notes / comments

[arabaliozian]

feb/22

Sunday, February 19, 2006
*************************************
The Brits and the Yanks use terms like Victorian to describe an era whose mindset can clearly be defined and distinguished from, say, the Edwardian that followed it. If I were to label the period of our collective experience and mindset from the turn of the last century to the present, I would have to call it Hamidian after Sultan Abdulhamid II and Talaat, to emphasize the fact that we continue to be at the mercy of Ottomanized mini-sultans and crypto-Stalinists.
*
The two challenges we confront today are (a) to modernize and (b) to democratize, that is to say, to liberate ourselves from the nightmares of despotism, massacrism, and Turcocentrism,
*
What we need is an emancipator like Lincoln whose "personal qualities enabled him to form friendships with men who had previously opposed him; to repair injured feelings that, left untended, might have escalated into permanent hostility; to assume responsibility for the failures of subordinates; to share credit with ease; and to learn from mistakes." I am quoting from TEAM OF RIVALS: THE POLITICAL GENIUS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN by Doris Kearns (New York: Simon and Schuster, 916 pages, 2005).
*
When warned that one of the politicians he was about to promote had been a rival in the past, Lincoln is quoted as having said: "We have stood together in the time of trial, and I should despise myself if I allowed personal differences to affect my judgment of his fitness for the office."
*
Do you see anyone on the horizon that may come close to qualifying as an Armenian Lincoln?
*
And now let us pray: "Our Father Who art in heaven…"
#
Monday, February 20, 2006
***************************************
I am proud of my few friends and even more proud of my many enemies.
*
It is not the wise who have strong opinions but the foolish who are satisfied with their own ignorance.
*
I hope I will never be insecure enough to make the mistake of elevating an opinion to a belief system.
*
They tell me I complain too much. I see nothing wrong in that. Complaining or grumbling is a legitimate genre. According to J.B. Priestly, "I am a writer of talent but I am a grumbler of genius." And Paul Johnson: "If I had my way there'd be a Nobel Prize for grumbling."
*
I criticize no one but myself, and more precisely, my former self.
*
When at the age of 87 a woman with whom Mozart had fallen in love as a young man was asked, "Whatever made you reject him?" She replied, "How was I to know? He was such a little man!"
#
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
************************************
Some people are so consistently wrong that if they ever decide to say the opposite of what they think, they may come close to achieving infallibility.
*
"I made a mistake when I said there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz," admitted British historian David Irving. After calling him a "serial denialist," the Austrian judge sentenced him to three years in prison. As a historian Irving should have known that being a denialist is a bad career move in the West. It's different in the Middle East…
*
On the radio this morning I heard a woman define a great lover as "a man who makes love to you for eight hours and then turns into a pizza." She must have been a black widow spider in a previous life.
*
André Gide: "Truths belong to God; ideas belong to men. Some people confuse ideas with truths."
*
A writer should write as if he valued the reader's time more than his own. One reason I find most academics unreadable is that they write as if they had all the time in the world to produce empty verbiage that may mean a great deal to themselves and to their fellow academics but no one else.
#
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
*************************************
"If you think just because you and I are Armenian that makes us brothers, you are dead wrong, my friend. We are nothing of the kind. As a matter of fact, to avoid all future disappointments, let us think of each other as Turks!" Had I approached my fellow Armenians with this mindset, I would have been a happier man.
*
In his second volume of memoirs, BETWEEN YOU AND ME, Mike Wallace writes about his encounters with many celebrities from all walks of life and quotes from his interviews extensively. Sometimes what happens before and after the interviews is far more interesting than the interviews themselves. When, for instance, President Johnson warns Wallace that he has no wish to speak about Vietnam and if Vietnam is mentioned he will walk out on him, Wallace tells him: "Vietnam f***ed you, Mr. President, and so, I'm afraid, you f***ed the country. And you've got to talk about that!" I look forward to the day when an Armenian journalist will say to one of our political leaders: "Do you have an explanation as to why you and your kind have been f***ing the nation?"
*
In Hermione Lee's VIRGINIA WOOLF'S NOSE: ESSAYS ON BIOGRAPHY, there is a chapter titled "How to End It All," where Lee analyzes the tendency of all biographers to embellish and dramatize the death of their subjects. It seems biographers, even the ablest among them, are incapable of simply stating the facts. Instead they give in to the temptation of orchestrating a finale which more often than not belongs to fiction rather than history.
#
Books to read:
DICTIONNAIRE MOZART,
SUR L'AMOUR ET LA MORT by Patrick Sueskind,
L'HOMME SANS CONCESSIONS: ARTHUR KOESTLER ET SON SIECLE by Michel Laval.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Thursday, February 23, 2006
**************************************
Gide: “Faith moves mountains; yes, mountains of
absurdities.”
*
Misunderstanding is a constant theme in Gide’s
final diary entries.
“When an intelligent man makes an effort not to
understand, he naturally succeeds much more
cleverly than a fool.”
But I have also discovered that, when it comes to
misunderstanding, fools can be surprisingly
creative.
*
After seeing Olivier’s production of KING LEAR
Gide goes at some length to explain why he thinks
this to be Shakespeare’s worst play. Odd that he
does not mention Tolstoy, whom he admired, and
who also hated this play about which he wrote a
long essay as if he were trying to settle an old
score with a rival.
