Ohhh! I love Starship Troopers! The book, not so much, but the movie I adore.
Let’s dig into your choice to respond with this scene.
That’s the moment where Verhoeven shows us ‘Federation Victory’! The good guys have won! They’ve captured the Brain Bug! It’s afraid! Humanity wins!
Except what’s actually happening is fascists celebrating the torture of a sentient being. One that extracted human minds just as they’ll now extract from its mind; each side justifying their horrors by pointing to the other’s. All while convincing themselves they’re heroes.
The Federation doesn’t attempt communication or diplomacy. They literally probe its brain for intel while cheering its terror. The troops cheering ‘It’s afraid!’ aren’t the good guys. They’re Verhoeven’s mirror showing us how righteousness becomes the very tyranny it claims to fight.
NPH’s character literally becomes a full SS-uniformed intelligence officer who feeds his best friends into an endless meat grinder. The bugs were defending their home. The Federation manufactured its own eternal enemy. And everyone cheering becomes complicit in forever war.
You’ve sent me a scene about people so drunk on their enemy’s fear that they can’t see they’ve become the monsters.
So either you’re agreeing that celebrating suffering makes us indistinguishable from what we oppose, or you’ve accidentally proven my point by quoting the villains as heroes.
Either way, I couldn’t have picked a better metaphor myself.
Or I used a well-known movie scene to poke at historically violent people using violence to score political points. Noting hypocrisy in a group is not to stoop to their level.
Ohhh! I love Starship Troopers! The book, not so much, but the movie I adore.
Let’s dig into your choice to respond with this scene.
That’s the moment where Verhoeven shows us ‘Federation Victory’! The good guys have won! They’ve captured the Brain Bug! It’s afraid! Humanity wins!
Except what’s actually happening is fascists celebrating the torture of a sentient being. One that extracted human minds just as they’ll now extract from its mind; each side justifying their horrors by pointing to the other’s. All while convincing themselves they’re heroes.
The Federation doesn’t attempt communication or diplomacy. They literally probe its brain for intel while cheering its terror. The troops cheering ‘It’s afraid!’ aren’t the good guys. They’re Verhoeven’s mirror showing us how righteousness becomes the very tyranny it claims to fight.
NPH’s character literally becomes a full SS-uniformed intelligence officer who feeds his best friends into an endless meat grinder. The bugs were defending their home. The Federation manufactured its own eternal enemy. And everyone cheering becomes complicit in forever war.
You’ve sent me a scene about people so drunk on their enemy’s fear that they can’t see they’ve become the monsters.
So either you’re agreeing that celebrating suffering makes us indistinguishable from what we oppose, or you’ve accidentally proven my point by quoting the villains as heroes.
Either way, I couldn’t have picked a better metaphor myself.
Or I used a well-known movie scene to poke at historically violent people using violence to score political points. Noting hypocrisy in a group is not to stoop to their level.
It appears you do not want to know more.