NEW YORK, NY – At a clandestine meeting in their Manhattan penthouse headquarters, members of a secret cabal working towards total control of global political and financial systems were puzzled at how easy it was to manipulate the majority of the world’s population into unwittingly aiding the group’s wicked machinations.

Pointing to the current U.S. presidential election as an example, a member of the global conspiracy bent on forming a new world order, known only as “Mr. Aquamarine”, commented, “I mean normally we’d have to pour billions of untraceable dollars into at least 100 different PACs on both sides to rig that thing. This time around, all we had to do was put a few crazy ideas into Donald’s head, promise Hillary a dozen replacement clones, and off they went!”

“Mr. Gamboge”, another member of the group focused on forcing most of the world’s population into debt slavery while maintaining the illusion of popular control, remarked, “Seriously? This is just so damn easy. We just brainwashed a few guys with some radical interpretations of religious texts, and they make the major oil-producing geopolitical region more chaotic than a Denny’s early bird special. Then we just throw some inflammatory and racist comments on Reddit and Twitter, and the entire Western world goes fucking nuts.”

After joking about the facility of leveraging peoples’ fears and preconceptions into poisonous untruths that only further the shadowy group’s selfish and destructive agenda, a “Mr. Razzmatazz” chuckled and said, “We were totally prepared to blow a couple billion to engineer a war or two and maybe set off another financial crash, but people are doing a great job of furthering the demise of the world as we know it without much help. Honestly, we’re way under budget. I think we can spring for that 40-person hot tub exclusively fuelled by endangered tropical forests this year.” 

After vigorous applause over the hot tub, the group unanimously agreed that they were “blowing those little Illuminati shits out of the water.”