Most "normal" people are so insufficiently aware that things like these are taking place in the world every day, and it is "normal".

I grew up in a light version of this - my growing up was full of conflict with a Catholic fundamentalist parent. I've also been upclose and personal with Network 21 (the strongest group of Amway distributors) who run an indoctrination system that's in many ways similar to this.

This is really evil, and people usually fail to understand that when I say that I'm against organized religion, this means that I'm against cults and indoctrination systems like this. They are a real disease that perpetuates itself in society, and even large and generally less fundamentalist organized religions have lots of nooks and crannies which are fundamentalist in this way. I've seen those nooks and crannies and people who perpetuate this on the Catholic side, and I can confirm that indeed these patterns are evil, and furthermore that they are not a deviation, they are an integral part of the system, they are the norm.

Now all it takes is for some more people to speak out, and for others to pay attention and listen to people with such experience, and not think that we just need to "make nice" and "reduce social friction", as alluded to in my previous post. This kind of thing destroys the lives of people it grabs on to - I am only a light victim of this, but see how dogemperor describes how she was raised. Beyond the people they affect directly, cults like these have the power to cause wars in which millions get killed, and they have a great eagerness to do it. The Iraq war may have partly happened because it had support from large masses of American Christian fundamentalists, who believe it is a stepstone to their rapture and salvation.

If you don't know much about the power and the nature of religios cults, please do educate yourself. Read the experiences of people like ex-dominionists, ex-opus dei, ex-scientology. Nothing is more tragic and more dangerous than people who wreck their lives and others' convinced they're doing the right thing, caught up in this system that totally prevents them from thinking.

And there are so many of these people. It sometimes seems as though 'light' versions exist wherever you look.