notes and comments

[lampron]

Re: elegy

A hundred years ago we were slaves.
We are now slaves of former slaves.
#
#

Ara

Former slaves tend to want to become slave masters

What is the way forward?

Democratic institutions in Armenia are weak - Armenia has no tradition of democracy

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Thursday, July 14, 2011
*****************************************
ON KEMAL (III)
********************
In asserting the reality of the Armenian genocide
I am not relying on Armenian historians and
eyewitness accounts by foreign diplomats and observers,
but Kemal’s own treatment of the perpetrators.
So that when brainwashed Turks call Armenians liars,
they unknowingly also apply the same label on Kemal,
who may indeed have been one
but not in his treatment of the Ittihadist criminals.
The only other alternative is accusing Kemal
of gross incompetence, not to say criminal conduct,
in his persecution, prosecution, and execution
of high-ranking military and political leaders
whose actions were based on the firm belief that
they were following orders and acting
in the best interest of the nation.
Because if these gentlemen were innocent,
as Turkish denialists maintain,
then it goes without saying that
Kemal got away with murder.
#
Friday, July 15, 2011
*****************************************
NOTES / COMMENTS
******************************
Every day something happens to remind me
that I am not the center of the universe
and every day I choose to ignore the evidence.
*
You may have noticed that
people are more willing to help you
if in the process they can also help themselves.
*
Originality: to be unpredictable and inevitable at the same time.
*
Everybody wants to be rich and famous.
I have come to terms with my own obscurity and poverty
because I see no merit in being like everyone else.
*
The ambition of all authority figures is
to appear infallible in the same way that
the ambition of every scarecrow is to terrorize.
*
Freud's grand-daughter is reported to have said:
"The 20th Century produced two major charlatans:
Hitler and Freud."
My first thought:
Her legal claim on the Freud estate
and a fraction of his royalties must have been rejected
by a court of law.
(In this connection see also Aram Saroyan's memoir
of his father, LAST RITES).
#
Saturday, July 16, 2011
*****************************************
RE-READING TOYNBEE
********************************************
ON OUR FAVORITE SPORT:
THE BLAME-GAME
**********************************
“It is always easier both intellectually and morally, to debit one’s ills to the account of some outside agency than to ascribe the responsibility to oneself.”
*
ON UNDERSTANDING
*********************************
“Comprehension sometimes consists in just a correct understanding of questions that are unanswerable.”
*
CONNECTIONS
********************************
“Every human being now alive has links, however tenuous, not only with every one of his contemporaries, but also with every other human being that ever lived.”
*
“In this sense human history is one single seamless web, and any dissection of it is an arbitrary misrepresentation of Reality.”
*
ON WAR
*******************
“It is part of the nature of war, once started, to get out of hand; and many belligerents who have made war ‘justly’ at the start have drifted into commission of injustice before the end of the story.”
*
ON REFORM
***********************
“I do not know of any human society in which drastic social reform has not been overdue at every stage of its history.”
*
ON IRREVERANCE
******************************
“I am convinced that irreverence, where irreverence is due, is one of the cardinal virtues.”
*
ON DEATH
*****************************
“Death limits life’s liabilities. This boon that death confers is supremely valuable, and ought therefore to be immensely consoling.”
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Sunday, July 17, 2011
*****************************************
IDEAS
********************************************
There are synonymous ideas as surely
as there are synonymous words.
Case in point:
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 eyes of the world,
the lower I sink in my own.”
*
People with money assume they are wiser
because if they don’t know or understand something
they can always hire someone who does.
*
I have two kinds of critics:
those who say I am wrong when I am right,
and those who tell me I am useless
and reading me is a waste of time.
Both agree on one thing:
I should be more positive by adopting them
as my role models.
#
Monday, July 18, 2011
*****************************************
NOTES & COMMENTS
********************************************
LIES
***************
The easiest lies to expose
are the ones we have ourselves professed in the past.