*
Communism has been defined as state capitalism,
and capitalism as socialism for the rich. Private
enterprise promotes greed, and government
programs legitimize waste. All systems are
designed by elites to favor elites.
As for revolutions: they only replace one set of
rascals with another. Which is why, during the
final years of his life,
Arthur Koestler (one of the most politically
astute writers of the 20th century) refused to
discuss politics.
*
Zarian observes somewhere that we are on the
verge of extinction not because we have been
victimized by ruthless tyrants, but because we
have lost our bearings, we have assimilated the
values of our oppressors, and we have betrayed
all those among us who have attempted to define
what is and is not Armenian.
#

Friday, February 24, 2006
***********************************
David Irving is now willing to concede that
millions of xxxs died during World War II, but he
refuses to use the word Holocaust describing it
as a concept that “became cleverly marketed, like
Tylenol.” In view of his past blunders and
dishonesty, I find his semantic sensitivity
fraudulent.
*
Indifference is sometimes confused with strength.
It seems to me it is more akin to moral
feebleness.
*
The very same extremists who mounted violent
demonstrations against cartoons of the Prophet
are now demolishing holy shrines and beheading
teachers in front of the class for refusing to
teach only religion and riot.
*
Whenever I mention the many crimes committed by
organized religions I am reminded that atheism
too has produced its share of criminals, such as
Stalin. But I maintain that, unlike Marxism,
which is an ideology, Stalinism became a religion
and a highly organized one at that. Let me quote
Nikita Khruschev on Stalin: “It is impermissible
and foreign to the spirit of Marxism-Leninism to
elevate one person, to transform him into a
superman possessing supernatural characteristics
akin to those of a god.”
*
Mohammed is only a prophet and a messenger; and
yet, he is treated as a god in whose name all
kinds of unspeakable crimes are committed every
day. This is clearly seen by the overwhelming
majority of mankind except the criminals.
*
Because I have consistently refused to confuse
ideology with theology some of my partisan
friends think of me as a heretic and an enemy of
the people.
#

Saturday, February 25, 2006
************************************
In some people the instinct to assert
intellectual superiority is stronger than the
need to learn and understand.
*
Gide quotes Leon Bloy as saying: "One must puke
on others!" How about that for French refinement,
etiquette, and elegance?
*
At the turn of the last century Baronian made
savage fun of our leadership but history advanced
as if he had not written a single line.
*
Before I blame anyone, I blame myself - a
quintessentially unArmenian trait that. Before we
blame ourselves, we prefer to blame the rest of
the world, not just Turks and Kurds but also
Bolsheviks, the West, and the Good Lord Himself.
We never bother to ask what have we done to
deserve so many enemies?
*
A contemporary Baronian is unthinkable perhaps
because after the Genocide, and unlike the xxxs
(who have produced some brilliant satirists and
comedians) we prefer to lament crocodile tears
rather than have a good laugh at ourselves - at
our vanity, at our illusions, at our propaganda,
and ultimately at our lies.

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Sunday, February 26, 2006
************************************
The many ways those in power have to control our thoughts and emotions, especially the emotions of the thoughtless.
*
Most of his life, Gide writes in his World War II diaries, his efforts have been concentrated on understanding "the other," that is to say, the enemy. It is such a pity that the world is run not by men like Gide but by the likes of Hitler and his dupes.
*
Armenian problems? What problems? Since we haven't been able to solve them so far we must assume them to be an integral part of the human condition, like death and taxes.
*
Patriotism allows us to do nothing and to feel good about it.
*
Patriotism also allows us to think that if our heart is in the right place, we can't go wrong. But what if the heart is controlled by a dysfunctional psyche?
*
An honest man is a charlatan's worst nightmare.
*
That which we learn from books may not even register on our consciousness. But that which we learn from experience we can't forget.
*
If your understanding focuses on yourself and ignores the other, your understanding of yourself as well as reality is bound to suffer because you are only a tiny fraction of a far larger reality, and tiny to the point of being invisible. And what is patriotism if not an extension of the self?
#
Monday, February 27, 2006
***************************************
In a tribal environment the myth of "pure blood" is taken seriously. It is different with the ruling classes and elites in general where mixed marriages are the norm rather than the exception.
*
After centuries of intermarriage a Turk is more difficult to define than an American. Something similar could be said of an Armenian. In the ghetto where I was born and raised there were Armenians who looked like Mongols, Germans, and Negroes but they all identified themselves as Armenian because (a) Armenians were the dominant tribe, (b) to identify themselves as anything else would have been against their own interests, and (c) because the offspring of mixed marriages were looked down at as mongrels.
*
There are harmless idiots and then there are dangerous idiots. A dangerous idiot is one who believes what his political and religious leaders tell him.
*
I understand idiots because I was one most of my life. Perhaps I still am for thinking that common sense and decency are transferable.
*
I was born again as a human being on the day I said to myself, "I am an Armenian, therefore I am an idiot."
*
There exists an American school of thought that says, if you repeat to yourself "Today I like myself more than yesterday. Tomorrow I will like myself even more," you will cease being a lousy bastard.
*
There is also an Armenian school of thought that says, if you repeat to yourself every day, "I am smart," or "I am smarter today than I was yesterday," you will cease being an idiot.
*
If two idiots meet and one says to the other "You are smart," and the other replies, "You too are smart," they will part with the conviction that, unlike most of their fellow men, they are not idiots.
