washington uniparty. The Democratic party made this transition under the guise of becoming a ‘new, moderate party’, and is often referred to as the ‘New Democratic Party’. Wall Street banks contributed millions to both his 1992 and 1996 presidential campaigns, and they would go on to support Hillary Clinton’s senatorial and presidential campaigns as well.[v] Clinton appointed Robert Rubin as Secretary of the Treasury, a banker from Goldman Sachs, one of the banks which benefitted immensely from the Clinton regimes subservience to them.[vi] Rubin was also the first director of the National Economic Council, a newly formed group intended to advise the president on economic policy. He would later serve as a chairman on the Council on Foreign Relations.

Rubin, along with other advisers, pushed Clinton to repeal Glass Steagall and to ‘modernize’ the US economy and its regulation.[vii] The policies he advocated for are directly responsible for the financial crash in 2007-2008. In the Clinton regime’s makeup and actions we see the makings of what the current Democratic party is, a coterie of white collar elites, often coming into the government straight from private equity or the arms industry, who are bent on advancing their ilk at the expense of the ‘deplorables’, the group of people who intellectual darling of the WEF Yuval Noah Harari called the “useless class”, or as I refer to them, the displaced class.[viii] This class will grow exponentially over the next few decades. As Harari notes, the more niche or specialized a job is, the easier it is to replace a human with a robot, since “it need only outperform us in the specific abilities a particular profession demands.”[ix] Those who will be replaced first by AI, or those already cast aside by outsourcing or deindustrialization, are not seen as humans by the illiberal liberal class. Clinton embodied this attitude when she said in a speech in India that in the 2016 presidential election, she “won the places that matter”, the most productive areas in the country, like Silicon Valley and Hollywood.[x]

What the Democratic party became starting with Clinton is a party of vapid elites and technocrats. Despite all of Clinton’s actions resulting in the great recession in 2007-2008, few trace the current state of the Democratic party back to the Clinton regime. At the time, Clinton’s presidency was remembered fondly, though the awfulness of George Bush certainly helped cement these rosy memories. By the time even a few people realized the damage Clinton had done, it was too late, and a war mongering dolt was in office when the finical crash manifested, so Clinton easily escaped blame. As Thomas Frank argues, that liberals convinced themselves Clinton had been an incredible steward of the US economy is “what really makes this story poisonous.”, and that “Everything Clinton’s team had done was an act of professional-class consensus.”[xi] Frank concludes that “another teaching of the Clinton years came through loud and clear. This one instructed us on social class: which cohort had a future and which one did not; which was the right one to be in, which was the wrong one.”[xii] Based on electoral shifts since Trump’s victory in 2016, the Democratic party is completing its transition to a party for the educated, the experts, and the self-proclaimed enlightened. This does not mean that the Republican party is a champion of the working class either.  Although Trump has secured wins for the working class, like his withdrawal from the TPP in his first term, and his recent negotiations with US longshoremen. Since the Democratic party is so hollow and elitist, Trump can get away with pitching himself as a man of the people through small feats and deals.

Biden opened his remarks on the oligarchy in America by saying ‘today’, as if it only started to form when Trump and Musk rose to power, and before then, it was rosy, and billionaires may have been involved in politics. Contrary to this contrived wisdom, a lead candidate for the Chair of the Democratic Party said recently that the Democrats have only ever worked with “good billionaires”, and he claimed that “There are a lot of good billionaires out there that have been with Democrats, who share our values, and we will take their money,”[xiii] He then said that they are not taking money from “bad billionaires” This presumably refers to Musk, Thiel, and others who backed Trump. Martin is not wrong, but he is not right in the way he probably thinks he is. When he says the ‘good billionaires’, which likely refers to the likes of Mark Cuban, Reid Hoffman, and Blake Irving, who together with 90 other ‘business leaders’ (the Western nomenclature for oligarch) signed a letter endorsing Kamala Harris for president, sharing ‘our values’, he does not mean positive values like love of liberty or competition, he means Western exceptionalism and importantly, the supremacy and inherent virtues of the illiberal liberal class, who, because of their social status and credentials, deserve to rule over us like Plato’s philosopher kings.[xiv] The ‘bad billionaires’ like Thiel and Musk are only bad because they dare to deviate slightly from establishment doctrine. There is very little difference between them and billionaires like Hoffman or Cuban. In most cases, there is much overlap between them in how they operate and how they see the world. Musk, Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos all have major contracts with the US federal government. Thus, their support or attempts to befriend Trump is rooted in self-interest, not higher principles or beliefs.

