It is both easy and difficult to define the ‘establishment,’ yet most of us know, intuitively, why we abhor it.
It is Washington, D.C. politicians (or a gaggle of wannabes) who, when faced with a choice of retaining their career or doing the right thing, choose the former. It is all the money pouring into their campaign funds from wealthy individuals. It is corporate lobbyists, bending the law just to the point where another ounce of pressure will break it.
It is a tax law bought by the wealthy that allows them to store money overseas, tax-free, while youths earning minimum wage (if they are lucky enough to have a job) have nowhere to hide their pittances and nothing to deduct, so must pay every penny of their taxes.
It is a Congress that is broken to the point that it cannot perform the main duty for which it was elected — to see to the welfare of all American citizens, yet can send Americans to die in warfare in order to make weapon manufacturers ever more profitable, while simultaneously taking food (stamps) out of the mouths of 45 million poor and hungry Americans.
It is those people, those politicians and extremists, throughout America, who think that they have a right to tell others how to live their lives, often insisting that others follow the manufactured precepts of their own particular religion — one which they, themselves, abuse every day. In their own way, they are killing as many people everyday as is ISIS.
The establishment...it is a malevolent evolution of capitalism that makes it work for those already wealthy and for global corporations — a circumstance that will be infinitely worsened should the TPP become law. Included in that circumstance is an expanding economy at all costs, where profit is more important than people and nearly all new profit goes to those who are obsessed with the power that more money brings.
It is the sort of people who would build an unneeded and unnecessary oil pipeline - the KXL - from Canada to Texas, for the financial benefit of a relatively few people, while endangering the homes of thousands of people and wildlife that lie in the path of that pipeline. It is the fact that, since 1986, there has not been a single U.S. oil pipeline that has not suffered at least one significant leak. What the establishment is not, or should not be, is the 500+ deaths, 2300+ major injuries and nearly $7 billion in property damage that resulted from the combined effect of those leaks, but it sure is a Canadian company that is suing the U.S. for $15 billion for refusing the right to build that monstrosity.
I could give example after example. However, by now it should be clear:
The establishment is everything that cares not about Life, Liberty, nor the Pursuit of Happiness. It IS everything making people work 50% longer than before, in order to take home less income. It IS arguing over whether or not people should have an absolute right to healthcare, in a country that has near unlimited wealth. It IS permitting hunger to exist in a country that, annually, produces enough food to feed the entire world 2 to 3 times over. It is everyday people, everywhere, forced to further contaminate the air that we breathe, so that others can continue to make money. It is war, it is pestilence, it is unproven GMOs. It is damned near everything that, ultimately, serves to diminish the quality of life for the majority of earth’s billions.
So, why should we fear it? That's easy to answer. In our everyday struggle to make a better life for ourselves, our children and grandchildren — and theirs — the establishment is the force that cares not about the future, but solely to justify its own existence. You and I are nothing but collateral damage.