Sunday, December 10, 2006
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DIAGNOSE AND ADIOS
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Confronted with an incurable disease, some doctors offer no hope or consolation to the patient. This MO by MDs is known as “Diagnose and adios.” As a veteran of many verbal confrontations, I have learned the hard way that it never pays to contradict an argumentative person whose central concern is to prove his brain, or some other organ more closely connected with his manhood, is bigger than yours. Nothing disarms such a person more than telling him he is right, especially when he is dead wrong. Tell him he is wrong and he will come up with more reasons why you are a damn fool. If Freud were alive today, my guess is, he would diagnose Bush’s intransigence as an extension of his defective manhood. As for Armenian intransigence, he would diagnose it as a trauma sustained during centuries of subjection to brutal foreign tyrants, after which he would say “Auf viedersehen.” I look forward to the day when I too will see the light and say adios to our dupes.
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Monday, December 11, 2006
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CANNIBALS AND CHRISTIANS
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To say that I attack or criticize Armenia and Armenians in my writings is a gross distortion of what I have been doing. I write in defense of all victims, underdogs, and men of goodwill (regardless of nationality). To write in defense of victims also means to expose their victimizers, and I don’t mean past victimizers (as our Turcocentric self-appointed pundits do), but present ones. We cannot change the past, but we may have a better chance changing the future. If I write more on wicked men and less on good ones, it’s because they (the wicked) have taken over our leadership. My writings are an expression of concern rather than hostility. To criticize is to expose contradictions. A critic is someone who tells you if you want to travel south, you should not board a northbound train because then you may end up in Alaska where you may freeze your butt. If you want to live to be a hundred, you should not mix yourself a cocktail of arsenic and rat poison. If you want to impress others with your high IQ, you may have a better chance of doing so if you keep your trap shut, because if you open it, you may run the risk of exposing yourself as an idiot. If you are in a hole, you should stop digging. If you worry about Armenians being few, you should not support or defend leaders who have no interest in checking the exodus from the Homeland and the assimilation rate in the Diaspora. On the contrary, you should do whatever you can to expose their corruption, incompetence, lies, and wickedness; and if you cannot do that, you should not obstruct the path of those who are trying. This much said, let me conclude by saying that none of us can claim to be beyond criticism, because being human also means being a bundle of contradictions. And speaking of contradictions let me confess one of my own many contradictions: If I want to lecture on the advantages of a vegetarian diet, why do I choose doing so to an audience of cannibals?
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Tuesday, December 12, 2006
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IF THE BLIND…
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When it comes to what to write and how to write it, I find my guidelines not in the speeches and sermons of our bosses, bishops, benefactors and their assorted flunkies and hirelings, who will say and do anything for an empty title or a regular salary, but in our literature. Not everyone who speaks in the name of God acts with His wisdom; and some of the most dangerous fanatics in history have exceled in the art of speechifying in the name of patriotism.
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I remember during the Soviet era whenever I published a commentary critical of the regime, I would receive nasty and abusive phone calls and letters by our chic Bolsheviks who would remind me that we owe our present prosperity and existence to our big brothers to the North, and if they ever withdrew their support, the Turks would have us for breakfast. Whenever I cited violations of human rights, I would be informed that such violations exist everywhere, including Canada and the United States. They would explain and justify every Soviet crime against humanity the way denialist Turks explain the Genocide by saying even the most so-called civilized nations on earth have been guilty of similar crimes, and like rape and murder, genocide is an integral part of the human condition. It follows no one can afford to adopt a morally superior stance. Ramgavar editors would go further and accuse me of disseminating Tashnak propaganda. That’s the problem with liars and propagandists: they think everyone is either a liar or a propagandist.
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Let’s not have any illusions about our “betters” who are better only at creating problems rather than solving them. If you have not understood that much about our history and present situation, it may be because you are a product of an educational system whose aim is not to raise consciousness but to lower it by making you say “Yes sir!” when common sense and decency tells you to bellow “A plague on both your houses!” And if you were to ask why I blame Soviet purges and Ottoman massacres on our own leaders, I would reply by saying, for the same reason that sectarian violence in Iraq today is blamed on Bush. Political leadership is a demanding discipline; mediocrity and politics don’t mix; mediocrity in times of crisis may even spell disaster for the nation. Leadership is much more than popularity, charisma, and patriotic speeches. Leadership means the ability to see what’s on the other side of the hill. Our leaders have been better at speechifying than seeing the other side of the hill. The source of all our misfortunes is to be found in their blindness…and “if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.”
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Wednesday, December 13, 2006
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CROSS-EXAMINATION
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QUESTION: Would you agree with me when I say that our critics and dissidents have been consistently negative, perhaps even hostile and prejudiced towards our political leadership?
ANSWER: To say that is to completely ignore the fact that our political leaders – be they kings, princes, nakharars, and ideologues — have been much more negative and hostile towards one another.
Q: What would you say to those of your readers and critics who say you are consistently negative in your judgments?
A: I would say that our “betters” are even more negative in their judgments as well as policies against one another, hence our perennial divisions that have crippled the nation and reduced us to the status of perennial losers. If I am wrong, I can be corrected and contradicted. Can we say the same about them?
Q: If you are right and they wrong, why is it that they have many more supporters, followers, and hamagirs (sympathizers) than you have readers?
A: One reason, they control the media. Another reason, bad ideas make perfect sense to dupes who are easily satisfied with slogans and clichés that flatter their vanity. As for good ideas: history tells us even the best ideas can be manipulated and perverted by cunning operators to such a degree that they become their own contradictions. Hence, such phenomena as dissidents who are labeled as “enemies of the nation,” and contempt for ideas in the name of ideology.
Q: A final question: Why should the average reader trust your ideas more than the ideas of – to use your own expression — our “betters”?
A: Let’s have the honesty to admit that none of our ideas is original or new. We are all in the business of recycling old ideas. A 20th-century English philosopher has gone as far as saying that all philosophy is a footnote to Plato. Our choice is between the received ideas of politicians with an ax to grind on the one hand, and on the other, the received ideas of thinkers who have dedicated their lives to the selfless and thankless labor of enhancing our understanding. And now, allow me to ask you a question: Can you think of a single memorable sentence spoken by any one of our leaders during the last fifty years?