Goodbye to Chalmers Johnson

K. Amemiya

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This post first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

Chalmers Johnson was a stalwart of TomDispatch. He first wrote for this website on January 8, 2003 (“Iraqi Wars“), barely more than a month after it was launched. The last piece he wrote in his life (“Portrait of a Sagging Empire“) was for TomDispatch as well. In the years between, he penned 28 other TD pieces on a remarkably wide range of subjects, including how the American war in Iraq was harming the human patrimony (“Smash of Civilizations”), abolishing the CIA, the dangers of our empire of bases (a subject he all but copyrighted), the bloated Pentagon budget, our fading military empire, and how militarism was driving us toward bankruptcy, among a host of subjects. For good measure, he sat down for a two-part TomDispatch interview with me that was Chalmers all the way. (“Our encounter,” as I wrote at the time, “is an interview in name only. No one has ever needed an interviewer less. I do begin with a question that had been on my mind, but it’s hardly necessary.”)

I’ve written about how we first met on the page (as I was his book editor, starting with his now-classic volume Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire) and about his death on November 20, 2010. I still miss him. In our present world, overflowing with explosive, unexpected moments, I regularly wonder just what “Chal” would have made of events in Egypt, Libya, Japan, or Washington. His remarkable, restless, penetrating intelligence is missed. He was a giant.

That said, I’m pleased to offer a special kind of goodbye to him today, a memory piece on his work by Sheila Johnson, his wife, partner in so many endeavors, and an impressive figure in her own right. It seems like a fitting way to say goodbye, remember the breadth and stature of the man, and take in the scope of his life.

In the introduction to his final book, Dismantling the Empire, America’s Last Best Hope (just out in paperback), he took up a recurring topic of interest to him: “the choice between republic and empire,” and the way “our imperial dreams stretch our means to the breaking point and threaten our future.” Among “the alternatives available to us as a nation,” he wrote, “we are choosing what I call the suicide option.” He added that “it might not have to be this way, that we could still move in a different direction.” Those were, in a sense, his last words. How true they remain three and a half months after his death.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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