arabaliozian

March 18, 2010 *************************************************** OLD-TIME RELIGION ******************************************* What does the average Armenian know or understand about the reasons why we are divided? I suspect most Armenians follow the old-time religion routine: if it's good enough for my father, it's good enough for me. It follows the son of a Tashnak will be a Tashnak, the son of a Ramgavar will be a Ramgavar, and so on. It also follows, our divisions are based not on facts or values but on habit and tradition. Which may explain why even our revolutionaries are right-wing conservatives. As a result, instead of renewal we have stagnation, instead if progress paralysis, and instead of dialogue two monologues that never cross. * To join a group means to surrender a fraction of one's individuality and uniqueness. * In a group it is not always the best that rises to the top but the most cunning and ruthless. * Even the most absurd slogan will make sense if it flatters our ego. * Sometimes I am accused of repeating myself. If you agree with a slogan, you don't mind to have it repeated countless times. But if you disagree with an idea, being exposed to it even once, it will be a source of annoyance, irritation, and hostility. * Who is more guilty? The leader or his dupe (who assesses himself as smart)? * The 11th Commandment in the Armenian Decalogue: “Thou shalt not be a dupe.” # March 19, 2010 *************************************************** OPIUM ******************************************* Marx said religion is “the opium of the people.” The word assassin comes from the Arabic “hashish” (opium). Voltaire: “Since it was a religious war, there were no survivors.” * As a nonbeliever I respect equally both believers and nonbelievers– both Sartre and Schweitzer (who were cousins). Sartre, the atheist, writes in his memoirs: “I depend on people who depend on God.” A contradiction? Walt Whitman: “So what if I contradict myself? I contain multitudes.” * Nationalism is defined as an ideology by nationalists, and as pathology by those who have studied its history. * Some are too big to fail, and some are too insignificant to register on the consciousness of the world. You may now guess to which category we belong. * Incompetence and intolerance of dissent is a lethal combination that might as well be a death warrant. * What makes life bearable is the idea of death. * Whitman: “Nothing can happen more beautiful than death.” * Optimism? Nothing wrong with it, provided you are prepared to be disappointed. * Why do I write in short sentences and paragraphs? The short answer is, fear. Fear of boring my readers. # March 20, 2010 *************************************************** ON PATERNALISM ******************************************* Our genocide is not only a symptom of man's humanity to man but also of our own misplaced and naïve trust in an alien power structure that we were led to believe to be paternalistic because that is how it had (mis)represented itself to us for 600 years. One reason we don't emphasize this aspect of our past is that paternalism continues to be our favorite mode of perceiving our own leadership. * Xenophobia blinds us to the virtues of our adversaries to the same degree that it blinds us to our own vices. * In our traumatized partisan environment you are safe only if you parrot the partisan line. But if you dare to think and speak for yourself – that is to say, to give expression to your own thoughts. convictions, and experiences – then prepared yourself to be verbally abused by dupes who know and understand even less than their “educators” -- meaning, those who brainwashed them. * Oliver Goldsmith: “The laws govern the poor, and the rich govern the law.” #

March 14, 2010 *************************************************** SLOGANS ******************************************* To be brainwashed is bad enough. What is infinitely worse is to be brainwashed by idiots who pretend to be smart. And what could be easier for an adult than to appear smart to a child, which is when they get you – when you are a child and cannot yet think for yourself. And they get you not with logic or sentences that make sense or have any connection with reality, but with slogans – slogans like “America the Beautiful,” “The Land of the Brave and the Free,” “Deutschland uber alles.” Massacres and genocides come naturally to people who are brainwashed to parrot slogans like “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.” All slogans should come with a warning or a counter-slogan, such as “Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.” “Workers of the world unite, provided you don't drop your pants and bend over to murderous morons.” “Allawa akhbar!” God may be One. God may be Great. God may even be Almighty. But God is also Incomprehensible, and to speak in His name is to bluff and blaspheme. # March 15, 2010 *************************************************** QUESTIONS ******************************************* Toynbee: “When prophets disagree, are we to give credit to either of their opposing voices?” Likewise, when our dividers disagree... * The difference between an agnostic and a man of faith: the agnostic will not kill and die in the name of an entity whose existence is based on hearsay evidence. * Simone Weil: “It is impossible to forgive whoever has done us harm if that harm has lowered us. We have to think that it has not lowered us but revealed our true level.” * A noted French philosopher (Merleau-Ponty) once described the German occupation of France during World War II, as being “raped by history.” How are we to describe our own experience? After being gang-raped for 600 years we were eviscerated? Are we dead or alive? * Questions that I ask myself seven times every day (which is how many times a pope is said to doubt his faith every day): Am I wasting my time? I am. Why do I go on? I don't know. # March 16, 2010 *************************************************** IF YOU LIE DOWN WITH DOGS.... ******************************************* If you lie down with cannibals, you are sure to end up in their digestive tract. Perhaps genocide was the price we had to pay for being not only subservient to them for 600 years but also their “most loyal subjects.” * Winners say they won because God was on their side or it was their “manifest destiny” to win. Losers say they lost because their enemies were predators who spoke with a forked tongue. * Prejudice comes as naturally to men of faith as extremism to fanatics and big lies to dupes. * The greater the number of divisions, the great the number of panchoonies and letters that end with the words “mi kich pogh.” * Who benefits from our divisions? Only our dividers. * I plead guilty to the charge that I recycle ideas as opposed to propaganda, and to propagandists, recycling ideas might as well be a capital offense. * Our crypto-sultans and neo-commissars are so insecure that they will promote any mediocrity that knows how to flatter them, and silence anyone who dares to question their infallibility. * I am not personally acquainted with any one of our leaders but I have dealt with some of their underlings and I am appalled by their intellectual mediocrity (which I am willing to forgive) and moral moronism (which is at the root of all crimes against humanity”). * Incompetent leaders might as well be shepherds who drive their flocks in the direction of ravenous wolves. * A belief system or faith is a product of man's creative mind as surely as the composition of a great symphony, and man has created many more gods than great symphonies. # March 17, 2010 *************************************************** THIS & THAT ******************************************* The Irish like to say, “There are two kinds of people: the Irish and those who would like to be Irish.” How many kinds of Armenians are there? I would say, as many as there are Armenians; but I could also say there are also two kinds: dividers and their dupes. * If I am wrong, I can be corrected. But if those who are in charge of our destiny are wrong, the result may be another massacre – if not “garmir” (red) than “jermak” (white). If I have said this before, I apologize. I happen to be an addict of reiteration. Or, as Socrates used to say, “To know is to remember.” * Awareness of ignorance is better than false knowledge. * When an American politician needs a dedicated aide, my guess is, he says: “I need a Young Turk.” I doubt if anyone of them says “I need a rug merchant.” I read recently that Khrushchev referred to Mikoyan as “my rug merchant.” * My English dictionary defines “Young Turk” as “a young person eager for radical change to the established order.” * If what you say makes sense, let your words speak louder than your emotions. #

March 11, 2010 *************************************************** TOYNBEE ******************************************* One reason I love to read and reread Toynbee (sometimes more than twice) is that so much of what he says, and the authorities he quotes, are anti-authoritarian and apply not only to me personally but also to mankind in general, including – or should I say, especially – to Armenians. Random examples follow: Volney: “The source of man's calamities reside within him; he carries them in his heart.” Saint Cyrian: “If the foreign enemy were to cease from troubling, would Roman really be able to live at peace with Roman?” Rabbi Agus: “'Uniqueness' as an innate quality of being is exclusive in character, invidious in intent, invariably offensive.” Walter Bagehot: “The very institutions which most aid at step number one are precisely those which most impede at step number two.” In Toynbee's own words: “Progress would not have been the rarity it is if the early food had not been the late poison.” And I think of our own political parties whose step number one was love of freedom, and step number two fear or hatred of free speech.” Our own Garabents put it more succinctly when he said: “Once upon a time we fought and shed our blood for freedom. We are now afraid of free speech.” And to think that Garabents was a thoroughly pro-establishment writer beloved by all. Another quality that makes Toynbee attractive to me personally is that he quotes the Bible (and he does so frequently – more frequently than any other historian I have read) not as a believer but as a non-believer. In his own words: “I believe that the answers to the questions that matter most to us can be found only beyond the reason's limits, if they can be found at all.” Please note that final “if.” When asked why he had devoted thirty years of his life to the writing of his magnum opus, STUDY OF HISTORY, Toynbee is said to have replied with a single word: “Curiosity.” # March 12, 2010 *************************************************** BLUNT TALK ******************************************* “The United States was not the golden land of opportunity people thought it was. Blacks were oppressed. The poor were downtrodden. The press told lies. Truth existed nowhere. Everyone was motivated by money.” (THE SHOT, by Philip Kerr. New York, 2000, page 62). Blunt talk. That's what I like. I wish we had more of it. * People who are afraid of open spaces are said to suffer from agoraphobia, a word that combines two Greek words – agora (space) and phobia (fear). It seems to me, collectively, we suffer from alithophobia (fear of truth) and pragmatophobia (fear of reality). Which may well be why there are a great many people out there who don't believe us even when we speak the truth, probably because they think we suffer from psematolatria (the worship of lies). Next time you hear or read one of our pundits or “patriotards” (baloney artists parading as community leaders), I urge you to keep these words in mind even if you can't find them in any dictionary for the simple reason that I just made them up. * Please note that Philip Kerr, the author of the above quotation, is not a historian, sociologist, or academic, but a writer of thrillers who was greatly influenced by Raymond Chandler, the only American writer I have enjoyed reading three times – see especially his FAREWELL, MY LOVELY. Like Chandler, Kerr has a brilliant sense of humor. At one point, for instance, his central character, who happens to be a professional assassin, says: “I'm the real careful type. Ava Gardner offered to suck my c*ock I'd probably ask what was in it for me.” * The only other American writer I have read three time is Hemingway -- not his novels but his short story “The Killers.” I don't mention LOLITA because Nabokov was less American and more Russian cosmopolitan. # March 13, 2010 *************************************************** REFLECTIONS ******************************************* My two ambitions in life as a writer: (one) to explain why many Armenians are alienated, and (two) to expose the arrogance and incompetence of those who alienate them in the name of patriotism. * If rabbis, imams, and bishops were to renounce their monopoly on truth, would the number of their followers go up or down? Hard to say. But one thing we can say with certainty: they would be promoting tolerance instead of intolerance. * As a reader, I prefer bad dialogue to good descriptions. I should like to read a work of fiction that begins with the words: “In what follows, I will not speak of the appearance and wardrobe of my characters on the assumption that what's most important about them will emerge in what they say.” * The trouble with some of my critics is that they don’t consider me worthy of criticism. Instead, they insist that I either give up writing or change my views in such a manner as to jibe with theirs. In short, they demand that I become a disciple and an echo. Their disciple and their echo! My critics are not literary critics in the usual sense of these words, but messianic figures whose message is “Abandon your ways and follow me, for I am the only path to wisdom and salvation.” To such an Armenian to say anything but “Yes, master!” would be heresy leading to eternal damnation and hellfire. #

