In his farewell speech upon completing his second term as President of the United States in January of 1961, Dwight Eisenhower coined the term “military-industrial complex” to describe the insidious influence of private industry and the military over the American people and their trusted institutions, in some ways echoing the sentiments of United States Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler, author of the 1935 book War is a Racket. However, this is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

A common talking point is that Eisenhower originally meant to say “military-industrial-congressional complex,” and was persuaded to alter his speech. This is only half-true. Eisenhower actually meant to say “military-industrial-academic complex,” which, if you think about it for longer than the short-term memory of a goldfish, actually makes a lot more sense. After all, Congress is downstream from both industry and academia. Legislators are lawyers, and lawyers both are and trained by academics. Legislators also regularly consult, both in innocuous (committee) and unscrupulous (lobbying) manners, with representatives from industry and academia. Some people include scientists among those consulting academics, but I maintain that scientists and academics are mutually exclusive, and I’ll explain why later. In short, Congress is not part of the cabal of masterminds, it is merely the tool by which the cabal of warmongers, robber barons, and delusional ideologues make their fever-dreams into reality. When Congress, or for that matter, any branch of government, does what it’s “supposed to do” and actually act in the interest of the public instead of the cabal, then all of the captured institutions, including the 24-hour propaganda machine known as the legacy media, work to undermine those in government who aren’t serving the “proper” interests. Unfortunately, statist simps insist that “if only the government had more power to keep the bad actors in check hurr durr” or even more galaxy-brained “we need more people in government who have integrity and aren’t so easily bribed.” People in government are usually put there by the cabal, and democracy is only an illusion of choice. In reality, the government is and always has been the means by which the cabal turns its cute-sounding ideas and get-rich-quick schemes from fever dreams into dystopian reality. Increase the government’s power, and you only further enable the cabal to pursue its sinister agenda. Reduce the government’s power, and you reduce the cabal’s ability to meddle in the affairs of ordinary people – almost as if the libertarians are actually on to something.

Now, personally, were I in Eisenhower’s position, I would have said “academic-industrial complex,” and left the military out of it entirely, for the simple reason that the military, much like Congress, is downstream of academia. After all, military officers are trained in academies, and up until 1965, ROTC was mandatory for all college students. Only industry is not strictly downstream from academia, since, although most people who work in industry may have gotten their training in academic institutions, the individuals who founded the massive corporations that run industry are not the products of academia. The common trend is that the most financially successful people tend to be college dropouts, largely because innovation does not require credentials, but servitude does. Academies do not teach innovation for the simple reason that innovation cannot be taught, nor should it be. Innovation is the result of creativity, which I’m sad to say is a product of innate intelligence (i.e. genetics) more than anything else. Unfortunately, society cannot run on innovation alone, as the majority of inventions have been technically unfeasible and the vast majority have been commercial failures, even if they were objectively good ideas. Now then, academic institutions are somewhat necessary, but at the end of the day, they have always been far more concerned with indoctrination than with education, as anyone familiar with the history of the university as a concept already knows. For those who didn’t know, the first universities were established by the Roman Catholic Church in order to train their clergy, so, you know…

What the fuck does it want now?!

To get an advanced degree in academia, you need only regurgitate the ideas you’ve been spoon-fed in a manner that seems original. To get an advanced degree in science, you must make a genuinely original contribution to knowledge, which is why scientists tend to be much more creative individuals than academics. In the words of Albert Einstein, “imagination is more important than knowledge.” Other than scientific theories, the vast majority of ideas that have come out of academic institutions have been abysmal. Academics are, and always have been, the self-anointed holier-than-thou bourgeois snobs who think that they know better than people who have productive and worthwhile lives. Yesteryear, it was the classical religions that professional pompous windbags sat about and pontificated on, but now, it’s postmodernist drivel. Once upon a time, the anointed worshipped the likes of Thomas Aquinas, now they worship the likes of Jean Baudrillard. Scientists have always been at odds with the anointed, because the anointed have sacred beliefs and prohibited beliefs. In contrast, Carl Sagan brilliantly phrased the scientific mindset when he said “the only sacred truth in science is that there are no sacred truths; anything that is inconsistent with the facts must be either discarded or revised.” In science, there is no such thing as “inappropriate” questions, only malformed questions. Science welcomes questions; dogma does not.

