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populistindependent wrote:Interesting shift in the criticisms of Hugh.
professorpan wrote:.....
I have no animosity to Hugh, who I find to be oddly endearing in his singular brand of zealous evangelizing. His threadjacking drives men nuts, but this wasn't supposed to be about that, either. Really -- I'm not into character assassination. But fallacy assassination? Sign me up.
My goal is not to flagellate a manatee -- it's to address an idea that the manatee pimps with wild abandon. Not the control of media. Not Walt Disney's alliance with the military. Not obscure linguistic theories, or how words or phrases can be used to obscure or persuade.
That's all good stuff, and Hugh has an impressive and wide knowledge of propaganda and covert history.
That's not what this thread was about. It was an exasperated attempt to discuss an idea. To take one example and hold it up to the light.
But never mind.
Hugh Manatee Wins wrote:If you're wondering if Don Knotts and Jerry Lewis are 'in on it' then you REALLY HAVEN'T BEEN PAYING ATTENTION.
sorry to shout.
Actors don't make the decisions that put 'Borat' or 'The Golden Compass' or 'Star Wars' on the side of my city's buses.
Movies are like wars, they are started and financed and given greenlights for release dates WAY UP THE FOOD CHAIN.
Hugh Manatee Wins wrote:
sorry again.
Pat Tillman didn't start the invasion of Afghanistan but he was a very useful unwitting asset. GET IT?
damn. And you wonder why I repeat myself!
You are absolutely correct about 'reality-jacking.' We are drowing in fiction and it is laced with psy-ops, too! That's what I'm pointing at! If everyone is drinking out of the fiction river, don't you think it has been spiked upstream?
Hugh Manatee Wins wrote:
Hey, quick! What kind of guy does the word 'Mulder' mean to you?
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A hopelessly searching 'conspiracy theorist' who belongs in the National Enquirer?
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What? Not that the South African military tried to buy a Washington DC newpaper to do pro-apartheid propaganda? Connie Mulder? 'Muldergate?' 'The Information Scandal?'
Gosh, why didn't you immediately think that?
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Think audiences were just clamoring to see a TV series about military courts? No.
But they got conditioned by J.A.G. long before the Military Commissions Act of 2006 eliminated habeus corpus and the Enlightenment.
Hugh Manatee Wins wrote:Parents don't even know how their children's minds are shaped and when.
I see hippie-looking young women dressing their cute little girls up in military camo and I stop them and ask them what they think about this and they say, "oh, it's just cute."
No concept of conditioning, normalization, de-sensitization....none.
Attack Ships on Fire wrote: I did some quick searching and found this answer given on the Wikipedia page for Fox Mulder's name:
...Carter began his career as a screenwriter in 1985 at The Walt Disney Studios.
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Brother Craig is a Full Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT.
Tell me Hugh, don't you think that is incredibly far fetched thing to have happened, especially given that the series we're talking about is supposed to have a meme where the government cannot be trusted and is covering up assassinations and your disliked "woo-woo" subjects?
Hugh Manatee Wins wrote:Parents don't even know how their children's minds are shaped and when.
I see hippie-looking young women dressing their cute little girls up in military camo and I stop them and ask them what they think about this and they say, "oh, it's just cute."
No concept of conditioning, normalization, de-sensitization....none.
That is a separate topic and I agree with you that desensitization is prevalent everywhere now but it's far, far more bigger and probably less insidious than you fear. Kids playing violent video games doesn't mean that they grow up to become killers, or kids listening to death metal don't mean that they grow up to become serial killers.
You keep mentioning the camo clothing as an example of desensitization but if you want to pull no punches, why not point to the average grocery store and the butcher section? 100 years ago kids would see a lot more death firsthand, real death, not computer characters or nicely cleaned butchered meat products. Kids 100 years ago and further back got to witness hangings, see dead bodies bloat up, help participate in the slaughter of animals if they lived on a farm and so on.
My Grandmother is made of heavier stuff than I am in a lot of ways because she grew up on a farm, helped raise and then kill animals. I grew up playing video games where I murdered millions and I cry whenever I see an animal die. I and a lot of people in my generation are still children when it comes to the concept of real death while people born 80 years ago aren't.
