[politics]
\nEVIL EMPIRE
\nChalmers Johnson at the San Diego Main Library<\/b><\/p>\n
Saturday, May 19, 2007<\/p>\n
Review by Kent Manthie<\/i><\/p>\n
Chalmers Johnson was a professor with the University of California for 30 years: from 1962-1992, teaching mostly at the flagship UC Berkeley and also for a time down south at UC San Diego. His specialties were Asian, specifically Chinese and Japanese studies. Dr. Johnson has degrees in economics and political science as well as Chinese history, all graduate degrees, either MAs or PhDs. Also, for 4 years, between 1968 and 1972, he even worked for a compartment inside the CIA, the Office of National Estimates, where he must\u2019ve done some fabulous work and, no doubt, some mind-numbing detailed analysis to which he\u2019s sworn to secrecy. He is therefore, a bit of a smarty-pants, not some half-baked Cassandra, but an oasis of cool, calm and rational discourse. Johnson exudes a low-key, laconic charm and a disarming, grandfatherly (he\u2019s 75 and officially a UC retiree) rectitude.
\n So it was a thrill, therefore, to spend a bit of my Saturday afternoon (5\/19\/07) at the Main Library, Downtown San Diego, listening to Chalmers Johnson give a lecture entitled \u201cEvil Empire\u201d \u2013 a talk that was related to his current best-seller, \u201cNemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic\u201d. There was also signing of books beforehand and again afterwards; Wahrenbrock\u2019s Books were on hand, selling copies of \u201cNemesis\u201d so people could have Johnson inscribe something witty inside the front cover. I left my wallet at home so I didn\u2019t get a book.
\n Johnson\u2019s style isn\u2019t shrill, high-strung rhetorical blubbering. He has a calming way about him but at the same time he showed off his keen intellect and sense of history by weaving in many parallels between the hubris of the American empire builders and the fall of Ancient Rome and the perils of standing armies to a democracy.
\n He went right in for the kill, with a grave prognosis of the long-term fate of America, given the way things are presently skidding along: the rest of the world hates us, we\u2019re in debt up to our eyeballs, there are elements of progressive and radical change out there in the world that are working very hard to counter the influence of the super-duper power that people think the U.S. is.
\n What Chalmers Johnson did was to sound some alarm bells; he\u2019s an informed academic who has some sense of history and a sharp analytical mind. Johnson\u2019s way is to be purposely over-the-top: maybe America needs to be shaken into consciousness; sometimes it takes a real shock to wake people up. Gentle nudging never really prods people into action, especially political action; that was the underlying message \u2013 ordinary Americans need to get out of their stupors and get pissed off and take action if anything good is to happen in the future.
\n The auditorium was a full house, which I expected at a free event like this. I thought there was going to be a bigger crowd, even when I got there, at 1:40pm, 20 minutes early. Instead, people trickled in little by little over the next half hour or so and just before 2:00 a throng of people magically appeared and filled out most of the empty seats. The show got going about 15 minutes late but eventually I got used to the bad sound quality, which would\u2019ve been helped had he pulled the microphone closer to him; it wasn\u2019t really a problem, though, as long as he spoke loudly enough, but one thing that kept making me cringe was the constant noise being perpetrated throughout the auditorium, not the least of which was the damn door that made a \u201cBANG\u201d every time someone walked through it because it was a free-swinging door that would slam when it swung shut unless you were careful enough and considerate enough to not let it slam shut, but I\u2019m sure nobody realized that it was going to slam when they went through it; nonetheless it continued over and over again as people were continually coming in and going out throughout the entire lecture, as well as some little clicks and pops, which were all amplified by the hard, bare floor.
\n So, the talk went on for about an hour; Johnson gave a concise, not-overly-broad monologue about the dangers a country that has ambitions for empire faces if they go around creating their empire around the world at the expense of domestic issues: in the end they overspend and overextend themselves only to have it all fall apart.
\n The end of democracy comes, says Johnson, when the country teeters over the edge into bankruptcy and\/or some kind of economic meltdown sending shockwaves through all parts of society and myriad chain reactions would shut down commerce and leave the country paralyzed, just for starters. Then a depression would settle over the world, after which the majority of the countries in the world would come out of it all right, but not the USA. We would, according to Johnson, never emerge from this depression and presumably that would give way to a radical restructuring, an adjustment that will forever alter American society.
