Hacker Cinema
The Manchurian Candidate
2004 · Film · 130 min
Directed by Jonathan Demme
Years after his squad was ambushed during the Gulf War, Major Ben Marco finds himself having terrible nightmares. He begins to doubt that his fellow squad-mate Sergeant Raymond Shaw, now a vice-presidential candidate, is the hero he remembers him being. As Marco's doubts deepen, Shaw's political power grows, and, when Marco finds a mysterious implant embedded in his back, the memory of what really happened begins to return.
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6 comments on Hacker News
The Manchurian Candidate was along these lines, though it has an (early) happy ending, before the candidate becomes president, at least in the movie. I haven't read the book.
Nothing wise about Martin Luther King's dream? Not many bible beliving people would say dreams are meaningless or cannot have higher meaning. I don't think my dreams are particularily important for anyone else but myself. But I have not had nightmares about the kinds of things soldiers have. PSTD suffering soldiers don't have many people to turn to. It was the subject of the movie the manchurian candidate. Great movie if you haven't seen it.
No one listens to the nightmares of those who suffer war and that is the main reason we face a catacylsm. No one wants to hear that either. So I am sure you will be no different.
JFK also was influential in getting the excellent Manchurian Candidate movie made—which fell out of circulation for many years after he was killed. I can't remember if it had to do with that or not.
Notice though that the game is only distributed on platforms controlled by large corporations. So it's kind of like going to a movie theater to watch a big budget movie where the villain is an evil corporation (e.g. the 2004 Manchurian Candidate remake). That's why I liked the OP's line that the only punk move is not to play, and why I submitted this story even though I'm not into gaming.
Check out the movies - The Manchurian Candidate and The Game.
i'd like to second this reading recommendation and add that in the first few paragraphs of this book i found one of the more inspired and simple brain hacks i've ever tried (paraphrasing here ... the book's on a 6-degrees loan somewhere):
"to free your mind of its cluttered and stunted awareness, walk around the room calling out at the objects you see, but use different names for everything. look at the chair and say 'banana', then the door and say, out loud, 'desk', and so on. go on walking and calling things by their wrong name out loud. it takes a few minutes, maybe 10, but soon you might notice something happening. maybe a kind of brightness falls over the objects in the room around you. suddenly things appear more vivid, fresh and new, for no particular reason. it's like an adrenaline shot for your creative mind. getting into this state takes deliberate effort at first, but gets easier with practice."
if you're familiar with it, there's a scene from the remake of 'the manchurian candidate' that uses a similar lighting effect to signal an altered state of mind for key characters. but it's nothing like that. those are the movies. -- just to set the right expectation.