#
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
*************************************
There is more to America than cowboys and Indians. There is also more to Armenians than the massacres. And yet, our press, our educational system, our editorialists, pundits, and academics conspire to reduce our identity, to distort our worldview, and to narrow our horizons when they emphasize the dark side of our recent past. They go further and cover up our failures and shortcomings, of which we have more than our share, because, they tell us, they come under the general heading of "dirty linen."
*
Anyone who dares to discuss our problems is told to shut up unless he can solve them, or rather make them disappear as if by magic with a single verbal formula like abracadabra.
*
We are more, much more than misunderstood victims if only because we are human beings, or rather, it is within our powers to be born again as human beings.
*
We have a small army of lawyers, PR men, lobbyists, propagandists, and fund-raisers who are fully equipped to handle our grievances. We don't have to brainwash our children to think and behave as their unpaid hirelings or crusaders.
*
In a commentary in our local paper today I read: "A smart country is a country brimming with ideas, a country open to pioneering minds, a country not fearful of intellectual fertility, experimentation and daring - a thinking country."
*
Even more to the point: "We need to be careful in our use of language, avoid reductionist marketing strategies, and celebrate the fully broad nature of smartness. Otherwise we will miss the Mozarts and Platos in our midst. And that would not be a smart thing to do." Where, O where is the Armenian pundit capable of producing such a paragraph?
#
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
***************************************
Renan: "A good policy consists not in opposing what is inevitable but in being of use to it and in making use of it."
We have been better at "being of use to it," than "in making use of it," alas!
*
Robin Hood did not steal from the rich, he simply returned to the poor that which had been stolen from them.
*
Gide in 1941, after the German occupation: "For years now, France has hardly given us any reason to be proud. The France of today has ceased to be France." By France I assume he meant the leadership and its dupes.
*
Genocide is a plant whose seed is prejudice, and prejudice comes to us disguised as love of God and Country.
*
As the offspring of perennial underdogs and victims I refuse to assert moral superiority because to do so would mean adding hypocrisy to my previous list of vices.
*
If someone I don't trust were to agree with me, I would disagree with myself.
*
Andrea De Carlo: "He tells me to follow my instinct. But what if I have two of them?"
*
ON WRITING (THREE PARAPHRASES)
*********************************************
If the first sentence comes from the gut, the rest is bound to follow. (Hemingway)
*
Before you sit down to write you must stand up and live. (Thoreau)
*
Force yourself to be brief and miracles may happen. (Chekhov)
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Friday, March 10, 2006
**************************************************
Whatever I know, which is not much, has come from books. My knowledge of the real world is so limited that it might as well be non-existent; and whenever I have ventured outside in search of knowledge, I have returned to my books bloodied and defeated. But am I alone in this? Consider our revolutionaries at the turn of the last century. As long as they became intoxicated with Western ideas, they did no harm. But when they decided to act on them in the real world, their dreams turned into a nightmare. And consider what’s happening in Iraq today….
*
Socrates understood many things but he failed to understand one of the most important things, namely the fact that some day his conversations with fellow Athenians would be seen as a capital offense.
*
In a letter to the editor and speaking about “the authority of the scriptures,” a fundamentalist speaks of “the very foundation of facts that have withstood centuries of brutal attacks.” Astrology too has “withstood centuries of brutal attacks.” So what?
#
Saturday, March 11, 2006
***************************************
OTTOMANIZED ARMENIANS
***********************************
Some Armenians have been so thoroughly Ottomanized that their only source of wisdom seems to be Turkish sayings; and judging by the number of Armenian sayings and writers they quote, they have not heard or read a single one. Talaat and Stalin exterminated two generations of our ablest writers. These Armenians went further: they buried and forgot these writers ever existed.
*
GOSTAN ZARIAN
ON SOVIETIZED ARMENIANS
************************************************** ***
In his TRAVELLER AND HIS ROAD and speaking of Sovietized Armenians who recycled Bolshevik propaganda to him, Zarian writes: “They are spitting on Raffi. They are spitting on Aharonian. They are spitting on Derian. And that with the borrowed, consumptive spittle of Muscovite ‘masters.’ Even their filth is second hand. Even their words have not been picked up from our streets. Danger, danger, danger!”
*
OUR PRESENT SITUATION
***********************************
If our situation is xxxxuation today it may be because we are at the mercy of Sovietized bloodsuckers and Ottomanized charlatans whose Turcocentric view of life and understanding of their fellow men begins and ends with massacres. “You either massacre or are massacred,” they seem to be saying. “And if you can’t massacre your enemy with fire and sword, choose a more defenseless victim and massacre him with words.” And who could be more defenseless than Armenian writers? If they are no longer spitting on Raffi, Aharonian, and Derian, it may be because they don’t even know who these writers are.
*
AM I REPEATING MYSELF?
****************************************
If I am, it is because our Ottomanized and Sovietized brothers repeat themselves too by recycling filth that has not even picked up from our own streets but from alien gutters.
###

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Sunday, March 12, 2006
*********************************************
Speaking of Lord Byron’s involvement in the Greek war of liberation, John Mortimer writes: “He had found, like many of those who have struggled for great liberal and liberating causes and beliefs, that the difficulty isn’t so much fighting the enemy as stopping your friends murdering each other.”
*
“If we have free speech,” Milton tells us, “truth will look after itself.” It follows, where there is censorship, there must also be lies.
