From: Jasper
Date: 10/18/00
Time: 12:09:51
PM
Laraad2000
Exactly! That's the theme running through every one of my books.
It hit me full blast in 1971 when I was on emergency leave from Vietnam and a woman came up to me and asked me how it felt to murder children. You can read that story in the first chapter of The Invisible Warriors. I swear to God it really happened. Something similar happened to many returning Vietnam vets. To the woman who accosted me and assaulted me with her words, I was a monster. I have no doubt that she "saw" in my uniform what she believed was the truth.
Over the years I have learned that conspiracies of evil intent are not nearly as common or dangerous as "conspiracies" of shared perception. That's what led me to write The Random Factor Trilogy and to get so involved in the murder trial of O.J. Simpson. To the extent that people see and believe the same images they behave in the same way. That's why dictatorships always control the media.
Why did so many ordinary German's think it was a good thing to kill Jews, Gypsies and other "enemy's of the state"? Why did the word turn a blind eye to The Rape of Nanking and the systematic slaughter of nearly a quarter million Chinese. It was because of the way they saw them. Why did so many ordinary Hutus in Rwanda think they were right to kill so many Tutsis? It was because of the way they saw them. Ditto for Bosnia, Sudan, Cambodia and Laos. And how can we forget the Klan in the Jim Crow South or the "renegade" cops in every major city of the United States? How can we forget the African-American's who call each other "niggers" and behave accordingly? Film, radio, newspapers and especially television are weapons. Whoever controls them control the people who rely on them for news, information and especially "entertainment."
Most North Americans and Western Europeans believe they are sophisticated enough to distinguish news from propaganda, but their vision blurs when the information is not coming from their government. When it comes to entertainment, it doesn't take much for skilled image manipulators to lead them wherever the image-makers desire. The better the "show" the more effective the propaganda. --Jasper