*
MACHO ETIQUETTE
*****************************
Hemingway’s last wife writes in a letter that
whenever she wanted to talk to him about a problem,
he would say: "I haven’t got time.
I have to go xxxx now."
*
HONESTY
**********************
If you decide to be honest
be prepared to acquire mortal enemies.
*
KNOWLEDGE
****************
Compared to what we don’t know,
what we know is such a tiny fraction that
we might as well be blind, deaf and dumb.
When Socrates said "The only thing I know
is that I don’t know," he was not being ironic,
he was stating a fact.
#
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
*****************************************
HUBRIS & NEMESIS
********************************************
Nemesis has finally caught up
with Robert Murdoch’s hubris.
We can now look forward
to the disintegration of his media empire
as fervently as the civilized world looked forward
to the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire
in the second half of the 19th Century.
*
My Turkish readers may not be aware of the fact
that at one point their diplomats
offered to apologize for their crimes against humanity
(i.e. the Genocide) provided
no further demands were made on them.
The Armenians rejected the offer
on the grounds that it would allow the Turks
to get away with murder.
*
If a World War III is ever declared,
I have every reason to suspect
the Turks will do to the Kurds
what they did to the Armenians during World War I.
That’s the problem with people
who get away with something.
They invariably come back to get away with more.
Which is what happened within Murdoch’s empire:
first they bribed a lowly cop or bureaucrat
and when they got away with it,
they went all the way to the top --
the head of Scotland Yard and the Prime Minister.
#
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
*****************************************
COMEUPPANCE
********************************************
If Talaat was innocent,
why did he run away to Berlin
where he met the fate of a mad dog?
*
As for Kemal: he died as an alcoholic,
which amounts to saying,
he condemned himself to death
by self-administered alcohol poisoning.
*
If some Turks hate Armenians
it’s because “it is characteristic of the human mind
to hate those he has injured” (Tacitus).
*
If “I think therefore I am,”
it follows
“If I don’t think therefore I am not”
or I exist only on a subhuman level,
which amounts to the same thing.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Thursday, July 21, 2011
*****************************************
TWO QUESTIONS,
ONE ANSWER
********************************************
Can you name a country
whose most profitable export has been war?
*
Can you name a country
whose greatest source of wealth has been
the indiscriminate slaughter of unarmed civilians?
*
The trouble with brainwashing people is that
you may be successful only with your own.
*
One reason Kemal has acquired heroic stature in Turkey
is that his predecessors were infinitely worse.
*
Wilkie Collins: “Nothing in this world is hidden forever.”
*
Sooner or later all Big Lies are exposed.
*
There are no hiding places from the truth.
#
Friday, July 22, 2011
*****************************************
RIFF-RAFF
********************************************
In my youth I was so abysmally naïve
that I believed I could count
on the support, friendship, and understanding
of the very same individuals
who were in the business of oppressing the people.
But then, in what way was I different from Zohrab,
one of the smartest Armenians that ever lived,
who thought he could count on Talaat’s friendship?
*
Man will always invent an ideology or belief system
that will justify criminal conduct.
Which amounts to saying,
he will find a way to speak in the name of god
and do the devil’s work.
#
Saturday, July 23, 2011
*****************************************
RIFF-RAFF / II
********************************************
A headline in my morning paper reads:
“James Murdoch on hot seat.”
And why?
Because he may have lied
when he testified before a parliamentary committee.
So what else is new?
Everybody lies – from muggers to presidents.
If everybody lies, it follows,
nobody sees anything wrong in lying to liars.
That’s why Turks have been lying for a hundred years
and they will continue to lie to the end of time.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Sunday, July 24, 2011
*****************************************
ON POWER
********************************************
Power means first and foremost
the power to justify that which cannot be justified –
from dividing the community
to committing genocide.
*
Power allows the insane to accuse the sane of insanity.
*
My answer to those who question my habit
of posting critical comments on open forums:
If I am wrong, they can correct me.
