A monolithic, fanatic worker bee society run by an insectoid elite of brain-bugs. This fits in well with the societal viewpoint when the book was written. The bugs in the book, though, had ray guns and space ships. The movie, of course, is a brilliant satire of the book, it sends up the whole novel as a fascist rag, by (among other things) putting the earthers in very Third Reich type uniforms and surrounding them with very Goebbel like propaganda. Of course, director Paul Verhoeven (Robocop), was born and raised in Nazi Occupied Holland, he know what fascism is like from personal experience.

WHY the arachnoids are invading earth space is never very clearly explained. All we know about them is they are vicious killers; "the only good bug is a dead bug". Why they must be exterminated is never questioned, and every alternative to ethnic cleansing is dismissed as Liberal squeamishness. (Extra credit (read "Citizen of the Galaxy", same shoot-em up, same rodeo. Great read, though.
Heinlein may be Fascist, but he is a very good writer, especially for grooming teen-age boys for the Dark Side. He's a lot like Ayn Rand in that respect.

My view of the book is that it is a damn good read. Its well written, exciting, has a lot of novel and clever ideas, and for an adolescent audience, its an absorbing story. But it is also very effective political propaganda aimed at young readers. It paints a picture of a benign fascism as the only way to defend ourselves from the socialist bug collective, all justified by an imaginary history based on events that haven't happened yet. The fascist state described by Heinlein is as seductive as the Socialist Worker's Paradise envisioned by the Lefties. And its just as cherry-picked and just as phony.

Now, I don't believe Heinlein is a racist. Indeed, his hero, Johnny Rico, is of Filipino stock, and he lives in Argentina. Nut he and all his pals all talk, think and act just like 1950s North Americans. I picked up on that real quick. And I don't think his idea of limiting the voter franchise to veterans because they have demonstrated their commitment to sacrifice for the community should be dismissed outright. Actually, that may not be a bad idea!

When I read "Troopers" and "Citizen" in high school, I was very much impressed by them. But fortunately, something in the back of my skull warned me; this is too glib, too easy, too obvious. The more I thought about them, the more I could see these books were not designed to give me an exciting adventure science fiction story, they were very cleverly constructed to teach how a society should be constructed, from the ground up, and that any attempt to question that was wrong, it was evil, and it was not to be countenanced.

I'm not to surprised that "Troopers" was required reading at the US Naval Academy. I wonder why.