notes and comments

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Thursday, August 23, 2012
***************************************
OF DOGS AND FLEAS
*********************************
Where there is abuse of power there will be victims.
Where there are victims there will be victimizers.
Where there are victimizers there will be dissent.
Where there are fascists there will be violations of human rights.
*
Under Stalin we had Stalinists
who were brainwashed to believe
they were not fascists but patriots.
Under Hitler we had pro-Nazi anti-Semites.
And under Putin today we have Putinists.
Even Talaat had his share of Armenian supporters,
among them Zohrab, himself a highly sophisticated
and brilliant intellectual, political leader, diplomat and writer.
*
Sometimes I am asked:
What would you have done in their place?
-- meaning Armenians in fascist regimes.
My answer: I don’t know.
Very probably I would have done
what they did – i.e. taken the easy and safe way out:
be a Nazi under Hitler, a Stalinists under Stalin, and so on.
But having done so I wouldn’t expect future generations
to look up to me as a hero or a role model
or a lover of freedom and a defender of human rights,
or a noble specimen of humanity.
*
The problem with fascists is that
they dig their own graves with their own hands
and expect the rest of the world to look up to them
as morally superior.
*
I don’t spin theories.
I speak of historic reality.
If you lie down with dogs,
you will get up with fleas.
#
Friday, August 24, 2012
*************************************
“KILL A COMMIE FOR CHRIST”
******************************************
The aim of philosophy is to introduce meaning
into a meaningless world.
The aim of religion is to introduce cannibalism.
Remember: no one has ever killed anyone
in the name of Socrates or Spinoza.
*
What makes the 1% smart is greed.
What makes the 99% dumb is cowardice.
*
The bloodthirsty disposition of the few
and the cowardice of the many:
there you have it – an abridged history of mankind.
*
Trying to make a good impression on others
by pretending to be better than we are
might as well be an admission of inferiority.
#
Saturday, August 25, 2012
*************************************
POLITICS 101
*************************
If a political leader cannot see the coming catastrophe,
what is he good for? – besides making bombastic statements
about past achievements?
*
We are so hungry for past achievements that
we even brag about being the first nation in the 20th century
to be targeted for genocide.
Has anyone ever bragged about being run over by a truck?
*
Once upon a time I too was a patriot.
I looked up to our leaders
the way Turks look up today to Ataturk,
the way the Soviets looked up to Stalin
and Germans to Hitler.
But I am no longer a child.
*
Propaganda explains nothing.
Its sole aim is to convince and persuade
by avoiding all explanations.
*
Nationalism is a game in which
victory invariably goes to the strong,
never to the just.
*
I am against chauvinism for two reasons:
when we emphasize the positive in us
and cover up the negative,
we run the risk of deceiving ourselves.
But when we do the same to others,
we may make friends,
and we need friends more than we need
self-satisfied blind men
who pretend to have 20/20 vision.
*
If our leaders could not see through
the likes of Talaat, Stalin, Hitler,
and more recently, Assad,
they might as well have been blind,
and “when the blind lead the blind
both shall fall into the ditch,”
which is exactly where we are today – the ditch,
compliments of our “betters.”
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Artashes: many thanks for your constructive criticism. greatly appreciated. you are a good armenian! i hope one of these days you will run for office. i wish you all the best.

[Artashes]

Re: elegy

Artashes: many thanks for your constructive criticism. greatly appreciated. you are a good armenian! i hope one of these days you will run for office. i wish you all the best.

