What is establishment?

in #philosophy7 years ago


We have so many groups of people that state they are against the establishment. What exactly is establishment? I will bring up definitions, but I am not one of those that gives sway to the Appeal to Authority of a dictionary, I see plenty of lingual drift and the repurposing of words these days that I know a word can end up being treated as different than what the dictionary definition states. Furthermore, if I check multiple dictionaries their own definitions can differ between them.

The following is from dictionary.com:

I suspect when people say they are against the establishment they are referring to the bullet point number 4 in that group of definitions.

(often initial capital letter) the existing power structure in society; the dominant groups in society and their customs or institutions; institutional authority (usually preceded by the):
The Establishment believes exploring outer space is worth any tax money spent.

Now another thing that comes to mind is that this is likely also what people are usually referring to when they say things such as "Fight the Man".

Yet what is it really?

If it is establishment then it seems it would be the norm within the power structure. So would it be the person that shows up for a four year term that is the establishment, or would it be the people that seem to be there regardless of who sits on the 4-8 year seat? Wouldn't the establishment more likely be the people that have no term limits?

If this is the case then unless the person sitting on the 4-8 year seat came from out of that group can they truly be called the establishment?

My impression of the establishment is that thing which is present and does not change. It is the power structure that is in place and though it may have a figurehead that comes out front every 4 to 8 years there are still those that are present outside of those terms. This can be senators and congressmen with no term limits. This can be supreme court justices with no term limits. This can be positions of authority within the various offices for law enforcement who don't really have term limits.

This can be in the lobbyists and the corporations they lobby for that exist regardless of who sits within the 4 to 8 year chair.

This can be the mainstream media that is controlled and owned by five corporations and they remain in power and influential regardless of who is in the 4 to 8 year chair. In fact, usually they almost are the main arm that determines who that person sitting in the 4 to 8 year chair will be.

So is fighting and challenging the person in the 4 to 8 year chair truly fighting establishment? If that person came from out of these other existing groups of no term limit people then perhaps it is.

Yet what if the media, the corporations, and those without term limits seem to be allied against the person in the 4 to 8 year chair? Wouldn't that seem to indicate that the establishment in such a case is against the 4 to 8 year chair person?

If that is the case then if you are working with the groups opposing the 4 to 8 year chair holder would you truly be working against establishment? In my mind and by my reasoning you actually would be working FOR the establishment.

Now in looking at this word establishment and giving a lot of thought to it. For it to be established I primarily would be looking at the things that remain. What is the status quo power?

I would also be considering what tools and techniques they have at their disposal that would let them remain in power. Laws are one way for certain. Creating loopholes for campaign financing (such as PACs), and opening the door wide for lobbyists is one way. Passing bills that benefit the corporations of those lobbyists and give the corporations guaranteed income, such as bills that force citizens to use and buy those corporations products and if they do not that is a crime.

Maybe just the idea of creating more and more laws overall would be appealing. Then they need for more and more attorneys increases as the law becomes more and more maze like and convoluted. Then think about those no term limit people and how many of them started out as attorneys.

What is an attorney trained in? Are they trained to tell the truth about their client, or are they trained to present their client in the best light and help them win? As far as I know it is the latter. So what happens when their clients are the lobbyists and corporations, and not actually the people? Do you think they will suddenly stop practicing their skills at convincing people their client is in the right?

We have a term for them it is called Lawyers, but that could also be changed to Liars. They can say they didn't lie, they just didn't share all of the information. This can change contextual information. As far as I am concerned that is still lying and a little semantic dancing doesn't change that.

Now consider that our no term limit people usually come from this occupation.

Consider that the 4 to 8 year chair holder also often comes from this occupation.

Is this a good thing?

Now one thing they have been good at is pushing for laws and regulations that clearly strip a lot of important aspects out of the education of the people. By doing this they become easier to steer, and less likely to think for themselves. The population becomes more and more herd like and fond of embracing bandwagon fallacies and jumping on the bandwagon.

They become more and more susceptible to propaganda.

So what happens when you throw labels at these people, and convince them those labels are bad? What happens when you tell them someone is establishment and you have convinced them that attacking establishment is bad? What happens when you convince them that erasing history is valuable?

What happens when it is the actual establishment that is telling them what to do, and who to attack?

What happens when the attackers use the tactics and actions of those that they supposedly are against?

What happens when history has been so edited that they no longer know what the label actually means and they just blindly march?

What happens when you are told how unfairly you are treated due to "race" and then they tell you to blame it all on one "race"? Does this sound like using racism as an excuse to be racist?

These are all things I hope some of the protestors on ALL sides and especially those that self identify as Antifa will think about.

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My definition of the establishment:

I stuck a Rothschild in my into image. Establishment is pretty big. All I can think of is who are the actors and entities that seem to remain influential or active regardless of who sits upon the throne? Sometimes the person on the throne comes from those echelons, in fact usually they do.

