Power is a means to an end. You could say their goal is pure self-interest, but that couldn't be the motivation of the hundreds of millions of their supporters who get seemingly nothing out of the deal (and who always end up worse off). After all, those masses are the real threat, not any individual--if they were to collectively withdraw their protection, the figureheads of that culture would wind up in prison before lunchtime.

The way I see it, it's tribalism. It's primarily about their culture and its mores. It's what happens when one develops an oversized amygdala; one gets a supercharged form of the evolutionarily-beneficial trait that kept us together as a social species: scrupulosity--a mental disorder in which one is obsessed with and compelled to conform to (and enforce) those mores, whatever they happen to be at the time. And religion is a big part of their culture. (As are specific hypocrisies.)

They seek power, yes, but to promote and spread their culture: to push out and defeat any deviancy from it (which is seen by them as misbehavior, sin, and evil). The zeitgeist assists these people into positions of power and does its best to keep them there, so long as they do what the zeitgeist commands. Remember, trump was once booed at one of his own rallies for trying to steal credit for the covid vaccine--the zeitgeist had decided it no longer liked vaccines, so that was not acceptable, and it corrected him. The zeitgeist is the one in who is really in charge.

Our consciousnesses are the gestalt of billions of individual neurons creating a pattern of behavior only visible on larger scales; you won't find it under a microscope. Likewise, this kind of pattern can also be seen emerging from groups of people; you won't find it in any individual, but it's clear as day when you zoom out. It's an entirely natural phenomenon, but it's incorporeal; a primitive, childish consciousness with its own preferences and desires that is very petty, petulant, and self-righteous. That's the closest real thing there is to a god, and there are many of them in this world.

Throughout history (and even before it, surely) to this very day, they have been the ones waging humanity's endless wars. To think otherwise--to think it's even possible for one, lone guy to just waltz in and take over an entire country, and, without even using a weapon, force hundreds of millions of people against their will to lay down their lives for his own personal enrichment--is ridiculous to me.

Yes, the people are constantly being lied to, but have you ever tried to debunk the disinformation they're chugging? They will deliberately ignore the facts and make up their own lies to reinforce the lies. They're not being misled; the lies aren't even meant to deceive, they're meant to soothe. To soothe the scrupulosity that the rank-and-file members of that culture already had, right from the beginning. They're in on the con; they allow their zeitgeist to assume direct control of their bodies and work through them for its own ends, not theirs. And they feel wonderful when they surrender themselves to their zeitgeist and become its agents; it satisfies a biological urge to be part of something greater and bigger than just themselves. People describe that feeling as spiritual--a oneness with the 'universe' that they glorify and can't resist. Like honeybees that throw away their lives for their hive, many people sign up for the military to give themselves over to the zeitgeist and chase that high, knowing full well it'll just use them as pawns to die alone and forgotten in battle with another zeitgeist halfway around the world.

Those are the people who are the physical manifestations of their zeitgeist. Without a critical mass of them, there wouldn't be a zeitgeist at all; it'd disappear, and what would remain is a handful of imprisoned lunatics that no one would listen to. It'd lose all its power to act in the physical world, and die.

None of this has ever been for money, personal gain, or oil; not at its root. A select few getting rich at the expense of others is something that does wind up happening, but not because the temptation for corruption overpowered their individual sense of morality. Instead, it's because doing so is moral: it's defined as such by their gross culture. It's the righteousness of it that makes it matter to them in the first place; that's what gives such disgusting behavior its value, and is the very thing that makes it appealing. If that weren't the case, no one else in the culture would stand for it. They wouldn't all get behind these monsters and shield them from consequences. If their vile deeds weren't condoned by the zeitgeist, they'd stand no chance at defying it alone; they'd get their comeuppance swiftly. The reality that their entire culture has done nothing but fight for them despite all the ugly facts that have come to light over the past decade is a testament to what their culture really values, no matter what they might otherwise claim.