con-sara-cy theories

Episode 51: The Manchurian Candidate & The Winter Soldier

Episode 51

The Manchurian Candidate was written by Richard Condon and published in 1959. It focuses on Raymond Shaw, a soldier who receives the Medal of Honor under false circumstances. This theme is updated in Captain America: The Winter Soldier  with its mysterious killer who's been turned into a brainwashed mercenary.

So is this all the realm of Hollywood and spy-fi novels? Or are these scenarios possible?

⚠️ Spoilers lie ahead!

Links:

https://www.amazon.com/Manchurian-Candidate-Perseus/dp/1568582706

https://tubitv.com/movies/664878/the-manchurian-candidate

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manchurian_Candidate

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manchurian_Candidate_(1962_film)

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/84079/13-conspiratorial-facts-about-manchurian-candidate

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manchurian_Candidate_(2004_film)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_America:_The_Winter_Soldier

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/brain-implant-depression-electrode-stimulation-surgery

Need more? You can visit the website at: https://consaracytheories.com/ or my own site at: https://saracausey.com/. Don't forget to check out the blog at: https://consaracytheories.com/blog.

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Transcription by Otter.ai.  Please forgive any typos!

Welcome to con-sara-cy theories. Are you ready to ask questions you shouldn't and find information you're not supposed to know? Well, you're in the right place. Here is your host, Sara Causey. 

