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BRIAN LAMB, HOST, Q&A: Chalmers Johnson, when you wrote the last line of ”The Sorrows of Empire,” you said this, ”feeling such a reform nemesis, the goddess of retribution and vengeance, the punisher of pride and hubris, waits impatiently for her meeting with us.” I get a sense you might even be writing your next book name, ”Nemesis.”
CHALMERS JOHNSON, AUTHOR: The third book is done and it’s called, ”Nemesis.” The subtitle is, ”The Last Days of the American Republic.” It’s to say I don’t see the wait out any longer. That the Congress – or that the separation of powers has clearly broken down; the President has achieved virtually anything he might’ve wanted to do in that area. I don’t think the political system will save us. The military could conceivably take over; they’ve threatened this but I don’t think so for reasons that I think are pretty obvious, above all, the fact that no enlisted – only enlisted men have been convicted in the prison torture scandals, none of the officers. The result is that within the armed forces today, enlisted men are extremely sensitive to illegal orders, saying, you’re going to take the rap for it, not us. There’s no more illegal order than to take over Congress, so the officers I just don’t think believe innocent men would follow their orders today, so my wife keeps saying to me, come up with something optimistic and I come up with bankruptcy. Its – that looks like it might be the thing that will bring the republic to an end.
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