Jason Bourne, the Winter Soldier, and the guy in American Ultra were all put through government mind-control programs and given intensive training to be super soldiers and assassins. They demonstrate great skill and quick thinking. This flattering portrayal is meant to make the audience think that the government mind-control programs work nicely, that they are effective at providing formidable operatives who can be of great service to the public if harnessed correctly. But if we really had operatives like that, would we have lost in Afghanistan?
The truth is that the victims of government mind-control programs are not improved, they are damaged. For real missions that require a skilled killer, such as the assassination of a foreign military leader, the government wouldn’t use an MK Ultra wind-up toy. They’d just use a military sniper. The wind-up toys are unreliable and not used for sincere missions. They’re used for psy ops, such as mass shootings in America. Their conditioning wasn’t to make them more accurate shooters, it was just to make them willing shooters of random people. They weren’t trained to be fearless in the face of a foreign enemy, they were trained not to care about their own lives. The purpose of the MK Ultra wind-up toys is not for them to be secretly successful warriors, it’s for them to be public failures. It’s to demoralize the public by association, and to push political goals such as gun control. Normal people who value freedom and the first two amendments don’t want to be associated with Jared Lee Loughner, James Holmes, Dylann Roof, or Payton Gendron. None of these people were used for military operations, just for psy ops. All of them had previously been known by the deep state, had been using drugs, and had been handled by psychiatric “professionals”. Now they’re all broken and ruined, and none of them will be conducting a Jason Bourne-like mission of recovering his identity and taking down the deep state agency that pushed him too far.
The first thing that came to mind for me when hearing “Jason” is the guy from the Argos and the Golden Fleece. I’d guess Decoding Symbols would mention that mythological connection.
Ludlum’s book The Bourne Identity was published in February 1980. The first Friday the 13th movie came out three months later in May 1980. In the first book, it’s shown that ‘Jason Bourne’ is an assumed name and at the end he remembers his real first name is David. David is a name loaded with symbolism, too. Since the movie came out 20 years after the book and after the Friday the 13th movies, it’s possible that the movie makers were influenced by Jason Voorhies and incorporated some of his symbolism into Bourn’s character. It’s an interesting idea, similar to the Dr Octopus/ Frankenstein metaphor in Spider Man 2 and SM No Way Home.
Thanks for the money quote from Decoding Symbols. “People who are so messed up they shoot up an elementary school are not going to act like James Bond as they do it."