Hello, hello, and thanks for tuning in. In tonight's episode, I will be talking about the Manchurian Candidate, the novel, as well as the films. More so the 1962 film with Lawrence Harvey and Frank Sinatra. Less, about the 2004 remake that has Liev Schreiber and Denzel Washington, and also the Marvel film Captain America The Winter Soldier. You don't get a film like the Winter Soldier without first having a novel like The Manchurian Candidate. Spoilers abound. If you would like to read the novel, which I hope you will please do so first, if any of these movies you have not seen but you intend to download this episode, bookmark it, come back to it. If you continue onward, I assume that you're fine with spoilers. So Let's saddle up and take this ride. The novel The Manchurian Candidate, was published in 1959 by Richard Condon. I read it over the course of three or four nights, and it was the kind of book where I would have to force myself to set it down so that I could go to bed in a timely fashion. It seemed to me to have a little bit of a slow start, but once I really got into the story, I didn't want to stop reading it. I really thought that it was incredibly fascinating. I thought about the best way to organize this episode. So I think what I will do is go through the plot of the 1962 film adaptation of the novel. I'll talk about material differences between the film and the novel. And of course, I'm going to be your typical English major book worm nerd here and say up front, the novel is better than the film, which is not to say that I think that the film is poorly done, not at all. You just get much more character development, much more plot development, the pacing is much more taught as you're reading the book, whereas Hollywood is going to have to cut certain things out and speed certain things up. And there were times in the movie where I'm like, that was just so much better explained in the novel. If you were watching the movie with no backstory, you'd be like, What the hell is even happening here? So I would recommend the book more so than either of the film adaptations. But with that being said, Any and all of the above are worth your time. So the 1962 film adaptation opens up in Korea. 1952 there's a group of soldiers who are playing cards, drinking, messing around with women. Sergeant Shaw is portrayed as a stick in the mud who wants no part of this carousing in the 1962 film adaptation. Raymond Shaw is played by Lawrence Harvey, who looks nothing like the way that Raymond Shaw is described in the novel. So that was a little bit of a Hmm, wait a minute moment, because he's like a tall, blondish haired guy with mustard colored eyes, which that, and of itself, conjures up a very weird image in your mind. When someone says yellow eyes, I automatically think of Scott Farkas from a Christmas story. So it was like, okay, all right, so Lawrence Harvey doesn't really look the way that I pictured Shaw as I was reading the novel. And then he also sounds like James Mason, which I didn't really picture that either. So little little bit strange there for me, but nevertheless, he does a good job. I think, of capturing this idea of Shaw as a stick in the mud who doesn't get along well with his former soldiers, doesn't really have a lot of fun. Is up tight and overly straight laced. This group of soldiers are captured by Russian soldiers and are flown away by helicopter. We go forward in time to Sergeant Shaw returning home and being chosen for the Medal of Honor. He is not happy about the recognition. His mother, on the other hand, is pushing for photographs. His stepfather makes speeches to the crowd that's assembled. And of course, this crowd is there because Raymond's mother has arranged it for publicity reasons. Another peculiar casting decision here is that Angela Lansbury was cast as Eleanor Shaw, but there's only like three or four years of difference between Lawrence Harvey and Angela Lansbury. So it is a little bit difficult to have a suspension of disbelief that someone who's barely older is the mother. I just thought that that was a little bit weird. James Gregory plays the stepfather Senator Iceland, which is at least somewhat more believable, but that just seemed to me to be a bit of a strange decision to have somebody that's barely older playing a character's mother. Raymond seems sullen, and he tells his mother that he's moving to New York to take a newspaper job. Job. Shaw's mother accuses the editor of being a communist, and Shaw says that he's a Republican, but they both loathe Raymond's mother and stepfather. Shaw's commander is now in army intelligence, and by the way, Shaw's commander, Ben