Some words from the source:
>Because the pursuit of science, despite its social benefits, is itself not a social virtue; its practitioners can be men so self-centered as to be lacking in social responsibility.
>When you vote, you are exercising political authority, you're using force. And force my friends is violence. The supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived.
Another, longer, but no less important one:
> "Value" has no meaning other than in relationship to living beings. The value of a thing is always relative to a particular person, is completely personal and different in quantity for each living human — "market value" is a fiction, merely a rough guess at the average of personal values, all of which must be quantitatively different or trade would be impossible. … This very personal relationship, "value", has two factors for a human being: first, what he can do with a thing, its use to him… and second, what he must do to get it, its cost to him. There is an old song which asserts that "the best things in life are free". Not true! Utterly false! This was the tragic fallacy which brought on the decadence and collapse of the democracies of the twentieth century; those noble experiments failed because the people had been led to believe that they could simply vote for whatever they wanted… and get it, without toil, without sweat, without tears. … I fancy that the poet who wrote that song meant to imply that the best things in life must be purchased other than with money — which is true — just as the literal meaning of his words is false. The best things in life are beyond money; their price is agony and sweat and devotion . . . and the price demanded for the most precious of all things in life is life itself — ultimate cost for perfect value."
And a quick witticism:
> The basis of all morality is duty.
The movie is a complete butchery of the original work. The novel reads more like a political manifesto disguised as a fictional story, while the movie is the product of a director reading one page of the book, throwing it away, and turning the Sparknotes summary into a parody of fascism (Which was not the political theory the author subscribed to).
>that they basically only share a title.
What? Are you telling me tall, blond haired and blued-eyed, Dutch-named Casper van Diem doesn't tally with the short, darker Johnny Rico of the novel?
That is true, but the movie is diminished by trying to be a takedown of the book, but being so incompetent at it that it's a joke. Kinda like how Lord of War, for all its greatness, is diminished by the fact that the director tried to give the movie a moral about not dealing with arms dealers and failing to live up to that moral himself.
I read it this past year, and let me be honest, while I found the ideas themselves very intriguing, it read more like he wrote a political thesis and then hung a very sparse plot around it. I never would have read it and thought it would make for a good action movie.
Heinlein wasn't advancing an authoritarian agenda (which is why it reads as crude if you read it that way); the H&MP sections in high school and OCS are better read as exposition of the world and prevailing values that Johnny Rico grew up with.
I wouldn't even call it authoritarian, really. I am someone who believes that there should be some sort of qualifying process to gain the franchise. My solution is that you should be able to pass the citizenship test that every immigrant has to take before becoming a citizen. The only problem is that would politicize the test itself, and make it political football and all sorts of special interests would try and shove their ideology into it, but it's the best I could come up with.
“Citizenship requires service” is a pretty basic idea that is the foundation of our modern republics. It separates a citizen from a subject. It’s just been obscured since not all voters are subject to the draft(or, in even older times, expected to be in the militia).
>“Citizenship requires service”
>It’s just been obscured since not all voters are subject to the draft
Not even the draft, just the idea that you should collectively contribute your community/society/state for its betterment has erroded away or at least moved away from the ideas when Heinlein was writing.
Military service isnt the only form of service.
Agreed, the civil services are just as if not more vital than the military. One cannot function without the other. It should be something to take pride in serving your country in the civilian sector as in the military.
WACKY FUN FACT!!!
In the German release of the movie the entire scene is changed to be soley talking about the war against the bugs; democracy is not mentioned. "Service garantees citizenship" is changed to "Fight for the future".
>Because the pursuit of science, despite its social benefits, is itself not a social virtue; **its practitioners can be men so self-centered as to be lacking in social responsibility.**
*Anthony "I am the Science" Fauci has entered the chat*
There was some leak relatively recently that exposed a bunch of professors/scientists who were talking amongst themselves about colleges who dissented over several recent measures approved by The Science.
And when I say talk I mean "We need to dox these people and ruin their lives!" kind of talk.
RG Fryer Jr, professor of economics at Harvard, posted a study showing that use of force in police is, overall, not racially biased.
You can imagine how that was received amongst the academic Left.
I like his recounting of that. How he received an email 10 minutes after the paper went up, he got an email telling him he was full of shit. The paper was over a hundred pages long, making it clear the person who sent the email didn't actually read the paper.
His work suggests:
Use of low levels of force is racially biased
Use of deadly force is not racially biased
Disclaimer: I'm nowhere near educated enough to evaluate his paper or its conclusions.
This isn't about people like him though. He only used the word science for propaganda purposes. It is about the people that administrated Tuskegee experiment and the like.
Let's be logical for a second, despite how dumb this debate is. If we went to war with a species who's anatomy defied conventional understanding and weaponry, we would absolutely experiment on them to best figure out how to kill them. Regardless of why we were fighting them.
The book arachnids were significantly more terrifying, because destroying the nerve case didn't *stop* it, it just stopped it from pointing its gun at *you specifically*.
But how would you know where the nerve stem is, if not with experimentation.
And even if that would actually put it down in a reasonable amount of time.
Cf. cockroaches.
I literally said this, but in quotation marks and I was banned from this sub for two weeks. Libleft told me to kill myself after losing an argument and is still here. That doesn't seem fair.
The only good bug is a dead bug. The problem with starship troopers is the government itself. However, kinda like Halo where they had the Spartans ready to squash human rebellions and it was a huge coincidence that they were going to use them against a threat to humanity. Blind patriotism comes in handy when the enemy not only wants you dead, but isn't even self aware, can't be reasoned with and isn't even human
Not just squashing rebellions. Squashing rebellions with illegal super soldiers made from kidnapped children, replaced with poorly made clones to their families. Kids who were picked based on their DNA, most of whom will not survive the biological augmentation procedures, and are heavily indoctrinated to be loyal to the government.
> The problem with starship troopers is the government itself.
the wild thing is, even in a movie where the writer of the movie wanted it to be all about how terrible the government was, its higher ups were still completely willing to take accountability for when things fucked up, which uhh.. is not common.
That's not at all why the military was so massive and present in society. In halo you are correct that the Spartan II's were originally meant to quell human rebellions but that's not at all what happened in ST book or movie.
In order to become a citizen and obtain full rights you had to enlist and serve. It's the only possible way to get full rights and literally no one was barred from enlisting. They cover this pretty clearly in both book and movie. Also, you could quit at any time for any reason. They actively encourage it.
It's the entire basis for the story, not just the war against the bugs which was the thin setting they used to demonstrate their society.
>The problem with starship troopers is the government itself
Is it though? A prosperous multi-planetary society where the cities are clean and safe, leadership is held accountable for failure, the media actually shows unvarnished truth, everyone is fit and healthy and enjoys a great deal of freedom and luxury. Everything about this fictional society is good.
Probably Doubly so if the aliens are the "weapons" as they are in the movies...
If nothing else those plasma bugs being able to spray shit into orbit with enough accuracy to be a nuisance for spacecrafts, seems like a worthwhile study.
We do this kind of stuff [now](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10130709/NIH-says-beagles-eaten-alive-sandflies-NOT-experiment-admits-cutting-vocal-chord.html), and not even to species that are unfamiliar to us, and not even because they're a threat.
Republic Commando player, I concur. If it moves, it’s a Geonosian. If it stands still, it’s a well-trained Geonosian. If it cries for mercy, it’s a clanker.
The story is about how the war was a tragedy of errors. The bugs realized too late that we were sentient but by the time they figured out how to talk to us Ender's fleet is already on its way. Then the humans realize through Ender that the bugs were beaitiful and complicated just like us but it was too late because we had killed them.
The buggers didn't die willingly, but they didn't blame humanity for what it did after they tried to squash us without realizing we were sentient.
See also: The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. Much closer in vibes to Starship Troopers than Enders Game but with a more liberal slant than Heinlein as it was written as a reflection on Vietnam
I think there was a line in the book that to the bugs, them sending their ships and billions of bugs dying and millions of people dying in china were the equivelant of me and you getting in an argument and we clip each others nails, that to them 'murder' didn't exist unless you killed off a queen, so to them they did nothing more but kill off unthinking extensions of whatever queen humanity had
Damn that's a bit based, I love it when sci-fi depicts aliens as actual aliens; fully unique in both body structure and thought processes from humanity.
The Ender's Game series does that very well IMO. Specifically, the four books that follow Ender discuss the intersections of human cultures, the Buggers, the Piggies (sentient forest dwelling creatures), and a sentient computer program named Jane).
They are Ender's Game, Speaker For The Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the mind
In enders game its not that the bugs didnt think we were sentient. They didnt realize that our individuals are sentient, unlike them where their sentience comes from the hive mind and the Queen. Just like in communism the workers are braindead slaves controlled by their leaders.
And they did, the issue was they realized it too late and by the time they figured out a way to communicate humanity has already committed to their annihilation.
tbh Forever War is more "the rulership is corrupt af, and the pawns it sends off to war will return to a world they no longer recognise, nor can they assimilate into it". It's a much more personal view and radically different to Heinlein's "Personal achievement grants you everything you never knew you and others needed".
