Starship Troopers and the Malleability of Memory

memory is a Fickle thing that can be manipulated and sometimes we do it to ourselves would you like to know more since I've talked about Starship Troopers in a previous video I've had several people both here in the comments and elsewhere remind me that the book has other ways to become a citizen besides military service I did not remember this being the case so I read through it again focused on the question is military service the only way to become a citizen of the Terran Federation short answer yes but it's more interesting than that let's follow our guide Johnny Rico on the quest of citizenship in the Federation I had mentioned to my father late in my senior year in high school that I was thinking over the idea of volunteering for federal service the use of the term Federal service seems fairly Broad in our usage it could be anything from joining the Army to being a mailman at no point in the text does the book state that there are non-military alternatives there are a few lines that suggest as much when taken in isolation but the ambiguity is cancel out by things that are plainly stated elsewhere what's the moral difference if any between a civilian and a citizen a citizen accepts personal responsibility for the safety of the body politic defending it with his life a civilian does not the exact words of the text this exchange comes straight out of the book but with one important change you what is the moral difference if any between the soldier and the civilian since this is coming from a state mandated or at least approved textbook we can't attribute it to a verbal slip the deliberate use of the term Soldier instead of Citizen would seem to clinch the debate right there unless of course the context of the textbook passage being quoted is narrower than the scene implies it could be that military services merely the most common or most respected route to citizenship the term of service isn't a kitty Camp it's either real military service rough and dangerous even in peace time or a most unreasonable facsimile thereof this is what the recruiting Sergeant tells Johnny and his friends when they show up to enlist or rather the anti-recruiting sergeant the one-armed legless invalid they put out front to scare off potential enlistees it's the closest the book comes to saying that you can be a citizen without joining the military because the government doesn't care one bucket of swill whether you join or not because it has become stylish with some people too many people to serve a term and earn a franchise and be able to wear a ribbon in your lapel which says you're a veteran whether you've ever seen combat or not but if you want to serve and I can't talk you out of it then we have to take you because that's your constitutional right it says that everybody male or female shall have his born right to pay his service and assume full citizenship but the facts are that we are getting hard-pressed to find things for all the volunteers to do that aren't just glorified KP he goes on to explain to these eager young Starry Eyed mush-brained cities that if you came in here in a wheelchair and blind in both eyes and were Silly enough to insist on enrolling they would find something silly enough to match counting the fuzz on a caterpillar by touch maybe the only way you can fail is by having the psychiatrist decide that you are not able to understand the oath this could just be a case of Surgeons hyperbole to throw the would-be boots off balance but let's for a moment consider it at face value if the military is required to take everyone that wants to sign up and as the surgeon says too many people are unlisting and have to be accommodated with make work then the military is upholding its social function hardening new citizens at the expense of its War fighting function this suggests that the military is either the only route or that the others presumably not legally required to take everyone that shows up are so small is to be almost irrelevant it's not looking like you can become a citizen by working as a park ranger or teaching at a public school even the doctor conducting physicals at the recruiting station is a non-citizen he too tries to warn them off military services for ants believe me I see him go I see him come back when they come back I see what it's done to them and for what a purely nominal political privilege that pays not one centavo and that most of them aren't competent to use wisely anyhow this suggests that the nominal political privilege follows directly and solely for military service otherwise the half-hearted would take other paths to it are there an unspecified number of coveted civil service jobs that meet the citizenship requirement since no specific examples are given let's look at it conceptually would a society like the Federation do that what is the purpose of requiring service to attain citizenship what is the whole exercise supposed to accomplish tell them Sergeant so for those who insist on serving their term but haven't got what we want and must have we've had to think up a whole list of dirty nasty dangerous jobs that will either run them home with their tails between their legs and their terms uncompleted or at the very least make them remember for the rest of their lives that their citizenship is valuable to them because they've paid a high price for it paid a high price this I think is the key it's not about giving the state a few years of your life in exchange for elevated status you why are only citizens allowed to vote it's a reward what the Federation gives you for doing Federal service oh no it's about tying the status and authority of exerting political force to real personal costs and a sense of responsibility this takes more than a summer in the Peace Corps or a stint as a research assistant at McMurdo Station Johnny and Friends refuse to be discouraged and sign the papers and while Carl and Carmen easily get themselves into technical fields Johnny is not the most intellectually accomplished man to ever walk into a recruiting office how about you son infantry sir good for you mobile infantry made me the man I am today when it comes to listing his preference for an MOS he stops after infantry I didn't bother to list the various non-combatant auxiliary core because if I wasn't picked for a combat core I didn't care whether they used me as an experimental animal or sent me as a laborer in the tyrannizing of Venus another one was a booby prize we have to keep in mind that the military isn't just combat roles there are cooks and truck drivers Engineers doctors all active duty military the Federation has even more non-combat roles because the military is legally required to take everyone that insists on signing up while the text doesn't explicitly say so I have the distinct feeling that tyrannizing penis is very much a privates with shovel's job more than a typical construction gig and probably comes with all the usual Army discipline and drudge work I came out of the Federal Building feeling subdued yet not really unhappy at least I was a soldier I had papers in my pocket to prove it I hadn't been classed as too dumb and useless for anything but make work the Federation looks like a society that places a higher value on moral character and fortitude than on intelligence or education for its politically active class it's selecting for people willing to sacrifice their own comfort and safety people with the grit to stick out hardship for a greater goal is trying to weed out freeloaders and opportunists they don't want to make it easy there's no incentive to give people alternatives to military service in fact doing so would contradict the entire social and political philosophy of the Federation but why does the idea that it establishes other paths take hold what's the basis for this particular bit of headcanon it brings to my mind the deleted Biggs dark letter scenes from Star Wars [Music] will tell me that long ago they had seen Star Wars with those scenes included one said it was on HBO another that it was one of the networks airing at me but they didn't no release of Star Wars included those scenes when they allegedly saw it however the scene was in the published script uh stills from it were widely available in various books and NPR included it in their radio dramatization I remembered listening to that as a kid but I still had to look up and verify it all the pieces were there for that particular memory to integrate itself going from knowing what the big scenes contained knowing where they fit in the movie and finally that false memory of seeing Biggs dark lighter talking to Luke in some special HBO edition of Star Wars that ran once and just as the big scene seems to have reinserted itself into the movie in the minds of some of the people exposed to it I suppose the Starship Troopers non-military citizenship idea persists because we live in a culture that doesn't like the idea of restricting voting rights the federation's logic while internally consistent is foreign to us so particularly if we like the book our minds May insert Alternatives around the bits that taken in isolation could suggest other options we fill in the gaps and smooth it over I wonder if there's a subconscious element that rejects the idea of requiring a term of service as a soldier to become a full citizen because culturally we don't trust elitism and exclusionary policies when it comes to such things and now that less than 10 percent of the American population has actually served in the military it is not a broad experience and for most of us would translate to non-citizen status so perhaps we Shuffle things around in our minds to make it fit more with what we want and expect in fact that's the basis of most of modern politics manipulating that process whatever the case I do think it's clear that the Federation has one path to citizenship and it involves talking to a crotchety sergeant that thinks you should just go home after Starship Troopers I went ahead and read Forever War again so we're going to talk about that one of these days

Channel: Feral Historian

Views: 5,750

Keywords: Starship Troopers

Id: j0I97THnD9Q

Length: 10min 19sec (619 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 14 2023