Not just the government, but collusion with institutional and social media creates a profit incentive to sow discord, divisiveness. I was alive in the eighties and remember the religious right - the attitudinal support from mainstream media, etc. Today's politics look like a secular religious left. Not much different in the dynamic of the followers/leaders, the social glare they cast, the censorship. We really do learn nothing from the past - we all think we're living in 'unprecedented times' but I see more of the same, every year.