Marco, is played by Frank Sinatra, who also was not really what I pictured in my mind as I was reading the novel. Mean, I know studios are always going to go with whoever's a big box office draw, but I was like, this movie seems to be oddly casted to me. So Shaw's commander is now in army intelligence and is victimized by nightmares from the war. And it's always the same scenario of a ladies meeting about flowers that morphs into a meeting about communist brainwashing that is spot on. That's exactly the same as the scenario happens in the novel. The men are told that they are like on a layover and they're at a hotel having to listen to a women's group meet about flowers and horticulture, when really this communist brainwashing is taking place. The troops have been brainwashed, and Shaw has been brought to the front to play a fake card game. The spectators want to see Raymond murder someone with his bare hands, and he is asked to kill whomever he dislikes the least. He's ordered to take a scarf and strangle Ed mavoli to death. Marco wakes up from his nightmare screaming. He confides his nightmare to others in the military, and they rebuff him. They decide that he should drop his accusations, and they diagnose him with PTSD, so he's then transferred to a job in public relations. Senator Iceland is stirring up these McCarthy esque statements of government officials who are closet communists and yelling about it on TV, he essentially orders the Senate to conduct an investigation on the matter. Another soldier, meanwhile, named Melvin, has the same recurring nightmare as Marco Shaw murders Bobby limbeck by shooting him. The soldier wakes up screaming from the nightmare, and his wife encourages him to write to Shaw for help while Shaw reads the letter from Melvin, the phone rings and his code phrase is given. Why don't you pass the time by playing a little Solitaire? Shaw does and hits the queen of diamonds. The Red Queen is his trigger card. He's told to go to a hospital at a specific time, and a news bulletin goes out that Shaw was mowed down by a hit and run driver. The Soviets bought a rehab facility for wealthy alcoholics, and they have Raymond hospitalized. I'm using air quotes here, hospitalized there. However, there has been no accident. He's there for his handlers to check on him and ensure he's still operational. The Soviets want to see that Raymond can actually perform. He needs a test run. Now, this is also all in the novel, the story about the Soviets buying a wealthy alcoholics rehab facility on American soil, and then taking Raymond there under the pretense of a false accident, putting false bandages on him. All of that is in the novel. So they want Raymond to murder someone on the outside to see if he can do it. Yin, who is like this, like brainwash mastermind, brainwash handler guy. He suggests that Raymond murder his own boss, Mr. Gaines, and then, if he succeeds, Raymond will get promoted into his job and become the editor of the paper. Raymond, of course, succeeds, Marco continues to deteriorate, and he tries to read random books on random topics, hoping he can forget that's also straight out of the novel. His boss comes to him, he learns that he's being demoted again and placed on leave, and it's an involuntary leave, like you're not being encouraged to do this. You're being ordered leave. While he's on a train, he meets this woman named Eugenie rose. They have some type of weird chemistry, and she gives him her address. This is also straight out of the book. Now in the 1962 film, Janet Lee is cast as Eugenie rose. This was another moment where I was like, Well, I that's not what I pictured. So I sort of pictured, based on the way that she's described in the novel, as being a much sturdier, stronger type of woman. You know, Janet Lee is very slender and delicate looking. So I was like, I don't really get her as Eugenie rose, but anyway, they they're on this train. They hit it off, apparently, like in a love at first sight, instant chemistry kind of way. So Shaw receives a call at work from Chun Jin, who had been his interpreter in the military, and Shaw is rather rude to him, but of course, the viewer knows that Chun Jin was actually in on the brainwashing exercise, and he's coming back now as a plant Senator Iceland and Raymond's mother are arguing about what she wants him to say to the public about supposed communists inside the Department of Defense, and she's obviously controlling him now in the novel, that's made much, much clearer, much clearer, that Raymond's mother is the brains behind. The whole operation, and you get this entire back story about how that's not included in the film, about how

