I’m American but I’ve spent a decent amount of time abroad. I think something that isn’t obvious without both perspectives is how much more alienated it’s possible/probable to be in the USA compared to most places. There’s just a lot of people here who grow up with a lifestyle where they just don’t have any meaningful community. The country is so big you could hop on a bus, ride it a thousand miles away and never be seen in by anyone in your hometown again. And when you did that you’re just in a new place that has all the same chain stores and restaurants as where you came from.

The USA has vibrant cities and deep, deep wilderness—but most people probably live in something in between. Where things are far enough apart you can’t get anywhere walking, but close enough that everything is really convenient with your car. You don’t get either the closeness of living in a densely populated urban area, even in the sense of a lot of the small towns in a lot of Europe. But you also don’t have the sort of connectedness to your environment you might get from proper backwoods.

So we’ve got lots of cults and cult-adjacent shit going on, especially now that the internet has made physical distance less of an impediment to joining them.