Greentext

I have a lot of thoughts and feelings related to the book because, while there is a lot of garbage in it, the core thesis spelled out at one point in the last third I think is very worthwhile and came at a time in my life (just turned 21 when I first read it) that it helped shape my political views. As another commenter said Heinlein was never very consistent in the politics portrayed in his stories, which I’ve understood as him exploring various views more than wholeheartedly endorsing any one of them.

First, the garbage. It’s pretty clearly pro military, as the in-book government was established by veterans seizing power and the primary path to having political power (being a voting citizen as opposed to a civilian) is through military service. There’s lip service paid that it’s any kind of civil service (Neil Patrick Harris’s character goes off to a research lab for experimenting in the book), but it’s only a sentence or two. No source on this, but my gut says Heinlein probably wanted to explore the idea more but was hampered by the fact he was writing a space military adventure and needed to focus on that. There’s also a lot of 50’s values espoused for separating genders into different groups and that spanking your kids is good no matter what the “bleeding hearts” might say.

The biggest difference that bothers me between the book and movie is how soldier lives are valued, best displayed through the tactics humanity uses. In the movie humanity uses almost the same strategy as the bugs. Get a lot of troops, equip them about as cheaply as possible, then send swarms of them to deal with bugs. Mass casualties are a given. The book is one of if not the first example of power armor turning a soldier into almost a one man army. It’s stated at one point that a single soldier is about as effective as 1000 bug drones in combat. This, along with statements from multiple officers throughout the book, shows me that individual soldier lives are actually valued in the book, and that while they are spent they are not wasted the way they are in the movie.

But for me, the most important takeaway from the book is a lecture given to Johnny Rico during officer school where the instructor lays out why service is required for citizenship. Essentially the goal is to ensure that the only people making decisions on behalf of society (ie politicians and the people that vote them in) are putting the good of that society over their own personal wellbeing. The service citizens go through is meant to weed out selfish people by putting them through difficult experiences where it would be in their best interest to quit rather than continue. While I doubt the book’s system would actually achieve that, I do think that the value of society-serving rather than self-serving voters and politicians is correct and probably the most important thing that a society could achieve (not that I know how to achieve that). It’s the first thing I ask myself when deciding who to vote for now, “does this person actually care about the people they’ll be representing or are they just interested in having power?”

Its bad, dude sounded like he wanted this the entire time and it really would be better. But that scene in the beginning stuck with me through the entire reading and I came out with nearly the same interpretation as the movie.

Heinlein was...rather directionless on his politics. I think it was Clarke that once remarked that Heinlein's politics depended on who he was sleeping with - which is why you get weird whiplash from the anti-governance free-love (and incest and racism) in Methuselah's Children and Farnham's Freehold to a full throated defense of utopian fascism in Starship Troopers.