arabaliozian

Thursday, April 9, 2009 ******************************************** TO EACH HIS OWN ************************************ To us, the Genocide is a tragedy. To the Turks, it's an embarrassment. To American politicians running for office, a cash cow. To our own leadership, a distraction from present problems and their reluctance or inability to solve them. To our Turcocentric ghazetajis, an endless source of venom and an opportunity to play the blame-game as well as a chance to assert moral superiority. As for Turcophile historians who say it was the Armenians who massacred the Turks; I for one am not surprised. So what if after 600 years of subservience that gradually degenerated to brutal oppression, some Armenians took justice into their own hands? Would anyone dare to assert that, had the Ottoman Empire been an Armenian Empire and Turks an oppressed minority, they would have said, “Let bygones be bygones. Let us smoke the peace nargileh and forever after live like brothers?" * ON MORAL SUPERIORITY ********************************* We are told when God created angels and He gave them a free will, half of them turned into devils. It is therefore safe to assume that if sometime in the future the Good Lord were to give His angels another crack at freedom, another 50% of them would make the wrong choice. Which is why so far God in His infinite wisdom has not made the same mistake. Which is also why, when God wants to destroy a man, He gives him more power, because more power means greater freedom. * P.S. ***************** Yesterday I listed four books that I have read three times. I should have included another – Raymond Chandler's FAREWELL, MY LOVELY. * WORDS OF WISDOM ******************************** Chinese saying: “Extreme cleverness is as bad as stupidity.” # Friday, April 10, 2009 ******************************************** A MENSCHE ************************************ In his THE GREAT WAR FOR CIVILIZATION, Robert Fisk dedicated an entire chapter to the Armenian genocide. He does the same with his latest book, THE AGE OF THE WARRIOR: SELECTED ESSAYS (New York, 2008). After tearing to shreds Turkish and “gutless” American denialists, among them President Bush, General Petraeus, ambassador Ryan Crocker, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, he turns his outrage on Armenians themselves. When an interviewer in Yerevan makes a reference to Turkey's “lack of democratization,” Fisk demands to know: “What about Armenia's pliant press? And why was it that present-day Armenia seemed to protest much less about twentieth-century's first Holocaust than the millions of Armenians in the diaspora, in the U.S., Canada, France, Britain, even Turkish intellectuals in Turkey itself?...Long live the Soviet Union.” A man after my own heart! # Saturday, April 11, 2009 ******************************************** THE USES AND ABUSES OF FAITH ************************************************* Whenever I replace the word “God” with “the Unknown and the Unknowable,” what I read makes either more sense or no sense at all – as in “God loves you.” If God loves us, His definition of love is more akin to hatred. * Most of mankind's problems, including our own, stem from the fact that those who have God or capital (make it, Capital or god) on their side, consider themselves beyond criticism. * When a man is devoid of honor, compassion, and understanding, he adopts race, color, and creed as criteria. * Faith is an essential ingredient in one's life, we are told. Maybe so. But what if faith allows us to call anyone who does not share our belief system an infidel dog who doesn't deserve to live? * What do I think of mysticism? Let me quote my favorite mystic, Saint Teresa of Avila: “It is the humblest among you who are the most perfect not those who are favored in prayer or with ecstasies.” #

Sunday, April 5, 2009 *********************************************** THE CHARITY OF SWINE ************************************ We are told the favorite reading matter of Roman emperors was epic poems glorifying their deeds. Which reminds me of a book I once wrote for an Armenian publisher subsidized by one of our national benefactors in which his (benefactor's) name wasn't mentioned. Though the book was a success (three printings in as many years) the publisher was fired. * Roman emperors, Ottoman sultans, Soviet commissars, Armenian benefactors, Wall Street chief executive officers: they expect to be brown-nosed and rewarded even when they make a mess of things. They want smart people working for them but not smart enough to see their limitations. They support free speech provided it doesn't expose their failings. * The wealthy think of the poor as lazy parasites. The poor return the compliment by viewing the wealthy as a bunch of bloodsuckers. * Some of the worst blunders in the history of mankind were committed by men who assumed to know better. * In the world of high finance, the lower in the totem pall you are, the more checks and balances you have to deal with. * I think of my schooldays in Venice when the Mekhitarist monks charged us for the toilet paper we used. Then motivated by greed they trusted the wrong investment firm and lost everything. # Monday, April 6, 2009 *********************************************** HUMAN NATURE EXPLAINED ************************************ “In his place I would have done the same thing.” There is more truth in that sentence than in many treatises on understanding and human nature. * “...tribalism has impeded African progress. What Africa needs is precisely such transmutations of tribal loyalties to the larger loyalties of nationhood.” Why is it that none of our pundits dares to say as much about us? * Both Turks and Armenians are naïve dupes in so far as they believe in the lies of their own political leaders, the biggest lie being that as civilized people they are incapable of violating anyone's human rights, let alone committing crimes against humanity. Butter would not melt in their mouths -- or anywhere else for that matter. * Reality is versatile in its production of facts and by carefully selecting some and ignoring or rejecting others one can justify anything. Theologians, ideologues, historians, and propagandists in general are fully aware of this phenomenon and like lawyers they go about their business with ruthless dishonesty. * Somewhere Alain writes that we conceive of birth as something that happened in the past and of death as something that will happen in the future. But in reality, he tells us, they are both ongoing processes. Every moment that passes is a preview of death, and it is up to us to be reborn as human beings “today, now, immediately, it is our only chance.” # Tuesday, April 7, 2009 *********************************************** TWO FASCINATING WRITERS ************************************ In his DIARIES, Christopher Isherwood speaks of several encounters with Lesley Blanch (then wife of Romain Gary) but at no time does he mention that she is the author of SABRES OF PARADISE, one of the most fascinating books ever written on the Caucasus, and one of the very few books that I have read three times -- the others being THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN (Mann), LOLITA (Nabokov), and Toynbee's RECONSIDERATIONS. Simenon is mentioned only once to be dismissed as “a dreary little mind.” In my twenties and for about ten years Simenon became an obsession. I read everything that I could locate in libraries and bookstores. He wrote under several pseudonyms and may have published as many as five hundred book, and slept with as many women, he never tired of boasting in interviews, and did so to enhance his understanding, he would explain. I think it was Gide who first compared him to Chekhov. In a 1960 entry, Isherwood quotes Leon Surmelian as having said: “...among Armenians who come to America, it is always the third-rate who succeed,” and “Armenians are either businessmen or dreamers.” I remember once when I wrote Surmelian a letter proposing an interview, he turned me down and said he had just published an essay in the weeklies and I was welcome to comment on it in a letter to the editor. # Wednesday, April 8, 2009 *********************************************** ISHERWOOD AND WHITMAN ************************************ By skipping passages dealing with Ramakrishna, Krishnamurti, assorted swamis and gurus, and mercenary Hollywood producers, I was able to finish Christopher Isherwood's mammoth DIARIES. May I confess that what I enjoyed most are his one-liners on his fellow men and women: On Charles Laughton: “stupid, vain and pretentious...an arrogant old fool.” On Laura Huxley (Aldous Huxley's third and last wife): “[a] mannish well-tailored bitch.” On Claire Bloom (who was to become Philip Roth's wife): “demure but probably quite a bit of a bitch.” On Shelley Winters: “a blundering Jewish leftwing ass.” On Izak (OUT OF AFRICA) Dinesen (Baroness Blixen): “a withered monkey.” * I am now reading Walt Whitman. Some of his lines are piercing in their precision, as when he speaks of animals: “They do not sweat and whine about their condition, They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago...” We need more Whitman in our lives and less sermonizers and speechifiers who rub salt in our wounds and promise heaven which is even more inaccessible to them than it is to the rest of us. #

Thursday, April 2, 2009 *********************************************** THE UNANSWERED QUESTION ************************************ It is said of the 18th-century French aristocracy that they knew how to live. Yes, that they did. They knew how to live alright! What they didn't know – which is infinitely more important than what they knew – was how to survive. With us it's the other way around: we know how to survive, or so we are brought up to believe, but not how to live. If we use the word survival only in reference to the nation, and if by nation we mean the regime, yes, we may qualify as survivors. The questions to be asked at this point are: What kind of survival is it that requires the death of millions of innocent civilians, including our best and brightest? What kind of survival is it that places the survival of the regime above the survival of the people? What kind of survival is it that allows the regime to brainwash the people into believing that it is our patriotic duty to serve the regime? Serving the regime is a fascist concept. In a democracy, it is the state that serves the people (not the other way around), which is why politicians are referred to as public servants. But that's not the end of the story, which in our case happens to be not so much a comedy of errors as a tragedy of fallacies, or again, as a perversion of priorities. Now then, let us suppose for the sake of argument that your family perishes and you are the sole survivor. Do you then go around bragging about your own survival? I don't think so! And yet, this is what we are encouraged to do to perpetuate the lie that we never had it so good because we are in the best of hands. A final question: We may indeed know how to survive, but do our leaders know how to govern? # Thursday, April 3, 2009 *********************************************** 4 STORIES / 4 MORALS ************************************ 1. The Pope holds shares in the Casino at Monte Carlo. * 2. After bankrupting the global economy, chief executive officers collect million-dollar bonuses. * 3. Priests make a comfortable living by exploiting someone else's crucifixion. * 4. Turcocentric ghazetajis try to make a name for themselves by exploiting the martyrdom of innocent victims. # Moral I: When you reach the top, the rules of the game no longer apply. * Moral II: The rules governing underdogs do not apply to top dogs. * Moral III: When it comes to taking care of number one, all rules are suspended. * Moral IV: After declaring yourself to be on the side of the angels, you may forge an alliance with the devil. # Saturday, April 4, 2009 *********************************************** AS OTHERS SEE US ************************************ Did Princess Diana (may she rest in peace) have one, or is it two, drops of Armenian blood in her veins? Was Guderian of blitzkrieg fame an Armenian? Why should anyone give a damn? It seems to me we are so hungry for celebrity that nothing would make us happier if someone were to prove that Hitler's or Stalin's great-great mother or father was half- or even one-quarter Armenian. * We have a great many writers today who write as Armenians. I for one would like to write as a human being. We are all born as human beings but somewhere along the line we are carefully educated to identify ourselves with a specific group, after which we are told all kinds of lies about that group and it makes no difference which group it is. * We are brainwashed to justify our regime's failings by saying we are a young democracy. We are also informed that Armenia is “the cradle of civilization.” Figure that one out if you can. * If I were to meet an Azeri today and if I were to identify myself as an Armenian to him, my guess is he would see in me someone with a bloodthirsty disposition. I am told Azeris today identify Armenians as “the Israelis of the Caucasus,” and when a Muslim calls you an Israeli, take my word for it, that ain't no compliment. * Hanging a label on a fellow human being is the beginning of all crimes against humanity. Azeri refugees today think of Armenians the way Armenians think of Turks. Have I said this before? Readers accustomed to hearing old lies expect me to come up with new truths. To them I say, the number of truths is limited and nothing that is true is ever new. #

Sunday, March 29, 2009 *********************************************** WHERE WE STAND *********************************************** Russians gave communism a bad name and Americans did the same with capitalism. The next “fail-safe” or “best” system, whatever it may be, will also bite the dust by its dedicated supporters as surely as communism and capitalism. It is almost as if the destiny of the best were to be the worst. * Armenianism: the triumph of dogmatism over solidarity. * It is the most assertive among us that are the most insecure. * What we are is not a monolithic structure but fragments of what we could have been. * We are constantly bombarded by lies that encourage us to hate our fellow men. It is almost as if the function of our “betters” were to make us worse. * Pablo Neruda: “I only know the skin of the earth, / And it has no name.” After “All men are brothers,” the best argument against nationalism. * I see a clear parallel between what contemporary composers have done to music, what artists have done to art, what politicians have done to statesmanship, with what economists have done to the global economy. # Monday, March 30, 2009 *********************************************** SOCRATES ******************* “We approach truth only in the proportion as we are farther from life.” * ON OBJECTIVITY *************************** Objectivity and passionate involvement are mutually exclusive concepts – unless of course one develops the difficult art of thinking against oneself, which means assuming one is wrong even when – especially when – one is absolutely certain of one's moral superiority and infallible judgment. * ON UNDERSTANDING ******************************* To understand and solve a problem, one must be objective, and one must be objective for purely selfish reasons – to improve one's chances of survival. Cultures that are not tolerant of objectivity or dissent (in this context, two words that might as well be synonymous) have a short lifespan. Think of the Soviets, the Nazis, the regime of the Young Turks, and more recently, the Nixon administration. Closer to home, think of all the dissenting voices in the Ottoman Empire at the turn of the last century that were ignored by our revolutionaries who to this day emphasize their heroism instead of questioning their judgment. * DEFINING EVIL ****************************** To know what must be done and not do it. To know that what one does is wrong but do it anyway. To know that “a house divided against itself cannot stand” and to divide it anyway. * WORTH REPEATING ****************************** The surest way of moronizing a nation is to brainwash the people into believing they are not just smart but smarter than any other nation, and anyone who dares to say otherwise is an enemy of the people. I speak from experience. The more moronized I was, the smarter I thought i was. # Tuesday, March 31, 2009 *********************************************** STRANGE BUT TRUE ************************************ What a strange world we live in! Chief executive Rick Wagoner (the one who traveled to Washington by private jet to ask for a handout) is getting $23 million for bankrupting General Motors as the management is demanding more concessions from the workers. * The best argument against women's intuition and men's IQ (if such a thing exists) is the high rate of divorce. * In the struggle for justice there are no losers. Even if you lose you may inspire others to carry on the struggle, or you may wear down the opposition even if it is by an invisible fraction of an inch. * No one can be as ignorant, or rather, as infatuated with his own ignorance, as he who pretends to know and understand everything. I would even go as far as saying, the safest way of judging a man's knowledge and understanding is by the number of times he is willing to say “I don't know” and “I don't understand.” * One of the most difficult things in politics is separating friend from foe – especially the kind of foe who knows all the right words and can easily guess what it is exactly that you want to hear. * It is only after the obvious solution is rejected that a problem is declared insoluble. # Wednesday, April 1, 2009 *********************************************** DON'T BE A FOOL! ************************************ A wise man (it may have been Aldous Huxley) once said that our planet is the insane asylum of the universe. It is said, “There are forty-three kinds of insanity.” Or, to paraphrase Tolstoy, “Every insane person is insane in his own way.” There is a school of psychology that says, since the social order in which we live in is insane, the function of psychiatry is to replace one form of insanity with another. Consider the case of Christians who believe the Bible to be the source of all wisdom, including scientific knowledge. Chief executive officers who believe they deserve million-dollar bonuses after bankrupting not only their business but also the global economy. After reading one of my commentaries, a Mekhitarist monk is quoted as having said: “He is an intellectual and all intellectuals eventually go insane.” Which may suggest that we are better at diagnosing insanity in others than in ourselves. Either that or we assume to be the norm and any deviation we label as insane. We may know how to survive, but do we know how to live? We brag about our literature but we suppress free speech. Don't be taken in by appearances. Don't believe everything you read in the papers. There are as many lies in the speeches of our speechifiers and the sermons of our sermonizers than there are forms of insanity. #