Your theory doesn't make any sense to me because I believe that we as a society are being protected from dark discussions about things like death, not just from the outcomes of war but in just about every facet.
And Hugh, you completely dismissed all of my examples of counter-programming films that have been made and released by major movie companies. How do these films fit into your KWH theories? Have you watched them? Are you aware of them? Why don't you want to include for discussion these examples which I think blast holes in your idea of Hollywood being so extensively controlled by KWH?
Saying the name Mulder in "X-Files" was used as KWH by proving that it's a shared surname to someone involved in parapolitical field isn't good science.
That is a separate topic and I agree with you that desensitization is prevalent everywhere now but it's far, far more bigger and probably less insidious than you fear. Kids playing violent video games doesn't mean that they grow up to become killers, or kids listening to death metal don't mean that they grow up to become serial killers. You keep mentioning the camo clothing as an example of desensitization but if you want to pull no punches, why not point to the average grocery store and the butcher section? 100 years ago kids would see a lot more death firsthand, real death, not computer characters or nicely cleaned butchered meat products. Kids 100 years ago and further back got to witness hangings, see dead bodies bloat up, help participate in the slaughter of animals if they lived on a farm and so on. My Grandmother is made of heavier stuff than I am in a lot of ways because she grew up on a farm, helped raise and then kill animals. I grew up playing video games where I murdered millions and I cry whenever I see an animal die. I and a lot of people in my generation are still children when it comes to the concept of real death while people born 80 years ago aren't. Your theory doesn't make any sense to me because I believe that we as a society are being protected from dark discussions about things like death, not just from the outcomes of war but in just about every facet. And that has nothing to do with making little girls want to dress up in cameoflage clothing.
The effect isn't just about active killing. It is also about getting them to not react socially or politically against it.
FourthBase wrote:
But I don't completely agree with it. We as a society are being protected from dark discussions about death? You're in the industry, man, and you don't see that the television shows and movies and video games are literally swimming in more and more realistic simulations of gore?
The effect isn't just about active killing. It is also about getting them to not react socially or politically against it.
But again, look back to a time before TV and radio and even magazines. Chances are if you lived pre 1900 you would have seen a lot more death firsthand than we do today. Children were exposed to it at an earlier age. People didn't give sympathy cards when someone's loved one died. Burials and preparation of the body were more hands on for the surviving relatives of the deceased whereas today it's taken care of by anonymous strangers. I think that a valid argument could be made for children being more desensitized to death and violence pre Industrial Revolution than today. For every news report or video game showing a violent act there are also positive reinforcements of entertainment, cartoons and movies providing basic moral lessons to young minds. Would these positive reinforcements have vectors of transmissions to such a wide body of children 100 years ago? Would a child of a day laborer be exposed to the concepts that racism, sexism and bullying are bad things to do? I don't want to argue that we have a perfect society but I do think that too much negativity is placed on facets of modern life that can be used as scapegoats for the role of violence in society.
Oh they are absolutely more realistic about showing murder and mutilation. If you look at 2007 as compared to 1977, today we have far more processing power for the video game consoles so that makes sense why we see blood sprays and dismemberment done in detail in modern games as opposed to something like Atari's "Combat" with its crude block graphics and 4 colors. Television is another prime example; we now live in a 500 channel universe and we're getting more graphic (sexual and violent) content available for viewing as opposed to 1977's 3 channel universe. Movies started to show more graphic violence beginning in the 1960s and we now have more classification for shows to better inform people of what to expect. Pushing the boundaries does mean that the next filmmaker to do it will have to go that one step further. Romero showed us dead cannibals in "Night of the Living Dead" in 1968 but if you compare it to "Dawn of the Dead" in 1979, the latter is far more graphic than its predecessor. I believe that is a result of the advancement of culture, for better or worse, and letting filmmakers have more freedom and sales outlets to market more extreme films.
DrVolin wrote:Whether this shift merely reflects changing societal attitudes, or whether it is partly or wholly engineered, it is real. Hugh's contributions help me reflect on the extent to which there is engineering.
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