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"Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it." ~Malcolm X -
Re: elegy
Saturday, October 31, 2009
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IN PRAISE OF THE OPPOSITION
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Only the insecure read to have their prejudices reinforced.
As a Catholic I enjoyed reading books that were on the Index.
I was taught to believe Turks were bloodthirsty savages. I now have Turkish friends with whom I enjoy exchanging views – something I cannot say about my fellow Armenians.
After a brief stay in New York City, an anti-Semite friend of the family from Greece paid us a visit. “I saw quite a few xxxs there,” he said at one point. “Guess what. They are people like you and me!”
I have met several Armenians, among them a poet and a businessman, who on visiting Turkey, they became infatuated with Turks. I have also met Armenians who after visiting the Homeland and on their return to America, they went down on their knees and, like the Polish Pope, kissed the tarmac.
I have learned more about Tashnaks by reading Ramgavars and vice versa.
I am a liberal who enjoys reading the NATIONAL REVIEW, and one of my favorite contemporary American writers is Buckley's son, Christopher.
Friends justify your blunders and cover up your failings, they thus do more harm than good. I have learned more about myself by reading my critics. Perhaps one reason we have been going backwards as a community is our collective fear of criticism and dissent.
Mart bidi ch'ellank!
#Comment
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Re: elegy
I think times are changing and we aren't expecting perfection from ourselves as much as we used to. We no longer have CIA/KGB/Turk boogiemen around the corner to justify extremism among our own. Though we're still arrogant and obnoxious, the younger generation is evolving and forced to be more objective.kurtçul kangalComment
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Re: elegy
Sunday, November 1, 2009
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MALEFACTORS
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If I write what I think, it may be because so far no one has paid me to write what he thinks. And since no one has made that kind of indecent proposal, I have not even been tempted to surrender my virginity.
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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, brown-nosers prosper.
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The establishment our capitalists support is reactionary, anti-intellectual, narrow, and intolerant.
It is against dissent and dialogue.
It is for decline and degeneration.
To our hirelings they may be manna from heaven, but to all honest men, they are no better than malefactors.
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Turks quote me?
So what? I don't consider that a liability.
They quote me not because I am anti-Armenian or pro-Turkish but because I expose Armenian lies, in the same way that we quote Turks who expose Turkish lies.
Not all Turks are liars and not all Armenians are crooks.
If and when Armenians and Turks develop a consensus it will be because of the effort of dissidents, not those who trumpet chauvinist crapola from podiums and newspaper editorials.
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Re: elegy
Nice
kurtçul kangalComment
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Re: elegy
I think we should all strive to have Turkish friends. We can barely admit that 100 years ago, almost all of our grandparents/great-grandparents spoke Turkish as a first language and maybe spoke some Armenian. There are so many books on Ebay, to this day, with Armenian letters but Turkish language.
I think we should admit that the revolutionaries deceived no one but themselves, because had they gotten the support of the Armenian community, the Ottoman Empire would have collapsed sooner, Armenia would be very large territorially speaking, and there probably would never have been a Turkiye as they have now. But we can barely admit that the same revolutionaries that sell themselves off as saviours today, usually terrorized Armenians who were loyal to the Ottoman Empire (pre- and during the war) and even assassinated many Armenians after the genocide, during the foundation of the Kemalist regime.
We need to accept it that blaming the Russians and CIA for the Armenian on Armenian violence around the Mediterranean is too easy, and in the eyes of those who do openly talk of those days, you know that there was much more. Of course there was...we're a dog-eat-dog race in how we compete with each other...for the sake of our nation. We could never do like America and Mexico, and call ourselves "United States".
If our church saved our identity and culture, as I used to believe for so long, then how did the church lead to the great divide in the diaspora...so easily?
We can prosper and overcome in the future, when we fully remove the chains of the past...or at least acknowledge their existence.
What we saw in Artsakh was the Phoenix rising. What else do we need to see, to know that we can overcome?kurtçul kangalComment
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Re: elegy
Monday, November 2, 2009
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RECAPITULATIONS
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Our propagandists tell us we are the smartest people on earth.
Our writers are unanimous in telling us we are our own worst enemies.
How smart is that?
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After creating an environment in which only bottom-feeders are allowed to survive and prosper, our propagandists tell us we are survivors par excellence.
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Everyone likes to be told he is smart.
No one likes to be told he is dumb.
Our propagandists know this, but like all propagandists, they view deception as an integral part of their job.
