Thursday, September 21, 2006
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FROM MY DIARY
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“Not so loud, please!” Verdi once said to an organ grinder who had planted himself beneath his window; and forever after the organ grinder sported a sign that said, “Student of Verdi.”
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Frances Mayes dedicates her latest book, A YEAR IN THE WORLD: JOURNEYS OF A PASSIONATE TRAVELLER (New York, 2006), “To the forgotten new yellow panties and bra left drying on the rim of the hotel bathtub.”
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A Chinese GI’s complaint to his sergeant: “Sarge, they keep calling me Sneeze but my name ain’t sneeze. My name is Hep Chou.”
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In so far as criticism shows what can be done as opposed to what’s being done, it is always constructive.
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Can a dupe really speak of self-interest if his views are not his but someone else’s?
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You cannot reason with tyrants because they value their power above reason. Likewise, you cannot reason with men of faith because they value their religion above everything else, including their own survival.
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Since most Christians are Christian because they were born in a Christian country, and most Muslims are Muslim because they were born in a Muslim country, it follows, what determines a man’s choice of religion is geography rather than the merits of their belief system. It also follows, most believers, like most patriots, are dupes of an unthinking factor, namely real estate. Which also means, to say my religion or my country is better than yours amounts to saying my mud is better than your mud.
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Friday, September 22, 2006
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Faith and fundamentalism, fundamentalism and fanaticism, fanaticism and collective insanity: not always easy to tell where one ends and the other begins.
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There is a beautiful English expression which is easily translated into Armenian but as far as I know it is seldom or never used by us: “Throw out the rascals!” – meaning, “Vote against the incumbents,” as if our incumbents were morally superior to American incumbents. In this connection perhaps I should add that until very recently we in the Diaspora couldn’t even identify our incumbents.
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On the Internet it is not always easy to tell if those who attack you anonymously are children or adult retards. Perhaps I should have a warning label on everything I write that says: “What follows may not be suitable for young audiences. Parental guidance is advised.”
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To generalize about Muslims may not be politically correct, but that should not prevent us from speaking of their mistreatment of women and their megalomaniacal imperial illusions based on the fact that, since they had an empire in the Middle Ages, they can have another in the near future, provided they follow the Guidance, which says, infidels have the same status in the eyes of Allah as dogs.
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Speaking of collective illusions and ambitions: in what way is our claim on historic Armenia any different?
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And speaking of generalizations: Let others think of us as a nation of cunning rug merchants. We see ourselves as heroes and martyrs; and heroes and martyrs don’t learn from their mistakes because they don’t make them.
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My favorite epitaph: “Here lies someone who tried to screw his fellow man as little as possible” (Camilo Jose Cela).
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Saturday, September 23, 2006
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We brag about our facility with languages; and yet, Karzai speaks better English than Kocharian; some of our ablest translators are re-translators; most Armenians born and raised in America cannot speak their mother tongue, and most of those who speak it can’t read it.
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To love man means to hate exploiters, crooks, propagandists, dupes, charlatans, moral morons, tyrants, brown-nosers, flunkeys, hirelings, know-it-all smart-asses, liars, rapists, child molesters, thieves, killers…Perhaps to love man means to hate mankind.
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By the time you subtract the PR, spin, doubletalk, and propaganda factors, what’s left from the palaver of a politician may very well be not just nonsense but dangerous nonsense, the kind that starts wars and massacres.
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We may not cut out tongues and burn heretics at the stake, but that does not prevent us from making it clear that’s what we would like to do if we could get away with it.
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