After all, it must be some secret aliens/lizard people at the top that have a very secret agenda we can’t know about, pushing all the buttons so the world falls into chaos, right?

This is where idealism philosophy in politics lead. A very mundane ruling class interest is obscured in many layers of mysticism, back then it was divine right or Sun needed to be begged to rise every morning or multitude of other nonsense, and now it is basically the same thing, the sanctified priestly caste of capitalists interpret and manage the divine will of markets, plus some conspiracy superstition for the masses. The old superstitions at least had the benefit of shitty understanding of nature.

All based on making mechanisms of society purposefully obscure.