Several years ago, my circle of acquaintances and friends included a lot of people who work at local parks. They were mostly hippie-trippy granola types, and I assumed their work-places would reflect that, but they were actually very political and shitty. There's a certain logic to that. The parks are far removed from natural necessity and there are lots of people with the skills and credentials needed for the jobs, so it's an environment that's ripe for political maneuvering and glad handing types. Academia and media are similar scenarios. That work environment is weirdly stressful for most normal people.
For the past several decades, some oligarchs and government officials have been systematically selling out and working against the mass population of western nations. It seems like a relatively large portion of the population of western nations has finally figured this out. That's triggered a near total panic in the patronage networks of the oligarchy.
Their jobs, just like the priesthood of yore, is to provide ongoing justification for plunder and malfeasance. The best current example is provided by the global warming industry, which has a Tony The Tiger style mascot in Greta Thunberg. A small army of academics and NGO employees work full time on promoting the idea that CO2 emissions should be another financial racket that makes people like Al Gore wealthy.
NGOs and academics provide a moralistic smokescreen to oligarchs and give a patina of legitimacy to their rackets. Once that preaching and moralizing loses credibility and value, entire industries, like the global warming industry can vanish overnight. The smokescreen is akin to religion with a priesthood, but it's not a very deep religion. It's more like a public cult of the classical world.
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