So, you are arguing that ordinary civilians should not be allowed to be part of our government? That we should instead have a military dictatorship? That is a an absolutely terrible idea.
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Oh gods no, that is terrifying!
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I had a chat with Heinlein in the 1980s about the idea. He made it quite clear that (1) the novel was fiction, and (2) the idea was based on a society at total war, where the entire political and industrial economy was geared to supporting the effort of a fight for survival. If ‘uniting against the common enemy’ is the premise on which the entire system rests, then it makes sense that its leaders must have military experience. Not otherwise.
It was not to be taken as a prescription, any more than the theocracy of Nehemiah Scudder or the grass-roots down-home parliamentarianism of Tunnel in the Sky.
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You do realize that the society in Heinlein’s Starship Troopers was straight-up fascist, right?
It also stands to reason that any such society would be constantly looking for new enemies to fight. It’s an outright monstrous basis for a society.
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Ehhh…I’d rather not go full Heinlen-brand fascism quite yet.
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And I thought that bit was what caused some people to dismiss Heinlein as a fascist?
And wasn’t the fine print “public service” rather than specifically military? Either it says so or people have argued, I forget. The book is about a war, so the other service is buried.
There’s also a big difference between not serving and being a flake.
That may be some of the issue, a bad businessman and reality show “star” somehow becomes president (so I guess it’s true, everyone has a shot) withiut any electoral involvement. Even Reagan had been a governor before running for the presidency. Nobody in “recent” times that I can think of hadn’t previously been in office. Surely if nothing else, it works as a "finishing school " so no crudity lands in the oval office.
The military-based social structure depicted in Starship Troopers was set to have grown out of the collapse of “20th Century Western Democracies” which succumbed to “crime” and “juvenile delinquency” due to a lack of moral and social discipline. So the rise of fascism predates the war with the bugs in that novel.
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Heinlein was assuming that if the fight were ever won, that there would be a Cincinnatus, Washington, or Eisenhower to hand the reins back to the civil government. As a retired naval officer himself, he thought that nobody would loathe war as much as someone who’s seen it.
There appears, though, to have been a subtext; firefighters, police, logistics, transport, were all apparently militarized, or at least under military discipline. Many government bureaux appear to have been staffed with non-Citizen employees. Heinlein tried to gloss over this in Expanded Universe, but there are scenes in which people are dissuaded from entering Federal Service because there’s no war on, suggesting that all Federal Service is indeed military.
But, as I said, the whole thing was advanced as a hypothetical. Heinlein’s message is: assuming arguendo that the world came to be this way, here is a story set in it.
Heinlein’s own politics were odious, and some of that is definitely expressed in the didactic scenes in Starship Troopers. With that said, though, the novel is hardly utopian! Starship Troopers should not be read as promoting fascism any more than Logic of Empire should be read as promoting slavery.
It’s interesting that Joe Haldeman wrote The Forever War in response to Starship Troopers, but praised the latter: “it’s a very well-crafted novel, and I believe Heinlein was honest with it”. Heinlein also offered praise for The Forever War, calling it, “maybe the best future war story I’ve ever read,” despite its political premise being nearly diametrically opposed to that of Starship Troopers.
It perhaps says something that we’re still discussing the novel, sixty years after it was published. I think it likely says something more about us than about it, and what it says about is isn’t very nice. (Humans suck.)
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He is “Commander in chief” on paper. The same way a butter-bar lieutenant fresh out of the academy outranks a master sergeant. On paper.
From what I can tell, the military is the only facet of federal government this clown has not managed to corrupt. If/when/as things get worse, and 2021 makes us nostalgic for the “good old days” of 2020… I am really going to keep hoping I was right about this.
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Never served i bet. There are solutions for things like that when the wars on. Doesn’t work in peace time though.
Again—the novel explicitly states that the military-based government rose out of the ashes of social collapse caused by crime and decadence centuries earlier, not because the planet was at war. The Earth still isn’t even officially at war with the bugs at the beginning of Rico’s story.
ETA: I fear we’re getting off topic so I’ll stop now.
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Oh I have no doubt it happened. It’s just mind-blowing that something like this, which would literally be a career ending scandal for an entire cabinet, has flown so far under the radar that I hadn’t even heard about it.
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The last time I read this poem was in the late 80s.
And now I’m the one weeping. Damn, man.
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Militarism ahoy!
On behalf of the rest of the world I will say…; actually what I want to say to that cannot be printed in these pages.
This must be the worst idea I have heard in weeks.
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If any question why we died,
Tell them, because our fathers lied.
– Rudyard Kipling
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Yes. I loved Obama as a president, despite a number of significant policy differences. But one of my biggest disappointments was what seemed to be an incredibly naive view that we were still a functioning democracy with two parties that, while at odds on how best to do it, both fundamentally wanted to govern.
That wasn’t McConnell’s GOP, and hadn’t been for a while.
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ok but, what does it mean to “win”? what is it that they have “won”? when every last “librul” head has 'sploded and the fascists have it all, what does the remaining cadre of supporting cast (or ‘caste’) gain? what have they “won”?
I cannot picture this oh-so white shiney land looks like, nor do I really want to ever find out exept to ask WTAF DO THEY WANT?
I just cannot fathom that concept of “winning” at all cost.
announcer: “Tell 'em what they’ve won, Johnny!”
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Nope.
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Power. That’s the whole ballgame.
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