Vivek has some crazy ideas. I feel like that’s how change happen though. There are decades of presidents that tow the line, they make changes that are incremental and then BAM there’s an FDR and society is fundamentally altered. Vivek could be that guy. Not saying that’s a good thing. FDR wasn’t all good either. But big swings could be good right now. Lots of tools exist that have never existed before. I get the attraction of the citizenry test for all voters. But it seems like it would be a hard pill to swallow for the left. “ Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights” -TJ We have a lot of dumbasses voting. On both sides.
Its a hard pill to swallow for the left because it is very explicitly voter suppression against them. Why target youth specifically? What makes the military so enlightened that they don't need to take the test? (rhetorical- its because the military votes republican)
I'm due for a re-watch of this, thanks. Some people were unable to detect the satire. So sad.
It's not that nobody got the satire, it's that Heinlein was deadly serious about it while Verheuven wasn't. The satire in Robocop isn't a whole lot subtler but it also had some stuff that wasn't satire that allowed everyone to attach to it. One of my big beefs with "golden age" science fiction is it's mostly a one-world-government libertarian triumph of the white man. Heinlein was the worst. Starship Troopers was such a McCarthyist screed that Scribner refused to publish it. I've never read it; my family worships Heinlein but that one was just a bridge too goddamn far. It's worth noting, however, that without Starship Troopers there would be no Forever War, a vastly better book with a much greater influence on culture.
Vivek doesn't want a citizenry test for all voters. He wants a citizenry test for people aged 18-24. It's very obviously targeted to help Republicans.