Culture from the darker side

A couple of years ago I bought a bunch of Tom Clancy novels, easy reading I thought. Didn’t expect much. I admit I liked the movies and figured the books may be written the same way.

Oh, how little did I know.

When “The Hunt for the Red October” came out in the mid 80s it was on time, although the movie hit right after the cold war was more or less over and many critics did not fail to point this out.

“The Bear and The Dragon” was published in 2000 and now, reading it almost six years later, I cannot shake the feeling that the book was even late then. In TBATD Tom Clancy looks for another conflict and finds it in Siberia.

In Clancy’s world the Russians first find a large amount of oil in Siberia and shortly afterwards they find even more Gold. Two things that Russia can use to rebuild itself, and things that the US obviously wants.

Enter China (aka the Dragon) stage left. China is a murderous country, no conscience and utterly barbaric. Clancy takes several hundred pages to set up a reason to “force” China’s hand to invade Russia and then another couple of hundred pages before it actuallly happens.

In the process he manages to run up pretty much any stereotype about the Russians and Chinese he can find in order to “further” his story, not to forget painting the US as the saviour of humanity.

The politics in the books at times become so far from what is happening in the world even back in 2000 that one can’t help but laugh.

Politics aside, what is worse is the way most Chinese and Russians are portrait, as automatons, straight out of the 1950s US anti communist propaganda movies in case of the Chinese and as the “nice but slightlly retarded and alcoholic brother” in case of the Russians.

Here’s an example just before things start to “heat up” (I use this loosely, this book has some serious timing issues):

The doctor saw the nurse wave. This one was a man. It was easier on the men, and so they gave most of the “shots” in the hospital. He took the 50-cc syringe from stores and then went to the medication closet, unlocking it and withdrawing the big bottle of formaldehyde. He filled the syringe, not bothering to tap out the bubbles, because the purpose of this injection was to kill, and any special care was superfluous. He walked down the corridor toward Labor #3. He’d been on duty for nine hours that day. He’d performed a difficult and successful Caesarian section a few hours before, and now he’d end his working day with this. He didn’t like it. He did it because it was his job, part of the State’s policy. The foolish woman, having a baby without permission. It really was her fault, wasn’t it? She knew what the rules were. Everyone did. It was impossible not to know. but she’d broken the rules. And she wouldn’t be punished for it. Not really her. She wouldn’t go to prison or lose her job or suffer a monetary fine. She’d just get to go home with her uterus the way it had been nine months before — empty. She’d be a little oder, and a little wiser, and know that if this happened again, it was a lot better to have the abortion done in the second or third month, before you got too attached to the damned thing. Damned sure it was a lot more comfortable than going through a whole labor for nothing. That was sad, but there was much sadness in life, and for this part of it they’d all volunteered. The doctor had chosen to become a doctor, and the woman in #3 had chosen to become pregnant.

He came into #3, wearing his mask, because he didn’t want to give the woman any infection. That was why he used a clean syringe, in case he should slip and stick her by mistake.

So.

He sat on the usual stool that obstetricians used both for delivering babies and for aborting the late-term ones. The procedure they used in America was a little more pleasant. Just poke into the baby’s skull, suck the brains out, crush the skull and deliver the package with a lot less trouble than a full-term fetus, and a lot easier on the woman. He wondered what the story was on this one, but there was no sense in knowing, was there? No sense knowing that which you can’t change.

So.

He looked. She was fully dilated and effaced, and, yes there was the head. Hairy little thing. Better giver another minute or two, so that after he did his duty she could expel the fetus in one push and be done with it. Then she could go off and cry for a while and start getting over it. He was concentrating a little too much to note the commotion in the corridor outside the labor room.

[...] Page 413 in the Paperback edition

Obviously this is Clancy critique on the one child policy in China, but the problem is not so much with criticism on this fact as it is about the portrayal of the doctor in this case, and no, this is by far not the only time that Chinese are portrait in this way. The Russians, as said before, don’t get away much better.

In both cases the Russians and Chinese are pretty much incompetent (in the case of the Chinese also greedy) and utterly inferior to the US of A. At time it does becomes more than laughable, and more than once I had to wonder what world Clancy lives in, and then a moment later I asked myself while I was still reading it.

If he is not showing us the superiority of the american political system, the american leaders, the american banking system, the american “fairness”, the american media etc. etc. he shows us how advanced the american technology is and how much the Russians need Americans in order to be able to defend themselves, and how utterly useless the Peoples Liberation Army is.

I could go on, but I am really not in the mood of wasting any more time (yours or mine) on this “book”, besides the screwed up world view the writing (as can be seen above) is not all that entertaining.

But hey, at 1137 pages it at least makes a nice doorstop.

Rating: 0/5 (I would have given negative, but my scale doesn’t allow for that).