Honestly this is sort of ridiculous.
- Biden is a Washington insider now, but that's because he had a lifetime to make something of himself. He grew up in the middle class
- I think we can all agree Obama was an outsider without any sort of elaboration
- Bill Clinton grew up dirt poor in a state that basically only makes the news when something stupid happens.
All three had to climb the ladder in a huge way, that simply wouldn't have been possible in a lot of other countries.
I also feel like Trump embodies the whole "anyone can be president" in his own sort of fucked up way. Trump obviously was born into immense wealth and enjoyed tremendous status, but he was in no way ever considered leadership material by America's political elite. His election was a complete "wtf" moment and wouldn't have happened in most countries. In a more rigid system we'd probably have had something like a Hillary Clinton v Jeb Bush election, which strictly speaking would have been better than what we got but also let's be real we would have all hated it.
I'm not saying America is some pure meritocracy. Bush was a third generation political dynasty member. His opponents were also pretty well connected. It's just that he's only one of several presidents to get elected in the past 30 years.
I feel like bluesky is just an attempt by a lot of institutional powers that lost a platform when Elon took over Twitter to make what essentially is a clone of Twitter circa 2018.
What a lot of people forget is that, even before Elon, Twitter had become super toxic. It was basically some pseduo-progressive echo chamber dominated by lazy journalists, virtue signaling politicians, and toxic hot takes divorced from reality. The moderation system was just selectively enforced based on whatever Twitter's SF HQ thought was relevant that day.
I like the idea of anyone being able to spin up their own server and have a space for discourse. While it can be dangerous, I'd strongly argue that having a centralized private organization deciding what is/isn't acceptable is a lot more so.