 

Raymond's mother married his father when she was very young, and she has Raymond, and then she cheats on Raymond's father with this guy, Iceland, who had been a colleague at the legal firm, and she figures out that he's malleable, like she can make him into what she wants him to be. He will be her public face. She's living in a time when a female politician, a female president of the United States, would not be as possible as it is today. So she needs to be the puppet master, if you will. And she selects this guy, John Iceland, and he goes along with it. I mean, he's almost like putty in her hands, and they pretty much cease having any kind of sexual relationships. So she also becomes a procurer and finds women for him to sleep with. And it's like, as long as you keep doing what I want you to do, and I'm in control of you, then I'll make sure that you're taken care of. So it's, um, it's a very sick, controlling, perverse kind of relationship, although, let's be honest, we assume that those types of relationships absolutely exist, not only in Washington, DC, but I'm sure, in Hollywood as well. So Marco goes back to Shaw's apartment and beats the hell out of Chun Jin. He's not expecting to find him there. He goes to Shaw's apartment to find Shaw, and then when Chun Jin comes to the door, he just beats the absolute crap out of Chun Jin, and it causes him to have a flashback. So it's another reason why he's doing this beating. Marco is arrested and calls Eugenie to bail him out. Eugenie, meanwhile, was engaged to another man, but she breaks off that engagement because she wants to be with Marco again, because they've got this whole instant love thing going on that's also straight out of the novel. It might seem like that's just something that was invented for the movie, but actually it's an it's in the original novel. Shaw confronts Marco about the whole incident and tells him how bad he looks. Marco tells him about the recurring nightmares. Shaw had received a letter from Melvin, the other man suffering from nightmares. Shaw is suspicious, because Melvin claims that they were best friends when they were not. Marco goes to Washington, DC, and from a set of slides, he correctly identified Soviet officials from his dream, Melvin also identified the same men, so this begins to give more credence to their story. And the military sets up a joint intelligence program to surveil Shaw. Shaw and Marco sit and have a drink together on Christmas Eve, and Shaw tells Marco about this doomed romance that he had with a girl named Josie, who's the daughter of a man named Senator Jordan. Senator Jordan and Senator Iceland are like mortal enemies. Even though I believe they're members of the same political party, they do not get along at all. Their their politics are really antithetical, and Senator Jordan doesn't support this red scare that Iceland is trying to get going. And in the novel, as well as in the film, Raymond's mother destroys his relation relationship with Josie. Now it's made really clear in the novel precisely what she does to throw gasoline on this open fire, and it's awful. So when Raymond and Josie are like 1920 years old, something like that, they meet at this area where Senator Jordan has a summer home, and then Raymond's father had a summer home, and they're all there on vacation, Raymond gets bitten by a snake, and Josie comes to the rescue to help him out. And even though Raymond has always been cold and has never really been sexually active, he takes a shine to Josie, and the two of them really become inseparable over the course of the summer, but Raymond's mother disapproves of this relationship because she disapproves of Senator Jordan and his politics. So it's like she wants Raymond to get as far away from Josie and josie's father as possible. Plus, I just think that she has this sadistic streak of ruining things for Raymond. It's pretty perverse. So in the novel, all of this is much more clearly explicated, and she just berates Raymond and stays on him like all night long. It's like how prisoners will get worn down, like the cops will just put somebody in an interrogation room with no food, no water, no bathroom breaks, no contact with the outside world, keep them sleep deprived, so that finally, they'll confess to anything because they're exhausted, they need to urinate, they're hungry. I mean, it's like your basic root chakra needs take over, and so you'll basically say that you did anything. That's what she does to Raymond, just all. All night long, harps on him about how horrible the Jordans are and he