*
Somewhere in his MANDATE FOR ARMENIA (Kent, Ohio, 1966) James Gidney writes that the mandate was rejected because the prevalent view in Washington was that Turks and Armenians were two Middle-East tribes that had hated each other for centuries and to get involved in such an environment would amount to looking for trouble. In other words, Armenians and Turks were seen as variants of today’s Sunnis and Shias in Iraq. Which brings to mind the adage that the only thing we learn from history is that we can’t learn from history.
*
Recycling propaganda enhances our prestige (in our own eyes) as it lowers our IQ (in the eyes of others) in addition to certifying our status as perennial dupes.
*
I have said this before and it bears repeating: the victims were innocent. But not all Armenians were. One does not have to read Turkish historians or Turcophile apologists to know this but our own pre-Genocide writers like Baronian and Odian (both available in English) whose works make it abundantly clear that the Armenian communities in the Ottoman Empire were at the mercy of loudmouth charlatans who spoke with a forked tongue, very much like our Turcocentric dime-a-dozen pundits today.
#
Monday, March 13, 2006
***************************************
QUESTIONS / ANSWERS
*********************************
WHY DO YOU CONSISTENTLY STRESS THE NEGATIVE AND IGNORE THE POSITIVE?
Because my job as a critic is to expose contradictions. A typical example of contradiction is saying one thing and doing the exact opposite.
*
READING YOU ONE WOULD CONCLUDE THAT ALL ARMENIANS ARE SOVIETIZED OR OTTOMANIZED CHARLATANS.
The written word is not a perfect medium of communication. Even the word of God has been misunderstood and misinterpreted by learned theologians throughout the centuries. What I have been saying is that the nation is at the mercy of Ottomanized or Sovietized charlatans. I have at no time said, suggested, or implied that we are all of us charlatans.
*
WHY IS IT THAT I DON’T RECOGNIZE MYSELF IN YOUR WRITINGS?
The obvious answer to that question is that what I write does not apply to you.
*
I DON’TCARE WHAT YOU SAY, I AM AND I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN A PROUD ARMENIAN.
Can you really be proud of our countless victims, or the present regime in Yerevan, or the assimilation rate in the Diaspora, and the emigration rate in the Homeland? I say about pride what Camus once said about charm – that it is “sh**.”
*
ARE YOU SUGGESTING WE SHOULD ALL HANG OUR HEADS AND SPEND THE REST OF OUR LIVES BEING ASHAMED OF OURSELVES?
No, because that would amount to accepting our present situation as a permanent condition ordained by God or some other immovable or irresistible force. I want my fellow Armenians to share my outrage, to say enough is enough. I want decent Armenians to spend less time saying, Yes, sir! I have at no time denied the fact that there are many decent Armenians. For all I know they may even be in the majority, in the same way that the majority of Germans under Hitler, or Russians under Stalin, or Italians under Mussolini, or Muslims today are decent folk. But they are not the ones who run things, set policy, make headlines, and shape the destiny of the nation.
*
I HAVE NEVER SAID YES, SIR! TO ANYONE. ON THE OTHER HAND, HOW DO I GO ABOUT SAYING NO, SIR!?
You can begin by sending an e-mail to the editors of our Turcocentric weeklies and saying there is more to life than Turks and massacres, which shouldn’t cost you a penny or more than a minute of your time. I am reminded of the great American reformer, Saul Alinsky, who once said that to demand and introduce social change doesn’t have to be hard work; sometimes it can even be fun.
##
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
**************************************
Kieslowski: “We are ashamed of being weak, hence our solitude.”
*
If only one among a hundred writers is silenced on political or religious grounds, the worth of the other ninety nine is diminished if only because it reduces their status to that of conformists and yes-men.
*
Malcolm Muggeridge: “Never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream.”
*
Roger Martin du Gard: “Our whole damned civilization has got to go before we can bring any decency into the world.”
Something similar could be said of our entire culture of lamentation and Turcocentrism.
*
Nietzsche: “I may be a bad German, but in any event I am a good European.” And I say, what’s the use of being a good Armenian if it also means being a bad man?
*
I once met a prominent Armenian poet, educator, and author of several textbooks who called the Nobel Prize a Zionist conspiracy. Next he said his former students now living in America number in the thousand. Which may explain the popularity of the Zionist conspiracy theory among Armenians.
#
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
**************************************
My childhood ambition was to excel in a specific field so that I would enjoy the respect of my fellow men, make a living, and provide for my family. It was my misfortune to choose literature, and Armenian literature at that – a field in which the better you get the more you are abused. But by the time I discovered that however, it was too late, I had reached a point of no return. I now do my utmost to earn as much contempt as I can, and I am glad to report I am doing just fine, even if the better I get, the worst my prospects get.
*
Whenever an odar editor rejected my work, I would ask myself, “What am I doing wrong?” Whenever an Armenian editor rejected my work, I would ask, “What am I doing right?” Odar editors wanted more sex and action; Armenian editors, more lies. Odar editors wanted to entertain their audience; Armenian editors wanted to brainwash theirs.
*
Paul Valery: “My first word was NO; it will also be my last.”
*
Nothing unites dishonest men more readily than the appearance in their midst of an honest man.
*
Perhaps I was lucky enough to have a father who was educated enough to read newspapers but not arrogant enough to propagandize or speechify. If anything, he was a collateral damage of speechifiers and sermonizers.
