Author: arabaliozian

Thursday, November 18, 2004
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Politicians are adept at making you think you are thinking when in fact you are parroting slogans of their own contrivance.
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The unspoken aim of an elite is the systematic moronization of the masses.
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We are all victims of politicians, if not the enemy’s than our own. People of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your charlatans.
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According to the Turkish version of the story, it was Bulgarians, Greeks and Armenians who provoked Ottoman massacres by killing Turkish civilians. If true, the question we should ask is: “Why did law-abiding subjects of the Empire suddenly behave like bloodthirsty savages?”
It can be said of massacres, what Merleau-Ponty says of torture:
“It is said, and it is true, that torture is the answer to terrorism. This does not justify torture. We ought to have acted in such a way that terrorism would not have arisen.”
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Democracy may also be defined as fascism modified by anti-fascist checks and balances, which sometimes fail to check and balance.
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Thomas Mann: “The intellectual man is almost as much interested in painful truths as the fool is in those which flatter him.”
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Friday, November 19, 2004
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We cannot change history, but we can try to understand it, beginning with the fact that political decisions are not acts of God (like earthquakes and volcanoes) but acts of men, with their own set of prejudices, loyalties, interests, blind spots, limitations, idiosyncrasies, fears, doubts, and anxieties. In short, politicians are people like us, totally disqualified to assert infallibility.
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History may be summed up as a slow-motion avalanche of blunders and miscalculations by men of power whose central concern is to either maintain or increase their powers.
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Talleyrand is right: sometimes errors of judgment can be far worse than crimes.
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It has been said, and it is true, that we see things not as they are, but as we are. Our understanding is therefore enhanced whenever we think against ourselves, or we view reality as a succession of traps and ambushes.
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A version of the past that supports a specific political agenda cannot be right. Also, between a version that flatters our vanity and one that does not, the chances are the unflattering version will be closer to the truth.
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A Sudanese general on the genocide in Darfur: “It is not genocide; it is war, and in war bad things happen.”
Sounds familiar?
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We have many kinds of literary awards except a Freedom of Speech Award. Can you guess why?
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Because I dare to question the judgment and wisdom of our political leadership, I am sometimes accused of “self-hatred.” Figure that one out, if you can.
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Saturday, November 20, 2004
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It is a mistake to identify the people with the regime, especially if the regime is non-representative, and all regimes are to some extent non-representative, including democracies. Consider the case of the Bush Administration today. Roughly speaking it represents only the interests and values of only 25% of the people, since 50% don’t vote and the remaining 25% voted against him. And of the 25% that voted for him, one is justifying in wondering how many of them did so on the basis of deceptive slogans that exploited their prejudices and fears. For more on this subject, see GAG RULE: ON THE SUPPRESSION OF DISSENT AND THE STIFLING OF DEMOCRACY by Lewis H. Lapham (New York, Penguin Press, 2004).
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Speaking of the unpopularity of democracies and the ease with which they slide into fascism, Lapham writes: “Nobody ever said that democratic government was easy, which is why, during the twenty years between the last century’s two world wars, it failed and was abandoned by the people of Italy, Turkey, Portugal, Spain, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Albania, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Austria, and Germany.”
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And finally, here is Spengler on the undemocratic nature of democracies: “A small number of superior heads, whose names are very likely not the best known, settle everything, while below them are the great mass of second-rate politicians selected through a provincially-conceived franchise to keep alive the illusion of popular self-determination.”
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Thursday, November 11, 2004
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In whatever I write, my aim is not to assert the superiority of my ideas, but to suggest that there is nothing wrong in once in a while questioning the validity of our fundamental assumptions, in order to separate that which is ours (therefore authentic) from that which is someone else’s (therefore alien).
Cases in point:
What if hating a fellow Armenian is more Ottoman and less Armenian? What if the status quo we support is more authoritarian and less democratic? – that is to say, more Ottoman and less human?
What if inflexibility is not love of principle but infatuation with the self?
And what if, since in an authoritarian environment, yes-men have a far better chance to survive and succeed than honest men, we have been educated, manipulated and brainwashed by charlatans?
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Chinese proverb: “Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps the singing bird will come.”
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Generosity is a virtue praised by the poor, and avarice is a vice practiced by the wealthy.
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Longevity does not guarantee wisdom, only senility.
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Stolen apples taste better because only the very hungry steal.
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Friday, November 12, 2004
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Our intellectuals today do not aspire to expose the charlatans and overthrow the oppressors half as much as they do to join their ranks.
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We are all dissidents, if not against the state, then against the dissenters.
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It is not easy writing for readers who know better. It is even more difficult writing for readers who know everything and are never wrong. Hercules had it easy: his labors were only twelve in number.
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An old Catholic once told me: “When I go to confession, I tell the priest: ‘Father, you know me, it’s the usual.’ And he understands because he has been my confessor for many years.” Now, imagine if you can this old man to be an Armenian confessing to an Armenian priest. Not only the priest would insist on hearing every single sordid sin but also, at the end, after accusing the old man of covering up, he would refuse absolution.
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What’s the difference between an Ottomanized Armenian and a Turk? The Turk does not pretend to be the opposite of what he is.
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When honest men keep silent, only the loudmouth charlatans are heard.
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Saturday, November 13, 2004
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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
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One does not kill in the name of God but in the name of an idol. Pascal is right: “The worship of truth without charity is idolatry.”
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What would happen to him if he were to convert to Hinduism, asks Toynbee, and he answers: “In the hierarchy of castes I should rank below the sweepers.”
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In his book of travel impressions, Denis Donikian quotes a woman in Yerevan as saying: “Today no one gives a damn about the people. If they want to build a church they go right ahead and build it. Speaking for myself, I have lost all faith. Believe in what, may I ask? And what’s the use of buying a newspaper? I am not illiterate. I wouldn’t mind reading a newspaper. But I can’t afford one.”
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Elsewhere: “Once upon a time there was a country in which everyone spoke the same language and no one understood what the other was saying.”
