So I might quibble over 'halfway'.

The language and legal pollution is much swifter and more deadly - in a culture of short attention span, untrained to debate competently -- and dedicated mainly to ease -- particularly the ease of escaping the difficult and lonely process of thinking for oneself.

Throw in massive daily Distractions, so as to keep the folks consuming (thus distanced from any time or place as might result in peaceful thought) and not much is apt to be noticed, as various small Popish Presidential Memos are acted upon. cf 1/2001 onwards.

Can Heil Christ .. be very many financial quarters down the line?
Great fodder for future experimental anthropologists, though.