Thursday, March 26, 2009 *********************************************** ON REVOLUTION *********************************************** The average layman may not understand the exact meaning of subprime mortgages, hedge funds, toxic assets, derivatives, and all the complexities of the present economic crisis, but he understands greed when he sees it, and recognizes a bloodsucker when he sees one. Anger is negative, we are told. Anger does not solve problems. Where would revolutions be without anger? Where would America be without its Revolution? Americans today, especially the homeless and the unemployed who number by the million, have many more reasons to be angry and to revolt against their financial officers on Wall Street and representatives in Washington than they had against the mad English king. You say, anger is negative? I say, what could be more positive than anger against corruption, greed, incompetence, and injustice? * Even if they are allowed to keep their bonuses, the CEOs will spend it in fear, they will live in fear, and they may even go underground for the duration. Some day they may even realize that accepting those bonuses was the dumbest thing they ever did. * Organized religions have victimized more innocent civilians than organized crime. The same could be said of organized ideologies, including nationalism, communism, and capitalism. * Under a corrupt or authoritarian regime, law and order might as well be synonymous with fear and lawlessness. # Thursday, March 26, 2009 *********************************************** RIFFRAFF *********************************************** A so-called young financial expert on TV speaking of Wall Street chief executive officers: “Their salaries could be as low as $75,000...they survive on bonuses...” Bernard Madoff ruined about 5000 investors. Wall Street CEOs ruined the global economy. They should be grateful that so far they haven't been arrested. The very least they can do is work for minimum wage until they correct their blunders. But of course, not being a financial expert, I can rely only on my common sense, which, it seems, flies out the window when applied to Wall Street riffraff. And this so-called young whippersnapper thinks he will be quelling the anger of the unemployed and homeless on the grounds that these poor CEOs work for next to nothing? * Speaking of American movies, a French critic once described them as “technical perfection in the service of cretinism.” What we have here is financial expertise in the service of moronism! Consider the following scenario: Your house is on fire. Firefighters arrive and after pouring gasoline instead of water they expect you to be grateful to them. Thank you for doing such a great job. Here, please accept this small check as a token of my appreciation. * Another scenario: You hire a contractor to fix your old house. He in turn hires electricians, plumbers, dry-wallers, roofers, and so on. But by the time they are through the house is torn down as in the story of the big bad wolf and the three little pigs. At which point, the contractor demands to be paid the agreed on amount plus a bonus. * We are told the CEOs who bankrupted AIG have already quit. So what? Let's get them back and let them work for a dollar a year. Liddy is doing it. Is decency on Wall Street limited to only one CEO? * Once upon a time, when Communists spoke of Wall Street, they meant everything that was evil in the capitalist system. Who could have foreseen that some day Wall Street would be perceived as such by the whole world, including Americans? # Saturday, March 28, 2009 *********************************************** MEN AND WOMEN *********************************************** According to a study conducted by a Vatican theologian, men and women are tempted by the same sins but in different order of frequency. Men are tempted by women, food, laziness, anger, vanity, envy, and avarice; and women by vanity, envy, anger, men, food, avarice, and laziness. * THE SINS OF THE ESTABLISHMENT ********************************************** To support only writers who are pro-establishment is to be against literature and for prostitution. * A NEW BOOK ************************* In a recent issue of LE POINT (Paris, March 3, 2009) I read the following ad for Gilbert Sinoué's EREVAN: “The great novel of the Armenian people.” “A great novel that speaks of a terrible truth.” “Written with intense emotion, but also with justice.” “Gilbert Sinoué makes us relive the tragedy of an entire people.” * CARLOS FUENTES ******************************* “It makes no difference whether you surrender your ass or your conscience: you will get them back in bad shape.” #

Sunday, March 22, 2009 *********************************************** ON MYTHS *********************************************** We either react against the ideas instilled in us during our formative years, or we treat them as infallible articles of faith and stick to them to the bitter end. Deep inside somewhere Charents remained a nationalist even when he spoke against it; and Zarian remained an anti-nationalist even when he voiced nationalist nonsense. In a letter to a fellow Tashnak, the editor of HAIRENIK wrote: “If we treat him (Zarian) right, he may come to our side.” When he didn't, he was ignored and treated as an eccentric and a non-person. “I was told he was crazy and I stayed away from him,” a Tashnak neighbor of his once said to me, “and now you tell me he was a great writer?” According to Ilya Ehrenburg, Stalin said, “Don't touch Charents, he is on our side,” or words to that effect. But truth or God or the Reality Principle is on nobody's side. Studied in a Christian context, Greek myths about gods who fornicate with mortals sound blasphemous as well as ridiculous. And yet, the Greek effort to explain Reality makes as much sense today as the myths invented by Jewish, Muslim, and Christian theologians who have legitimized murder and massacre in the name of God. Toynbee is right: after choosing themselves, the chosen assert moral superiority and expect everyone else to be subservient to them. You are either with us or against us, they say, and if you are against us, you don't deserve to live. Some day when mankind is finally civilized, this kind of mindset will be viewed as worthy of barbarians and serial killers. # Monday, March 23, 2009 *********************************************** CROOKS UNLIMIMTED *********************************************** What's the use of writing if you end up alienating friends and making enemies of the very same people on whose goodwill you depend for your survival? On the other hand, what's the use of writing if you are not allowed to say what must be said? I may be more popular and have a better chance to survive by making at least minimum wage if I were to write cookbooks. I am not much of a cook, granted. My repertoire is limited to hard-boiled eggs, cheese sandwiches, pilaf, and spaghetti. But I am told you don't have to be a cook to write cookbooks. A best-selling author of cookbooks once told me, “I try at least once every one of my recipes before publishing them,” thus implying many other don't. If there are dishonest politicians, incompetent chief executive officers, and fornicating bishops, why not plagiarizing cookbook writers? * Speaking of crooks: why do you think Bernard Madoff wasn't exposed for twenty years? The answer is simple: Wall Street if full of them. Exposing him would have meant exposing themselves. And now that the bonus scandal has exploded, I am looking forward to the second act of the play – investigations, hearings, and indictments. As for the third act, I expect, very much like Watergate, it will end in the resignation, arrests, trials, and incarceration not only of CEOs but also of politicians and other fat cats. Unless of course there are so many of them that both Wall Street and Washington would be paralyzed. # Tuesday, March 24, 2009 *********************************************** THE PLACEBO EFFECT *********************************************** All talk of Historic Armenia belongs to the realm of archeology. In a political context, it makes as much sense as Historic Macedonia, Mongolia, or, closer to home, America. * There are so many laws and lawyers that protect the interests of the wealthy that even God wouldn't dare to challenge them. * Whenever a fellow Armenian contradicts me, I cannot help suspecting that he is too smart to be in a position to plead ignorance, and that his disagreement is more like a game, a challenge, or a thoughtlessly adopted political agenda. * A movement that fails to evolve a leader is as doomed as one that evolves two of them. * To label ideas as pro- or anti-Armenian can be misleading because what may be in our interests today may be against the Reality Principle tomorrow, as our revolutionaries in the Ottoman Empire discovered. After all, not all wars of liberation end in liberation, and “freedom or death” makes sense only if it means freedom for the majority. To confuse the placebo effect of some ideas with objective reality may result in disaster. # Wednesday, March 25, 2009 *********************************************** READING *********************************************** Books are my favorite companions. I don't care where I live as long as there is a good library in the neighborhood. Between a hell with books and a heaven without them, I would choose hell any day. Once, a few years ago, after observing the monotony of my daily routine and drab surroundings, a childhood friend commented, in my place he would have committed suicide. He promised to share his home and wealth with me if I agreed to return to Athens. Shortly thereafter he went bankrupt and died of a heart attack. I was reminded of this episode while reading Christopher Isherwood's mammoth DIARIES (1048 pages). In almost every other entry he speaks of encounters and conversations with the likes of Thomas Mann, Aldous Huxley, Greta Garbo, and Krishnamurti. And yet, he suffers from fits of depression and requires the constant care of quacks, shrinks, and swamis. There are endless passages about dreams, nightmares, meditation techniques, yoga, and mystical nonsense – passages I now skip for the sake of entries like the following: “After dinner, Aldous [Huxley] and I got in a corner. He was a little drunk, and started on a favorite topic: the poorness of all literature. Homer was terribly overrated, Dante was hopelessly limited, Shakespeare was such a stupid man, Goethe was such a bore, Tolstoy was silly, etc. etc.” (page 92). #

Thursday, March 19, 2009 *********************************************** SWINE *********************************************** Again and again we are told by so-called experts in Washington that the bonuses of the chief executive officers on Wall Street are such an insignificant fraction of the total bailout that it is a waste of time discussing them. These gentlemen must be blind not to see that a million dollars is a million dollars; it may be small change to some, but they are a fortune to the rest of mankind who must work for a living. And I suspect the outrage is less about the bonuses themselves and more about the fact that the very same individuals who are responsible for the present crisis have the judgment and manners of greedy swine. * C.G. Jung: "Even in our civilization, the people who form, psychologically speaking, the lowest stratum, live almost as unconsciously as primitive races." * The words of an honest man don’t need definitions; but the commas of a crook should be carefully examined under a microscope. * We are told by scientists that we are made of stardust, and it is the dust that survives. * I knew I was going places when a number of Oriental carpet dealers wanted to hire my services as reviewer and translator of their books. These gentlemen are not the kind that would waste their money carelessly. * It is men without honor who are the first to rise in defense of their honor. # Friday, March 20, 2009 *********************************************** ON A NUMBER OF THINGS *********************************************** Obama wants to negotiate with Iran. I suspect Iranians will not fall for his rhetoric as readily as those who voted for him. That's because they have their own brand of rhetoric; and when rhetoric meets rhetoric the result is bound to be a dead end. * Talaat's blunder: left to their own devices, Armenians would have done a far more through job on themselves. * While listening to the televised sermon of a bishop, I could not help thinking: “I don't believe a word he says, and I doubt if he does.” * Bonus: What's a five-letter word that starts with a “b” that stands for bastard, and ends with an “s” that stands for swine? * Armenian Ottomanism: alienating a fellow Armenian in the name of patriotism. * Atheism: If an ant were to speak to me and say, “I don't believe in your existence,” would I step on it? * Benefactors: Take away their money and what have you got? An empty suit, albeit an expensive one. Am I alienating benefactors? Hell no! What I say has as much effect on them as the fart of an ant. # Saturday, March 21, 2009 *********************************************** JOHN UPDIKE *********************************************** After COUPLES, I read everything he wrote, and he wrote a great deal, and he knew how to write -- fiction as well as criticism and poetry. He was an inspired craftsman. His nonfiction was as good as his fiction, which is not something that can be said about such contemporaries of his as Mailer, Bellow, and Roth. But somewhere along the line – it may have been after the second or third RABBIT – I gave up reading him. Shortly before he died a few days ago I read a critical essay about him by a young American writer in whose last sentence Updike was dismissed as an “asshole.” (I later learned this critic had committed suicide.) I am now reading Updike's TOWARD THE END OF TIME (1997), an autobiographical novel about old age that, as always with Updike, brims with sharp observations and verbal felicities. And now I am looking forward to reading his posthumous works – diaries, notebooks, correspondence, perhaps even an unfinished novel and several big biographies. * Some random samples of Updike's descriptive skill: “Girls with orange hair hanging like seaweed or loosely bound with gold barrettes like pirate treasure.” * “A runty senior with a huge mane of black hair that for diving he did up in a hairband like a Greek girl.” * “The first breath of adultery is the freest; after it, constraints aping marriage develop.” * “An aluminum screen door with a misadjusted pneumatic attachment that snaps like lightning the first two-thirds of its arc and then closes the last third slow as a clock ticking.” #