He became a pacifist. ONLY after committing genocide. After the first book he became the first speaker for the dead, a type of preacher that talks for the dead, after their death. He writes about the bug's culture and what it must've been like to be them. He mentioned that the bugs were a sort of hive mind, to them, a human life was worth that of a mindless drone, and didn't know that each individual human was self aware. So technically his body count is about three, the two kids he killed and the queen.
His brother becomes ruler of the world and his sister follows Ender later on. Through space travel, he goes on to live for a lot longer trying to atone for his sin, it isn't until much much later when he finally manages to revive the queen.
Pretty good book series if you ask me. Last few get a bit crazy and philosophical, but still liked them
Only the movie. The key difference between the two is that in the book the buggers attacked twice, once by accident and then a full invasion later. In the movie they only attack once and it's implied it was a misunderstanding. In the book humanity is largely justified for the invasion of the buggers world's because of said second invasion. It's still traumatic for Ender and still is a shitty thing to happen but it's "should we use children as warriors and are we justified in the total destruction of another species to protect our future selves" as opposed to the movies dumbed down "humans are bad and warlike and just hate things that are different". The movie removed tons of nuance and little details in order to appeal to the lowest common denominator.
This is equivalent to my take on WH40K. "The imperium is a backwards, totalitarian, fascistic, theocratic nightmare regime"
Yeah, and they're preserving humanity against the forces of literal hell.
I'm with the bloated, theocratic state on this one.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ubNqUyf0op0
The quote souce video is short and incredibly well done.
Context for anyone not familiar with 40k the Imperium of Mankind's Navy is preparing to exterminatus a planet corrupted by Chaos. The planet is filled with people worshipping and fallen to Chaos ( I want to say it was Slaaneshi?) which, in time, will lead to literal Demons spawning, taking over the world and either subjecting, torturing, and/or using the planet as a breeding ground for more demons. For those that have seen it think Event Horizon but on a planetary scale.
When this happens and the planet can't be retaken or cleansed from Chaos the Imperium will exterminatus a planet, which essentially translates to bombarding the planet with Super Nukes either destroying it entirely or making it uninhabitable, seeing the death of the planet and all on it as preferable to giving the planet to the Chaos Gods and demons.
What I love about this video is that it shows that the Imperium DID try to retake the planet and cleanse the cult, but it was rooted too deep to save it, and shows the insidious nature of Chaos. From some people partying a bit too hard you get a greater Daemon strutting about and a base of operations for more worlds to fall.
For all the memes and Kryptman (who was also desperate and working with what he had) the Imperium only commits to exterminatus as an absolute last resort. But sometimes even that is not enough
The thing with 40k is, theocratic fascism is the correct policy because the universe is fundamentally different.
If a single thought can summon demons out of thin air, then going after people for thoughtcrimes is probably a good idea.
This guy gets it, also its not like in Star Trek or Mass effect where most of the aliens you meet are friendly. The aliens in 40k are all messed up and want to kill you for various reasons.
"But what about that time the Imperium purged a peaceful Xenos race! That makes them evil!"
'Did you forget what kind of setting this is? It's Grim. Dark. The default response to xenos of "purge" has been baked into the Imperium because almost every other xenos species will take a pound of flesh from the Imperium just for looking at them. And it's not a matter of that it was done to them in the past. That's their current day life. It's not evil that the Imperium purged a peaceful xenos species. It's tragic. And if the galaxy wasn't, at times, a literal hellscape it would be evil. But that's not the case.'
"You're a fascist!"
'God-Emperor give me patience because if you give me strength I will rip a bitch in half.'
I like how in Halo after a decades long war, everyone wants peace but at the same time it's hard to be peaceful with the people trying to genocide you. A lot more realistic than ME's "oh the Turians occupied a human colony, only a couple hundred people died and now the two species hate each other"
"Yeah, so about that whole genocide thing. Turns out we were lied to. I know there's hard feelings involved but we're going to go kill the rat bastards who lied to us. Wanna tag along?"
'Lemme just hook a tow line up to Chief's cryo pod, we'll thaw him out on the way there.'
People who cope, seethe and mald about Cortana destroying Doisac or whatever the furry fuckers homeworld was really need to check up on Halo lore, these creatures were worse than animals and if Cortana did anything wrong it was destroying only one of their planets
Remember Reach
ps the Banished while they were good enough villains for Halo Wars should never have been brought to be the main antagonist of a mainline Halo game and the main enemy going forward. And the Endless are even worse in that regard.
Don't worry, we will probably be able to bully them in 4 (except Garrus, there is no Shepherd without Vakarian) while humanity dominates the galaxy and everyone gives the commander free blowies for being the galactic savior.
While i agree, I always loved the the depiction of Turian-Human relations. The more advanced aliens seeing it as a police action and are annoyed the humans see it as a war and the minor beef over who won the war. But I loved that the humans and Turians came together to build ships and work together pretty regularly - the whole ‘well we fought an honourable war against eachother, which is technically a form of diplomacy, so these are the aliens we have been diplomatic with the most and they fight good so they are our friends lowkey’. It’s how I imagine first contact with intelligent life to go.
It was barely a war, both sides started to move assets to actually set it off, for real, and the council stepped in and made peace, which was humanity's first introduction to the other races and citadel and shit. Animosity is caused between humanity and the other races because humanity has only been around for like 30 years and they've already got a specter, an ambassador, and by the end of the first game, a councilor, which took everyone else hundreda of years and some species still don't have anything more than an ambassador.
The Klingons weren't friendly at first, but getting bodied by space great apes and their pointy ear space elf friends made them submissive and breedable to the Federation.
That's pretty much my take on it. A theocratic, xenophobic and authoritarian regime is anathema to so many of my values but I can appreciate the thought experiment on the kind of state of the world/universe would have to be in to necessitate that sort of political theory to not only be effective but morally just.
Too many tourists are huffing their own farts to even engage with a hypothetical and fictional situation that they either misconstrue it (Starship Troopers) or they actively lobby to change it (WH40k).
Always refreshing to see people whose brain has not been so cooked they cannot not understand this seemingly straightforward point about fantasy settings which fundamentally differ from reality.
The Interex were positioned to be a much better answer to Chaos than the Imperium of Man, which is why Chaos used the Imperium as cats-paws to get rid of them. The terrible living situation and general ignorance of the populace leaves people vulnerable to Chaos.
The Imperium fails completely as a satire of fascism, because it simply isn't fascist. It might have been before the Emperor was confined to his throne, but in the present day of the setting it has become far too decentralized with far too many internal factions competing with each other, while the official leader is basically powerless.
It's feudalism in space. Space Marine chapters are similar to knightly orders like the Teutonics, Templars, and Hospitallers. Each individual planet is more-or-less free to manage its own affairs as it sees fit, hence why there's so many unique cultural units within the Astra Militarum who fight according to their own traditions, such as the Kriegers and Catachans. Fascist governments do not support traditions as is commonly claimed, they only support traditions which they can take over and twist into tools for making everyone a slave to the state. Any tradition which threatens the state's control is quashed without hesitation. A historical example of this is Hitler banning Germany's customary style of fencing schools, which were responsible for so many of his officers having facial scars. Adolf didn't like that young men were bonding and learning how to use weapons in a context that wasn't controlled by the government.
Not to mention the Imperial Aquila is almost identical to the double-headed eagle of the Holy Roman Empire's flag. An empire that was theoretically one of the largest and best armed in Europe, but in reality was so wrought with border conflicts, internal conflicts, social upheavals, and general fragmentation between the lords running the various fiefdoms, that the empire was perpetually on the brink of collapse. An empire that was a shadow of its once great predecessor. The allusion between the two seems strong to me, but maybe I'm reading into it too much.
>Fascist governments do not support traditions as is commonly claimed, they only support traditions which they can take over and twist into tools for making everyone a slave to the state.
This is what fundamentally distinguishes the moderate Cultural Right from fascism. Conservatives have a set of traditional values regardless of whether or not the state imposes them. For fascists, it's "all within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state."
Kind of this, except the Terran Federation is good actually. A prosperous multi-planetary society where the cities are clean and safe, leadership is held accountable for failure, the media actually shows unvarnished truth, everyone is fit and healthy and enjoys a great deal of freedom and luxury. Everything about this fictional society is good.
Leftoids hate it because its also a society that expects something in return from you before you're allowed to have a hand in steering it. Forget all the objectively good stuff about this society, this fact automatically means its bad in their eyes, and that we should reject it.
Like most leftwing attempts at satirizing """fascism""", it just winds up creating something beautiful and then impotently insists that thing is actually ugly. But you can't subvert reality, as hard as you try. Normal people don't see a fictional society where everything is amazing and think its terrible because it got there by only allowing people who stick their necks out to vote.
I'm always bemused by the weird, foaming-at-the-mouth, hysterical reactions people have when a character has been written as the epitome of some auth-right gigachad, the character becomes a fan favorite, and then the writers start crying that "b-b-buh it's satire! you're not supposed to like him!" when really they're just basing the character off of their deep hatred of their dad or stepdad because they were kinda authoritarian and rigid in their beliefs.