Biden and the rest of the political class, Republicans and Democrats, are the same. He was never a public servant. Since his days as a Senator, he has served the permanent regime and big business. For his subservience to the credit card company MRNA, he was called ‘Senator Credit Card’ (Hunter also got a job at the company).[xv] He also supported all the Clinton regime’s worst policies, including those that led to the great recession, though Biden later said that his vote to repeal Glass Steagall was “the worst vote I ever cast in my entire time in the US Senate.”[xvi] He was at Barrack Obama’s side as the banks that crashed the economy were slapped on the back and given bailouts and bonuses, about 5 million people were evicted from their homes, and no one was held accountable for wrecking the economy.

Biden’s warning about an oligarchy, and how it is beginning to form, is propagandic mythmaking. He is a member of the very oligarchy he is warning about. It is an oligarchy that formed decades ago. Oligarchs like Musk may be more like the capitalist warlords who pillaged the economies of post-Soviet states following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, but he not as different from oligarchs like Bill Gates or George Soros as the illiberal liberal class and their lapdogs in the media want us to believe they are. Instead of calling Biden out for his mythmaking and attempt to shift the blame from his class to figures like Trump and Musk, they agree, pretending that the influence tech overlords now have over the federal government is unprecedented. So the cycle restarts, as after Clinton ravaged the US economy, opening it up to shady speculators and conmen, only to be lauded as an incredible leader who oversaw an economic boom, and then, following the great recession, some realized that it was the Clinton regime who laid the foundation for the financial crash, and the anger and resentment that bubbled during Obama’s presidency boiled over and resulted in Trump’s rise to power.

We are now in a denial stage once again. Biden’s claim that an oligarchy is newly forming is a denial, he is absolving himself and his class of blame. Instead of being outraged about this, most are channeling their rage at Musk and Trump. That Biden is getting away with saying that an oligarchy is forming today, after serving it for his entire political career, is disgraceful and disgusting. As Patrick Lawrence remarks, American citizens already know “this nation has long been beset by oligarchic parasites, even if the mainstream media do their best to keep this kind of talk out of our accepted discourse.”, and “To take aim at an American oligarchy at this stage in the story is like shooting at the side of a barn.”[xvii] For all those in the mainstream media who pretend to be progressive or revolutionary, there is little talk of the power and influence of the so-called good billionaires, only the bad ones. Oligarch is a term reserved for elites in countries like Russia and Belarus. This omission in the discourse on Western politics is embodied in many responses to Biden’s comments on a rising oligarchy. For example, the Guardian Editorial Board published their response, declaring that Biden is right, and that though the ultra-rich have been involved in politics for years, “rarely has the marriage of politics and riches been as naked or unashamed as with Mr Trump. The man who rages against elites has assembled a cabinet with 13 billionaires.”[xviii] They go on to write that “Now the “tech industrial complex” highlighted by Mr Biden and run by Mr Trump’s new friends works at an even more intimate level, determining what voters see. At stake may ultimately be the question of who shall rule: the people or America’s new aristocrats.”[xix] This is not just a reference to Musk’s control of X, but also to Zuckerberg and his recent changes to Facebook/Meta.[xx] This claim from the Guardian is absurd, as the ‘marriage of politics and riches’ has been a central facet of US and Western politics for decades. Trump may be flashier and more theatrical than Clinton and Obama were, but as I noted earlier, the Clinton regime elevated cretins like Rubin and Alan Greenspan, and as exposed by Wikileaks, Obama staffed his cabinet based on a list in an email from the Wall Street bank Citigroup.[xxi] Further, since leaving office, Clinton and Obama have done multiple speeches at big banks and investment firms for lump sums.[xxii] This is a naked marriage of riches and politics. It does not begin with Trump.