If they are wrong, they should correct themselves.
*
Power means to view disagreement as a capital offense.
*
The first and most important measure
of all powerful men
is to convince their adversaries that
the best defense is subservience.
But I believe Dostoevsky when he said
even the weakest man
has unimaginable reserves of power within him.
*
There are no new ideas.
All we can do is to mention the forgotten,
to emphasize the marginalized,
and to expose the absurd.
#
Monday, July 25, 2011
*****************************************
THE LESSONS OF OSLO
********************************************
Life is unpredictable and trying to predict it
is a waste of time.
*
Never underestimate the barbarism of the civilized.
*
Sometimes our worst enemy is one of us.
*
There is a Turk in all of us –
and Norwegians are no exception.
#
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
*****************************************
COMMENTS
********************************************
How to win an argument Turkish style:
Make yourself so absurd and repellent that
your adversary will give up in disgust.
*
I look forward to the day
when I will be objective enough to view Armenia
as a foreign country and my fellow Armenians
not as my brothers but as foreigners.
*
“He doesn’t believe what he says”
is better than “he believes what he says.”
I’d much rather deal with a liar
than with someone willing to kill and die
in the name of a belief system –
that is to say, a Big Lie.
#
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
*****************************************
THE LAW OF THE JUNGLE
********************************************
When asked why he hates Germans,
a xxx is reported to have replied:
“I have seven million reasons.”
We may not have as many reasons,
but we have another: we are called liars
because we dare to speak the truth.
*
Talaat appears to be the role model of all war criminals.
First they run away to a foreign country
(as I write there are thirty of them in Canada alone)
and when they are identified, arrested, and brought to justice,
they plead not guilty.
They see themselves as patriots, not killers.
Like wolves, they view the slaughter of sheep
as an inevitable result of evolution.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Thursday, July 28, 2011
*****************************************
TURKS, KEMALISM,
& DEMOCRACY
********************************************
Unlike fascists in Italy who believed
“Mussolini ha sempre ragione,”
Turks don’t say “Kemal is always right!”
but they think and live as if he were.
He isn’t! -- if only because Kemalism and democracy
are mutually exclusive concepts.
*
Turks: who are they?
The unvarnished and de-Kemalized answer is:
a bunch of thoroughly mongrelized Mongols
who have been brainwashed to classify themselves as Turks,
in the same way that Armenians and Kurds within Turkey
are classified as “Christian Turks”
and “Mountain Turks” respectively.
I have met many Armenians from Turkey
but none of them has ever identified himself as a Christian Turk;
and I suspect the only time a Kurd identifies himself
as a “Mountain Turk” is when he applies for a job
in the civil service.
*
I live in Canada and I am a Canadian citizen
but whenever I am asked to identify my nationality,
I say “Armenian” and no one sees anything remotely disloyal
or questionable in that.
*
When Armenians build a community center in Canada,
they call it an Armenian Community Center.
What do Armenians and Kurds call
their community centers in Turkey?
But perhaps the right question is:
Are they allowed to build such centers?
*
It seems to me, Kemalist democracy
is more akin to fascism.
#
Friday, July 29, 2011
*****************************************
SOLUTIONS
********************************************
Here are three of them in the form of commandments:
Thou shalt not divide and rule.
Thou shalt not silence dissent.
Thou shalt not speechify and sermonize with a forked tongue.
*
Silencing dissent is a fascist tactic.
Dividing the community is enemy action.
Only deceivers speak with a forked tongue.
*
To my critics I ask:
Which part of what I have been saying
you don’t understand – or rather,
you pretend not to understand?
*
Recent developments in the Middle East suggest
the days of all undemocratic regimes are numbered.
*
That which is whispered today by a single dissident
shall be shouted by a chorus of enraged millions tomorrow.
*
Because we don’t know our history,
we don’t know when we repeat it.