March 7, 2010 *************************************************** WHAT I BELIEVE ******************************************* Just because we understand and explain some things, we think we can understand and explain many other things. But so far, and after millennia of speculation by theologians, philosophers, and scientists, we have failed to answer the most important questions and we fool ourselves when we think some day we may at last grasp the meaning of life and the nature of God. Because in our arrogance (hubris) we think it is within our abilities to do so, we are punished (nemesis) with intolerance, jihads, fatwas, papal encyclicals, ten thousands commandments, belief systems and as many heresies and contradictions that suggest even the wisest among us is no better than a damn fool. I believe or I would like to believe God to be inaccessible, incomprehensible, and indifferent to both believers and nonbelievers alike. I suspect any Being or Power that can create the universe, only a fraction of which is visible to us, must be too busy creating other universes in an infinite number of dimensions only one of which is accessible to us. What are the chances that after we die, the incomprehensible will be comprehensible? I would say 50/50. I would also add that after we die we may no longer care whether life makes sense or not. # March 8, 2010 *************************************************** REFLECTIONS ******************************************* Why is an Armenian another Armenian's Turk? My only tentative answer is: Because his worldview is based on prejudice, propaganda, and lies. * Sartre: “Fascism is not defined by the number of its victims, but by the way it kills them.” Or silences them. Remember Milton's celebrated words in defense of free speech: “Who kills a man, kills a reasonable creature. But he who destroys a good book kills reason itself.” * I am beginning to see the truth in the old saying, sooner or later our blessings become curses, and everything that contributed to our good fortune, returns to destroy us. * There are prodigal fathers as surely as there are prodigal sons. * Propaganda is more dangerous than ignorance because it is identified as knowledge -- the kind that paralyzes the mind and moves crowds. * The bigger the lie, the greater the number of its dupes. * About the protocols: If history is on our side, why are we afraid of historians? * Ever since Jesus said it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God, our benefactors have been building churches in the hope of bribing God, thus adding blasphemy to their previous list of sins. # March 9, 2010 *************************************************** METAPHORS ******************************************* “An eye for an eye.” “If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out.” “When the blind lead the blind...” “In the country of the blind, the one-eyed is king.” These metaphors – assuming that's what they are – explain so much about human nature and history. And consider the following by Toynbee: “Any man of forty who is endowed with moderate intelligence has seen – in the light of the uniformity of Nature – the entire Past and Future.” * It takes less than a second to see the light. But compared to what we can't see or what God sees, the light we see may well be another form of darkness. * The unspoken threat of all authoritarian leaders to dissidents: “Since you refuse to see me as I see myself, I will pluck out your eyes and cut out your tongue.” # March 10, 2010 *************************************************** POWER & GREED ******************************************* What I put into words is the obvious, which may or may not be perceived as such by others, who may or may not wish to jeopardize their position within the power structure. As for our press: it is too dependent on the goodwill of our bosses, bishops, and benefactors for its survival to print anything that may not be flattering to their colossal egos. * The French have an untranslatable word for obnoxious, ignorant, brainwashed, narrow-minded, loud-mouth patriots: they call them “patriotards.” I call ours Panchoonies, Jack S. Avanakians, Turcocentric ghazetajis, and during the Soviet era, “chic Bolsheviks.” * The only time they are willing to admit blunders is when they want to assert their humanity (“Nobody is perfect”), never their abysmal incompetence. * I am resigned to the fact that I will never be popular with our brown-nosers and the source of the brown on their nose. * In his POWER & GREED: A SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORLD (London, 2002, page 189), Philippe Gigantes writes: “The Christian Armenians in the Caucasus regions of the Muslim Ottoman Empire favoured the Christian Russian Empire and were slaughtered by the Turks, the rulers of the Ottoman Empire. How many were slaughtered? The numbers are in dispute, varying between 500,000 and I.5 million.” This passage has a footnote that reads: “My father's uncle, Dr Nicholas Vassiliades, living in Constantinople (now Istanbul) and conscripted as a colonel in the Turkish army's medical corps, saw the massacre in Armenia. From the records of the Turkish army's medical corps, he placed the slaughtered at more than 1 million.” #

March 4, 2010 *************************************************** ON A VARIETY OF UNRELATED THINGS ******************************************* When someone you love dies, death ceases to be just another word in the dictionary and becomes a special kind of hell designed especially for you by a diabolically cunning sadist who knows you better than you know yourself, and is thus in a position to tell what will hurt you the most. He doesn't just behead you with an ax. Instead, he cuts your throat with a rusty knife and watched you bleed to death in a garbage can. * To say “Yes, sir!” to superiors has nothing to do with respect for authority and everything to do with cowardly subservience. * As far as I know, no one has ever heard anyone saying that a nation with the ablest Oriental carpet dealers is in a better position to make a valuable contribution to world peace and progress. * It is twice as hard to remain silent in two languages; and because most Armenians speak more than two languages, they suffer from chronic verbal diarrhea. * Insanity could also be defined as a process in which emotions are allowed to define thoughts. # March 5, 2010 *************************************************** CONNECTIONS ******************************************* Whenever I read about oppression, I hear echoes, see parallels, make connections: Martin Luther King: “It is a strange and twisted logic to use the tragic results of segregation as an argument for its continuation.” It is almost as strange and twisted as preaching Armenianism and practicing Ottomanism. * I see connections where none exist: first genocide of the 20th century and none of the Three Wise Men was Armenian. But then, they also say everything is connected to everything else. * Our version of democracy: Say what you like provided you believe what you are told by wiser men than yourself even when they happen to be damn fools. * Some of my readers enjoy using me as a punching bag. After Turks, an Armenian's favorite target is another Armenian. * Solidarity is a nation's greatest source of wealth and power. * If you are defenseless, you will be exploited and oppressed by men who will pretend to be your brothers, protectors, and benefactors. But you will make a big mistake if you think the only way to liberate yourself is by exploiting and oppressing your brothers. # March 6, 2010 *************************************************** COMMENTS ******************************************* If freedom enlarges the usefulness of our faculties (according to Kant), millennial oppression narrows them down to such a degree that it is not at all unusual to see a fool parading as a genius. * Dealing with fools is hard enough; infinitely harder is dealing with a fool who has been taken in by another fool. * Assessing oneself as infallible may well be the surest symptom of terminal cretinism. * The more unwavering a man’s commitment to his own self-interest, the more altruistic the principles he pretends to espouse. * Politics is the second oldest profession and in many ways it resembles the first. Fascists agree but they think this does not apply to fascism. #

February 28, 2010 *************************************************** #1 ******************************************* When it comes to my own self-interest, or taking care of #1, I have an instinctive drive to work against it on the grounds that the difficulties that confront me will become more challenging, and the greater the challenge, the greater the rewards, even if the rewards come not in this life but in the next, and I don't believe in an afterlife. Figure that one out, if you can. * It takes faith to see meaning in the meaningless or the incomprehensible. Has anyone ever been successful in explaining if God is love, why does He allow the massacre of the innocent? * When the mother of a good friend died a few years ago, to console her, I said: “Think of it this way: God has given you two lives – one with Mother and another without her.” When my own mother died I said and repeated the same thing to myself, but it didn't work; and I now think of it as one of the dumbest things anyone can say to a friend who has lost a loved one. It's like saying to a blind amputee: “God has given you two lives – one with your eyes and limbs, the other without them.” * How easy it is to bear another's grief! And how impossibly hard it is to come to terms with one's own. # March 1, 2010 *************************************************** CRITICS ******************************************* The function of a critic is not to know better or to speak in the name of a superior brand of patriotism or loyalty to the nation, but to expose contradictions. To say, for instance, that it makes no sense to brag about survival when it is the best that perish and the worse that survive. Or, to praise freedom in theory and to ban free speech in practice. Whether we like it or not, whenever we make an assertion, more often than not we speak in the name of an ideology or belief system whose fundamental principles we refuse to question or doubt. It is not that ideologies and religions can be wrong, but that they are never right because there are no final answers or answers to the most important questions. And as everyone knows by now, for every belief system there is another that contradicts it. Which belief system is the best? It depends where you were born and educated – make it, brainwashed. Which means, belief systems are an extension not of reason but of geography. Mountains, valleys and climate have more to do with what we believe than our brains. Am I advocating skepticism? No! Only reminding my readers that none of us is infallible, not even the Pope of Rome or, for that matter, the Catholicos of Etchmiadzin or Antelias. * It is not easy to see meaning in the meaningless. But what is even infinitely harder is to question the validity of meaning itself. A philosopher (I no longer remember his name) once wrote a book titled THE MEANING OF MEANING. It seems to me, in a historic context, it would be far more accurate to speak of the meaninglessness of meaning, in view of the fact that countless innocent victims were slaughtered in the name of a belief system or heresy that is no longer a heresy. # March 2, 2010 *************************************************** ...AMONG OTHER THINGS ******************************************* If a hundred million people believe in a lie, it doesn't follow that lie ceases to be a lie. * On more than one occasion I have been given to understand that if my income is below minimum wage I am in no position to negotiate or to say anything but “Yes, sir!” * Not all Turks are enemies, and not all Armenians are friends. Some Turks saved our lives by risking their own, and some Armenians betrayed us to the authorities. * Think of me as someone who is doing his utmost to be an honest witness in the eyes of an honest jury that may or may not exist. * Dividers don't like to speak of solidarity, or bankers of usury, or cannibals of vegetarianism, or pimps of castration. * Anyone who trusts someone else's judgment more than his own is a potential dupe. # March 3, 2010 *************************************************** FROM MY NOTEBOOKS ******************************************* If you want to teach yourself how to lie and deceive, write your memoirs. Even better, if you are a nationalist or a patriot, write a history of your nation. I speak from experience: I have done both. * To brag about the fact that we have oppressed no other nation is like a lizard asserting his moral superiority on the grounds that he has never killed and devoured a crocodile. * Too many chiefs, no Indians: that's one way to explain our divisions. * Memo to readers who like to compare me to Mencken: Please, take the trouble to learn how to spell his name. * I am not a good or even a mediocre pianist, but I can brag about one thing: I have been murdering Mozart's and Beethoven's complete Sonatas and so far no cop has ever laid a glove on me. * Disraeli claimed he had read PRIDE AND PREJUDICE eighteen times. May I confess that I have read it only three times. * A critic once said of Gore Vidal: “He exudes despair and cynical misery and a grudge against society which is really based on his own lack of talent and creative joy.” I am reminded of Churchill's World War II remark: “Some chicken! Some neck!” * No complete bastard ever wrote a decent line. Believable lies, yes! #

am i allowed to do that without the moderator's ok?

i use Turcocentric in the same sense as egocentric. but your objection is legitimate.