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When criticized, Donikian writes, our politicians have a pat answer: “Our present problems are the gradual accumulation of many past problems.”
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Why is it that the very same readers, who accuse me of dipping my pen in arsenic, dip theirs in cobra venom?
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Knowledge advances, propaganda stays the same. If you say, “Tomorrow I will think what I thought yesterday and what I think today,” the questions you should ask yourself are: “What if my thoughts are not mine but someone else’s? And what if someone else’s thoughts are the thoughts of an ignoramus?”
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Trash my kind of ideas
and alienate all those who think as I do.
Alienate those who do not parrot your sentiments and thoughts
and surround yourself only with like-minded men.
In the company of exclusively like-minded men,
entertain the illusion that most people think as you do.
Live in that misconception long enough
and blur the line that separates reality from illusion.
And is not confusing illusion with reality
the first stage of insanity?
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Like Captain Boycott and Judge Lynch, Bush has enriched the English language with a new word: Bushism, meaning any incoherent and nonsensical sentence.
#

Thursday, November 04, 2004
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FOUR MORE YEARS
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I feel like a Jew in 1933.
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The Christian Right in America may stand for love, mercy, and compassion, but not for tolerance. It views tolerance as un-American, therefore, anti-Christian.
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Dozens of books have been published by highly reputable scholars and investigative reporters in which Bush’s lies, inconsistencies, contradictions, and dirty tricks are exhaustively exposed and documented, but Bush was re-elected because the average born-again hillbilly trusts televangelists more than intellectuals.
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In 1933 Germans trusted Hitler more than Thomas Mann. Marx is right. History repeats itself, first time as tragedy, second time as farce.
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A Nazi is also one who, after hanging a label on a fellow human being, sees only the label.
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In 1915 we were the Jews of the Turks. And today, I am the Jew of our own bosses, bishops, and benefactors.
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All organized religions preach love, but after hanging a label on a fellow human being (heretic, anti-Christ, infidel, giaour, Untouchable) practice intolerance and hatred.
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All power structures speak with a forked tongue. Where there is power, there will also be pathological liars and dupes.
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We have all been Jews and Nazis at one time or another. “Jew” and “Nazi” are labels, granted, but only in the sense that “victim” and victimizer” are labels. To label another is not the same as to assume to have a license to kill.
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My ambition as an Armenian is to be able to criticize Armenians and to be perceived not as a good Armenian (that would be too much to ask), or even as an Armenian, but as a concerned fellow human being.
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Friday, November 05, 2004
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VERSIONS OF THE PAST
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When it comes to the past, every major historian will have his own version of it. Which version do we teach our children? Not a difficult question to answer: the version that is most flattering to our collective ego, provided it bears the seal of approval of a regime or power structure, of course.
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Elementary schoolteachers don’t teach history, they recycle propaganda. This may explain Mark Twain’s celebrated dictum: “I have never let schooling interfere with my education.”
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SELF-KNOWLEDGE
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We are products of history. To understand history is to understand ourselves. Hence, Herder’s description of history as the education of the human race.
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THE REASON BEHIND THE REASON
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What if the reason, the real reason, why we were massacred, was our ignorance of the world?
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QUESTION
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Was Napoleon a great man, a military genius, a spectacular loser, a hero, a tyrant, a bloodthirsty monster? Even French historians don’t always agree. What if, by occupying Germany, he stimulated German nationalism, which resulted in Hitler?
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THE STERILITY OF LITERATURE
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After Shaw wrote, “One fashionably dressed woman may cost the life of ten babies,” did the number of fashionably dressed women go down?
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IN PRAISE OF SOLIDARITY
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Chinese proverb: “To hunt tigers one must have a brother’s help.”
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WAR AND PEACE
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“Islam is a religion of peace,” according to an imam quoted in our paper today, “but like all religions, it is open to misinterpretations.” Which may be why Socrates, Buddha and Jesus did not write a single line. But then, Marx, who wrote copiously and in exhaustive detail in order to avoid misunderstanding, created the nightmare of Stalinism.
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Saturday, November 06, 2004
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THE TAO TE CHING ON NATIONS
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“A great nation is like a great man,
When he makes a mistake, he realizes it.
Having realized it, he admits it.
Having admitted it, he corrects it.
He considers those who point out his faults
As his most benevolent teachers.
He thinks of his enemy
As the shadow that he himself casts.”
(A lesson that the Chinese are in the process of relearning and we have yet to learn.)
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VOLTAIRE ON THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIONS
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“…From the meeting of the earliest scoundrel with the very first fool.”
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PAUL VALERY ON EDUCATION
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“Education in depth consists in undoing one’s first education.”
(In other words, if you want to understand the world, forget what you were taught by your elementary schoolteachers and learn to think for yourself.)
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PANAIT ISTRATI ON ARMENIANS
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In his book of Armenian travel impression, Denis Donikian quotes the following passage from Panait Istrati: “The Armenian is a fellow I know as well as I know the Greek and the Jew. I like all three a lot, notwithstanding their defects, the most obvious being their conviction that, if the sun were to set forever, they would be the first to adapt to the new reality.”
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CLAUDE IMBERT ON BUSH
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“A president that consults God before breakfast will always enjoy the support of a good half of his fellow Americans.”
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“America under Roosevelt defeated fascism. America under Reagan defeated communism. Two planetary triumphs that confirm America’s mission to fight evil [i.e. jihadist Islam].”
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WITTGENSTEIN ON THE ART OF TEACHING
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“My aim is to teach you to pass from a piece of disguised nonsense to something that is patent nonsense.” (Or, from charlatanism, whose sole aim is to deceive and mislead you by flattering your vanity, to transparent nonsense that cannot obstruct your understanding of the world and arrest your mental development.)
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Sunday, October 31, 2004
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BUGGERING ON.
FAITH, RELIGION, AND IDEOLOGY.
MASTERS OF THE BLAME GAME.
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Very early this morning I opened my eyes with the words: “Many have tried before me and failed. When they were not silenced, they gave up in despair. Why go on?”
And here I am again, “unwashed, unshaved, unshat” (Auden), “buggering on” (Churchill).
