Starship Troopers Fans (me) Are Unhinged

Every so often, my doom scrolling uncovers a new man that has a similar enthusiasm, to mine, of the 1997 film Starship Troopers, yet has the opposite takeaway from the film's message. These men are many, but have the same personality and worldview, and I can't help but see them as one person, diametrically opposed to me on some spectrum of Verhoeven film analysis. A nemesis. A shadow version of myself.

I am sure I did not understand this film upon first viewing circa 97-98; I was about ten years old. The effects were good for the time, and it's an exciting action/creature movie for a ten year old; at the plot level, the cool, attractive young troopers were the heroes. Yay.

 In high school, I turned on the movie* because I was starting to form opinions about politics and film (uh oh). At the tender age of 15ish I decided I could not stand the jingoism of the characters in this film. My understanding of Starship Troopers had somehow grown poorer. I mistook the film's portrayal of the explicit fascism of the United Citizen Federation for tacit approval. By the way, I would later have the same problem with 300, but that time I was right on the money.

I have been informed that the Arachnids (the bug monsters in the film and novel) are just bugs, and that the UCF is actually not fascist, but very chill. This reading necessitates ignoring a boatload of textual evidence in the film including, but not limited to: the UCF official news source FedNet (the only news source in the world, apparently) churning out satirical propaganda films, the "bug meteor" being the movie's Reichstag fire, the military uniforms being modeled after Nazi uniforms, etc. 

Maybe more significant, and fascinating, the Arachnids are only bugs on the surface plot level; underneath, they almost perfectly mirror the infantry with their bug-like armor (complete with bug-like insignias) and their myriad of weaponry, and their hierarchal structure. But right wing enjoyers of Starship Troopers do not miss this symbolism because they are too dumb (well, not all of them do), they dismiss the implications of the symbolism and the intent of Verhoeven because the surface veneer of patriotism and military valor enters into wish fulfillment territory for them

This is my contribution to this discussion. Many others have talked about the film at length and what it means, but let me be the one to point out that these guys love the idea of the UCF so much, and so badly want to be Rico that the satire barely registers, because it would be so, so cool, man. I know. They told me so.

*"turned on" meaning I decided it was bad, but I suppose I also turned it on, meaning I played the movie on my TV. I didn't make it to be horny, though.