Anyway, corporal punishment was common for a lot of the 20th century and nobody batted an eyelid about it. I even remember when I was 8 the headmaster visiting the classroom to apply his plimsole to the backside of the kid next to me. And before you ask, no, it wasn’t a private school. Like I’ve said before, what are you doing today that seems perfectly sensible & reasonable but will be judged by history as being outrageous & contemptible.

If you are writing a book about war and the military then “violence as a solution” pretty much comes with the territory. Or playing an RPG if it comes to that. You were pretty quick to use the rocket launcher on Postman Pat weren’t you? (grin)

For example, Tim, I know one of the things you don’t like about Starship Troopers is the military based government he uses. However, remember that Heinlein saw soldiers return from both world wars. One of the common things you hear from demobbed servicemen is the feeling that society doesn’t understand them, doesn’t appreciate what they have done. Now if that disaffection had manifested itself in a political movement, then there were enough ex-servicemen across the globe that it could have carried forward into a political system where you can only participate if you have served in the military. From the perspective of the 195o’s, I can understand how it didn’t look that implausible that a future WW3 would end up that way. Unsettlingly, Heinlein picks the protagonists in that war as China vs Russia/UK/US. With the US moving its military balance towards the Pacific and the rise of China as a superpower, maybe he had more foresight than others back in those Cold War days.