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What matters about an idea is not whether it is positive or negative, or pro-this or anti-that, but how accurately it explains a situation. Which is why, whenever we approach reality with preconceived notions and prejudices, it blows in our face. Our recent history provides us with so many instances of this occurrence that we, or rather, our political parties, have become masters of the blame game in order to avoid all responsibility for their miscalculations.
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An argument between a commissar without a license to kill and a writer without an audience is like a fight between two bald-headed men over a comb.
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The difference between faith and religion is that faith unites and religion divides. Religion divides not only in relation to other religions but also within itself – Sunni and Shi’a, Catholic and Protestant, sometimes even Catholic and Catholic, and Protestant and Protestant. The same applies to ideologies, like Marxism or Communism (Stalinist and Trotskyites) and nationalism (Tashnak and Ramgavar).
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When religions and ideologies divide, they declare their moral and political bankruptcy by ignoring the central message of their faith (love, compassion, tolerance and mercy) or the interests of the nation (strength in solidarity). Because without solidarity, a nation makes itself more vulnerable to the enemy or to social, political and economic forces “beyond its control” – or so the political leaders say in obedience to the rules of the blame game.
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Monday, November 01, 2004
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THE ALIENATED,
THE ASSIMILATED,
AND THE FORGOTTEN.
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The Armenian critic or dissident may not be the rule, but neither is he the exception we may think he is. Just because we silence critics, it does not mean they cease to exist. And just because we alienate our fellow Armenians, it does not mean they cease being Armenian.
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The alienated Armenian is not a second-class citizen. Rather, he is a reflection of our own cult of intolerance and hatred.
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An alienated Armenian means what he says and he says it with his feet. And what he says is what I have been saying: our institutions are run by charlatans who legitimize Ottomanism in the name of Armenianism.
To forget, or to ignore, or to dismiss them as defective Armenians is to compound the felony. They are as much our victims as our parents were of Turkish atrocities, and like our victims of the massacres, they number in the million.
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The alienated Armenian is our responsibility. Not to recognize this is nothing but an Armenian variation on a Turkish theme.
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Let us not emulate our leaders who have become such masters of the blame game that they see themselves as infallible role models whose every word has the authority of Holy Writ.
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Imams and bishops may pretend to speak in the name of God, but all politicians, regardless of nationality, will behave like pathological liars for the sake of expediency and whenever it is in their own interest.
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Tuesday, November 02, 2004
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A new idea will be a source of dread only to the man who is infatuated with his own ignorance.
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The purpose of an Armenian argument is not thesis-antithesis-synthesis (or consensus) but “You are full of s***! that’s who I am.”
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As perennial victims, our only chance to achieve top-dog status is in verbal vitriol.
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Nothing illustrates our Ottoman heritage better than an exchange of views.
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For every insecure Armenian who needs to assert superiority in argument, there will be another who has developed strategies to avoid confrontation.
When asked which church he goes to, a friend of mine is in the habit of replying: “I am with the good guys.”
Another friend has trained himself never to say, “I disagree with you.” Even when he disagrees with a fellow Armenian violently he says, “You may be right.”
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In an argument, our unstated aim in not consensus but the total destruction of the adversary.
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If our bishops, who speak in the name of the Almighty (Who knows everything) cannot agree, why should we?
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Two people disagree because neither knows the whole truth.
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When we disagree, we cling to our partial knowledge the way a drowning man is said to cling to anything, including a venomous serpent.
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To think to know everything is as bad as to know nothing.
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The only reason some people think they know everything they need to know is that their standards are mighty low and their demands minimal to the point of non-existence.
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He who cannot tell the difference between knowledge and information is a complete ignoramus even when he is well informed.
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Wednesday, November 03, 2004
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To understand another you must walk a hundred miles in his moccasins. To know him, to really know him, you must share his beliefs, superstitions, prejudices and misconceptions.
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I understand Armenians because I grew up in an Armenian ghetto; I had an Armenian education; and I have spent most of my life working for them. I could write a dictionary of Armenian fallacies, clichés, misconceptions, and prejudices, all of which have been mine at one time or another.
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When we silence dissent, we cease to have a balanced view of ourselves, and an unbalanced view of ourselves might as well be the initial stage of insanity. To those who say, individuals may go insane, but not nations, may I remind them of what happened to the Italians under Mussolini, the Germans under Hitler, and the Soviets under Stalin. (And today, I am tempted to add: the Americans under Bush.)
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What could be more ridiculous, not to say absurd, than to suggest that a nation that has endured six centuries of brutal oppression, a series of massacres, dispersion, and destitution in alien environments, can be threatened by the criticism of a single minor scribbler?
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If you take things seriously, happiness for you is taking nothing seriously, not even death.
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I love this sentence by Saint-Simon: “My self-esteem has always increased in direct proportion to the damage I was doing to my reputation.”
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Thursday, October 28, 2004
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THE POSITIVE AND THE NEGATIVE
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I once heard a Jewish comedian say, he did not care for the Ten Commandments because they stressed the negative.
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Why were Charents and Bakounts tortured and killed by our commissars? Because they were perceived as a negative influence on Soviet society.
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Hagop Baronian was betrayed to the Turkish authorities by his fellow Armenians in Istanbul because he too was perceived as negative.
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Freud saw in Christianity “a distorted form of obsessional neurosis,” and Karl Marx as “the legitimator of exploitation.” They did not much care for the Ten Commandments either.
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What’s positive and what’s negative? It depends on where you stand. My enemy is negative, my friend positive, and my enemy’s enemy is my friend because two negatives make a positive. To paraphrase the African chieftain quoted by C.G. Jung in his memoirs: “If I steal my enemy’s wives, it’s positive. If he steals my wives, it’s negative.”
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When I sit down to write, it never even occurs to me to choose between being negative or positive…especially if my house is on fire.
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At the height of the British Empire, Matthew Arnold wrote: “The world, which seems to lie before us like a land of dreams, [contains] neither joy, nor love, nor light, nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain.” As far as I know, no one has ever accused Arnold of stressing the negative at the expense of the positive.
