Also, simply hardly watching any TV and not listening to AM radio talk shows or most anything else on radio except for NPR helped.

In my family and extended family, of those who turned far right, there were people with drive and people with no drive, there were people deeply religiously indoctrinated and people eschewing religion, there were poor people and slightly less poor people. But there was a commonality that they didn't want someone else to get something that they didn't think they deserved. There wasn't a sense of shared sacrifice, but rather an everyone-for-themselves mentality. And I think that at the root of it was fear.

Both my parents became indoctrinated by the fundamentalist xtians in their later years, turning from what I'd thought were strong independent thinkers who'd taught me to be a strong independent thinker myself, into angry, paranoid, and brainwashed sheep. It was very, very sad, how miserable they were in their later years. Nothing could bring them joy, except, perhaps on brief occasions, an experience of being out in the pureness of nature, away from people.

A good question. It made me think, and I"ll keep thinking about it.