Sunday, February 06, 2005
********************************
If you are an honest man, you will make many enemies but very few friends.
*
My patriotism is as necessary to me as air and water. My enemy’s patriotism might as well be carbon monoxide and arsenic.
*
In my salad days I wrote a number of dishonest books. When I wrote them I did not think of myself as being dishonest but as being patriotic. And I was outraged when a Canadian critic accused me of racism for my uncompromising pro-Armenian and anti-Turkish stance. It took me twenty years to realize that he was right and I was wrong. It may take me another twenty years to realize that when I write an honest line today I should not expect to have the agreement and support of our chauvinist charlatans.
*
Patriotism, we are taught to believe, is a far more important attribute than honesty. Unfortunately for us and for mankind in general, our enemies are similarly brainwashed. Result? Millions of innocent victims. It may take not twenty but two thousand more years for humanity to realize the obvious fact that patriotism is not a virtue but an integral part of our killer instinct.
*
History is clear on this point: territoriality and terrorism might as well be synonymous.
*
Pablo Neruda: “I only know the skin of the earth, / And that it has no name.”
#
Monday, February 07, 2005
*********************************
ON MORAL SUPERIORITY
**********************************
I was brought up to believe in the moral superiority of Armenians. Since then I have been disappointed so many times that I no longer believe in the moral superiority of any race, nation or tribe; neither do I believe in their moral inferiority. We all swim in the same soup. Germans as well as Russians, Americans as well as Africans – they have all produced their share of swine, and Armenians as well as Turks are no exception to this rule.
*
It is not the best among us who assert moral superiority, but the worst. Anyone who believes otherwise should take a good look at himself in the mirror and question his readiness to accept racist propaganda as the final arbiter of morality.
#
Tuesday, February 08, 2005
****************************************
BIRDS WITHOUT WINGS
***********************************
In the second half of this wonderful historical novel by Louis de Bernieres, we read the following:
“The Armenians and the Kurds have loathed each other for centuries, and, owing to the fact that there are many Armenian units and commanders in the Russian army, the same banal atrocities have been committed against the Kurds that the latter have always enjoyed committing against Armenians.”
*
Further down there is a similar passage dealing with Adana.
*
May I confess that I read similar passages in foreign books with a sense of relief and malicious pleasure. I for one am tired of seeing Armenians portrayed as perennial victims of bloodthirsty savages.
*
Perhaps we owe our survival not to our religious faith or superior intelligence or degree of civilization (probably all myths created by our propagandists), but to the fact that, in human affairs, past conduct is not always an infallible index of future conduct and appearances can be misleading. So much so that, only the naïve and the ignorant are perplexed when sheep behave like wolves.
#
Wednesday, February 09, 2005
*************************************
OUR GREATEST ENEMY
**************************************
Gostan Zarian (20th-century author): “Our political parties have been of no political use to us. Their greatest enemy is free speech.”
*
Avedik Issahakian (20th-century poet): “Our three curses: earthquakes, bloodthirsty neighbors, brainless leaders.”
*
Yeghishe (5th-century historian): “If a nation is ruled by two kings, both the kings and their subject will perish.”
*
To those who say, “Yeghishe was wrong because after 1500 years of his prediction we are still around,” I say: “We may be around, yes, but one could also say that we have been perishing the death of a thousand cuts.”
*
Nixon and Watergate, Reagan and Iran Contra, Clinton and Monica: politicians never admit errors of judgment until caught in the mesh of an inflexible justice system. If it were up to our Ramgavars, all Tashnak leaders would be forced to resign on grounds of criminal misconduct, and vice versa – all Ramgavar leaders would hang from the nearest tree for their support of a criminal regime in the Homeland.
*
That’s one reason why these two entities cannot engage in dialogue. There is no honor among charlatans.
*
As an anti-partisan, I would like to see leaders of both parties cross-examined by an unbiased panel. Will that ever happen? One can only hope and pray. But I have every reason to suspect that both parties would rather disband than admit any errors of judgment. Their only defense so far: “We are not perfect, no one is.” Ask them to expand and they will say “No comment,” or words to that effect. They admit their imperfection only to appear more human – that is to say, more perfect in their humanity.
*
I began by quoting a medieval historian and two contemporary writers. Let me conclude by quoting three more intellectual leaders:
*
Raffi (1835-1888): “Those who are responsible for our safety are themselves a gang of criminals…We are like sheep without a shepherd.”
*
Nigoghos Sarafian (1905-1973): “Our history is a litany of lamentation, anxiety, horror, and massacre. Also deception and abysmal naiveté
mixed with the smoke of incense and the sound of sharagans.”
*
Shavarsh Missakian (1884-1957): “I see charlatanism and cheap chauvinism everywhere but not a single trace of self-sacrifice and dedication to ideals and principles.”
*
It is to be noted that Shavarsh Missakian was himself an intellectual as well as a Tashnak political leader.
#