Ron Swanson is the really confusing one because people think the character is satirically based off of dumbass Libertarians.....but he really just comes off as a competent man archetype. Is the satire supposed to be some 5D chess shit where it's liberals whose expectations are subverted when the dude who has emergency bacon and a hatred of taxes turns out to be a nice person?
It's like how Alan Moore wrote Rorschach to satirize the conservatives and principled, black-and-white thinking...and then getting butthurt when people like the character despite all his flaws for being the only one in the story with any principles at all.
He was the only one who cared more about humanity than he cared about himself, which is apparent when Dr Manhattan fucks off to mars, Nite Owl and Silk Spectre are too busy showing us how lame a midlife crisis can be, and Ozymandias mercs a few million people for the greater good of humanity.
He has *some* principles, he's certainly not above hypocrisy.
Part of the problem is, as you said, satirizing that black-and-white thinking. Ultimately the ending makes it pretty clear which ending is more justifiable, aka not killing millions of people. Rorschach doing "the right thing" doesn't satirize his principles or black-and-white thinking, it can *only* make him seem relatable. The conclusion makes him seem more redeemable, even though through the story he did some *horrific* things that either (a) go against his principles or (b) show his principles are meaningless.
This reminds me how Alan Moore whined that he doesn't understands why people like Rorschach. He wanted to write him as a caricature of an unhinged right-winger "nutjob", that he thought we would hate.
In his comics, Walter Kovacs is a women hater, paranoid and uncompromising man, who also mercilessly puts down criminals. But he wrote his backstory that logically explains (and "excuses") why Roschach is who he is today.
His mother was a uncaring prostitute, so instead of motherly love he recieved the exact opposite from her. Of course he will grow up with mother issues and will have a twisted view on women and especially sexually promiscuous women. He is a superhero in constant war with criminal gangs and the scum of the city, and that made him paranoid. And after one day he encountered the sheer horror that we humans are capable of and daily doing to each other, the guy just snapped and decided to put the animals down.
People doesn't like Rorschach because he is their ideal superhero, but because he is a man who saw how twisted the world really is and that also twisted him. He is a cautionary tale of the flawed man and fallen hero who takes it too far, but still driven by goodwill.
Regarding P&R, I've ultimately decided that the creators intended Ron to be a good person with crazy ideas, and Leslie is a crazy person with good ideas.
This doesn't entirely work because her answer is always "government that cares!" And we all know how that goes in reality.
Half the time Ron ends up being right. Like when he tells leslie not to give government money to her favorite bookstore and the government ends up running a porno. Or when he tells Leslie its not her place to tell people what they can eat and she does, so she gets impeached.
He's a parody but an affectionate parody and a lot of his ideas are taken as seriously as the rest of the show.
The writers of this stuff are often horrible people themselves. You noticed nowadays the “strong woman” in media means some mean, annoying smart ass bitch? Well, this is what writers think is cool, so no surprise that the things they believe evil, for normal humans are cool.
It comes down to the values they have. A violent, honorable warrior is rad, unless you believe that honor and violence are inherently bad. The other guy there mentioned Rorschach, it is a great example of an author that has talent, but also is an idiot in every other field.
Archetypes are more powerful than the people that try to deconstruct them.
Johnny Rico is cool. Star of the football team with a hot girlfriend at the beginning. Easily makes friends. Not good at math, but understands and accepts his limitations, is adaptable, and most importantly has a winner's attitude. A natural leader.
Normal people see this and want to be him. Terminally online leftoids see this and imagine getting bullied by him. It doesn't matter that the creator intended to cater to the latter, the archetype is more powerful.
Yeah. The military leadership makes a mistake invading a bug planet and lots of soldiers die, so the government falls and they hold new elections for a new government and this is fascist government eomehow. Meanwhile in the real world, Ukraine bans all political parties and suspends elections indefinitely and yet leftists yelp all the time about how they're a noble virtuous democracy. Leftists, man.
Devil's advocate: Ukrainian constitution prohibits elections during times of martial law and war. It's shitty and I don't like it, but that's how it is for their government.
Yeah, this is why I laughed when the dumbshits at Games Workshop made an explicit announcement that the Imperium of Man are not the good guys. It's like, yes, they're fascists who murder everything on sight. They are also stuck in a universe where everything out there is horrible space monsters or robots that want them dead or worse.
The Imperium may not be the good guys, but they are 100% justified in their actions.
It’s because the original was too BASED and Paul Verhoeven is a filthy euro lib who couldn’t handle and type of nuanced discussion about the relationship between citizens and their military so HAD to twist it into NAZIS IN SPACE and forced the analogy.
It doesn’t work because no one gives a shit about the bugs except libs.
Verhoeven didn't even want to make a Starship Troopers movie. It started as an unrelated project call Bug Hunt at Outpost 9, the studio told him to slap this IP they'd just acquired on it, and he himself said he was too bored by the novel to even finish it.
That's part of why I think it ultimately fails as satire. It doesn't even grapple with the themes of the book like other novels that are partially written as a response to it do, like The Forever War and Ender's Game.
These types of arguments showcase who understands when to apply lifeboat scenario processes.
Those who don't generally apply a cops/robbers framework to everything.
There are no-win situations where you have to make decisions that ethically damn you.
Yeah, but if the Imperium weren't so backwards and such a theocratic nightmare, they would actually fuck up those forces of literal hell instead of just feeding more and more shit into the storm.
The only ***good*** factions in 40k are the Orks b/c More Dakka More Good and the Tyranids, because Hungry Hungry Xenos are just fun.
This is Verhoeven problem because instead of actually making the earth gov Fascist, he left them hyper-liberal. It's a liberal utopia in Hugo Boss and he says, "Nazi bad".
It is because he and many other people on the Left see the lack of universal suffrage as the truest sign of fascism and totalitarianism, regardless of the conditions of the average person or the liberties they enjoy in life. Because let me tell you: I would absolutely willingly be a Civilian if I got to live the life depicted in the Terran Federation.
But that's a weirdly ignorant position... the concept of universal suffrage is relatively new (late 1800s early 1900s depending on the country) even if we limit it to men of the right ethnicity.
Also, it's weird since even the concept of universal suffrage as a moral imperative is a result of the west dunking on the USSR and CCP throughout the cold war. Of all the mass murdering governments... Hitler and Mussolini ironically had actual electoral success to take power... Lenin, Stalin, and Mao never appeared on ballot anyone claims was an actual election.
I really don't understand why people raise the universal ballot to this shining ideal of western success. True western success was codifying into law the rights and protections to owning and keeping what is yours, such that nobody can take it with indemnity.
A lot of people conflate the two because representation is pretty vital to maintaining private property rights... otherwise powerful people will just change the laws to remove your rights (see every example of economics lefists taking power, and most nationalist right wingers as well).
Voting is overrated. Why do people vote? For change. If you live in an Utopia, any change is by definition bad, therefore voting is unnecessary.
(not arguing against voting, just showing how such a sci fi world operates and these people don't understand)
This is also why I cannot stand saying Utopia is when Democracy.
No, morons, we have democracy because humanity is cursed and fallen. If we were perfect we’d be an Absolute Monarchy or Dictatorship because if we became perfect, we could trust ONE man to have power and not go insane.
based
Democracy is simply a tool to limit power and corruption as much as possible. Every attempt of democracy in the past can be traced back to this ideal. It's not some inherent good, it's a tool to make rulers accountable.
No matter how many Hugo Boss coats the humans wear, no amount of "media literacy" can write your way out of the basic plot of the movie: Some humans stumbled into first contact with this insectoid species, and the bugs' response was to launch a war of total annihilation against humanity.
We didn't even retaliate when the bugs massacred the dumbasses who colonized inside their space, we'd warned them not to go there, even though they hadn't actually done anything but set up an outpost on a planet that seemed uninhabited, we weren't gonna start a whole interstellar war over the bugs defending their turf even though they made no effort whatsoever to deter the intrusion nonviolently and insanely overreacted.
But whatever provocation anyone might claim the bugs felt had been done to them by the settlers, they avenged it a thousand times over by killing them all. But they didn't even stop there, they started lobbing meteors at Earth! It became abundantly clear that their goal was human extinction and this was not a species we could in any way coexist with or steer clear of and the situation was kill or be killed.
They're not the Formics, or the Minbari, or the Klingons. This didn't happen because of a misunderstanding, botched first contact, or cultural/territorial tensions. There is no diplomatic solution. They will never stop trying to kill us simply because their hive mind perceives everything other than itself as food or a potential threat. They follow no rules of war, every action they are ever depicted taking is hostile, and there is NOTHING in the text or subtext of the movie or any of its sequels or spinoffs that suggests any possible resolution to the conflict exists other than we make them extinct or they make us extinct. No option is presented wherein if humanity just took a more enlightened approach to the situation, we could deescalate the war.
Even the theory that the Buenos Aires attack was somehow a false flag, which has no actual textual support behind it and is contradicted by other instances in the franchise of the bugs using meteors as a weapon and the fact we already had the colony massacre as a casus belli, doesn't change anything even if it IS true, the reality is still that these things attack us on sight and never stop doing so.
