I would guess that you started to be aware of politics about 10 years ago. You're off by at least 30 years or so... For example, the removal of Jerry Pournelle

I would guess that you started to be aware of politics about 10 years ago. You're off by at least 30 years or so... For example, the removal of Jerry Pournelle's free account at MIT because he kept mentioning ARPANET in his column in Byte magazine. Then he accused MIT's sysadmins of being communists who wanted to destroy America's military... That was 1985. The X project started the year before that.