February 25, 2010 *************************************************** FROM MY NOTEBOOKS ******************************************* Jean Rostand, French biologist and son of Edmond, author of CYRANO DE BERGERAC: “Afterlife? It is the body that survives the mind, for several hours.” * John Crowe Ransom, American poet: “In all the good Greek of Plato, I lack my roastbeef and potato.” That's like going to hell for a cold beer. * The best I can say about our benefactors and their flunkies is to quote Pushkin's line: “Where there is a trough, there will be swine.” * Chinese proverb: “Behind an able man there are always other able men.” The reverse is also true: Behind a failure... * I don't remember any references to Armenians in John Updike's works. I am a little surprised therefore to read the following in TOWARDS THE END OF TIME (New York, 1997, page 124): “The Armenians of the region [Asia Minor] remained loyal to Christianity but were savagely slaughtered during World War I.” The only other Armenian connection to Updike that I can think of is Cher starring in THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK. * In the mind of most odars Armenians are invariably associated with slaughter or hunger. * Armenian arguments polarize. When two Armenian friends start an argument, the chances are not only will they disagree but they will also end up as enemies. I speak from experience. # February 26, 2010 *************************************************** ON POWER ******************************************* Capitalism is the best system for capitalists. So is Marxism for communists. The same could be said of all organized religions and ideologies. It never fails. As soon as a religion or an ideology is established, it creates and persecutes heretics. That's because men of power hate to share it. Power and corruption might as well be synonymous. To cover up this obvious fact, men of power in a democracy call themselves public servants. But one man's public servant is another's fascist dictator. In the eyes of right-wing racists, Obama is another Hitler. * It has been said that a good diplomat can charm a cobra. If only our diplomats had been as good as our carpet dealers. * Confucius: “Oppressive government is worse than a tiger.” * We disagree like people who have tasted blood. We behave like sharks even if our opponent is a sardine. Which may explain our abuse of writers. I am not voicing a theory, just summing up the history of our literature. # February 27, 2010 *************************************************** PLAGIARISM ******************************************* Shahnour once accused Siamanto of plagiarism and quoted chapter and verse. Oshagan accused Zarian of plagiarism too but without quoting chapter and verse. Perhaps because Oshagan thought of himself as the best and refused to consider the possibility of anyone else being as good or even better without foul play. Sometimes I too am accused of plagiarism minus chapter and verse. But I don't mind pleading guilty as charged. Nothing I write is original. Everything I say has been said before if not in the Bible than by Plato. All I do is paraphrase, expand, and emphasize. Bertrand Russell used to say that all philosophy is a footnote to Plato. Plato has been accused of being a fascist. There are those who believe Heidegger to be the greatest philosophy of the last century. Not only was he a fascist but also a member of the Nazi party. A coincidence? It has also been said that if you want to have an idea of infinity, think of human ignorance. Even better, think of human history where ideas are translated into action – that is to say, wars, revolutions, and massacres. No one wants war, except of course deranged megalomaniacs and their dupes who seem to have their way every time. How to explain that? Or rather, what must be done? This simple question has a simple answer but no one seems to listen or care. Homo sapiens seems to be more easily seduced by lies than by truth – namely that, all men are brothers. And because I say and repeat as much, I am accused of plagiarism. But I shouldn't complain. Far better men than myself have been crucified or assassinated for uttering that blasphemy. #

February 21, 2010 *************************************************** AUTISM ********************************* There is an element of autism in even the mildest form of nationalism or patriotism, and autism is defined as “a state of mind characterized by daydreaming, hallucinations, and disregard of external reality.” It is autism that leads some people to believe they belong to a superior race or they are God's chosen people. It was autism that led our revolutionaries in the Ottoman empire to believe we were invulnerable because the Great Powers of the West were on our side. It is autism (what else?) that makes us believe we are survivors par excellence. So what if the best perished and it is the worst that survived? * Since I have been a dupe most of my life, I don't particularly care to be duped even if it is for the enhancement of my own self-esteem or for some other nebulous or poorly defined term whose aim is to make me disregard or ignore my perception of reality, and reality tells me in no uncertain terms that God doesn't choose, men do, and when men do the choosing, they invariably choose themselves. # February 22, 2010 *************************************************** COMPROMISE ********************************* To reach a consensus, one must compromise, and compromise has been defined as “the introduction of inconsistency to closed minds.” The key qualifier here is “closed minds.” Another symptom of closed minds is to think of criticism as negative and of propaganda as positive. Or to view political speeches and flattery as patriotic and to reject objective assessment and analysis as treason. Also to think of free speech not as a fundamental human right but as a crime against humanity. Our history is clear on this point. No writer has ever been in a position to silence a boss, bishop, or benefactor. And now consider the manner in which we treated our best writers from Abovian to Zarian. A nation addicted to lies may survive, but can it live? * We have become a nation of cynics as defined by Oscar Wilde – people “who know the price of everything but the value of nothing.” I doubt if there is a single Armenian today who has not heard of Gulbenkian, Kirkorian, or Manoogian. But how many have read or even heard of Massikian, one of our three most brilliant satirists – the other two being Baronian and Odian. Once more I am reminded of my favorite literary anecdote which I never tire of retelling because it so beautifully exposes the dark side of our ethos. When on his deathbed, community leaders asked him to leave his estate (Massikian was also a successful lawyer, a wealthy man, and a lifelong bachelor) to an Armenian educational foundation, he is said to have replied: “I'd much rather leave it to a Cairo bordello.” # February 23, 2010 *************************************************** THERAPY ********************************* How do you convince someone that he may be smart in the marketplace but a retard in politics? In psychology, there is a school of thought that believes in “aversion therapy,” which consists in exposing the patient into repellence against his neurotic convictions. By saying and repeating that we have been moronized into thinking we are smart not just in the marketplace but in all fields of human endeavor, I emphasize not the negative, as some of my critics accuse me of doing, but I engage in the practice of aversion therapy. I do this because that's how I acquired my objectivity on this issue. Once, when I said “Armenians are smart” to an alienated Armenian academic (may he rest in peace) whom I respected, he for the first time in our many conversations literally lost his temper, and that made such a powerful impression on me that I suddenly saw very clearly the absurdity of my assertion and the systematic way in which I had been turned into a dupe by our propagandists. If so far I have failed to expose the lies of our nationalists by aversion therapy, it may be because most ideas, even the best, fail. Violence continues to be popular in films as well as politics notwithstanding Tolstoy, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King. And consider what happened to Marx and his ideas. # February 24, 2010 *************************************************** POLITICS ********************************* To support a leader simply because he is “our” leader is a fascist concept. So is obeying laws because “the law is the law.” To be subservient to a system because “you can't fight City Hall” is not good citizenship but cowardly subservience. We owe all our freedoms and privileges today to men who dared to say “No!” to incompetent or corrupt leaders. * LITERATURE ******************************* We have two kinds of writers: those who look backward (Mesrob Mashdots, Vartan Mamikonian, Turks and massacres) and those who tell us looking backward has turned us into “pillars of salt.” This has been said before and it bears repeating. And I will go on repeating it even if it means being ostracized, unpublished, called “consistently negative,” and “an enemy agent.” * PROPAGANDA ******************************* Propaganda does not solve problems, it creates them. The illusion of moral superiority, for instance, or the illusion that God takes sides in human conflicts is worse than propaganda; it is a Big Lie and a curse that has destroyed nations and empires and continues to do so in our own days. We are people like any other people because “all men are brothers.” * RELIGION ***************************** In POWER AND GREED: A SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORLD by Philippe Gigantes (London, 2002) I read the following: “Very early in human history, the autocrat with the big club and the witch doctor with his potions and maledictions, became natural allies. The one with the big club organized the hunt and the defense of the territory. The sorcerer took care of the uncontrollable, the unpredictable and the inexplicable – he took care of God, in other words. The two, king and priest, in modern parlance, ran the tribe through the fear of violence and the fear of 'God.' In that tribal system, they each took a much bigger share of everything.” To which I will only add: “Nothing further, Your Honor.” #

February 18, 2010 *************************************************** INFIDELS ********************************* Muslims call us infidels. But, it seems to me, the real infidels are Muslims who slaughter other Muslims, and I am not talking about Muslim warriors killing other Muslim warriors but bloodthirsty fanatics killing innocent women and children. * Imams share with our bishops and bosses the false assumption that to divide and rule might as well be synonymous. They are too blind to see that their real enemy is themselves; and that a war fought on two fronts against a united enemy is doomed to end in defeat. * Let others speak of the long arm of the law. Ours, which was short to begin with, has been amputated. * Winston Churchill: “We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.” Where were our “rough men” when we needed them most? Did we ever have them? * The fewer the number of “rough men,” the greater the number of sermonizers, speechifiers, and ghazetajis. # February 19, 2010 *************************************************** REFLECTIONS ********************************* We live as though we will never die and when death knocks on the door we pretend it's Beethoven's 5th. * You want to know why I stress the negative? Because whenever I take a closer look at a positive, it reveals itself as propaganda. * There are no shortcuts to Golgotha. * Civil wars too are fought in the name of patriotism. * In theory – truth. In practice – lies. A great deal is lost in translation. * The difference between mathematics and life is that in life to solve a problem very often means creating more of them. * Literature: Art irritating life. * Life is a harsh taskmaster and being a fool is a luxury no one, not even the most powerful man on earth, can afford. # February 20, 2010 *************************************************** IT HAS BEEN SAID... ********************************* “He who speaks does not know. He who knows does not speak.” Does that mean mankind would have been better off without Socrates, Plato, Christ, and Gandhi? * It has also been said: “Take everything you hear with a grain of salt.” Why salt? To make the lie more palatable? * “He who speaks does not know?” What if that's only in reference to propagandists and their dupes? * There are those who say God does not speak because He has already said what must be said, and if our problems persist it's not His fault but ours. Does that mean both victimizers and victims must share responsibility for their (in)actions? Does that means a child that is raped and murdered by a cold-blooded serial killer must share the killer's guilt? * Instead of saying “Give us this day our daily bread,” the rich should say “Give us this day our share of compassion.” And we should all say: “Our Father, Who art in Heaven, why don't you come down on earth once in a while?” #

