Heinlein’s an extremely weird author overall and had very strange, contradictory views on basically everything. Like Starship Troopers is this incredibly idealist projection of 1950s America as a future globe-spanning state that “works” because of the disenfranchisement of anyone who “just doesn’t care enough about the nation to serve it” and has no thought for the culture or economics of that state because it’s all just vibes based background fluff for Heinlein to poorly philosophize about duty, strategy, and governance, putting forward this ideal elite volunteer superman soldier as superior to unreliable conscripts, praising the idea of strategic terror bombing to demoralize enemy civilians, and to parrot the all-too-common elitist idea that franchise should be restricted to a class of proven reliable and dedicated citizens rather than the whole population.
It’s basically this vibes based “utopian fascism” idealist shit that’s completely and utterly empty - it’s how a fashy sci-fi author writing in the 50s imagined a pretty neat society that he’d like to think about some more.
He even later commented on the politics of the book, disavowing it as “a thought experiment” that he decided he didn’t really like after all, before going on a libertarian-brained rant about how franchise should be locked behind a $1000 pricetag per vote instead.
Funny thing about the “enfranchisement of the human population through military service” is that Heinlein forgot to write in a bunch of enfranchised veterans. There’s a fair amount of unenfranchised civilians and a whole bunch of unenfranchsied active military (cause you aren’t franchised until after you’ve been honorably discharged from the military) and only like one enfranchised civilian… Rico’s teacher from the beginning of the book.
I came away thinking, “Oh, there are so few people who can vote/run for office because the assumption is that most of the people trying to earn the right to be a part of the political process died in the intergalatic forever wars.”
Heinlein’s an extremely weird author overall and had very strange, contradictory views on basically everything. Like Starship Troopers is this incredibly idealist projection of 1950s America as a future globe-spanning state that “works” because of the disenfranchisement of anyone who “just doesn’t care enough about the nation to serve it” and has no thought for the culture or economics of that state because it’s all just vibes based background fluff for Heinlein to poorly philosophize about duty, strategy, and governance, putting forward this ideal elite volunteer superman soldier as superior to unreliable conscripts, praising the idea of strategic terror bombing to demoralize enemy civilians, and to parrot the all-too-common elitist idea that franchise should be restricted to a class of proven reliable and dedicated citizens rather than the whole population.
It’s basically this vibes based “utopian fascism” idealist shit that’s completely and utterly empty - it’s how a fashy sci-fi author writing in the 50s imagined a pretty neat society that he’d like to think about some more.
He even later commented on the politics of the book, disavowing it as “a thought experiment” that he decided he didn’t really like after all, before going on a libertarian-brained rant about how franchise should be locked behind a $1000 pricetag per vote instead.
Funny thing about the “enfranchisement of the human population through military service” is that Heinlein forgot to write in a bunch of enfranchised veterans. There’s a fair amount of unenfranchised civilians and a whole bunch of unenfranchsied active military (cause you aren’t franchised until after you’ve been honorably discharged from the military) and only like one enfranchised civilian… Rico’s teacher from the beginning of the book.
I came away thinking, “Oh, there are so few people who can vote/run for office because the assumption is that most of the people trying to earn the right to be a part of the political process died in the intergalatic forever wars.”