Author: arabaliozian

Sunday, December 24, 2006
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PERSPECTIVES
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If you think the destiny of the planet is dependent on people like Alexander the Great, Napoleon, or even the outline of Cleopatra’s nose, Mark Kurlansky’s COD: A BIOGRAPHY OF THE FISH THAT CHANGED THE WORLD is bound to change your perspective. And now, imagine if you can, a book about men written by a cod.
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The best things in life are not always free. Understanding comes at a price. If you see yourself as your enemy sees you, you may not like what you see but you may enhance your understanding not only of yourself and your enemy, but also – which is more important – of the world.
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When we say, “I am sure,” are we really sure or just trying to suppress doubts?
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When both sides are guilty, they will exaggerate the guilt of the opposition and cover up their own. I don’t have any specific groups in mind, only human nature.
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Only the very insecure make periodic lists of their positives and cover up their negatives, and in fooling themselves they hope to fool others, and they resent it when others refuse to be fooled, and they refuse to be fooled not because they are smarter but because they prefer to be fooled by a propaganda line that emphasizes their positives and covers up their negatives. Present company suspected.
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Think of Internet discussion forums as therapy groups in which participants unburden themselves of complexes that masquerade as certainties, slogans, and clichés.
#
Monday, December 25, 2006
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FOUR FILMS
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Four of my favorite films of all time are included in the lavishly illustrated 1001 MOVIES YOU MUST SEE BEFORE YOU DIE, edited by Steven Jay Schneider (New York, 2003, 960 pages): George Stevens’s SHANE (1953) with Alan Ladd, Fred Zinemann’s FROM HERE TO ETERNITY (1953) with Montgomery Clift, John Sturges’s BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK (1955) with Spencer Tracy, and John Boorman’s POINT BLANK (1967) with Lee Marvin. I note that all four central characters of these films are solitary survivors who against their will and inclination are thrust into a conflict with a formidable set of well-organized adversaries bent on their destruction. I have not seen these films recently and I wouldn’t be surprised if they are dated.
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About FEOM HERE TO ETERNITY: one reason I enjoyed the book by James Jones more than the film is that it was there that I first “met” Mahatma Gandhi, another solitary being who confronted an empire bent on his dehumanization and death.
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I remember to have read somewhere that Gandhi refused to visit America because he didn’t think he would be understood there. He saw America as a distant and alien continent that cared much more about material possessions than spiritual attainments. Gandhi was a shrewd judge of character but as a profoundly human being he could also be hugely wrong, as when he failed to foresee the genocidal slaughter of Hindus and Muslims immediately following the partition of India during which millions perished. Had he suspected the possibility of such a tragedy, I suspect he would have retired from politics permanently or committed suicide by starvation.
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As for Richard Attenborough’s GANDHI (1982), I have only one word for it: disappointing.
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Tuesday, December 26, 2006
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“PIGS NEVER SEE THE STARS”
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My first book about Armenians came out in 1975, which means I have been writing steadily about them for over thirty years. So I am not surprised when some of my gentle and not so gentle readers inform me that I have become predictable, boring, and repetitive. They demand variety, as if I were running an ice cream parlor or pizzeria. To them I suggest they visit the nearest public library. And to the hoodlums who tell me it is now time that I give up writing “all that crap,” I say, “Be careful, my friend, because you may tempt me to agree with you that, if writing about Armenians like you is crap, it may be because I for one refuse to speak of crap as if it were rose jam.”
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To write about Armenians also means to write about human nature, and more precisely, what happens to it after long centuries of brutal oppression. For, to be oppressed means to be offended, insulted, and dehumanized; hence, the need to retaliate. There is an Armenian proverb that says, “A coward takes revenge by slicing up a watermelon.” Insulting someone anonymously and from a safe distance is, I suppose, another way of getting even. There are two other Armenian proverbs that are worth quoting at this point: “The toothless dog barks from a distance,” and “A bald man has no use for a gold comb,” – or an imbecile for understanding.
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Wednesday, December 27, 2006
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PRESENT COMPANY SUSPECTED
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Human affairs have so many contexts, implications, consequences, layers of meaning, and interpretations that for every great thinker who says one thing there will be another who says the exact opposite. Is lying moral? As always, there are two schools of thought.
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There is no belief system that at one time or another I have not swallowed hook, line, and sinker, except perhaps astrology. When I speak of dupes, I speak of myself. Madame Bovary c’est moi. So is Monsieur Bovary.
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Trust someone who paints a flattering self-portrait, as you would trust the honesty of a compulsive liar or the wisdom of an ignoramus.
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As a child I identified myself with our leaders because I was told to do so. But the moment I started thinking for myself I saw them as megalomaniacal mediocrities and enemies of freedom, common sense and decency.
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Am I wrong? Probably. Unlike those who brainwashed me I have at no time asserted infallibility.
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When they cannot convince, they brainwash, and they brainwash because they need unthinking fanatics willing to die for the “Cause” – that is to say, their power and prestige.
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All children are brainwashed for their own good. And what’s even worse, they are brainwashed by individuals who were themselves brainwashed. This may explain why the world is in such a mess today.
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Thursday, December 21, 2006
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HO, HO, HUMBUG!