needs to start his military service. He can just get away from her well, then she also goes to josie's father and lies. She tells josie's Dad that Raymond is a degenerate, a sexual degenerate and a homosexual, and that he needs to get his daughter as far away from Raymond as possible, like she's going to be put in danger being around a perverted sex predator. I mean that because that's the implication when she talks about him being other and otherwise degenerate. The implication there is that he's some kind of rapist, pedophile person. And I was just sitting there reading this, going, Oh my God. What kind of Wicked Witch does that to their own kid? That's really appalling. So we see this flashback in the film of Josie tending the snake bite and their romance beginning. It's really funny too, because Lawrence Harvey looks like he's 35 but he's supposed to be, you know, 1920 years old. And it's flashback. There was an another movie like that. Um, trying to remember, I think it was called My cousin Rachel. And there's a flashback sequence in that movie also where Richard Burton is supposed to be, like, 15, and he looks 25 or 30. It's just absolutely comical, because he's like, I'll see you later, father. And I'm like, Dude, you look like you could be that dude, that guy's brother. It's just, it's funny sometimes in the movies. So even though Raymond's supposed to be like, 20 ish, he looks like he's 35 at a grown ass adult man. So Raymond's mother thinks that the Jordans are communist, and he wants Raymond to leave them alone, or she wants Raymond to leave them alone. He caves in, of course, and abandons Josie, as I mentioned in the novel, all of this is much clearer in a bar like the flashback sequence is over with. So Raymond's in a bar and he hears the bartender utter his code phrase about Solitaire. By accident, Marco comes in and sees Raymond in a trance. Raymond then jumps in the lake at Central Park because the bartender said he wished that his wife would go jump in the lake. Marco is astonished by this behavior. Raymond says he doesn't remember what happened or why, and Marco connects the dots that in his nightmare, Raymond was playing solitaire, and he knows at this point that Solitaire is clearly a trigger mechanism. Shaw's mother has now changed her mind about Josie for political reasons, of course, and she now wants Raymond to get married to her. She's been in Paris, but will come home soon, and Raymond's mother wants them to get engaged. Now this is a different story than what we get in the novel. In the novel, Josie has actually gone off, I think, to somewhere in Argentina to get married to another man, but that man passes away, and Josie becomes a widow, so that's what provides an opening for the two of them to be able to get married in the novel, but in the novel, as well as in the movie, Shaw's mother is orchestrating all of this behind The scenes. She invites Raymond to a costume party that she is going to throw as a sort of welcome home party for Josie. And she also tries to gaslight Raymond into thinking that he treated Jocelyn in a way that was shabby and rude, although we know as the viewer, and of course, the person reading the novel that Raymond didn't have anything to do with it. She's the one that forced him to break up with Josie and then made up terrible rumors about her own son. Raymond agrees to go to this costume party only because he really wants to see Josie. His mother sneaks him away from the party to the library, and he's high, strong and nervous about Josie, and his mother claims that she'll offer him a drink to calm him down, but instead she activates his code phrase about Solitaire. Josie sees him through the window of this library and comes in, and her costume is the queen of diamonds. The two of them kiss and have this happy reunion. Raymond's mother talks to jocelyn's father and tries to goad him into supporting her husband for the VP nomination. Jocelyn's father threatens to hit Iceland with impeachment charges. Instead, Marco has a forced deck of cards made of all queens of diamonds, and the plan is to activate Raymond and then change his brainwashing protocols. Raymond is happily reunited with Josie, and they run away to elope. This also happens in the novel. Marco tells Josie that Raymond is sick and needs help, but she doesn't believe him. Marco says that that he will give them 48 hours to go off and have their honeymoon, and then he'll be back. News of the elopement makes it to the mainstream media. Iceland calls for Jordan's impeachment and accuses him of high treason.

