Service Guarantees Citizenship: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Fascism

[rah]

Which is why I said

Besides the obvious issue of just who or how that determination is made.

I doubt the determination would be fair or consistent, which would probably also become racial.

But in my opinion, actual dementia should disqualify you. But again, my hear tells me that how else are those inflicted with it be represented,

 

[Valka D'Ur]

A test of "understanding and knowing what is best" leads to most people not being able to vote.

A test of "does allowing them to vote cause harm to the democratic process?" is probably safest.

I repeat: Define "mentally challenged." People with Down Syndrome? People like my dad, who has dementia, but still reads the newspaper and listens to the news? Someone with FAS? People with cognitive impairments, either as a result of birth defects, accidents, drug overdoses, cancer, or stroke?

There are people who think that if you're not able to physically get to a polling station, you shouldn't be allowed to vote. That right there is an outrageous thing.

 

[El_Machinae]

Keep in mind, too, that if felons and the mentally ill sway an outcome, there's bigger trouble already

 

[Cutlass]

Should the mentally challenged be allowed to vote? That one has always been a bothersome one for me. Besides the obvious issue of just who or how that determination is made. My brain usually tells me that they don't really understand or know what is best, while my heart says that shouldn't matter.

In the elections it would be a wash. So why does it matter?

 

[Cutlass]

Military service doesn't become more valid as it gets muddier and bloodier. It's all very well to say that all arms exist to support the infantry, but the metaphor cuts both ways - a structure with no supports isn't good for much.

Sure. I have no problem with some man, or woman, who spends their entire enlistment as a supply clerk in Kansas, and only touches a gun during annual certification. They did their job.

My issue is with people people nominally trained to combat positions, who didn't do their jobs, because their families were so well connected that they were protected from having to do so. Or other well connected people who were given a pass on wearing the uniform at all, because reasons. Who then go on thinking that they understand the military well enough to disregard all advice and be massively gung ho for military adventures.


Bill Clinton didn't serve. But he understood that he didn't know the military, was reluctant to commit it to action, and took advice from ranking officers. Obama was much the same, except that he inherited to wars which had already been lost. And had no real way to extricate himself and the country from those situations. Reagan only semi-served in the Army. But for all his tough talk, he was actually fairly reluctant to put troops in harms way himself. GHW Bush did serve, and when he fought a war, he lined up all his ducks in a row to get as one sided a victory as can ever be expected. GW Bush, who only semi-served, surrounded himself with others who did not serve, or only semi served. With one exception. And that one exception was mushroomed and kept from the decision making process. And the people with a say in policy did not understand, nor respect, the military. And so we lost 2 wars.

The point being that having put on the uniform doesn't inherently equate to having done the service. Not when so much political influence is involved.

 

[Cutlass]

I have no problem with people being on welfare having life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. All of that doesn't require a vote in how the government is run.

Regardless in the book it requires military service, and has nothing to do with welfare. A poor person could volunteer the same as a rich person.

My point about limiting the vote was to perhaps get a better electorate involved in the whole process rather than the current popularity contest. Why should the people just along for the ride have as much of a say as the people pulling the sled? Eventually everyone ends up riding on the sled with no one pulling and you get nowhere.

You're still doing the talking points of the authoritarian-criminals rather than paying attention to facts.

First, you're pretending that there's any huge number of people who are just freeloading on welfare. And welfare is far too difficult to get for that to be true. Then you're assuming most people aren't pulling their share. While that is true almost exclusively of the rich, not the poor. Limiting the vote is not only absolutely certain to make the electorate worse. It is intended to make it worse. It is not only certain to make the votes more of a popularity contest, it is certain to make the votes more of a personality contest.

 

[Berzerker]

Trump couldn't be President in Starship Troopers, he aint a citizen, just a taxpayer

 

[FriendlyFire]

Trump couldn't be President in Starship Troopers, he aint a citizen,just Not even a taxpayer

Fixed

 

[Arwon]

I find it fascinating how many people missed that "makingthe audience cheer for and identify with fascism" was the core satirical point of Starship Troopers.