#
Saturday, July 30, 2011
*****************************************
SEPARATING FACT FROM FICTION
********************************************
Nationalist historians, religious leaders, and
a politically controlled educational system conspire
to create not human beings
with the ability to think for themselves,
but dupes who parrot lies
and are willing to kill and die
in the name of God and Country.
And when someone comes along
and exposes this simple fact,
he is labeled an enemy of the people
who fully deserves to be insulted, exiled,
jailed, silenced, or starved.
*
Some of my critics are convinced that
I am a pro-Turkish and anti-Armenian pornographer.
All because I deal with facts as opposed to fiction,
and I speak of reality
as opposed to recycling propaganda.
*
Among fanatics moderation is a risky business,
and among crooks honesty is a capital offense.
*
Sooner or later all belief systems and ideologies
are corrupted by ruthless and power-hungry mediocrities
who tell the people what they want to hear
and do what they want to do
even when what they tell the people is a lie
and even when what they want to do is criminal.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Sunday, July 31, 2011
*****************************************
ON INFALLIBILITY
********************************************
As the number of blunders goes up,
so do assertions of infallibility.
*
The greatest mistake is to think we are right
and those who disagree with us wrong.
*
Prove an infallible man wrong
and make an enemy for life.
*
Infallible men don’t learn
because they are in the business of teaching.
*
On the Genocide issue
Americans see Turks as reflections of themselves
and Armenians as white niggers.
*
Our political and religious leaders
praise solidarity with words
and bury it with actions.
*
Nothing can be transparently more dishonest
than to expose the crimes of our enemies
and to cover up our own blunders.
*
One of the most important functions
of all educational systems is to identify the enemy.
*
What holds a nation together
is the threatening presence of the enemy.
*
If the enemy dies,
so does the glue that holds the nation together.
*
The unspoken aim of all organized religions and ideologies
is to legitimize double-talk:
to say one thing and do the opposite.
*
I don’t write for the enjoyment of the reader.
Neither do I write to flatter.
I write to point out the fact that
no one is infallible,
we all make mistakes,
and the beginning of all wisdom is acknowledging them.
#
Monday, August 01, 2011
*****************************************
ON COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS
& FALLACIES
********************************************
Readers who know nothing about me
assume just because I criticize Turks
I must be pro-Armenian; or, again,
just because I criticize Armenians
I must be pro-Turkish.
These readers appear to live
in a one-dimensional either/or universe
in which the dominant colors are black and white.
It never even occurs to them that
criticism may be motivated
more by an objective assessment of facts
and less by means of nationalist bias.
*
If you tell me you know and understand
all you need to know and understand,
you give me no choice but to conclude that
your needs must be extremely narrow.
If you tell me reality is an open book to you,
you will corner me into saying
that may be because you read nothing but comic books.
There are more shadows than light in life,
and more shades of gray than black and white.
*
Whenever a historian asserts
he has figured out the past and how it works,
he is immediately attacked by other historians
as well as philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists,
and theologians who inform him in no uncertain terms
that his facts are all wrong,
his assumptions unjustified,
and his conclusions misguided.
*
For more on this subject, see Arnold J. Toynbee’s RECONSIDERATIONS,
volume xii of his STUDY OF HISTORY.
See also the critical fire aimed at Oswald Spengler
by, among others, Toynbee himself in the opus cited above.
*
To my uninformed readers, may I add that
Spengler and Toynbee are two of the greatest historians
of the past century.
May I also add that public opinion is shaped
less by great historians and more
by politicians, propagandists, and ghazetajis
who operate on the assumption that
a nation’s own version of its past is the only true one.
#
Tuesday, August 02, 2011
*****************************************
A TURKISH FRIEND
********************************************
Some Turks appear to be obsessed
with what they did to Armenians during World War I
as surely as some Armenians are.
They are Armenocentric to the same degree
that some Armenians are Turcocentric.
