Starship Troopers on the ground

Dave ex Machina has a blog post about Star Wars Stormtroopers who...wait - don't go, this is interesting...really exist. The 501st is a legion of Stormtroopers (and other Star Wars villains) who dress up in fantastically accurate costumes and raise money for charity while being all Space Nazi on parades and at conventions.

He riffs on the strange irony inherent in seeing people dressed as mindless, genocidal infantry being hugged by little kids and having their photos taken with gran.

Suppose tomorrow the Bush administration announces plans to deploy thousands of Homeland Security Troops to American cities, to walk the streets armed in the search for un-American, possibly terrorist activities [...]
Obviously there would be some outrage, yeah? I mean, not as much as there should be, but a lot of folks wouldn’t care for this at all.

Now imagine that these troops are outfitted exactly like Stormtroopers from Star Wars.

What percentage of geeks would declare that this was awesome?

What percentage of non geeks?

Then he takes it from there.

The whole thing, as is required on teh intarwebs, eventually dissolves into a massive argument on the comments list. This time it's between people who think it's odd that people dress up as fascists for fun, 501sters who don't think it's odd at all, and people egging both sides on with judicious pokes. It's one of the few arguments I've read where Godwin's Law doesn't apply. Unfortunately nobody gets hot under the collar about the plural of octopus either. I usually enjoy that when it happens.

There are some cool pictures of Stormtroopers, including one of Stormtroopers playing Twister.

Thanks to Blitzen for the heads up!