Sunday, March 15, 2009 *********************************************** BOOKS IN MY LIFE *********************************************** I grew up in time of war – two wars, as a matter of fact: World War II and the Greek Civil War. I grew up in a house without books. It was only at the age of fourteen that I read my first book – WITH FIRE AND SWORD by the Polish Nobelist Henrik Sienkiewicz: a historical novel of WAR-AND-PEACE dimensions, but less Tolstoy and more Dumas pére and Errol Flynn. The only thing I remember about it today is the name of the central character, Pan Mikael Volodiovsky. I read it in an Armenian translation done by a Mekhitarist monk. At one time the Mekhitarists were formidable translators and the most prolific of them all was Arsen Ghazikian, who single-handed translated all the epic poems of the Western canon from Homer to THE SONG OF ROLAND, among many other Greek and Latin classics. Two of his students, Padre Elia (Yeghia) Pachikian and Mesrob Janashian, were my teachers. Janashian was also the author of a highly detailed and competent HISTORY OF MODERN WEST-ARMENIAN LITERATURE. After FIRE AND SWORD I chanced on a thin paperback, Dostoevsky's THE GAMBLER, and was hooked on the Russians. What fascinated me about Dostoevsky was the fact that his characters spoke their mind, held nothing back, refused to stand on ceremony or consider what others may think of them. In that sense, they were more authentic human beings than anyone I had ever met. Chekhov was different. His characters impressed me as people I had known or could have known. There was nothing bizarre or incomprehensible about them. The Russians, and I include Tolstoy and Turgenev, made me realize that I wasn't alone, and whenever I try to reread them now I also realize that you can't go home again. # Monday, March 16, 2009 *********************************************** THOMAS MANN *********************************************** On a visit to Venice, a middle-aged German writer falls for a beautiful Polish boy on the beach, postpones his return home, and dies of cholera. (As a youth, Mann idolized Wagner, who also died in Venice.) I first read DEATH IN VENICE in Venice, at the age of fifteen, in an Italian translation. It left me cold. Much ado about nothing, I thought. Ten years later I read it again, this time in an English translation, with the same result. But I refused to give up on Mann and with CONFESSIONS OF FELIX KRULL, CONFIDENCE MAN I got religion. Immediately after I read and reread THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN, JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS, and DOKTOR FAUSTUS the way a born-again reads and rereads the Bible. Two things fascinated me about Mann: his subtle humor and his expertise on a wide range of subjects. When he expanded the Biblical story of Joseph into a four- volume, 2000-page long novel, for instance, he acquired an entire library on both the Bible and ancient Egypt. To write about the life of a modern composer, he befriended and pumped several famous musicologists, composers, and conductors, among them Adorno, Schoenberg, and Bruno Walter (who happened to be a next-door neighbor as well his daughter's secret lover). In politics and philosophy, he could argue both sides of any issue – an advantage over Shaw, Sartre, and Nabokov who took sides with disastrous results -- Shaw and Sartre in their support of totalitarian regimes, and Nabokov in his defense of the war in Vietnam. Mann has had his share of critics: Shaw ignored him, Sartre and Nabokov dismissed him as a bourgeois, Brecht called him “a short-story writer," Stefan Zweig thought he was long-winded, Furtwaengler accused him of changing nationalities as if they were shirts, and Hitler wanted him assassinated -- some said because THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN outsold MEIN KAMPF. * Mann on Hitler: “Thanks to his own baseness, he has indeed succeeded in exposing much of our own.” * “The totalitarian statesman is the founder of a religion; or, more accurately, the founder of an infallible, inquisitorial system of dogma that forcibly suppresses every heresy while itself resting on legend – a system to which truth must austerely submit.” * Mann on what it takes: “The creative genius must first become a world in itself, in which only discoveries and not inventions, remain to be made.” * “The intellectual man is almost as much interested in painful truths as the fool is in those which flatter him.” # Tuesday, March 17, 2009 *********************************************** ARNOLD J. TOYNBEE *********************************************** When asked by a journalist what had motivated him to dedicate most of his adult life to writing his monumental multi-volume STUDY OF HISTORY, Toynbee replied with a single word: “Curiosity.” Of the twelve volumes, my favorite is the 12th, subtitled RECONSIDERATIONS. Here Toynbee replies to his critics – an astonishingly large number of them from all over the world. Sometimes he is willing to admit error, at others he reaffirms his position and goes further. Case in point: “Spate's failure to keep his knowledge of the Jordan valley's history up to date would have been venial if the tone of his criticism had not been supercilious. However, my concern with Spate is not to return his fire but to follow out the second thoughts into which I have been stung by the stimulating shot with which he has peppered me.” One reason I enjoy reading and rereading RECONSIDERATIONS is its quintessentially unArmenian tone of tolerance and acceptance of dissent as worthy of consideration. Toynbee's general theory of the rise and fall of civilizations and empires goes something like this: civilizations grow by responding successfully to challenges under the leadership of creative minorities, and decline when the leaders fail to react creatively.” In his own words: “A growing civilization can be defined as one which the components of its culture [economic, political, artistic, and scientific] are in harmony with one another; and, on the same principle, a disintegrating civilization can be defined as one in which these elements have fallen into discord.” All general theories are vulnerable to contradiction and criticism. Plato's were criticized by his student, Aristotle, Marx's by Keynes, Spengler's by Jacques Maritain and Teilhard de Chardin, and Toynbee's by a wide range of specialists who saw in him an interloper who had dared to exploit their findings to serve his own alien agenda. In my view, Toynbee's greatest merit is not his general theory but the many brilliant observations on the human condition. Random samples follows: * On racial superiority: “The Jews, the Japanese, the British 'sahibs', the Nazis...all seem to me to have been chosen by no one except themselves.” * On critics: “Whenever a reviewer is tempted to treat an author as a dart-board he should remember that the missile which his hand is itching to lance is not a dart but a boomerang.” * On chauvinism: “Self-idolization is most flagrantly in evidence, not as a self-adjudicated reward for success, but as a self-exculpating compensation for failure.” (I think of these lines whenever I hear one of our charlatans bragging about our celebrities and achievements.) * “The egocentric illusion has always beset every living organism in which an ego has ever asserted itself.” * On pessimism and optimism: “The truth is that Valéry's pessimism and Gibbon's optimism are, both alike, rationalizing of feelings that are irrationally subjective.” # Wednesday, March 18, 2009 *********************************************** REFLECTIONS *********************************************** Whether God exists or not is not the problem. The problem, the real problem, the existential problem is placing as great a distance between us and the Devil as possible. Likewise, knowing the truth is not the problem. The problem is recognizing a deceiver when we see one. * Because I criticize Armenians I am accused of anti-Armenianism; and because some Turks quote me, I am accused of pro-Ottomanism. I may be wrong about everything but I have no doubt whatever in my mind that no one, not even the very best among us, are beyond criticism. And not to criticize in the name of patriotism is to support the corrupt and the incompetent, and when things go wrong, to blame the enemy who probably was also duped into supporting lying riffraff. * Among us, politics (or the art of the possible) is confused with ideology (the art of the impossible), and inevitably, ideology is confused with theology (the art of the incomprehensible), and theology is confused with pathology. Some day, in a future progressive and enlightened Armenian democracy, if our partisans are arrested and put on trial, they will be absolutely right in pleading not guilty by reason of insanity. * As solitary creatures, Armenian writers have been perennial victims of political parties and their satellite institutions, all of which have a tendency to divide their fellow Armenians into friends and enemies or yes-men and dissidents. As for dialogue: who has ever heard of such a thing in an Ottoman or Soviet environment, or, for that matter, in a crypto-Ottoman or neo-Stalinist context? #

Thursday, March 12, 2009 *********************************************** ON OPTIMISM *********************************************** If all our writers, from Khorenatsi to Zarian, have so far failed to penetrate the thick walls raised by our political and religious leaders, whatever possesses me into thinking I have a better chance? And what kind of arrogance bordering on pathological megalomania is it that makes our Turcocentric ghazetajis entertain the illusion they will have better luck with the Turks? Perhaps there is a Don Quixote in all of us – a Don with the IQ of Rosinante, or is it Sancho Panza's jackass? * “Please, don't tell my mother I am a CEO on Wall Street. She thinks I am a pimp.” * When millionaires declare bankruptcy, they do so to protect their millions. Some laws, it seems, are made by crooks, for crooks. * In his autobiography,Theodore Reik, a Freudian psychoanalyst, writes that for many years he was deeply in love with a very attractive woman. But when he finally married her, the wedding night was a disaster. He seems to be saying, a penetrating awareness of the other is achieved only by penetration. * Both pessimism and optimism are more or less legitimate ways of forecasting the future. Sometimes pessimists are right, and sometimes optimists. But optimists are never right if their optimism is motivated by wishful thinking. Reality advances on a different plane from our wishes. That’s why, even when our dreams come true they have a tendency to turn into nightmares. # Friday, March 13, 2009 *********************************************** REFLECTIONS ON OUR HISTORY *********************************************** “If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.” Our history in a nutshell. * There are two kinds of nations: those who divide and conquer, and those who divide themselves and are conquered. * The function of a belief system or ideology is to raise a wall between us and our perception of reality. The function of our nationalist historians, leadership, and educational system is to cover up this fact. And the function of our writers is to remind us of it. There are many references to this fact in our literature. (See below.) * To those who say, how could little Armenia resist the overwhelming might of ruthless empire builders like Genghis Khan (13th century), Timurlang (14th century), and Suleiman the Magnificent (16th century), my answer is: our predisposition for dividing ourselves was in full swing long before these gentlemen went on the warpath. Listen to our 5th-century historian, Yeghishé: “Solidarity is the mother of good deeds, divisiveness of evil onces.” Elsewhere: “We may not be allowed to question the integrity of princes, but neither should we praise men who pit themselves against the Will of God” (that is, the Reality Principle). And more to the point: “In the same way that a man cannot serve two masters, a nation cannot have two kings. If a nation is ruled by two kings, both the kings and their subjects will perish.” * Am I rubbing salt in our wound? Why not? -- if the wound is self-inflicted. * Raffi: “An Armenian's worst enemies are not odars but Armenians.” * Gostan Zarian: “Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another.” * Charents: “O Armenian people, your salvation lies only in your collective powers.” * For more on this subject, see my DICTIONARY OF ARMENIAN QUOTATIONS. # Saturday, March 14, 2009 *********************************************** LITERATURE *********************************************** The only time I am referred to as a writer by our commissars is when they tell me it is my duty as a patriotic Armenians to echo their sentiments and thoughts. You say I have said this before? How flattering! Not only you read me but you also remember what I say. * Money goes to money, they say. Something very similar happens to culture too. Consider the situation of 20th-century French literature, one of the most highly developed and influential in the world: the three playwrights who revolutionized the French theater (Samuel Beckett, Arthur Adamov, and Eugene Ionesco) were an Irishman, an Armenian, and a Romanian respectively). And now consider the situation of Armenian literature at the other end of the spectrum: not only we don’t encourage or welcome outside contribution, but we also alienate and silence our own (from Abovian to Zarian). Figure that one out if you can. #