\n That is the picture that Johnson paints \u2013 one possible route the future might take; something that could be set in motion in very short order, precipitated by a major economic catastrophe, something like \u201c\u2026Saudi Arabia suddenly demanding euros instead of dollars for their oil\u201d \u2013 Johnson said that the system whereby Saudi Arabia takes dollars for its oil is the only thing that is keeping our American economy afloat and that if it switched over to euros instead of dollars the U.S. would \u201cend tomorrow\u201d; that is the triggering scenario that Johnson used to show how a major sudden shift like that could start the ball rolling that would lead to the aforementioned beginning of the end of the U.S. as we know it. It is something like this: you\u2019d have a situation of chaos on your hands, where panic is setting in and the whole of civilized society is unraveling as money is running out and desperation runs rampant; a scenario where it\u2019d become all too easy for the military to take over \u2013 sometimes, even with justifications \u2013 and impose martial law, something that Tommy Franks has already mentioned would likely be enacted in the event of another terrorist worse than the one on September 11, 2001 – when this happens, says Johnson, that\u2019ll be the end of the American democratic experiment, a swift, painful death. These kinds of things can erupt quickly too, he said; while things seem stable enough now, that doesn\u2019t mean that some catastrophe couldn\u2019t trigger panic and chaos and disaster in a very short period of time. Johnson illustrated this point thusly: \u201cImagine if it were 1985 and I told you that in about six years the Soviet Union would cease to exist you\u2019d think I had been inhaling too deeply on a certain substance\u201d
\n I knew I was in for starkness at this talk, but the hopeful part of the show came during the Q & A period, always a highlight at book readings and lectures, where the scripted part ends and the audience gets to enter into dialogue with the speaker. There were a few interesting questions, some predictable diatribes and platitudes, et cetera, but it was heartening, at least, to see fellow citizens speaking their minds and displaying the age-old enabling power of the group dynamic. But really, it gave me a sense that there are a few people in America who don\u2019t only care about prime time TV shows and what kind of car to buy this year, and I think that was an optimistic thing in itself for us to take away from the whole thing.<\/p>\n
KM<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[politics] EVIL EMPIRE Chalmers Johnson at the San Diego Main Library Saturday, May 19, 2007 Review by Kent Manthie Chalmers Johnson was a professor with the University of California for 30 years: from 1962-1992, teaching mostly at the flagship UC Berkeley and also for a time down south at UC San Diego. His specialties were Asian, specifically Chinese and Japanese […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3098,"url":"http:\/\/reviewermag.com\/press\/2010\/10\/27\/cd-review-tracy-johnson\/","url_meta":{"origin":298,"position":0},"title":"CD review: Tracy Johnson","author":"admin","date":"October 27, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Tracy Johnson This San Diego-based singer songwriter\u2019s voice in track one has a real unpolished prettiness about it, like a Caucasian Tracy Chapman. But track 2, \u201c(You Gave Me) Faith In Hollywood,\u201d is way too happy\/sappy\/syrupy. Unfortunately the rest of the CD sounds lackluster as well. \u201cBittersweet,\u201d \u201c\u201cHurricane,\u201d \u201cRuby Slippers,\u201d\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "archive"","block_context":{"text":"archive","link":"http:\/\/reviewermag.com\/press\/category\/archive\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/reviewermag.com\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/tracy-johnson.gif?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":17429,"url":"http:\/\/reviewermag.com\/press\/2020\/03\/27\/book-review-abandoned-san-diego\/","url_meta":{"origin":298,"position":1},"title":"book: ABANDONED SAN DIEGO","author":"Reviewer Rob","date":"March 27, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"[Book Review] Local Knowledge ABANDONED SAN DIEGO ABANDONED SAN DIEGO, 96 pages, paperback, published by America Through Time, 2019, Jessica D. Johnson author review by Rob I like this little book because I love San Diego. Any book that attempts to reveal useful hidden knowledge pretty much has my vote,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "books"","block_context":{"text":"books","link":"http:\/\/reviewermag.com\/press\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":14483,"url":"http:\/\/reviewermag.com\/press\/2017\/07\/31\/14483\/","url_meta":{"origin":298,"position":2},"title":"Kicking It With Ben Johnson","author":"Reviewer Rob","date":"July 31, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"[Sobriety] Sober Ben Johnson How one drunk stopped being a drunk First in a series of videos on getting away from addiction by Reviewer Rob I'm going to be doing some \"Getting Sober\" videos to document ways people kick self-destructive addictions. So for the first of them I sought out\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "addiction series"","block_context":{"text":"addiction series","link":"http:\/\/reviewermag.com\/press\/category\/addiction-series\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":18185,"url":"http:\/\/reviewermag.com\/press\/2020\/12\/20\/fanboy-on-91x-fm\/","url_meta":{"origin":298,"position":3},"title":"Fanboy on 91X FM","author":"Reviewer Rob","date":"December 20, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"","rel":"","context":"In "archive"","block_context":{"text":"archive","link":"http:\/\/reviewermag.com\/press\/category\/archive\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/reviewermag.com\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/IMG_20201220_180019_172.jpg?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/reviewermag.com\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/IMG_20201220_180019_172.jpg?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/reviewermag.com\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/IMG_20201220_180019_172.jpg?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/reviewermag.com\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/IMG_20201220_180019_172.jpg?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/reviewermag.com\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/IMG_20201220_180019_172.jpg?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":9520,"url":"http:\/\/reviewermag.com\/press\/2013\/09\/04\/hidden-san-diego-inside-lake-hodges-dam\/","url_meta":{"origin":298,"position":4},"title":"Hidden San Diego: Inside Lake Hodges Dam","author":"Reviewer Rob","date":"September 4, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"[Adventure] Hidden San Diego: Inside Lake Hodges DamTweetReviewer trekkingPhotos and spot report by Jessica Johnson from HiddenSanDiego.net Lake Hodges Dam is a multiple-arch dam that sits on the San Dieguito River south of Escondido. It was commissioned by the Volcan Water Company and designed by John S. Eastwood. The structure\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "adventure central"","block_context":{"text":"adventure central","link":"http:\/\/reviewermag.com\/press\/category\/adventure-central\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":337,"url":"http:\/\/reviewermag.com\/press\/2007\/08\/05\/diary-of-a-social-worker-book-review\/","url_meta":{"origin":298,"position":5},"title":"Diary of a Social Worker book review","author":"admin","date":"August 5, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Diary of a Social Worker A book by Rodney Johnson Review by Kent Manthie The thing about people is that they are so damn predictable; they\u2019re not only predictable, they can be nosy neighbors, vindictive jerks and vengeful folks \u2013 ex-lovers, pissed off neighbors and the like. This simple idea\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "archive"","block_context":{"text":"archive","link":"http:\/\/reviewermag.com\/press\/category\/archive\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/reviewermag.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/reviewermag.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/reviewermag.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reviewermag.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reviewermag.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/reviewermag.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/reviewermag.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reviewermag.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reviewermag.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}