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A CRITIC’S JOB
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I read the following in Kenneth Tynan’s posthumously published diaries: “A critic’s job is to make way for the good by demolishing the bad.”
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A PARABLE
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Once upon a time there was a man who lived in a beautiful house on a hill. Upon his return from work one day, he saw from a distance that his house was on fire. On noticing a passerby with a cell phone, he said: “Please, call 911 for me.” And the passerby said: “Why should I?” “Because my house is on fire,” said the other. “That’s the bad news,” said the passerby. “What’s the good news?”
Much later the man, whose house had gone up in smoke, found out that the passerby with a cell phone was an Armenian.
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AN ARMENIAN DECALOGUE
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I. Thou shalt not confuse the god of our priests with God.
II. Thou shalt not consider intolerance a virtue.
III. Thou shalt not blame foreigners for all our misfortunes.
IV. Thou shalt not entertain the ambitions of a commissar of culture.
V. Thou shalt not resent those who expose the Turk in you.
VI. Thou shalt not practice or promote Ottomanism in the name of Armenianism.
VII. Thou shalt not believe every word you utter as if it were the word of God.
VIII. Thou shalt not pretend to be as infallible as the Pope of Rome, as fearsome as Stalin, and as magnificent as Suleiman.
IX. Thou shalt not parade your ignorance as if it were the latest word in wisdom.
X. Thou shalt not reject the validity of these Commandments on the grounds that they stress the negative and ignore the positive.
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Friday, October 29, 2004
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ON THE POSITIVE SIDE
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It has been said that reality is often stranger and more brutal than any fiction. But in reality, whenever a door is closed, there may be ten or even a hundred other doors waiting to be opened. Just because we cannot see these doors, it does not mean they are not there. Very often, that which is nearest to us is also the least visible.
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ON NATIONALIST HISTORIANS
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It is not at all unusual for a nationalist historian to be objective when it comes to other nations and turn into a pathological liar when it comes to his own. This is true not only of Turkish historians but of all historians in general. I wish I were in a position to say that our own historians are an exception to this rule.
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THE RED AND THE WHITE
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The difference between a “red” and a “white” massacre is that, a red massacre is perpetrated by wolves and jackals, and a white massacre is perpetrated by sheepdogs and shepherds.
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QUESTION / ANSWER
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Why is it that under the repressive, not to say, murderous, regimes of the Red Sultan and Stalin we had literary giants, and under our own bosses, bishops, and benefactors, we don’t even have midgets. My guess is: a combination of ignorance, prejudice, intolerance and envy can be more deadly than an army of jihadist imams and commissars with a license to kill.
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A THOUSAND AND ONE DOUBTS,
ONLY ONE CERTAINTY
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Unlike some of my self-righteous and chauvinist detractors, I am more than willing to concede that nothing I say is certain and the chances that I may be wrong are very high. I am willing to go further and say that I may even be wrong 99% of the time. But on one point I can assert 100% certainty: namely, in my defense of free speech. I wonder, how many of our self-appointed neo-commissars, who have at one time or another advocated silencing me, have had anything remotely favorable to say about free speech, which happens to be a fundamental human right.
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ZARIAN AND GARABENTS
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The two authorities I would like to quote at this point are Zarian and Garabents.
Zarian: “Our political parties have been of no political use to us. Their greatest enemy is free speech.”
Garabents (Jack Karapetian): “Once upon a time we fought and died for freedom. We are now afraid of free speech.”
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ON THE NEGATIVE SIDE
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If, in an Armenian environment, a door is closed, you can be sure of one thing: a trap door will open beneath your feet.
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MEMO
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Expect the worst and you will not be disappointed.
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Saturday, October 30, 2004
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BUSHWHACKED
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We are a people like any other people, I am reminded repeatedly, “with our own share of honest men and charlatans.” If true, consider some of the insults, slogans, headlines, and graffiti directed at Bush, only a small fraction of which are quoted in BUSHWHACKED: LIFE IN GEORGE W. BUSH’S AMERICA, by Molly Ivins and Lou Debose (New York: Random House, 347 pages, 2003).
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BUSH IS PROOF THAT EMPTY WARHEADS CAN BE DANGEROUS.
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LET’S BOMB TEXAS, THEY HAVE OIL TOO.
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IF YOU CAN’T PRONOUNCE IT, DON’T BOMB IT.
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ONE THOUSAND POINTS OF LIGHT, AND ONE DIM BULB.
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WAR IS NOT A FAMILY VALUE.
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$1 BILLION A DAY TO KILL PEOPLE -WHAT A BARGAIN.
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WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ME AND GOD? HE MIGHT FORGIVE BUSH, BUT I WON’T.
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SMART WEAPONS, DUMB PRESIDENT.
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PEACE TAKES BRAINS.
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IT’S NUCLEAR, NOT NUCULAR, YOU IDIOT!
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Because I have been paraphrasing and expanding on these slogans in reference to our own leadership, I am perceived as a hostile witness and an enemy that should be silenced. My question is, if you disapprove of our leaders, what have you done to expose their blunders? But if you approve of them, what right do you have to tell me to recycle your own particular brand of pro-establishment crapola?
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CRITICS, MEDDLERS, AND COMMISSARS
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After criticizing me, a reader writes: “I am not a critic.” Zarian is right. “We don’t have critics. What we have are meddlers.” And more often than not, may I add, meddlers with the ambitions of commissars of culture who miss the good old days when they had a license to kill.
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EMPEROR MURPHY
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If the massacres can be blamed on the bloodthirsty disposition of the Turks and the double talk of the Great Powers; if the exodus from the Homeland and the high assimilation rate in the Diaspora can be blamed on social and economic conditions beyond our control; the question we must ask is: What the hell do we need leaders for? If so far they have been of no use to us when we needed them most, why don’t we get rid of them and consider ourselves perennial subjects of Murphy and his inflexible law, that says: “If things can go wrong, they will go wrong at the worst possible time.”
