Last week I was thinking about the universal convergence of former activists against Trump’s holocaust. All of them in my circle have now become Trump cultists. I remembered that Vietnam protesters DIDN’T flip. After the war was done we moved into normal life concerns, but none of us fell in love with LBJ or Nixon.
There were plenty of cults in the 70s. Scientology, Jonestown, Hare Krishna, Ecumenical Institute, Jesus People, EST, and dozens of others. Many of my friends fell into them. Those cults were pseudoreligious or pseudoscientific, NOT tied to partisan politics.
Why the change? The Fairness Doctrine was repealed in the 80s. Immediately politics became a pure team sport, a pure personality cult. Before the 80s, mass media was NOT ALLOWED to run cults. They had to stay away from partisanship. After repeal, talk radio developed, the CNN/FOX pair developed, and the web started to form cults.
Way back in the USENET/BBS/Compuserve era, rigid two-teaming was already the rule, and it’s grown more sophisticated since then.
Polistra's Mill 