The Washington establishment is a melding of the government and corporations, where the private and public sectors are not independent but interdependent. Bertram Gross illustrates this when he writes that the American Establishment “is more complicated than any complex. It is a complex of complexes, a far-flung network of power centers, including institutional hierarchies. These are held together less by hierarchical control and more by mutual interests, shared ideologies, and accepted procedures for mediating their endless conflicts.”, and that “It is an interweaving of two structures—polity and economy—that under industrial capitalism have never been independent of each other. It is the modern partnership of big business and big government.”[xxiii] This complex of complexes not only predates Trump, but it also explains why he is surrounded and is being influenced by the ultra-rich, who, if they didn’t support him before the election last year, have grown to befriend or work with him to enrich themselves. They have mutual interests, shared ideologies. Seen from this angle, Bezos’ decision to not endorse Harris, as well as his refusal to allow the Washington Post to endorse her, and Zuckerberg’s sudden switch on content moderation, make perfect sense. They are acting solely out of self-interest, no different than Musk.

The Guardian Editorial board is, like many others, are desperate to pretend that as soon as Trump is inaugurated and in the White House, the US will abruptly become an oligarchy. What they should have started their responses to Biden’s comments with is admitting that Biden is a beneficiary and enabler of the US oligarchy. Lawrence captures Biden’s slavish devotion to US oligarchy when he writes that he has always been “intimately involved in the reigning oligarchy, not least among Silicon Valley’s princes — an appendage, a reaper of its benefits, certainly an enabler—for most of his political career, if not all of it.”[xxiv] Yet, his membership in the oligarchy is being outright ignored or dismissed. As Gross and others have written, the marriage of riches and politics is not new or naked with the Trump regime, it is a marriage that happened long ago. Yet again, this reality will not be reckoned with by the illiberal liberal class. It is why Trump, and his acolytes will likely be at the forefront of US politics for years to come.

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[i] Liptak, Kevin, Jack Forrest, Elise Hammond, and Aditi Sangal. “Key Lines from President Joe Biden’s Farewell Address.” CNN, January 16, 2025. https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/15/politics/key-lines-from-president-joe-bidens-farewell-address/index.html.

[ii] Liptak, Forrest, Hammond, and Sangal. “Key Lines from President Joe Biden’s Farewell Address.”

[iii] Jones, Callum. “‘She’s Going to Prevail’: FTC Head Lina Khan Is Fighting for an Anti-Monopoly America.” The Guardian, March 9, 2024, sec. US news. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/09/lina-khan-federal-trade-commission-antitrust-monopolies., Stahl, Lesley, and Aliza Chasan. “FTC Head Lina Khan Fighting Big Tech, Big Pharma and Big Groceries | 60 Minutes.” Cbsnews.com. CBS News, September 22, 2024. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/federal-trade-commission-lina-khan-60-minutes/. and Stoller, Matt. “On Lina Khan Derangement Syndrome.” Thebignewsletter.com. BIG by Matt Stoller, February 18, 2023. https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/on-lina-khan-derangement-syndrome.

[iv] Canova, Timothy. “The Legacy of the Clinton Bubble.” Dissent Magazine, 2008. https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/the-legacy-of-the-clinton-bubble/.

[v] Behan, Richard W. “The Clintons and Wall Street: 24 Years of Enriching Each Other.” CounterPunch.org. CounterPunch, February 26, 2016. https://www.counterpunch.org/2016/02/26/the-clintons-and-wall-street-24-years-of-enriching-each-other/. and “The Clintons’ $93 Million Romance with Wall Street: A Catastrophe for Working Families, African Americans, and Latinos.” CounterPunch.org. CounterPunch, March 16, 2016. https://www.counterpunch.org/2016/03/16/the-clintons-93-million-romance-with-wall-street-a-catastrophe-for-working-families-african-americans-and-latinos/.

[vi] Clair, Jeffrey St., and Alexander Cockburn. “Neoliberalism and Its Discontents.” Scheerpost.com, December 16, 2022. https://scheerpost.com/2022/12/16/neoliberalism-and-its-discontents/.

[vii] Roberts, Dan. “Wall Street Deregulation Pushed by Clinton Advisers, Documents Reveal.” the Guardian, April 19, 2014. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/19/wall-street-deregulation-clinton-advisers-obama.