*
I have a Turkish friend
(he may no longer consider me a friend, but I do)
who has written a big book –
the biggest I know on the subject – in which
he attempts to prove that Armenians have
not only invented a genocide and
believed in it for almost a century
but they have also somehow succeeded in convincing
an important fraction of the civilized world,
including one of the greatest historians of all time
and several Nobel-Prize winners
(among them a Turkish one).
*
This friend of mine believes Talaat
was the best friend Armenians had;
and Kemal was a great statesman
who was never wrong (in his own words:
“he was right 99% of the time”).
*
By contrast, I was brought up to believe
Talaat was to Armenians what Hitler was to xxxs.
All wrong! my Turkish friend is eager to inform me.
The only reason Talaat did what he did
is that Armenians returned his friendship
by trying to assassinate him.
But since (I assume) he could not arrest the perpetrators,
he took it out on defenseless civilians.
If attempted assassination were sufficient ground for genocide,
we would have genocides as frequently as soups du jour.
*
As for Kemal being a universally admired statesman
about whom even western historians have written
voluminous biographies:
my good friend may not be aware of the fact that
western historians have also written voluminous biographies
of Hitler and Stalin.
*
To my Turkish friends I say,
if I continue to call you a friend it’s because
(one) I don’t consider disagreement sufficient ground for divorce;
(two) I believe with Gandhi that no man is beyond redemption; and
(three) convictions, even belief systems,
are subject to error and change.
So that I for one will not be surprised in the least
if we become friends once more.
#
Wednesday, August 03, 2011
*****************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
********************************************
Them and us is a misleading classification
because there is a great deal of us in them
and vice versa.
*
To say that a question is unanswerable
is also an answer.
*
To convert to a religion or ideology
is to legitimize one’s status as a dupe.
*
The rich defend their privileges
with the same intensity as the starving search for food.
*
The difference between being infallible and 99% right
is about the same as the difference
between charity and a loan for 99 years.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Thursday, August 04, 2011
*****************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
********************************************
The Chinese said to their poor, “Get rich,”
and they got rich.
The Americans said to their rich, “Get richer,”
and they bankrupted the global economy.
*
You cannot travel on the wrong path
and hope to reach your destination.
*
I know my critics are wrong
when they say what I used to think thirty years ago.
As for critics who speak in the name of God and Country,
they are never right – or they are wrong 99% of the time.
*
Some of the most dangerous criminals
in the history of mankind were political leaders
who were thought of as infallible – or 99% right.
*
Bishops, imams, rabbis:
witch doctors with a college education.
#
Friday, August 05, 2011
*****************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
********************************************
Both Turks and Armenians share in common
an aversion to reality.
Turks believe all talk of genocide is fiction.
When repeatedly warned of the coming catastrophe,
Armenians reacted with disbelief.
“Zohrab effendi is exaggerating,”
was a typical reaction.
Even after the cold-blooded murder
of our ablest men in Soviet Armenia,
our “chic Bolsheviks” in the Diaspora
went on repeating the slogan
“Russians are our big brothers.”
Closer to home,
when I speak of our reality objectively today,
I am told to “Shut the f*** up!”
#
Saturday, August 06, 2011
*****************************************
CRITICS
********************************************
My critics are my best source of inspiration.
They are my bread and butter.
*
Once upon a time we were a progressive nation.
But we lost that under the Sultans and the Soviets.
*
To say all problems can be solved except ours
might as well be a suicide note.
*
Charlatans will prosper as long as there are dupes;
and honest men will be persecuted
as long as there are charlatans.
*
To be smart and to be a dupe
are mutually exclusive concept.
*
To divide and rule has been the foreign policy
of all imperial powers.
As long as we remain divided
we implement the foreign policy of our enemies.
*
Our dividers are as unaware of their genocidal intent
as Turkish denialists.
*
When I was young I sought the approval of my superiors
until I realized they were the scum of the earth.
*
I cannot change the past;
neither can I resurrect the dead.
No one can.
*
To expose present blunders
is to prevent future catastrophes.
That’s why I prefer to write about our reality today
as opposed to past deeds that cannot be undone.
