By definition, any episode of Final 24 has to try to suggest a drumbeat effect, and sure enough, the producers have duly bolted it on, with the voiceover announcing melodramatically "Seven hours to live...", "Four hours to live..." But in fact, the drumbeats started long before this.
Koresh had been born to a 14-year old single mum, which appeared to be the normal idea in that part of Texas. Unremarkable, slow at school, bullied by his mother's various lovers, he developed a secret longing for absolute power and control, and soon saw that the quickest route was through a minor religious movement, conveniently away from the spotlight.
He had at least read his own situation correctly. Untalented in any other way, he possessed a rare gift for convincing a congregation that he alone could interpret God's will. And so, he gained ascendancy of the dubious cult known as the Branch Davidians, whose history should have raised every red flag, but didn't. The running costs were underwritten by armaments trading. The power struggles had included a murder. And the victorious leader Koresh declared every woman in the movement to be his property, with their husbands deprived of marital rights, and endless children popping-up, fatherless, or not, according to how you define their status.
After officials investigating reports of child-sex in the Waco compound were fired-on, the FBI took over and began their 51-day siege. Only the naïve could have claimed that it was the FBI who started the final and fatal fire ("David would never have killed children..."). Armageddon was on its way, for it had been in Koresh's script from the start.
Koresh had been born to a 14-year old single mum, which appeared to be the normal idea in that part of Texas. Unremarkable, slow at school, bullied by his mother's various lovers, he developed a secret longing for absolute power and control, and soon saw that the quickest route was through a minor religious movement, conveniently away from the spotlight.
He had at least read his own situation correctly. Untalented in any other way, he possessed a rare gift for convincing a congregation that he alone could interpret God's will. And so, he gained ascendancy of the dubious cult known as the Branch Davidians, whose history should have raised every red flag, but didn't. The running costs were underwritten by armaments trading. The power struggles had included a murder. And the victorious leader Koresh declared every woman in the movement to be his property, with their husbands deprived of marital rights, and endless children popping-up, fatherless, or not, according to how you define their status.
After officials investigating reports of child-sex in the Waco compound were fired-on, the FBI took over and began their 51-day siege. Only the naïve could have claimed that it was the FBI who started the final and fatal fire ("David would never have killed children..."). Armageddon was on its way, for it had been in Koresh's script from the start.