[viii] Harari, Yuval Noah. “The Rise of the Useless Class.” ideas.ted.com. ideas.ted.com, February 24, 2017. https://ideas.ted.com/the-rise-of-the-useless-class/.

[ix] Harari. “The Rise of the Useless Class.”

[x] Axios. “Hillary’s New Stat: I Won Districts Representing 2/3 of U.S. GDP.” Axios, March 13, 2018. https://www.axios.com/2018/03/13/hillary-clinton-india-two-thirds-gdp-trump.

[xi] Frank, Thomas. Listen, Liberal, Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? New York: Metropolitan Books, 2016.

[xii] Frank. Listen, Liberal, Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?

[xiii] Beijer, Carl. “There’s No Such Thing as a Good Billionaire.” Jacobin.com, 2025. https://jacobin.com/2025/01/billionaires-tech-oligarchy-biden-trump.

[xiv] Gibson, Kate. “More than 90 Business Leaders Endorse Kamala Harris for President.” Cbsnews.com. CBS News, September 6, 2024. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kamala-harris-endorsed-by-business-leaders/.

[xv] CBS News. “MBNA Paid Biden’s Son as Biden Backed Bill.” http://www.cbsnews.com, August 25, 2008. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mbna-paid-bidens-son-as-biden-backed-bill/., Peres, Kenneth. “Joe Biden Serves Wall Street, Not Main Street.” Common Dreams, February 23, 2020. https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/02/23/joe-biden-serves-wall-street-not-main-street. and Umansky, Eric. “Biden’s Cozy Relations with Bank Industry.” ProPublica, September 25, 2008. https://www.propublica.org/article/bidens-cozy-relations-with-bank-industry-825.

[xvi] CNN, Jake Tapper, and Joe Biden. “Biden Regrets 1999 Vote to Repeal Glass-Steagall.” YouTube, December 11, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heXAQvYz-e0.

[xvii] Lawrence, Patrick. “Patrick Lawrence: Exeunt, the Man from Scranton.” Scheerpost.com, January 20, 2025. https://scheerpost.com/2025/01/20/patrick-lawrence-exeunt-the-man-from-scranton/.

[xviii] Editorial. “The Guardian View on Biden’s Warning of Oligarchy: Trump and the Malefactors of Wealth.” the Guardian. The Guardian, January 16, 2025. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/16/the-guardian-view-on-bidens-warning-of-oligarchy-trump-and-the-malefactors-of-wealth.

[xix] Editorial. “The Guardian View on Biden’s Warning of Oligarchy: Trump and the Malefactors of Wealth.”

[xx] FIRE. “Meta’s Content Moderation Changes Closely Align with FIRE Recommendations.” The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, January 9, 2025. https://www.thefire.org/news/metas-content-moderation-changes-closely-align-fire-recommendations.

[xxi] Eley, Tom. “Citigroup Chose Obama’s 2008 Cabinet, WikiLeaks Document Reveals.” World Socialist Web Site, October 15, 2016. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/10/15/wiki-o15.html.

[xxii] Behan. “The Clintons and Wall Street: 24 Years of Enriching Each Other.”

[xxiii] Gross, Bertram M. Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America. New York, NY: Open Road Integrated Media, Inc., 2016.

[xxiv] Lawrence. “Patrick Lawrence: Exeunt, the Man from Scranton.”

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References

Axios. “Hillary’s New Stat: I Won Districts Representing 2/3 of U.S. GDP.” Axios, March 13, 2018. https://www.axios.com/2018/03/13/hillary-clinton-india-two-thirds-gdp-trump.

Behan, Richard W. “The Clintons and Wall Street: 24 Years of Enriching Each Other.” CounterPunch.org. CounterPunch, February 26, 2016. https://www.counterpunch.org/2016/02/26/the-clintons-and-wall-street-24-years-of-enriching-each-other/.

———. “The Clintons’ $93 Million Romance with Wall Street: A Catastrophe for Working Families, African Americans, and Latinos.” CounterPunch.org. CounterPunch, March 16, 2016. https://www.counterpunch.org/2016/03/16/the-clintons-93-million-romance-with-wall-street-a-catastrophe-for-working-families-african-americans-and-latinos/.

