The outgoing US President expressed his concern for the democracy in the United States in his final television address. Joe Biden warned of the rule of the super-rich, but this is ironic, as he himself belongs to this group. The United States have long been an oligarchy. As early as 2014, a comprehensive study by Princeton University described the US democracy as being in a poor state. Politics is made for the rich by the rich, as the study’s conclusion can be summarized. Joe Biden’s rhetorical flourishes, praising the working class for the country’s development, have no connection to the American reality. The possibilities of political participation in the US are highly unevenly distributed. They can be summed up in a simple formula: the higher the wealth, the greater the influence. The principle of equality is no longer in effect.
The middle class and all individuals below this income level have been shown to have no significant influence on political decisions in the US. This is not a new development since Trump and Musk, but a long-standing process that has led to a stronger concentration of power in the upper tenth of the society. In Germany, this is essentially not much different.
Biden’s warning against Trump and Musk is rather an expression of the fact that there are now massive differences within the upper echelons of the US society on how the country should be led, and especially who should benefit from it.
The concern of the outgoing President for the erosion of democracy in the US is, in light of its actual state, only a smokescreen. His real concern is which family clans will benefit from the redistribution of wealth from the bottom up in the future. Biden is concerned about himself and his peers. Democracy is of no concern to him; it is merely a pleasant phrase to veil his own interests.
Moreover, it is also dangerous that the large social media platforms no longer want to correct disinformation with fact-checks, as Biden suggests, driven by his own interests. The fact that fact-checks have become an instrument of control over the public discourse is also an expression of this power struggle within the US establishment.