Brian Leeland, a 79-year-old Democratic voter in Detroit, had enough. Frustrated by the way the US media covers this febrile political era, from Donald Trump’s Washington to political campaigns across the country, he contacted the Guardian.
“Your decision to frame the race here as a simple progressive versus establishment choice is overly simplistic verging on lazy,” he wrote to this reporter, after our coverage of progressive Abdul El-Sayed’s campaign in the Democratic US Senate primary in Michigan. “As an electorate, we are not binary for the convenience of the media.”
His was a complaint I heard often as I traveled across the midwest to cover a host of contested Democratic primaries. So I called him up.
Leeland’s list of frustrations is long: grifters, liars, the two-party system, money influencing elections, the US’s standing in the world, the growing national debt and a fixation on cultural issues, not just the larger problems that plague the country.
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Yes, most Americans are very upset with the establishment. They just can’t agree on who the establishment is.
Obviously Trump is currently the establishment since he’s the one in power right now, but the irony is a lot of the people who voted for him did so because they were angry with the establishment that preceded him. So, many Americans are angry at an establishment that was meant to take on a past establishment that many other Americans had been angry with.
Trump has always been a part of the establishment.
MAGA was made up of three establishments. Evangelical Christians, Generational Wealth, and Corporate Oligarchy. These are the only three groups that are INHERENTLY fascist. There could have never been a single thing that a SANE person would see or hear from this group that would make anyone think that the working class would get anything but more work and more taxes.
The main problem is actually that about half the country are either illiterate morons, and/or sadistic psychopaths. They all WANTED this
my fear is that this trend will splinter only the ‘left half’ of the vote as a significant number vote third-party from ‘lack of options’ or as ‘punishment’; and that the ‘right’ will remain mostly united (as they usually do) in their hate and stupidity and greed, allowing republicants to actually gain as a result.
A large chunk of the population would rather throw out the baby with the bathwater and any attempt to tell them they’re insane for thinking so is an exercise in futility.
In fairness to them, even the best of our leaders are still operating in the framework that got us here.
It’s establishments all the way down. And what do they all have in common? Being servile to capital.
Trump and maga are not the establishment. They are extreme radicals with a completely different agenda than the establishment. Their agenda is to do away with the Constitution and replace it with an authoritarian regime centered on christian nationalism and fascism–of that’s not radical, what is? The fact that they managed to take over the government doesn’t make them “the establishment” unless you accept that they will maintain power and thus become a new “establishment”.
He is practically embedded into the capitalist oligarchy which are ruling the US. You don’t get more establishment than that.
Yes, he is not part of the professional politician gang which has been used to rule, but he is definitely part of the establishment which that gang also was subservient to.
Yeah, exactly. trump is part of the class who employ the “establishment” as it is usually understood. He is literally the boss of the establishment.
Republican SCOTUS, courts, billionaires, major political donors, CEOs, bankers and investors, news company owners, entertainment company owners, etc…
He himself is from the real estate industry.
He’s the very embodiment and personification of the establishment.
What you call the “establishment” is old rules and cultural expectations which the actual establishment is trying to break to cement their power.
I understand what you’re saying, but I don’t entirely agree. Trump did win the presidential nomination of one of only two established major political parties. Many Republican politicians who had been part of the US political establishment for decades are now among Trump’s coalition. Trump also has the support of some established media organizations, like Fox News. I would also argue that the business establishment is largely the same as it was before Trump came into office.
“The establishment” is a vague and nebulous term
It’s like when people say “they”. And I don’t mean the gender neutral pronoun, I mean when people say “they’re making a new law” or “they’re making a new movie” or “they’re using AI to design things”. The nebulous “they” that seems to encompass all governments and organizations that control things
It’s not radical, it’s reactionary
No, it’s radical, dude, totally
<not a serious comment, 100% a joke based on the 80s slang>