Beijer, Carl. “There’s No Such Thing as a Good Billionaire.” Jacobin.com, 2025. https://jacobin.com/2025/01/billionaires-tech-oligarchy-biden-trump.

Canova, Timothy. “The Legacy of the Clinton Bubble.” Dissent Magazine, 2008. https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/the-legacy-of-the-clinton-bubble/.

CBS News. “MBNA Paid Biden’s Son as Biden Backed Bill.” http://www.cbsnews.com, August 25, 2008. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mbna-paid-bidens-son-as-biden-backed-bill/.

Clair, Jeffrey St., and Alexander Cockburn. “Neoliberalism and Its Discontents.” Scheerpost.com, December 16, 2022. https://scheerpost.com/2022/12/16/neoliberalism-and-its-discontents/.

CNN, Jake Tapper, and Joe Biden. “Biden Regrets 1999 Vote to Repeal Glass-Steagall.” YouTube, December 11, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heXAQvYz-e0.

Editorial. “The Guardian View on Biden’s Warning of Oligarchy: Trump and the Malefactors of Wealth.” the Guardian. The Guardian, January 16, 2025. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/16/the-guardian-view-on-bidens-warning-of-oligarchy-trump-and-the-malefactors-of-wealth.

Eley, Tom. “Citigroup Chose Obama’s 2008 Cabinet, WikiLeaks Document Reveals.” World Socialist Web Site, October 15, 2016. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/10/15/wiki-o15.html.

FIRE. “Meta’s Content Moderation Changes Closely Align with FIRE Recommendations.” The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, January 9, 2025. https://www.thefire.org/news/metas-content-moderation-changes-closely-align-fire-recommendations.

Frank, Thomas. Listen, Liberal, Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? New York: Metropolitan Books, 2016.

Gibson, Kate. “More than 90 Business Leaders Endorse Kamala Harris for President.” Cbsnews.com. CBS News, September 6, 2024. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kamala-harris-endorsed-by-business-leaders/.

Gross, Bertram M. Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America. New York, NY: Open Road Integrated Media, Inc., 2016.

Harari, Yuval Noah. “The Rise of the Useless Class.” ideas.ted.com. ideas.ted.com, February 24, 2017. https://ideas.ted.com/the-rise-of-the-useless-class/.

Jones, Callum. “‘She’s Going to Prevail’: FTC Head Lina Khan Is Fighting for an Anti-Monopoly America.” The Guardian, March 9, 2024, sec. US news. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/09/lina-khan-federal-trade-commission-antitrust-monopolies.

Lawrence, Patrick. “Patrick Lawrence: Exeunt, the Man from Scranton.” Scheerpost.com, January 20, 2025. https://scheerpost.com/2025/01/20/patrick-lawrence-exeunt-the-man-from-scranton/.

Liptak, Kevin, Jack Forrest, Elise Hammond, and Aditi Sangal. “Key Lines from President Joe Biden’s Farewell Address.” CNN, January 16, 2025. https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/15/politics/key-lines-from-president-joe-bidens-farewell-address/index.html.

Peres, Kenneth. “Joe Biden Serves Wall Street, Not Main Street.” Common Dreams, February 23, 2020. https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/02/23/joe-biden-serves-wall-street-not-main-street.

Roberts, Dan. “Wall Street Deregulation Pushed by Clinton Advisers, Documents Reveal.” the Guardian, April 19, 2014. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/19/wall-street-deregulation-clinton-advisers-obama.

Stahl, Lesley, and Aliza Chasan. “FTC Head Lina Khan Fighting Big Tech, Big Pharma and Big Groceries | 60 Minutes.” Cbsnews.com. CBS News, September 22, 2024. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/federal-trade-commission-lina-khan-60-minutes/.

Stoller, Matt. “On Lina Khan Derangement Syndrome.” Thebignewsletter.com. BIG by Matt Stoller, February 18, 2023. https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/on-lina-khan-derangement-syndrome.

Umansky, Eric. “Biden’s Cozy Relations with Bank Industry.” ProPublica, September 25, 2008. https://www.propublica.org/article/bidens-cozy-relations-with-bank-industry-825.