 

So it's like, I'm gonna get you before you get me. Raymond sees this on television and flies off the handle. Raymond's mother activates his solitaire trigger and sends him to murder Senator Jordan. Raymond does, unfortunately kill Senator Jordan in the kitchen of his house, and then Josie walks in unexpectedly. So. Kills her as well. Part of his training in the brainwashing was to always kill witnesses, but he'll have no memory of it after it's over with. This also happens in the novel. It's a very sad scene where it's already bad enough that he's sent to murder his father in law, who seems to be an honest man, and then Josie walks in unexpectedly, and he kills her too. Marco comes home holding a newspaper with the headline about the murder. He knows that Raymond did it. Senator Iceland claims that his wife treated Josie like a daughter. Oh, and she's so distraught over the murder, Raymond calls Marco crying and wondering how on earth anyone could kill Josie. Marco wants to come get him, and he puts a pack of the forced deck cards in his pocket. Meanwhile, Iceland has been given the VP nomination. Marco triggers Raymond, and he relays the truth of his brainwashing. Marco wants to know the end game, but Raymond isn't sure. Marco tries to UN brainwash Raymond. Raymond's mother calls and tells him that the convention will reconvene at night, because all of this now is set amidst the backdrop of a national convention where they're going to nominate their president and VP nominees for the upcoming election. So his mother calls and tells him that the convention will reconvene at nine. O'clock, Marco tells him to call once he knows what she wants him to do. The plan is for Raymond to dress as a priest and be given a Soviet boom stick. He's expected to murder the presidential nominee, and then Iceland will take the corpse in his arms and deliver a rousing political speech. This too is also directly from the novel. She announces that she has been working with the Soviets and believes that Iceland will get in the White House and make martial law look like anarchy. She confesses to Raymond that she had no idea when she asked the Soviets to make a pop popper for her, she had no idea that the pop popper they would make would be Raymond, and she promises that she will pay them back and grind them into dirt for what they've done to Raymond. In the movie, she kisses him at least once in the mouth in a fairly provocative and suggestive way. But in the film, that's really the only hint of what we get from the novel. The novel is much more explicit. And I understand that that point in time, with censorship and films and the so called morality code in Hollywood being what it was, I'm sure they were limited on how much they could really even imply to the audience. But in the novel, it's frighteningly clear. So Raymond's mother, in in the novel, is sexually abused when she's a young girl. She starts to develop into womanhood around the age of 10, and her her own father takes advantage of her, and instead of resenting the incest and not wanting it to happen, she grows to love it, and she falls in love with her own father, and the two of them have an ongoing sexual relationship until he dies. At that point, her brother, who's an older brother, considers himself to be like the man of the house, the man of the family, and that's one of the reasons why she runs away at a young age and gets married to Raymond's father. She doesn't want to have anything to do with her older brother. The two of them are at odds with one another. They don't get along well, and she just worships her father, even though he was sexually abusing her and they were committing incest together, she just loves the deceased father, and has put him up on such a massive pedestal. Well, in this analogous scene in the novel where she has hypnotized Raymond and has told him this plan of what's going to happen at the convention when he murders the nominee. She sleeps with him. She tells him that he looks so much like her dead father that she's just overcome with passion, and she rapes him. I mean, I guess for all intents and purposes, that's what you would call it, because he's in an altered state of consciousness, and she commits incest on him. And I'm like, oh my god, this is like a crazy soap opera, craziness. Marco awaits Raymond's call to relay the plan, but the call doesn't come. Marco goes to the convention himself to see if he can find Raymond Iceland is nervous and sweaty because he knows what's going on, and so in the movie, like Raymond is only supposed to hit the nominee in the novel, Raymond's mother has rigged up like blood packs in Iceland's jacket, because Raymond is supposed to basically, like, graze one of his shoulders to have a non serious, non life threatening injury. But because of the blood packs, it's going to look serious. So you're gonna have this bloodied man holding a corpse giving this patriotic speech, and then he'll just be a shoe in for the presidential nomination himself. You. So Iceland's nervous and sweaty because he knows what's going to happen, but Raymond's mother chastises him to be still like Raymond is very good at what he does. He's not going to miss you. Don't have to worry. Marco spots the booth where Raymond is hidden, and he hightails it up there, but he's too late. Rather than murdering the presidential nominee, Raymond kills Iceland and his own mother, and then when Marco gets up there, Raymond tells him, when he gets the door open, that no one could have stopped them, not even an army could have stopped them. So the reason why he didn't call Mark Marco was because he wanted to finish everything. Marco was standing there looking shocked, and he sees that Raymond has added his Medal of Honor to his priest costume, and then Raymond turns the boom stick on himself and commits suicide. And he's considered a hero at the end of the movie by Marco, at least. And that is also a very similar ending to the novel. Raymond's goal is to take out Iceland and his mother and try to save the country from whatever heinous tyranny they're planning to inflict on everyone. If it sounds to you like there may be some parallels here between the novel and the movie and real life events. You're not wrong. On the back flap of the paperback edition that I have under About the Author we read, born and raised in New York City, Richard Condon began writing fiction in his 40s. He had previously worked in the movie business for more than 20 years as a press agent for Walt Disney Productions, putting in time at nearly all of the major studios. In addition to the Manchurian Candidate, a work that many feel disturbingly foreshadowed the pop pop of both President John F Kennedy and his brother Robert. He wrote numerous best sellers, including Pritz honor and Prince's family. He died in 1996 it is some rather interesting foreshadowing. The book was published in 1959 and the rumor is that Senator Iceland's character was based on Senator Joseph McCarthy, and that Raymond Shaw's mother is based on McCarthy's lawyer Roy Cohn, the first film adaptation that was released in 1962 was actually released in the United States on october 24 of 1962 right in the midst of all of the tension with the Cuban Missile Crisis.

