Education was a big target for our group, we were working hard to sink our tendrils as deep into the world’s educational systems in every country and at every level and you could immediately see that it was desperately needed. In fact, the sheer amount of bullshit in education rivaled that in politics- no, exceeded it! Even working with my colleague, Brenard Goit- a rather interesting fellow with quite diverse holdings- I felt I was more likely to be mired in the shit forever than succeed at anything!

“I did try and warn you,” Brenard said to me, his eyebrow raised. Prick.

“Yeah, but I kept thinking to myself, ‘it couldn’t be that bad,’ and the fact that it is worse is a little stunning.”

In this age of information, nearly unlimited knowledge was available at any moment- yet education was so mired in the past I wouldn’t be surprised to find an archaeologist picking over a school. Though I do admit that this was not about pure academics, what was taught was pretty correct in general- the issue was what was not taught.

“These kids couldn’t think their way out of a paper bag if I gave them a map!” I exclaimed in exasperation, happy to be in one of my many penthouses with a glass of scotch in my hand- I needed it today.

“Kevin, man, I keep telling you that you don’t pay enough attention to the bullshit- don’t be surprised it snuck up on you!”

The cause for this particular breakdown was the report in front of me that broke down belief in a series of major conspiracy theories and pseudoscience in adults under thirty in the United States. The results were- well, I needed alcohol to make it through the report, so take that as you will.

“Though honestly,” Brenard said with a chuckle, “I think we should give the people who believe in the Illuminati a break now, they aren’t wrong anymore.”

“We have been at this less than a year and these people have believed for decades- hell, some of this shit dates back centuries.” I grumbled, “and frankly our attempts have been similar to trying to ram our heads through concrete. Taking over the world is hard fucking work!”

“Honestly,” Brenard laughed. “I kind of want to screw with them a bit. Like go in to an interview with contacts that make it look like I have slit eyes and then remove them when the camera pans away.”

“Fuck you,” I say, but don’t really mean. The two of us are pretty decent friends as things go. It is nice to have someone around who is my equal and I can actually relax with! “I actually have people who think I am a lizard person from a moon space station- how they even come to that conclusion is beyond me, it is so crazy it comes full circle and just becomes silly.”

Brenard sighed and his expression turned serious, picking up a particular page of the report.

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“Jokes aside,” he said scowling at the paper. “We have to do something about these ones. Creationists, anti-vaccers, climate change deniers, and those bullshit alternative medicine crackpots- this all needs to be shut down- Hard.”

“And it all comes back to education,” I sighed. “No one properly educated would buy this bullshit, but trying to change education to actually educate kids garners so much resistance that we might as well not even try.”

“Between the two of us we have serious pull in congress…”

“But not that much,” I thought about the political shitstorm that would follow attempting to fix the serious gap in critical thinking skills in schools. “These groups don’t overlap entirely, and together they represent more than half this countries population- no leech, I mean politician, would be dumb enough to piss all of them off at once, no matter what leverage we apply.”

“You know what we need?” Brenard said after a moment of silence, “we need a banner to rally this behind, a cause to get them worked up.”

“Use fire to fight fire?” I thought about it, “it is exactly what we are fighting against, but I could see it working. It isn’t like those opportunities come along every day howe- oh, I know that smirk.”

Brenard’s face always had that smirk right before he fucked with someone. How this mischievous bastard had managed to become a majority stockholder in more major companies than I could name and then with some little pushes, ended up ruling them all from the shadows, I will never know.

Well, I say shadows, but that is just because he likes to work in the dark- literally. Only light is the computer screen. He isn’t hiding anything, it is just that no one bothers to check who owns what. It isn’t his fault that no one noticed what he was doing, it was all a matter of public record if you checked.

“If I said ‘false flag,’ what would you say Kevin?”

“I’d say that I will have the cameras ready to roll,” I replied, draining my drink and standing up. “Let's get this done.”

A week later, a group of anti-vaccer creationists that Brenard had managed to dig up from under some unknown rock assaulted a meeting of the teachers union in Texas. For some reason, the journalists that were there to record the meeting were not the run of the mill reporters normally sent, but some of the most recognizable correspondents from around the nation. How they all ended up there would eventually be attributed to a series of computer errors- which would be traced back to hacker groups that had gained access to the systems when some conspiracy theorists nutjobs had managed to find a ‘backdoor’ into the news agencies computers.

If you wanted to be technical, neither Brenard or I had done anything- we had just made it possible for some people to do what they would have wanted to do if they could.

Add to that a little bit of pressure and some suggestions to the right people and high profile celebrities were stirred up and making speeches about the importance of education and learning. Plus, making certain that at the same time certain internal reports about the dangers of some alternative medicine practices and you had the perfect storm.

Now the only thing to do was ram it through congresses mouth and down their throat before they could taste what we were feeding them. The most effective time for any movement was just after it started, when it was not yet an establish part of the system and was instead a destabilizing influence on it.

It was time to call in a few favors.