It's a fucking cult.

One thing cults do is install a "cult personality" on top of their members' natural personalities. This personality is almost always a rough facsimile of the leader's personality.

We all like to think we're immune to cult brainwashing tactics, but we're not. They play on nearly universal weaknesses in human psychology. Whether you get sucked into a cult is not a function of whether you're smart, or a decent person, or anything like that. It's more just whether or not you were unlucky enough to happen upon a cult recruiter or recruitment material at the wrong time in your life. This recruitment material has been pumped out by right wing talk-radio and news networks and stuff for decades, so a lot of people have happened upon it during the wrong moment of their life.

This cruelty is the cult personality. It's not who they are. They're mostly normal people who fell prey to destructive influence.

I'm not saying there should be unconditional reconciliation, or that I'll ever trust these people again. But I'm pretty sure there are still decent people in there somewhere.

Then again, this cult has pulled in the majority of my family, and I might just think this because on an emotional level I'm having a hard time dealing with the idea that so many people I care for are so far gone.