{"id":10832,"date":"2011-08-08T08:18:47","date_gmt":"2011-08-08T16:18:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=10832"},"modified":"2011-08-08T08:18:47","modified_gmt":"2011-08-08T16:18:47","slug":"best-of-tomdispatch-chalmers-johnson-dismantling-the-empire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2011\/08\/08\/best-of-tomdispatch-chalmers-johnson-dismantling-the-empire\/","title":{"rendered":"Best of TomDispatch: Chalmers Johnson, Dismantling the Empire"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chalmers Johnson<\/a> died on November 20, 2010<\/a>, but \u2014 for me at least \u2014 his spirit lives on in the most active of ways. In his last years at TomDispatch.com, he regularly chewed over<\/a> the profligacy of the Pentagon, our unbridled urge for military spending, and our penchant for war-making and war preparations without end. He was convinced that we had long passed the point at which we were still a \u201crepublic,\u201d that we had decisively opted for empire, and \u2014 long before the U.S. intelligence community came to<\/a> that conclusion \u2014 that we were on the downward slide, helped along by what he called a \u201cmilitary Keynesianism\u201d<\/a> run amok.<\/p>\n

One question he raised regularly in conversation, but never answered in print, was: What would it mean for the United States \u2014 i.e., a great military superpower \u2014 to bankrupt itself? After all, we aren’t Argentina. But if there was no obvious model to draw on, he never doubted one thing: if we didn\u2019t change our ways and reverse course on empire, we would certainly be a candidate for debtor\u2019s prison and a wreck of a country. In his last major essay, also the title of his last <\/a>(and still unbearably relevant) book, he turned to the issue of \u201cdismantling the empire,\u201d knowing full well that it wasn\u2019t on any imaginable Washington agenda.<\/p>\n

Having just lived through one of the more bizarre months<\/a> in the history of the former republic \u2014 what I recently termed<\/a> \u201ca psychotic spectacle of American decline\u201d \u2014 it seemed to me that Johnson\u2019s \u201cdismantling\u201d essay couldn\u2019t be more timely, and so on this quiet Sunday in August, on the weekend the author of Blowback<\/a><\/em> would have turned 80, I\u2019m bringing it back from the TomDispatch archives<\/a>. It was first posted on July 30, 2009, and it has only gained in relevance from the two years of debacle that have followed. If only I could bring Chalmers back as well. This country could use him right now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chalmers Johnson died on November 20, 2010, but \u2014 for me at least \u2014 his spirit lives on in the most active of ways. In his last years at TomDispatch.com, he regularly chewed over the profligacy of the Pentagon, our unbridled urge for military spending, and our penchant for war-making and war preparations without end. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[375],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-10832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chalmers-johnson"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10832"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10832\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10836,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10832\/revisions\/10836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10832"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=10832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}