Updated:2025-01-18 06:51 Views:101
President Joe Biden speaks from the Oval Office of the White House as he gives his farewell address Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025, in Washington. (Mandel Ngan/Pool via AP)
You can’t have the word “Filipino” without the “o.” But the “O” word? That only creeps in when you’re talking about a weak democracy.
That’s what I was thinking about when Joe Biden, outgoing our POTUS and the man the majority of Filipino Americans backed for president, gave his farewell address on Wednesday.
Instead of dwelling on all his accomplishments that Donald Trump will take credit for in a year or so (an improving equality, better infrastructure, just to mention two), Biden’s speech was noteworthy for uttering one, ugly, four-syllable word.
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It’s a word so rarely spoken in American politics that it seemed to hang in the air, daring us to confront it: “oligarchy.”
It wasn’t just a word; it was a warning.
Biden, a man who has spent his life in the service of a democracy governed by “We the People,” stood at the pulpit of history and called attention to a growing threat.
ADVERTISEMENTA monarchy is the rule of one, democracy the rule of many. But oligarchy? That’s rule by the wealthy few – a cancer spreading quietly yet aggressively through the body politic. And it’s threatening to consume America.
With the rhetorical equivalent of a giant red Sharpie, Biden circled the “O” word and said, in essence: “This is where we’re headed if we don’t wake up.”
A farewell unlike any other
ADVERTISEMENTBiden’s farewell speech wasn’t just another political goodbye. It was an unflinching acknowledgment that American democracy is at a critical point.
You may like: Five things to know about Biden’s farewell address
“I want to warn the country of some things that give me great concern,” Biden said. “That’s the dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultra-wealthy people.”
Let that sink in. The sitting president of the world’s leading democracy explicitly identified oligarchy as the next great threat to America. Not the Russians. Not China. It’s us – the super-wealthy among us. Because Biden knows that oligarchy “erodes a sense of unity and common purpose.”
Biden said it “causes distrust and division,” and makes democracy “disillusioning” because “people don’t feel like they have a fair shot.”
It’s a startling admission, not only because it breaks from the usual platitudes of political speeches but because it lays bare the creeping reality: power and money have coalesced into an elite class that no longer answers to the people. Only to their bank accounts.
Biden, ever the self-avowed capitalist, isn’t against wealth. He’s a guy who gets it – money makes the world go ‘round. But when money buys power unchecked, and when billionaires use that power to rig the system in their favor, democracy is undermined. Add a dash of political ambition, and you get oligarchs.
And Biden sees the writing on the wall: the incoming administration, with Trump’s cozy relationship with billionaires like Elon Musk, threatens to mainstream this oligarchic rule.
The Philippines: A lesson in oligarchy
Filipinos know the “O” word all too well. Oligarchy isn’t just a political concept in the Philippines; it’s a lived reality.
In the 1980s, I covered mass demonstrations in the US against the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos. Back then, protestors – freedom-loving Americans and exiled Filipinos – decried the Reagan administration’s support of a puppet government propped up by oligarchs.
Marcos didn’t hold power alone. His dictatorship thrived because of a wealthy elite that consolidated political and economic control. The rich cronies supercharged their businesses with political connections, creating a society so top-heavy that the middle class was virtually nonexistent.
For the oligarchs, life in the Philippines was golden. For everyone else? Not so much.
Now, fast forward more than 40 years. The United States, long the model of democracy, looks increasingly more like the Philippines of the Marcos era than the Philippines looks like American democracy.
When Biden said the word from the Oval Office, it was official. In terms of democracy, America is heading in a third-world direction.
Oligarchy in action
It’s not hard to spot. Elon Musk has made himself Trump’s “First Buddy,” and his influence isn’t just due to his intellect alone. It’s his money and his status as “world’s richest man.” It’s bought him a seat at the table of political power, with little regard for the people he tramples on his way to the top.
In this new age of unbridled capitalism, that’s enough to rewrite the rules.
Biden’s warning isn’t hyperbole. As of January 20, the floodgates open, and billionaires will not only influence government – they will become the government. Public institutions, built to serve the people, are at risk of being privatized in the name of profit.
Capitalism’s breaking point
The irony, of course, is that America’s brand of capitalism was always meant to coexist with democracy. But unchecked capitalism – when power and wealth consolidate to such an extent that they are indistinguishable – becomes something else entirely. It becomes oligarchy.
For decades, there was at least lip service paid to fighting monopolies and ensuring fairness in the system. “The American people stood up to the robber barons back then,” said Biden. “They didn’t punish the wealthy. Just made the wealthy play by the rules everyone else had to. Workers want rights to earn their fair share. They were dealt into the deal and helped put us on the path to building the largest middle class, the most prosperous century, any nation has ever seen.”
But those checks and balances are eroding. Biden, to his credit, was one of the last public servants to actively push back. But he was unable to convince the voting public that he had the answers, and Trump the oligarch won.
And one of Trump’s principal acts will be to reward his fellow oligarchs by cutting their taxes.
Biden’s farewell speech is a historic moment – a sitting president calling out the very system he has served. It’s a plea to the American people to remain vigilant, to demand accountability, and to remember that democracy requires more than a vote every four years. It requires constant engagement and, at times, resistance.
Biden warned about all of it. The billionaires are part of what he called “the tech-industrial complex.” They control the “avalanche of misinformation and disinformation, enabling the abuse of power.”
It impacts the free press, and what the public knows about key issues like climate change, for example. Tech brothers and cryptocurrency advocates know only one kind of green, and it’s not the environment.
Backed by Trump, bolstered by a conservative Supreme Court, Biden even mentioned one other point. A call for term limits for justices – 18 years max.
gila4d slotThat’s where Americans need to focus. But getting money out of politics will take real action. And oligarchy thrives in silence, in the complacency of those who believe their voice doesn’t matter.
In a document posted on its website, the DOE said the projects were endorsed to the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) for a system impact study.
But it does.
The protests I covered in the 1980s taught me that. The Filipinos who stood up to Marcos didn’t just topple a dictator – they reminded the world that people power can prevail, even against the wealthiest and most powerful elites.
Joe Biden may be stepping down, but his final message should remain loud and clear: Democracy isn’t guaranteed. It’s something we must fight for, especially when the big “O” starts knocking at the door.
If we don’t, then consider the tragedy when America the colonizer, ends up looking like the colony it set free.
Emil Guillermo is an award-winning journalist, commentator, and storyteller. He writes a column for the Inquirer.net’s US Channel.
Watch his mini-talk show “Emil Amok’s Takeout/What Does an Asian American Think?” on www.YouTube.com/emilamok1 or join him on patreon.com/emilamok
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