Sunday, March 8, 2009 *********************************************** IF *********************************************** If I speak well of some Turks it's because I have heard about good Turks and even met and dealt with some of them. If I am critical of my fellow Armenians it's because, very much like the rest of mankind, we are far from perfect. If, on the other hand, you think Armenians are beyond criticism, I can only say, you must be just about the luckiest man on earth because obviously so far you have dealt only with good Armenians. Either that or you are a nationalist, that is to say, blind in one eye. * I was brought up to believe reality is not what I see but what I was told to see. I have wasted so much time seeings things that weren't there. * Reading teaches us that our blunders, defeats, and humiliations are not unique to us and that countless others have been through the very same experiences. * It’s not easy civilizing barbarians. But what is infinitely harder is civilizing barbarians who brag about their past civilization. # Monday, March 9, 2009 *********************************************** KILLERS *********************************************** “But he was such a kind man!” neighbors say of a serial killer. I am not implying kindness is suspect. What I am saying is that there is a killer in all of us. * Regardless of what you say, you will have your share of critics who belong to the Richelieu school of criticism that says, “If you give me six lines written by the most honest man, I will find something in them to hang him.” * I don't expect to be published in a newspaper or magazine where archbishops advertise the sale of Oriental rugs in their cathedral. Neither do I expect to be welcome in an Internet discussion forum whose moderator is the son of a bishop or the hireling of a benefactor. * To be an honest man means to make many enemies and very few friends. * When in a hurry, go slower than your normal speed. * “After all, we are Armenians!” – meaning , anything we say or do must be accepted and forgiven, including that which would be normally unacceptable and unforgivable. Some Armenians use Armenianism the way cold-blooded killers use the plea of insanity. # Tuesday, March 10, 2009 *********************************************** ON JUSTICE *********************************************** I gave up publishing books on the day I realized we had more writers than readers. That may well be another first for us -- first nation to produce more writers than readers, and first nation to massacre more trees per capita than any other nation on earth. One thousand academics in the United States alone – and academics, as everyone knows, must either publish or perish. And then we have, what a friend of mine calls, “a massacre mafia” -- academics whose field is the Genocide and who review and promote books written only by members, they ignore all others. Once when I wrote something to the effect that massacre books may promote a victim mentality, several reader wrote in protest to say that they don't feel like victims. But suppose a member of your family has been traumatized by a criminal, say, like a rapist. Would you remind her of the rape every chance you get? You may deceive yourself into thinking you are not a victim on the conscious level, but what about your subconscious where the real action is? Writing books may well be another way of establishing our immortality and as such a legitimate reaction to genocide, granted. But writing books that no one reads? Like the offspring of all oppressed and victimized people we are first and foremost bundles of unsettled scores for whom verbal abuse is the only safe way to get even. Instead of constantly reminding us of our victimhood, we should be taught the value of such mantras as “Let the dead bury their dead,” and “What's done is done and cannot be undone.” I am not promoting amnesia. What I am doing is reacting against our masochists. Speaking about verbal abuse: once when I took it upon myself to remind a garbage mouth reader that insulting me simply because he disagrees with me is wrong, he said, “Sue me!” thus expressing an awareness of the fact that the rule of law is mightier than bitching, and one competently written legal brief is worth a thousand lamentations and as many insults. You want justice? Get a lawyer. # Wednesday, March 11, 2009 *********************************************** NOTES AND COMMENTS *********************************************** The real conflict is not between ideologies or belief systems but between those who cling to what they have (even when obtained by piracy or exploitation) and those who have nothing to lose. * Sometimes the only way to disarm your accusers is by pleading guilty to crimes that didn't even cross your imagination to commit. It is not easy to satisfy someone who has tasted blood. * The ideal citizen is a fool who allows himself to be brainwashed and manipulated. All others are classified as trouble-makers and malcontents. That's the way it is with gravediggers – they prefer to deal with corpses. * I don't write to have anyone's agreement. I write the kind of things I would have liked to have read in my formative years when I was programmed not to think for myself. * We live as though our problems were insoluble; but we argue as if we had a minimum of two solutions for every one of our problems. * Some people are so outrageously wrong that they don’t have to be corrected. Sooner or later life, facts, the reality principle will speak to them much louder than any logical argument or appeal to common sense and decency. #

Thursday, February 26, 2009 *********************************************** POLITICIANS AND INTELLECTUALS **************************************************************** Arnold Toynbee: “Society is the total network of relations between human beings. The components of society are thus not human beings but relations between them.” * A politician will never say or do anything that may question his ability to lead and to do what must be done, even when he is catastrophically wrong, and even if it means violating the human rights of his fellow countrymen. By contrast, the function of an intellectual is to say what must be said even if it means exposing the incompetence and criminality of politicians and in the process risking his own survival. As for propagandists: as extensions of politicians, they specialize in exposing the crimes of the opposition and ignoring and covering up their own. I am not implying here that politicians and propagandists are always wrong and intellectuals aways right. What I am suggesting is that it is not easy to reconcile the demands of self-interest with objectivity. * PARALLELS ******************************* There is a passage in Toynbee that explains even if indirectly what befell us a hundred years ago in the Ottoman Empire. In what follows, all you need to do is replace the words Egyptiac and Hyksos with Ottoman and Armenian: “At this moment the apparently defunct Egyptiac society was recalled to life and action by an overwhelming impulse to chastise the Hyksos trespassers who had ventured to desecrate a swept and garnished house by their unclean presence. The stimulus was so powerful, that it raised the Egyptiac society not just from the deathbed but actually from the bier on which it was being carried to the grave, and in this demonic xenophobia the society seemed to have discovered at the thirteenth hour, the long-sought elixir of immortality.” The final lines of this quotation may also suggest that the glue in nationalism is provided more by fear and hatred of the enemy and less by love of one's fellow countrymen. # Friday, February 27, 2009 *********************************************** HEAVEN AND HELL **************************************************************** If the system is good to you, you will be good to the system. Millions believed in Stalin because he promised heaven and earth, and he even delivered some of it in the guise of full employment, prosperity, power, and glory. And these believers, like all believers in organized religions, did not stop to question the validity of dogmas that legitimize intolerance, persecution, torture, murder, war and massacre. One could go as far as saying faith is the real source of all evil. * A belief system should be judged not by its promises but by its victims. Consider militarism, a belief system that promotes honor, courage, self-sacrifice, glory, and heroism: what mortal could resist these noble attainments? What decent human being would dare to suggest that their opposites, among them cowardice and dishonor, to be superior virtues? And now, listen to Toynbee on these military virtues: “It is flying in the face of all experience to jump to the conclusion that the only place where we can ever hope to find these precious things is the slaughterhouse where they have happened to make their first epiphany to human eyes.” * Closer to home: who supports the present regime in our homeland? First and foremost, our fund-raisers who, according to insiders, make a very comfortable living beyond the wildest dreams of those they claim to help. Unmask these bloodsuckers and you will come face to face with wheeler-dealers whose role models are Wall Street chief executive officers. Moral of the story: Don't be a fool. Don't believe everything your are told or read in the papers. Demand accountability and make sure the firm that does the accounting is not run by a brother-in-law or a co-conspirator. And last but not least, next time someone speaks of heaven, makes sure he doesn't mean your hell. # Saturday, February 28, 2009 *********************************************** RANDOM THOUGHTS **************************************************************** When a doctor kills instead of curing, his license is revoked. This law governing the practice of medicine does not apply to Wall Street chief executive officers probably because law-makers and CEOs are co-conspirators. * During World War II Armenians fought on both sides – on the Soviet side in the name of defeating fascism, on the German side in the name of liberating the Homeland. Both sides were convinced theirs was a noble cause. Neither had the initiative or intelligence to ask what's so noble fighting Hitlerism in the name of Stalinism and vice versa? It is simply astonishing the ease with which self-assessed intelligent people are moronized. * You want to know what makes Armenians so mean? Six hundred years of kissing Ottoman ass. #

Sunday, February 22, 2009 *********************************************** MEMO TO A YOUNG ARMENIAN WRITER ****************************************************** Always keep in mind that you will never be able to make a living by sharing your wisdom with readers who are much wiser than you. * No matter how good you are, you will have your critics, some of whom would gladly stone you to death. Think of Tolstoy on Shakespeare, Schopenhauer on Hegel, Turgenev on Dostoevsky, Russell on Sartre, and Sartre on himself. * When asked which church or community center you go to, say “I am with the good guys.” * The three pillars of fascism are: nationalism, anti-intellectualism, and anti-Semitism. I may have told you this before but some things bear repeating, maybe not as often as first nation this and first nation that, but at least once or twice a year. * One of our skinheads, who had verbally abused me for several years on a daily basis, once called to apologize. We had a long conversation. Shortly thereafter it became clear that he had not called to apologize but to gather more ammunition against me. * When it comes to enemy propaganda, we have 20/20 vision. When it comes to our own, we are blind. # Monday, February 23, 2009 *********************************************** READING ****************************************************** Since I don't do much traveling, I enjoy going places by proxy. I just finished reading Farley Mowat's big book on Siberia – SIBIR: MY DISCOVERY OF SIBERIA (Toronto, 1970) – a fascinating place that has attracted many travelers, among them Chekhov. Mowat writes that Russians love partying and their favorite drinks are Georgian wine and Armenian cognac. I suspect our cognac has done more damage to the Soviets – if only to their livers and longevity – than all their dissidents and ours combined. I am now reading Paul Theroux's GHOST TRAIN TO THE EASTERN STAR: ON THE TRACKS OF THE GREAT RAILWASY BAZAAR (New York, 2008), where he revisits places that he first wrote about thirty years ago – from London to Tokyo and all the way back via Siberia. Theroux is one of my favorite travel writers and his PILLARS OF HERCULES, about the countries on the Mediterranean coast, is a classic in the genre. When told by a Romanian academic that Turkey cannot join the EU for another ten years because “they have problems with human rights of the Kurds and the Armenians,” Theroux dismisses Kurdish demands as unreasonable, “and the Armenian business was a hundred years ago.” He goes on to identify himself as “a mild Turkophile” and reflects that “the massacre of Armenians a century ago, the later expulsion of Greeks, and the Kurdish outrages and Turkish reprisals are lamentable facts of Turkish history; still, no city in Asia is so self-consciously reform-minded and it is lucky in its writers, who are public intellectuals in the European mode – Orhan Pamuk was one of the many who denounced the downplaying of the Armenian slaughter. He represented a public conscience.” I should like to see one of our own writers in that role. # Tuesday, February 24, 2009 *********************************************** More on Paul Theroux's GHOST TRAIN TO THE EASTERN STAR: ON THE TRACKS OF THE GREAT RAILWASY BAZAAR (New York, 2008). **************************************************************** While in Istanbul, Paul Theroux has long conversations with several Turkish writers, among them Orhan Pamuk and the young, dynamic, outspoken, and stunningly attractive Elif Shafak. Speaking of Pamuk's trial, he writes it was a case of “a lion being judged by donkeys.” “Pamuk's crime,” he explains, “ was his mentioning to a Swiss journalist that 'a million Armenians and thirty thousand Kurds were killed in this country and I'm the only one who dares to talk about it.'” “Turkey has amnesia,” Elif Shafak tells him. “Turks are indifferent to the past, to old words, to old customs...We need to know about the Armenians.” Another speaks “about the burden of being a Turkish writer abroad. Westerners whose knowledge of Turkey was limited to MIDNIGHT EXPRESS and doner kebab would challenge them saying, What about the Armenians? What about the Kurds? How come you torture people?” In Baku we learn that there are Armenocentric Azeris as surely as there Turcocentric Armenians. “Azerbaijan is a police state,” Theroux is informed by a foreign diplomat. “TV is controlled. Print media is somewhat free, but an opposition editor was gunned down last year.” An Azeri tells him America should declare war against Iran because Iranian are bad people, but “Armenians are worse...In the 1990s they had captured the Azeri province of Nagorno-Karabagh, killing 20,000 Azeris and displacing a million more.” “In football, Armenia is our enemy. In life too,” another Azeri tells him. And, “We are overwhelmed by emotions! Armenians don't make any distinction between Turks and Azeris. Hey, it's all about 1915. When I was at Harvard, I met Armenians from Yerevan and had no problems. But Armenians from Watertown were very belligerent.” “...in March 1918 in an Armenian uprising, Armenians killed 30,000 Azeris.” Paul Theroux may identify himself as a moderate Turkophile but what's uppermost in his mind is to be objective, to report rather than to editorialize. We could learn from him. # Wednesday, February 25, 2009 *********************************************** FROM MY NOTEBOOKS **************************************************************** On the radio: four answers to the question “Do you believe in the present economic crisis?” asked at random in a train station: “No! I think that's something politicians talk about and I don't believe them.” “Yes. Some people I know have lost their jobs, but I am not worried because I am a teacher.” “(Laughing) I don't care because I have very little money.” “Sorry, I can't answer, my train leaves in four minutes.” * Julien Green: “Thoughts have wings, words only feet. That's a writer's greatest source of anguish.” * “We are Armenians!” yes, I know. But what kind? Ottomanized, Levantinized, Sovietized, Americanized?... Because most of our disagreements are rooted not in our views but in our identities or cultural backgrounds. * A French magazine calls Fidel Castro and Kim Jong-il of North Korea “the living-dead.” * If like me you prefer dialogue to long descriptive passages, Vladimir Sorokin's THE QUEUE (New York, 2007) is for you. Originally published in 1985, this is a Soviet-era work of fiction that consists in brief exchanges between people waiting in a long line hoping to buy whatever it is that's being sold at the other end. #

