This was really interesting, thank you. I didn't understand the particular event or posting that led to your family beginning to shun you, can you explain? Was it that you argued at the party and the effect was delayed, or was it an immediate reaction to your Sowell post?

To give you some hope, this kind of stuff is how cults work, of course, by encouraging groupthink to the exclusion of family. I have worked to save people from cult influence in the past. My hope is that the pandemic's psychologic and economic impacts are making this cult attractive short term but that rationality prevails in the medium term and beyond. The cult influence was always catching victims in a moment of weakness in their lives for various reasons, mental health or other crises. This time it's just that so many people are in that kind of moment at once.