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Yes.

Charlie was nurtured in the beginning by Hollywood and music elites. Why? Are they just drawn to inherent evil?

And, of course, the girls kept their love for him alive despite everything, including their own ruined lives.

One of the traits that drew my husband & I together 45 years ago is that both of us are immune to bullshit and control. When we try to analyze it, it goes back to our earliest memories. _Something_sends up red flags and sets off alarms:”this does not compute”.

He had a cold, controlling and physically abusive father. I had a narcissistic mother who was cold, controlling and emotionally abusive. She changed history often enough that I became adept at detecting it and could not be gaslighted. Our opposite sex parents were loving and protective. I also had a wonderful grandmother for 15 years.

Both of us, of course, encountered cults in the 60s....you couldn’t avoid them. Neither of us got more than peripherally involved for short times before fleeing. Both of us became involved in the leftist political movement, but the leaders/recruiters sensed our resistance and we were both excluded from anything other than outlier events. We encountered the betrayals and internecine ugliness early on and left the left. It took another 8 years to drift rightward, mostly because of Reagan’s economy.

So, I don’t think people can be deprogrammed. Looking back, we chose a rural, craftproducer lifestyle and didn’t even have TV due to poor reception for half the 70s, all the 80s and the first past of the 90s. Eventually, we found our friends were all Christians and Republicans. It was organic. These were the people we could talk with. It helped that we found folks who, while committed in their faith, were not prudes, used street language when appropriate and had a clear sense of authenticity. But they didn’t change us. We’ve always been who we are.