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IN PRAISE OF HUMILITY
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In a book of Anatolian travel impression by Lord Kinross (who is also the author of a mammoth biography of Ataturk), I remember to have read about his encounters with old Turks who bragged to him on having taught the Armenians a lesson they will never forget.
They brag about having massacred us, and we brag about our survival. May I suggest the world would be a far better place if we, all of us, realize we have nothing to brag about and a great deal to be humble about. Besides, if we brag about our survival, what do we do about the millions who did not? Do we plead amnesia? Do we ignore them? Do we pretend, out of sight, out of mind?
#

Sunday, October 24, 2004
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SPEECHIFIERS AND SERMONIZERS
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Whenever I am invited to deliver a speech, I try to explain that what I have to say is not exactly speechifiable. Last time I heard one of our popular speechifiers, he voiced the same old familiar slogan: “We must support our beloved homeland because without it we are no better than lost sheep wandering aimlessly in a desert of alienation.” My message would be the exact opposite: the Homeland should support the people or us because without the people the Homeland is nothing but a piece of real estate.
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As things stand, to support the Homeland also means to reinforce and legitimize a corrupt power structure and a priviligentsia whose number one concern is number one.
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Lenin opposed all forms of charity, because, he explained, “charity does nothing but postpone the revolution.”
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“The Homeland needs us!” yes, certainly, it goes without saying. But what the Homeland needs even more is elected officials who will live up to their responsibilities by being honest public servants accountable to the people. This may not be part of our culture or authoritarian traditions, granted. But what is the alternative besides despotism, Sultanism, or Stalinism?
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I am not suggesting a regime change by assassination or revolution, but by gradual reform. Let us help the Homeland by all means, but let us also do whatever we can to clean up the mess there. Easier said than done? Yes, especially if you take into account the fact that before we undertake to clean up the mess there, we should clean up our own mess here.
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We in the Diaspora may be financially better off, but morally we too are in desperate need of reform. Which is why I shiver when I see diasporan charlatans and gravediggers going to Armenia and parading as benefactors and saviors of the nation.
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Corruption and incompetence are at the root of the exodus from the Homeland and a high rate of assimilation in the Diaspora: two “white massacres” that are more or less ignored by our ghazettajis and phony pundits, who prefer to stress such meaningless controversies as the use of the word “kef” or the adoption of the vernacular badarak.
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If the present rate of assimilation and exodus continues, who do you think is going to support and defend the Homeland? Our speechifiers and sermonizers in the Diaspora or our wheeler-dealers with their Swiss bank accounts and villas in the Homeland?
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Monday, October 25, 2004
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MATTHEW 7:6
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“One reason I refuse to write for Armenians is the warning in Matthew 7:6,” a reader writes.
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A couple of days later, the same reader: “It seems to me you take Armenian affairs and your fellow Armenians too seriously, and you consistently ignore the advice in Matthew 7:6.”
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I check Matthew 7:6 and I read: “Do not give dogs what is holy; and do not throw your pearls before swine, less they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.”
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I dread to think what would happen to me if I were to adopt St. Matthew’s sentiments and vocabulary. As for political correctness: I agree with those who dismiss it as “semantic fascism.”
*
Ever since I read Gandhi’s definition of religion – any belief system that you think is true, including atheism – I can no longer identify myself as a non-believer. Like Chekhov, I believe that we cannot answer the most important questions with any degree of certainty, and what make most belief systems intolerant are the certainties they pretend to possess.
*
People believe for two main reasons: they were conditioned to believe at a time when they couldn’t think for themselves; and they believe because they feel a deep need to believe…and they will believe in anything and anyone, including Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Castro.
*
As a child I was educated to be a devout Catholic. In my twenties I discovered Zen Buddhism. I now think there is a core of universal truth in all religions, provided we define religion as an endless quest. I also think if Socrates, Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed and Gandhi ever met, they would agree with one another and they would consider their followers as so many dogs and swine.
*
There is a type of Armenian criticism that I call “nuisance criticism,” whose intent is not to make sense or to expose contradictions (which is the true definition of criticism) but to make a nuisance of itself and to silence dissent. It is no exaggeration to say that some of our ablest writers – from Voskanian and Massikian to Shahnour and Zarian – fell silent as a result of this type of criticism.
*
When an American criticizes America, he is motivated by love of America. But when a Muslim jihadist criticizes America, his ultimate aim is the total destruction of the continent.
*
To my critics I say: Next time you think of attacking me, ask yourself, “Am I motivated by Ottoman venom?” and if the answer is yes, keep silent. Because, remember, the most devastating criticism is silence born of apathy.
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Tuesday, October 26, 2004
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CRITICS AND COMMISSARS
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Times may change, continents may change, but the number of our commissars, it seems, is destined to remain constant, with one difference: they no longer have a license to kill.
*
Whenever our editors reject one of my commentaries, they never explain why, and when they do, their lies are so transparent that I experience a shiver of shame on their behalf.
*
Some of our commissars may no longer have a license to kill or to silence but they make up for it with concentrated Ottoman venom.
*
I write only about what I see, experience and think. Obviously, I am in no position to write about what someone else sees, experiences and thinks.
*
To those who say I am an enemy of the people, I say: “That’s what you think and I cannot be held responsible for what you think.”
*
To those who would like to see me silenced, I say: “You, my friend, are an anachronism. Because, in case you didn’t know, the era of commissars of culture has been consigned to the dustbin of history, where it belonged in the first place. Of course, you are free to disagree with me. But again, I cannot be held responsible for what’s in your head, only for what’s in mine. Besides, why should I write about what you think if (a) you are in a far better position to do that, and (b) I don’t even know who you are?”
*
Censorship exists where there are dark secrets and lies, which, if exposed, would tarnish the image of those in power. It is the function of a critic to expose these lies and secrets. A critic who fails to do that is like a doctor who ignores the symptoms of serious illness in his patient. Such a doctor is not a doctor but a quack whose license should be revoked. And such a critic is not a critic but a propagandist and a parrot that can repeat only what others see, think and feel.
