
When Life Gives You Lemons, It’s Probably Because of the Illuminati
I assumed that the film had something to do with a big secret hidden away upon America’s founding something something…
My daughter has never set up a lemonade stand in our neighborhood, and I wonder if she’s missing out on a vital childhood experience because of this. When I was her age, I would try to sell lemonade at the end of my driveway. I had seen kids in books and comics and movies run successful lemonade stands, but I lived out in the country across from a cow pasture; no one was going to happen by my small startup and pay a nickel for some Minute Made. But what did I know? That’s just what American kids are supposed to do, right?
In contrast, my kid lives on a cul de sac in the suburbs of Atlanta. We have friendly neighbors and a lot of foot traffic, so she could do pretty well selling lemonade, but she’s never tried. The idea has never even occurred to her, and I feel a little guilty for not encouraging her to do it. I started to wonder if I’ve robbed my daughter of some sort of rite of passage.
But, then, I found out that she might have more ambitious — possibly sinister — plans. She recently brought home a school assignment for a group project that required her and a few third-grade classmates to develop a business plan for selling lemonade. They had to devise a name and slogan for their brand; write a commercial and jingle; design a logo for a t-shirt, cups, and business cards; and, most importantly, they needed to create a mascot.* What did they choose for their company name? Illuminate Lemonade. Upon first glance, this all seemed completely innocent and even a relief: My kid was finally doing the lemonade-stand thing.

After a closer inspection of the business plan, something seemed off…there were eyes everywhere! One stared out from the side of the lemonade cup. Their impish mascot, happily raising a glass in the air, can best be described as a combination of the Kool-Aid Man and Eye of Providence, which is the all-seeing eye that looms over the pyramid printed on the back of the U.S. dollar bill (this same cyclopean pyramid was also on their business card). And the t-shirt was plastered with so many eyes, pyramids, and other cryptic symbols that it looked like an amateur crafter had gone crazy with some sort of occult Bedazzler. But, of course, the big tip-off was when my daughter’s school group had misspelled the name of their company a few times: instead of writing Illuminate, they had written Illuminati.
Ah, the Illuminati. The scheming, self-selecting elite who wield secret influence over world affairs. The hidden hand that manipulates global finance, politics, and even — by some accounts — the weather. The power behind the power. How the fuck does my 8-year-old know about the Illuminati?


Or, rather, who told her about it? It wasn’t me. I mean, I don’t think the Illuminati is real; the rich and powerful are openly screwing us over just fine without a hidden hand guiding them.** So, I asked my kid where she had gotten the name and how she had come to know anything about the Illuminati. But she just shrugged and said one of the boys in the group told her about it.

Okay. But why the fuck does this other kid know about the Illuminati? I turned this over in my head a bit before deciding that it had to be because of the film National Treasure. Maybe he watched it with his dad and really latched onto the whole Illuminati angle.
I hadn’t actually seen National Treasure when I first came up with this theory, but I assumed that the film had something to do with a big secret hidden away upon America’s founding something something, Knights Templar, etc. etc. etc. Masons, something, something, Illuminati. And there’s also Nicolas Cage.
While the above was, I’m fairly certain, pretty much the verbatim elevator pitch for the movie, I was wrong about there being any overt reference to the Illuminati. Granted, the “all-throughout-history-scheming-influential-men-have-amassed-a-hoard-of-treasure” thread is a major element of the film, and it’s not too great a leap from that to Illuminati if that’s your thing, but there is no explicit mention of it.
I know Jay-Z raps a lot about the Illuminati, right? Could these third-grade boys be listening to Jay-Z? But before I clutched my pearls, swooned upon the fainting couch, and bemoaned what has become of America’s youth, I stopped to consider that maybe the kid heard something about the Illuminati from his dad. In my experience, dads are prone to paranoia about hidden scams and The Powers That Be that are working against them.
Growing up, I knew that my grandfather and uncles were Masons, and I just assumed that this was akin to, say, joining the Moose Lodge. Y’know, a social organization: have some drinks, shoot the shit, do something for poor kids, and maybe wear some sort of ceremonial apron or headgear when the occasion dictates it. It wasn’t until high school that I learned an alternative account of history that cast suspicion on the Masons: dark mutterings about how they performed sinister rituals and worked to manipulate the financial system to the detriment of hard-working Christian America. A friend of mine told me that he read all this in a book of his dad’s, and I find it interesting no one ever seems to say stuff like this about the Lion’s Club.
But Masons — and whatever tenuously apocryphal connection they have with the Templars — have come to occupy that oblong, shadowy part of the venn diagram where pop culture and actual history overlap. (This is also the part with the fake moon landing, by the way.) And so, I guess they make for pretty good quasi-antagonists in movies. I say quasi because the Masons in National Treasure are actually pretty chill and, apparently, just like a good mystery.
Where was I going with this? I don’t even remember. I think I was supposed to be talking about the movie. But, anyway, I still don’t know why my kid is selling lemonade for the Illuminati. I am somewhat reassured, however, that the bright yellow planning documents indicate that it will be regular ‘ol American lemonade. Because pink lemonade is totally a Masonic plot.
*Oddly, the project did not require them to figure out how, where, or to whom they would sell their product, nor how they would produce it, which seemed to me like an oversight for a business project. But, what do I know? If I understood anything about business, I wouldn’t be working in public broadcasting.
**Yeah, yeah. I know the original and long-defunct Illuminati was a real German secret society in the 1700s, so hold off on your “Well, actually…” comments. I’m talking about the spooky, sinister Illuminati that the guy who spends too long on the computer at the public library is always yammering on about.
Jack Walsh is a writer and producer who makes shows about pop-culture nerds for public broadcasting nerds. He occasionally writes other things that he reads in front of people in exchange for drink tickets and polite chuckles.