*
I propose the following epitaph for our sermonizers and speechifiers: “Here lies a charlatan the size of whose ego exceeded only by the length of his forked tongue.”
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Thursday, March 16, 2006
**************************************
We brag as naturally and thoughtlessly as a canary sings. But whereas canaries have no credibility problem, we do.
*
In a letter from the Publisher of a new Armenian magazine I read the following: “We are one of the few people of the ancient world that have survived to modern times with a language, culture, and memory of our history.”
*
Whenever I read assertions of this type I am seized by an irresistible urge to footnote the text if only for the sake of accuracy and honesty; also in order to inform readers that we are not all braggarts or dupes of braggarts.
*
We have survived to modern times? What if most of us, among them the best, did not survive?
*
With a language? What if most of us neither read nor speak the language?
*
Culture? I see more culture in yoghurt than in an Armenian community center. An odar friend, who is more interested in our literature than most Armenians, tells me: “I have yet to meet an Armenian who has read a single book by Raffi or Zarian.”
*
Memory of history? What’s there to remember? Military defeats and moral victories followed by centuries of oppression, subservience, lamentation, betrayal, collaboration with the enemy, massacres, dispersion, internecine conflicts, and more lamentation….
#
Friday, March 17, 2006
********************************
Things change, people change, life changes, and I am no longer what I used to be. Once upon a time I too was a cliché-spouting, loudmouth chauvinist propagandist. Then I met a xxxish boy from, of all places, Azerbaijan, and bragged about Armenians being the smartest people on the face of the earth. To prove it I went into the old routine of making a list of our celebrities:
“Anastas Mikoyan,” I said.
“Karl Marx,” said he.
“Aram Khachaturian,” I said.
“Mendelssohn, Mahler, Schoenberg, Aaron Copland,” he countered.
“William Saroyan,” I said next.
“Shalom Alecheim,” he said.
“Alecheim Shalom,” I replied.
“I meant the writer,” he said.
“Never heard of him,” I said.
“FIDDLER ON THE ROOF,” he said.
“He wrote that?”
“Who else?”
“Akim Tamiroff,” I said next.
“Who is he?” he wanted to know.
“One of the greatest actors in the world,” I explained.
“Charlie Chaplin,” he said.
“Beat Calouste Gulbenkian if you can, the wealthiest man that has ever lived,” I said.
After a few moments of reflection, he said:
“Jesus Christ, Freud, Einstein.”
And that was the last time I ever bragged about our celebrities.
#
Saturday, March 18, 2006
******************************************
Historian David Irving six years ago in a British courtroom: “More women died on the back seat of Edward Kennedy’s car at Chappaquidxxxx than ever died in a gas chamber in Auschwitz.”
Found guilty in an Austrian court of law, Irving is now having second thoughts on the subject. If only he had taught himself to put aside his personal prejudices and to say, “I don’t know,” or “I am not sure,” or even “I have studied many documents but not all of

them.”
*
And consider Toynbee who, after an interview with Hitler in the 1930s, stated: “I am now

convinced Herr Hitler wants peace.”
*
According to a French historian, Louis XIV never said, “I am the State.” On the contrary,

on his deathbed, his final words were, “I go, but the State remains.” What if this was a

case of deathbed conversion?
*
According to a Biblical scholar, Jesus was in his fifties when he was crucified.
*
One can prove anything by quoting historians who are notorious for their inability to get

their sh** together. Something similar could be said of political and religious leaders: One can legitimize all crimes by quoting them.
*
Marx called some nations “unhistorical,” because they contributed nothing to world progress. We owe our status as a “historical” nation to the fact that we have contributed many things, but mostly victims.
*
We must teach our children to listen to the other side of the story, and by that I don’t just mean the Turkish side, but also the Armenian moderate, non-partisan, and anti-partisan side.
*
To those who question the validity of my assertions, I can only say that everything I write is based on the published works of our writers and my own experience. I may not have God and capital on my side (or is it Capital and god) but I do have that which is God-given, namely logic and common sense.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Sunday, March 19, 2006
******************************************
We are outraged whenever Turks accuse us of massacring them. I am not. I even
welcome this development because, for a change, I begin to see myself not as the offspring of perennial victims but as a human being. To paraphrase Shakespeare in THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, “I am an Armenian. Hath not an Armenian eyes? Hath not an Armenian hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? If they massacre us, shall we not massacre them?”
*
Once upon a time I believed in our moral superiority. I know better today, and whenever I hear someone making such claims, I add hypocrisy to his list of failings.
*
In his POLITICAL PARANOIA: THE PSYCHOPOLITICS OF HATRED, co-author Robert Robins says all stories of “good against evil” are just that, stories, and as such are viewed with some degree of justified skepticism.
*
Again, let me add, repeat, and emphasize, I am not questioning the reality of the Genocide and Turkish responsibility, only our claim of moral superiority. Whenever we portray Turks as bloodthirsty Asiatic barbarians and ourselves as the first Christian nation and the cradle of civilization, who believes us? Surely not the Germans, or Americans, or Russians, or Muslims, or Hindus, whose innocent victims number in the millions too.
*
I say these things for two reasons: to enhance our credibility in the eyes of the world; and to tear ourselves away from the comfortable reality to which we have become accustomed and which may make us vulnerable to the charge of racism.