I'm glad you took my words as constructive critisism as that was how they were meant. I also assume you took them with a grain of salt.
I find many of your word both insightful and pointed, but not all(obviously).
I've had many offices(bathrooms) in my day. Generally after eating "Maria's" tacos I have "run"for office but of course that was none politicle. As you stated -- if you lay down with dogs etc -- so I wouldn't run for politicle office because of the flea factor.
I shall not contend with you anymore Ara and only wish you well.
To paraphrase Ara -- if I never ask to send me money please don't let that constrain you from doing so.
Artashes

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Sunday, August 26, 2012******************************************* CONFESSIONS OF AN EX-MORON********************************************* *** One of the worst things that can happen to a man is to be dependent on the charity of swine. If you have never been there, consider yourself the luckiest man on earth.*There is more hatred than love in what I write, or so I am told. To which I say, surely I can’t be the only game in town. There must be many others more favorably disposed towards our “betters.” Let them be the good cops to my bad cop.*For 600 years we were dependent on the charity of swine. We were even grateful and loyal to them. Even after they legally abducted, converted, and brainwashed our boys to kill and die in their imperialist wars; even after they raped our daughters and used them as concubines and xxxxxs, our gratitude and loyalty never wavered. On the eve of the Genocide they called us their “most loyal ethnic minority.” What did that get us, may I ask? So you still think if I am kinder to our swine they will have a better chance to see the light and change their ways?*If our “betters” go about their business with the shameless arrogance of bloodthirsty oppressors it may because they know something we don’t know, namely: if they control the educational system and the press they can convince even the dumbest people on earth to think they are the smartest. I speak from experience. Even as I went about committing some of my worst blunders, I did so with the awareness that as the offspring of the smartest nation on earth I could do no wrong.#Monday, August 27, 2012************************************** FROM MY NOTEBOOKS***************************************As soon as I am tempted to take myself seriously one of my patriotic readers takes it upon himself to remind me that no one gives a damn about what I think or say. I am grateful to these readers. One of the worst things that can happen to an Armenian writer is to think that like the rest of mankind he deserves to live.*Even the smartest Armenian will speak like an idiot if he has been brainwashed as a child.*Love is like alcohol: after intoxication, hangover; after blissful harmony, ulcer; after heaven, hell.#Tuesday, August 28, 2012********************************** CHARLATANS*********************To see the invisible and to understand the incomprehensible: we all share that ambition, but somewhere along the line some of us give up and pretend to be satisfied with answers fabricated by charlatans – popes, imams, rabbis who, unable to convince one another, brainwash defenseless children in the name of education.*We have the rare gift of saying a great many things except that which must be said. *The brainwashed cannot speak for themselves.*Fascism cannot be defeated with arguments. It took a world war to defeat fascism and even then it was only a temporary victory. There are more fascist regimes today than there are democracies, and there are fascists even in democracies. They may not call themselves fascists but they are as fascist as the fascists under Mussolini who was said to be “always right” (“Mussolini ha sempre ragione”)very much like popes, imams, and rabbis.#Wednesday, August 29, 2012************************************** RATS****************** We now know something we didn’t know until last night: When “Mrs. 1%” fell sick “Mr. 1%” took good care of her. It follows, the 1% know how to take care of their own and make it look like they do this out of Christian charity and compassion.*Fascism may also be defined as the encounter of useful idiots with moral morons.*I have every reason to suspect communists of all nations now pray for a Republican victory because then the chances of a Russian-style revolution in America may be greatly improved.*Writes David Brooks in THE NEW YORK TIMES: “Romney attended Harvard, studying business, law, classics and philosophy, though intellectually his first love was always tax avoidance.”*One of my favorite cases of mixed metaphors goes something like this: “Mr. Speaker, I smell a rat; I see him forming in the air and darkening the sky; but I’ll nip him in the bud.”#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Thursday, August 30, 2012
