mission creep

the event, observation / perception of, reaction to -- mass hypnosis. derived from a specific historical event (video documentation), when the commander in chief addressed an active-duty armed forces division in a militarized zone. with careful diction, the president punctuated his statement : "and you will ... complete your --- " the pronunciation of "mission," elicited from the division--in all but perfect unison-- a slow crescendo, a roar, something like "rah" at its peak. the noteworthy aspect is both aural and visual. half a beat after the word was spoken (an apparent, if experimental, verbal prompt) the division members slowly raised their heads and emitted--some tentative, at first, some strong, then as a chorus--the crescendo-roar. it gave the distinct impression of hypnosis on a mass scale. the phrase then, not only denotes the incident described, but also the feelings elicited by it. more generally, it denotes the event (real or hypothetical), of grand-scale, schematic influence of human behavior/performance. (at least, and specifically in this case, to the degree of verbal prompting.) it might also be used as an epithet.