#
Monday, March 20, 2006
*************************************
There is a natural tendency in all of us to divide people into friends and enemies, or good and evil, and judgments into true or false. But reality is more complex, and more often than not it can be simultaneously good and evil as well as true and false.
*
When someone tells me, “I don’t like Armenians,” my first impulse is not to accuse him of being an enemy but to ask myself, “Are we likeable?”
*
Nobody is perfect. We all have our share of failings. Whenever I mention one of them, however, I am told it is not a specifically Armenian failing but a human, therefore, a universal failing. Which raises the question: What is our view of humanity? Turks we call Asiatic barbarians, and the West a bunch of double-talking degenerates.
*
If we are like everybody else, we must also have our share of barbarians and
degenerates who pretend to be civilized. Don’t get me wrong. If I am disappointed, it is not in my fellow Armenians but in myself for overestimating them and for failing to see them as they are – human beings with their share of contradictions, wounds, and complexes.
*
We like to say that we have massacred no one, but we forget to add, only in our version of the story. And if we are like everyone else, our version of the story, like everyone else’s, must be full of holes.
*
Am I saying we are as bad as Turks? No, I am saying not all Turks are “as bad as Turks,” and not all Armenians are morally superior. Collective moral superiority, or any other kind of superiority, is a myth created by the likes of Hitler. Which amounts to saying it is not just a lie but a Big Lie, and thus the source of some of the worst blunders and crimes against humanity.
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Tuesday, March 21, 2006
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Alain: “There is no doubt whatever that on certain occasions Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon behaved like fools. It has been my aim in life to avoid emulating them.”
*
The credibility of historians, even the best among them, has been questioned by fellow historians since the beginning of historiography. Herodotus, “the father of historians,” has also been called “the father of lies.” More recently, Arnold J. Toynbee, one of the greatest historians of the 20th Century, has been dismissed as “a prophet of mumbo jumbo.” And consider the case of Edward Gibbon (1737-1794): in his universally acclaimed DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, he portrays Romans as the good guys and Christians as the villains. To say that Armenian historians are more trustworthy than Herodotus, Gibbon, and Toynbee is to certify our status as perennial dupes.
*
Again, my intension here is not to question the reality of the Genocide but our version of its context, or rather our treatment or cover up of its context.
*
If Turks disagree with us, and now with themselves (as the Orhan Pamuk episode
suggests), it may be because the Armenian side stresses the facts, and the Turkish side stresses the context; and the context, to put it in a nutshell, was the very real threat of annihilation not only of the Ottoman Empire, which was moribund, but also that of the Turkish nation.
*
In the Turkish version of the story, the slaughter of Armenians was a case of self-defense or justifiable homicide. Armenians were not alone in threatening their survival, of course. There were others. Many others. But they were beyond Turkish reach. We weren’t. And that was our misfortune. It is true, Turkish conduct was savage to the point of being irrational. But who has ever been able to reason with a man who is convinced his own existence is in peril?
*
Did we act reasonably when we drove the Azeris (most of them innocent civilians) from Karabagh? Is Israeli conduct towards Palestinians consistently reasonable? Even many xxxs say it is not.
*
Speaking not as a historian but as a human being, I view the Genocide not as a clash between good and evil but a result of two enormous miscalculations or blunders: (one) that of our revolutionaries or freedom fighters (in our version of the story, terrorists in theirs) in thinking that with such mighty allies as the Russians and the Great Powers of the West, we couldn’t lose; and (two) that of the Turks in assuming that unarmed Armenian civilians were a real threat to their survival.
*
Alain: “I have at no time believed that it is possible to create a new philosophy. What I have been doing instead is re-creating the best of what has already been said. But is this not also creating in the best sense of the word?”
#
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
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Judging by the number of books that tell you how to solve problems, there must be two or more solutions for every problem. But judging by the number of people who don’t read books, the nation must be lousy with people drowning in unresolved problems. You may now guess what happens to such a nation when it goes out of its way to solve the problems of other nations.
*
And now, from the sublime to the ridiculous: I am an Armenian. As if that weren’t enough, I also write for Armenians. Two jumbo-sized problems right there. Which may explain why so far I haven’t been able to solve a single problem. Which may also explain why I have a grudging admiration for our Turcocentric pundits who have been successful in convincing their readers that on the day Turks repent three golden apples will fall from heaven and we shall live happily ever after.
*
As we wait for that day, here is a piece of advice you may wish to keep in mind: Never marry a woman whose three previous husbands committed suicide.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Thursday, March 23, 2006
*************************************
Because Abdul Rahman, an Afghan, converted to Christianity 16 years ago, we are told, he may face execution. In an angry editorial, titled “Intolerance in Afghanistan,” in our paper today, I read: “As a citizen of this planet, Abdul Rahman should have the absolute right to worship the God he chooses in the manner he chooses without fear of prejudice, persecution, jail or death.”
*
It seems mankind (and I include Christians) has not yet decided whether God, or Truth, or religion is a life-affirming or death-legitimizing concept. Christians (including Armenians) continue to glorify their martyrs who chose death rather than conversion to some other religion, including Islam.
*
Questions: What if Islam legitimizes death because it accepts Christianity as its role model? What if Muslims call Christians infidels because Christians called them infidels? What if the Genocide could have been prevented if Armenians within the Ottoman Empire had followed the example of their compatriots in Hemshin and converted to Islam, in the same way that shortly thereafter, and under the Soviets, they converted to atheism?