February 14, 2010 *************************************************** DEMONOLOGY ********************************* If you are not with us, you are against us. If you are against us, you are against God. If you are against God, you are with the Devil. That's not theology but demonology. One could even say, theological dogmas are the inventions of the Devil. Hence the countless innocent victims... * Loyalty, when it is obedience of the powerless to the powerful, it is a one-way street. * Idiots who think they are smart: they are my favorite sources of inspiration. Our world is full of them...and they are full of it. I speak from experience. I was one of them myself. In the eyes of God I still am -- I use the word God as a point of reference that is invisible, inaccessible, incomprehensible, but Almighty. * The most powerful people in the history of mankind – those who changed the world and continue to do so -- men like Christ, Marx, and Einstein – were born, raised, and lived without power. They did not command armies and they were not part of a power structure or bureaucracy. Think about that next time you say you cannot cook pilaf with words. Remember, it took a three-letter equation to incinerate Hiroshima. # February 15, 2010 *************************************************** UNDERSTANDING HISTORY ********************************* Some of our ablest writers lacked the faculty of understanding history or of seeing “the other side of the hill” (to use a military metaphor) or “the angularity of time” (Sartre). Face to face with history, even our realists remained romantics at heart. They were more influenced by French literature and less by real events that made headlines in the international press. I am not talking of prophetic insight or vision but simply of deciphering the writing on the wall. I am talking of a myopia so advanced that it might as well have been blindness. Consider Zohrab as a case in point, without any doubt one of our most sophisticated, experienced, and politically savvy observers of the Ottoman scene. And yet, instead of warning his readers of the coming catastrophe, he wrote fiction about adulterous women, golden-hearted prostitutes, and the death of a salesman. He wrote a pamphlet about the Hamidian massacres, true, but he saw them not as preludes to a greater tragedy but as aberrations that if exposed may not be repeated. His naïve faith in the Ottoman power structure was such that he even saved the life of the future architect of the Genocide by risking his own. If one were to compile profiles of famous Armenian dupes, surely Zohrab would qualify as the greatest of them all. As for Baronian and Odian: they wrote about the moral bankruptcy of the Armenian community and ignored the apocalypse looming on the horizon. If the sins of our intellectuals were sins of omission, those of our political leadership were sins of commission. Instead of doing their utmost to prevent the coming catastrophe, they did the exact opposite: they did their best to provoke it. History repeats itself today. Our academics and pundits prefer to speak of past massacres and are blind to the “spitak chart” (white slaughter) or assimilation in the Diaspora and mass exodus from the Homeland. It seems to me, we worry too much about our identity and not enough about our soul, and “what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” # February 16, 2010 *************************************************** NOTES & COMMENTS ********************************* Talaat and Stalin murdered two generations of our best writers. We cannot forget that. But it seems we have forgotten or we don't even like to mention the fact that there is more than one way to slaughter a writer and we are not as innocent as we pretend to be. * There are two kinds of Armenians: those who think and those who recycle propaganda. Those who recycle propaganda speak louder and they are never wrong; and armed with that conviction, they persecute and silence anyone who dares to think for himself. Examples from the past: writers from Abovian to Zarian. * You can always rely on an Armenian to justify his selfish interests with a verbal avalanche of noble principles and ideals. In the words of a friend: "After fattening themselves on the blood of the innocent and the helpless, our Count Draculas are good at delivering lectures on the virtues of vegetarianism." * Celine was a notorious anti-Semite but he is viewed as a great writer even by some Jews (among them Philip Roth) because he had enough hatred in him to cover most of mankind, including his fellow countrymen, about whom he had this to say: “Vicious and spineless, raped, robbed, gutted, and always halfwits. That's France and that's the French.” * Beethoven suffered horribly over his deafness, but I doubt if anyone listening to his music thinks of it. I don't. The things that mean most to us may not even register on someone else's consciousness. # February 17, 2010 *************************************************** MISTAKES ********************************* Because I was not a gentleman, I assumed everybody else was. That was a big mistake. * If instead of ten thousand belief systems mankind had adopted the Socratic dictum “The only thing I know is that I don't know,” or “Of the gods we know nothing,” history would not have been an endless horror story. * The two most frequently abused words in all languages are “I think.” When a brainwashed idiot or, for that matter, a man of faith (but I repeat myself) begins a sentence with the words “I think,” he should be interrupted and informed that perjury is a serious criminal offense. * The exercise of power over the powerless is an insult. Hence Hamlet's phrase “the insolence of office.” As for law and order: I am reminded of the Roman saying: “They make a desert and call it peace.” * No matter how you describe me, there will be some truth in it. But this is true of all men. We are not a single person but a crowd. There is a particle of all men, both dead and alive, in all of us. #

February 11, 2010 ************************* COMMENTS **************************************** The history of deceivers and their dupes has a beginning (the Serpent and Eve) but no end. * If we have not been taken in by Patagonians and Zulus it's because we have at no time dealt with them. * In the latest issue of the NEW YORKER dealing with the Internet I read: “...pervasive anonymity (which encourages bullying and moblike behavior)...” * When I was young I went out of my way to make friends. In my old age I am much better at making enemies. The friends I made were not always worthy of friendship. As for my enemies, I will say this: they make solitude a glorious experience. * How much of what we know today would be reduced to ignorance if we were to see reality through the eyes of God? * Greed makes a man more cunning as well as stupid: more cunning in his employment of means to achieve his end, and more stupid in thinking he can hide his greed. * THOREAU SPEAKS ************************************** “The man I meet with is not often so instructive as the silence he breaks.” * “Society: Pigs in a litter, which lie close together to keep each other warm.” # February 12, 2010 ************************* ON LEADERSHIP & NATIONAL IDENTITY ********************************************* Unlike American “birthers” who believe Obama is a Muslim double agent born in Kenya, I have no interest in questioning the national identity of our leaders some of whom may well be of mixed parentage. But I have every right to question their honesty. So much so that the expression “an honest Armenian leader” sounds to me as absurd as saying the sun rises in the West or one plus one makes eleven. Speaking for myself: I'd much rather be ruled by an honest Zulu, Patagonian, or even Turk than a pure-blooded Armenian (assuming such a one exists) who speaks with a forked tongue. * About the irrelevance of national identity in political leadership: some of the most competent Byzantine emperors spoke Greek with a foreign accent for the simple reason that they were of Armenian descent. * To repeat what we have heard is not to say what we think. * Honest Armenians prefer to be silent. The louder the speech, the bigger the lies. When one of our sermonizers died of cancer of the tongue, a friend who was personally acquainted with him said: “That's because he spoke too many lies.” * To quote someone does not always mean to agree with him but to point out a different perception of reality. # February 13, 2010 *************************************************** THE OTTOMAN CURSE ********************************* Like all imperial powers, the Turks adopted divide-and-rule tactics in their dealings with us and they appear to have succeeded so brilliantly that we remain divided long after their empire collapsed. Think about that next time you say Armenians are smart. * Explaining a phenomenon is easy. What is hard is dealing with it. Armenian literature has failed to convince our leaders in that endeavor. Hence the contempt for our vodanavorjis and scribblers. * The dumbest Armenian is capable of inflicting the deepest wounds and the smartest Armenian can voice the dumbest opinions. * One reason why our wheeler-dealers – unlike our writers -- have prospered and no doubt will continue to prosper is that they can pretend to be idealistic, committed, and principled much more convincingly than honest men. #

February 7, 2010 ************************* EXPOSING A MYTH ************************************* “The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie – deliberate, continued, and dishonest – but the myth – persistent, pervasive, and unrealistic.” John F. Kennedy * There is a type of Armenian patriotism that believes in covering up the incompetence, corruption, and even the criminal conduct of our leadership on the grounds that, if exposed, our image as a nation may be harmed in the eyes of the world. * Earthquakes, we are told, are acts of God. But victims of earthquakes are not. Earthquakes don't kill people. Buildings do. How many of our contractors and commissars in charge of constructions are in jail today? What guarantee do we have that the next earthquake, which may happen in ten or twenty years, will not kill many more victims? * Our phony patriots are against hanging our dirty laundry out in the open for everyone to see. Americans, on the other hand, believe that sunlight is the best disinfectant. Who is right? Who knows better? * To those who say I should write in Armenian for Armenian papers, and not in English in open forums: Our writers from Khorenatsi and Yeghishé (5th century) to Zarian and Massikian (20th century) have done exactly that without any discernible results. When Zarian assumed a critical stance, he was silenced, driven out of the United State and into Soviet Armenia, where he became an abominable no man. There are even those who accuse him today of having been an agent of the KGB and the CIA, and worse, that in his final phase he went mad. * Generally speaking the average Armenian dupe respects our bosses, bishops, and benefactors much more than our scribblers and vodanavorjis. Bosses, bishops, and benefactors are perceived as men of power, God, and capital (make it, Capital and god). What do scribblers and vodanavorjis do? They try to cook pilaf with words. Let the buggers shut up; and if they refuse, let them starve! Serve them right. * In our environment today Turcocentric ghazetajis are more respected and compensated than writers, even if after a century of verbiage (letters to the editor, commentaries, essays in the foreign press, not to say treatises, documentaries, symposia, and textbooks), they have failed to resurrect a single victim, annex a single inch of historic Armenia, or collect a single red cent as reparation. When writers fail, they do so on their own and at their own expense. The same cannot be said of our ghazetajis, speechifiers, propagandists, and their assorted fund-raisers and bloodsuckers who survive and prosper by victimizing victims all over again, as if, once a victim, always a victim were their jagadakir. Amot! # February 8, 2010 ************************* DIARY ************************************* Asked if he had seen Mozart's DON GIOVANNI, Casanova is said to have replied: “Seen it? I have lived it.” Which reminds me of a similar line in reference to Reagan's longevity as president. When asked if he had heard of Marco Polo, he is said to have replied: “Heard of him? I knew him!” * An old tactic that seldom fails: when cornered in an argument, assume the air of someone with a large store of inside information not available to ordinary laymen like your adversary, and proceed to lie your head off. * Free and fair elections are probably known by corrupt regimes (like our own) as an American disease. * It is fashionable to blame the Yanks for dropping the first bomb on Hiroshima. No one says, Thank God the Japs didn't have it first. And some day in the near or distant future if history repeats itself and the bomb is dropped on Muslim fanatics, they will call it a crime against humanity until they realize the only reason Muslims didn't drop the bomb on New York City or Washington or Paris is that they didn't have it. * An unspoken Armenian mantra: “Tell me what I want to hear and I will believe it even if you happen to be an habitual and compulsive liar.” * A nation that places propaganda above literature is doomed. # February 9, 2010 ************************* WINNING AN ARGUMENT -- ARMENIAN STYLE ************************************* Another tactic that never fails is to make an assertion so untenable and asinine as to make your adversary give up in despair and disgust. Three examples of such assertions that have been leveled against me follow: “Armenians are incapable of hatred.” “The only reason people quit their homeland and emigrate to foreign countries is greed for more money.” “Criticizing Armenians in English in an open forum on the Internet is akin to treason.” * Armenians cannot engage in dialogue because their aim is not to get at the truth or to learn from one another's experience and understanding but to assert their intellectual prowess by being invincible in argument. So what if in the process they expose themselves as inbred morons? For perennial losers, victory trumps all other considerations. * We like to speak of “the Armenian wound.” What we carefully avoid mentioning is that more often than not this so-called wound is self-inflicted. If we are at the mercy of unprincipled mediocrities today it's because we betrayed two generations of our ablest men to alien authorities. We could not betray all of them because in the Diaspora free speech is not thought of as a capital offense. As a result, those who survived were either silenced or treated as parasites and nonentities whose sole contribution to our welfare as a nation has been empty verbiage. After all, who has ever heard of a chef who can cook pilaf and shish-kebab with words? * It has been said that for the shoeless, happiness is a pair of shoes, not the complete works of Shakespeare. Likewise, for the starving, happiness is a loaf of bread, not the music of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms. And now that we are neither shoeless nor starving, can we really say we are a success as a nation or a diaspora because we are progressive, civilized and smart? And if we are smart, why do we take pleasure in uttering inanities? # February 10, 2010 ************************* ARE JIHADISTS PARAGONS OF VIRTUE? **************************************************** How does a jihadist justify the slaughter of innocent civilians? Easy! “My imam tells me if I act in the name of Allah I will be rewarded with a harem of virgins in paradise.” * ARE ARMENIANS SMART? ***************************************** How does an Armenian justify his stupidity? Easier. “Everyone knows Armenians are smart. Whatever I say must therefore be smart. Those who disagree with me are ignoramuses.” Correction! Everyone does not know Armenians are smart for the simple reason that everyone does not even know we exist because they tend to confuse us with Romanians and Aramaeans. The very few who think we are smart, they mean smart only in the marketplace or as rug merchants. * WOMEN IN LOVE ********************************** In a biography of Patricia Highsmith, author of STRANGERS ON A TRAIN (filmed by Hitchcock and partly scripted by Raymond Chandler) we read: “For most of the 1940s Pat never stops falling in love with women – sometimes for no more than an hour or an evening.” (See THE TALENTED MISS HIGHSMITH: THESECRET LIFE AND SERIOUS ART OF PATRICIA HIGHSMITH, [New York, 2009, page 569].) * In a recent issue of LE POINT (Paris, January 2010) one of Brigitte Bardot's old lovers reminisces: “I was 18 when I first met her. She was then a famous star pursued by paparazzi. At one point she whispered to me: 'Listen, I don't go to bed with someone I am not in love with.' Ten minutes later she added: 'But, you know, I can fall in love three times in a single day.'” #