Truth be told, I prefer not to describe the cabal’s institutions as a “complex” at all, but rather as “the cathedral,” because that’s what it has always been. The names and trappings of the power structures may change, but the methods by which they hold on to power have remained the same since time immemorial. Seriously, read Machiavelli’s work, this shit never changes. Another thing to keep in mind is that the elites of society have embraced a mindset called “cathedral thinking,” named after the fact that, until the advent of modern construction techniques, cathedrals took over a century to build, and were therefore multi-generational projects. Similarly, there is a Native American saying that “one generation plants the trees, the next gets the shade.” Cathedral thinking is a luxury, since common people have always had far more immediate concerns, with the satisfaction of their basic needs being entirely up to their own volition, rather than being guaranteed by servants. The grand plans for society, such as the varying forms of totalitarianism, have always been borne out of minds that are products of the ivory tower, and thus totally out of touch with the people they intend to govern, and indeed, out of touch with reality itself.

The true masterminds do not put themselves in positions that they can easily lose via, for example, popular vote or court marshal. Instead, they position themselves in stable occupations that they cannot easily be removed from, for example, tenured professors, corporate moguls, and bankers. One of the most Machiavellian shitbags who ever lived, Nathaniel Rothschild, once infamously said “if I control a nation’s wealth, I care not who makes its laws.” One of the current evil masterminds, Lawrence Fink, is the founder and CEO of Blackrock, the world’s largest investment firm – in other words, a company that makes money by shuffling money around. Fink doesn’t get a lot of attention because he knows how to hide, despite being the world’s richest man. “But Sasha, everyone knows that Elon Musk is the world’s richest man,” I hear you say. No, he’s not. Musk’s personal net worth is higher than anyone else’s, but Fink controls a lot more money, with his company being worth an estimated $10 trillion. Fink, however, doesn’t keep much money in his personal accounts, so he doesn’t make any lists of insanely rich people; instead, Fink owns most of the billionaires themselves. Fink, by all accounts, is obsessed with world domination, his greed knows no bounds, and he has somehow sold his idea of buying literally everything to an intellectual confidence trickster and pseudo-academic skinhead named Klaus Schwab, whose own pet project, the World Economic Forum, is funded entirely by hedge funds and its obscene membership dues. Much as the most profitable educational program to run is one that requires no equipment and produces only ideas, the most profitable business model is to produce nothing and shuffle money around. Forget war, the real racket is insurance, banking, and the educational system that indoctrinates people into believing in this imaginary economy.

But of course, you came here for snark, not to be demoralised, so now for a healthy dose of white pills (which may or may not just be breath mints). Thanks to the internet, and the fact that censoring it has proven to be impossible, even in a totalitarian hell-hole like China, it is now easier than ever to see how ordinary people live, and share information about how to live, ironically enough, without being terminally connected to the outside world. The anointed remain in their own little echo-chambers, so if they actually succeed in bringing about their dystopian nightmare, they can be the ones resorting to cannibalism to survive, the rest of us will be just fine. I’m going to let you in on a little secret: despite the millions of ordinary people who fell into the meat grinder that sustained authoritarian regimes, statistically speaking, the people in the greatest danger were, and still are, always the members of the dictator’s inner circle. Don’t bother trying to tell the anointed, but their terrible ideas will bring about only their own demise, not the end of the human race, as many of these nihilistic talking fleshlights wish. Even in death, they never accept that they are wrong. I mean, seriously, Klaus Schwab can cry crocodile tears knowing that he’ll never live to see his vision become reality, but he won’t stop trying, because he’s devoted his entire life to it and can’t do anything else, just like a life-long preacher who wakes up one morning and realises that he doesn’t actually believe in the god he’s made a living saying is so great, but has to keep up the grift because otherwise he goes from palace denizen to vagabond. All the honorary PhDs in the world won’t change the fact that Blowfeld’s evil twin’s IQ is at least 30 points lower than mine, and I’m just some filthy, illiterate, antisocial half-breed luddite fit only to work the cabbage mines in his book. We shouldn’t lose sleep over all this, rather, take comfort in knowing that, a hundred years from now, you will be more fondly remembered than Bill Gates, George Soros, Klaus Schwab, or Larry Fink, all of whom will be buried in unmarked graves to prevent people from pissing on their corpses.