Thursday, September 29, 2005
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MASTERS OF THE BLAME GAME
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What I am about to say I have probably said before. If you value your time, no need to read any further.
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We blame the massacres on Turks; we blame the Stalinist purges on the Kremlin, emigration from the Homeland on the Earthquake, the Earthquake on God, and the high rate of assimilation in the Diaspora on conditions beyond our control. Which raises the question: Who is minding the store? What has been the role of our leadership in all this? If they have been of no use to us in the past, of what possible use can they be in the future?
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More questions:
Do we have an independent judiciary?
Do we have a Supreme Court?
Does anyone know the name of the Chief Justice?
If we had an independent judiciary, how many members of the Executive Branch would be impeached, found guilty, and fried?
That’s something worth thinking about.
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If I have said this before, I apologize.
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Friday, September 30, 2005
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Whenever a reader attacks my anti-establishment views, thus rising to the defense of the establishment (as if the establishment did not have an entire propaganda apparatus with which to defend itself and to hoodwink, bamboozle, and flimflam the public), I remind myself that there is a sucker born every minute. That’s the only way to explain why all leaders, no matter how corrupt, incompetent, and evil, have had their share of supporters. Nazis in Germany and Fascists in Italy exist today as surely as Stalinists do in Russian and in the former states of the USSR, including our own homeland and diaspora. I have met some of them myself. They may no longer identify themselves as Stalinists as openly as in the good old days, but neither do they try very hard to hide their true colors, especially when it comes to such subjects as the United States, McCarthy, the CIA, and our own ARF.
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Saturday, October 01, 2005
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MEMO TO A FRIEND
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You tell me I should travel, deliver lectures, visit community centers, press the flesh. To what end? Writers have at no time played anything but a less than marginal role in our collective existence. And now that they have been effectively exterminated or silenced, does anyone miss them? Have you heard anyone lament the fact that after the generation of Shahnour and Zarian we have only minor scribblers, propagandists, hirelings, brown-nosers, and phony pundits who blabber endlessly about Turks. Remember Puzant Granian’s words: “So many national benefactors, but not a single national poet!” And allow me to quote Zohrab: “Once in a while I come across certain characters, among them so-called friends and acquaintances, who tug at my sleeve, take me aside and whisper: ‘Why don’t you concentrate on your own affairs, man? This writing business doesn’t fill the stomach’.” There you have a typical Armenian speaking. Can you imagine anyone saying to an Oriental carpet dealer: “Why bother selling rugs, man? There are more important things in life.”
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