February 4, 2010 ************************* BORN-AGAIN **************************************** Somewhere Sartre describes the process whereby a man passively accepts values invented by others as “kneeling down like an animal to be loaded with them.” In other words, to die as a man and be born again as a jackass. * In everything I write I try to understand and explain myself hoping thus to understand my fellow men and the world around me. As for changing the world: even when one succeeds in that particular endeavor, one may fail in many others. Consider Marx's dream and the reality of the Soviet Union. If Marx had been a contemporary of Stalin, my guess is either he would have committed suicide or written a treatise in praise of capitalism. * Whenever I am insulted anonymously, I say to myself: Let's give the devil his due. Obviously the man knows how to read. He may not always understand what he reads but he has taken an important first step. It would be a mistake to give up on him. In a year or two, or in ten or twenty years, his understanding may catch up with his reading skills. Rome wasn't built in one day. My own understanding took longer than twenty years to reach the present point. What right do I have to make greater demands on others? # February 5, 2010 ************************* THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS **************************************** The most valuable thoughts are those that contradict our emotions. * When I wrote what they wanted to read, I was happy and they were happy, until I read Einstein's remark to the effect that to aim at happiness at the expense of truth is to entertain “the ambitions of a pig.” * ON SOLUTIONS ******************************** The first step is the realization that, like the kingdom of God, solutions too are within you. * MEMO TO READERS WHO INSULT ME ANONYMOUSLY ************************************************ Your own shadow is a much more serious threat to you than I could ever be. But then, cowards don't need a real threat to experience fear, for their greatest enemy is their own imagination. * TOYNBEE'S CONCEPTION OF REALITY ************************************************* “Every human being now alive has links, however tenuous, not only with every one of his contemporaries, but also with every other human being that has ever lived. In this sense human history is one single seamless web, and any dissection of it is an arbitrary misrepresentation of Reality.” * MAX WEBER ON MODERN MAN ********************************************* “Specialists without vision, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never before achieved.” # February 6, 2010 ************************* MIKOYAN ********************* In his 1959:THE YEAR EVERYTHING CHANGED (New Jersey, 2009), Fred Kaplan devotes an entire chapter to Mikoyan's 1959 visit to America. A man of “blunt words, crackling wit, and unfailing good humor,” Mikoyan is also said to have been followed by Hungarian demonstrators who called him “mass murderer!” We also read here that Khrushchev affectionately called him “my Armenian,” and my “rug merchant.” * ON NATIONALISM *********************************** The trouble with nationalists is that they will be as divided as multinationalists because everyone will have his own conception of nation and patriotism that will stand in direct contradiction to another's. Hence the frequency and inevitability of civil wars. * SPENGLER ON DEMOCRACY ************************************** “A small number of superior heads, whose names are very likely not the best-known, settle everything, while below them are the great mass of second-rate politicians selected through a provincially-conceived franchise to keep alive the illusion of popular self-determination.” This may explain the popularity of conspiracy theories. * VERSIONS OF THE PAST **************************************** Nationalist historians tend to be good at telling one side of the story: their own. The same applies to historians with an ideological or religious ax to grind. Which is why there are as many versions of the past as there are ideologies, religions, nations, tribes, and schools of thought, all of whom assert to have a monopoly on truth. To say therefore that our own version of the past is true but the French, Russian, American, British, Patagonian, or, for that matter, Turkish versions of their own past is false, is to bury our heads in the sand. #

January 31, 2010 ************************* MORE ONE-LINERS **************************************** To be a fool means to be at the mercy of worse fools who think they are smart. * The lower on the totem pole you are, the more subject to checks and balances you will be. * Faceless bureaucrats follow rules not because they believe in them but because their only concern is their source of income. * When sacred cows are in charge, they will criminalize the consumption of shish-kebab. * The truth? Let us say, we may never know it and as human beings we were not meant to know it. All we can hope to do is move in its direction by discarding half-truth and lies. * Everything makes sense if you find the right explanation. * The aim of all religions and ideologies is to make you say "Yes, sir!" * In theory, religion is meant to civilize; but in practice what it does is legitimize barbarism. * To acquire a faith is not the same as to see the light. # February 1, 2010 ************************* DIARY **************************************** There are two Armenians mentioned in Cheever's biography: one of them is a loud-mouth phony and the other Saroyan and his “tax problems.” Elsewhere we are informed Saroyan was popular in communist countries and “all but forgotten in the West.” Cheever and Updike were thought to be good friends but in his diary Cheever had this to say about him: “He describes erections so exhaustively that he's beginning to look like a big prick with a hair-piece” -- a remark that probably hastened Updike's death. * Those who say “We need solutions,” want nothing of the kind because solutions may expose them as dupes or frauds. * Politics seems to attract the kind of people whose role model is not Gandhi but Don Corleone. * A good fraction of mankind today makes a comfortable living by deceiving their fellow men.” * One should judge a religion not by its theology but by its history, which also means, by its crimes against humanity. * If I repeat myself it may be because our blunders keep repeating themselves and not repeating myself would amount to either giving up or covering up. # February 2, 2010 ************************* IF... **************************************** If the West were to adopt the methods of the Ottoman Empire, all Muslims within its borders would be deported to Siberia, Sahara, and even Antarctica. This may still happen if things get worse instead of better. When civilizations clash it is not always the most civilized that prevails but the most ruthless. Democracy and respect for human rights may be noble principles, but life-and-death situations demand not moderate measures but ruthless tactics. It is true that most Muslims, perhaps even the overwhelming majority, are not for terrorism, they may even be against it, but so were Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during World War I and Jews in Europe during World War II. Some of us may not live long enough to witness this apocalyptic denouement. That does not mean it may never happen. On the contrary, it may even be thought of as inevitable. # February 3, 2010 ************************* FRAGMENTS **************************************** As children we are brought up not to questions the words and conduct of adults. The trouble is, some of us never quite grow up. That's the only way to explain the popularity of men like Hitler, Stalin, and Mao (who is said to have slaughtered more people than the other two combined, or so I read in today's paper). One could sum up the work of all great thinkers with two words: “Grow up!” Or, as the Scriptures tell us: “When one grows up, one should put aside the toys of one's childhood.” * I am a man without a country and without a neighborhood, if one defines a neighborhood not as a collection of houses but of homes. Every house in which I have lived at one time or another has been torn down by either war or real-estate developers; only my alma mater stands but it is no longer an educational institution but a cheap motel. As for my present neighborhood where I have lived for fifty years: the old are either dead or in nursing homes; the young have moved on to better neighborhoods or have been arrested on drug charges and taken away never to be seen again, and the immigrants have returned to their homeland. * Gresham's Law, named after the 16th-century English merchant Sir Thomas Gresham, states, "Bad money drive out good money," meaning: adulterated gold drives out pure gold, for the simple reason that it is cheaper. By extension, opportunists drive out men of principle, and mediocrities drive out those who seek to achieve excellence. * An extension of Gresham's Law: Evil knows how to organize itself because it appeals to the selfish instincts of the majority. * Likewise, recycled crap drives out objective judgment, and hoodlums and their verbal abuse drive out dialogue. #

January 28, 2010 ************************* AN HONEST ANSWER *************************************************** Asked how he had managed to survive the Stalinist purges when so many of his contemporaries had perished, Avedik Issahakian is said to have replied: “By applauding the murderers.” For more on this remarkable interview, see Antranig Chalabian, DRO (DRASTAMAT KANAYAN), page 269. * To be read by friendly readers: nothing unusual in that. To be read by hostiles: That’s where the money is, because it means being allowed the opportunity to introduce thoughts where none exist. * Even after you prove to him that his position is untenable, an Armenian will go on defending it to the bitter end, like a captain going down with the ship. That’s his way of asserting his manhood. I don’t write for readers whose central concern is their own manhood. That would be like writing about hallucinations. # January 29, 2010 ************************* FROM MY NOTEBOOKS **************************************** Even when we speak of others, we speak of ourselves. * Martin Luther (1483-1546): "I am more afraid of my own heart than of the Pope and his cardinals. I have within me the great Pope, Self." * If the Turks say what really matters is only their side of the story, we should not say the same about our side of the story. * The cruelest thing that has happened to Armenian writers after they were systematically and ruthlessly slaughtered by Talaat and Stalin was to become dependent on the charity of swine. * There are those who think membership in a party qualifies them as experts on Armenian history, culture, and human nature. * I believe in progress. I believe in human perfectibility. I believe in the ultimate triumph of reason. These are my three greatest illusions. * I wish God existed so that He would punish all those who dared to speak in His name. * To speak the truth privately but not publicly is to compound the felony of perjury with cowardice. * Gordon W. Allport: "Many studies have discovered a close link between prejudice and patriotism. Extreme bigots are almost always super-patriots." * It is only by confronting our dark side that we may see the light. * Commissars and mullahs are philistines, that is to say, killers who adopt an ideology or religion to legitimize their killer instincts. * It is the height of non sequitur to call Turks barbarians and to demand justice from them. * There will come a time when people will reject all religions and ideologies simply because imams and commissars believe in them. * Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), political philosopher: "Under conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think." * Kingsley Amis (1922-1995), English novelist: "If you can't annoy somebody with what you write, I think there's little point in writing." # January 30, 2010 ************************* ONE-LINERS **************************************** A good diplomat can charm a cobra or it takes one to know one. * “Armenians of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your dividers.” What if this slogan succeeds only in producing our own Stalin? * My favorite genre: brevity. * To be self-righteous and to be wrong might as well be synonymous. * Arrogance allows a man to think he has all the answers even when none of them is right. * To be sure means to ignore one's doubts. * One way to define freedom of speech is by saying even the ablest statesman is not qualified to tell even the worst scribbler what to write. * The spirit of contradiction in some Armenians is so highly developed that if you were to agree with them they would disagree with you. * It is now time that we think of lamentation and hatred as experiments that failed and try another approach. #