 

If you want some additional kind of spooky information, you can go to Mental Floss, where they have 13 conspiratorial Facts About The Manchurian Candidate. I do think it's interesting, because the novel was a book that JFK really liked, sad situation that years later it would turn out to be, you know, a little bit too close to home, but I generally speaking, I will tell you, you know, I've talked about the ugly American also, if you find a novel, you hear about a novel and it's one that JFK said that he really liked it is not going to let you down. I apparently he had very good taste in books, because I've not read anything that was on his recommended list that I thought was not worth my time. So number one on the Mental Floss list is John F. Kennedy helped it get made. Frank Sinatra had a deal with United Artists and wanted the studio to make an adaptation of Richard Condon's 1959 novel, but the execs at UA thought the subject matter was too politically controversial and wanted nothing to do with it. Lucky for Sinatra, he had friends in high places, including President John F Kennedy Frank visited JFK, who'd been a fan of the novel, and the President made a personal appeal to UA head Arthur Crim, who was especially apt to listen because he was also the Democratic Party's finance chairman. Condon later told a Sinatra biographer that's the only way the film ever got made. It took Frank going directly to Jack Kennedy. End Quote, if you scroll down to number 13 on their list, you'll read the 1960 Democratic National Convention served as an inspiration for guidance. In the climactic scene set at the political convention, Frankenheimer and cinematographer Lionel Linden looked at news footage from the 1960 event at which JFK was formally nominated. Frankenheimer said many of the shots in that sequence are direct copies of real images broadcast in 1960 yet another connection between the Manchurian Candidate and JFK. End quote. In the 2004 remake, things are updated and tweaked around a bit. I mean, the general idea is still basically the same, Denzel Washington plays, Ben Marco. We have Schreiber plays Raymond Shaw, and in this version, he's like a US Representative from New York. And his mother is played by Meryl Streep. She is a US senator herself, and she's trying to position Raymond to become the vice presidential candidate. So it's like the idea of Senator Iceland being her puppet. All of that is replaced by different type of plot. In the 2004 version, they also update it instead of being the Korean War, the Gulf War from the 1990s I wanted to mention it at least briefly, because something different in. The 2004 version is this idea of, like, using a mad scientist, geneticist, dude who's done illegal human experimentation on political prisoners, and he's using, like, falsely implanted memories and brain chips, and so they're able to activate Raymond using technology and deeper forms of brainwashing than what the communists had in the 1959 novel. And I'm like, I would be remiss to not at least mention that we're living in an age where brain chips are no longer science fiction, but science fact that is creepy. I want to segue over to Captain America, the Winter Soldier, because, as I said at the beginning, you don't get a film like the Winter Soldier without originally having a novel like The Manchurian Candidate, by Richard Condon. In fact, in the Marvel movie, Captain America, Civil War, Tony Stark, played by Robert Downey Jr refers to Bucky Barnes, aka The Winter Soldier as hey Manchurian Candidate. One informs the other. I'm going to segue now to Captain America The Winter Soldier. Some people rag on superhero movies in general, and some people rag on Marvel movies, specifically as overly produced, commercial high Hollywood schlock for the masses. But in these films, there are some pretty interesting Easter eggs. If you really listen to the dialog and you pay attention and you don't just assume that it's all science fiction fantasy, you might be surprised, not necessarily pleasantly surprised, either. I'm not going to go through the whole plot of the film. I really just want to hone in on the parts that are germane to this idea of a Manchurian Candidate. Nick Fury shows Captain America a project called Project Insight. It's an underground bunker full of advanced level weapons that are linked to satellites. The weapons never have to come down. They can even read a T, word, T, E, R, R, O, R, i, s, t, s, d, n, a, before he ever steps out of his cave. Captain America is appalled by this and says, It's not freedom, it's fear. Fury himself begins to have concerns and goes to Secretary Pierce, who's played by Robert Redford to ask that the project temporarily be delayed. After he does this, he is almost murdered on the road, and the man who is his would be pop. Popper is the Winter Soldier figuring out that he missed the Winter Soldier comes back and murders fury in Captain America's apartment. Steve Rogers, aka Captain America, pursues him, but is not successful in catching him. Secretary Pierce interrogates Steve, but it's clear that Steve is not swayed. An attempt is made on Steve's life in an elevator. He's able to see it coming and defends himself and escapes narrowly. Steve confronts Black Widow about Nick Fury, and she says she knows who did it, the Winter Soldier. She was a victim of him too, and has a wound to prove it. She's tried to find him over the years, but has never been successful. Nevertheless, the two of them decide to try. They go to a seemingly abandoned military base in New Jersey, and it's the same one where Steve had his basic training. So if you watch the first Captain America, like Origin Story movie, that's the place where little, scrawny shrimpy Steve Rogers had basic training. At the base, they discover a machine containing the consciousness of Dr Zola, an obvious paper clip scientist, and in fact, Black Widow actually brings up paper clip by name Zola was also the man who took Bucky Barnes and turned him into the Winter Soldier in Manchurian Candidate style brainwashing. Zola tells of the Nazi Party, and his tales about the Nazi Party growing inside of SHIELD are chilling. It seems a clear reference to how Nazi imperialism informs the Charlie India alpha's decisions even today.

