Things definitely didn't go as they expected, and I agree that is has become that much harder for their narratives now.
I never said covid was a strategy for enslavement. I said it was a scam. They saw an opportunity as they themselves told us, and they went with it. Many people had various reasons to support lockdowns and such, for example corporations stayed open while small business were forced to close.
That wasn't part of some greater conspiracy, but just from that siloed perspective, the corporations would have had to engage within some sort of 'conspiracy' in order for legislators to allow them to keep operating. We can speculate about all the reasons, but that is how the world works - everyone thinking of their own interests. Especially people in higher positions. So in that sense, most people went along with it because it served them, and others got drunk on the extra power and showed how unfit they were for their positions.
What I questioned was where all those guidelines and the policies that everyone adopted came from. I questioned the validity of their claims about vaccines, the illogical measures they proposed, and based on how absolutely every single thing they said and did was either a lie or the opposite of common sense, I decided the whole thing was a scam with a lot of stupid and complicit people.
The planning starts at the top so that it can be distributed down to the lower channels, most things below that are organic "bottom up", as you say. Just pay attention to how the media operate, in lockstep, parroting and setting the narratives for people to fight over. That is just one arm of the entire propaganda network.