Chapter 8
Rationalization: Finding Harmony in the Discord
When you rationalize, you do just that. You make rational lies.
—Author Unknown
Dorothy Martin talked to aliens. They told her of the cataclysm that would destroy much of the civilized world. On a fateful Tuesday, water was to engulf much of the land between the Arctic Circle and the Gulf of Mexico, destroying cities on the West Coast from Seattle to Chile in its wake. Earthquakes would rock the Midwest, devastating Chicago, among other cities. That would be just the beginning. Within the next year, the entire world would see its doom. The Tuesday when the world would see the first prelude to its horrific final act was December 21, 1954. That day came and went. The highly anticipated cataclysm did not.
Although Dorothy received her messages directly from aliens on the undiscovered planet Clarion, she was not the only one to believe the prophecy. Indeed, she amassed a cult following of 13 disciples, who had forsaken their material lives in anticipation of being rescued by spaceships on the eve of the predicted disaster. Among them was Dr. Charles Laughead, whose proselytizing of Dorothy’s prophecies to his students at Michigan State College led to his untimely dismissal from his prestigious job—and $10,000 annual salary that accompanied it (equivalent to approximately $82,000 in today’s dollars).1
In the months leading up to the prophesied catastrophe, Dorothy and her followers, particularly Charles, begrudgingly indulged ...
