"Jeff Hecht - The Awful Truth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hecht Jeff)

tottering, and ready to fall with the slightest push from the glorious working
class."
"It's about time," the Party Secretary began, then paused to hold back
a cough. "We keep hearing that the imperialist empire is rotten. But we never
heard anything about you."
"I was under deep cover. Very deep cover," mumbled the newcomer. "The
Secretary ... the man who was Secretary before you ... said I should not
return until my work was done."
"The Party does not believe in the violent overthrow of the United
States government," the Party Secretary recited the legal exorcism recommended
in front of suspected police informants. "We merely wish to exercise the right
to peaceful dissent."
"I didn't do anything violent. I don't know how to make bombs..."
"So..."
The little man looked straight at the Party Secretary, trying to appear
soldierly. "I was assigned to destroy the will of the American public.
Psychologists had just discovered the power of subliminal messages. The
capitalists used them to deceive the working class, to lure them into fighting
imperialist wars and to make them think they benefitted from capitalist
exploitation."
"They made my daughter a class enemy. A Yuppie lawyer!" spat the Party
Secretary as he put the cigarette in his mouth and began searching his pocket
for matches.
"I was the one who saw the power of television, back at the start of
the War. I saw that it could reach every home in the country. And I knew that
the capitalists would try to control it, like everything else. They wanted to
make it a new opiate for the masses, to replace the old religions, but I knew
it could rouse the anger of the working class."
"The working class in this country haven't gotten off their collective
fat duffs in the past forty years," spat the Party Secretary. He lit his
cigarette, inhaled, and coughed.
"Well, yes, but that was ... well, that became ... part of my plan. I
had to hide, you see, or they would catch me before I could subvert their evil
designs. It was hard. At first I tried deep subliminal messages, hidden even
from the advertisers, but they didn't work. Instead of loving Comrade Stalin,
they all feared him..." The two old Party workers looked away as he shook his
head.
"But I would not admit defeat. If I could not build up, I would tear
down. I started with the programs, convincing the networks to make them a
little dumber each year. Then I began working on the signals themselves. I
found resonances with the electric fields in the human brain. The people
talking about the hazards of electromagnetic fields have missed the real
danger. The 60 cycles of electric current is just a little too high. When I
helped set the standard for color television, I make sure it shows 59.94
fields per second. That puts the subtle flicker of the screen in perfect
resonance with the biochemical cycle of neural tissue. An hour of watching
each day conditions neurons to misfire. Gradually, it destroys reasoning.
Children can't focus their eyes on a page to read. Adults can't reason or
think through the consequences of their actions. It destroys patience and the
will to work hard."