January 24, 2010 ************************* METAPHYSICS *************************************************** Disagreement is inevitable when we search for meaning in the meaningless, or when we reduce an infinite number of factors into only a handful. * We say God is on our side when we want to do the Devil's work. * The visible is one; it is the invisible that is legion. * Newspapers write more about criminals than law-abiding citizens. Doctors deal more with the sick than with the healthy. And critics deal more with deceivers than with honest men. I am not consistently negative; our reality is. * What will save us is neither our conception of patriotism nor our degree of self-esteem but our courage to confront and deal with reality. # January 25, 2010 ************************* A STORY WITH MORALS *************************************************** Three friends in a tavern were arguing about the greatest evil in the world, and since they were not Armenian, they were able to reach a consensus: Death, they decided, was the greatest evil. Next they also agreed to search for Death and kill him. During their long search they met an old man who told them where Death lived. They followed the old man's directions but instead of Death they found a pot of gold. To celebrate their good fortune, one of them went to fetch a bottle of wine. While he was gone, the two friends decided to kill him to have his share of gold too. And as soon as he returned they fell on him and killed him, drank the poisoned wine, and they died, because the same idea had occurred to their victim. MORAL I: If you look for Death, long before you find him, he will find you. MORAL II: If after a long search you find what you were looking for, you will wish you had not found it. MORAL III: Gold and friendship are mutually exclusive concepts. # January 26, 2010 ************************* ARMENIAN PHILOSOPHY *************************************************** To express his contempt for me, one of our Turcocentric ghazetajis once called me a “philosopher.” It is true, philosophy has at no time been a favorite subject of ours. Our most famous medieval philosopher, David Anhaght, is remembered for his invincibility in argument, not his originality of ideas. And as far as I know, none of our academics (of which we have over a thousand) has ever produced a text on 20th-century Armenian philosophy, probably because it is not easy to write about nothing. If I were to sum up the dominant philosophical idea of the past century, it would have to be “I hate Turks, therefore I am.” * AN AMERICAN FALLACY ********************************************** With big bucks, you can hire the best brains. But only the kind of brains willing to be subservient to big bucks. * THIS AND THAT ********************************* I love my fellow Armenians as much as a good Christian loves his executioner -- with one difference: I am not a good Christian. * Speaking of good Christians: There are those who define a good Muslim as one who goes about murdering infidels. Christians used to do that too but not anymore. These days some good Christians murder only homosexuals, Blacks, abortionists, Jews, and Communists – remember the slogan, “Kill a commie for Christ”). * It is a well-known fact that swine don't have self-esteem problems. # January 27, 2010 ************************* INSANITY *************************************************** Somewhere Jung explains that there is a woman in every man and a man in every woman, and that this becomes apparent when one reaches middle age. I once had a friend (may he rest in peace) who believed one reaches middle age only by adopting some form of insanity. Whereas I am of the opinion that we are born and raised into an insane world and we survive only by adapting ourselves to it. (To be noted: Jung harbored pro-Nazi sentiments.) * Under the Sultan, our writers were free to tear our institutions to shreds. Under our own mini-sultans they are free to do so too but only to the opposition and to brainwash children into believing their side is good, the other bad. * I have never been psychoanalyzed. One could say avoiding shrinks is a luxury only the poor can afford. * Whenever I think I am smart, I remind myself of the number of times I have been taken in by idiots. * To believe in miracles is bad enough. To believe one is worthy of them is infinitely worse. #

January 22, 2010 ************************* OUR REVOLUTIONARIES *************************************************** Their dreams were too big, their ability to realize them too small, and their faith in the West misplaced. Result: the perfect storm of genocide. * MY CRITICS ****************************** They are unanimous in letting me know that I should bugger off, get a life, and mind my own business. And may I confess that there are times when I am tempted to do exactly that. What keeps me going? Perhaps Abovian knew better. Instead of getting a life, he chose death – either that or death chose him. * CHILDHOOD ************************************* They were so sure of what they were doing and I was so confused and uncertain as to why I felt as I did that it never even occurred to me to ask: “Why are you doing this to me?” # January 23, 2010 ************************* FROM THE MOUTH OF BABES & COMEDIANS *************************************************** George Carlin: “Traditional American values: Genocide, aggression, conformity, emotional repression, hypocrisy, and the worship of comfort and consumer goods.” * RISE & FALL ****************************** In his STUDY OF HISTORY, Toynbee writes: “A growing civilization can be defined as one which the components of its culture [economic, political, intellectual, scientific, etc.] are in harmony with one another; and, on the same principle, a disintegrating civilization can be defined as one in which these same elements have fallen into discord.” You may now decide whether we are growing or disintegrating. * TWO KINDS OF MEN ***************************************** “Hell is other people,” wrote Sartre. But according to his life-long friend-enemy, Merleau-Ponty: “When a man takes an oath to exist universally, concern for himself and concern for others become indistinguishable for him; he is a person among persons, and the others are other himselves. But if, on the contrary, he recognizes what is unique in incarnation lived from within, the other person necessarily appears to him in the form of torment, envy, or at least uneasiness.” Wars, revolutions, and massacres are committed by Sartrian men. By contrast, great spiritual leaders from Socrates and Jesus to Gandhi and Schweitzer conform to Merleau-Ponty's definition of men who choose to “exist universally.” #

01/10/10 ************************* VOODOO *************************************************** Every branch of learning and activity has its voodoo counterpart. There is voodoo economics, voodoo medicine, and voodoo history. Conspiracy theories belong to the voodoo branch of history. So does anti-Semitism – sorry! I meant to say, anti-Zionism. There is a conspiracy theory that says Dick Cheney directed the Mossad to bring down the World Trade Center. There is another conspiracy theory that says the Young Turks were Jews or puppets of Jews, or student of Jews. There is another one, which happens to be a favorite of mine, that says the serpent in the Garden of Eden was a CIA agent in disguise. Conspiracy theories attract lunatics as surely as sh*t attracts flies. Our Turcocentric ghazetajis pretend to know all there is to know about Turks and our anti-Semites expect us to believe they know more about Jews than most Jews. Our dime-a-dozen pundits, speechifiers, and sermonizers, and activists are past masters of voodoo. Where solidarity is essential, they divide. Where honesty is a must, they engage in charlatanism. Where free speech and dialogue are required, they are dead set against both. And when things go wrong, our voodoo pundits explain it by pointing their finger on alien agencies. That may explain why we have been going backward instead of forward; and even as we advance towards the abyss, we are brainwashed to brag about our genius for survival. Figure that one out, if you can – and please, no voodoo! # 01/11/10 ************************* WWIII *************************************************** You cannot win a war against an enemy who loves death more than life. The Japanese lost because the Yanks dropped the Bomb on them. If terrorists succeed in staging more 9/11-style attacks, the Yanks will have no choice but to elect a more warlike president who will not only carry a big stick but he will also use it. * I say what I think; you say what you were told; after which we go our separate ways. That's dialogue, Armenian style. * In our Ottoman phase, no Armenian would ever dare to contradict a Turk. In our diaspora today, no Armenian would ever dare to contradict a boss, bishop, or benefactor. As the French are fond of saying, “Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme merde.” * My guess is, one reason our revolutionaries lost is that they were brought up to believe they were so smart they could do no wrong. Positive feedback may work in Oriental carpet dealership but is bound to be counterproductive in politics and international diplomacy where the competition is much stiffer. * We have enough gold in our communities (think of Gulbenkian, Krikorian, Manoogian, & Co.) for two Golden Ages. Instead, we wallow in the recycled crap of our Panchoonies and Jack S. Avanakians. # 01/12/10 ************************* THE BLIND LEADING THE BLIND *************************************************** We are a failed state. Our “brainless” leaders have been successful only in one endeavor, that of brainwashing us to channel our discontent in the direction of the enemy. As for our press, whose main function is to expose corruption and incompetence: its favorite motto is, “No polemics, please!” Who the hell is talking about polemics? I am talking about facts. But facts are not facts to those who refuse to acknowledge them. Case in point: our genocide is a fact to us. It is a controversy to them. See what I mean? I once wrote a letter to an editor questioning a fact discussed in an editorial and I received the following answer: “We don't, as a rule, publish letters that are critical of our editorial.” Anti-Turkish venom, no matter how predictable, repetitive, and tedious is in. Armenian reality is out. What Jews were to the Nazis, capitalists to communists, and Armenians to the Sultan and Talaat, Turks are to us. Turks are the alpha and omega of all our problems. That's the way it is with all rotten systems. They need scapegoats and when they can't find them, they invent them. The Turks are guilty of a crime that was committed a century ago. They have nothing to do with our divisiveness, incompetence, and intolerance of dissent and dialogue. Only the blind leading the blind and their dupes refuse to see this. # BOOKS RECEIVED ********************************************** THE DARK VALLEY: SHORT STORIES by Axel Bakounts, translated from the Armenian by Nairi Hakhverdi. Preface by Victoria Rowe. (London, 2008). * SOUTHERN FEVER: SHORT STORIES by Abig Avagyan. (Yerevan, 2002). (In Armenian) * HOMO DEI or A BIBLICAL STORY: A NOVEL and CAVE STORIES or 1993: NOVELLAS by Karen A. Simonian (Yerevan, 2006). (In Armenian) * COLORS OF THE PRISM: COLLECTED REVIEWS, ARTICLES, AND DRAWINGS by Krikor Keusseyan (Watertown, 2009). (In Armenian) * DRO (DRASTAMAT KANAYAN): ARMENIA'S FIRST DEFENCE MINISTER OF THE MODERN ERA by Antranig Chalabian, Translated by Jack Chelebian. (Los Angeles, 2009). # 01/13/10 ************************* SARTRE ON ASCETICS *************************************************** “The ascetic is a man rich enough to choose his poverty freely.” Good point. Gandhi enjoyed the financial support of a wealthy Indian industrialist by the name of Birla, who once complained that Gandhi's poverty cost him a lot of money. As for Tolstoy: he was a multimillionaire. * SARTRE ON HIMSELF *********************************** “I turned rebel later only through having pushed submissiveness to the extreme.” In my case, I became a dissident through having said “yes, sir!” to too many idiots. * If I knew my words mattered, I would be more careful in my choice of them. * One reason Armenian writers are willing to work for nothing is that the job has other compensations, one of them being deflating noxious gasbags. * THREATS ******************************* I don't believe in Armenians who send me threatening e-mails anonymously. I believe if an Armenian can do me harm, he would have done it already. * AN UNFORTUNATE DEVELOPMENT ************************************************ As a result of the Genocide, we have become self-righteous fanatics not only in our dealings with the enemy, but also in our dealings with our fellow Armenians. * ON SURVIVAL ****************************** Survival is important. But what is even important is survival with honor. To stress the importance of survival at the expense of honor is to legitimize cowardice, opportunism, moral degradation, even treason and betrayal. #