Sunday, February 15, 2009 *********************************************** THE GREEKS AND US ****************************************** Whenever I am told to be more positive, I think of Homer who begins his story with a rape and ends with the destruction of Troy. And what do we learn from the ODYSSEY? Only this: even when one is engaged in as innocent an undertaking as going home, one will have to deal with obstructionists. If you dismiss Homer's testimony as suspect on the grounds that he was an unbeliever, let's consider the Bible: Why did the Good Lord introduce a serpent in the Garden? There are those who maintain it was not the Lord who did that but the CIA. But I for one don't believe everything I am told, and that's where my troubles begin. When I am told, for example, that we are better or smarter than the Greeks because we no longer believe in many gods some of whom fornicated with mortals, all I can say is that, that's true, we have made some progress in that department. We believe in only one God who is divided into three, and only one of the three, the Holy Ghost, engaged in the business of impregnating a mortal. The Greeks condemned Socrates to death because he said “Of the gods we know nothing.” Christians, by contrast, persecuted and killed only those who did not share their dogmas, lies, and propaganda. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Or, as the French are fond of saying, “Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme merde.” # Monday, February 16, 2009 *********************************************** THE ANGEL OF GROZNY ****************************************** We are smart, no doubt about that. We are as smart as any nation you care to mention. We may even be smarter than some. But we have been systematically moronized by our leadership. We have been as systematically moronized as any nation under a corrupt and incompetent leadership that has collaborated with some of the most brutal, ruthless, and bloodthirsty regimes in the history of mankind -- and it has collaborated to the point of betraying and murdering its greatest intellects. If you want to know more on the subject of systematic moronization, I urge you to read Asne Seierstad's THE ANGEL OF GROZNY (New York, 2008), a masterpiece of contemporary journalism that deals with recent developments in Chechnya and the evils of Russian and Chechen nationalism. * The very same readers who tell me not to open old wounds, never give up blabbering endlessly about older wounds. * I have never heard a loud-mouth charlatan or fanatic to admit error, which may suggest, the louder they are, the more infallible they consider themselves to be. * Some of our most ardent nationalists live in self-imposed exile, and when war breaks out in the Homeland, they selflessly allow others to do their killing and dying for them. # Tuesday, February 17, 2009 *********************************************** STANDARDS ****************************************** To agree in the name of an ideology or belief system is to conspire against the majority of mankind. * Speech and honesty can be a lethal combination. * The danger is not in worshiping false gods but in worshiping the devil in the name of god. * When a loser's dreams come true, they turn into nightmares. * The more successful you are in fooling men, the less successful you will be in fooling reality. * Armenian etiquette: If you are wrong you will be corrected. If you are right you will be insulted. * And now, from the general to the specific: How to explain the decline of our cultural standards when compared with those of the turn-of-the-century Ottoman Empire and pre-Stalin Soviet Union? The answer must be: the philistinism of our bosses, bishops, and benefactors combined with the opportunism of our academics. # Wednesday, February 18, 2009 *********************************************** RANDOM THOUGHTS ****************************************** All ideologies begin as belief systems and end as bureaucracies; and all bureaucracies might as well be interchangeable. What failed in the United States and the Soviet Union is neither capitalism nor communism but “the invisible hand” of faceless bureaucrats. * If so far we have failed to learn from history it's because history and propaganda are mutually exclusive concepts, and our propaganda tells us we know all there is to know and there is nothing wrong with us – it's all the fault of the rotten world in which we live. * It's unbelievable the number of things people will avoid saying in order to achieve popularity. I could never acquire that particular talent – or is it tactic? * Smart Armenians are a dime a dozen. Honest Armenians – that's different. * In our environment, the higher they rise, the more crooked they get. * A fellow Armenian (a white-haired elderly no-nonsense type) knocks on my door, introduces himself, barges in, and demands to know if I am really an atheist. I tell him I don’t believe in the god of our priests. He is too puzzled by my answer to pursue the matter. What I fail to add is that, the true atheist is he who uses someone else’s crucifixion to make a comfortable living. #

Thursday, February 12, 2009 **************************************************** HORROR SH0W ************************************************ In his impressions of Siberia, an American traveler writes that whenever he wanted to say “good” in Russian, he would say, “horror show” (=horosho). Reminds me of Rosalind Russell in A MAJORITY OF ONE saying “You're welcome” in Japanese sounds like “Don't touch my mustache” (=Do-itashimasta”). * From a televised interview with deputy prime minister of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, a puppet of Putin: “What do you like doing best?” “Fighting. I'm a soldier.” “And when there's no one left to fight?” “I have bees, bulls, fighting dogs.” “What else to you like?” “Partying. I love women.” “And your wife doesn't mind?” “I do it secretly.” From THE ANGEL OF GROZNY by Asne Seierstad (New York, 2008, page 100). * A moderate pacifist doesn't have a chance against a warlike fanatic. * When an Armenian realizes he cannot settle his score with Turks, he moves on to an easier target – his fellow Armenians, and the more defenseless the better. * We learn from failure. Success has the opposite effect. * It is good to be smart but not to appear to be smart – especially if one is an idiot. * As a child I was brought up to believe all Turks go to hell. As an adult I know that not all Armenians go to heaven. # Friday, February 13, 2009 **************************************************** THE POWER AND THE GLORY ************************************************ Because they can't promise peace and prosperity, nationalists promise power and glory, and what mortal can resist two divine attributes? (“For thine is the power and the glory.”) * There are many schools of criticism, the most common are envy-driven and revenge-driven. * I have yet to meet an anti-Semite who wasn't a bully. * Churchill on de Gaulle: “What can you do with a man who looks like a female llama surprised when bathing?” * Under the Soviets we experienced despotism, intolerance, censorship, corruption, abuses of power, and purges (a euphemism for the systematic slaughter of the best and the brightest). And yet, there are those who assert the Soviets ushered in a renaissance of arts and culture. Who says Armenians are smart? Only Armenian idiots who think they are thinking even as they recycle enemy propaganda. * Nabokov's aristocratic contempt for lower-class writers like Dostoevsky, Mann, and Sartre reminds me of the king who, after the premiere of DON GIOVANNI, said to Mozart: “Too many notes.” * Once, when I was the regular book-reviewer of several Armenian-American weeklies, I received a book of memoirs by a rug merchant with a note that said, the longer the review, the bigger the check in the mail. * The universal and irresistible temptation to appear smarter or better than we are. # Saturday, February 14, 2009 *********************************************** FROM MY NOTEBOOKS ****************************************** Our faith in Athena, goddess of wisdom, has collapsed, but the Parthenon stands. We are made of stardust, and it is the dust that will survive. * We are careful to admit only the failings we think we have overcome. * Our Turcocentric ghazetajis think humor is pro-Ottoman. * In his WISDOM OF THE SANDS, Saint-Exupery tells us to be aware of misguided pity. There are beggars, he explains, who love to cling to their stench and to expose their sores. * A self-appointed commissar of culture may qualify as a potential murderer but not as a critic. * "For a smart man, you can be very naïve!" a trial lawyer, who is also a good friend, tells me. I don’t know about smart but I am worse than naïve when I get emotionally involved. Emotion reduces a complex reality into a one-dimensional extension of ourselves. Emotion, writes Sartre somewhere, attempts to change the world by means of magic. What could be more primitive? * Saint-Simon: “My self-esteem has always increased in direct proportion to the damage I was doing to my reputation.” * Tolstoy: “The higher I rise in the opinion of others, the lower I sink in my own.” * # Writers like Naregatsi, Raffi, Baronian, Odian, Zarian, Shahnour, Massikian, among many others, prove that criticism and patriotism are not incompatible concepts; blind patriotism by contrast is almost always symptomatic of fascism. #

Thursday, February 5, 2009 **************************************************** NOTES AND COMMENTS ************************************************ You cannot solve a problem whose existence you refuse to acknowledge. * Armenians are not litigious by nature – they learn it from their leaders. * Fascists don't believe in dialogue and compromise, only in consensus and unanimity. Even when there are ninety-nine voices saying yes, and only one saying no, they feel the need to silence the sole dissenting voice. * To know a great deal about Turks and next to nothing about Armenians, except their status as victims: that, it seems, is the mission of our Turcocentric ghazetajis. * The reason why I am consistently negative is that my life and work may be divided into three distinct periods: (one) past -- naïve and sentimental; (two) present -- old and cynical; (three) future – unprintable and unmentionable. * “After all, we are Armenians!” – meaning , anything we say or do must be accepted and forgiven, including that which would be normally unacceptable and unforgivable. Some Armenians use Armenianism the way cold-blooded killers use the plea of insanity. * 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, Patagonian, or, for that matter, Turkish versions of their own past is false, is to bury our heads in the sand. # Friday, February 6, 2009 **************************************************** ON EASTERN MYSTICISM ************************************************ What can we learn from schools of Eastern mysticism? Or rather, what has the East learned from its own mystics? To those who say the ideas of Eastern mystics have universal validity even if they have been corrupted by their religious and political leadership, I say, the same could be said of Christianity and its mystics. Gandhi, a Hindu, learned a great deal from the Bhagavat Gita and other Hindu scriptures. But he also learned from Tolstoy (a Russian), Ruskin (an Englishman), and Thoreau (an American). * If history teaches us anything it is that no matter how noble an idea or ideology, sooner or later it will be corrupted and perverted by an authoritarian elite whose greatest concern will not be the welfare of the masses but its own powers and privileges. * What can we learn from mystics of both East and West? Only this: the mystical experience is not transferable and all efforts to express it in words are destined to fail. For more on this subject see Aldous Huxley's THE PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHY, and Arthur Koestler's THE LOTUS AND THE ROBOT. Also of interest, the writings of Krishnamurti, an Indian mystic, who said, “If you follow someone else, you are on the wrong path,” or words to that effect. This is true of individuals as well as nations. Our greatest exponent of this particular idea is Gostan Zarian. See his TRAVELLER AND HIS ROAD and BANCOOP AND THE BONES OF THE MAMMOTH, both available in English. * Arthur Koestler on Zen Buddhism: “Inarticulateness is not a monopoly of Zen; but it is the only school which made a philosophy out of it, whose exponents burst into verbal diarrhea to prove constipation.” Elsewhere: “Zen always held a fascination for a category of people in whom brutishness combines with pseudomysticism, from Samurai to Kamikaze to Beatnik.” Koestler is much better on Indian mysticism and its countless aberrations, including Gandhi's. * Finally, here are two of my favorite Buddhist sayings: “Look not for refuge to anyone beside yourself”; and “Foolish friends are worse than wise enemies.” # Saturday, February 7, 2009 **************************************************** DIARY ************************************************ It is written “You can't cook pilaf with words.” It is also written “Soft words can break bones.” * Once upon a time a man went all over the world in search of buried treasure only to discover on his return home that it was buried in his own backyard. Moral: It's a waste of time searching wisdom in what you don't know. * To be the slave of former slaves is not freedom. * In a recent edition of the PETIT LAROUSSE ILLUSTRÉ (the most widely used French-language reference work) there is an entry on Talaat Pasha wherein we read about what an Armenian did to him as opposed to what he did to the Armenians. As a matter of fact, there is only one Armenian mentioned and that is in the final line, which reads: “He was assassinated by an Armenian.” The innocent reader is left with the impression that some bloodthirsty crazed Armenian victimized an innocent Turkish statesman. * In all fairness to LAROUSSE: in its entry on ARMENIA we read: “1915: The Young Turks committed genocide (1,500,000 victims).” … DIKRAN THE GREAT is identified as a Parthian. Armenian emperors of Byzantium are not identified as Armenian; neither are such Armenian writers as Adamov and Troyat. … Pierre Gaxotte: “There is no such thing as History, there are only historians.” #

Sunday, February 1, 2009 **************************************************** IT TAKES ALL KINDS ************************************************ My friends may forget me, but my enemies never will. That is why I never lose an opportunity of making one. Most of my enemies however are not enemies because I offended them in any way, but because I failed to flatter their colossal egos, which, in their eyes, might as well be a crime against humanity comparable to a massacre of civilians. * Ignorance is not a crime, neither is credulity. But some of the worst crimes against humanity were committed by fools and dupes – and, of course, leaders who knew how to organize and use them. * A dupe may also be a man of cunning who is infatuated with his own brain power, judgment, and perception of reality. * Even after Stalin's crimes were exposed, there were many Armenian-American academics, poets, writers, and merchants who were pro-Soviet (I called them chic Bolsheviks). I know this because I would receive angry letters and telephone calls whenever I published a commentary critical of the regime. * Even dupes with a negative IQ are smart enough to believe only in things that are clearly to their advantage. The reason there were so many chic Bolsheviks in America is that the regime treated them as celebrities whenever they visited the Homeland. I will never forget the archbishop who once said to me: “If you ever decide to establish yourself in the Homeland, they will take good care of you.” Moral: Be aware of charlatans offering unsolicited advice that may sound flattering to your vanity. # Monday, February 2, 2009 **************************************************** THE ABYSS ************************************************ If I write about our dark side it's because no one else does. If our Turcocentric ghazetajis and their role models, our nationalist historians, are to be believed, Turks are our only dark side. But when writers like Raffi, Baronian, Odian, and Zohrab wrote, they stressed our failings, not those of other nations. And then there is Naregatsi, a saint: our greatest and least read writer whose sole subject was the abyss within. Next time you feel like bragging about your Armenian identity, read Naregatsi. Whenever I run into an Armenian who brags about our celebrities, multi-millionaires, our Mikoyans and Mamoulians, our Arlens and Saroyans, and above all about our survival as a nation, I begin to see more merit in a dignified death. To those who brag about Armenia being the first nation to convert to Christianity, may I ask how successful have they been in loving not only their enemies but also their fellow Armenians? * I had the following exchange with one of our editors last week: “We need poetry and fiction,” said he. “What about essays?” I asked. “You can do your preaching elsewhere,” was his reply. My guess is this editor would have rejected Naregatsi on the grounds that his writings did not qualify as vodanavors and massals. * Speaking of massals and grandmother stories: Once when I asked another one of our editors why he published so many grandmother stories, he explained: “Because grandmothers have played an important role in our lives.” Have they? That was news to me. Has any one of our nationalist historians included a chapter on grandmothers in his texts? Speaking of my own grandmothers: I never knew one of them because she died long before I was born. The other one lived in another town and I saw her once or twice a year. She never told me a single story. # Tuesday, February 3, 2009 **************************************************** POLITICIANS AND WRITERS ************************************************ The difference between politicians and writers is that politicians understand people and writers want to be understood. Politicians understand people in the sense that they know all about their need for flattery and big lies, such as “chosen people,” “superior race,” “first nation this/first nation that.” One could even say that politicians are in the business of inventing and exploiting big lies, and writers in exposing them. This may explain why to this day Hitler, an unspeakably mediocre intellect, has his admirers, and Thomas Mann, a writer of genius, his detractors. * The chosen people: If one is to adopt history, facts, and reality as an index, it would be more accurate to speak of the unchosen people. * To speak of superiority even as one behaves as the most depraved of criminals: what could be more asinine, perverse and inferior? * Perhaps one reason big lies are popular is that they combat repellent truth that are even bigger. * What could be more absurd than dupes at the mercy of control freaks speaking of freedom? * It is not safe being a law-abiding citizen among criminals, or to speak one's mind among the mindless. # Wednesday, February 4, 2009 **************************************************** WITH OLD AGE COMES OBJECTIVITY ************************************************ With old age comes objectivity, which means the more aware I become of our failings, beginning with my own, the more clearly I see the strategies we employ to cover them up. We survived because we were divided. It is all the fault of the bloodthirsty barbarians that surround us. There is nothing wrong with us. It's all the fault of the rotten world in which we are condemned to live. Had we lived in a civilized world, we would have been a role model to all nations. As for our critics, beginning with Naregatsi: all they do is project their rotten problems on the rest of us because misery like company. Hence our fondness for massals and vodanavors like “Yes im anoush Hayastani” and the eternal snows of Mt. Ararat. Between “once there was and was not” we have a marked preference for “was not,” at the end of which three golden apples will fall and we will live happily ever after. #

