Chalmers Johnson

So therefore, I think it might be asking too much.

You mentioned Blowback, the book, Chalmers Johnson.

Yeah.

And the fantastic book, by the way, both of the books that I read from his were very good.

Yeah.

And so, and the last thing I wanted to get to on that to get your opinion on is one of the books I read, I read it after 9-11, but I didn't realize it was written before 9-11 when I read it, which was Chalmers Johnson's book, where he says in 2000, like, look, we've put so much military aid, intelligence money into the Middle East and folks connected with folks like bin Laden.

I wouldn't be surprised if they use that to attack us in what the military calls blowback.

So Yeah.

We're sort of like one of those people like we're playing with fire here.

Well, yeah.

And Chalmers Johnson, I was going to mention his name because he's the did the blowback trilogy, the late Chalmers Johnson, who, by the way, wasn't a crazy radical leftist.

He was a widely respected scholar of politics and about Asia and things.

I think I rewatched that Jonathan Karl interviewing AOC.

He said that America deserved 9-11, which I think – is a ham-fisted way of saying blowback, which, you know, 20 years ago, 22 years ago, I was interviewing Chalmers Johnson, a very prominent academic who had written an entire book about blowback and the implications of our involvement.

That stuff is...

It's not particularly profound whatsoever, and it's certainly terrain that has been covered.

Oh, so the response will be to the government.

But over 26 years ago, there was a guy by the name of this name, Chalmers Johnson, and he writes, quote, "Johnson argues that the meaning of blowback should be widened as to encompass unintended negative consequences for the population on the receiving end as well." End quote.

Guys, this is not in any way a controversial statement.

This is not any kind of claim by Piker that American Jews who suffer from anti-Semitic hate crimes or some related element, that they brought it on themselves.

Formal institutions without informal networks m- cannot function properly.

There is a book by Chalmers Johnson, it's called MITI and the Japanese Miracle.

MITI is the Ministry of International Trade and Industry.

Mm.

So, uh, Chalmers Johnson was showing how Japan transformed from a poor society into a, uh, an advanced country.

So he would say the Japanese state would get the best students from the best universities to sit a civil service entry exam, and only 2% or 3% of those who sat that exam passed.

Imagine the best students from the best universities, they sit an exam and the failure rate is 97% to 98%.

The idea of blowback.

We had Chalmers Johnson on the program 20 some odd years ago to talk about this.

The idea of blowback... is a rather uncontroversial one

for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction actions have consequences consequences can be unpredictable