*

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Sunday, August 07, 2011
*****************************************
CRITICS (II)
********************************************
On the day brainwashed dupes begin to agree with me
I will have no choice but to consider a career move
by applying for a job in the sanitation department
-- which may not be much of a move
consisting as it does in collecting trash
as opposed to exposing it.
*
The right word at the right time and place
can make a difference.
I have no doubt about that.
If so far I have made no difference
it may be because I have not yet found the right word;
or, if I have found it,
I have not delivered it at the right time and place.
This is why I intend to keep buggering on
until I hit paydirt.
In the meantime I console myself by saying
if what I say annoys the hell out of some readers,
I must be doing something right.
*
“What Africa needs,” I read today in a commentary,
“is precisely such transmutations of tribal loyalties
to the larger loyalties of nationhood.”
Which simply means, we have no reason to believe
we are ahead of Somalis, Ugandans, and Zulus?
*
The Tea Party in America reminds me of our partisans
willing to drive the nation to bankruptcy
rather than to compromise for the sake of consensus.
*
Compromise and consensus have become dirty words with us
because God and all those who speak in His name
have no use for compromise.
Our partisans confuse ideology with theology…
“and because it was a religious war,
there were no survivors.”
#
Monday, August 08, 2011
*****************************************
ON BELIEF SYSTEMS
********************************************
When it comes to politics and history,
the average man
(this is especially true of Armenians and Turks)
tends to adopt a dogmatic stance.
His views become an integral part of a belief system
and as everyone knows,
the problem with belief systems
and those who hold them is that
they are never wrong –
very much like the Pope of Rome
(in the eyes of Catholics),
Kemal (in the eyes of Kemalists),
Hitler (in the eyes of Nazis),
Stalin (in the eyes of Stalinists),
Mussolini (in the eyes of Italian fascists),
Mao (in the eyes of Maoists),
and last but not least,
Marx (in the eyes of Marxists –
though Marx himself is quoted as having said,
“I am not a Marxist”).
*
I was brought up as a Catholic,
and as a Catholic it never even occurred to me
to question the Pope’s infallibility.
But I changed my mind
the moment I began thinking for myself --
as opposed to saying “Yes, sir!”
to whatever I was told
by my superiors, whom I now consider
the scum of the earth).
*
The problem with believers is that
they suffer from one of the most dangerous
psychological aberrations known to man,
namely, infantilism.
They hate to grow up.
They hate anyone who dares to contradict them.
Above all they hate to think for themselves,
which means, they hate to use that which happens to be
their most valuable possession: their brain.
*
Believing in gods
(there have been ten thousand of them, we are told)
is bad enough.
Believing in men is infinitely worse.
#
Tuesday, August 09, 2011
*****************************************
WHAT A MAN BELIEVES
********************************************
What a man believes is his own business.
It becomes our business
only when his belief system
promotes intolerance,
legitimizes prejudice,
and issues licenses to kill.
*
A belief system that relies on charlatans to exploit dupes
might as well be a criminal conspiracy.
I am not spinning theories and scenarios
based on abstractions.
I am talking about facts and historical reality –
what happened to our parents in the Ottoman Empire,
to our brothers in the Soviet Union;
and what’s happening today
in the Middle East and Africa.
*
“Yes, sir!” may be said to be
the two most dangerous words known to man.
If it weren’t for these two monosyllables,
we would have no organized religions and armies,
that is to say, wars and massacres.
#
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
*****************************************
WHAT'S TO BE UNDONE
********************************************
We like to believe we are eminently adaptable survivors.
There is some truth in that but also a contradiction.
We are so adaptable in fact that in France
we could easily pass for Frenchmen,
in Russia for Russians,
in Greece for Greeks,
in Italy for Italians,
in Israel for xxxs, and so on…and
I have even met Armenians
who could easily identify themselves as Mongols in Mongolia
and get away with it.
