Starring: Casper Van Dien, Denise Richards, Dina Meyer, Neil Patrick Harris, Director: Paul Verhoeven
Category: Sci-Fi, Action
Warning: The post is political. If that offends you, please don't read the rest. I am not usually political but the intrigue and maneuvering between the Republicans and Unions in Wisconsin in the news triggered my mind to an an old unfinished post. The main part of the post below was originally written many years ago but was never finished. I just went over it once over and posted it.
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Starship Troopers was viewed as a popcorn action movie starring teen movie actors when it came out. It was more notable as a special effects extravaganza of it's day. Looking back, director Paul Verhoeven also brought to life the world of Starship Troopers. Starshup Troopers and it's world was first thought up by it's author, Sci-Fi legend Robert Heinlein. Verhoeven added his visual touches, bringing the world to life. But if you look past the Nazi-like uniforms, you will find both a world that are heading for as well as a world that we already in.
Americans are proud of their Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Both documents goes against the grain or 'conventional thinking' of the time they were written. They have in them new ideas and concepts that were relatively new to society. But today, they are Americans that have oppososite views of them. While they claim to respect the founding fathers and the documents, they work hard in finding ways to subvert them. They work around the language to support ideas that are in opposite to the ideas written in the Constitution and the Declaration of independance.
While America is a nation of immigrants, there have always been efforts to control or limit immigration. All sorts of reasons are give but looking at history, each wave of immigration ultimately benefits America. There are always problems but in the end the Irish, the Chinese, Japanese, Eastern Europeans, Mexicans contributed the growth of the nation. The real problem immigration poses to the people who oppose them is that each new immigrant-citizen is given a vote. Democary is not just about voting but giving everyone a chance to vote. Powerful people who are in power do not want to get voted out (sounds strange the first time I wrote this but try finding someone who wants to get voted out :). So when election time, instead of just trying to convince voters of why they should vote for them, some people focus their effort in preventing people from voting. This includes removing people from lists of people who can vote, spread flyers to people who they know are against them to convince them to vote on the day after election and threatening people to not vote at all. All of these ways are real examples of what had been done to deny people the chance to vote. Immigration control is about controlling the number of people who can vote.
The world of Starship troopers offers a way around this. In this world, there exists two type of 'citizenship'. Almost everyone is a civilian who has equal rights except voting rights. The right to vote is the right of the citizen. To become a citizen, a civilian must have been in Federal Service. The service seems to be a form of government service but in most cases, it is a form of military service. This is a tantalising option for people who have a problem with the fact that anyone can vote. You can have life, liberty and the pursuit of happines, just not vote. The argument will be "we are not saying american citizens can't vote. We are just saying that being born in America doesn't mean you are a citizen, just a civilian. That should be enough to have life, liberty, etc...". The creation of this higher citizenry is aligned into their "you have to earn the right to..." mentality. The irony of this is that while Robert Heinlein was anti-communist, this is what is happening in communist countries. To vote for leaders, you have to be a member of the Communist Party (a higher citizenry). You have to earn the right (or be accepted by the Party) to become a Communist Party member. The problem with this arrangement is that like most anything man-made, it can be manipulated. We already saw a son of a prominent person doing 'federal service' (thus eligible being a voting citizen in Startship Trooper's world) in a time of war by going to an airbase on the weekends at home. The founding fathers were wise in keeping the right to vote available to all citizens at no cost. So while the world of Starship Troopers is not here yet, people need to be careful of efforts to take that basic right away through 'procedures' or 'regulations'.
What is here, from the world of starship troopers, is what was shown in a brief few seconds in the movie. There was a TV news show showing a panel talking about the big attack. One of the panelist pointed out that Earth had in fact an agreement with the bugs to not go into certain territories. But they did so in the pursuit of valuable minerals. Thus the attack on each was really a retaliation on a broken accord. The panelist was shouted down and basically driven out. Sounds familiar? We live in a world were facts don't really matter, opinions do. At least that is what other people are trying to convince us. In fact, the idea being pushed is that there is no such thing as facts or that facts in fact, are just opinions. The trick here is to mix up 'factual events' with 'sceintific fact'. While one is evolving and growing (scientific fact) the other can't be changed (past events). Our interpretation of the event can be changed, though. It's like this, I saw something on tv about the death of Lewis Merriwhether (of the Lewis and Clarke fame (no, not the superman tv series)). The history books says it was suicide (interpretation). Now there is evidence that points to murder (another interpretation). What doesn't change is the fact that Lewis died (past event).
What that tv news show was doing happens too often on tv today. Events that are not favourable to an opinion are suppressed. Facts are painted as opinions. Under the doctorine of "you have an opinion, but my opinion is mine", I can dismiss your fact. But dismissing an event does not mean it didn't happen. In the other way around, opinions are treated as facts, e.g. Job-killing bill, job-killing is an opinion, but it is a bill (fact). Today on tv we argue for the sake of arguing. There are people who are thinking of ways to make more arguments or find creative ways of arguing or finding things to argue about. Why? Arguing makes good tv and good tv makes ratings.
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Back to your normally scheduled posts..
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