REVIEW OF EDWARD CLINE’S BOOK “PRESENCE OF MIND”
https://militaryreviews.blogspot.com/2018/06/review-edward-cline-presence-of-mind.html
Ed Cline is a most prolific and articulate and intelligent writer. It is hard to keep up with his excellent columns, let alone his dozens of novels. Check out:
Presence of Mind by Edward Cline is subtitled, “A Chess Hanrahan Novel.” It is one of four thrillers that feature private detective Hanrahan. Although published in 2010, the series was originally written in the 1980s. In chronological order the four books are: With Distinction, First Prize,Presence of Mind and Honors Due. First Prize was published by the Mysterious Press in 1988. All are now readily available for order online.
The first book of the series, With Distinction, takes place in a small college town where Hanrahan has retreated from the world. He’s essentially “on strike” from a country spiraling out of control. When a philosophy professor is murdered, police chief Hanrahan solves the case. Along the way, he learns a great deal about the causes of the country’s problems. At the novel’s conclusion, he decides to return to New York City to solve cases involving moral paradoxes.
Chess Hanrahan deals with some aspect of the “establishment’s” intellectual and moral corruption in each novel. In With Distinction it’s academia. First Prize deals with the aesthetic vandalism of the publishing profession. Honors Due lifts the rocks covering Hollywood and the stage in order to examine what’s underneath. In each case, he solves the paradox of how moral corruption under the guise of “idealism” can and does lead to murder. In Presence of Mind Chess confronts what is now called the Deep State’s foreign policy empire. As he explains to a traitorous villain who is selling out the United States to the Russians,
“I’d like to have been born a hundred years ago, so that as I grew older, I could witness the growth of civilization and enjoy its fruits. But, I wasn’t. I have to stand by and watch it being sabotaged and overrun by barbarians in this time. I want to understand why that’s happening and, when I can, to try and stop the carnage. Most people either aren’t aware that that’s what’s happening, or they’re aware but avert their eyes and minds.” I paused. “I’m a thinking man. I don’t want illusions.” (pg. 137)
It’s important to remember the context of the book’s era of the mid 1980s. During the post Vietnam Cold War era, the liberal establishment worked overtime appeasing the Soviet Union and selling out the USA at every opportunity. One only has to recall their response to President Reagan’s “evil empire” quip or “Tear Down this Wall” speech. For example, there was the media’s slobbering love affair with “journalist” and Soviet agentVladimir Posner. Of course, today the same people (or their evil progeny) are fomenting war between the United States and Russia based on their manufactured election conspiracy.
The media/academia axis manufacturing of a Fake News consensus is hardly new. The indoctrination of the American people with the liberal establishment’s propaganda was obvious back in the 1980s. The villains in Presence of Mind utilize all of their vast power and influence to create what they call “cognitive harmony” in order to abolish dissent or thoughtcrime before it can impede their agenda,
“Tragically, it [society] must also ‘shed’ those persons whose lamentable circumstances, atavistic perceptions, or premature self-endings caused them to resist their ultimate, necessary and wordless absorption into the whole. As resolution to this dilemma, Ketterling [Foundation] advocated a vigorous program of public education to rectify both predicable and unexpected instances of cognitive dissonance present in the lay citizenry, and the establishment of a science of information interpretation as a branch of public perception maintenance, whose goal would be universal cognitive harmony.” (pg. 59)
Such cultural harmonizers existed in the 1980s, just as they do today. For example, there is the British and American media’s framing of the persecution of Tommy Robinson and the public reaction in Britain. Thenarrative is that Robinson somehow interfered with the rape trial defendants’ right to a fair hearing. Further, all of his supporters are just “far right” soccer hooligans. Happily, only the usual clueless fools are buying this sad attempt to create “cognitive harmony” based on transparent lies. Meanwhile back on earth, we of cognitive dissonanceunderstand the obvious: Tommy’s incarceration is an attempt to cover up the British establishment’s complicity with the Moslem rape gangs. It’s failing spectacularly. If the recent Italian elections are any indication, the globalist traitor-elite had better get used to much more “atavistic perceptions.” Chess Hanrahan is one of my all-time favorite fictional characters. Edward Cline has created a fully fleshed-out and believable protagonist solving interesting paradoxes framed in tight plot construction. I won’t give away anything else in this review. Buy the books and enjoy some wonderful thrillers.
Comments are closed.
