Posted on 01/20/2025 5:38:00 AM PST by MtnClimber
Biden’s farewell swipe at “oligarchs” was a hollow echo of Eisenhower, deflecting from a presidency defined by chaos, corruption, and hypocrisy.
In his last address, Joe Biden offered a Parthian shot at “oligarchs” and the dangers these “billionaires” pose to the republic. At the same time, left-wing senators hammered Trump cabinet nominees on the grounds that they would be too complacent in the face of a supposed takeover of the country by Trump’s “billionaires” and their “oligarchy.”
Many things could be said about Biden’s farewell address, but I will limit them to three.
First, Biden was attempting to copycat the warnings of outgoing president and iconic war hero Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Some 64 years earlier—on January 17, 1961, the near day of Biden’s “farewell address,” a departing Eisenhower warned of a new “military-industrial complex” threat to the republic that had grown out of World War II and was cresting during the ongoing Cold War of the 1950s.
The fear, as Ike outlined it, was that a new small tech-corporate elite would sell the country on all sorts of expensive weapons and programs to ensure a near-permanent condition of hyper-military readiness and national insolvency.
This resulting “garrison state” would make the arms merchants and technocrats rich but also exhaust the U.S. treasury in the process. What would follow for the American people was a government octopus that demanded ever higher taxes while spending money in ways increasingly unknown or irrelevant to the public interest.
Eisenhower worried the grandees of the military-industrial complex—ex-generals revolving into defense contractor lobbyists and board members—would redefine the ancient laws of war and peace in terms of mumbo-jumbo techno-jargon. The resulting esoterica was designed to justify budget-busting defense expenditures, without enough care that the federal government would expand while the now overtaxed and overregulated citizen...
(Excerpt) Read more at amgreatness.com ...
Marxism is the greatest threat our country faces, both externally and internally.
VDH ping
The oligarchs just gave each other Presidential medals in front of everybody ffs.
I respect VDH but he rarely tells me anything I don’t know anymore. He never goes for the jugular. He writes beautifully but leaves me wanting.
OK article for historical perspective. Says not much (except for $oro$) about the evil behind and around the Biden Crime Family and the ‘rat party. Enemies domestic.
BTTT
I agree, much missing from this article. democraps hold on Wall Street and other financial institutions missing.
I like VDH and Alex Jones as a pair. VDH is a sober assembler of history-in-the-making and Jones is a wild eyed conspiracy enthusiast who has been right way too many times to be ignored. His crazy prognostications too often have become reality in a year or two.
I really like Hanson too. Just wish he would punch harder, so to speak.
So, he further insists that in the future, the U.S. must master emerging technologies and services—such as artificial intelligence, biotechnology, cyberwarfare, cryptocurrency, drones, emerging fuels like small nuclear plants, hydrogen, and mega-batteries, and deadly new weaponry from lasers to hypersonic missiles.
In that regard, he knows that the talent that created and mastered these technologies and new services are not greedy billionaires and “oligarchs,” but, if enlisted in a common cause for their fellow citizens, could become the modern successors to Kaiser, Knudson, Ford, and Wilson.
FR Index of his articles: Victor Davis Hanson on FR
Town Hall: Victor Davis Hanson on Town Hall
American Greatness: Victor Davis Hanson on American Greatness
His website: Victor Davis Hanson
Please let me know if you want on or off this new VDH ping list.
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Didn’t these “oligarchs” all bend to Biden’s will? Biden gets money from oligarchs. The Democrats are oligarch wannabes.
Hanson’s doing duel action - feeding us AND starting the ‘red pill’ process with people who haven’t ‘WOKEen’ up to the horrors of the democrat/commie/ totalitarian party. God bless Victor Davis Hanson - - he’s been with us since the beginning.
NBC coverage a few minutes just mentioned “oligarchs”. The media seems to think that decrepit Joe Biden and his 81 million votes, and the mysterious, faceless men in the shadows who made all the decisions during his 4-year term — those people represent “Our Democracy”. Donald Trump, on the other hand, with his second (or third?) win in a presidential election is tossing democracy out the window and installing an Oligarchy in which rich guys run everything.
Pure VDH gold. Soon the 'rest of the country' will be getting the truth about the Biden commie/crime/“oligarchs”/sexual weirdo horrors from good people like VDH...
The military-industrial complex is not the only thing Ike warned us about. He also called out the techno-government complex and an education-government complex. All were related to the amount of money necessary.
President Eisenhower was a very wise man. He saw this mess coming and warned against it.
Agreed.
VDH is a college professor and dirt farmer, the definition of gentleman and scholar. Punching hard is not who he is.
Okay. Points taken.
artificial intelligence, biotechnology, cyberwarfare, cryptocurrency, drones, emerging fuels like small nuclear plants, hydrogen, and mega-batteries, and deadly new weaponry from lasers to hypersonic missiles.
——
That’s a lot of stuff.
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