Back in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, before being woke was a thing, the quintessential middle-finger expression to those who controlled us was “Up the Establishment’s Arse.” Well not exactly arse (the British slightly more polite word), but you get the drift. The Establishment is a term describing a dominant group or elite that controls a polity. It may comprise a closed social group that selects or attracts its own members, or an entrenched business or political élite. The Obama Establishment embraces all of these.
America’s “Establishment” often reflects the values of the sitting two-term U.S. president. Against all odds, and the cause of much PTSD among Democrats, Big Tech, corporate bosses and the prevaricating mainstream media, President Trump came to office promising to “drain the swamp.” The anti-Trump swamp inherited from the Obama administration, has now become America’s new “Establishment.”
The Establishment has undergone several transformations since the turn of the 20th Century. Notable among these eras was the first three decades of the 20th century where the Establishment was composed of wealthy, conservative industrialists, and corporation heads. Men like John D. Rockefeller, Henry Flagler, Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius Vanderbilt, John Jacob Astor, J.P. Morgan, Henry Ford, Andrew Mellon controlled America’s Establishment. Not surprisingly, some of America’s finest private universities proudly carry their names or were funded in large part by their largess. All but one U.S. President from that era, Woodrow Wilson, was a Republican.
In 1934, on the tail of the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was voted in as U.S. President. He created the progressive “New Deal” that morphed into today’s “New Greed Deal.” Going against historical precedent, FDR would go on to win, both a third and fourth term until his death in 1945. This was the beginning of a new Establishment composed of liberal politicians, liberal newspaper owners, bankers, and other vested interest corporatists. Eisenhower’s election in 1953 created a brief respite from the FDR Establishment until JFK’s election in 1961. After JFK’S assignation in 1963, LBJ became president and in his five and one-half years of service, established America’s return to a left-leaning Establishment, with support of and full involvement in the Vietnam War. The leftist Establishment gained a new member, the military-industrial complex (MIC). Ironically, LBJ’s successor, Richard Nixon, attracted most of the derision for the Vietnam fiasco despite strong evidence offered by Lewis Sorley in A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam, that Nixon was turning the war effort in America’s favor; the MSM and Academy derision forced Nixon’s troop withdrawal, America’s defeat, and China’s rise.
More recently came the Clinton Establishment including the Clinton Foundation (now the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Foundation) with the rise of Big Tech, lawyer dominance in Congress, and the conversion of the academy to Marxist-inspired pedagogy. With the Bush Establishment came another respite from progressivism but saw the sad resurgence of the MIC in the Middle East wars. The global reach and corruption of the Clinton Establishment persisted, culminating during the Obama years with the sale of part of America’s uranium stockpile to the Russian company Rosatom State Atomic Energy Corporation, and allowing the Russians to assume control of Uranium One. Uranium One’s chairman then used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million to the Clinton Foundation. Following the short-lived Bush Establishment, progressivism returned with the Obama Establishment. This has been the Establishment gift that keeps on giving to the left and taking from normal Americans throughout the Trump years.
During our presidential election year, I question what exactly constitutes America’s Establishment. While Trump has made important inroads in parts of the deep state, it is patently clear that the lingering Obama Establishment is still calling many of America’s shots. Since President Trump’s election, the unapologetically progressive Obama Establishment includes the mainstream media, Democrat and Never-Trumper politicians, academia, and the deep state’s alphabetic royal flush of federal agencies. These include the FBI, NSA, NIAID, FDA, NIH, HHS, CDC, OSHA, VA, NCPDCID, along with the left-leaning AMA, ABA and too many more to recount.
The Obama Establishment healthcare wing is now compromising lives by holding up the release of Pfizer’s BNT162b2, an mRNA-based Covid19 vaccine, until after the election. Why? If American lives, especially black lives, really mattered given their vulnerability to Covid-19, there would be no delay in releasing this life-saving vaccine in order to give political advantage to Joe Biden’s campaign. Obviously lives matter less than political gain.
In a nutshell, these medical groups of the Obama Establishment appear less committed to running effectively or efficiently, than they are to following what their leaders’ command. And for nearly four years their command has been to stymie the Trump administration and blunt his policies at every turn and at any cost to our national well-being.
Even the Commission on Presidential Debates has embraced the Obama Establishment agenda. Just before the second, and last presidential debate, City Journal’s John Tierney implored both parties to rethink and rework the entire debate format and concept, arguing that “we finally have a chance to create improved debates, because the current sponsor, the Commission on Presidential Debates, has bungled its mission so badly that Republicans are vowing never again to submit to its whims.”
The Wall Street Journal’s W. Holman Jenkins, Jr. recently opined, that the mainstream media are “so bamboozled and neurotic…because of its anti-Trump virtue signaling. If you’re so dumb as to lose all critical judgment every time you hear the word ‘Russians,’ somebody will take advantage of it.”
The Obama Establishment’s critical judgement has gone by the wayside with President Trump’s winning policies. Even though Obama Establishment prevarications have long been debunked, its representatives are screeching “Russian Collusion” after the discovery of Hunter Biden’s “laptop-from-hell” and prima facie evidence of the corruption of the Obama Establishment’s pick for president.
I end with a Doobie Brothers album title, “What Were Once Habits are Now Vices!” Our nation’s twisted Obama Establishment has morphed—what were once progressive habits have become conspiratorial vices targeting America’s undoing. Their anti-Trump virtue signaling and demands that the public be kept in the dark about Trump administration successes sucks.
Up theirs!