From: Jasper
Date: 14 Jun 2000
Time: 10:18:57
Jean,
Several movies have been based on that idea: The Manchurian Candidate, Telafon, The Naked Gun, an episode of Magnum P.I. and probable others I don't know about. Therefor, some people are going to chalk it up to fiction and move on. Ten or fifteen years ago I might have been one of them. Now that I've seen how much deadly tinkering with our subconscious minds have been going on for generations with archetypes and stereotypes on film and television I have to take your idea seriously.
What scares me more than government operatives covertly programming certain segments of the population to kill "undesirables" on cue is the potential for ANYONE with regular access to the media to do it. That's what Condor Broadcasting International and NPR stand for in The Random Factor. Given a large enough population with immediate access to deadly force and enough repetition of a given message to use it, you will inevitably get some percentage of the population to do so. That's what makes stereotypes such powerful weapons of mind control. In the Random Factor all manner of "futuristic" computer-based entertainment sources are used to produce that result.
I hadn't thought much before about a combination of the new mind-altering drugs and certain repetitive messages being used by an organized group (or groups) to get someone to do what this 13-year-old kid did. I'm thinking a lot about it now.
Another thing…Sleep depravation, some foods for some people or a traumatic event can have the same effect as a powerful drug under the right conditions. Consider the training of a soldier. Some of it has to do with tactics, equipment, fighting techniques and functioning efficiently as a member of a team. But uniformity and repetition are the keys. And lets be real…what are solders trained to do? To kill. --Jasper