01/07/10 ********************************** ARMENIAN ANTI-SEMITISM *************************************************** You may have noticed that some of our anti-Semites prefer to identify themselves as anti-Zionists probably because they know anti-Semitism to be an undeniable prejudice with a long history; whereas anti-Zionism is a recent geopolitical development, and as everyone knows by now, in politics it is legitimate to take sides. What these gentlemen ignore is the fact that whenever Israel is mentioned, the number of our pundits on Middle-East politics suddenly goes up dramatically. Armenians who know little or nothing about their own history expect us to believe they know all there is to know about the complexities of the Middle East, on the assumption that their interlocutors must be even more ignorant than they. These Armenians, it seems, miss the good old days when Jews allowed themselves to be persecuted and exterminated. What they are against is sh*t-disturbing Zionists who made a mess of things. I see parallels here between what our anti-Zionists think of Jews and what Turks thought of Armenians at the turn of the last century. “When Armenians were loyal subjects of the Ottoman Empire – when, that is, they allowed us to fornicate with their daughters and to conscript their boys to fight and die in defense of the Empire -- we had nothing against them. We got along just fine. But then, some politically ambitious whipper-snappers had the temerity to make territorial demands on us. Don't blame us for what happened. Blame these greedy and ungrateful bastards who did not appreciate enough the protection, prosperity and all the freedoms they enjoyed in the Empire. We are not prejudiced. Never were. We are not racists. We love everyone and hate no one. But justice is justice and the law is the law.” # 01/08/10 ********************************** SHISH-KEBAB *************************************************** Freedom of speech means the freedom of breaking taboos, casting down idols, and shish-kebabing sacred cows. We are denied the fundamental human right of free speech because, when sacred cows are in charge, the first thing they do is to criminalize the consumption of shish-kebab and to legitimize the practice of cannibalism. * The more ignorant the speaker, the more dogmatic his pronouncements. * Armenians argue not to reach a consensus by means of compromise but to settle a score with the Turks. * OUR TRAGEDY ************************* After a fatal accident, they never say, “Had I driven more defensively, my family would be alive today.” What they say and repeat is, “It was the other's fault. He is the guilty one!” # 01/09/10 ************************* OIL *************************************************** No one gives a damn about Muslims -- not even Muslims. What they really care about is the oil. As for us: Now, you tell me, why should anyone give a damn? Our cognac? I have tasted it. It tastes like arsenic. If visiting diplomats and foreign statesmen say they like it, it may be because they are compulsive liars. Either that or they have no taste. And the only reason some of them are willing to acknowledge our existence is that we stand between them and Azeri oil. As for members of the European Union willing to acknowledge the reality of our genocide: they do so because they need a reason to justify their anti-Turkish stance. On the day Turkey becomes an economically self-sufficient and viable state, they will open their arms to them. They may even drop their pants and bend over. That's politics for you. That's taking care of numero uno and to hell with truth, justice, human rights, and morality. There is a lesson for us here. Since no one gives a damn, we have no choice but to rely on one another. Amen. #

01/01/10 ********************************** FROM MY NOTEBOOKS *************************************************** In Herman Melville I come across a new word: “sultanism,” meaning the exercise of authority with a touch of sadistic pleasure. * A mediocrity will be subservient to any regime or power structure that gives him a regular salary, or a title, or a uniform, or the license to persecute better men than himself: there you have it, the root of our sultanism. * When one of Moliere’s characters first delivered the line “A knowledgeable fool is a greater fool than an ignoramus!” he no doubt alienated several members of the audience. That’s the problem with good lines: they tend to alienate self-satisfied jackasses. * There are many kinds of dupes, but the worst are those who are easily seduced by the irresistible charm of their own arguments. * Great nations need big lies; small nations need bigger lies. * After reading one of my things, an old friend writes: “I am glad you continue to be a patriotic Armenian.” I don’t have the heart to tell him that I loathe patriotism. I love honest men and loathe charlatans regardless of nationality; and some of the worst charlatans I have met are Armenian patriots. * My father was a law-abiding citizen. He never said a word against anyone. No, not even Turks. He kept to himself. He kept his distance. He didn’t see anything wrong in that. Neither did I. Subservience comes naturally to all Armenians. But they don’t call it subservience. They call it good citizenship. They call it respect for authority. # 01/02/10 ********************************** COMMENTS & OBSERVATIONS *************************************************** All "aBush" (brainless) leaders share two things in common: (one) they overestimate their powers to the same degree that they underestimate the enemy's; and (two) they refuse to learn from history -- in Bush's cases, the war in Vietnam; in our case, the turn-of-the-century series of massacres that preceded the Genocide. Even after their blunders are exposed, such leaders continue to have their followers and admirers. There are fascists in Italy today, Nazis in Germany, Stalinists in Russia, and skinheads all over the world. * If you prove to an anti-Semite that the man he hates is not a Jew, he will say, "But his teacher was." Which makes all Christians vulnerable targets of hatred. * Loyalty becomes subservience when it says, “Yes, sir!” to idiots. * They tell me I am anti-Armenian because I oppose idiots who pretend to be smart. * Intolerance of dissent is a sure symptom of the fact that the foundations of the power structure are so flimsy that a single wrong word may precipitate its collapse. # 01/03/10 ********************************** FRAGMENTS *************************************************** Non-believers who build churches, pirates who collect art, fornicators who preach chastity -- what I find even more offensive about our men at the top is their conviction that they are indispensable to the nation and not even remotely responsible for our misfortunes. * In a country of the homeless, they build cathedrals which they call Houses of God – as if God needed their housing. * Never trust a man who lives on excellent terms with himself. * It's amazing how much an Armenian can accomplish when he works for alien interests. * There is a Jewish saying: “Some people are such nonentities that when they go out of a room, it feels like someone came in.” We call such people “unshook” -- literally shadowless, or men whose insignificance is such that they don't even cast a shadow. * On the day an Armenian enters politics, politics gains nothing, but Oriental carpet dealership loses something. * When law and order legitimize oppression, exploitation, or subservience in the name of the state, what they really legitimize is lawlessness and disorder. * A dupe is an idiot who trusts other idiots. Consider the history of fascism communism, and nationalism. * My definition of an idiot: anyone whose actions do more harm than good, or someone who bites more than he can chew and chokes on it. * I don't mention names because I don't want to immortalize nonentities who make headlines today and are forgotten tomorrow. # 01/04/10 ********************************** FRAGMENTS / II *************************************************** There is a margin of error in all our judgments. That's one way to explain the blunders of popes, imams, and self-righteous fanatics who think of themselves as infallible. But I could be wrong. If only we, all of us, were capable of ending all our assertions with that qualifier – I could be wrong. * The flunky of a national benefactor once gave me to understand that “they” were willing to “help” me, provided I followed instructions. Because they have the cash and I have only ideas, they speak of “helping” me. Which means, they value cash more than ideas. Which may also explain why everything they touch turns into ashes. * I speak as I do probably because I suffer from a rare condition known as allergy to money. * On more than one occasion I have been informed that those I call “flunkies” or “the scum of the earth,” are in fact honorable men. They may be right. I think as I do probably because I refuse to rely on the brainless for political guidance and on pimps for moral values. * Because he felt neglected and ignored by his audience, one of our authors once wrote a story in which a priest is caught masturbating in a public lavatory. Whereupon he was verbally assaulted and severely chastised by a wide number of outraged defenders of the faith. At one point even one of our national benefactors joined the the lynch mob. It was not so much a tempest in a teacup as a tsunami in a thimble. “I am ashed to be identified as an Armenian,” said the author, assuming the role of innocent victim. The whole situation reminded me of Oscar Wilde's dictum on fox-hunters: “The unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable.” * MEMO TO OUIR ACADEMICS ********************************************* No literature, please! Just tell us what's on your mind. # 01/05/10 ********************************** FRAGMENTS / III *************************************************** After we lose a war – and according to Saroyan we have lost them all – we call our losers heroes. There are cultures in which losers are either executed or commit suicide. * I love the contradictions of an honest man. I loathe even the shadow of an inconsistency in the dishonest. * I loathe anti-Semites because they are on the side of majorities and against perennial victims. I identify with victim for two reasons: (one) I am an Armenian, and (two) I am a dissident. * It is painful to be misunderstood. But when I think of the alternative – to be understood and appreciated by idiots – I feel much better. * Theatrical producer Joe Papp to an uncooperative mayor: “Shakespeare should be as important as garbage collection.” * I remember to have read somewhere: “British soldiers fight like lions, but lions led by donkeys.” # 01/06/10 ********************************** FRAGMENTS / IV *************************************************** Like all fundamentalists, an Armenian wants to change the world but not himself. He refuses to do the possible and attempts the impossible – that is to say, to teach justice, human rights, and morality to present and former empires like the United States and Turkey that operate on the assumption they know better than a failed state like Iran, Yemen and Somalia -- states with little history of central government control; states so corrupt and inept that they shoot to kill innocent demonstrators with a legitimate grievance, or they violate the human rights of their own citizens. * To assess oneself amounts to pronouncing a verdict of not guilty after a trial without judge, jury, and prosecution. * American children are brought up to believe in Santa. Nothing wrong in that so long as childhood illusions are not replaced with propaganda. * The greatest gift parents can make to their children is the gift of approaching reality without illusions. #

