Originally Posted by JohnM Starship Troopers by Karen Kwiatkowski Citizens! Robert Heinlein was truly gifted, but it doesn’t take a genius to see that Starship Troopers, first published in 1959, is a handbook for the present...

There's a Chinese restaurant that both Bill and I enjoy not too far from our home in a strip mall. It's so close that, occasionally, I've mounted Gilligan and gone there for lunch a couple of times all by myself. Their Hot and Sour Soup has a post-swallow citrus kick to it that I really love - and they don't skimp! The Shrimp with Lobster Sauce has much, much more shrimp than onions and peppers; the pork fried rice has almost as much BBQed pork in it as there are crunchberries in a big bowl of the Cap'n.

Anyway...

Directly adjacent to the restaurant is a recruiting station for all branches of the Armed Services. Up until recently, for at least 8 months, standing on display in the lobby of that recruiting station - visible through both the glass door, was a life-size cutout poster of four people, two men and two women representing Hispanic, Asian, African and Caucasian ethnicities. The tag line of the cut-out: "Be a citizen. Be a Marine."

As if - ala Starship Troopers, the film - citizenship was dependent upon enlistment in the Armed Forces.