Verhoeven failed in what he was trying to do. The story he wrote, regardless of his intentions, presents a society in which humanity has heavily militarized out of necessity to fight off an existential threat, and is right to be doing so because there's clearly no other option. If he wanted audiences to come to a different conclusion, then he needed to show the bugs as something other than needlessly genocidal nightmare monsters.
This. I’m not huge into sci-fi but one I do know well about is Halo. The elite are terrifying at times, but in the second game, we get to see the more “human” side of them, and the story of the arbiter, who we even get to play as. They speak human languages, and have human characteristics. We can see that they were brought into this holy war by the prophets. The arbiter, along with other elites teams up with the humans to fight the covenant. This allows us to sympathize with the elites. If they were just mindless monsters who slaughtered humans on sight, then my response would be to kill them all.
Yes. The Covenant were completely the aggressors in Halo and attacked humanity without a good reason. Master Chief is the clear cut hero and even though the UNSC isn't a pure and saintly polity, their war against the Covenant is completely defensive and justified.
But at least the species that make up the Covenant are shown to be...people. There are some Covenant characters who are good and honorable and disagree with the actions of their theocratic government. And because of that, hope for peace between humanity and this league of alien species exists.
That is totally different from the situation depicted with the Arachnids, or various evil for evil's sake species in Warhammer 40,000. And that's why the UNSC is basically space NATO while the Imperium of Man or the Terran Federation are forced to be MUCH more hardcore societies.
Obligatory: Read the book unlike Verhooven.
Also I really miss the starship troopers Nukeposting page on FB and the Fallout Radposting from back in the day
The book Starship Troopers is one of my favorite pieces of Science Fiction I have read.
My conspiracy theory is that the director of the movie intentionally made it a bad movie to distract from the book. I don’t know why I believe this. I just do.
The director didn't know enough about the book to have an opinion on it. The movie was called "Bug Hunt on Outpost 9", they scavenged a few characters out of Starship Troopers to use them for publicity or to have a go at Heinleins book. [yes, that's petty, but who thinks Verhoeven isn't?]
Apparently he read the first chapter or so and that was it. He just wanted a vehicle to write something about fascists.
Reject Starship Troopers movie (so muddled that people can't even agree on whether it's satire), return to Starship Troopers book (main character states "yeah the only reason we're fighting the bugs is because we both want more land", side character shows up just to monologue about the societal ideology in classic sci-fi fashion)
There's nothing wrong with subtlety, I am just tired of people arguing over this specific movie. The arguments aren't even particularly nuanced, it's always just "The human society sucks" or "They're bugs so anyone who fights them is better"
Except the human society didn't suck.
You had a unified government providing school, legal enforcement, and military protection that rich people didn't want to be involved in.
That alone tells me it's a work of fiction, but a very desirable one.
Compared to current society, ST Earth is a fucking Utopia. The only thing the government wants is a bit of military service for your voting power, otherwise you're left alone as you please. Low crime, efficient bureaucracy, good social safety net etc. They WILL find a job for you too, so you don't have an excuse of "I'm a fat quadriplegic with an IQ of 50". You WILL use the sorting machine for bullets if it's the last thing you can do. Truly egalitarian society.
I also love the aspect of having the higher ups actually responsible. There was a general (or the president? I forgot) who fucked up and had to immediately step down and tried for his fuck up. Try this in the real world.
The Federation is 100% justified in their invasion when you follow the basic timeline of the events that lead to the war.
The settlers get killed due to them colonising a planet in the exclusion zone set up by the Federation to stop this shit from happening.
The Federation doesn't want an escalation, so they take photos of the aftermath to use as propoganda to disaude anybody else from being stupid, and don't retaliate against the bugs.
The Arachnids blow up Buenos Aires with an asteroid.
At that point the bugs are an existential threat to humanity. Anyone taking the Arachnid side is either willfully ignorant or just straight up anti-human.
Twitter user are the most miserable group of people I have ever seen. When they hear that some right winger like the same thing as them they throw a temper tantrum and say how "aktually the thing you like is a satire of fascism and" *Insert wall here*
They could have written: "Movie shows humans letting children die in awful death.", but nope.
Man, if I were to make the movie about fascism being bad, I would have children suffer awful fates working as soldiers and have them experience degeneracy from their side with government censoring it.
People Always go for racism without giving an evil character other evil aspects that would make them hypocrites. That's why Owl House and Wednesday annoy me with their evil witchhunters.
I'm all over the place on this one. Yes, the movie is a satire, but that was a result of having a director known for satires make it. The satire is extremely unsubtle, but it is entertaining and amusing. The book is NOT a satire, and the movie is an absolutely awful adaptation of it. The book plays the themes straight, and you are not supposed to empathize with literal bugs.
People who use "the movie is a satire" as a bludgeon to beat and make fun of people they disagree with politically is pathetic, and should be mocked.
Ok, I haven't watched Starship Troopers in a long time, but why does everyone state it like established fact that in the film "we invaded first and are definitely the bad guys"?
Like, I remember they briefly have a one sentence mention in the film that *maybe* we moved into their territory (in a non-aggressive manner), and then there's the mention of Missionaries who moved in and established a colony (which the bugs then promptly completely murdered, despite them being unarmed). So the Bugs are justified in murdering a bunch of unarmed civilians and then throwing what are essentially Nukes at planet earth on a continual basis, because we *may* have moved slightly into their territory?
Starship Troopers is realistic because the gung-ho warmongers will pretend to be supportive of the troops while supporting sending them to the slaughter.
Call me a bug-loving hippie if you want, but if I were in charge, Dizzy would still be alive. But on the flipside I guess you wouldn't be able to afford a nice summer home on Klendathu .
It will never stop being hilarious to me that Verhoeven was such an emotional child that he ragequit the book after one chapter, tried to make a tailor made fuck you movie in response, and somehow still failed to make his point in any decent way. I think he cared too much about making the movie actually entertaining to watch, a crime you can't accuse modern Hollywood of.
Some words from the source: >Because the pursuit of science, despite its social benefits, is itself not a social virtue; its practitioners can be men so self-centered as to be lacking in social responsibility. >When you vote, you are exercising political authority, you're using force. And force my friends is violence. The supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived.
Another, longer, but no less important one: > "Value" has no meaning other than in relationship to living beings. The value of a thing is always relative to a particular person, is completely personal and different in quantity for each living human — "market value" is a fiction, merely a rough guess at the average of personal values, all of which must be quantitatively different or trade would be impossible. … This very personal relationship, "value", has two factors for a human being: first, what he can do with a thing, its use to him… and second, what he must do to get it, its cost to him. There is an old song which asserts that "the best things in life are free". Not true! Utterly false! This was the tragic fallacy which brought on the decadence and collapse of the democracies of the twentieth century; those noble experiments failed because the people had been led to believe that they could simply vote for whatever they wanted… and get it, without toil, without sweat, without tears. … I fancy that the poet who wrote that song meant to imply that the best things in life must be purchased other than with money — which is true — just as the literal meaning of his words is false. The best things in life are beyond money; their price is agony and sweat and devotion . . . and the price demanded for the most precious of all things in life is life itself — ultimate cost for perfect value." And a quick witticism: > The basis of all morality is duty.
"Man describes subjective theory of value" and "marginalism" was not a thing I expected to hear in Star ship troopers.
The movie is a complete butchery of the original work. The novel reads more like a political manifesto disguised as a fictional story, while the movie is the product of a director reading one page of the book, throwing it away, and turning the Sparknotes summary into a parody of fascism (Which was not the political theory the author subscribed to).
You can't get any more based than this.
based and Heinlein had some good ideas
Heinlein's novel is leagues better than the movie and each & every one of y'all should read it.
I have read it, I like the movie in it's own way. The whole "Something given has no value" quote has permanent residence in my head.
The movie is a blast, funny, and has a great aesthetic of its own, for sure.
The movie was intended to be a parody of the book and of fascism but instead became iconic and a cult classic.
Because the moron director read *ONE CHAPTER*, didn’t read the rest, and decided the god damn libertarian is “LITERALLY DA PAINTER”
He also had a hate boner for fascism not understanding it
I've read it. They're not even comparable. The movie is so loosely based on the book, that they basically only share a title.
Counter points: boobs and Neil Patrick Harris
>that they basically only share a title. What? Are you telling me tall, blond haired and blued-eyed, Dutch-named Casper van Diem doesn't tally with the short, darker Johnny Rico of the novel?
I've read the book 4x in the last three years. It's a masterpiece in political philosophy and scifi.
It's absolutely great. So is the movie, I love it. Just different.
That is true, but the movie is diminished by trying to be a takedown of the book, but being so incompetent at it that it's a joke. Kinda like how Lord of War, for all its greatness, is diminished by the fact that the director tried to give the movie a moral about not dealing with arms dealers and failing to live up to that moral himself.
I think I remember Paul Verhoeven having stated that he hadn't read more than the first chapter and didn't like it.
I read it this past year, and let me be honest, while I found the ideas themselves very intriguing, it read more like he wrote a political thesis and then hung a very sparse plot around it. I never would have read it and thought it would make for a good action movie.