Yet what does it say when all of those "established" entities are attacking the person on the throne?

Who exactly is the establishment in that situation?

The more I look into this stuff the more all money seems to lead to the Rotchilds - so I'd go with them owning 80% of the establishment, including killary, chump, sorearse and monsanto...

Your approach is very centered on US patern, I guess. In Italy you could say establishment is the permanent renewing of decision making groups (in politics and public institutions as well as in economy and private firm, mass media and great broadcasting world, etc) using the same persons ever and ever. Very often "old boys network" made by old persons, male gendered...thanks for posting. Really very interesting

Well what I described was essentially an "old boys network" in the U.S. Yet they also own the media. :)

I like the cover photo. The Iron Throne!
Btw. I never knew Hilary was part of Monsanto...

I didn't either until I was searching for that Diagram. She may not be part, I bet she is there due to owning shares or something of that nature.

There are many revolving door type diagrams I was just searching for some examples. EPA has a revolving door with Monsanto and places they are supposed to be oversight for as well. Conflict of interest be damned.

@geke has a lot of those interesting diagrams.

Thanks for the tip. I gave them a follow.

To my mind it's obvious the antifa are not fighting the establishment (as in the no.4 bullet), but rather they're doing the establishment's bidding in fighting the present "chair-holder". Why is exactly is the establishment so desperate to get rid of the inconvenient chair-holder remains to be seen, but I'm afraid it's gonna be ugly. This is the reason I tend to use the word deluded when referring to these leftist protesters.
Could be that the same is true for alt-right supporters. Maybe both sides are playing out a war between factions within the establishment. I remember reading about these factions during the 2016 campaign.
By the way, here is the link to the promised article about rewriting history as experienced by someone who's lived under a Communist regime.
https://steemit.com/politics/@ladyrebecca/you-cannot-rewrite-history-ask-the-communists

Good presentation, the one chart I would add to this, which really blew my mind the first time I saw it was this one detailing the affiliations of the Bilderberg Group attendees in 2012:

Here the link to the article and the image itself.

Thanks for the supplement. There are truly tons of amazing charts that could have been added to my post. I thank you for this one.

Here is my not secret:

I generally write all of the text of my post before adding any photos or videos. Generally as I am reading through it again I start looking for images to compliment it.

As you can see I felt compelled to build quite a few collages because there is just so much.

Yet I know there are many I would love to add and there are ones I've seen in the past I couldn't find this time though I only looked shallowly.

There are a few cases where an image or video may inspire my text, but generally I add all the images later. I suspect you do this too a lot of the time.

Though I do thank you for that image. It'd be neat if people added more charts to the replies like this. :)

The establishment is the entrenched swamp monsters. Joseph McCarthy was right. There are communists and enemies of state infestin our government and media.

P.S. What is really amazing to me is that Hilary was even uglier in her youth than she is currently. It's like the opposite of a miracle or something.

Yes, #4 is the establishment, it is the people who buy and own the politicians who run this country, once they are bought and paid for laws and policies are passed which benefit the establishment instead of the majority if the population. http://www.opensecrets.org/dark-money/top-election-spenders

the extreme left and the extreme right both have the global corporations and banks as their main enemy, yet they only seem to fight each other. I think both movements have been infiltrated by the Establishment.

I wrote a short article with a pretty epic Goebbels quote in it, if you are interested :)

Yeah... I sometimes use Goebbels quotes when I talk about Propaganda... send it my way.

https://steemit.com/politics/@thatgermandude/why-national-socialism-is-socialism

To give you a spoiler on the Goebbels quote:

"According to the idea of the NSDAP we are the political left... there is nothing we hate more than the right-leaning possession-citizenry-block" Joseph Goebbels , "Der Angriff" 1931

Hahaha.... the funny thing is most of the things the Left is against and protesting here in the U.S. were actually created by the Left in the past. Yet if they keep tearing down and erasing history people won't know that will they?

The creation of false history is at least as evil as destruction of history :P.

The SPD has been the german social democratic party for almost 150 years now and all they did was kill any real socialist movement in it's roots and establish pseudo-socialist mechanisms like insurances. That's why I dont like Bernie, he sounds very similar to our SPD-shills.

"Bürgerrepublik, mit Herren von sozialistischer Vergangenheit an der Spitze" nach Rathenau

In the sense were people say they are against the establishment, establishment simply means: "The power that be." The difference just being who that power may be...

Which my entire article still stands. :)

I thought I summed it up, haha :p

Universal Basic Income can be one of the solutions. Bring the power back to the people not to the establishment...

There are problems with UBI. Where does it come from? Who pays for it? What effect will it have on the economy? Will that just reset $0 to whatever UBI is and result in continually needing to raise it as we do with Minimum Wage?

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