Professor Torrance Stephens

The Rise of Establishment Politics Professor Torrance Stephens

Since the second term of the Clinton Administration, and more so even during the middle of the George W. Bush administration until the start of the Barack Obama administration, the policy making of decades past were in front of my very eyes, morphing into some new protoplasmic political mutant. Suddenly, it was difficult to determine political policy making between republicans and democrats. In fact the blur between Clinton, Bush and Obama was so supersaturated that if they did not openly affiliate with any political party, on paper their policies would be completely similar if not the same. As opposed to having distinct political variances, through the common denominator of capitalism and American exceptionalism, the citizenry started to take a back seat to a select and privilege ruling elite that resulted in a singular monopolistic political modus operandi. Instead of American being the manufacturing center of the world, a huge part of our economy became supported on war, the things we make for wars and a financial service sector that fed on profiteering from fractional reserve banking and collateralized debt; all of which were supported on the backs and labor and service of a growing lower and shrinking middle class America. However, as the average American started to pay attention, and notice the rhetoric of both major political policies was actually the same, and that the policies implemented continued to enrich them and their contributors from large corporations, K Street and Wall Street, a new colloquialism began to be accepted to describe these observations - "the Establishment" and "Establishment politics." The establishment, regardless of political affiliation, is more into name-calling, blaming and pointing fingers while giving thirty second sound bites on corporate owned cable news stations than solving or even trying to solve problems. Given this lack of ability and imbued ineptness and superficial nimble problem solving, it became easier to fan the flames of identity politics and artificial reforms to hide their authentic inability to address any other cause not involving their self-enrichment, consequently to the disgruntlement of the electorate. The average voter considers the establishment as the party elites and wealthy who have more to gain from dividing and breaking the U. S. populous into groups and factions, in an effort to disguise their true intention to maintain control, than servicing the need, desire and will of the people. The establishment is not blue-collar and has never had roots in the working class poor, and frequently speaks as they are concerned with the middle class but never mentioning the poor.