system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[The Stand] I am a historian, in the post plague year of 2050. What's the deal with all this stuff about how the Vegas dwellers were literally governed by the devil?

Is that just propaganda? 

Was the Boulder Free Zone really founded on the mandate of God? 

Was the nuke in Vegas really God's will? 

I am not a particularly faithful person. 

Now, I'm trying to teach an objective class here, and... to be honest, I don't know how to separate the myth from the people.

Is it possible that this... Randall Flagg... was really as bad as he was told to be?

Is it at all possible that a woman around a hundred could effectively organize a state that would conquer the world?

Is it really true that Flagg was in some measure responsible for unleashing the virus? All pre-plague records seem to have no knowledge of him. 

Now, I'm not some Neo-Flaggist, but... it seems pretty ridiculous to me, as a man of science, that one man could have caused such a cataclysm. 

Does the truth lie in the middle?

Lord knows that I'll be stripped of my post by Abagailists if this ever gets back to my university.

And if they ever see my tattoo, may the Crimson King help me.
gpt
The issue we run into here is that the testimony of every original resident of the Boulder Free Zone includes at minimum one incident that can't be readily explained; a vision of Mother Abigail, rallying them to Boulder. Trying to be completely objective on the subject means confronting that elephant in the room, either to explain it away or to acknowledge it quickly and move along. *Something* beyond pre-Superflu science prodded that situation along, and it would be irresponsible to turn a blind eye to the existing something.

On the subject of both Abigail and Flagg, neither was the be-all, end-all of their respective faction. On Abigail's front, she mostly served as a figurehead and spiritual leader, while the actual nuts and bolts of building and running the Zone was performed by the residents. Flagg, meanwhile, was mostly working with tools built and mismanaged by the United States Military, and rode the wave of chaos created by their failure to contain and manage the Superflu. He nudged, and he prodded, and he drew people to his banner much like Abigail, but he wasn't micromanaging the downfall of human civilization. 

The "middle", as it were, is that the Superflu and the resulting Boulder/Vegas conflict was a human issue, and while supernatural influence was in play, most of the big action was made by normal people. The forces beyond this would could nudge, and prod, and direct, but it fell to humanity to actually make the choices and take the actions at hand.