Other People's Oligarchs

Joe Biden's is worried about certain oligarchs who don't support Joe Biden

Consider, if you will, the peculiar spectacle of Joe Biden's farewell address – a moment that calls to mind those recurring American anxieties about concentrated power that have haunted our republic since Hamilton and Jefferson first squared off in their pamphlet wars. Biden, channeling a strain of populist concern as old as Andrew Jackson's bank wars, warns us about oligarchs, with one particular gentleman floating over much the critque.

Elon Musk develops new systems for carbon-free, self-driving finger tenting

Biden warned:

I want to warn the country of some things that give me great concern. And this is the…dangerous concentration of power in the hands of very few ultra-wealthy people, and the dangerous consequences if their abuse of power is left unchecked.

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.

Scary, but like most nightmares, a little hazy around the edges and powered by a particular form of logic that works better at midnight than at noon.

Our current reality presents us with something far more complex. We find ourselves in what might be called the Age of the Divided Plutocrat – where billionaires, like the rest of America, have sorted themselves into competing camps with opposing visions of the commonwealth.

The Democratic establishment's newfound horror at billionaire influence would be more convincing if they weren't simultaneously cashing checks from their own cadre of centibillionaires. The numbers don't lie: 83 billionaires backing Harris to Trump's 52, with Future Forward dumping $900 million into Democratic coffers. But hey, those are the good billionaires, right? It's as if the plutocrats decided to stage their own version of America's political divide, complete with competing SuperPACs and dueling Twitter feeds.

Consider the paradox of Elon Musk. Where once we had the Koch brothers, their fortune built on the extractive industries that progressive nightmares are made of, we now have a billionaire who made his fortune by trying to eliminate the very carbon emissions that the Kochs' empire helped produce.

Here's Sanders' stark framing of the Koch influence, from 2015:

"When you look at the Republican Party today, you know, which is reactionary in so many areas ... most of these guys deny the reality of climate change or they say, 'we're not sure.' How do you think that happens? It happens because the Republican Party is significantly funded by the Koch brothers and the big energy companies."

Sanders’ critique was fundamentally rooted in the origins of the wealth driving the oligarchs of the moment. He saw no distinction between their nefariousness of influence and the source of their capital. As he stated in the same interview: “[The] Koch brothers are on record as saying they will spend $900 million in this campaign cycle. They make most of their money through fossil fuel.”

But now that Musk is the ogreish oligarch of the moment the same people who decried fossil fuel billions as inherently corrupting are now telling us that billions made from electric cars are... equally corrupting? It’s like finding out that Andrew Carnegie's fortune came not from steel mills but from inventing public libraries, but