Some Weaknesses of the Cathedral

Part One

The Cathedral particularly its academic and intelligence wings is far less powerful, competent, and informed than it projects to outsiders. Much of its power comes from intimidation of would be challengers through fear of its reputation. But, when actually challenged the Cathedral is almost inevitably weaker than it claims. If it was actually as strong as it claimed it would not need to spend so much effort on propaganda to project an image of being powerful. It could instead just eliminate its enemies with impunity. But, this is not the case. Core parts of the Cathedral have consistently proven themselves to be incompetent, unable to completely squash even very weak challengers, and dependent upon expertise from people not only outside of it but hostile to it for very basic research. These are not the features of an invincible Leviathan. They are the features of what Mao would have described as a Paper Tiger.

Take for instance one of the key intelligence wings of the Cathedral, the CIA. This is an organization that has been plagued with serious failures both in making correct predictions based upon the gathering of information and carrying out successful covert operations. It is far from being a flawless organization populated by geniuses. The alleged thousands of geniuses working for the CIA failed to predict almost every single major event that such a centralized intelligence organization should have. These include the collapse of the USSR, the Iranian Revolution, the Soviet placing of missiles in Cuba, and the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Their incompetence in this key function is literally almost unrivaled by any other institution. Likewise their numerous covert operations do not have a flawless record. Operation Valuable Fiend, the Bay of Pigs, and their attempted operations to infiltrate North Vietnam in the early 1960s were all complete failures. In the case of Vietnam the CIA’s incompetence was so great that it forced the US government to transfer their responsibilities over to the military with the creation of the Studies and Observations Group. The earlier failures in Albania and Cuba led to the effective elimination of any hope of removing these governments and the physical neutralization of all anti-communist elements inside these countries. Yet, the CIA is probably the single most important intelligence organization of the Cathedral which is considered to be an invincible Leviathan immune from serious harm. Any organization incapable of defeating tiny Albania is not all powerful by definition.

The academic branches of the Cathedral also posses similar weaknesses. As do the media branches. Like the CIA they too rely largely upon reputation to convince people of their power and abilities rather than actual competence and knowledge. The projection of an image of power rather than actual real abilities has been the core pillar of their influence for many decades. No part of the Cathedral indeed nothing on this earth built by man is invincible and an empirical analysis such as done for the CIA above shows a huge number of serious weaknesses in these institutions.