[Anonymouse]

Oh dear. I forgot to note the URL, but one reviewer reckons the reboot is doomed to fail because it isn't satirical as Verhoeven's was.

I am honestly sick and tired of reading comments about "fascism" in Heinlein's novel. He complained in Expanded Universe (I forget which one) that people seem incapable of reading English, and I agree. The facts are:

1) In a fascist society no-one votes. They do in the novel.
2) It might glorify the infantryman somewhat, but that's because he deserves it. The term "military grade" does not, as too many people think, mean top-notch gear - it means the cheapest and most basic equipment that can still do the job.
3) It is NOT automatically true that veteran = discharged soldier. They are not necessarily synonymous. A cook on a starship will be subjected to minimum risk, and someone in R & D (which Carl was in the novel) at even lower risk, but they would still be entitled to vote at the end of their two-year term...and their vote would count equally as much as that of a 50-year veteran with both legs blown off.
4) The whole idea is that every politician and voter has proved through arduous (but not necessarily dangerous) service that they place the welfare of the group ahead of personal advantage (a key point; it would do no good for people to vote rationally if the politicians were not similarly constituted). I doubt there are many politicians who can say that and mean it.

The problem, I suspect, is that the detractors don't like the idea of having to qualify for the vote, preferring our current 'warm body' policy...and look where that got us, in the UK or in the States - we have Starmer, they have Trump.

Verhoeven should have read the entire novel...after studying English in more detail than he apparently did.