As for being survivors:
let us not forget that a great many of us,
especially the best and the brightest,
did not survive – compliments of Talaat, Stalin,
and our Levantine philistines in the Diaspora.
*
And speaking of Levantines:
one of the worst things that happened to us
in the New World is allowing Levantines
to be in charge of our institutions
on the grounds that they are more authentic
and less assimilated Armenians than the average native.
These gentlemen (if you will forgive the overstatement)
have done more harm to the integrity of our communities
than all “social, political, and economic factors
beyond our control” combined.
*
We like to believe we are smart.
Yes, some of us may well be smart,
but only in the marketplace.
Our political I.Q. or the way we conduct our affairs
might as well be negative.
We are as tribal as the most backward
African dysfunctional nation.
Put two Armenians on a desert island
and they will build three churches – the third
being the one they don’t go to.
*
What will save us?
What can save us?
As for as I can see, only prayer –
and I speak as an atheist.
“Our Father who art in Heaven…”
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Thursday, August 11, 2011
*****************************************
DOUBLETALK
********************************************
They say “We don’t need critics,”
because they hate to be exposed as incompetent fools.
*
They say “We need solutions,”
thus admitting so far they have failed to come up with any.
Imagine an economist saying to a street vendor:
“I need a new fiscal policy.”
*
“We don’t need critics!”
Translation: Shut-up!
*
They say they don’t need critics
because they consider themselves beyond criticism.
*
They say they need solutions
as if all of our literature dealt
with the eternal snows of Mt. Ararat,
nightingales serenading the moon,
and the mutual torments of love.
*
You need solutions?
Read Khorenatsi, Raffi, Baronian,
Odian, Zarian, Massikian…
and if you don’t like Armenian writers,
read Greek, Russian, French, English, and American writers,
because in the end they all speak
against ignorance, intolerance, oppression,
incompetence, dishonesty, and doubletalk.
*
“We need solutions!”
I have never heard a speechifier deliver that line in public.
What I have heard again and again and ad nauseam is
“We need your moral and financial support!” –
an obvious variation of the Panchoonie punch line
“Mi kich pogh oughargetsek.”
#
Friday, August 12, 2011
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NOTES AND COMMENTS
********************************************
Just because Turks disagree with us
it doesn’t necessarily follow that everyone who disagrees with us
is a Turk or a Turcophile.
*
If outrage were an argument
we all would be like David Anhaght – invincible.
*
I remember to have read somewhere that
the criminal rate among politicians is much higher
than among ordinary citizens.
If international law were tougher,
most politicians would be in jail.
*
Egocentrism: the misconception that
what we say matters.
*
Turcocentrism: the fallacy that Turks continue to be
in charge of our destiny as a nation.
*
No matter how hard I try
I cannot trust a man who is incapable of speaking
against his own interests.
*
Assad in Syria, Gadhafi in Libya:
the more incompetent and corrupt a leader,
the harder he will cling to power.
Closer to home: how many of our own political leaders
have resigned because they were not equal to the task?
#
Saturday, August 13, 2011
*****************************************
OBSERVATIONS
********************************************
There is a familiar type of loud-mouth
and holier-than-thou superpatriot
whose role models are our revolutionaries
in the Ottoman Empire
who promised heaven and earth
and delivered hell.
That’s the way it is with political leaders,
especially revolutionary political leaders:
the more they promise,
the less they deliver,
and the chances are,
what they deliver is not fit for human consumption.
*
Rhetoric is a euphemism for verbiage
and verbiage is another word for verbal garbage.
If rhetoric were enough,
we could be the mightiest empire in the history of mankind.
*
We have this in common with the xxxs:
history has not been on our side.
Their victory over the Palestinians
and ours over the Azeris have been moral catastrophes.
The xxxs have been accused of behaving like Nazis,
and we have been accused of behaving like Turks.
*
We should teach our children to say:
“I disagree with what you say,
but I will neither raise my voice
nor go down into the gutter to prove you wrong.”
#