It's very fashionable to talk about "the ruling class", the "establishment", "elites" and "the will of the people" but the cold hard truth is that the more that "the people" have gotten involved in the political process, the worse the country has fared politically.
The Founders were very specific about who they thought should vote and who shouldn't. The more we expanded voting rights, the further we fell from grace.
The Establishment
TM is the current boogeyman. People need to feel they need an enemy to fight so those who want to rule create enemies. That's a much easier enemy to create in people's minds that the attitudes that are causing our real problems, from dependency to authoritarianism and collectivism.
It is just part of the us versus them game when it should be us versus ourselves first. We need an external target so we don't look at our own failures.
A perfect example of this- Trump is complaining that The Establishment
TM in Louisiana, Tennessee and elsewhere are 'stealing his delegates'. No, The Establishment
TM isn't stealing anything. It is his own failure to retain a ground game in these states and have representation at precinct meetings that is causing him to lose delegates. Not The Establishment
TM. He is not following through with his promise to his primary voters.
