Nemesis

We are, the author contends, headed for monumental economic disaster because of selfish, secret, and reckless military spending. As Johnson outlines the "dangerous path" the United States has forged., narrator Tom Weiner's steady, deep voice offers comfort to a rocky journey. The book's only flaw is the extent of the author's tangential explanations. But the gem is the section on the erosion of freedom of information. The author's theme is clear early on: "Imperialism requires that a . . . domestic democracy change into a domestic tyranny." Weiner's voice of reason resonates as listeners are left questioning our future. M.B. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine

January 29, 2007
Like ancient Rome, America is saddled with an empire that is fatally \t\t undermining its republican government, argues Johnson (The Sorrows of Empire), in this bleak jeremiad. He \t\t surveys the trappings of empire: the brutal war of choice in Iraq and other \t\t foreign interventions going back decades; the militarization of space; the \t\t hundreds of overseas U.S. military bases full of "swaggering soldiers who brawl \t\t and sometimes rape." At home, the growth of an "imperial presidency," with the \t\t CIA as its "private army," has culminated in the Bush administration's resort \t\t to warrantless wiretaps, torture, a "gulag" of secret CIA prisons and an \t\t unconstitutional arrogation of "dictatorial" powers, while a corrupt Congress \t\t bows like the Roman Senate to Caesar. Retribution looms, the author warns, as \t\t the American economy, dependent on a bloated military-industrial complex and \t\t foreign borrowing, staggers toward bankruptcy, maybe a military coup. Johnson's \t\t is a biting, often effective indictment of some ugly and troubling features of \t\t America's foreign policy and domestic politics. But his doom-laden trope of \t\t empire ("the capacity for things to get worse is limitless.... the American \t\t republic may be coming to its end") seems overstated. With Bush a lame duck, \t\t not a Caesar, and his military adventures repudiated by the electorate, the \t\t Republic seems more robust than Johnson allows.