*************************************
BULLIES
***********************
In any given group victims outnumber their bullies;
and yet, bullies are allowed the freedom to victimize.
*
It took slaves and workers long centuries
to unite against their masters and exploiters
only to develop their own set of bullies –
more tyrannical, more ruthless, more bloodthirsty.
*
Why did it take women thousands of years
to assert their rights?
Even as I write these lines today
most women spend more time, money and energy
to make themselves more desirable to their oppressors
than to develop the kind of solidarity
that will give them the strength to assert equality with men.
*
And finally, consider the 99% versus the 1%.
In an enlightened society the 1% would probably be in jail;
and yet, they are allowed the freedom to sermonize and speechify
in the name of God and Country,
or freedom and prosperity.
*
One may be justified in suspecting that
what motivates most men and women
is not common sense and decency
or even self-interest but
cowardice, greed, and ignorance.
#
Friday, August 31, 2012
*************************************
DECEPTION
************************
Don’t believe everything you are told.
Believe even less everything you read.
The aim of human communication is deception.
This is not a personal prejudice but a universal truth.
It has been said and repeated by far better men than myself,
among them Socrates who went further and said
people (including the 1%) use words
with total unawareness of their meaning.
*
Turks don’t view the Genocide as a tragedy
or a crime against humanity
but as a military victory to celebrate
and brag about among themselves.
(“We taught them a lesson they’ll never forget!”)
*
Armenians don’t view treason and betrayal
as a capital offense but as a necessary means for survival.
To some degree we are all perverts and liars,
and to say otherwise is the height of self-deception.
*
You think I enjoy being the bearer of bad tidings?
I think of myself as an objective observer
and an interpreter of reality.
As for the world at large:
the consensus seems to be:
Let bygones be bygones.
Concentrate on the future.
What’s done is done and cannot be undone.
*
Asvadz medz eh!
Not an original slogan, granted.
But what’s the use of originality if it can fix nothing?
#
Saturday, September 01, 2012
*****************************************
CONFESSIONS OF A
MEGALOMANIAC
************************************************** *
A megalomaniac with an inferiority complex.
That’s me.
I write for Armenians who hate to read
because they know better.
Armenians who brag about
their highly developed instinct for survival
even as they dig the nation’s grave.
Whoever said “At the beginning was the word,
at the end garbage,” sure knew what he was talking about.
*
Neither Khorenatsi nor Naregatsi,
neither Raffi nor Zarian were successful in toppling
the thick impenetrable wall that stands
between our men of contemplation
and our men of action – writers and politicians.
*
“Our political parties have been of no political use to us;
their greatest enemy is free speech”(Zarian).
*
The average Armenian dupe is convinced
nothing and no one can fool him,
not even the combined cunning of seven Genoese
(the smartest Italians, it has been said)
seven Greeks, and seven xxxs.
And yet he is taken in by partisan slogans
whose sole aim is to divide the nation.
*
To divide and rule.
That’s enemy action.
It follows, as night follows day,
and as sunset follows sunrise,
our partisan patriots are our enemies.
Now then, go ahead and contradict that.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Sunday, September 02, 2012
***********************************
SEMANTICS
***********************
Freedom to a bully means
the freedom to bully the weak and defenseless.
Freedom to a racist means
the freedom to view a fraction of his fellow men
as inferior and himself as superior.
To a capitalist it means the freedom to exploit.
To a tyrant it means the freedom
to oppress, enslave, and when necessary, to slaughter.
*
Until very recently, in my own lifetime as a matter of fact,
“Anglo-Saxon democracy” in the Southern States
freedom meant classifying “xxxs, Catholics, and niggers”
as alien, hostile, and undesirable minorities,
that is to say, the scum of the earth.
*
It is not enough to say what must be said;
you must also be careful to say it to the right person.
In that sense, all our writers have been preaching
