Although we’re only a few weeks into the new year, let me be the first to suggest that the 2025 Word of the Year should be “Oligarch.”
It’s a fun word to say. Try it. “Oligarch.”
You might even use it as the name for that fat cat that slinks around the shadowy darkness of your back yard: “Oh, there’s Ollie Gark again. Back by that empty bird nest, just past that tuft of bunny fur on the lawn. Sneaky little guy, getting fatter every time I see him.”
I first heard the word “oligarch” a half-century ago when Mr. Ferguson, my high school history teacher, explained different types of world governments.
I had heard of democracies, republics and monarchies, but “oligarchy” was new to me.
Oligarchy, Mr. Ferguson explained, was a type of government run by very few people, usually rich and powerful men who pulled the strings, even if they weren’t official government officeholders. But because they were so rich and powerful, they influenced decisions made by the official leaders of government.
Those decisions fattened the oligarchs, of course — and also the officials with the power to make those decisions — even if it spelled doom to lesser citizens of the land.
Sort of like that fat cat Ollie Gark lurking in the shadows of your yard, leaving behind all those empty bird nests and tufts of bunny fur.
Ancient Rome was an oligarchy until it collapsed, Mr. Ferguson explained. So was South Africa, at the time under apartheid (but which would also collapse in 1990.)
It was also the Soviet Union’s system. Although “free and fair” elections were held by constitutional law, the real leadership came through behind-the-scenes deals between elected office holders and shadowy rich men. And while the politburo and oligarchs got plump, the citizens wasted away.
We struggled to understand the concept, because we had nothing to compare it to. To help us get a handle on the idea, Mr. Ferguson suggested an American figure like Henry Ford, a man two generations earlier whose wealth gave him the power to reshape America’s landscape.
Because of Ford, owning an automobile was not only possible, it was eventually necessary, because he purchased railroad lines only to tear up the rails, making it impossible to reach many destinations except by car. Thanks to the auto (or cursed by it), America’s sprawling suburbs were born, and public transportation withered.
And America’s new landscape, of course, fattened Ford’s bankroll along the way—as well as the bankroll of agreeable governmental office-holders tasked with decisions like whether Americans’ tax dollars would be spent on roads or rails.
But still, was Ford hand-in-glove with powerful government leaders like…who was President in his day? Coolidge? Hoover? Some bumbling stuffed shirt with a lousy legacy.
Was Henry Ford calling the shots? Was Depression-era America just one more example of an oligarchy crumbling, as they always do?
Mr. Ferguson didn’t go quite that far. This was the early ‘60’s, maybe too soon for a high school teacher to suggest that there is little difference between American governance and Soviet governance. It would be five or ten more years before American high school history teachers might tell the fact that Ford—an American icon—was a racist, union-buster, and ardent admirer of Hitler.
No, Mr. Ferguson told us none of that. He left it to us to decide whether Ford was an oligarch.
There are some who say Ford caused the Depression. He and other power-brokers like him — Getty and Chrysler, for example—all prospered during the Depression as the nation floundered. It is ever thus with oligarchies: The nation fails while the oligarchs flourish, whether it be Rome, South Africa, Soviet Union—or here?
And so we moved on from high school and filled our heads with other facts. I remember about as little of my early education as you do.
But for some reason, after all these years, I’ve been thinking about the word “oligarch” a lot lately.
Maybe it’s because today’s rich and powerful Henry Fords are all snuggling cozily around our incoming federal government. Some, like Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswami, are being installed in offices like the Department of Government Efficiency, which, although not an official government agency, will exercise considerable power over how our government operates.
Eleven other billionaires are slated to take key administration roles like Treasury, Commerce, Education, NASA, Small Business, Medicare, Social Security, and Energy.
Those in the new President’s cabinet alone are worth $10 billion. (For comparison, the combined worth of Biden’s entire cabinet totaled $118 million. Musk alone spent almost twice that to influence the 2024 election.)
I’ll help you with the math — $10 BILLION vs $118 MILLION — the incoming president’ cabinet is almost 100 times richer than the outgoing cabinet (Sources: Americans for Tax Fairness; Forbes).
That’s the President’s privilege, of course. He’s been voted into office to make decisions like that, and now there’s nothing you or I can control about it.
Any more than I can control a word like “oligarch” suddenly popping into my head after all these years and refusing to leave.
So let me be the first to suggest that “oligarch” should be the word of the year, because I think you’ll see it pop up quite a bit wherever the facts are presented openly and honestly. Unless, of course, the oligarchs use their vast powers to squelch talk like that.
Until then, feel free to name your slinking backyard assassin “Ollie Gark,” because it’s fun to say. He’s your fat cat, not mine. I didn’t put him there. Call him whatever you like.
I’ll take my joy in watching the birds and bunnies and squirrels out my window — as long as any of them last.
TR Kerth is the author of the book “Revenge of the Sardines.” Contact him at trkerth@yahoo.com