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Wednesday, October 27, 2004
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Because I am in the habit of trashing charlatans, a reader writes: “It is wrong to trash the Homeland,” thus identifying the Homeland with charlatans.
*
“Why is it that you consistently stress the negative and ignore the positive?” I am asked repeatedly. Allow me to answer that question by asking another, which, as far as I know, is never asked in our environment: “Why is it that we can afford to support priests, bishops, editors, and schoolteachers by the dozen, sometimes even by the hundred, but we cannot afford a single full-time investigative reporter?”
*
The publisher of a chezok diasporan weekly once said to me: “On the day I published an investigative report on the ARF, the ARF issued an order to its members to cancel their subscriptions. As a result, in a single week, I lost a thousand subscribers.”
*
An editor from Yerevan: “Once, recently, when I published an investigative report critical of the regime, my office was vandalized and my reporters beaten up.”
*
If we had an investigative reporter, would anyone tell him to investigate the positive and to ignore the negative?
*
As I see it, we are experiencing two “white massacres” – exodus from the Homeland and assimilation in the Diaspora: number of victims, a million and a half each. Please note that both semantics (“white massacre”) and statistics (a total of three million victims) are not mine. Are they accurate? You be the judge.
*
Should I apologize for not being the bearer of bad tidings?
*
You want positive? Easy! Read ARF weeklies on ARF activities, ADL (Ramgavar) weeklies on Ramgavar undertakings, AGBU- and Armenian Assembly-sponsored publications on their respective success stories throughout the world. And if you need more, expose yourself to the verbal diarrhea of our dime-a-dozen sermonizers, speechifiers, and pundits.
*
And I can imagine a member of the Party reviewing Solzhenitsyn’s GULAG ARCHIPELAGO in a Soviet literary periodical and saying: “On the whole, this book emphasizes the negative and completely ignores the many positive aspects of Soviet life.”
*
We may not have real Gulags, granted; but we do have a good number of moral Gulags.
*
Even if I were to write about real Gulags, would I be believed? To this day, Solzhenitsyn is attacked by crypto-Stalinists (you will be surprised how many of them are still with us) on the grounds that he allowed himself to be an instrument of American imperialism.
*
You want more positive? Every other day I receive a newsletter or a brochure in which the many wonderful deeds of our charitable organizations (there must be hundreds of them) are described in some detail, with the inevitable Panchoonie punch line: “Mi kich pogh oughargetsek” (Send us a little money).
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hursday, October 21, 2004
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God is not a fascist but the god of fascists is. He will not tolerate deviationists and dissidents, also known as heretics and blasphemers. Hence the tragic and violent fate of those who at one time or another dared to challenge his authority.
*
Teilhard de Chardin: “The way we treat people is the way we treat God.” I wonder how many Christians even came close to suspecting that when they were burning heretics at the stake, it was God they were burning?
*
Dostoevsky: “A man is endowed with the faculty to rise above the human condition and to embrace eternity.” Though he was himself a devout Orthodox Christian, Dostoevsky did not say “a Christian,” but “a man.” I like that.
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A Christian needs an imam as much as a Muslim needs a bishop. As for a man: he needs neither one nor the other – unless of course he has the mind and soul of a sheep.
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A conviction is no longer a conviction if it is a result of conditioning or brainwashing. A child or a robot cannot have convictions. Convictions are convictions only when formed by reason and experience.
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Friday, October 22, 2004
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Smart prophets and pundits are like astrologers: the more vague and ambiguous their predictions, the better chance they have of not being wrong.
*
Why do we feel the need to voice our disagreements and to insist that we are right and our adversaries wrong? According to Hegel as explained by Kojeve: “Man, to be really, truly man, and to know that he is such, must impose the idea that he has of himself on beings other than himself.”
*
Sartre on Freud: “The dimension of the future does not exist for Freudian psychoanalysis.” Not quite: Freud concentrated on analyzing past wounds because he knew we are creatures of the past with wounds that must be healed and conflicts that must be resolved if we want to find the right path and fulfill our destiny. But Sartre is also right in so far as obsession with the past may turn us into pillars of salt.
*
The Genocide is our collective wound and so far we have failed to heal it because we have made Turkish acceptance of responsibility as a necessary condition. In other words, as victims of murder, we have made ourselves dependent on the goodwill, decency, and sense of justice of murderers.
*
As for world opinion: it remains divided because nations too are creatures of the past with their own open wounds and unresolved conflicts. Americans cannot side with us because they too, like Turks, are guilty of having adopted a genocidal policy towards their native Indians. And Israelis side with Turks because they live in fear of another holocaust and Turks happen to be their only Muslim friends in the Middle East.
*
It is an illusion to think that on the day Turks plead guilty we will be born again as human beings and resolve our internecine conflicts.
*
“The past is not a proof that can be corrected,” writes Herzen, “but a guillotine knife; after it has once fallen there is much that does not grow together again, and not everything can be set right.”
*
What if our dependence on Turkish goodwill is another symptom of our slave mentality?
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Saturday, October 23, 2004
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It is not at all unusual for an Armenian to behave like a Turk in defense of his self-defined and self-assessed Armenianism and to see no inconsistency or contradiction in it.
*
It is beyond me why in the eyes of some Armenians, Armenianism and civilized conduct appear to be incompatible concepts.
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As subjects of the Ottoman Empire, history appeared to us as immobile. But at the turn of the last century it began to move and to move so fast that so far we have failed to catch up with it, which also means we cannot grasp its meaning and perceive its direction.
*
Hegel: “Each consciousness seeks the death of the other.”
When Hegel wrote that line he was not thinking of Armenians but he might as well have been.
*
Great many incomprehensible things become comprehensible if you take into consideration the fact that we live in an imperfect world as imperfect beings with imperfect judgments. If you add to that mixture the fact that we are also torn by a set of conflicting and alien traditions, ideologies, religions, loyalties and vested interests, you may have to conclude that the most incomprehensible thing of all is the fact that we are alive – though battered, wounded, and sometimes even eviscerated, but still breathing….
