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loving boomers.
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Sep 3, 2019 23:22
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Samuringa posted:TV Episodes that did not age well even though they were never made If that show ended up being as much of an emotional rollercoaster as that summary, it would have been riveting (and horrific).
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Sep 3, 2019 23:31
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hard counter posted:i personally think it's fairer to call robert heinlein stubbornly naive than actively malicious even if you think nativity can be equally destructive, This seems relatively common among military sci fi, for example one I actually like: Jack Campbell. He's highly critical of any influential unelected power (whether that's corporate, intelligence agencies, military, etc) and firmly believes that the most cynical democracy is still better than the most noble military coup. However he places the responsibility on the citizens to elect people worthy of the office rather than the systems that allowed monsters to take control in the first place. You're this close.
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Sep 3, 2019 23:37
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GrandpaPants posted:If that show ended up being as much of an emotional rollercoaster as that summary, it would have been riveting (and horrific).
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Sep 3, 2019 23:37
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FactsAreUseless posted:Isn't it just a less-satirical Falling Down? that's God Bless America, which unfortunately did get released
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Sep 4, 2019 00:00
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Samuringa posted:TV Episodes that did not age well even though they were never made Not gonna lie, I actually kind of wish that had been made. Like what even the gently caress?
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Sep 4, 2019 00:00
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THEY JUST WOULDN'T STOP INSTAGRAMMING THEIR SANDWICHES
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Sep 4, 2019 00:01
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buddhist nudist posted:This seems relatively common among military sci fi, for example one I actually like: Jack Campbell. He's highly critical of any influential unelected power (whether that's corporate, intelligence agencies, military, etc) and firmly believes that the most cynical democracy is still better than the most noble military coup. However he places the responsibility on the citizens to elect people worthy of the office rather than the systems that allowed monsters to take control in the first place. Really the most important feature of democracy is that it diffuses power around. If you have a singular position that gets absolute power or can use weaselly ways to control who gets the democratic powers then every psychopath, narcissist, or fanatic in existence is going to stop at nothing to either get that position, get extra influence on whoever has it, or rig the game so they can get it eventually. Democracy also staples a certain level of accountability on it; if a politician gets too lovely then people can just not elect them again. If you have the reins spread around among a bunch of accountable people that can only do things if they make deals and at the very least not piss off the voters it limits the damage they can do. Granted you get dicks sometimes anyway. I think Heinlein was also playing with that angle; an ever important question is how you keep the psychos out of office. Telling people they have to sign themselves over to the state for a while before they're allowed to have access to any real power at all I think he believed would accomplish that.
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Sep 4, 2019 00:01
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Samuringa posted:TV Episodes that did not age well even though they were never made I like how this is written like the car went all Christine and murdered her, instead of what it probably was - some millennial on his cell phone (a Samsung Galaxy, I’m sure) running her down.
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Sep 4, 2019 00:31
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So besides Neil Patrick Harris’ uniform, what was fascist about the Starship Trooper’s world? Fascism pretty much requires a totalitarian government and they didn’t have that. They do have a rigid social structure, which is a fascist requirement, but so does India and pre-revolution Russia.
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Sep 4, 2019 00:37
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British soap opera magazines tell me that this week in Eastenders there's going to be a mass shooting in a crowded pub. Feels in poor taste to run a storyline like that, but I haven't heard a lot of criticism of it so far.
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Sep 4, 2019 00:45
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Krispy Wafer posted:So besides Neil Patrick Harris’ uniform, what was fascist about the Starship Trooper’s world? Fascism pretty much requires a totalitarian government and they didn’t have that. I think the movie version had the "service" be military only. You could argue "only ex soldiers get to vote" could be easily nudged into outright fascism if it isn't just plain fascism already. It's been like a thousand years since I watched that movie though and I never paid close attention to it. The movie is actually pretty different than the book in a lot of ways. In the book the social structure was actually pretty loose overall; it wasn't like military members were some extra special class with a gently caress ton of extra privileges. The movie did a lot more to glorify the military even though it was also pretty satirical.
