My first thought just reading the title of thread was, "does a bear x@#$ in the woods?"
How the wt could not be thought of as a cult is beyond me and that is after reading specifically about cults, brainwashing, etc....when mine first joined up, and all of those books did not even mention jw's. Many were going back to when US soldiers were coming back from Korea, psychology and so forth. Seeing my own husband succumb and its effects solidified my belief that jw's are most certainly a cult. One can clearly see him go into cult mode (eyes, mannerisms, speech, etc..) and I am not alone in seeing this phenomenon. Scary as hell when you see for the first few times! Was scary enough for me to see much less explain to children at the time.
Over time his spiral into jw-ism is less prominent, I think he has just learned to hide it better over time. He clearly saw that people were shocked by his demeanor, appearance or something when he went full on jw. I can still see it and it still pisses me off when happens. I'm trying, I don't show him that I am annoyed but it is there. Some things he says are right out of a wt or maybe their videos and it annoys me no end. I have become them- change the subject. sigh.