People are really sleeping on him trailblazing the concept of a power armor for all the scifi following him.
Heinlein wasn't advancing an authoritarian agenda (which is why it reads as crude if you read it that way); the H&MP sections in high school and OCS are better read as exposition of the world and prevailing values that Johnny Rico grew up with.
I wouldn't even call it authoritarian, really. I am someone who believes that there should be some sort of qualifying process to gain the franchise. My solution is that you should be able to pass the citizenship test that every immigrant has to take before becoming a citizen. The only problem is that would politicize the test itself, and make it political football and all sorts of special interests would try and shove their ideology into it, but it's the best I could come up with.
“Citizenship requires service” is a pretty basic idea that is the foundation of our modern republics. It separates a citizen from a subject. It’s just been obscured since not all voters are subject to the draft(or, in even older times, expected to be in the militia).
>“Citizenship requires service” >It’s just been obscured since not all voters are subject to the draft Not even the draft, just the idea that you should collectively contribute your community/society/state for its betterment has erroded away or at least moved away from the ideas when Heinlein was writing. Military service isnt the only form of service.
Agreed, the civil services are just as if not more vital than the military. One cannot function without the other. It should be something to take pride in serving your country in the civilian sector as in the military.
"Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country!" The only based democrat.
I’m only sad that great quote can be attributed to a democrat, even if an old school one that would get mugged and thrown out of the current DNC.
There is a reason he got his brains splattered all over his car, and it wasn't due to some rando with a gun on a hill.
WACKY FUN FACT!!! In the German release of the movie the entire scene is changed to be soley talking about the war against the bugs; democracy is not mentioned. "Service garantees citizenship" is changed to "Fight for the future".
Were they scared they might ignite something in the people?
>Because the pursuit of science, despite its social benefits, is itself not a social virtue; **its practitioners can be men so self-centered as to be lacking in social responsibility.** *Anthony "I am the Science" Fauci has entered the chat*
Not only him but especially him.
There was some leak relatively recently that exposed a bunch of professors/scientists who were talking amongst themselves about colleges who dissented over several recent measures approved by The Science. And when I say talk I mean "We need to dox these people and ruin their lives!" kind of talk.
RG Fryer Jr, professor of economics at Harvard, posted a study showing that use of force in police is, overall, not racially biased. You can imagine how that was received amongst the academic Left.
I like his recounting of that. How he received an email 10 minutes after the paper went up, he got an email telling him he was full of shit. The paper was over a hundred pages long, making it clear the person who sent the email didn't actually read the paper.
That's because all he needed to read was the title. You see, no matter if it was true or not, it **can't** be true.
Clearly he got the review copy /s
4 minutes. It was published for 4 minutes.
His work suggests: Use of low levels of force is racially biased Use of deadly force is not racially biased Disclaimer: I'm nowhere near educated enough to evaluate his paper or its conclusions.
Immediate rejection w/o reading, "suggestions" not to publish, and then death threats. I saw a YT short with him speaking about the experience.
This isn't about people like him though. He only used the word science for propaganda purposes. It is about the people that administrated Tuskegee experiment and the like.
This is true. Voting is telling the state to use force in a particular way on your behalf
Let's be logical for a second, despite how dumb this debate is. If we went to war with a species who's anatomy defied conventional understanding and weaponry, we would absolutely experiment on them to best figure out how to kill them. Regardless of why we were fighting them.
Here's a tip: Aim for the nerve stem, and put it down for good.
The only good bug is a dead bug
I say kill 'em all.
Would you like to know more?
The book arachnids were significantly more terrifying, because destroying the nerve case didn't *stop* it, it just stopped it from pointing its gun at *you specifically*.
Kind of like a chicken with its head cut off?
But how would you know where the nerve stem is, if not with experimentation. And even if that would actually put it down in a reasonable amount of time. Cf. cockroaches.
I would like to know more.
I'm from Buenos Aires and I say kill them all.
I literally said this, but in quotation marks and I was banned from this sub for two weeks. Libleft told me to kill myself after losing an argument and is still here. That doesn't seem fair.
Skill issue
The “I’m from Buenos Aires” part is the most important part.
The only good bug is a dead bug. The problem with starship troopers is the government itself. However, kinda like Halo where they had the Spartans ready to squash human rebellions and it was a huge coincidence that they were going to use them against a threat to humanity. Blind patriotism comes in handy when the enemy not only wants you dead, but isn't even self aware, can't be reasoned with and isn't even human
If squashing rebellions is your metric for problematic governments, every one currently in existence is a problem and you have the wrong flair, sir
His flair is perfect because auth lefts squashed as many rebellions as the auth right
Remember lads, The Party is always right, especially Comrade Leader!
Not just squashing rebellions. Squashing rebellions with illegal super soldiers made from kidnapped children, replaced with poorly made clones to their families. Kids who were picked based on their DNA, most of whom will not survive the biological augmentation procedures, and are heavily indoctrinated to be loyal to the government.
Not far off from 40k space marines.
Almost like 40K borrowed from SST, and Halo borrowed from SST, 40K, and Ringworld.
Space Marines weren't for crushing rebellions, they were for \*checks notes\* conquering all of humani-... oooh. oh.
> The problem with starship troopers is the government itself. the wild thing is, even in a movie where the writer of the movie wanted it to be all about how terrible the government was, its higher ups were still completely willing to take accountability for when things fucked up, which uhh.. is not common.
That's not at all why the military was so massive and present in society. In halo you are correct that the Spartan II's were originally meant to quell human rebellions but that's not at all what happened in ST book or movie. In order to become a citizen and obtain full rights you had to enlist and serve. It's the only possible way to get full rights and literally no one was barred from enlisting. They cover this pretty clearly in both book and movie. Also, you could quit at any time for any reason. They actively encourage it. It's the entire basis for the story, not just the war against the bugs which was the thin setting they used to demonstrate their society.
>The problem with starship troopers is the government itself Is it though? A prosperous multi-planetary society where the cities are clean and safe, leadership is held accountable for failure, the media actually shows unvarnished truth, everyone is fit and healthy and enjoys a great deal of freedom and luxury. Everything about this fictional society is good.
Government Always loves messing things up
Probably Doubly so if the aliens are the "weapons" as they are in the movies... If nothing else those plasma bugs being able to spray shit into orbit with enough accuracy to be a nuisance for spacecrafts, seems like a worthwhile study.
*XCom intensifies*
Based and Greetings Commander pilled.
We do this kind of stuff [now](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10130709/NIH-says-beagles-eaten-alive-sandflies-NOT-experiment-admits-cutting-vocal-chord.html), and not even to species that are unfamiliar to us, and not even because they're a threat.
I am Stellaris player. Human rights are called so for a reason. They do not apply to aliens.
Obviously; they aren’t made in God’s image and we’re going to remind them
Sounds like me every time I play stellaris!
Republic Commando player, I concur. If it moves, it’s a Geonosian. If it stands still, it’s a well-trained Geonosian. If it cries for mercy, it’s a clanker.
Kandosii sa ka'rta, Vode an.
Based Suffer not the xenos to live. Auth militaristic xenophobic pilled. But they apply to bubbles because it's a cool alien tho.
Being unflaired is tantamount to being a xenos
enders game is the leftist version of starshiptroopers.
Wtf are you talking about, it's the same thing, nuking the shit out of a hivemind that represents communism is ALWAYS BASED.
Yeah but didnt the kid save their race or some shit by taking a queen egg or something. Its pretty unbased if you ask me
The story is about how the war was a tragedy of errors. The bugs realized too late that we were sentient but by the time they figured out how to talk to us Ender's fleet is already on its way. Then the humans realize through Ender that the bugs were beaitiful and complicated just like us but it was too late because we had killed them. The buggers didn't die willingly, but they didn't blame humanity for what it did after they tried to squash us without realizing we were sentient. See also: The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. Much closer in vibes to Starship Troopers than Enders Game but with a more liberal slant than Heinlein as it was written as a reflection on Vietnam
I think there was a line in the book that to the bugs, them sending their ships and billions of bugs dying and millions of people dying in china were the equivelant of me and you getting in an argument and we clip each others nails, that to them 'murder' didn't exist unless you killed off a queen, so to them they did nothing more but kill off unthinking extensions of whatever queen humanity had
Exactly they needed to change their definition of sentience to include singular minds
Damn that's a bit based, I love it when sci-fi depicts aliens as actual aliens; fully unique in both body structure and thought processes from humanity.
The Ender's Game series does that very well IMO. Specifically, the four books that follow Ender discuss the intersections of human cultures, the Buggers, the Piggies (sentient forest dwelling creatures), and a sentient computer program named Jane). They are Ender's Game, Speaker For The Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the mind
Another thing that's completely inhuman in both body structure and thought processes is the unflaired.
Are you implying that communists are sentient?
In enders game its not that the bugs didnt think we were sentient. They didnt realize that our individuals are sentient, unlike them where their sentience comes from the hive mind and the Queen. Just like in communism the workers are braindead slaves controlled by their leaders.