Political satire and messing with the audience expectations of a genre, combined with comic ultraviolence, are basically Paul Verhoeven's core thing. I dunno how anyone who saw Robocop could miss where he was coming from here.

 

[BvBPL]

How do you think Basic Instinct works with that, Arwon? I have some thoughts on it, but I'm curious what yours are.

 

[Arwon]

I think he's mostly messing with the genre there. It seems like another case where he's taken a bad screenplay and shot it as an attack on the genre (noir out thriller) it purports to be.

It's a big old mess, like Showgirls, and I don't think he really conveyed a strong intent in them so much as was just messing around. I think his action movies had much greater clarity about them.

The sexual politics of those two movies I find confusing. They mostly seem to be satirical (eg of Stone's femme fatale) but they come off a bit muddled. I tend to assume he was going for a similar trick as in Robocop or with Starship Troopers but with sex instead of action. Maybe sex is just difficult to satire.

(I mean there's sex jokes in the others - Robocop had a crotch shooting ffs and the brain bugs are the Freudiest thing ever - so you'd have to say that messing with the sexual imagery of his genres is also a consistent element too.)

 

[Lexicus]

a legal precedent established centuries ago that stands unquestioned in nearly every country in the New World

By "centuries" do they mean one and a half?

 

[Kyriakos]

I find it fascinating how many people missed that "makingthe audience cheer for and identify with fascism" was the core satirical point of Starship Troopers.

Political satire and messing with the audience expectations of a genre, combined with comic ultraviolence, are basically Paul Verhoeven's core thing. I dunno how anyone who saw Robocop could miss where he was coming from here.

Robocop is pretty straightforwardly against OCP

Starship troopers is more of a ridiculous presentation. It may be nostalgia too, though..

 

[Cutlass]

By "centuries" do they mean one and a half?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthright_citizenship_in_the_United_States#English_common_law

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Trump couldn't be President in Starship Troopers, he aint a citizen, just a taxpayer

That implies he pays taxes lol

 

[Lexicus]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthright_citizenship_in_the_United_States#English_common_law

Who cares about the roots in English common law? The 'unquestioned' legal principle of birthright citizenship dates back, in the United States, to 1868.

 

[Camikaze]

One of the chief difficulties I have with a lot of the (otherwise well-justified) teeth-gnashing in the US about Trump is the willingness to bandy around the word 'fascism' in a manner that's heavily tinged in American exceptionalism. There's this assumption that pervades a lot of criticism that anything short of the rigorous standards the US prides itself on is equal to fascism. Media restrictions are probably the best example; while Trump's war on the press is certainly extremely troubling in some quite fascistic ways, the conversation seems to uncritically proceed on the basis that any sort of media restriction amounts to fascism. This is despite such media restrictions existing in most western democracies, to one extent or another. It's of course true that if certain policies are assumed to be unconstitutional in the US, then pursuit of those policies is a pursuit of unconstitutionalism, and unconstitutionalism might be considered to be a hallmark of fascism (in some ways). But then that's distinct from saying that the underlying policies are themselves, taken in a vacuum, fascist, and if you were merely labelling as 'fascist' the pursuit of unconstitutional policies, it would cease to be 'fascism' if Trump were to say "I think we should amend the Constitution to allow certain media restrictions". The logical chain appears to essentially be that, if something is contrary to the US Constitution, it is probably fascist, which not only fetishises the US Constitution strictly within the US context, but also reeks of American exceptionalism.

Similarly with jus soli. It's not a prerequisite for a liberal democracy, or a necessary ingredient for a non-fascist state. There's certainly very good arguments for why it should not be done away with, or how doing away with it in a certain way would be fascist. But the assumption that, because it's different to what America has, its removal would therefore portend the rise of the American Reich, seems to ignore global context, or involve quite a leap.

 

[Farm Boy]

I think it's mostly a measure of contempt across a class line, more than it is anything else.

 

[BvBPL]

What is the difficulty in people making assessments from a domestic standpoint?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Exactly. Of course, people who never served don't understand this and let Hollywood inform their impression of what military life is like.

Without resorting to Hollywood there is evidence that the military does produce some number of reactionary nitwits that we would be better of without, and there is certainly no reason to amplify their votes