to the deaf, dumb, and stupid.
*
Freedom is not the only word open to abuse however.
All important words – truth, justice, equality, objectivity…
among many others – can be easily perverted
to mean the opposite of what they really mean.
To a nationalist historian, objectivity means
to cover up the negative and to emphasize the positive,
and if there are no positives, to invent them.
*
To subscribe to an ideology or belief system means
to abdicate one’s common sense and reason,
and to accept a Big Lie as the Truth.
Patriotism in our context means love of one’s country
and hatred of one’s fellow countrymen beginning with those
who dare to disagree with us.
*
And speaking of Catholics:
An Irish priest to a little schoolgirl:
“Tell me, daughter, what do you want to be when you grow up?”
“A prostitute.”
“What’s that you said?”
“I said a prostitute, Father.”
“Thank God for that. I thought you said a Protestant.”
#
Monday, September 03, 2012
****************************************
SEMANTICS (II)
*****************************
Speaking of words and their meanings:
When we speak of nationalism
what we really mean is tribalism.
In our context freedom means only the freedom
to choose a foreign master.
Patriotism means loyalty to a gang of partisans
and “mi kich pogh” panchoonies.
And what is our anti-Americanism
if not disguised pro-Bolshevism?
*
When an Armenian says to another Armenian
“I disagree with you,” what he really means is
my brainwashers disagree with your brainwashers.
Or, it is not we who disagree
but our bosses and bishops.
Which may suggest,
even our disagreements are not our own;
or to paraphrase Zarian,
even our trash has not been picked up from our own backyard.
*
I know I am on the right path
when what I think today
stands in direct contradiction
to what I was brought up to believe yesterday.
*
Zohrab is right: Subservience corrupts everything it touches,
including the noblest virtues.
When near in the end of his life
Charents dared to speak of solidarity
he was careful to hide his message in a poem so cunningly
that only his most loyal friends could locate it, and – you guessed it –
it was one of them who betrayed him to the authorities.
#
Tuesday, September 04, 2012
******************************************
PROPAGANDA AND DISSENT
**************************************
Don’t think of me as someone who knows better.
Think of me as someone who provides a perspective
that contradicts a propaganda line.
*
How to recognize a propaganda line?
Easy! A propaganda line emanates from a power structure
and all power structures rely on a class of individuals
who make a more or less comfortable living
by misleading the people:
schoolteachers, priests, sermonizers, speechifiers, and the press.
Another peculiarity of propaganda is that
there will invariably be another propaganda line
that contradicts it; and by contradiction
I mean not only abstractions but facts.
(Genocide? What genocide? It never happened.
It’s a fiction of our imagination.)
*
All power structures have the means to silence dissent.
By contrast dissent is powerless as well as solitary and unprofitable.
Consider the case of our own dissenters.
Most if not all of them were silenced, starved, ostracized,
betrayed to the authorities or murdered in cold blood.
*
The Romans had a legal principle that said
the surest way of identifying the guilty party is by asking
“Who benefits by the crime?”
Dissent is not and cannot be a crime
(though more often than not it is treated as a capital offense)
because there are no beneficiaries, only losers – namely,
the dupes of propaganda and the dissenters themselves.
*
In America today there are two propaganda lines
that contradict each other,
and there are dissenters who say
it is not politicians that control events but corporations.
*
In our own Homeland and Diaspora
there is a propaganda line that says
we never had it so good
because we are in the best of hands,
and there are dissenters who say
our power structures are rotten
and we are experiencing not one
but two self-inflicted genocides:
assimilation in the Diaspora
and exodus in the Homeland.
*
Who is right and who wrong?
Up to you to decide.
And there you have another difference
between propaganda and dissent:
dissent gives you a choice.
Propaganda does not.
#
Wednesday, September 05, 2012
********************************************
BENExxxxTORS
******************
I don't trust the judgment of the powerful and the rich.
The greater the wealth, the emptier the suit.
In an environment where benefactors are kings,
only brown-nosers prosper.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Thursday, September 06, 2012