Thursday, January 29, 2009 **************************************************** THE BLAME-GAME ************************************************ What makes the blame-game irresistible to charlatans like Governor Blogojevich of Illinois is that it allows them to portray themselves as morally superior even when irresponsible, corrupt, greedy, and guilty as hell. One important difference between Blogojevich and our own wheeler-dealers is that no one died as a result of the Governor's misconduct. Even more important: Americans have a justice system and a legal maneuver known as impeachment. Do we even have a word for it? And if we do, when was the last time anyone heard it? Which may explain why very soon Illinois will be rid of Blogojevich but we will continue to be at the mercy not of one Blogojevich but a whole gang of them. * When our speechifiers and sermonizers speak of unity, they remind me of wolves who would like to see sheep gathered in a single enclosure as opposed to being scattered all over the forest. * The comments of our Turcocentric ghazetajis sometimes read like memoranda to a non-existent foreign office staffed by invisible bureaucrats anxiously waiting for their input and advice. * At one time or another I have been accused of all those things that I have exposed and ridiculed, including fascism, racism, Antisemitism, anti-intellectualism, and intolerance. I don’t mind pleading guilty to the charge of intolerance: I am indeed intolerant of stupidity and ignorance parading as knowledge and wisdom. I am also intolerant of greed, double-talk, tribalism, chauvinism, yes-men, Ottomanism, Stalinism, cowardice, treason, and arrogance. If by being tolerant of these things I will be a better Armenian, I say, No thanks! I’d much rather be an honest human being. # Friday, January 30, 2009 **************************************************** THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME ************************************************ With unemployment soaring everywhere, many Armenians may decide to return to the Homeland, get organized, and throw the rascals out. Wishful thinking on my part? I am not sure. Such a movement has already started in France and Russia, and I expect any day now America may follow. * I am so used to being insulted by readers that I feel ill at ease when one of them is kind to me. And when I insult a reader I expect him to say it comes with the territory and to forget about it, as opposed to holding a grudge for ninety-nine years. But I guess that too comes with the territory – that is, unforgiving Armenians with the memory of elephants and the venom of seven Turkish vipers. * Anti-intellectualism has been a constant in our history because it allows hoodlums the luxury of looking down on their betters and assuming a morally superior stance on the grounds that God and Country are on their side. * They rise in defense of God and Country. As for me, I rise only in defense of that most uncommon of all human faculties: common sense. * Everything I write is an answer to a specific question, objection, or criticism. And yet, some of my readers complain that I ignore them. I suspect what these readers want is not answers but attention, flattery, propaganda, and lies. To them I say: It’s been a pleasure disappointing you. # Saturday, January 31, 2009 **************************************************** BIG LIES ************************************************ Dupes and fools are the backbone of a nation because they are willing to kill and die in the name of a Big Lie. * Between a Turkish friend and an Armenian enemy I would choose a Turkish friend. Who in his right mind wouldn't? Many Armenians alive today owe their life to Turkish friends, and many victims of the Genocide, including some of our most beloved writers and poets, owe their death to Armenian traitors. * We know the family trees of royal dynasties but not of the masses, to which most of us belong. And the leaders, elites, and top dogs of all nations are, like Obama, mutts. * Turks call themselves Turks because they have been brainwashed to believe they are Turks by men who were not themselves Turks. We are all products of mixed marriages. * The Byzantine Empire was Greek but some of its greatest emperors and generals were of Armenian descent. The so-called Ottoman Empire that succeeded it was as much Greco-Armenian as Turkish. Most of our own kings and generals were imported talent. * At the turn of the last century, the kings and queens of Europe were related to Queen Victoria and to one another; that did not prevent them from fighting a world war that was meant to end all wars (another Big Lie) but resulted in the bloodiest war in the history of mankind. * Germany's most dangerous enemies were neither the Russians nor the French but the Nazis (from “national socialism”), in the same way that Russia's greatest enemies were the Bolsheviks, whose supreme leader was a Georgian, whose belief system was based on the theories of a German Jew. * World history is full of Big Lies like that one and the Biggest of them all is that political leaders are selfless servants of the people and their number one priority is not number one but the welfare of their subjects. #

Sunday, January 25, 2009 **************************************** SOME NOTES ON THE ARMENIAN PSYCHE ************************************************** Let me begin with a warning to the reader: I don't understand everything, neither do I claim to have truth on my side. I write as I do because those who understand everything or know the truth are either silent or have failed to convince all of us. Therefore, consider what follows only as fragments from a work in progress. * Why are Armenians mean to one another? What is at the root of our dogmatism, mutual intolerance, and divisiveness which have made of us perennial losers and underdogs? Puzant Granian once quoted to me a teacher of his who used to say, “There is a Turk in all of us.” This may suggest Armenians are not harmless Saroyanesque clowns whose sole aim in life is to entertain and amuse odar audiences, but more like carnivores who “survive by cannibalizing one another” (Zarian). * We are divided because we lack a common pool of values, customs, traditions, and language. We have as many as 43 dialects, not all of them mutually comprehensible. We might as well be foreigners and barbarians (the Greek word for foreigners) to one another. * Solidarity is a function of the leadership not of the people. Where leaders disagree, people quarrel. * Our conquerors divided and ruled us for so many centuries that divisiveness has entered our DNA and become the central component of our identity. * For millennia we took it from barbarians because we had no choice in the matter. We now have a choice and not only we refuse to take it but we also feel liberated enough to verbally slaughter anyone who dares to disagree with us. * In his LAMENTATION, Naregatsi (our Dante/Shakespeare) explains that like all men we too are walking encyclopedias of failings (or sins). The only way to come to terms with this fact is by becoming aware of it in the hope that the reality principle (or God) will reward us with understanding, forgiveness, acceptance, and serenity. It follows, when a fellow Armenian arouses the worst in us, we should be grateful to him for making us aware of the Turk within, for, according to Freud, the aim of civilization is to make the unconscious conscious. * God bless you and God bless the divided tribes of Armenia. # Monday, January 26, 2009 **************************************************** ON THE FALLACY OF DOGMAS ************************************************ In the USSR the economy was controlled; in the U.S. it was free. Both went bust. This may suggest a number of things, among them: (one) all systems are open to abuse and corruption, and no system is foolproof; (two) sooner or later all dogmas are exposed as fallacies by the reality principle; (three) more often than not crises are created by experts or self-assessed superior intellects; (four) the stronger an opinion, the weaker its foundation in truth; (five) to know all there is to know about a specific academic discipline does not mean to know more about life; (six) next time you run into someone who knows better, consider the possibility that his superior knowledge may be inferior to your ignorance; (seven) a political party will have a better chance to survive if its party line is a zigzag; (eight) when it comes to their own expertise, all experts are optimists. # Tuesday, January 27, 2009 **************************************************** REPLIES ************************************************ “I disagree with you because I have more than one bishop, historian, and professor on my side.” I could always claim to have God on my side (“A house divided against itself cannot stand”) but I refuse to take the name of the Lord in vain. * “Has it ever occurred to you that a divided house may have a better chance to survive because if one half perishes the other may continue to live and prosper?” Maybe so but let's see if this theory applies to us. Once upon a time we had vibrant communities in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, how many of them survive today? And let's consider the Armenian-American diaspora: judging by its rate of intermarriage (80% I believe) and assimilation, the consensus is it may not make it to the next century. * “The Diaspora may perish, but the Homeland will live!” If in the Diaspora we have a high rate of assimilation, in the Homeland they have a higher rate of exodus. I have heard it said that the only people who don't want to emigrate are the cops. * “We have the leadership we deserve.” No one deserved the likes of Sultan Abdulhamid II, Talaat, and Stalin, not even our leaders. * “I believe in the immortality of the nation because Armenians are men of faith.” Faith is not enough. We must also do what must be done. Which means mutual tolerance, solidarity, dialogue, compromise, consensus, and above all respect for human rights, including that of free speech. If our bishops, historians, professors, and pundits don't believe in free speech, even He, whose name I refuse to to take in vain, and all His angels and archangels cannot save us. # Wednesday, January 28, 2009 **************************************************** VICTIMS ************************************************ No one, not even Armenians, are interested in Armenians as human beings, only as victims – victims of massacres, earthquakes, wars, and starvation. Whenever Armenians are mentioned in the odar press, the chances are it will be in connection with Turkish criminal conduct during World War I. Armenians as victims. Speaking for myself as a human being rather than as an Armenian, I say enough of this miserabilism! Enough of our status as perennial victims. What could be more repellent than pity? * An old friend whom I have not seen or exchanged a single word in fifty years comes to see me. He comes armed with a fat dossier outlining his economic plan. He wants to improve conditions of life in the Homeland. Someone must have told him as a writer I may be in a position to introduce him to benefactors. He goes away a thoroughly disappointed man. * Once when I expressed a pedestrian wish to a woman (Armenian), she was outraged. “You are a writer!” she said. Did she want a sonnet? I have never written a sonnet in my life. On a good day and with a little bit of luck and daring, I may manage a third-rate haiku, but that's as far I am prepared to go. Even a fourth-rate sonnet I consider altogether beyond my ambitions and capabilities. * A writer? An Armenian writer? What could be more contemptible! I am only a human being who does some scribbling on the side. If you find what I say irrelevant I suggest you read our writers, who, you may be interested to know, were also victims of both foreign and domestic tyrants. #

Thursday, January 22, 2009 **************************************** JINGOISM ************************************************** “If I love my country I am justified in hating those of my countrymen who do not share my views.” * “If I speak in the name of patriotism it means my heart is in the right place, which also means no one can challenge my views, unless of course they are willing to make themselves vulnerable to charges of anti-Armenianism, pro-Ottomanism, and treason, which, as everyone knows, happens to be a crime punishable by death, and rightly so.” * “Since our failings are human failings shared by all of mankind, we should stop bitching about them.” It follows, exposing incompetence, intolerance, corruption, greed, and divisiveness, among other failings, is classified as bitching, which common sense tells us, is unmistakable evidence of anti-Armenianism. * According to an old Jewish saying, “Some people are such nobodies that when they go out of a room it feels like someone came in.” Something similar could be said of the jingoist arguments mentioned above. No matter how often they are contradicted and rejected they are voiced again and again as if they were gospel truths. * Armenians are a strange breed indeed: they can take centuries of subservience and brutal oppression but they can't stand straight talk. They believe in freedom but not in free speech. Figure that one out if you can. # Friday, January 23, 2009 **************************************** DZOUR NESDINK, SHIDAK KHOSSINK ************************************************** Those who oppose free speech operate on two assumptions: (one) free or uncontrolled or unsupervised speech will inevitably lead to verbal abuse; and (two) they are themselves infallible when it comes to drawing the line that separates freedom from abuse. History tells us these two assumptions have been more open to abuse than free speech, and more crimes have been committed in the name of censorship than in the name of free speech. * In the same way that war is diplomacy by other means, genocide is censorship by other means. * Freedom without free speech is a fascist illusion. * No matter how hard I try I cannot agree with a belief system or ideology that legitimizes the violation of someone's fundamental human rights. * It is my ambition to speak of reality. Let others speechify, sermonize, and propagandize about their pet abstraction. A nation that does not have its feet firmly planted in reality is a nation that may survive (in the same way that animals in a zoo survive) but cannot live. Survival is life to the same degree that slavery is freedom. * Flaubert said: “Everything must be learned, from reading to dying.” And for an Armenian, engaging in dialogue with a fellow Armenian. * I preach but I don't always practice what I preach. When the other day I read that a member of this group wanted to have his name removed because he was “too busy,” my first uncensored thought was, “Busy doing what? -- beside pulling his dick.” Immediately I decided to keep this nasty thought to myself, and if I write it down now for everyone to see it's because I want to underline the discrepancy between theory and practice. I offer it not as a justification but as an explanation. * To be a good Armenian is not the same as being a good human being, and I'd much rather deal with a good human being than an Armenian who considers himself la crème de la crème. * And here is a rule without a single exception: An Armenian who considers himself la crème de la crème doesn't even qualify as la crème de la scum. # Saturday, January 24, 2009 **************************************** DEMOCRACY ************************************************** Power does not mean imposing your will on others. Power means responsibility, accountability, and service. Politicians are not our lords and masters or highnesses and excellencies, but our servants. They do not represent God on earth but the will of the people, and the people is not an abstraction but you and me. The more power they have, the greater their burden of responsibility and accountability. I say these things because I had an Armenian education and I was not taught any of it. You might say, I enjoy sharing my discoveries. If there are those who are not aware of these things it may be because it took mankind millions of years to formulate them, and after having formulating them it took many more centuries of strife to realize them. That doesn't mean all power structures today are democratic. Far from it. As a matter of fact, undemocratic regimes today outnumber democracies, and even more to the point, the temptation of tyranny and fascism is a constant in all democracies. * How long before we reject the Ottoman and the Soviet from within us and are born again as human beings? * If I speak in the name of common sense and decency, am I then an enemy of the people who should be insulted and silenced? If you disagree with me it must be because you have a better explanation. If you do, why don't you let me know what it is and I will be more than happy to make it mine. * Remember, a good Armenian is first and foremost a good human being and he would be recognized as such not only by those who agree with him but also by those who disagree. #