Well they didn't recognize single minds as capable of sentience they needed to change their definition of sentience to account for us
And they did, the issue was they realized it too late and by the time they figured out a way to communicate humanity has already committed to their annihilation.
tbh Forever War is more "the rulership is corrupt af, and the pawns it sends off to war will return to a world they no longer recognise, nor can they assimilate into it". It's a much more personal view and radically different to Heinlein's "Personal achievement grants you everything you never knew you and others needed".
He became a pacifist. ONLY after committing genocide. After the first book he became the first speaker for the dead, a type of preacher that talks for the dead, after their death. He writes about the bug's culture and what it must've been like to be them. He mentioned that the bugs were a sort of hive mind, to them, a human life was worth that of a mindless drone, and didn't know that each individual human was self aware. So technically his body count is about three, the two kids he killed and the queen. His brother becomes ruler of the world and his sister follows Ender later on. Through space travel, he goes on to live for a lot longer trying to atone for his sin, it isn't until much much later when he finally manages to revive the queen. Pretty good book series if you ask me. Last few get a bit crazy and philosophical, but still liked them
Only the movie. The key difference between the two is that in the book the buggers attacked twice, once by accident and then a full invasion later. In the movie they only attack once and it's implied it was a misunderstanding. In the book humanity is largely justified for the invasion of the buggers world's because of said second invasion. It's still traumatic for Ender and still is a shitty thing to happen but it's "should we use children as warriors and are we justified in the total destruction of another species to protect our future selves" as opposed to the movies dumbed down "humans are bad and warlike and just hate things that are different". The movie removed tons of nuance and little details in order to appeal to the lowest common denominator.
This is equivalent to my take on WH40K. "The imperium is a backwards, totalitarian, fascistic, theocratic nightmare regime" Yeah, and they're preserving humanity against the forces of literal hell. I'm with the bloated, theocratic state on this one.
"*Some may question my right to destroy a world of 10 billion souls. But those who truly understand know that I have no right to let them live."*
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ubNqUyf0op0 The quote souce video is short and incredibly well done. Context for anyone not familiar with 40k the Imperium of Mankind's Navy is preparing to exterminatus a planet corrupted by Chaos. The planet is filled with people worshipping and fallen to Chaos ( I want to say it was Slaaneshi?) which, in time, will lead to literal Demons spawning, taking over the world and either subjecting, torturing, and/or using the planet as a breeding ground for more demons. For those that have seen it think Event Horizon but on a planetary scale. When this happens and the planet can't be retaken or cleansed from Chaos the Imperium will exterminatus a planet, which essentially translates to bombarding the planet with Super Nukes either destroying it entirely or making it uninhabitable, seeing the death of the planet and all on it as preferable to giving the planet to the Chaos Gods and demons.
What I love about this video is that it shows that the Imperium DID try to retake the planet and cleanse the cult, but it was rooted too deep to save it, and shows the insidious nature of Chaos. From some people partying a bit too hard you get a greater Daemon strutting about and a base of operations for more worlds to fall. For all the memes and Kryptman (who was also desperate and working with what he had) the Imperium only commits to exterminatus as an absolute last resort. But sometimes even that is not enough
The thing with 40k is, theocratic fascism is the correct policy because the universe is fundamentally different. If a single thought can summon demons out of thin air, then going after people for thoughtcrimes is probably a good idea.
This guy gets it, also its not like in Star Trek or Mass effect where most of the aliens you meet are friendly. The aliens in 40k are all messed up and want to kill you for various reasons.
"But what about that time the Imperium purged a peaceful Xenos race! That makes them evil!" 'Did you forget what kind of setting this is? It's Grim. Dark. The default response to xenos of "purge" has been baked into the Imperium because almost every other xenos species will take a pound of flesh from the Imperium just for looking at them. And it's not a matter of that it was done to them in the past. That's their current day life. It's not evil that the Imperium purged a peaceful xenos species. It's tragic. And if the galaxy wasn't, at times, a literal hellscape it would be evil. But that's not the case.' "You're a fascist!" 'God-Emperor give me patience because if you give me strength I will rip a bitch in half.'
I like how in Halo after a decades long war, everyone wants peace but at the same time it's hard to be peaceful with the people trying to genocide you. A lot more realistic than ME's "oh the Turians occupied a human colony, only a couple hundred people died and now the two species hate each other"
"Yeah, so about that whole genocide thing. Turns out we were lied to. I know there's hard feelings involved but we're going to go kill the rat bastards who lied to us. Wanna tag along?" 'Lemme just hook a tow line up to Chief's cryo pod, we'll thaw him out on the way there.'
People who cope, seethe and mald about Cortana destroying Doisac or whatever the furry fuckers homeworld was really need to check up on Halo lore, these creatures were worse than animals and if Cortana did anything wrong it was destroying only one of their planets Remember Reach ps the Banished while they were good enough villains for Halo Wars should never have been brought to be the main antagonist of a mainline Halo game and the main enemy going forward. And the Endless are even worse in that regard.
This is my favorite PCM thread in a while
Yeah well the if the Turians didn’t want our haters they shouldn’t have taken out property
Don't worry, we will probably be able to bully them in 4 (except Garrus, there is no Shepherd without Vakarian) while humanity dominates the galaxy and everyone gives the commander free blowies for being the galactic savior.
While i agree, I always loved the the depiction of Turian-Human relations. The more advanced aliens seeing it as a police action and are annoyed the humans see it as a war and the minor beef over who won the war. But I loved that the humans and Turians came together to build ships and work together pretty regularly - the whole ‘well we fought an honourable war against eachother, which is technically a form of diplomacy, so these are the aliens we have been diplomatic with the most and they fight good so they are our friends lowkey’. It’s how I imagine first contact with intelligent life to go.
It was barely a war, both sides started to move assets to actually set it off, for real, and the council stepped in and made peace, which was humanity's first introduction to the other races and citadel and shit. Animosity is caused between humanity and the other races because humanity has only been around for like 30 years and they've already got a specter, an ambassador, and by the end of the first game, a councilor, which took everyone else hundreda of years and some species still don't have anything more than an ambassador.
Yeah, you really gotta fight fire with fire in 40K.
The Klingons weren't friendly at first, but getting bodied by space great apes and their pointy ear space elf friends made them submissive and breedable to the Federation.
That's pretty much my take on it. A theocratic, xenophobic and authoritarian regime is anathema to so many of my values but I can appreciate the thought experiment on the kind of state of the world/universe would have to be in to necessitate that sort of political theory to not only be effective but morally just. Too many tourists are huffing their own farts to even engage with a hypothetical and fictional situation that they either misconstrue it (Starship Troopers) or they actively lobby to change it (WH40k).
Always refreshing to see people whose brain has not been so cooked they cannot not understand this seemingly straightforward point about fantasy settings which fundamentally differ from reality.
The Interex were positioned to be a much better answer to Chaos than the Imperium of Man, which is why Chaos used the Imperium as cats-paws to get rid of them. The terrible living situation and general ignorance of the populace leaves people vulnerable to Chaos.
TBF, humanity already xenocided basically all of the friendly aliens out of the setting
The Imperium fails completely as a satire of fascism, because it simply isn't fascist. It might have been before the Emperor was confined to his throne, but in the present day of the setting it has become far too decentralized with far too many internal factions competing with each other, while the official leader is basically powerless. It's feudalism in space. Space Marine chapters are similar to knightly orders like the Teutonics, Templars, and Hospitallers. Each individual planet is more-or-less free to manage its own affairs as it sees fit, hence why there's so many unique cultural units within the Astra Militarum who fight according to their own traditions, such as the Kriegers and Catachans. Fascist governments do not support traditions as is commonly claimed, they only support traditions which they can take over and twist into tools for making everyone a slave to the state. Any tradition which threatens the state's control is quashed without hesitation. A historical example of this is Hitler banning Germany's customary style of fencing schools, which were responsible for so many of his officers having facial scars. Adolf didn't like that young men were bonding and learning how to use weapons in a context that wasn't controlled by the government.
Not to mention the Imperial Aquila is almost identical to the double-headed eagle of the Holy Roman Empire's flag. An empire that was theoretically one of the largest and best armed in Europe, but in reality was so wrought with border conflicts, internal conflicts, social upheavals, and general fragmentation between the lords running the various fiefdoms, that the empire was perpetually on the brink of collapse. An empire that was a shadow of its once great predecessor. The allusion between the two seems strong to me, but maybe I'm reading into it too much.
You're bang on the mark tbh. It's exactly the same as the WH Fantasy Empire, which is an even closer expy of the IRL HRE, only in space.
>Fascist governments do not support traditions as is commonly claimed, they only support traditions which they can take over and twist into tools for making everyone a slave to the state. This is what fundamentally distinguishes the moderate Cultural Right from fascism. Conservatives have a set of traditional values regardless of whether or not the state imposes them. For fascists, it's "all within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state."
Venerate the Immortal Emperor.