*******************************************

THE TRUTH

**************************

For ever opinion, theory, ideology, and belief system there is another that contradicts it. Communism versus capitalism. Theism versus atheism. Imperialism versus nationalism. Which is right? *We tend to think in terms of generalities, abstractions, and carefully selected facts – and that’s where we go wrong: in our selection of evidence. *What are the arguments for imperialism? For 600 years the Middle East lived in relative harmony. But after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire there followed a long series of internecine wars with no end in sight. Something similar happened after the collapse of the Soviet Union. *What are the arguments against nationalism? Divisions tend to generate more divisions and internecine conflicts can be as bloody as imperialist wars (Syria being a present-day case in point). *What is the difference between communism and capitalism? As the old joke has it: Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it’s the other way around. Or, as they used to say in Poland: “Once upon a time we were slaves. We are now slaves of former slaves.” *The truth is, there is no Truth, only Big lies and dupes.

#

Friday, September 07, 2012

***************************************

RECAPITULATING

*******************************

The reason why I like to make the truth as unpalatable as I can is that only then our dupes may decide to emerge from the cesspool in which they have been swimming. *Very early in my career as a writer I realized the only way to survive in this business is to kiss ass and say it smells like roses. *I know now why as a child I was lied to about Armenians: the truth is too unspeakable. *As an adult I was promised minimum wage (actually less) provided I wrote and translated what I was told by mediocrities that operated on the assumption it is a writer’s duty to emphasize the positive and cover up the negative, that is to say, to lie and deceive. *When I finally decided to speak the truth, I was silenced and became an enemy of the people. On more than one occasion I have been accused of being a hireling of foreign powers including the regime in Ankara. *We are so addicted to lies that anything that does not flatter our collective ego is rejected as enemy action. *May the Lord have mercy on our soul – if there is a Lord and we have a soul

#

Saturday, September 08, 2012

**************************************

CHAUVINIST SLOGANS

*****************************

Chauvinists are not born but made, and what makes them is systematic indoctrination at a vulnerable age. *What is the difference between an Armenian and a Turkish chauvinist? Only the identity of their brainwashers. In all other respects they might as well be Siamese. *Where there is chauvinism there will be deportations, wars and massacres. *“All men by nature desire to know” Aristotle tells us.He should have added, except chauvinists who prefer to wallow in their own cliches ignorance. *A chauvinist’s most important ideas revolve around slogans and recycled propaganda and his favorite two words are “Yes, sir!”*“My country, right or wrong!” “My love of my country is good. My enemy’s love for his country is bad.” “If you don’t have Ararat in your heart you are no better than a piece of sh*t," (or so I was informed the other day by one of my gentle readers). “Forget your mother but do not forget your mother tongue.”And to think that there are actually self-assessed smart people who take this kind of nonsense seriously.*The Jesuits --masters of indoctrination--had a slogan of their own: “Give me a child and I will raise him to believe anything!” And so it is. *To speak truth to stupid is to dig your own grave.