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Sep 4, 2019 00:45
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The society was a military dictatorship. There was some lip service to a civil part but it wasn’t really important and is mostly ignored. It couldn’t be more fascist if it tried
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Sep 4, 2019 00:48
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It’s more a democratic Junta. Can’t be totalitarian if the leadership is elected, although it’s a restrictive democracy, like one where only landowners can vote.
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Sep 4, 2019 01:22
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goldenninjawarrior posted:British soap opera magazines tell me that this week in Eastenders there's going to be a mass shooting in a crowded pub. Feels in poor taste to run a storyline like that, but I haven't heard a lot of criticism of it so far. It's possible to do it well, and I'm pretty sure the UK hasn't had any big mass shooting events that would give it a 'too soon' quality (granted, there is time). But there's a lot of bad roads that sort of story could go down in action. We just don't know which ones they'll take until they do it. ...but gently caress, now I want to watch Eastenders just to see if/how they'll gently caress this up. I'm gonna go with 'unrealistic motive, possibly by a minority that really don't do mass shootings'.
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Sep 4, 2019 01:35
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Krispy Wafer posted:It’s more a democratic Junta. Can’t be totalitarian if the leadership is elected, although it’s a restrictive democracy, like one where only landowners can vote. Yeah, an actual fascist government wouldn't have anybody voting. Power would be concentrated in the hands of a few who would pick and choose who did and didn't get in. Rico is from a wealthy, successful Filipino family living in Brazil. They can't vote until Rico and his dad enter the service but it's made very clear in the book that nobody is preventing them from doing pretty much anything else.
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Sep 4, 2019 01:49
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You two have some very narrow ideas of what constitutes fascism.
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Sep 4, 2019 01:59
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Literal Nazi Germany held "elections" for the Reichstag in 1936 and 1938. Fascist Italy held them in 1929 and 1934. The thing is no one really had a choice in those elections, a trend perfectly reflected in the seemingly single-party parliament in Starship Troopers.
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Sep 4, 2019 02:07
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Krispy Wafer posted:So besides Neil Patrick Harris’ uniform, what was fascist about the Starship Trooper’s world? Fascism pretty much requires a totalitarian government and they didn’t have that. nothing really, a lot of folks are throwing the term fascism around regarding both the book and the movie and it's not really merited the book is a generally appreciative thought experiment about the role of authoritarianism and militarism in a near future advanced human society. the movie is a criticism of authoritarianism and militarism. the movie uses fascistic imagery to underscore "hey, these guys are militarists and this is kind of a weird dystopia" e: both the book and the movie suffer from the "cool! space marines!" effect in that the more entertaining parts of the work are the military sci fi pew pew stuff than the explorations of systems of government. this also means it's easy to project whatever political leanings you want on either heinlein or verhoven Mr. Fall Down Terror has a new favorite as of 02:23 on Sep 4, 2019 |
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Sep 4, 2019 02:20
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Jaramin posted:Literal Nazi Germany held "elections" for the Reichstag in 1936 and 1938. Fascist Italy held them in 1929 and 1934. The thing is no one really had a choice in those elections, a trend perfectly reflected in the seemingly single-party parliament in Starship Troopers. It isn't an election if you have somebody telling you who to vote for. Even so in the book it never mentions if there are political parties or not. The book is told from Rico's perspective and it's made pretty apparent that he doesn't really pay much attention to that sort of thing. Rico is barely out of high school when he enlists and enlists more or less on impulse. The book hints that people, after their service, choose for themselves whether they run for any office or not so even if there's only one functional political party it isn't the party deciding who has a shot and who doesn't. This is why I mentioned some of the things I did; the government in the book is portrayed as non-intrusive enough that people actually tend not to think about it all that much. Rico's dad thinks he's a dingus for wanting to join the service as he's been really successful without even bothering to consider it. He eventually joins up anyway but it's a minor plot point at the very end of the book. ToxicSlurpee has a new favorite as of 02:31 on Sep 4, 2019 |
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Sep 4, 2019 02:27
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thinking back there really isn't enough detail around how the government works in the book to say if it's fascist or not. i think it just seems that way because heinlein was probably suffering from some kind of weird cold war panic about communism and he was trying to figure out how an individualist liberal society would defend itself from an alien hive mind threat (aka, the chinese). except he couldn't really reconcile his anti-government, pro-individualist views with the demands of a central militarist world government so it's just awkward. it's easy to label it as "guys with guns who give orders, must be fascists" since that's more plausible than the sort of libertarian militaristic state which both does and doesn't worship soldiers which heinlein is trying to articulate. i feel like the book's idea of gentle militarism made more sense in a very post ww2 mindset when there were millions of rugged men running around who were proud citizen-soldiers, and contemporary views on people who serve in the military (and the role of the military in establishing domestic security) are very different today
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Sep 4, 2019 02:37
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Rico says that the system as it exists in the book happened more or less accidentally. Society broke down, the military imposed order, and the system as it exists kind of just grew from there. It worked and there was really no oppression other than the voting thing so people just lived with it.