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Propaganda consists in exploiting lies.
Literature consists in exposing them.
You may now guess which branch of human endeavor prospers and which starves.
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Ignorance, intolerance, and subservience to authority are not assets but they are touted as such by all propagandists.
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The fact that I disagree with propagandists may well be irrelevant.
What is relevant however is that propagandists disagree with one another too – and I am not talking about Armenian versus Turkish propagandists but Armenian versus Armenian propagandists.
Case in point: Once, many years ago, after I interviewed a Tashnak leader, a Ramgavar wrote a letter to the editor in which he accused the Tashnak of being a compulsive and habitual liar. But what really surprised me was the fact that in his defense, the Tashnak did not deny the charge; instead he retaliated by dismissing the Ramgavar as a brainwashed Bolshevik.
Hatred of Turks also means hatred of fellow Armenians who do not share our ideology.
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The two pillars of propaganda, loyalty and respect for authority, have been at the root of some of the worst crimes against humanity, including our own genocide. So much so that, “following orders” is no longer thought of as a legitimate legal defense.
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No one can be as easily manipulated as a cowardly ignoramus. Such a one can even be brainwashed to die like a hero -- or, as the Armenian expression has it, as an “esh nahadag” (=a jackass martyr).
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To brainwash innocent children is not thought of as a crime against humanity but as education; and to brainwash a nation is thought of as a patriotic duty.
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On the Genocide: I am so busy examining my conscience that I leave the legalities to lawyers.
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If you are arrogant enough to think that you know and understand all you need to know and understand, learning will become such an unbearably humiliating experience that ignorance will be seen as the more comfortable alternative.
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Where there is a pundit there will also be a counter-pundit.
Whom to trust?
My answer: The pundit whose views are less flattering to my ego.
#Comment
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Re: elegy
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
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HISTORY AND HISTORIANS
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Historians don't understand history, or so we are told by historians themselves, who, as a rule, are also critics of their predecessors and contemporaries.
In his criticism of Karl Marx, Toynbee tells us one cannot explain historic occurrences by the faulty distribution of wealth. In other words – to somewhat simplify matters – money is not the only source of evil in human affairs; sometimes it's faith or organized religions. That's why he concluded his 12-volume STUDY OF HISTORY by saying mankind will know peace only when all religions are reorganized on the basis that Truth (Gandhi's definition of God) is One. The rest is propaganda.
Trevor-Roper criticized Toynbee – criticized? make it, savaged; make it, tore him to shreds – for being not a historian but a mystic and a prophet.
Were Toynbee and Trevor-Roper fair in their critiques of Marx and Toynbee respectively?
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After an interview with Hitler in the 1930s, Toynbee stated “Herr Hitler is a man of peace.”
And Trevor-Roper: after publishing a best-selling book on the last days of Hitler, he authenticated Hitler's diaries which were later exposed as forgeries.
We all have our blind spots and historians are no exceptions.
Do Historians understand history?
They do, but only a fraction of it.
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What about our own historians?
I am afraid the massacres in the Ottoman Empire have acted on them the way the Greek mythological figure of Medusa is said to have acted on those who beheld her: they have turned them into stone.
Has any one of our historians been successful in explaining our decline and degeneration?
Why is it that for six hundred years we were not only subservient to a brutal empire but also acquired the reputation of being its “most loyal millet [subject nation]?”
To what extent subservience and massacre have combined to make of us what we have become?
Finally, has any one of our historians attempted to expose the absurdities of our propagandists?
Why not?
Is their intellectual blindness a result of ignorance or cowardice?
#Comment
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Re: elegy
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
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QUESTIONS
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Never ask “Is he with us or against us?”
Ask instead, “Am I right or wrong?”
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I like this thought by Jean Rostand: “In a future age we shall be just as astonished to find that we have had politicians as leaders as we are, today, to find that we once had barbers as surgeons.”
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Gostan Zarian: “With us, the emphasis is on cunning: a character trait of slaves, devoid of creative impetus, never a source of strength.”
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Nietzsche: "What is evil? Whatever springs from weakness."
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Eric Hoffer: "Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many."
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Is what I am doing of any use to anyone?
I have no idea.
Why am I doing it?
I don’t know.
If I fall silent, will anyone miss me?
I doubt it.
After twenty years of hard labor have I accomplished anything?
I don’t think so – unless you consider perforating a few swollen egos
an accomplishment….
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