Sunday, January 18, 2009 **************************************** AGAINST DOGMATISM ************************************************** A doctor in Australia speaking of people in isolated villages: “You must always have a translator with you because when they don't understand a question, they say yes.” It is the same with underdogs everywhere. They think it is safer to say “yes, sir!” even when they are told to drop their pants and bend over. We said yes to Christianity; we said yes to atheism under the Soviets; and in the Ottoman Empire some of us said yes to Islam. We said yes to capitalism in the Diaspora and yes to communism in the Homeland. And today we say yes to our bosses, bishops, benefactors, and their assorted gangs of neo-commissars and "mi kich pogh" panchoonies. * A famous Armenian soprano speaking of a Gomidas love song during a radio interview: “Armenians are shy.” “You mean coy.” “No, shy.” “You are not shy!” We like to think, since most odars, not to say Armenians, are ignorant, we can say anything we want about Armenians and get away with it; and it comes as a shock when we are contradicted. * “To know is to remember,” Socrates used to say. It follows, to remind is to teach. * No matter what you say, there will be those who disagree with you. Remember, there are still flat-earth theorists and dupes who think Hitler and Stalin were messianic figures. * There are honest disagreements and there are Armenian disagreements. If throughout our millennial history consensus has been with us an unattainable Utopian goal, it’s because our disagreements are seldom honest disagreements. * Honest men with honest disagreements may agree to disagree and thus develop a consensus -- which means working together, as opposed to thinking alike. # Monday, January 19, 2009 **************************************** FROM MY NOTEBOOKS ************************************************** “I don't like making enemies,” a writer tells me. And I cannot help thinking that the only way to avoid making enemies in our environment is by joining them, if only with your silence. * When I was young I trusted and respected my elders. But with old age comes mistrust and suspicion. So much so that whenever I run into an honest man these days I feel like a born-again human being. * Gone are the good old days when a commissar could permanently silence a dissident with a memo or a phone call with three monosyllables: “Shut him up!” Their only weapon now is verbal abuse. But the trouble with insults is that there are only a limited number of them and only a limited number of times they can be repeated. It has happened to me more than once that after repeatedly and almost daily abusing me for a year or two or even more, they have given up and fallen silent. * Obama's greatest achievement so far is that he survived the insults of his adversaries and is now willing to have them as advisers, and this not in the name of a belief system but common sense. * I am not surprised to read the following headline in one of our weeklies: THOSE WHO WERE NOT AFRAID OF SOVIET INJUSTICE ARE NOW AFRAID OF ARMENIAN JUSTICE. * When an Armenian asks you a question, you can be sure of one thing: he knows the answer. # Tuesday, January 20, 2009 **************************************** ENEMIES ************************************************** Emile Littré : “Man is a most unstable compound, and earth a decidedly inferior planet.” * When it comes to religion and politics, the prevalent attitude among leaders towards the masses is: the less they know and understand the better – because then they can be more easily manipulated and misled. As a result, we know more about the dark side of our enemies than they do; and we know less about ourselves than we should. It follows, anyone who dares to say all men are more or less the same, or Turks are our if not brothers than half-brothers is promptly labeled a traitor. * Our enemy, our real enemy, is not the Turk but knowledge, understanding, and objective judgment. Socrates was guilty of exposing the ignorance of his “betters.” Galileo knew something that the scriptures did not. Solzhenitsyn did not think the men in the Kremlin were morally or intellectually superior, he was therefore guilty of objective judgment. As for writers like Zabel Yessayan, Charents, and Bakounts, among others: they were too smart to be taken in by Bolshevik propaganda – though smart in this context does not mean a higher IQ but the ability to use one's common sense and to think for oneself. * Napoleon once said, “A man with ideas is my enemy.” Which may suggest that rulers prefer to rule over the brainless. In their eyes, to expose the lies of their propaganda might as well be a crime against humanity. * The Turks have a saying: “Chok ghareshterma, bokhou chekar.” Freely translated: “Don't get involved (or mix it up too much), you may expose the sh**.” * Those who have dared to confront tyrants have always been a tiny minority, and tiny enough to be almost invisible to the naked eye. # Wednesday, January 21, 2009 **************************************** HISTORY ************************************************** We have advanced from one form of oppression to another accompanied by long-winded sermons and speeches in the name of God and Country. Who speaks in the name of the people? Who dares to see a cause-and-effect connection between our corruption, incompetence, divisiveness or lack of vision and our status as perennial victims? All we contribute to our narrative is lies. Consider our press: most of it is about Turkish criminal conduct and our minor celebrities. Our problems – from massacres to earthquakes – fall on us without warning like thieves in the night. “Mart bidi ch'ellank.” * We like to think, since we are not guilty of genocide, we are not fascists. But to silence dissent or to be deaf to dissenting voices is if not fascism than it is saying yes to fascism. * There is an idiot in all of us, including the most wise. Likewise, there is a killer in all of us, compliments of our crocodilian ancestors. This may explain why sometimes intelligent men are deceived by fools, and decent men are misled by criminal psychopaths; and here, I could make a long list of famous men who supported Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin. #

Wednesday, January 14, 2009 **************************************** BEING ARMENIAN ************************************************** “What's wrong with assimilation?” an assimilated Armenian once asked me, and I could not give him an answer. * In everything I say I speak not as an Armenian but as a human being who has done his utmost to go beyond political, racial, national, or tribal labels. * “You repeat yourself,” a Turcocentric ghazetaji who publishes a weekly anti-Turkish tirade once informed me. And when I said, “How many different ways are there of saying Turks are guilty of genocide?” he insulted me. * An Armenian who gets involved in Armenian affairs acquires two sets of unsettled scores: (one) against Turks, (two) against fellow Armenians who disagree with him. * Armenians use insults like voodoo pins – for long-distance murder. * A friend (may he rest in peace) once delivered the following dictum: “The only way to survive in this world is by adopting a form of insanity.” And I can't help thinking that the words of a dead man have a finality that the living cannot match. * The fate of the book hangs on the first paragraph, the same way that “the fate of the house depends on the wedding night” (Balzac). * Q: “Should I write every day or only when I am inspired?” A: “If you have something to say, every day; otherwise, once or twice a year should be sufficient.” # Thursday, January 15, 2009 **************************************** GETTING AT THE SOURCE ************************************************** The closer you get at the truth, the more enemies you make. * It is in disagreement that an Armenian exposes his true nature. * An intellectual's first enemies are not politicians but pseudo-intellectuals who rise not in defense of god and country but grub and ego. Their role model is neither Abovian nor Zarian but Talaat and Stalin. Their unstated aim is the extermination of the intellectual class. Verbal abuse comes more easily to them then a simple assertion of disagreement. * Sooner or later we must all come to terms with the fact that we belong to a nation that has been victimized not only by foreign but also by domestic enemies, and of the two, the domestic have been more dedicated and persistent. * The hardest thing for an Armenian to admit is that the enemy may not always be the other but himself. Only when we are willing to admit this, may we begin to understand the source of our tribalism and divisiveness. * To those who think I have no right to speak for them, only for myself, allow me to reiterate that I have at no time denied the fact that my analysis of the Armenian psyche is rooted in self-analysis. It is this realization that has saved me from applying for membership in one of our mafias. I have at no time felt the need to join a criminal organization to be a perpetrator. * The miracle is not that we have survived, but that there are still more or less smart and decent human beings willing to identity themselves as Armenian even when they are half-Greek, half-Russian, or half-Jewish. # Friday, January 16, 2009 **************************************** WHAT IS LITERATURE? ************************************************** In his WRITING IN THE DARK: ESSAYS ON LITERATURE AND POLITICS (New York, 2008), David Grossman says, what made him decide to be a writer was the urge to invent stories. I thought of Scheherazade who invented stories in order to postpone her death. One could say that we too, like Scheherazade, write to postpone the death of the nation. But unlike Scheherazade, we don't write to entertain our masters but to expose the lies of their propaganda. This may explain why Scheherazade succeeded in realizing her goal and we have failed. Fascists in Italy, Nazis in Germany, and Bolsheviks in the USSR lied to the people too and they were exposed not by writers (who tried very hard but failed) but by the reality principle. Italy and Germany lost a war and the USSR went bankrupt. How to explain the fact that our lies have had a much longer lifespan? We were a nation1500 years ago and we like to believe we still are. But are we? In the 20th century alone we experienced three genocides, one “red” (in the Ottoman Empire) and two “white” (assimilation in the Diaspora and exodus in the Homeland). We have become a beggar among nations and at the mercy of – in the words of Avedik Issahakian (not exactly a critic or dissident) -- “earthquakes, bloodthirsty neighbors, and brainless leaders.” You may now guess which of these three “curses” (Issahakian's word) have been emphasized by our “brainless leaders” and their propagandists. For every writer that mentions “brainless leaders,” we have dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of academics, historians, ghazetajis, speechifiers, and sermonizers who do their utmost to cover up the corruption, incompetence, and divisiveness of our leaders and to emphasize our “bloodthirsty neighbors and earthquakes.” And here is where intellectuals come in – to uncover that which is hidden from us. I repeat myself? And what do you think our propagandists do? Another question: Has anyone ever complained that our propagandists, ghazetajis, speechifiers, and sermonizers repeat themselves? And what about our panchoonies? How many different ways are there of saying, “Mi kich pogh oughargetsek.” To those who say, notwithstanding our prophets of doom and gloom, we have endured and we shall continue to endure, I ask: What if most of us, especially the best and the brightest, did not endure and will not endure? # Saturday, January 17, 2009 **************************************** DIARY ************************************************** A Palestinian mother in Gaza: “My children can no longer play in the street.” A suggestion: Why don't they take their damn war somewhere like Sahara or the Gobi desert? * Memo to myself: “Depressing thoughts are carcinogenic agents. You think too much about Armenians.” * My dissenting views are so extreme, it seems, that even our dissenters disagree with me. * If our past were a poem, it would be a lamentation to some, and a triumphal march to others. * When a reader insults me, I think, at least he has read and reflected on what I have written, and that's good enough for me. Beggars can't be choosers. * It is widely known among citizens of a democracy that politics is the second oldest profession and that in many ways it resembles the first. Fascists agree but they think this does not apply to them. #

Sunday, January 11, 2009 **************************************** MEGALOMANIA ************************************************** Our public library (kpl.org) has acquired a new paperback edition of MEIN KAMPF. They have discarded some of my favorite books – among them Tolstoy's HADJI MURAD, Lesley Blanch's SABRES OF PARADISE, Klaus Mann's autobiography, and Joachim Maass's THE GOUFFE CASE – but retained Hitler, and they say crime doesn't pay. * In my teens and early twenties when I wanted to read everything from A to Z, I also gave Hitler's KAMPF and Marx's KAPITAL a try, but I no longer remember if I finished them. It is easy to start reading a book but difficult finishing them. Of the dozen or so books that I borrow from the library every week I may or may not finish reading one or at most two. Like Sartre (“I'd much rather read a crime novel than Wittgenstein”) I'd rather read an entertaining second-rater than a ponderous big shot who takes himself seriously and expects to be taken seriously. * Taking oneself seriously: that's another one of our maladies. A reader once said to me, “Maybe the writers you quote (from Khorenatsi to Zarian) failed because they went about it the wrong way.” There is no limit to our megalomania – from the turn-of-the-century revolutionaries in the Ottoman Empire (“frogs trying to rape and elephant”) to Turcocentric ghazetajis today parading as defenders of the faith and saviors of the nation. Which is one reason why I hesitate to identify myself as a critic or a dissident or even a writer. I feel more comfortable calling myself a "sh** disturber.” # Monday, January 12, 2009 **************************************** ON PROGRESS ************************************************** We are a nation of small potatoes ruled by cabbages who pretend to be kings. * My morning paper informs me that, according to a watchdog agency, “democracy declined significantly in Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan and Moldova.” * We like to think of ourselves as progressive, but the truth is progress has never been our most important product. At the turn of the last century our political parties were run by intellectuals. Today they are run by businessmen, that is to say, by bottom-feeders whose greatest concern is the bottom line. If that's progress, it's more like the progress of a disease. In whatever we have done, we have followed our masters, be they Turks or Russian – not the two brightest stars in the firmament of democratic rule and progress. * I write as I do because I don't care for the sound of my own voice. I was brought up to be a narcissist. I now see more merit in self-loathing. * If I were a success, I wouldn't write as I do because I would do my utmost not to bite the hand that lays the golden egg. * Where a part-time janitor makes more money than a full-time writer, there will be an abundance of recycled crap and a total absence of ideas. * It is extremely difficult for me to be civil to individuals who in a different time and place would have been my executioners. # Tuesday, January 13, 2009 **************************************** LET FREEDOM RING ************************************************** Freedom means participation in power. Freedom means telling our fund-raisers: We demand accountability and certification from an independent forensic accountant. Freedom means to treat our political leaders not as masters but as public servants. Freedom means saying “No!” to our bosses, bishops, benefactors, and their assorted hirelings, flunkeys, and brown-nosers without fear of retaliation. Freedom means lessons in civics in our schools, so that our children will grow up learning not only about Turkish atrocities but also about the meaning of democracy and the articles of our constitution. Freedom means saying to our political bosses: Unless you engage in dialogue and develop a consensus we will not support you. Freedom means saying to our bishops: Unless you stop building new churches when old ones remain unattended, we will walk out on your sermons. Freedom means saying to our benefactors: As long as you sink your money into partisan enterprises, thus reinforcing our divisions, we will call you a dupe of charlatans and bloodsuckers and have a good laugh whenever your name is mentioned. Freedom means telling our Turcocentric academics and ghazetajis: Enough is enough! We have had our share of lamentation for our victims and hatred of the perpetrators. Enough massacre editorials, articles, memoirs, monuments, demonstrations, and museums. It is now time that we move on and solve our present problems, among them two “white” genocides – that is, assimilation in the Diaspora and emigration in the Homeland. Have we ever known this kind of freedom throughout our millennial history? The freedom to say “Yes, sir!” is not freedom but subservience, which is another form of slavery. To exchange one form of subservience (be it Ottoman or Soviet) with another is not freedom but a swindle. Wake up, Armenians. You have nothing to lose but your chains! #