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Sep 4, 2019 02:43
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In real life, the idea that only former military can vote would obviously result in fascism, hence Charlesthehammer's post above referring to it as a military dictatorship. But in the fictional world of ST as depicted, this miraculously hasn't happened. The society is very similar to 20th century USA, but with way more equality of race and sex, more general prosperity, plenty of personal freedom, etc. It's practically utopian, apart from the war with the bugs. As a long-time Heinlein fan, I've generally concluded that ST isn't pro-fascist, but its ideas about society are definitely stupid anyway. The whole society is based on one incredibly flawed assumption that Heinlein seems to have believed was true - that people who enlist in the military must not be selfish. At first glance, this might seem to make sense - dying is negative infinity value for oneself, so anyone who is willing to risk it to help defend their society must value helping others more than they value themselves. But of course, in real life we know that's not true. People enlist for all kinds of reasons - to avoid homelessness, to get away from their family, for a sense of machismo, because it's the only way they'll be able to afford a post-secondary education, etc. Not since WWII has there really been a large number of people enlisting just because they felt it was their civic duty. (Speaking from an American perspective, here; Heinlein wasn't known for his multiculturalism.) And from there the incongruity between the ST society's principles and its actuality arises. If Heinlein had realized that those principles would, in real life, lead to fascism, he probably would have been against them.
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Sep 4, 2019 02:47
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Samuringa posted:TV Episodes that did not age well even though they were never made The whole furor about trigger warnings and safe spaces went mainstream because Roger Ailes and the other bloated creeps at Fox got were outraged that Millennials don't want to be sexually assaulted by them and that their victims might want therapy. And then the reasonable centrists all decided that yes, this is a real issue that we have to be concerned about. What a spiteful, stupid age we live in.
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Sep 4, 2019 02:54
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DontMockMySmock posted:In real life, the idea that only former military can vote would obviously result in fascism, hence Charlesthehammer's post above referring to it as a military dictatorship. But in the fictional world of ST as depicted, this miraculously hasn't happened. The society is very similar to 20th century USA, but with way more equality of race and sex, more general prosperity, plenty of personal freedom, etc. It's practically utopian, apart from the war with the bugs. I think part of it came from the standpoint of standard sci-fi optimism. It's a few centuries in the future and there is space travel so he's assuming that there just isn't much reason for people to fight anymore. Everybody is prosperous, nobody is poor, and nobody is fighting each other as there just isn't the need anymore. A hell of a lot of conflict in human history boils down to fighting over resources. If nobody is cold or hungry there's less of that impulse to fight. I don't think he's making a miraculous assumption but looking at it through a lens similar to Star Trek; if there's no scarcity anymore there's just no point in oppressing people so why would anybody bother? Fascist propaganda often relies on "those people are taking poo poo that's rightfully yours! Let's go murder them!" But if you aren't really missing anything and have everything you want it's pretty hard for somebody to convince you that your poo poo is being wrongfully taken. There are hints that it isn't the governmental system causing the stability but rather the plenty that such a high tech society would bring causing it. Even so the service thing is a difference between the movie and the book; it's made clear in the book that some people that serve never actually go into the military. The one dude's service (before he dies in a bug fight, anyway) is doing science stuff on Pluto. No fighting involved; he's intended to be a researcher until the bugs show up and wreck the place's poo poo. There's a bunch of what is fundamentally civilian work that needs done so it isn't like everybody automatically gets shunted off into fighting.
