Sunday, November 11, 2007
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WORSE THAN A CRIME
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“It is worse than a crime, it is a blunder.” The French diplomat who delivered that line was not talking about our genocide but he might as well have been. It was a major crime on the part of the perpetrators, no doubt about that, but it was also and above all a colossal blunder on ours – a blunder in so far as we let it happen by making ourselves vulnerable to them, by freely choosing, as it were, the worst case scenario, and this notwithstanding the many warnings, previews, trial-runs, and rehearsals of 1894, 1895, 1896, and 1909. And what is even more incomprehensible to me is that to this day we ignore or cover up that aspect of the Crime perhaps because we care more about our image than about understanding reality, as if political leadership meant leading the people to hell and pretending it’s for their own good, or like shepherds, leading the sheep to the slaughterhouse after protecting them from wolves. Don’t think for a single moment that I am making unreasonable demands on our leadership. Neither am I asking for greatness or vision or prophetic insight. We don’t need learned scholars or eminent historians or charismatic leaders to point out where we went wrong. What we need are honest men with common sense willing to place the interests and welfare of the people above their contemptible little egos. This is not something that requires two or three generations, as our pro-establishment dupes like to say. This is a decision that can be taken in an instant. And speaking of two or three generations: once in a while I watch the Armenian hour on TV emanating from Toronto, mercifully only once a week. Most of it consists of videos of half-clad and heavily made-up girls dancing and gyrating provocatively in the manner of their best American counterparts. And I cannot help reflecting that if these zilli cheltiks can learn to mimic the worst that the West has to offer, why can’t our leaders learn to emulate the best or even the average?
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Monday, November 12, 2007
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THE LIGHT OF REASON
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It has been observed that on recovering their sight, blind men take refuge in dark rooms. You may now draw your own conclusions.
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An Armenian poet and academic from Yerevan, during a visit to the U.S., made fun of our Turkish surnames. Later, he was exposed as a prominent member of a mafia dynasty. What does that prove, you may ask. Simply this: a man will cling to any flimsy idea to assert his superiority over his fellow men.
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To believe someone in authority means to allow him to recreate you in his own image.
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When a friendly forum moderator once asked me if he should delete an offensive comment dealing with my person, I said, “No. Free speech allows everyone the same right to make an ass of himself in public.”
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All political leaders have adversaries and the chances are what these adversaries say about them is more objective and therefore closer to the truth than what they and their partisans say about themselves.
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Insults have a longer lifespan that compliments perhaps because they are more solidly rooted in reality.
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Tuesday, November 13, 2007
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THE ORIGIN OF ALL SINS
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5:45 AM
What if we never quite outgrow the infantile misconception that we are the center of the world? What if most of our problems and aberrations stem from our inability to realize that so is everyone else? What if belief systems, ideologies and their perversions, such as racism, nationalism, and fascism, enjoy ready and wide acceptance because they are extensions of this misconception? My God, my Country, my Leader, Mein Fuehrer, Heil Hitler!
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We sometimes forget that misconceptions are luxuries obtained at a very high price. Consider racism or the myth of the Chosen People or the Superior Race. By dehumanizing “inferior” races we dehumanize ourselves. Hence the spectacle of a superior race behaving like inferior swine. What if nationalism is nothing but collective narcissism? What if fascism and intolerance of criticism and dissent are based on the phoniest of all assumptions, namely that we are beyond criticism, that is to say, infallible, which is an attribute of God and of those who speak in His name even as they go about doing the devil’s work?
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6:30 AM
I read the following quotation of the day by W.R. Inge in our local paper: “The proper time to influence the character of a child is about a hundred years before he is born.” In other words, you cannot have a normal or a healthy child in a sick environment and an educational system with a perverted values.
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10:20 AM
Writes Orhan Pamuk: “Living as I do in a country that honors its pashas, saints, and policemen at every opportunity but refuses to honor its writers…” (See OTHER COLORS: ESSAYS & A STORY [New York, 2007] page 237.) Armenian translation: Living as I do in an environment that honors its bosses, bishops, and benefactors at every opportunity but refuses to acknowledge even the existence of its writers unless they are murdered by the likes of Talaat and Stalin, or they are dead, buried, and permanently silenced…preferably in a previous century…
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Wednesday, November 14, 2007
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HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE
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To kill the enemy without guilt, he must first be dehumanized and whenever possible demonized. This is what the Turks did to us during World War I; this is what the Germans did to the Jews during World War II; this is what African-Americans do whenever they voice the slogan “White man is the devil”; this is what Sartre did when, speaking of the human condition, he delivered the dictum “Hell is other people”; and this is what we do today when we speak of Turks or, for that matter, fellow Armenians who disagree with us.
There is only one way to demonize another and that’s by projecting the evil that is within us.
To avoid facing reality by admitting the evil that is within him, man has invented the blame-game. If we can blame our misfortunes on others, we absolve ourselves of all responsibility and we are born again as exemplary human beings without blemish. That is why the Turks cannot acknowledge the genocide, and that is why our self-righteous dividers cannot compromise and reach a consensus even as they speechify on patriotism or nationalism and practice tribalism.
The blame-game allows us to ignore the evil that is within us by concentrating on the evil that is within the enemy, even when the enemy happens to be our brother. Hence Zarian’s dictum “Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another.”
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