Thursday, January 8, 2009 **************************************** FROM MY NOTEBOOKS ************************************************** A Muslim scholar in Canada has written a book critical of Islam and now lives in fear of assassination. * It is only natural for those who are part of the problem to pretend not to see the solution. * Before you attain greatness you must achieve honesty, and of the two, achieving honesty may well be the more demanding enterprise. * Once upon a time, in the Middle Ages, we were celebrated for being good fighters. We still are, but only against the wrong enemy: ourselves. * More often than not, it is in our efforts to appear smart that we expose ourselves as fools. * It makes little sense to support one side against another when both belong to the dustbin of history. * In all political movements, lust for power is invariably hidden behind noble slogans; the greater the lust, the nobler the slogans. # Friday, January 9, 2009 **************************************** OBSERVATIONS ************************************************** To know nothing is better than to know only one side of the story. * Writing history should be more akin to examining our conscience as opposed to emphasizing the positive and covering up the negative. * It is not enough for an Armenian to win an argument, he must also annihilate his adversary. * After three decades of hard work I am now in a position to state with some degree of certainty and pride that I have made more enemies than friends. * Like most men, computers must be programmed in order to think. * It makes little sense keeping up with the Joneses if the Joneses are busy keeping up with the Smiths. * When top dogs don't trust one another, underdogs quarrel among themselves. * You work hard all your life, you make a fortune, you share your fortune with ingrates who insult you: who says benefactors are better off than scribblers? # Saturday, January 10, 2009 **************************************** REFLECTIONS ************************************************** The most visible feature of a nation is not its Golden Age or its celebrities, but its degree of solidarity. No one takes seriously a nation that has been manipulated by the divide-and-rule tactics of other nations for most of its existence. * To alienate a fraction of the people is to amputate the nation. * When I said the greatest insult to a writer is to ignore him, they stopped insulting me. If only I could solve all my problems with the same ease. * “The buck stops here”: the four most un-Armenian words in the English language. * Do I write because I like to annoy the hell out of dupes, bigots and charlatans? Why not? Isn’t that as good a reason as any? * It is not at all unusual for our chauvinists to preach Armenian culture and to practice Ottoman barbarism. #

Sunday, January 4, 2009 **************************************** ON PHONIES ************************************************** There is a tendency in all phonies to see only the phony in others. Face to face with an honest man, they feel ill at ease and their first instinct is to bring him down to their own level. Consider what happened to Zarian, one of the very few authentic giants in our literature. Every mediocrity in both the Homeland and Diaspora accused him of being a KGB or a CIA agent, or even a plagiarist. When Shahnour accused Siamanto of plagiarism, he quoted chapter and verse. When Zarian himself accused Charents of plagiarism, he mentioned Marinetti and Mayakovsky. But as far as I know none of our phonies ever stated whom did Zarian plagiarize. * Once upon a time fascists identified themselves as fascists. Not anymore. Nowadays they speak in the name of nationalism, as if fascism and nationalism were mutually exclusive concepts; and when they silence dissent, they do so as if it were their patriotic duty. * Some of my readers remind me of sharks circling and waiting for traces of blood to appear in the water. * Why do I write as I do? Because no one else does. * If the laws in Dickens's time were applied to American chief executive officers today, a great many of them who now travel in their own private jets would be in jail. It is such a pity that technological progress has become inseparable with moral degeneracy. # Monday, January 5, 2009 **************************************** ON IDEAS ************************************************** Armenians who are obsessed with Turkish criminal conduct are eager to inform me that my ideas lack originality. * The awareness of doing the right thing is better than fame, fortune, and happiness. * If you have only one idea, you have no choice. If you have two ideas, you have a choice. Two is better than one because freedom is better than slavery. * There is a familiar type of Armenian who is cunning enough to know that one way to have the last word is to make himself so repellent that anyone with the minimum sense of hygiene will do his utmost to stay as far away from him as possible. * Annihilating your enemy in the name of victory is the Ottoman way. So is verbally abusing those who disagree with you. * What matters is not how we treat our friends, but how we treat our enemies. * An enemy is one we have failed to convince that it will be to his advantage to be our friend. * To be savaged by fools and fanatics is the surest sign of being on the right path. # Tuesday, January 6, 2009 **************************************** AD HOMINEM ************************************************** Let better men than myself reach for the truth. All I want is avoid being absurd. * History teaches us to recognize blunders when we see them. If history, including our own, continues to be a succession of blunders, it may be because the number of blunders is infinite, the human brain at its most creative in their invention, and self-deception a constant. * Self-deception allows us to be absurd and self-righteous at the same time. * To those who wonder how dare I speak in the name of the nation when no one elected me, my answer is: I speak only as a human being and I don't need majority support to think, feel, and reason as a human being. * A typical Armenian is an open wound and a closed mind. * Anonymous: "A genius has his limitations. A fool does not." * Voicing morally superior sentiments is not the same as being morally superior. If it were, every sermonizer would be a saint. * Commissars of culture and culture are mutually exclusive concepts. # Wednesday, January 7, 2009 **************************************** PARALLEL LINES ************************************************** It is safe to assume that not all chief executive officers in America are crooks. But when the honest ones saw the writing on the wall, spoke up and said, “We can no longer afford private jets, million-dollar salaries, big bonuses, and golden parachutes,” they were silence by the crooks who said, “Relax! We are too big to fail. Uncle Sam will bail us out.” And Uncle did because the easiest thing in the world is to be generous with someone else's money. (I have already read a pundit who called Obama “an empty suit.") * Something similar happened to our revolutionaries in the Ottoman Empire when they were warned they were no better than frogs trying to rape an elephant. To which our revolutionaries replied: “Relax! We are not in this alone. The great powers of the West are on our side. The Turks wouldn't dare!” But the Turks dared because they knew the great powers were not our Uncle Sam and wouldn't spill a single drop of blood to save us. * And speaking of blood: We have shed our blood and we have done so copiously in defense of alien and even hostile empires, among them the Byzantine, the Ottoman, and the Soviet (350,000 dead during World War II alone). If we judge a tree by its fruit, a man by his actions, and a nation's IQ by its history, we may have to conclude that we are not the sharpest knife in the drawer. #

Wednesday, December 31, 2008 **************************************** MY ANSWER ************************************************** Once in a while a gentle reader takes it upon himself to remind me that what I say doesn't apply to everyone because it is based on self-analysis, and that it is wrong to project my own conflicts and contradictions onto the nation. I have at no time denied the fact that my analysis of our complexes is based on self-analysis. In my formative years and for a good fraction of my adult life I was a typical Armenian with all the prejudices, preconceptions, and fallacies that I now enjoy tearing to shreds. Neither have I ever denied that I was a devout believer of every single lie that was foisted on me by our “betters.” It is only very recently that I became aware of our reality as opposed to the fiction in which I lived. To put it differently: I was taught to be a narcissist, and after many years of slumber in a fool's paradise, I woke up one day with the realization that I was neither smart nor honest. If you tell me what a nation needs to achieve greatness is confidence in its own ability to confront and overcome challenges, and that at this point in our history what we need is not my kind of negativism that demoralizes us and turn us into defeatists like myself; I say, that is your perception of what I do based on your status as a dupe, and that to promote liberation from the lies of our propagandists is far from being negative or defeatist. It is, in point of fact, quintessentially positive and invigorating. I further maintain to be enslaved by comfortable lies is as bad as being enslaved by Turks. But to see this clearly you must first extricate your head from the sand in which you have it buried. # Thursday, January 1, 2009 **************************************** LEARNING FROM GENGHIS KHAN ************************************************** The first words on the back cover of Conn Iggulden's historical novel, GENGHIS: LORDS OF THE BOW, are: “After uniting warring clans...” * Once upon a time all empire were a single clan. Their career as empire began when one clan persuaded another to join forces on the grounds that two clans together are less vulnerable to aggression from other clans. * Clans are bad enough. Warring clans might as well be an open invitation to conquerors. * God did not create more Mongols, Chinese, Russians or Americans. If we are few today it's because some of us saw the writing on the wall and switched loyalties. * Let the fool enjoy his folly so that he may be wise, even if wisdom comes at the hour of his death. * When Indians burned widows, did any one of them ever bother to raise the question: “Why don't we ask the widows if they like to be burned?” Civilizations should be judged by the manner they treat the weak and defenseless. * If you want to understand Armenians, don't read their nationalist historians; read instead a history of Armenian literature. The only reason we don't burn writers the way Indians burn widows is that we prefer to ignore them, which amounts to burying them alive. * Because I refuse to share their obsession with massacres and money, they call me negative. One way to be positive in their eyes is to adopt “Yes, sir!” as a mantra. # Friday, January 2, 2009 **************************************** DIVIDING LINES ************************************************** Speaking of his mother, Edward Gorey says in an interview: “She had a stroke when she was about eighty and her entire character changed. All her hypocritical love for humanity vanished.” (ASCENDING PECULIARITY: EDWARD GOREY ON EDWARD GOREY. Interviews by Karen Wilkin, page 95.) This type of dividing line in one's life happens to all of us; and when readers disagree with me violently, I cannot help thinking that their disagreement has not yet reached the line that divides propaganda from reality. When did I change my mind about my fellow Armenians? In my case it was not so much a line but the last straw that broke the camel's back. * As children we should be taught to reflect that every conviction and dogma in our belief system may well be wrong and there may be more merit in their contradictions. That, it seems to me, should be the underlying principle in all educational systems. * In her review of LEFT IN DARK TIMES by Bernard-Henri Levy, Claire Berlinski mentions a Turkish friend of hers who “like most Turks” has been brought up to believe “the Armenians had it coming.” (NATIONAL REVIEW, December 15, 2008, page 32.) * A true sign of insanity, it has been said, is the belief that everyone else is crazy. In my view, another sure symptom of insanity is the belief that the world is run by intelligent men who place the interests of their people and mankind in general above their own and anyone who says otherwise must be nuts. * In a recent issue of the ARMENIAN REPORTER (December 20), there is a remarkable letter to the editor by Ara Sarafian outlining in some detail the present situation of Armeno-Turkish relations, which clearly implies that when it comes to the Genocide issue, our Turcocentric ghazetajis may be doing more harm than good. I urge Ara Sarafian to post this letter on Armenian discussion forums on the Internet. # Saturday, January 3, 2009 **************************************** ON APOLOGIES ************************************************** As a rule governments don't like apologizing for past crimes but they may change their mind when under pressure from their own people, or so we are told in THE POLITICS OF OFFICIAL APOLOGIES by Melissa Nobles, where we also learn: “The Armenians are not going to get an apology any time soon, in spite of a worldwide public campaign, from the Turkish government for the atrocities committed during World War I because most Turks are not prepared to accept that their government bore responsibility.” * The best interview in THE PARIS REVIEW INTERVIEWS, volume I (New York, 2006) is the one with Dorothy Parker, a relatively minor writer; the most boring is the one with T.S. Eliot – a pezzo novanta. Unlike Eliot who speaks only about himself and his work, Dorothy Parker speaks of many things and is never long-winded. * Armenians who vilify Turks and Turks who vilify Armenians don't think of themselves as racists because they assume the whole world knows what bloodthirsty savages Turks are and what nasty, disloyal scum Armenians are. But the whole world knows nothing of the kind and cares even less. To most of the world Turks and Armenians might as well be Hutus and Tutsis. As an Armenian, the only thing I know about Hutus and Tutsis is that they are tribes in Africa. The average Canadian doesn't even know where Armenia is. To him we might as well be Romanians or Arameans. #