#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Wednesday, September 12, 2012
*******************************************
IF
**************
What do you gain
if in your effort to be positive
you cover up the negative?
*
What do you gain
if you replace greed for money (capitalism)
with greed for power (communism)
if the number of victims
(the poor and the powerless)
remains constant?
*
History does not repeat itself;
it’s human nature that stays the same.
*
Propaganda makes a critic’s job easy
by telling him where the bodies are buried.
*
First nation to adopt Christianity in the 4th century;
first nation to adopt atheism in the 20th.
*
A man’s wisdom may also be judged
by the number of fools he counts as his enemies.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Saturday, September 15, 2012
*****************************************
ON IDEOLOGIES & RELIGIONS
*******************************************
Sooner or later all ideologies and religions
develop a power structure;
and where power enters murder is sure to follow –
not to say war and massacre.
*
Religions may benefit individuals
here and there, now and then
but societies, never!
*
Religions have been and continue to be
as dangerous as biological and nuclear weapons.
*
Freedom of religion means
license to brainwash.
#
Friday, September 14, 2012
******************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
************************************
There are two ways of being popular
in an environment dominated
by charlatans and dupes:
by inventing new lies and
by recycling old ones.
*
I don’t write for dupes.
I write for readers who almost think as I do.
*
Who takes Armenian writers seriously?
Not even Armenian writers.
Speaking for myself,
I have nothing but contempt for writers
who write about many things –
from the Middle Ages to massacres –
but carefully avoid our present problems.
*
If everybody loved to play the same instrument
we wouldn’t have an orchestra.
*
An Armenian reader may agree with me
on one or two points, but three points? –
that would be like a minor miracle.
#
Saturday, September 15, 2012
*************************************
GUILTY AS CHARGED
********************************
Benefactors write checks, build schools and community centers;
bishops sermonized in the name God;
bosses speechify in the name of Country and Mount Ararat;
and after leading a more or less comfortable life
they die in bed.
By contrast, successive generations of our writers
have been reduced to the status of beggars,
silenced, exiled, and murdered.
Why?
Simply because they refused to engage in deception
and to mislead the community into thinking
they never had it so good
because they are in the best of hands.
And because I write as I do
I have been called a Turk, an enemy of the people, and a xxxx.
*
When in his eighties Zarian died in Yerevan
after sustaining injuries in a fall,
he was sure he had been pushed and murdered
by agents of the State.
*
When Baruir Massikian,
a brilliant playwright, short story write and essayist,
who was also a successful lawyer,
was visited in his deathbed by a delegation of Panchoonies
parading as concerned community leaders
asked him to leave his wealth
to the Armenian Educational Foundation,
he said he’d much rather leave it
to xxxxxs in a Cairo bordello.
*
You may see me as a pessimist
and a dealer in gloom and doom.
I see myself as an honest witness
who refuses to commit perjury.
If that’s a crime,
I am more than willing to plead guilty as charged,
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Sunday, September 16, 2012************************************ SUNDAY SERMON***************************** Empires are not born but made, and what makes them is vision, without which, the Bible tells us, “the people perish.” *We have perished not because the land allotted to us was stony, the climate harsh, and our neighbors bloodthirsty,but because our leadership was without vision. *Empires have risen from the most unlikely places – even from deserts and islands. I am not an imperialist. I say these things to point out the fact that our nationalist historians are first and foremost propagandists whose sole aim in life is to mislead us into thinking we have nothing to worry about because our “betters” are noble and selfless specimens of humanity as opposed to being the scum of the earth. *You don’t believe me? Listen to Zarian: “Our political parties have been of no political use to us. Their greatest enemy is free speech.” And even more to the point: “Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another.” *Like empires, cannibals are not born but made and what makes them are leaders who place their own powers and privileges above the interests of the community and the nation.#Monday, September 17, 2012****************************************** A READER WRITES****************************** “You repeat yourself. You write too much. You have too many opinions. You are on too many forums.” *That’s because I have about a dozen readers half of whom either believe nothing I say or do not trust my judgment even when I say the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.To the rest I am old news because I say nothing that is new or original; I simply repeat, quote, or paraphrase better men than myself (to which charge I plead guilty as charged). *It follows I may or may not have one reader who may profit from what I say. My ambition in life is to have at least two readers before I die. On the day that happens I may consider making myself more useful in some other line of work, such as planting potatoes or bird-watching.#Tuesday, September 18, 2012************************************ WRONG QUESTIONS****************************** Do I have more enemies than friends? Wrong question. The right question is: Am I saying what must be said? *Do our fanatics outnumber our moderates? What about our dupes? Do they outnumber those who can think for themselves? Corrupt, incompetent or dishonest leaders: do they outnumber the honest ones? Do our dividers outnumber those who are of the opposite disposition? *If the alienated and assimilated outnumber those who “have Ararat in their hearts,” who is to blame? Speaking as an alienated Armenian who stays away from community centers, churches, and political parties: I hate all propagandists regardless of nationality so much so that I’d much rather deal with an honest Turk than a dishonest Armenian. I will go further and say I consider all honest men my brothers and all charlatans and crooks as my enemies. *Do our brainwashed dupes outnumber those who refuse to surrender their hearts and minds to partisans and panchoonies? To ask the right questions is the beginning of all wisdom.#Wednesday, September 19, 2012**************************************** ON BEING WRONG****************************** So what if I am wrong? Far better men than myself have been wrong. Think of Zohrab who saved Talaat’s life by risking his own. Think of our revolutionaries who on the eve of the Genocide challenged the Turks to massacre us. Think of Charents who allowed himself to be brainwashed by the Bolsheviks. Consider the case of Sylva Gaboudikyan of “Forget your mother” fame, who after the collapse of the Soviet Union declared “I am proud to have been a member of the Communist Party!” *If I am wrong I can be corrected. And I have been, many times. I am corrected even when I am right. When was the last time anyone dared to correct any one of our bosses, bishops, and benefactors? *You have nothing to fear from someone willing to admit his fallibility, and everything to fear from someone who speaks in the name of God, Country, and the eternal snows of Mt. Ararat.#