*
When in the final volume of his STUDY OF HISTORY Toynbee said in effect that mankind will know peace only if all religions combine and become a single belief system, he was ridiculed by so-called enlightened and progressive critics and dismissed as “a prophet of mumbo jumbo.”
*
Some day in a future Age of Enlightenment mankind will no doubt see all leaders of organized religions, and anyone else who dares to speak in the name of God, for what they are, megalomaniacal windbags. In the meantime, history will continue to be shaped by charlatans and their brainwashed dupes.
#
Friday, March 24, 2006
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The Turks saw us as their “most loyal millet (subject nation).” Raffi saw us as born traitors (“Treason and betrayal are in our blood”). Who is right? If I were to choose, I would say they are both wrong. The overwhelming majority of Armenians have been and continue to be too busy trying to survive in an alien and sometime hostile environment to have any time for politics. They are neither loyal subjects nor traitors to the Cause. Rather, they are law-abiding citizens even when the law is unjust, and even when the power structure is corrupt and authoritarian; and it makes no difference if the men at the top are Turks, Russians, or Armenians.
*
A prominent Tashnak once published a book in which he blamed all our problems on “chezoks” (non-partisan Armenians). When in my review of the book I said that amounted to victimizing the victims for the second time, I had an angry phone call from the writer who explained that he had sent a review copy of his book to me on the erroneous assumption that I too, like all right-minded Armenians, was a member of the Party and not that lowest form of animal life known as a “chezok.” The implication being that if I wasn’t with him, I must be against him, and therefore against God and Country, out of prejudice. It never even occurred to him that I might be on the side of the majority.
*
It has been said that when the rich fight, it is the poor who die. It could also be said that when charlatans fight, it is the honest that are silenced. You may now guess what gets ignored when liars disagree.
#
Saturday, March 25, 2006
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We don’t burn books. We bury them beneath layers of indifference. The result is the same.
*
Just because someone is ideologically motivated, that doesn’t make him a lesser dupe.
*
A tyrant is a public servant who behaves like a master.
*
Russian intellectuals divide Russia into three concepts: the regime, the people, and the literature; and they view the regime as a disease. Instead of a regime in the Diaspora, we have bosses, bishops, benefactors and their assorted commissars and hirelings who run our community centers, educational institutions, churches, and media.
*
A faithful member of the Party – and faithful in our context means lobotomized – once said to me: “You keep saying we are afraid of free speech. That’s a lie! I have contributed many articles to our weeklies and none of them has been edited or rejected.”
*
And so to bed with an easy conscience.
##

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Sunday, March 26, 2006
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Pasteur studied microbes. I study Ottomanized, Sovietized, and Americanized Armenians; and by Americanized Armenians I mean Armenians who have assimilated from the American way of life not the best (respect for human rights, free speech, tolerance of dissent) but the very worst (worship of the Almighty Dollar).
*
Please note that I am not saying all Armenians are Ottomanized, Sovietized, or Americanized. What I am saying is that we are -- the nation is, and our literature is -- at their mercy, in the same way that during our Soviet phase we were – we, the nation, the people, our literature and culture – at the mercy of Stalinized Armenians.
*
No, I do not hate Armenians, only those who are convinced they know better because they have God or truth on their side; and armed with that phony conviction they pretend to speak in the name of the majority, and in defense of our identity, literature, and culture.
*
Literature: do we have one? If we do, it must be the only literature in the world with a Turcocentric worldview. What I am saying here, and what I have been saying all along is that, in a little over 60 years our bosses, bishops, benefactors, and their commissars have succeeded in doing what the Turks tried but failed to do in 600 years.
#
Monday, March 27, 2006
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What I know in relation to what I don’t know or what there is to know might as well be a drop of water in all the oceans, seas, lakes, and rivers of the world.
*
I lived in Venice for five years. What do I know about its history? As I write, I am reading two recently published books about it, CITY OF FALLING ANGELS by John Berendt, and FRACESCO’S VENICE: THE DRAMATIC HISTORY OF THE WORLD’S MOST BEAUTIFUL CITY by Francesco da Mosto (I am not counting THE ASPERN PAPERS by Henry James, which takes place in Venice and which I am also reading, because it is a work of fiction) and I find something I don’t know on every pages.
*
And now from the sublime to the ridiculous: the neighborhood where I now live. As neighborhoods go it’s a quiet one about a mile from the center of town and the nearest police station. Even so I had my windows broken on three separate occasions; three of my next-door neighbors have been arrested on charges of growing marijuana and dealing in drugs; two others (one of them a professor of history) have been exposed as serial child molesters and are now serving time; and according to an article in our local paper today, another has been identified as a member of a racist gang and charged with first degree murder. There has also been a case of arson and another of suicide. The only reason I know about these things is that they have made headlines in our paper.
*
My guess is I know about my own neighborhood as much as I know about Venice.
*
Moral I: No one can claim to know all there is to know about the past.
*
Moral II: And if psychologists are to be believed, we know very little even about ourselves.
*
Moral III: Teach thy tongue to say “I don’t know.”
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Tuesday, March 28, 2006
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OF PROPHETS AND GODS
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Did Jesus marry Mary Magdalene and sire a child, as some scholars believe he did? I don’t know and I don’t care to know. But I like all theories that question the validity of organized religions, which I consider the source of much evil, among them intolerance, dogmatism, prejudice, authoritarianism, and countless wars and massacres.