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Sep 4, 2019 02:56
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Re Starship Troopers: I haven't read the book, so this is for the movies. It was not that you had to be in the military to vote, but that military "service" guaranteed citizenship, and all the rights and responsibilities that provides. You could be rich and successful like Rico's parents and not be citizens, but if you were a citizen you got all the perks of being a citizen. And as far as my reading, military service was not the only way to earn citizenship could be earned, instead being one of many. Military service was just one of the ones that 'guaranteed' citizenship, and also had extra perks, (like in the shower scene with the dude who wants to go to Harvard, and if he is a soldier the government pays his way, and the woman who wants to have babies, but needs to be a citizen to get a license.) And for those saying it is not fascism, well maybe you are technically correct. But it is definitely an authoritarian state. With clearly and strictly defined rules and boundaries. The movie just doesn't go much into what happens if you break the rules/run afoul of the 'government', (if at all). I would imagine that summary executions for most infractions against 'social order' are common, and that courts are extremely harsh on the letter of the law.
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Sep 4, 2019 03:01
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BrigadierSensible posted:And for those saying it is not fascism, well maybe you are technically correct. But it is definitely an authoritarian state. With clearly and strictly defined rules and boundaries. The movie just doesn't go much into what happens if you break the rules/run afoul of the 'government', (if at all). I would imagine that summary executions for most infractions against 'social order' are common, and that courts are extremely harsh on the letter of the law. In the book it's explicitly not the case. The movie deviates from the book, though. Pretty early on Rico points out that there are a ton of media personalities who never served constantly screaming about how they deserve the vote but they never get censored. Other than voting the book states that the government doesn't infringe on the rights you'd expect; people can speak, work, move, study, and assemble however they want. The people that scream about the vote never throw rebellions or cause real problems so the government just ignores them.
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Sep 4, 2019 03:03
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rico gets flogged in the movie like in the book. also the movie definitely plays up the fascism angle deliberately because verhoeven wanted to make a satire of militarism even if he had to misinterpret the book to do so. which is fine, it's not that great of a book
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Sep 4, 2019 03:04
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Democratic doesn’t really mean much for fascism. What makes it fascism is how it relates the state to its people, citizenship something you have to earn through some sort of service to the state which by its very nature is going to create an underclass an other to demonize
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Sep 4, 2019 03:07
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ToxicSlurpee posted:In the book the social structure was actually pretty loose overall; it wasn't like military members were some extra special class with a gently caress ton of extra privileges. Given that service members have exclusive control over the government, this state of affairs would persist only until they decided to start voting themselves extra privileges over the plebs. If you only have rights at someone else's sufferance, you don't have rights. That's the crux of the debate. Heinlein's novel depicts a society that has all the ingredients for fascism that arbitrarily manages to avoid actual fascism, which makes it largely indistinguishable from pro-fascist propaganda.
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Sep 4, 2019 03:07
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luxury handset posted:rico gets flogged in the movie like in the book. also the movie definitely plays up the fascism angle deliberately because verhoeven wanted to make a satire of militarism even if he had to misinterpret the book to do so. which is fine, it's not that great of a book He also points out that only the military uses flogging. He also looks at it like he definitely deserved it as if it had been a real fight he'd have risked nuking his squad because he didn't actually do the math. But yeah, the movie takes a lot of liberty with the source material but there were good reasons so whatever. They're pretty different things and each has its own merits and flaws.
