ESTABLISH THIS

I've had it with the theft of my beloved 1960's counter-culture terms "Establishment" and "Anti-Establishment."

I never thought I'd live to see that day when we hippie-revolutionaries' favorite term used to denigrate the whole freakin' capitalist-military-industrial-governmental machine is used by political parties and presidential candidates to attack each other as if each were Che Guevara himself?


The most "anti-establishment" Democrat is, though a self-declared "socialist," (not even a Marxist much less a Yippie) an incumbent US Senator. And on the Republican side the "anti-establishment" candidates are a billionaire mogul- a veritable embodiment of the fiscal ruling class- and another sitting senator.


What began as a perhaps tongue-in-cheek joke from the talking-head pundocracy has been flushed into the cesspool of charges and cross-charges that would-be "leaders of the free world" don't have a significant enough repugnance for the "powers that be"- in this case, power that be THEM.


Many of us continue to cringe at the way our beloved terminology is now used, not to belittle an even more abominable, ripe-for-removal-by-revolution power-structure than it was back in the day, but has become yet another political phraseological pronouncement pimped by pragmatic presidential populists.


Gag me with a lava lamp.