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Thursday, December 24, 2009 ********************************** WE NEVER HAD IT SO GOOD *************************************************** We are few. We are weak. We are vulnerable, Therefore, we are divided. Which is like saying: “I think. Therefore I am not.” * In our environment, the devils come disguised as angels. I once heard a bishop say: “We are for unity. It's the opposition that is against it.” Did he believe what he said? I am not sure. But his audience did, on the grounds that God does not lie. Neither does a man of God. * Hitler knew what he was talking about when he said, “The bigger the lie, the more believable it will be.” * We are divided. So what if we cease to exist? * Cease to exist? No way! We have existed for thousands of years. We must be doing something right. You call a thousand years of subservience to scum existence? You call a series of massacres and a genocide existence? I call it worse than death. * Liars are not born but made and they are made by dupes. Who is guiltier, a liar or his audience of dupes? * You can rate the IQ of a nation by the lies of its sermonizers and speechifiers. * We have two kinds of mortal enemies: those who want to kill us and those who want us to commit suicide. We never had it so good. # Friday, December 25, 2009 ********************************** RAFFI'S WARNING AND CHARENTS'S MESSAGE *************************************************** To prove to a visiting Venetian painter what the neck of a beheaded man really looks like, Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, also known as the Lawgiver, had a prisoner brought before him and beheaded. It is said that the Venetian painter was so shocked by the bloody spectacle that he left that same night under cover of darkness. That is the difference between that Venetian painter and us. The Venetian left. We stayed We stayed even after Raffi warned us the Ottoman Empire was no place for us because Turks had no respect for human life. We ignored Raffi's warning in the 19th century as we ignore today Charents's final message concerning our “salvation.” By “we” I mean less the people and more the leaders who speechify during the day about survival and turn into gravediggers under cover of darkness at night. * In my next commentary I will explain why “treason and betrayal are in our blood” (Raffi). # Saturday, December 26, 2009 ********************************** TREASON & HEROISM *************************************************** A nation or a community run by traitors will constantly emphasize the importance of patriotism, self-sacrifice, and heroism. In such an environment, heroes will invariably outnumber traitors. * Traitors don't think of themselves as traitors. They think of themselves as patriots who are doing what must be done to safeguard the survival of the nation. But since in politics, as in war, there are either winners or losers, losers will be classified as traitors by their political adversaries. Case in point: After the liberation of France, both Petain (a hero of World War I) and Laval were condemned to death by a French tribunal on the grounds that they had collaborated with the Nazis and they were therefore traitors. * Were Krikor Zohrab and Anastas Mikoyan traitors or heroes? If we judge them by their actions alone (as the French tribunal chose to do) they do not qualify as heroes. Zohrab saved Talaat's life from the Sultan's secret police; and Mikoyan carried out the Stalinist purges in Armenia so thoroughly that to this day only unprincipled mediocrities survive. In other words, their actions resulted in defeat and tragedy. * Are our dividers in the Diaspora today heroes or traitors? If we judge them by the Biblical dictum “a house divided against itself cannot stand,” and by Charents's final “message,” they cannot be said to be heroic figures. * One could of course explain and justify the actions of traitors by pleading extenuating circumstances, which might as well be inadmissible in our context. The fact remains that both Zohrab and Mikoyan were not just wrong, they were catastrophically wrong, and both paid a heavy price for their blunder. Zohrab was murdered by order of the same man whose life he saved by risking his own, and Mikoyan spent the final years of his life in constant fear to such a degree that he slept with a revolver under his pillow with the intention of killing himself if they ever came to arrest him in the middle of the night. As for the nation: I will let you decide whether their actions contributed to our collective profile as winners or losers. # Sunday, December 27, 2009 ********************************** AN INVITATION TO THE BEHEADING *************************************************** The French have a saying: “This little beast is nasty; when attacked, it defends itself.” Except that in our case, the little beast was a wounded tiger with nine lives, and we were no better than a toothless lapdog. We were slaughtered because we have been thrice cursed with “earthquakes, bloodthirsty neighbors, and brainless leaders” (Avedik Issahakian); and ever since these brainless leaders have been trying to convince us there is nothing wrong with them; it's the rest of the world that's rotten; and what is even more unbelievable is that we believe them. We lost because we believed the Christian West would not allow the massacre of brothers by bloodthirsty infidels – notwithstanding the fact that the West had already allowed a series of massacres to take place without lifting a finger (see VISIONS OF ARARAT: WRITINGS ON ARMENIA by Christopher Walker [New York, 1997]). We were slaughtered because our Christian brothers in the West were at war and too busy slaughtering one another to give a damn about an obscure tribe of Christians being slaughtered by infidels on another continent (see the Preface of G.B. Shaw's ANDROCLES AND THE LION). We lost because “we were tiny islands in a Turkish sea” (Hagop Oshagan). We lost because our revolutionaries were long on enthusiasm and short on experience. One contemporary scholar refers to them as “twenty somethings” (see Michael Bobelian, CHILDREN OF ARMENIA [New York, 2009]). We lost because we underestimated the strength and determination of the Turks to defend their 600-year old homeland. We lost because we believed in the professed brotherly love of serial killers. (Consider the case of Zohrab saving Talaat's life by risking his own.) We lost because we were divided. (See the correspondence between our revolutionaries and Artin Dadian in Pars Tuglaci, THE ROLE OF THE DADIAN FAMILY IN OTTOMAN, SOCIAL, ECONOMIC, AND POLITICAL LIFE (Istanbul, 1993). We were slaughtered because we have been fed “a steady and monotonous diet of shameless flattery and transparent lies” (Stepan Voskanian). We were slaughtered because our conception of history has been shaped by “deceivers... the smoke of incense, and the sound of sharagans” (Nigoghos Sarafian). Far from being an unexpected and unforeseeable Tragedy that “fell on us like a thief in the night,” our genocide might as well have been “an invitation to the beheading) (Nabokov). # Monday, December 28, 2009 ********************************** THIS AND THAT *************************************************** Patriotism is an irrefutable argument only to patriots. So is fascism to fascists. * If faith and truth were one, we would have only one religion and no jihads. Faith guarantees nothing. To say that faith is beyond criticism is to justify a big lie with a bigger lie. * Deceivers exist because deception works. It is astonishing the number of great men who were taken in by Hitler and Stalin, both of whom made a mafia godfather look like a benevolent uncle. * To an overly sensitive person, a wrong word can be as catastrophic as a volcanic eruption or an earthquake. * Turning points in one's life may happen not in noteworthy events but in insignificant occurrences that may at first escape notice. * To most Armenians the Genocide is only a page in our history – the darkest page, granted, but still only a page. Books, including history books, are one thing, life another. The average Armenian is much more seriously wounded by an insult than by any single page in history. * To ignore or cover up our problems is also to reject in advance all possible solutions. * We will mature as a nation only when we take ideas as seriously as money. # Tuesday, December 29, 2009 ********************************** MY QUARREL *************************************************** It is not safe to stand between a hungry lion and his kill. Likewise, between a crowd and its cherished illusions. * I write what I think because deep down I know no matter what I say, I will be ignored. That's the way it has been in the past, and I see no evidence to suggest that things may not continue on the same path in the future. * My quarrel, my real quarrel, is not with my fellow men. My quarrel is with myself for allowing deceivers to brainwashed me in the name of a false deity or big lies. * They emphasize the importance of love because they are hateful and they know it. Was it love that drove Jesus to use the whip against the money-changers in the temple? Was it love that drove the Orthodox Church in Russia to excommunicate Tolstoy, or the Catholic Church to torture and massacre heretics? To those who say that was then and this is now: may I remind them that the Russian Church, like our own Etchmiadzin, went on to legitimize Stalin's regime, and the Catholic clergy engaged in serial child molestation. * Dupes of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but leaders with the moral quotient of swine. * I call an enemy a friend if what he says enhances my understanding of my fellow men and myself. # Wednesday, December 30, 2009 ********************************** FROM MY NOTEBOOKS *************************************************** The original aim of nationalism was to liberate the nation from the tyranny of imperial powers. In theory. In practice, however, it simply replaced one tyranny with another. That's the way it is with organized religions, ideologies, and mass movements: they begin as liberation and end as oppression. * Analysis and flattery (or propaganda) are mutually exclusive concepts. You can have either one or the other. You cannot have both. * On more than one occasion I have heard it said, “If you criticize benefactors, they will stop giving.” I have never heard anyone say, “If we starve writers, they will stop writing.” Which may suggest, money is everything, ideas nothing. Which may also explain why as a nation we are so brain-dead that even the Turks are ahead of us. This assertion may outrage some, but not as much as it outraged me when I first heard it about forty years ago. * Our editors and activists have been dishing out anti-Turkish venom for such a long time that it has acquired the authority of a Decalogue. * There is a kind of vulgar bluntness that is the soul of elegance. * Speaking of his fellow Americans, Thoreau once said: “The greater part of what they call good I believe in my soul to be bad.” * Anonymous: “A live dog is better than a dead lion.” #

Sunday, December 20, 2009 ********************************** LIES ***************************** Lies. I was brought up on lies - lies spoken in the name of patriotism and self-esteem, but lies all the same. I was told being an Armenian was a rare privilege. I went into the world thinking the world owed me something - respect, sympathy, apology, admiration. I soon discovered the world had no time or interest in taking notice of my existence. The world didn't give a damn about me. The world didn't even know who Armenians were. That's when I began to understand why some smart Armenians changed their names and assimilated. Others preferred to stay away from their fellow countrymen. Still others of mixed parentage hid their Armenian fraction. What the hell was going on here? Was the world full of ignoramuses and traitors? It took me a while to realize that the world was what it has always been; and that I was the ignorant one in thinking there was something special in being an Armenian. I know now that we are a people like any other people, or we would be, if we didn't try so damn hard to appear better or superior. One could even say that, what makes some of us inferior is thirst for superiority. # Monday, December 21, 2009 ********************************** ACADEMICS ***************************** Never judge a nation by its history as written by its own historians. A Turk who believes in Turkish historians is as much of a dupe as an Armenian who believes in Armenian historians. All historians write with a bias, and I don't just mean nationalist, racist, or religious bias. Case in point: in a recent edition of the ENCYCLPAEDIA BRITANNICA the entry on Talaat, as written by a Turcophile historian, mentions only one violent death, Talaat's own by an Armenian assassin. How to explain this outrage? Very easily: (one) the historian treated the Turks as useful political allies of his own nation; (two) there are many more potential buyers of the Encyclopedia in Turkey than in Armenia; (three) since academics these days are a dime-a-dozen and the competition is fierce, they are willing to write anything for thirty pieces of silver. I am not saying this particular academic is a bad man and a shameless liar willing to prostitute his discipline and expertise. I am saying, we live in a world with the moral standards of a bordello, and Armenians are no better (see below). It is to be noted that this particular academic cannot plead ignorance of the Armenian genocide in view of the fact that in one of his first books on Turkey he mentions and discusses the Genocide in some detail. My guess is, that's when the Turks invited him to Turkey, gave him the red-carpet treatment, and made him see the light. They did the same thing to Toynbee with the same result, but not quite. Though he became a Turcophile, Toynbee never denied the Armenian genocide, but he did deny the republication of his book on the Genocide. And speaking of red-carpet treatment, and this time by Reds: A prominent Tashnak leader was once invited to Yerevan by the Soviets and returned to America a chic Bolshevik. Whenever I would publish an anti-Soviet commentary in our weeklies, he would write me poison-pen letters and call me nasty names. # Tuesday, December 22, 2009 ********************************** BIG EGOS & SMALL DICKS ***************************** An Armenian knows better not because he is wiser, older, more experienced, or more widely read, but because he assumes his fellow Armenians to be dumber than he is. * To how many of my fellow Armenians I could say, “With Armenians like you, who needs sultans and commissars?” * No matter how hard I try I cannot pretend to be a proud Armenian. Proud of what, may I ask? A thousands years of subservience to scum? – and I don't just mean foreign scum. * Jacques Chirac: “Sumo wrestling is a fine art, which is not always the case with political combat.” * Life has a way of cutting down to size anyone whose assessment of himself exceeds his real worth. * The reason why some men have big egos is that (according to Freud, Jung, and Adler, who agree on nothing but agree on this) they have small dicks. # Wednesday, December 23, 2009 ********************************** NOTES / COMMENTS ***************************** “If he speaks as if he were somebody, let's treat him like a nobody to bring him down to our own level.” * The secret of success consists not in cultivating your own garden but in inventing it. * You can tell he has a college degree because he uses words like dichotomy, existential, and paradigm. * Ideas? If you have the money, you can hire philosophers (provided they are not Marxists) and theologians who don't take the Scriptures literally and believe Capital to be a blessing from god. * The world has no interest in someone who knows a great deal about a great many things. The world is more interested and more willing to reward someone who knows everything about one thing. * If the liquid in the glass is poison, it makes no difference whether it is half empty or half full. * A religion that emphasizes truth or dogma over love and charity, is an invention of the devil. #