Festinger and his team were with the cult when the prophecy failed. First, the "boys upstairs" (as the aliens were sometimes called) did not show up and rescue the Seekers. Then December 21 arrived without incident. It was the moment Festinger had been waiting for: How would people so emotionally invested in a belief system react, now that it had been soundly refuted?
At first, the group struggled for an explanation. But then rationalization set in. A new message arrived, announcing that they'd all been spared at the last minute. Festinger summarized the extraterrestrials' new pronouncement: "The little group, sitting all night long, had spread so much light that God had saved the world from destruction." Their willingness to believe in the prophecy had saved Earth from the prophecy!
I've been enjoying the widespread mockery of this whole 'rapture' nonsense.
While the internet definitely provides fertile ground for the breeding of such hoo-haw and hands out megaphones to anyone who wants to trumpet their crazy notions, it also gives everyone else a platform to comment.
Whereas in the past you'd maybe see a Rapture billboard and snort derisively, or the news would report on it in their useless "we can't take sides, so we're going to present this patently insane story as if it were anything more than Weekly World News cover story bait and leave you grinding your teeth, I was able to join a Post Rapture Looting group on Facebook (800k members as of this morning) and get laughs from snarky wall posts.
The fundies and the right wing make a good pair.
They can both be perpetually, categorically wrong about pretty much everything, racking up strings of spectacular public failures without suffering any erosion of support from the faithful.
And both lose credibility with the rest of society when they get too specific with their mumbo-jumbo. Like this kook with his specific date for the Rapture. As long as it's just a fuzzy shape in the (ever receding) distance the general public won't sweat the details much.
When you sharpen the focus and people get a clearer look at your game, Joe Public usually doesn't like the view. Ditto with the Republicans allowing their Jihad against Medicare to be set down in relatively unambiguous terms by the Ryan "budget".
Both factions reject reality and both serve their purpose best by speaking in code and futzing on the specifics. It's been interesting seeing them out in the open over the last month or so- neither has fared particularly well.
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