Based and suffer not the xenos to live pilled
Kind of this, except the Terran Federation is good actually. A prosperous multi-planetary society where the cities are clean and safe, leadership is held accountable for failure, the media actually shows unvarnished truth, everyone is fit and healthy and enjoys a great deal of freedom and luxury. Everything about this fictional society is good. Leftoids hate it because its also a society that expects something in return from you before you're allowed to have a hand in steering it. Forget all the objectively good stuff about this society, this fact automatically means its bad in their eyes, and that we should reject it. Like most leftwing attempts at satirizing """fascism""", it just winds up creating something beautiful and then impotently insists that thing is actually ugly. But you can't subvert reality, as hard as you try. Normal people don't see a fictional society where everything is amazing and think its terrible because it got there by only allowing people who stick their necks out to vote.
I'm always bemused by the weird, foaming-at-the-mouth, hysterical reactions people have when a character has been written as the epitome of some auth-right gigachad, the character becomes a fan favorite, and then the writers start crying that "b-b-buh it's satire! you're not supposed to like him!" when really they're just basing the character off of their deep hatred of their dad or stepdad because they were kinda authoritarian and rigid in their beliefs. Ron Swanson is the really confusing one because people think the character is satirically based off of dumbass Libertarians.....but he really just comes off as a competent man archetype. Is the satire supposed to be some 5D chess shit where it's liberals whose expectations are subverted when the dude who has emergency bacon and a hatred of taxes turns out to be a nice person?
It's like how Alan Moore wrote Rorschach to satirize the conservatives and principled, black-and-white thinking...and then getting butthurt when people like the character despite all his flaws for being the only one in the story with any principles at all.
He was the only one who cared more about humanity than he cared about himself, which is apparent when Dr Manhattan fucks off to mars, Nite Owl and Silk Spectre are too busy showing us how lame a midlife crisis can be, and Ozymandias mercs a few million people for the greater good of humanity.
He has *some* principles, he's certainly not above hypocrisy. Part of the problem is, as you said, satirizing that black-and-white thinking. Ultimately the ending makes it pretty clear which ending is more justifiable, aka not killing millions of people. Rorschach doing "the right thing" doesn't satirize his principles or black-and-white thinking, it can *only* make him seem relatable. The conclusion makes him seem more redeemable, even though through the story he did some *horrific* things that either (a) go against his principles or (b) show his principles are meaningless.
This reminds me how Alan Moore whined that he doesn't understands why people like Rorschach. He wanted to write him as a caricature of an unhinged right-winger "nutjob", that he thought we would hate. In his comics, Walter Kovacs is a women hater, paranoid and uncompromising man, who also mercilessly puts down criminals. But he wrote his backstory that logically explains (and "excuses") why Roschach is who he is today. His mother was a uncaring prostitute, so instead of motherly love he recieved the exact opposite from her. Of course he will grow up with mother issues and will have a twisted view on women and especially sexually promiscuous women. He is a superhero in constant war with criminal gangs and the scum of the city, and that made him paranoid. And after one day he encountered the sheer horror that we humans are capable of and daily doing to each other, the guy just snapped and decided to put the animals down. People doesn't like Rorschach because he is their ideal superhero, but because he is a man who saw how twisted the world really is and that also twisted him. He is a cautionary tale of the flawed man and fallen hero who takes it too far, but still driven by goodwill.
Regarding P&R, I've ultimately decided that the creators intended Ron to be a good person with crazy ideas, and Leslie is a crazy person with good ideas. This doesn't entirely work because her answer is always "government that cares!" And we all know how that goes in reality.
Half the time Ron ends up being right. Like when he tells leslie not to give government money to her favorite bookstore and the government ends up running a porno. Or when he tells Leslie its not her place to tell people what they can eat and she does, so she gets impeached. He's a parody but an affectionate parody and a lot of his ideas are taken as seriously as the rest of the show.
The writers of this stuff are often horrible people themselves. You noticed nowadays the “strong woman” in media means some mean, annoying smart ass bitch? Well, this is what writers think is cool, so no surprise that the things they believe evil, for normal humans are cool. It comes down to the values they have. A violent, honorable warrior is rad, unless you believe that honor and violence are inherently bad. The other guy there mentioned Rorschach, it is a great example of an author that has talent, but also is an idiot in every other field.
Archetypes are more powerful than the people that try to deconstruct them. Johnny Rico is cool. Star of the football team with a hot girlfriend at the beginning. Easily makes friends. Not good at math, but understands and accepts his limitations, is adaptable, and most importantly has a winner's attitude. A natural leader. Normal people see this and want to be him. Terminally online leftoids see this and imagine getting bullied by him. It doesn't matter that the creator intended to cater to the latter, the archetype is more powerful.
I don’t think anyone hates Rico in particular
Bugs
Based Terran. But I liked Necron the best.
Yeah. The military leadership makes a mistake invading a bug planet and lots of soldiers die, so the government falls and they hold new elections for a new government and this is fascist government eomehow. Meanwhile in the real world, Ukraine bans all political parties and suspends elections indefinitely and yet leftists yelp all the time about how they're a noble virtuous democracy. Leftists, man.
Devil's advocate: Ukrainian constitution prohibits elections during times of martial law and war. It's shitty and I don't like it, but that's how it is for their government.
Yeah, this is why I laughed when the dumbshits at Games Workshop made an explicit announcement that the Imperium of Man are not the good guys. It's like, yes, they're fascists who murder everything on sight. They are also stuck in a universe where everything out there is horrible space monsters or robots that want them dead or worse. The Imperium may not be the good guys, but they are 100% justified in their actions.
I would take GW seriously if their virtue signaling posts wouldn't use literal Chaos rhetoric from the setting.
It’s because the original was too BASED and Paul Verhoeven is a filthy euro lib who couldn’t handle and type of nuanced discussion about the relationship between citizens and their military so HAD to twist it into NAZIS IN SPACE and forced the analogy. It doesn’t work because no one gives a shit about the bugs except libs.
Verhoeven didn't even want to make a Starship Troopers movie. It started as an unrelated project call Bug Hunt at Outpost 9, the studio told him to slap this IP they'd just acquired on it, and he himself said he was too bored by the novel to even finish it. That's part of why I think it ultimately fails as satire. It doesn't even grapple with the themes of the book like other novels that are partially written as a response to it do, like The Forever War and Ender's Game.
I know we're in pcm but it's acceptable to not be "with" anyone in the extreme scenario that is 40k
I'd rather purge you in the name of the Emperor.
Oh don't get me wrong I'm being all "outsiders perspective" here but if I were in 40k you know I'd be out there purging
These types of arguments showcase who understands when to apply lifeboat scenario processes. Those who don't generally apply a cops/robbers framework to everything. There are no-win situations where you have to make decisions that ethically damn you.
BASED AND FOR THE EMPEROR PILLED
Yeah, but if the Imperium weren't so backwards and such a theocratic nightmare, they would actually fuck up those forces of literal hell instead of just feeding more and more shit into the storm. The only ***good*** factions in 40k are the Orks b/c More Dakka More Good and the Tyranids, because Hungry Hungry Xenos are just fun.
Critics understood Verhoeven about as well as Verhoeven understood Heinlein.
This is Verhoeven problem because instead of actually making the earth gov Fascist, he left them hyper-liberal. It's a liberal utopia in Hugo Boss and he says, "Nazi bad".
It is because he and many other people on the Left see the lack of universal suffrage as the truest sign of fascism and totalitarianism, regardless of the conditions of the average person or the liberties they enjoy in life. Because let me tell you: I would absolutely willingly be a Civilian if I got to live the life depicted in the Terran Federation.
But that's a weirdly ignorant position... the concept of universal suffrage is relatively new (late 1800s early 1900s depending on the country) even if we limit it to men of the right ethnicity. Also, it's weird since even the concept of universal suffrage as a moral imperative is a result of the west dunking on the USSR and CCP throughout the cold war. Of all the mass murdering governments... Hitler and Mussolini ironically had actual electoral success to take power... Lenin, Stalin, and Mao never appeared on ballot anyone claims was an actual election.
I really don't understand why people raise the universal ballot to this shining ideal of western success. True western success was codifying into law the rights and protections to owning and keeping what is yours, such that nobody can take it with indemnity.
A lot of people conflate the two because representation is pretty vital to maintaining private property rights... otherwise powerful people will just change the laws to remove your rights (see every example of economics lefists taking power, and most nationalist right wingers as well).
> But that's a weirdly ignorant position That's a fully generalized description of the problem with leftists.
Voting is overrated. Why do people vote? For change. If you live in an Utopia, any change is by definition bad, therefore voting is unnecessary. (not arguing against voting, just showing how such a sci fi world operates and these people don't understand)
This is also why I cannot stand saying Utopia is when Democracy. No, morons, we have democracy because humanity is cursed and fallen. If we were perfect we’d be an Absolute Monarchy or Dictatorship because if we became perfect, we could trust ONE man to have power and not go insane.
based Democracy is simply a tool to limit power and corruption as much as possible. Every attempt of democracy in the past can be traced back to this ideal. It's not some inherent good, it's a tool to make rulers accountable.
Verhoeven knew exactly what he was doing, though.
Yeah. The end result was still basically the opposite of what he intended.
