[Tobytwo]

Certainly there's little pity for the aliens, but I wasn't really thinking of them so much as for other humans. The aliens don't do anyhting much to deserve pity (they take prisoners, but who knows how they treat them), and it would be pretty reasonable for a soldier to despise them. What I really meant was that the only run-ins Rico has with civvies tend to be fights, shopping (I'm sure he says of one planet that the civilians were ok because they called him "sir") and experiences where he looks down on them.

This makes sense given the voting setup, but my point is that it encourages a situation where the MI look down on the very people they are there to protect. Being a caste apart encourages them to do this.

Of course, things might be different among voters who merely accepted hazardous jobs instead of being in the MI, but Heinlein doesn't really go into that. Maybe the fleet have a different viewpoint altogether? I suppose we come back to Rico's very narrow viewpoint, which conceals a lot and makes a lot of different interpretations possible.