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Sep 4, 2019 03:07
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Straight White Shark posted:That's the crux of the debate. Heinlein's novel depicts a society that has all the ingredients for fascism that arbitrarily manages to avoid actual fascism, which makes it largely indistinguishable from pro-fascist propaganda. great summary but as a very small point i wouldn't say arbitrarily per se: heinlein earnestly believed that through the maturity gained from military service we'd become evolved enough to live in the quasi-utopia he imagined i think that's where he loses people, i mean star trek makes a similar conceit that over time humanity found a way to evolve into the enlightened species it depicts so that many modern problems don't apply anymore (not sure if it's ever explained how we evolved in star trek?), but heinlein actually puts forth the idea that it's dedicated but voluntary service that heals us i don't blame you for calling it arbitrary tho because it relies on an extreme optimism toward the military that most would consider unreasonable
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Sep 4, 2019 03:27
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Samuringa posted:This reads like a propaganda post. WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW MORE?
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Sep 4, 2019 03:40
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hard counter posted:great summary but as a very small point i wouldn't say arbitrarily per se: heinlein earnestly believed that through the maturity gained from military service we'd become evolved enough to live in the quasi-utopia he imagined Star Trek's history involves a similar thing; there was a completely horrid time of unspeakable war and suffering before gay space communism happened. It wasn't just a nuclear World War III but some really dreadful stuff. Humanity survived and managed to keep progressing technologically. What eventually made full communism possible was energy so cheap it was effectively free combined with the replicator. It took a combination of very nearly wiping ourselves out and inventing things that would completely erase scarcity. That's actually a common trope in science fiction; once scarcity quits existing people quit fighting and find other poo poo to do instead. That actually becomes a plot point not only in how the Federation ends up getting founded but in how other races react to both the Federation and humanity. Some races are just like "wait a minute you don't...fight or compete and...just give everybody everything they could possibly want? And it works?" ToxicSlurpee has a new favorite as of 03:45 on Sep 4, 2019 |
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Sep 4, 2019 03:40
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Star Trek's history involves a similar thing; there was a completely horrid time of unspeakable war and suffering before gay space communism happened. It wasn't just a nuclear World War III but some really dreadful stuff. Humanity survived and managed to keep progressing technologically. What eventually made full communism possible was energy so cheap it was effectively free combined with the replicator. It took a combination of very nearly wiping ourselves out and inventing things that would completely erase scarcity. Meeting anyone born to wealth and/or with a trust fund should make you immediately question those assumptions. 
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Sep 4, 2019 03:52
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Meeting anyone born to wealth and/or with a trust fund should make you immediately question those assumptions. There's a very big difference between 'everybody gets what they could possibly want within reason' and 'one person gets everything they could possibly want'.
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Sep 4, 2019 04:20
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Ghost Leviathan posted:There's a very big difference between 'everybody gets what they could possibly want within reason' and 'one person gets everything they could possibly want'. You have whole subcultures of people who only interact with other people who've never known scarcity firsthand, and they're some of the pettiest, most spiteful, and most undermining people who ever lived.
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Sep 4, 2019 04:32
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"post-scarcity society would be full of assholes because of trust fund kids" is an odd take with a phil ochs av
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Sep 4, 2019 04:45
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somepartsareme posted:"post-scarcity society would be full of assholes because of trust fund kids" is an odd take with a phil ochs av My argument is that there is no reason to think that a post-scarcity society, if such would exist, would be a wonderful utopia where everyone's happy, and an example is that people who already live in a parallel post-scarcity society while we get crumbs are not any less mean than us, as much as they think of themselves as our betters. Setting aside the question of whether post-scarcity is a thing that can actually happen on a planet with limited resources.
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Sep 4, 2019 04:55
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Post-scarcity wealth gap makes me think of the Diamond Age, where everyone has their basic needs met but the poor live in overcrowded slums while the rich literally can create islands in minutes populated with unicorns and dinosaurs at a whim.
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Sep 4, 2019 05:07
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