*
So many hooligans pretending to know better because they are better have insulted me, that I am beginning to develop the skin of a crocodile.
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Three funerals in less than two weeks: the shape of things to come or the shapeless thing getting closer?
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When a reader tells me to write more like Saroyan or Mark Twain or Michael Moore, I am tempted to ask: “And how do you like your pizza? – with or without anchovies?” Next question: “Do you think I am a pizza?”
*
In his book, WITH BORGES, Alberto Manguel writes, Borges was so sentimental that he wept at the end of ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES, one of my favorite Jimmy Cagney movies which I have seen and enjoyed several times without shedding the shadow of a single tear…and I thought I was sentimental.
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Monday, October 18, 2004
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The human brain is designed to think, but more often than not, thinking is the last thing it does.
*
You cannot argue with City Hall, they say; neither can you argue with a bishop, or, for that matter, with a dogmatist, a fanatic, a monomaniac, a partisan, and in general, anyone with an axe to grind or has more power than you do.
*
You cannot argue with Turks either. Not that I have ever argued with one. But I have argued with Armenians. As a matter of fact, I have had many arguments with Armenians and I have lost all of them. Not only have I lost the arguments but also quite a few friends, not to say a fraction of my dignity.
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Sometimes I ask myself: Why do I go on? And the only answer I can come with is that I don’t know. I have no idea why I continue to argue with my fellow Armenians. It must be the Turk in me.
*
But I know something today that I didn’t know before. Our side of the story is not the whole story. To think that it is, is to make the same mistake that Turks make when they think their side of the story is the whole story. I am a not implying truth is located somewhere in the middle. What I am trying to say is that, it is a mistake to think in any argument or conflict, one side is 100% right and the other 100% wrong.
*
You cannot have consensus without compromise, and consensus does not mean agreement but cooperation. This applies not only to Armeno-Turkish relations but also to Armeno-Armenian relations.
*
Our choice is between compromise and consensus on the one hand, and on the other, disagreement and feud to the end of time.
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And now, let us pray: Our Father who art in heaven….
*
And, if you are not big on prayer, let us reason together. Let us, for a change, use our brain for the purpose it was designed.
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Tuesday, October 19, 2004
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Whenever I read a favorable comment on Turks by a Western observer, I think: “What the hell does he know?” But more and more frequently now, the question I ask next is: “What the hell do I know?”
*
Is there a single imperial nation on the face of the earth and in the history of mankind that can plead not guilty to the charge of massacre?
*
When we think in terms of right and wrong, good and evil, lies and truth, love and hate, we, in a way, assume to live in a black-and-white world. But what if the colors of reality are closer to shades of gray?
*
So far we have concentrated our efforts on exposing Turkish crimes and Western lies to such an extent that we have ignored our own. Which is where I come in…. But what if I too have been so busy exposing our own prejudices and misconceptions that I have had no time to see my own? As a matter of fact, it is by observing my own prejudices that I began to see our collective lies.
*
Born and raised in a Tashnak neighborhood, educated in a chezok (Catholic) school, now living in a predominantly Protestant country among Ramgavar relatives, I have been exposed to a veritable supermarket of conflicting ideologies, religions, propaganda and lies.
*
We may agree on the number of our victims, but we agree on nothing else. What the hell do we know? That is our question.
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Wednesday, October 20, 2004
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In one of our weeklies I read today that an Orthodox Jew spat on an Armenian archbishop in Jerusalem, and the archbishop reacted by slapping the Jew. This minor incident epitomizes all the aberrations that at one time or another have been committed in the name of god or religion.
*
God may be good, but his role in the history of mankind has been ambiguous. If god were accountable to a separate set of superior gods, he would need a dream-team of lawyers. Either that or plead insanity.
*
Socrates was condemned to death because he was accused of not respecting the gods of Athens. Jesus was crucified because he claimed to be the Messiah. Joan of Arc was burned at the stake on religious grounds. Gandhi was assassinated by a fanatic Hindu. I could go on…
*
During the Soviet era, Ramgavars supported the regime in Yerevan and the Tashnaks opposed it. The regime is no longer with us but we continue to have two sets of churches, schools, community centers, weeklies, bosses and bishops where one would be more than enough. Our unspoken slogan: Bad blood first, solidarity last.
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If our political bosses are ever impeached, they too will need a dream team.
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Readers, who have programmed themselves to disagree with me, also program themselves to misunderstand everything I say, and when it comes to misunderstanding, the average Armenian can be as creative as a genius.
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According to the boomerang school of Armenian criticism, if you are against something, you will be accused of that very same something. Because I have been critical of intolerance and dogmatism, I have been accused of both aberrations.
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Religious faith is sometimes confused with religious insanity, which, unlike other forms of insanity, may raise an entire civilization against another. It is no exaggeration to say that religious insanity has claimed more victims than all other forms of insanity combined.
*
As for nationalism and idealism (two other forms of collective insanity): they too may lead to war and massacre, but only when they acquire religious fervor. Is not the fascist slogan “Mussolini ha sempre ragione” (Mussolini is always right) an echo of divine infallibility?
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Saturday, October 16, 2004
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One way to have a balanced view of yourself is by trying to see yourself through the eyes of your enemy. If most people hate doing that it may be because they are too infatuated with their own positive image of themselves and they dread the prospect of seeing the negative. What if the enemy makes a good case?
*
To be infatuated with one’s own image is the surest symptom of being a dupe to propaganda.
*
A reader writes: “How do you know there will come a time when churches and mosques will become museums? Are you a prophet?”
No, I am not because I base my assertion on the past, on history and what is commonly known and accepted as fact. After all, is not the future an extension of the past? Consider the fate of Greek and Roman temples. Consider the fate of the 1001 churches of Ani. As recently as last year, 42 churches were closed down in the Detroit area. What happened to the mosques in Spain? And what will happen to the mosques in America when a weapon of mass destruction claims 100,000, perhaps even 1,000,000 victims, and the terrorist responsible for this holocaust is discovered to have found safe harbor in a mosque?
