Shoot the hostage quote movie#

The problem for the ambitious terrorist who wants to destroy American government has just been made more complex - instead of hitting one city with a special weapon, the terrorist has to hit any number of locations - as many as 550 to get every senator, congressman and the President and his cabinet. All of those speeches could be made, and votes cast electronically.

Wonderful antidote for insomnia.īut modern technology also makes it possible to dispense with the physical meetings shown on C-Span altogether. So what? Well, there's no real reason why Congress has to meet physically, is there? Every cable viewer in the country has a seat inside the House and Senate chambers and committee rooms, as well as Parliament - C-Span 1 and 2 are thrown in with most cable packages.

With the widespread use of fiber optics to replace copper wire as 'landline,' even electromagnetic pulse from use of nuclear explosives in the ionosphere is a solvable problem. As far as it goes, good point.īut as a nation, America already has the capacity to resist terrorist disruptions - our phone system.Īmerica's phone system is increasingly becoming resistant to terrorist attack. Mass terrorism involves a handful of people killing or threatening to kill hostages or innocent bystanders in order to undermine the people's confidence in their government.īoth Paul and Final Historian make the point that various WMD would disrupt government and society in general. Reeves' character shoots Bridges' character in the leg, leaving the terrorist stunned for a response. Reeves thinks for a minute and says 'Shoot the hostage - take her out of the picture' A few minutes later, Bridges' character is held at gunpoint by the man who set the boobytrap.

Shoot the hostage quote movie#

In the movie 'Speed,' the SWAT cops played by Keanu Reeves and Jeff Bridges are trying to rescue a booby-trapped elevator full of people, and while they're doing that, the older cop (Bridges) asks the younger one (Reeves) what he would do if confronted by a gunman holding a hostage at gunpoint. If you need a short phrase to sum up a blackmail metaphor, it could be something like, 'You can't blackmail yourself if there's nothing you need to hide from yourself.Take the hostage out of the picture - virtual government Maybe you encourage them to be less ashamed of their thoughts or to stop thinking so badly of themselves for having them. Maybe those aspects fit into a blackmail analogy for your clients. In a blackmail situation, if you decide you don't need to be ashamed of your secret, or if you realize the people around you won't actually think badly of you if they learn your secret, then the blackmailer loses his power. It sounds like you're encouraging your clients to stop trying to hide from themselves that they have these bad thoughts and to stop caring if the bad thoughts get out. But if you don't care about the information getting out, they have no power. If you have a secret, someone can make you do what they want by threatening to reveal it. The most similar nonviolent situation I can think of is blackmail. If the hostage dies, or you decide you no longer care about protecting the hostage, they lose their power. When someone is holding a hostage it gives them power to make you do what they want because you want to protect the hostage. My mind always thinks of this as “shooting the hostage,” which although it feels like an effective metaphor to me, also seems unnecessarily violent, especially for the setting of outpatient therapy.ĭoes anyone have any other suggestions for a different metaphor I might try out? posted by dreamphone to Writing & Language (26 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favoriteīest answer: I feel like a lot of the suggestions are missing the mark because they don't get at the key aspects of the hostage metaphor. In exposure therapy treatments, it’s not unusual to work to increase tolerance of the distressing thoughts, because once our brain can’t threaten us with “bad thoughts” (as we are now willing to think the bad thoughts), the spell often loses its power. For example, let’s say someone experiences intrusive thoughts that they will harm someone, and they perform rituals or otherwise distract themselves to drive those distressing thoughts from their mind. In my work as a therapist, I often explore with clients the cost of continuing to avoid a distressing thing when the avoidance has begun to take up a considerable amount of space in their lives.