Sunday, July 22, 2007
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WHY I DISCUSS OUR PROBLEMS
ON ODAR FORUMS
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Because all men are brothers and we Armenians are members of the same family known as mankind.
Because I am a human being first and an Armenian second, and if my understanding of our problems, and by extension of the human condition, is right, then I prefer to share it with all of mankind as opposed to a small fraction of it.
Because I know what it means to be a human being. As for being an Armenian: there are probably as many definitions of it as there are Armenians.
Because our problems are universal in so far as all nations, including the mightiest empires, have experienced divisions and defeats.
Because at all times and everywhere underdogs outnumber top dogs and entire continents today are populated by present and former refugees and victims of intolerance, persecution, poverty, starvation, war and massacre; and because every human being alive today has experienced hatred, injustice, and discrimination.
Because there is some degree of corruption and incompetence in all power structures for the simple reason that power corrupts both the powerful and the weak, and very often the weak more than the powerful.
Because I want our editors and moderators to know that their power goes only as far as their own diminutive backyards and their efforts to violate my fundamental human right of free speech are destined to be self-defeating and to boomerang.
Finally, I discuss our problems whenever and wherever I am given the opportunity to do so because not to do so would amount to covering them up and I reject that option as cowardly; I also believe a bigger audience enhances the probability of being corrected when wrong.
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Monday, July 23, 2007
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BITCHES, PIMPS, AND MORONS
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“A war against terrorism such as we have seen is an oxymoron undertaken by morons,” writes Gerry Spence in BLOODTHIRSTY BITCHES AND PIOUS PIMPS OF POWER (New York, 2006), which in my view is one of the very best books ever written about the conservative movement in America today with particular emphasis on such “talking heads” as Nancy Grace (may she rest in peace), Jerry Falwell (ditto), Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, and Pat Robertson. Elsewhere Spence quotes the following words by Rosa Parks: “People, not governments, bring change.” Further down: “A revolution begins not with guns but with a revolution of thought. A revolution of thought begins with a revolution of knowledge. A revolution of knowledge requires that people be fully informed. But here again we face a nearly impossible obstacle: the media that informs the people is also owned by the corporate King.”
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Only a thoroughly brainwashed Armenian will assert our own leadership has been and continues to be less dogmatic, more tolerant of dissent, and less moronic. Which is why I feel justified in asserting: unless we thoroughly de-Ottomanize and de-Stalinize ourselves, mart bidi ch’ellank.
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Tuesday, July 24, 2007
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LIES IN POLITICS
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In Robert Dallek’s NIXON AND KISSINGER: PARTNERS IN POWER (New York, 2007) we are told that, as a translator in Germany after World War II, Kissinger learned the following lesson from camp survivors: “Impulses to dwell on past horrors would produce sorrow and self-pity, which were forms of ‘weakness’ that were ‘synonymous with death’” (page 39). Elsewhere Dallek quotes William Safire to the effect that both Nixon and Kissinger were “convinced that consistent lying can be the right thing for the country” (page 615). We are also informed here that they lied not only to the people but also to each other as well as to themselves – by believing in their own ‘image’, which, like all images, bears little relation to reality. This may suggest that in politics, and by extension history, the truth is constantly hidden from us and by the time it is revealed – if at all – it is too late because by then the damage is done and no one on earth has the power to unring the bell or resurrect the dead. As for those who say, perhaps even believe, that all politicians lie except ours: I envy their innocence but I have nothing but contempt for their loyalty, because loyalty to men, when it overrides loyalty to truth, is essentially a fascist concept.
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Wednesday, July 25, 2007
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ON FORGIVENESS
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Bishop Desmond Tutu in NO FUTURE WITHOUT FORGIVENESS (New York, 1999, page 23): “If the victim could forgive only when the culprit confessed, then the victim would be locked into victimhood.”
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Martin Luther King in a sermon delivered in 1957: “Forgiveness does not mean ignoring what has been done or putting a false label on an evil act. It means, rather, that the evil act no longer remains as a barrier to the relationship.”
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It is not my intention here to advocate forgiving the Turks because I am not in the habit of advocating utopian daydreams. What I am doing is revealing two unfamiliar (to me) aspects of forgiveness that may well be in our self-interest.
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GENERAL ANTRANIK ON NATIONALISM
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“I am not a nationalist. I am on the side of underdogs of all nations.”
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WHAT I KNOW ABOUT OUR GHAZETAJIS*
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What neocons are to the Bush administration, our Turcocentric ghazetajis are to the Armenian nation: they speak hate and war (strike that! I meant to say justice) but when the time comes, they will let others to the fighting for them.
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FOOTNOTE
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*ghazetaji: what paparazzi are to photojournalism, ghazetajis are to journalism.
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