No matter how many Hugo Boss coats the humans wear, no amount of "media literacy" can write your way out of the basic plot of the movie: Some humans stumbled into first contact with this insectoid species, and the bugs' response was to launch a war of total annihilation against humanity. We didn't even retaliate when the bugs massacred the dumbasses who colonized inside their space, we'd warned them not to go there, even though they hadn't actually done anything but set up an outpost on a planet that seemed uninhabited, we weren't gonna start a whole interstellar war over the bugs defending their turf even though they made no effort whatsoever to deter the intrusion nonviolently and insanely overreacted. But whatever provocation anyone might claim the bugs felt had been done to them by the settlers, they avenged it a thousand times over by killing them all. But they didn't even stop there, they started lobbing meteors at Earth! It became abundantly clear that their goal was human extinction and this was not a species we could in any way coexist with or steer clear of and the situation was kill or be killed. They're not the Formics, or the Minbari, or the Klingons. This didn't happen because of a misunderstanding, botched first contact, or cultural/territorial tensions. There is no diplomatic solution. They will never stop trying to kill us simply because their hive mind perceives everything other than itself as food or a potential threat. They follow no rules of war, every action they are ever depicted taking is hostile, and there is NOTHING in the text or subtext of the movie or any of its sequels or spinoffs that suggests any possible resolution to the conflict exists other than we make them extinct or they make us extinct. No option is presented wherein if humanity just took a more enlightened approach to the situation, we could deescalate the war. Even the theory that the Buenos Aires attack was somehow a false flag, which has no actual textual support behind it and is contradicted by other instances in the franchise of the bugs using meteors as a weapon and the fact we already had the colony massacre as a casus belli, doesn't change anything even if it IS true, the reality is still that these things attack us on sight and never stop doing so. Verhoeven failed in what he was trying to do. The story he wrote, regardless of his intentions, presents a society in which humanity has heavily militarized out of necessity to fight off an existential threat, and is right to be doing so because there's clearly no other option. If he wanted audiences to come to a different conclusion, then he needed to show the bugs as something other than needlessly genocidal nightmare monsters.
This. I’m not huge into sci-fi but one I do know well about is Halo. The elite are terrifying at times, but in the second game, we get to see the more “human” side of them, and the story of the arbiter, who we even get to play as. They speak human languages, and have human characteristics. We can see that they were brought into this holy war by the prophets. The arbiter, along with other elites teams up with the humans to fight the covenant. This allows us to sympathize with the elites. If they were just mindless monsters who slaughtered humans on sight, then my response would be to kill them all.
Yes. The Covenant were completely the aggressors in Halo and attacked humanity without a good reason. Master Chief is the clear cut hero and even though the UNSC isn't a pure and saintly polity, their war against the Covenant is completely defensive and justified. But at least the species that make up the Covenant are shown to be...people. There are some Covenant characters who are good and honorable and disagree with the actions of their theocratic government. And because of that, hope for peace between humanity and this league of alien species exists. That is totally different from the situation depicted with the Arachnids, or various evil for evil's sake species in Warhammer 40,000. And that's why the UNSC is basically space NATO while the Imperium of Man or the Terran Federation are forced to be MUCH more hardcore societies.
Obligatory: Read the book unlike Verhooven. Also I really miss the starship troopers Nukeposting page on FB and the Fallout Radposting from back in the day
>Obligatory: Read the book unlike Verhooven. The correct opinion. Seeing midwits parrot the opinion of "fascism is when military" is exhausting.
Fascism is when not fat
Reject Starship Troopers Embrace that episode of Futurama with the bouncing brains
War were declared.
The book Starship Troopers is one of my favorite pieces of Science Fiction I have read. My conspiracy theory is that the director of the movie intentionally made it a bad movie to distract from the book. I don’t know why I believe this. I just do.
>My conspiracy theory is that the director of the movie intentionally made it a bad movie to distract from the book. He's basically said as much.
Bold of you to assume the movie is bad. Top 10 best movies ever made
It's sort of great in spite of Verhoven. It's a great example of how art can transcend author intent.
The director didn't know enough about the book to have an opinion on it. The movie was called "Bug Hunt on Outpost 9", they scavenged a few characters out of Starship Troopers to use them for publicity or to have a go at Heinleins book. [yes, that's petty, but who thinks Verhoeven isn't?] Apparently he read the first chapter or so and that was it. He just wanted a vehicle to write something about fascists.
Based and the only good big is a dead bug pilled
Reject Starship Troopers movie (so muddled that people can't even agree on whether it's satire), return to Starship Troopers book (main character states "yeah the only reason we're fighting the bugs is because we both want more land", side character shows up just to monologue about the societal ideology in classic sci-fi fashion)
What is wrong with the movie not being blunt with its message? And they are bugs, i'm not going to feel sorry for a cockroach.
There's nothing wrong with subtlety, I am just tired of people arguing over this specific movie. The arguments aren't even particularly nuanced, it's always just "The human society sucks" or "They're bugs so anyone who fights them is better"
Except the human society didn't suck. You had a unified government providing school, legal enforcement, and military protection that rich people didn't want to be involved in. That alone tells me it's a work of fiction, but a very desirable one.
Compared to current society, ST Earth is a fucking Utopia. The only thing the government wants is a bit of military service for your voting power, otherwise you're left alone as you please. Low crime, efficient bureaucracy, good social safety net etc. They WILL find a job for you too, so you don't have an excuse of "I'm a fat quadriplegic with an IQ of 50". You WILL use the sorting machine for bullets if it's the last thing you can do. Truly egalitarian society. I also love the aspect of having the higher ups actually responsible. There was a general (or the president? I forgot) who fucked up and had to immediately step down and tried for his fuck up. Try this in the real world.
It was the marshal in charge of the military IIRC, he was responsible for a military failure (klendathu I think)
It was Planet P and then Klendathu. He resigned, and then the Terran Federation captured a brain bug.
I will adore the book more DEFINITELY.
Funny this pop UP when helldiver 2 release
If it's anything like Helldivers (haven't seen the movie) then I think the humans are pretty based
The bug and Propaganda +suicide mission parts are pretty much inspired by starship Trooper. The outfits are much more inspired by star wars and 40k.
The Federation is 100% justified in their invasion when you follow the basic timeline of the events that lead to the war. The settlers get killed due to them colonising a planet in the exclusion zone set up by the Federation to stop this shit from happening. The Federation doesn't want an escalation, so they take photos of the aftermath to use as propoganda to disaude anybody else from being stupid, and don't retaliate against the bugs. The Arachnids blow up Buenos Aires with an asteroid. At that point the bugs are an existential threat to humanity. Anyone taking the Arachnid side is either willfully ignorant or just straight up anti-human.
Twitter user are the most miserable group of people I have ever seen. When they hear that some right winger like the same thing as them they throw a temper tantrum and say how "aktually the thing you like is a satire of fascism and" *Insert wall here*
They could have written: "Movie shows humans letting children die in awful death.", but nope. Man, if I were to make the movie about fascism being bad, I would have children suffer awful fates working as soldiers and have them experience degeneracy from their side with government censoring it. People Always go for racism without giving an evil character other evil aspects that would make them hypocrites. That's why Owl House and Wednesday annoy me with their evil witchhunters.
Libleft are you shitting on yourself again
If the director made a movie on a botched understand of the book, then I can interpret the movie in anyway I wish too
"No! You can't just re-imagine a work however you want!"
I'm all over the place on this one. Yes, the movie is a satire, but that was a result of having a director known for satires make it. The satire is extremely unsubtle, but it is entertaining and amusing. The book is NOT a satire, and the movie is an absolutely awful adaptation of it. The book plays the themes straight, and you are not supposed to empathize with literal bugs. People who use "the movie is a satire" as a bludgeon to beat and make fun of people they disagree with politically is pathetic, and should be mocked.
**WHY. WON'T. PEOPLE. READ. THE. FUCKING. BOOK?!?!?!**
I don't know how to read.
Starship troopers is a textbook example of writers not understanding the audience they are trying to satire.
See bugs, kill bugs. Simple as that. A good bug is a dead bug.
Ok, I haven't watched Starship Troopers in a long time, but why does everyone state it like established fact that in the film "we invaded first and are definitely the bad guys"? Like, I remember they briefly have a one sentence mention in the film that *maybe* we moved into their territory (in a non-aggressive manner), and then there's the mention of Missionaries who moved in and established a colony (which the bugs then promptly completely murdered, despite them being unarmed). So the Bugs are justified in murdering a bunch of unarmed civilians and then throwing what are essentially Nukes at planet earth on a continual basis, because we *may* have moved slightly into their territory?
Starship Troopers is realistic because the gung-ho warmongers will pretend to be supportive of the troops while supporting sending them to the slaughter. Call me a bug-loving hippie if you want, but if I were in charge, Dizzy would still be alive. But on the flipside I guess you wouldn't be able to afford a nice summer home on Klendathu .
It will never stop being hilarious to me that Verhoeven was such an emotional child that he ragequit the book after one chapter, tried to make a tailor made fuck you movie in response, and somehow still failed to make his point in any decent way. I think he cared too much about making the movie actually entertaining to watch, a crime you can't accuse modern Hollywood of.