Time to be "Well Regulated"?

[baldguy]

73. Wow! I'm...I'm not really sure how to respond to this.

We usually see such mindless, concrete devotion to highly counter-factual statements only from reptile-brained Teabaggers, RW evangelical "Christians". "Starship Troopers" so widely acknowledged and is so obviously a depiction of a fascist society that, for any normal person to attempt to think otherwise would most likely cause them to have a stroke. Or a catatonic fit, at least. Saying it isn't fascist is like saying water isn't wet, or the Pope isn't Catholic, or that Fox News isn't the propaganda arm of the GOP.

The fact that it's satire is a little more difficult for the casual reader to grasp, but not much. Heinlein's masterful artistry is fully on display when he can paint his characters with such outrageous and absurdly over-the-top images, and yet have them act with totally convincing seriousness and absolute conviction. Verhoeven's failure was that he took Heinlein's story with three-dimensional, if slightly unreal characters from a smart & thoughtful satire, and turned it into a Hanna-Barbera cartoon of Ken & Barbie's bug hunt with their childhood friend, Obersturmbannführer Doogie Howser. All that was missing was the fluffy dog.

In reality, the characters from the book would be considered to be dysfunctional psychopaths if they existed in real life. This is one of the only things that Heinlein allows to give it away. Also the fact that he was a life-long libertarian, and that he never saw fit to try to shoehorn this work into his mainline Future History like he did nearly every other story he ever wrote. And finally - what really exposes it - just think of how his self-acknowledged alter-ego (and literal Mother fucker) Lazarus Long would have thought of & treated Johnny Rico. It's not likely Johnny would have survived the encounter.

I guess it's really no surprise that less-than-thoughtful people either don't recognize the blatant & over-the-top fascism, or do recognize & acknowledge it - AND LIKE IT! And neither group can see the satire.