*
Jesus himself had nothing to do with these things, of course, and cannot be held responsible. But if his followers are right, as a god he was in a position to foresee clearly the manner in which his followers would pervert his central message of love into hatred. He could have said he was not what his followers claimed him to be, namely the son of God, but only a humble carpenter who spoke not as God or even in the name of God (and following the example of Socrates he could have added: “Of God we know nothing”) but as a human being whose ignorance far exceeded his knowledge. Or, like Karl Marx who declared, “I am not a Marxist,” he could have said, “I am not a Christian.” Would that have changed the course of human history? Did Marx’s declaration prevent a single crime against humanity committed in the name of Marxism?
*
In the same way that composers create music, philosophers ideas, and writers works of fiction, men with messianic ambitions create gods. Hence the old saying: “Man cannot create a single worm, yet he has created ten thousand gods.”
*
There is no reason why creating gods should not be a noble task. The trouble begins when power-hungry and narrow-mind bureaucrats “see the light” and emerge with the dangerous conviction that their god is the only true god, thus reducing all others into usurpers and idols.
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Wednesday, March 29, 2006
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PARALLEL WORLDS
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Man has accepted kings as representatives of god on earth, barbers as surgeons, bishops and imams as spiritual teachers, and politicians as leaders. Man inhabits a parallel world, which he has been brainwashed to believe is the real one.
*
I speak from experience. For many years I too lived in a parallel world created by our chauvinist charlatans. I now believe what a bishop tells me as much as I believe what an imam says.
*
I agree that we have been victimized by two sets of massacres, one “Red” (genocide), the other “White” (assimilation). The Turks blame the “Red” on war; the Armenians blame the “White” on conditions beyond their control. The Turks refuse to accept responsibility because they stand to lose prestige, money (in the form of reparations) and territory. The Armenians don’t accept responsibility because they may be vulnerable to the charge of incompetence, divisiveness, corruption, absence of vision, and thus lose prestige, of which they think they have a great deal. And they think that because they too, like the rest of us, live in a parallel world. As for the people: what could they possibly lose they have not already lost?
*
I remember once when I submitted a commentary to this effect to one of our most progressive and enlightened editors, he rejected it with the words, “I don’t want to get involved in Armenian politics.” He too lived in a parallel world in which everybody is a victim, nobody a victimizer.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Thursday, March 30, 2006
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Massacre is an extension of intolerance as surely as a tree is an extension of its roots. Something similar could be said of prejudice and ignorance.
*
From the death of Socrates and the crucifixion of Christ to the assassination of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, history may be said to be a catalogue of acts perpetrated by the intolerant against the weak and the defenseless.
*
The tolerant reasons and preaches. The intolerant acts.
*
Even when tolerance triumphs, intolerance is bound to follow. Gandhi’s non-violent liberation of India was followed by the massacre of millions of innocent Hindus and Muslims.
*
The intolerant can neither reason nor preach; they can only propagandize to the unthinking masses.
*
Both sides of the Genocide issue today (and I include our pundits) would be more than willing to kill in the name of truth.
*
Mankind continues to be at the mercy of liars, crooks, and their dupes. The massacre continues.
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Friday, March 31, 2006
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“Forensic report unveils evidence of nepotism, poor management, and sloppy record keeping,” I read in a front-page headline today. I have never seen such a headline in our press and I doubt if I will ever see one. It is a universally acknowledged fact that nepotism is foreign to us, all our managers and accountants are models of integrity and efficiency; and, in the words of the Duke of Wellington, “if you believe that you’ll believe anything!”
*
Partisan politics is to politics what a virus is to a healthy organism.
*
One of our elder statesmen once said to me: “If you continue to criticize our benefactors, they may withdraw their support.” I had to explain to him that benefactors don’t respect the opinions of someone whose annual income is negative.
*
Whenever I am told that such and such a fellow has leadership qualities, I want to know where exactly does he plan to lead us? We may trust a bus driver or taxi driver because we know he will take us to our destination; we may trust a plumber, a butcher, or a pharmacist, but to trust a politician on the grounds that he has leadership qualities amounts to legitimizing criminal conduct.
*
I welcome criticism, even insults. I wouldn’t be able to write a single line if I thought there are readers out there who think I speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I may speak of half-truths and lies, but speaking or pretending to know the truth I leave to charlatans with leadership qualities.
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Saturday, April 01, 2006
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An authentic critic begins by criticizing himself.
*
When caravans pass, dogs bark but dung-beetles feast.
*
There is a type of idiot (and I was one of them myself) who thinks just because he is Armenian he is an expert on Armenian affairs, and just because his parents or grandparents were victims of massacres, he is an expert on the Genocide.
*
Mankind may be divided into those who are dissatisfied with their brand of wisdom and those who are satisfied with their brand of idiocy.
*
You may have noticed that our pundits never quote Armenian writers. It is as if our literature did not exist and they represent the very best in Armenian wisdom.
*
If I am a lone voice in the wilderness it may be because I can’t afford hiring yes-men.
*
I have lost so many friends during the last few years that I am seriously considering getting myself a dog.
*
If our masters of the blame game are right, our entire history has been shaped by alien and hostile forces and our sole contribution has consisted in providing victims.
#