What happens when the world does not end on the day predicted by the Wise Leader? When our alien forbearers do not arrive to transport Earth to the 17th Level of Effervescent Insight? You would think that followers would be disillusioned and abandon their leaders and beliefs. And some are. But very often, most are reinforced in their beliefs, and approach them with renewed vigor. Weird, huh? But also weirdly similar to our current political situation.
Why didn't the Republican loss in 2006, followed by a trouncing in 2008, turn them away from their failed and rejected belief system? One idea seems more useful to me every day: Cult behavior.
After cult members see the failure of the prophecy, they find a reason to recommit to their beliefs. If the aliens didn't arrive to help us, it isn't that the Wise Leader wasn't talking to any aliens. There just weren't enough believers yet. Or the Altar of Invitation wasn't shiny enough.
Because the alternative is to believe that all the effort undertaken was misplaced, and that the people who called us fools were right! This is hard to accept, often much harder than an incremental recasting of the cult's beliefs to encompass the failed prophecy.
So let us turn our eyes to our Republican brethren and susteren. Eight years of tax cuts and culture wars did not produce their desired economic and cultural progress. At the end of it, the voters roundly rejected them. They achieved neither policy nor political Nirvana, nor any obvious progress down that road.
You and I might expect most of them to question at least their tactics, if not their beliefs. But that is not what we've seen.
Instead the ascendant folks say that they were not conservative enough, did not cut taxes enough, did not cut support for the whiny, lazy poor enough. Rather than wonder if their orthodoxy made sense, they doubled down by intensifying their orthodoxy.
The classic work on this is When Prophecy Fails. It reports on a UFO cult after the aliens didn't arrive to rescue them from the end of the world (which also didn't arrive, in case you were curious). Most folks decided that the aliens had chosen to spare the Earth because of the work of the cult. Had it not been for their diligent efforts, we would all be dead by now, but luckily for you and me, these folks had shown we were worthy to be spared. What a wonderful message! It was time to let all of us know how they had saved us all! And how grateful we should be to them!
Hence, the Tea Party. Yes, one reason for their anger is racism, another is just losing to the Bad Guys (a.k.a. "anyone else"). But I think the major cause for their outrage is that they cannot accept that they were wrong. They must double down on their orthodoxy. They must make it clear to all of us that they were right and we are dangerously wrong (and ungrateful for their efforts to put us on the right track). They believe now more fervently what they believed before on taxes, culture, dependency, state intrusion, …
They will even shut down the government again. rather than learn that the last time they did it was a failure.
And they will also purge themselves of any impure people because lack of purity is what apparently doomed them to failure last time. Murkowski and her ilk are not just wrong, they are part of the reason we didn't reach Nirvana before, which makes them double-crossing traitors, the worst of the worst. No wonder they will kick against the Republican establishment. It was the Republican establishment that doomed them to this exile, and they will not be taken up by the saucers until they cleanse themselves of this weakness.
This nicely aligns the economic, anti-gov't, and neo-conservative theology of one part of the Republican party with the actual theology of their religious partners in the Big Tent of the GOP. The religious folks think this way as a matter of course — being Taken Up is a common expectation of the religious right. While neocons need not share this literal belief, their feelings arising from their disconfirmed expectancy of success is starkly parallel.
There are many reasons why the public at large may reward them anyway, but these are disconnected from the core of this motivation and energy. The Republican/Tea Party internal logic will ignore any reality to justify existing beliefs.
I don't know how we get out of this situation. Maybe aliens will come and save us?