 

Think about this.

 

They imported evil, and the Soviets were not clean in this either, because they had aparazzi asovia him, where they too imported evil to their country. All these scientists and their knowledge, they're just too important. Annie Jacobson, who wrote a book about paper clip, talks about how they were at the docks at Nuremberg, scooping these people up, people who had committed atrocities, crimes against humanity, people who should have stood trial and then been condemned to the death penalty, wound up being repatriated because they were too important. This is reality in his book The. Wuhan cover up. RFK Jr talks about, you get this ideology into the system. It doesn't go away. It's not like these people said, well, we've been repatriated. We realized that we were wrong. We're no longer going along with Hitler's agenda. Mea culpa. We were bad to do this. That ideology continues to fester inside these organizations. And even a movie like Captain America, the Winter Soldier is freaking telling you it's on Front Street. Zola talks to them about how the Nazis infiltrated shield. Shield is a pretty clear stand in here for the Charlie India alpha, and they just continued to grow. So instead of really being defeated in the Second World War, they just found a different home with a lot more money and a lot more infrastructure. Just think about how chilling that is. Dr Zola says when history did not cooperate, history was changed. If someone tried to get in their way and stop them that person was killed. Zola tells them that HYDRA has finally created a world so chaotic that humanity is willing to sacrifice its freedom in order to feel safe. He even calls it Hydras New World Order, and announces that the Nazis actually won again. I'm just long pausing because I want you to think about that they finally succeeded in creating a world so chaotic that humanity is willing to sacrifice freedom in order to feel safe. And He even calls it a new world order when we think about what we've been through with the and by the time this episode hits the airwaves. Post November election, God Only Knows. Heaven only knows what we will have experienced with all of that, a world so chaotic. And then also think about September one, one, people are willing to trade whatever civil liberties are. Are necessary, wink wink, in order to just feel safe. Again, that is so freaky. Shield attempts to murder Steve and Natasha, but again, they narrowly escape. Secretary Pierce knows the Winter Soldier, and he orders him to kill Steve and Natasha. So you find out he's in on the whole gag. Zola wrote an algorithm to predict anyone who would be or could be a threat to Hydra. So this is like pre crime and thought crime. If someone's name pops up, they get killed. An operation Insight will allow Hydra slash shield, aka the Nazis and the Charlie India alpha, if we're being honest, to kill millions of people at a time, if that's what they choose to do. So if the algorithm decides you may not be a threat right now, but five years down the road, something might radicalize you and you could be a threat. Pop, done, eliminated. I'm long pausing again because I really want you to hear this. This is not just some silly, throw away comic book, movie folks, Steve and Natasha, again, narrowly escaped death, once face to face with the Winter Soldier, Steve realizes that this man is his presumed dead best friend, Bucky Barnes. The hesitation upon recognizing Him causes Steve Natasha and Sam, who is was the Falcon to be apprehended by shield. They are able to escape with help, and they discover that Nick Fury is still alive. He's injured, but he is still alive, and essentially faked his own death so he could go underground. Barnes begins to have flashbacks after his encounter with Steve, a group of scientists wiped down his brain through some kind of electroshock therapy. Steve says there's no way to salvage shield. In order to purge Hydra, shield has to go too. Of course, there's a big, epic showdown finale, but Captain America is able to break through Bucky Barnes's programming, and rather than killing Rogers, Barnes actually saves him. The Black Widow gives Steve Rogers a file from the Soviets about Barnes, and Steve wants to go find Barnes. And in the final scene, we see buggy Barnes going to an exhibit about himself, and he realizes who he truly is. So that's similar to how in the Manchurian Candidate, Marco had realized what was triggering Shaw, and he wanted to go in and see if he could hijack the brainwashing and clean all of the wiring out so that Shaw couldn't be used as an agent anymore. Of course, we know it's a sad ending. Well, it's, I would say, a bitter, sweet ending, because Shaw feels like he's making a sacrifice of himself in order to rid the country of Iceland and his corrupt mother, he feels like he has to also not only sacrifice them, but sacrifice himself. So what do you think is this fact or fiction? Is this the realm of sci fi or sci fi, or Could there really be by. Now some type of Manchurian Candidate who can be triggered and wouldn't even know, wouldn't even remember, would never feel any guilt about what they did, because they wouldn't even realize they had done it. Or is that still some far away, way off fantasy in someone's mind? I was having this discussion with a friend of mine, and one of the points that I brought up was Lord Elon and the brain chip like Yes. Ostensibly, we're told that this is going to help people with health problems. And again, I'm very libertarian on these points. It's like what consenting adults do behind closed doors. I don't care. I don't care if they want to smoke a joint, if they want to get down on the Get down, as long as everybody's an adult and they consent to the activity. I don't care if somebody has an illness and they say I want, like, I consent to this. I feel like I've been informed of the risks. I'm giving informed consent, and I want to do this. It's not my place to stop them. I'm worried about like these things are always presented to us in a positive light. It's meant to help people. Because what monster would say I don't want sick people to be helped? Nobody would say that I don't want somebody with paralysis to be able to use a limb again. No, nobody would say that. It's just what other implications are coming down the road? Because this is extending beyond things like paralysis, the loss of a limb, stroke victims, etc, to also include emotional issues. I'll drop a link to sciencenews.org and how they have a story about how brain implants are treating depression. So it's like, well, could there also be some kind of emotional manipulation that takes place with these things, and then what would be the consequences of that? So this was the discussion that I was having with my friend about Manchurian candidates. I don't think that you would even have to have a person go through some kind of deep brainwashing. I think at least theoretically, I know this is going to sound super sci fi, but I think at least theoretically, you could just put a brain implant in do some amount of brainwashing, trigger a particular emotion, or start using the power of suggestion through that brain chip. And you could have somebody that was like, I committed this crime. I don't even really know why I did it. Or I started to feel like God was telling me. I started to feel like Satan was telling me whatever, you know, whatever kind of sheep dipping they want to do around that person to make him seem like a kook. In fact, that general idea is postulated in the more updated 2004 remake of The Manchurian Candidate. It's less about the good old fashioned brainwashing and more about how science can just simply put a brain chip in and cause somebody to go cuckoo. Scary. Yes, I intend at some point to do an episode, or maybe a series of episodes, around Dave McGowan's book program to kill. I remember reading that book and just not sleeping very well at night for a couple of weeks. It just haunted me. It was the kind of thing like finding out about paper clip where you just realize you don't live in the world that you thought you lived in. Things are not sunshine, roses and lollipops. There are a lot of nefarious things that go on that John and Jane Q Public never know about. The information is findable. It's just so many people want to live on the surface. They want to get distracted by bread and circus and not ever contemplate some deeper things that really impact their life. So what do you think Manchurian candidates? Real? Not real? Do we solve this problem with a brain chip? Do people go into some deep brainwashing and then they commit a crime and they don't even realize what they've done? A point to ponder. Stay a little bit crazy, and I will see you in the next episode.

 

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