It is natural for this kind of book to be written from a certain political/philosophical perspective. The genre is, after all, about "good" guys and "bad" guys. The nature of the "bad guys" changed since the first books a few decades ago to track the world political scene; first the Soviet Union, now Middle Eastern terrorists. Still, it was always just a USA vs. some other element, and the values being defended were pretty broad ones that I suspect most people of any political stripe would support. Unfortunately Clancy has now started going beyond the world stage and included the domestic political scene. I remember this starting in the Rainbow Six book where environmentalists were cast as the super-villains. It continues in this book where all the clear non-Republicans (if you read carefully you will see it finally stated Ryan is a Republican) end up being criminals or traitors to the USA in one form or another. Of course this political perspective isn’t surprising from Clancy given the type of book he writes, but now it is pretty overt. I used to be able to just ignore this element of the books, but now it is there in your face and it is politicizing the books.

posted Feb 1, 2013 at 10:43AM

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