If They were really that powerful they wouldn't need to fake it

If 'They' is replaced by 'fear' masking as 'control' then you have identified the mask and the father of it.

The shift from covert power to overt power is the revealing of the underlying fear and yet also of the deceit by which it is hidden - in surrogate power.

There are layers of masking.

What you see is the measure of what you give.

The mind has the capacity to give and receive false witness, reinforce it socially and subliminally, and experience as its reality - whether to its own glorification or gratification or to conflict, sickness, pain and death.

Truth remains true while illusions battle with themselves.

Power is in belief.

Belief is in the heart and mind.

When mind is set in conflict with truth of who you are

The heart is overruled or denied voice.

A surrogate and captive heart operates as emotional reactivity to the script and casting of the mind-set.

If you want the power of control, you give control power.

The conflicted and fearful - under the wish to take power for themselves, give power to whatever gives them the illusion of control. This generates its own masking reality or worldview, with its own self protective reinforcement.

"They'rUs" - with the many demanding controls that consolidate an identity under threat. All identities interact as a  collective entanglement in fear and control as power struggle.

True power is not struggle, but at rest in its own moving centre.

Power resting in truth is not gotten from opposing untruth, but is whole in all its parts and embraces all its parts within the whole. To be still and know, is the release of the mind of forcing or judging to GET from or to GET away from.

Regardless the casting out of broken parts under the struggle to 'make sense', the mind is the function of the extension and expression of the heart's knowing. Here is power of life and aligning in who you are is the releasing from what and who you are not. This is all irrespective of what others do or say, because you are giving all the meaning to your world that you are receiving - whether aligned in a transparency to the heart or locked in deceits and defences of a mind set outside and apart in self-isolation.

Fear, given power generates self-illusion that seeks mutual reinforcement.

Rather than fight the illusion of power, align in the presence that reveals truth as a relational or shared resonance of recognition.

They are not as in control as they may seem, for control is compulsive, addictive and self-limiting - even while promising the world. But the shifting from a Script of Fear's forgetting to the Script of Awakening from Fear is the revealing of the false as false, but only to the free willingness for accepting truth as true. In this your decision is waited on because truth is never coercive no matter how much we project a mind of grievance and vendetta onto our symbols of it.

Shutting down Consciousness, denying the Heart, is the means for the seeming power of 'control'. But this is a choice no matter how the mind baits or presents a "No Choice Necessity!" - and we live the fruit or consciousness of our choices. No one else lives your life. Except you give your power to them to do so. You don't need to take back what has never truly left you. Simply align in self-honesty at the heart and wait on the heart's recognition before reacting to the forms of what you think you know.

Everything is Created from and within being, not from nothing. Fear of nothing generates an 'oppositional will'.

The mind can be deceived, to believe it is protecting the heart, while denying the heart's voice as threat to its defended control.

The mind can be entranced and identified by its own story as a bias of 'control'. Or 'don't let truth get in the way of a good story'. If you insist it is not a good story, consider your hidden investments to see where you get something you want or think you need from an untruth and therefore still give it value and protection - even if it involves fear, pain or loss.

The urgency is to liten now and then the slow way is what uncovers what is needed as it is needed. Or ‘Dont just DO something, stand there!” Where do you choose to stand and be as the true presence of You in relation to your world and in embrace of relationships?

Doing is inherent to the physical realm and so let whatever you are doing honour your being - that connects you with the truth of Everyone and Everything - in a way you can recognise and accept and grow in.

I was moved to this reflection by

Martin's commenting

If "they" have the power to perpetuate a hoax on this scale, they would not need to.
They would already be in total control and pulling all the strings to begin with. 

And if "they" did bring this about to what end?

As i said, they would already need to be in total control to bring it about in the first place

My short response:

Yes, it is being played out within a larger context that is in a sense kept backstage.

I wrote a longer reflection on this theme that I put to my blog instead of here.

Command in the heart is not control - but alignment in whole decision. Resonance within the wholeness of being.

Loss of heart is the need for control and the fantasy of total control. Which is impossible as it depends on a separation and conflict with the 'controlled'.

This is not to say that fantasies cannot be acted out upon the bodies of others world and self as a screen. But you then set such pathways of choice as your chosen 'reality'. And become the focus of your own setting until releasing the game as not worth the candle.

The desire for experience is not about 'getting there' but accepting and aligning in such symbolic goals, sets the theme. Some are tuned into a page turner and others in deeply reflected parable. Self-awareness is the space or field in which the creative moves as recognition. But can seem to be almost completely forgot or discarded under an invested objection.