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If, on the other hand, you assert that our religion, being superior to all others, is destined to shatter all historic precedents, I ask: “Are you saying that because that’s what you were told as a child or is it because you really think so?”
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Sunday, October 17, 2004
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On the radio this morning, an interview with Jimmy Breslin, a well-known Irish-Catholic writer and the author of THE CHURCH THAT HAS FORGOTTEN CHRIST. When asked what he thought about good Catholics who believe in the Pope and go to church every Sunday, he replied: “They are sheep.” Next question: “You mean they can’t think for themselves?” “That’s right!”
*
Since I am in the business of exposing prejudices and fallacies, I am sometimes accused of having my share of them. If I do, I hope they are not those of a good Armenian or a good Christian, but those of an honest human being.
*
A good Armenian: Can anyone define him? It is not at all unusual for a good Armenian to be a bad Armenian in the eyes of another self-appointed good Armenian. The same could be said of a good Christian, a good Muslim, a good Protestant or a good Sunni.
*
Religion generates infidels. Where there are orthodoxies there will be heretics. And every ideology will have its share of dissidents, and sometimes the dissidents will be right and the ideologues dead wrong.
*
Where there are top dogs there will be underdogs. As an underdog of underdogs, or a double underdog, I don’t feel the need to identify myself with them. I am one of them.
*
Could an Armenian be a top dog in the Ottoman Empire or the Soviet Union without betraying not only a fraction of his Armenianism (however you care to define that label) but also his humanity?
*
The problem with labels is that they tend to reduce or even dehumanize the other. For an Armenian, the label Turk comes with a heavy burden of history, and we are all creatures of the past. But to be creatures of the past does not necessarily mean being its slaves.
*
When I wrote recently that a man does not need a cathedral in which to pray, a reader wrote: “How do you know? Why do you project your own predilections on others?” This reader may not be aware of the fact that it was the construction of a cathedral in Rome that split the Church into Catholics and Protestants, and this split was the cause of many wars, one of which lasted a hundred years.
*
Sometimes I feel like a Muslim among Christians, and like a giaour among jihadist Muslims. Some readers think what I say is so eccentric and odd that I might as well be an enemy of the people. I have every reason to suspect that these readers confuse spin and propaganda with fact and reality. Or, as Jimmy Breslin says, they think not like men but like sheep. They view the past and present, that is to say, reality, through the eyes of bishops, imams, and politicians. And the world continues to be in an unholy mess because people don’t trust their own judgment and prefer to accept the judgment of spinners and propagandists. But ignoring our judgment is also ignoring that which separates us from animals.
*
Propaganda dehumanizes. Political and religious leaders don’t say that because if they did, they would expose themselves as dehumanizers and the real enemies of mankind, and more precisely, wolves in shepherd’s clothing.
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Thursday, October 14, 2004
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A prominent French philosophy (Gilles Deleuze) once said, what mankind needs more urgently than anything else is an objective and thorough analysis of human stupidity, “against which even the gods cannot compete” (Goethe).
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When he runs for a second term, an American presidential candidate may have to defend or misrepresent or cover up four years of mismanagement and blunders. Imagine, if you can, a bishop or an imam defending centuries of intolerance, not to say, lies, sometimes even wars and massacres that have claimed millions of innocent lives.
*
We cannot explain the incomprehensible, neither can we describe the invisible, and god is both.
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Truth is an endless search. He who claims he has found it, lies.
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Truth, like god, is beyond our reach. The best we can do is move closer, and the only way we can do that is by exposing and discarding lies, especially the ones that say, god or truth is within our grasp.
*
A wise man once said: “I am willing to worship a man who says he is searching for the truth; but I will be glad to kill him if he says he found it.”
*
When presidential candidates debate, they come very close to calling each other hypocrite and liar. I dread to think what bishops and imams will call one another if they ever debate.
*
Religion is something between you and your god. You don’t need a mosque or cathedral in which to pray. Neither do you need a bishop or an imam who tells you he knows better because he speaks in the name of god.
*
He who says he understands the incomprehensible, lies. And he who says he can describe the invisible, is a fraud.
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Friday, October 15, 2004
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Imagine the following scenario: a clergyman in an isolated hicktown somewhere in America (remember DELIVERANCE) is caught torturing and burning at the stake those he views as heretics. Accused of serial killing, he is arrested and tried in a court of law. His lawyer pleads insanity even though the clergyman did what he did because he was following the dictates of his faith just as his medieval predecessors had done. Will the jury’s verdict be guilty or not guilty?
*
As far as I know, no serious historian has ever ascribed the Inquisition to insanity. Which may suggest that there is no such thing as a clear and universal definition of insanity, insanity is relative, and insanity is in the eye of the beholder or an extension of the zeitgeist (spirit of the time).
*
I disagree. We can’t adapt definitions to suit our prejudices even if these prejudices are ascribed to religious faith – especially to religious faith. I maintain there is rational conduct and irrational conduct, and the irrational becomes criminal when it claims innocent victims.
*
One reason I view religious insanity much more dangerous than individual insanity is that, individual insanity may lead to murder, but collective insanity may lead to war and massacre – remember Voltaire’s dictum: “Since it was a religious war, there were no survivors.”
*
Throughout history man (who is “wolf to other men”) has always found a way to legitimize murder (or the crocodilian fraction of his brain) in the name of this or that higher principle.
*
Which is why to this day the Turks find it difficult to plead guilty to the charge of genocide. They did what they did because they were following their faith, they believed in the authority of their sultan (who spoke in the name of Allah) and his successors. The Sultan was to them what the Pope is to Catholics, and what English monarchs (“defenders of the faith”) are to Brits.
*
If we justify religious insanity, or the crimes committed in the name of faith, then we must also agree with the Turks that our so-called genocide is a figment of our collective imagination. Or, the murder of innocent victims is not murder if it is committed in the name of God.
*
To those who say, we are not Asiatic barbarians and we no longer live in the Middle Ages, I say, in the eyes of jihadist Muslims, we are worse than that: we are degenerate giaours and riffraff who deserve to be exterminated.
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