One October day in 1844, thousands of followers of William Miller awaited the return of Jesus in glory and their own glorious ascension to heaven. The non-event that followed became known as The Great Disappointment.<\/p>\n
It didn’t help that the whole non-believing world was laughing their asses off while the devastated Millerites grieved and tried to recoup.<\/p>\n
You’d think something called The Great Disappointment would have been the end of the Millerite cult. But only if you underestimate the self-justifying irrationality of human beings.<\/p>\n
Sure, some walked away. But many who walked simply became True Believers in a different sect (the Shakers, whose adherents advertised that their founder, Mother Ann Lee, was already<\/em> the second coming of Christ). Yet others stayed faithful, but just figured there’d been a slight miscalculation and projected various near-future dates for the miraculous event. Many remained devout Millerites, but with dozens of individual beliefs about what had really happened on October 22. As the Jehovah’s Witnesses would do 70 years later (when their world didn’t end on schedule in 1914), some of the Millerites would basically say that the prophesy proved 100% true — just not in the way everybody expected.<\/p>\n I’m particularly fond of the faction that decided that Jesus had decreed a permanent Sabbath as of his no-show day and that no believer ever had to work again. Nice Everything became very, very complicated for a while (as Wikipedia explains<\/a>), but the upshot was that the Millerites (today called Seventh-Day Adventists) grew more numerous and stronger than ever.<\/p>\n George R. Knight made this story famous 28 years ago in his 1993 study, Millennial Fever and the End of the World<\/em>. But it’s hardly a new development in human history. <\/p>\n No matter what the belief system, no matter how spectacular its failure, True Believers will not only find a way to go on believing — they will believe harder and stronger than ever. Disappointments will not disappoint them. Facts will not sway them. Logical argument will be damned as the words of the devil. Opposition of the world will merely unite them more deeply in their fanaticism. <\/p>\n Whatever new conviction they may settle on after a “disappointment” will likely be a super-duper hardcore variation on the same-old same-old broken belief system and the same old actions.<\/p>\n If they gain, or already hold, power over others (which the Millerites blessedly did not), they will use that power more and more ruthlessly to demonize, control, and crush all who fail to bend the knee.<\/p>\n —–<\/p>\n Yeah. You know that drill.<\/p>\n Others have noted that the packs of seeming lunatics now trying to rule the globe either are<\/em> religious cultists or so much like cultists as to make no nevermind. <\/p>\n But it’s the kind<\/em> of religious believers we’re facing that’s most vital to understand. Knowing that will help us cope with what comes next.<\/p>\n The woke demand that we believe in the historically unlikely and the biologically impossible or face demonization and unpersoning. Those awaiting the climate-change apocalypse are utterly undeterred by its repeated failure to arrive and insist more loudly than ever that the rest of us — those not in their<\/em> crowd — will eat soy, give up our cars, own nothing, and like it<\/em>. <\/p>\n And — as omicron madness rises from the ashes of the dying COVID panic to sweep the global “public health” establishment — we can expect the True Believers (who in this case have the added incentives of billions of dollars, increased political power, and media fame) to hit us, harder than ever, with the same-old same-old of their broken “expertise,” their failed prophesies, and their useless (and cruel) “solutions.”<\/p>\n Never mind that we know very little about omicron at this point. Never mind that what we do know hints that the new variant follows the standard pattern<\/a> for mutating viruses: more contagious but milder.<\/p>\n The True Believers of Public Health faced their own Great Disappointment. Millions were beginning either to ignore or strike back at the best panic they’d ginned up in their bureaucratic little lifetimes (a real and nasty disease, but eminently survivable even for 98+ percent of its most vulnerable victims).<\/p>\n So — GLOBAL CATASTROPHE, Part umpty-ump! Whoohoo!<\/p>\n And if previous tools didn’t “slow the spread” or sufficiently cow the peasants, then let’s use the same tools, only more and harder! Lockdowns! Shutdowns! Masks and more masks! Firings! Travel bans! Closed borders! Closed schools! Vaxx passports! Above all, more and more NEW JABS! And for the unbelievers, increasingly stringent punishments to Heck, even before the excuse of omicron, one country in Europe had already banned the dirty unvaxxed<\/a> from buying gasoline. (I also thought this was fake news until I checked beyond the original link I received.)<\/p>\n In Greece, where the average monthly pension is 730 Euros, every filthy unvaccinated resident over 60 will be forced to pay a 100 Euro monthly fine<\/a>. (But never fear, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis assured us he was \u201ctormented,\u201d the poor dear, by his decision to smack the most vulnerable. Also he wants us all to understand \u201cIt is not a punishment.\u201d That should make everybody, especially all the newly poor, feel better.)<\/p>\nwork<\/del> leisure if you can get it.<\/p>\nsave their souls<\/del> force compliance.<\/p>\n