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A gentle reader insults me on an open Internet discussion forum. Being human I am not always successful in ignoring such abuse: I return the compliment. No harm done. A minor scribbler in the middle of nowhere and a faceless anonymous denizen of an unidentified suburban gutter somewhere call each other names. Not the end of the world. So what if we both lose? As for Armenian image: what image? No one gives a damn about our image except perhaps our phony superpatriotic propagandists and pundits whose empty verbiage impresses no one but themselves. What about Armenian honor? No such thing. There are only good men and bad men. Why shouldn’t we, like the rest of mankind, have our share of bastards?
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Another one of my gentle readers once remarked that I deserve to be insulted because everything I write is an insult to the Armenian nation. A statement worthy of a commissar of culture who views literature as a collective effort on the part of writers to kowtow and say “Yes, sir!” to our semi-sultans, mini-Stalins, and dealers of verbal manure like himself, who operate on the assumption that all it takes to be a concerned citizen is to assess oneself as one. Zarian is right: we do with words what the Turks did with yataghans, except that we use our tongues, which happen to be sharper and cut deeper. There you have it, the Armenian identity. Even as we die the death of a thousand self-inflicted cuts we speechify, sermonize, and editorialize about justice and patriotism, God and Country, martyrdom and survival. God help us, if there is a god and we deserve his help.
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Friday, December 22, 2006
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PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE
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We like to say that Germans are more civilized than Turks because they admitted and apologized for the Holocaust. We forget that, unlike Turks, Germans lost. Had they won, there would have been neither admission nor apology.
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Even when you do the right thing you may be penalized because of someone else’s blunders, as when you are hit by a drunk driver or massacred in time of war.
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I don’t mind testifying against myself. Some may call this low self-esteem. But what if the alternative is to sound like a self-satisfied pompous ass?
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The past is as incomprehensible as the future is unpredictable if only because once upon a time the past was also the future, and whenever in our narrative we make the past predictable, we ignore the fact that at any moment in real life things can go wrong in a million directions.
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When I think of all the wrong turns I could have taken, I feel as though I were the luckiest man on earth simply because I am alive.
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Whatever wisdom I have acquired I owe to my enemies. Ever since I have gained that realization I have been wondering why is it that we Armenians collectively have become one of the dumbest nations on earth instead of one of the wisest.
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Mistakes make us humble, unless they are of such colossal magnitude that admitting them would mean committing political suicide.
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Saturday, December 23, 2006
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PAVLOV’S DOGS
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It took me many years to admit that which seems obvious to me today, namely, that I was a product of systematic indoctrination and all my convictions and actions were not mine but someone else’s. In short, the fact that I was more of a robot and less of a human being. And when faceless readers insult me anonymously on the Internet today, they do so in the name of a belief system that is not theirs but someone else’s, a belief system moreover that they will reject if and when they discover its nature and origin.
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When Saroyan said he felt sorry for the Turks he was not only rejecting our collective and instinctive hatred of them, he was also saying, to think that the only solution to a political problem is the wholesale massacre of innocent civilians is to react not as human beings but as animals, Pavlovian dogs that salivate on hearing a bell.
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It is interesting to note that the commandment “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” is translated into Armenian, as “Thou shalt not behave like a dog.”
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In his sympathy for killers Saroyan was not being a good Christian by turning the other cheek; he was simply asserting his own humanity by rejecting the kind of indoctrination that legitimizes and promotes instinctive reactions, that is to say, the introduction of the law of the jungle in human affairs. He understood that the worst thing your enemy can do to you is not to kill you but to lower you to his own level. Is this not what our religion teaches us too? – not to hate our enemy but to love him, to ignore the animal in him but to recognize the fact that his convictions and actions are not his but products of an evil belief system that has been rammed down his throat at a time when he was powerless to resist it. And in that sense, is he not a brother?
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A brother: this is what Thomas Mann called Hitler (who had tried to have him assassinated). And this is how he described Hitler as speechifier: “It is oratory unspeakably inferior in kind, but magnetic in its effect on the masses: a weapon of definitely histrionic even hysterical power, which he thrusts into the nation’s wound and turns it round.” Isn’t this what our own Turcocentric pundits and speechifiers do too?
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Here is more of Thomas Mann on Hitler: “A brother – a rather unpleasant and mortifying brother. He makes me nervous, the relationship is painful to a degree. But I will not disclaim it. For I repeat: better, more productive, more honest, more constructive than hatred is recognition, acceptance, the readiness to make oneself one with what is deserving of our hate…” And: “Thanks to his own baseness, he has indeed succeeded in exposing much of our own.”
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Sunday, December 17, 2006
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When speaking with an older and wiser person, assume you are wrong. When speaking with an infallible person, assume he is wrong.
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Little mistakes we don’t mind admitting. But when it comes to big ones, we like to believe smart nations don’t make them. Which may suggest that in little things we are willing to be objective; in big things we prefer to follow the dictates of our vanity.
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Never ceases to amaze me — the stupidity of self-assessed smart people.
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I don’t diminish Armenians; I only describe the many ways in which they diminish themselves.
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When I was young and foolish I too said many things that I now regret; and if someone had warned me I would have ignored him, the way I am ignored today by our dupes.
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Tolstoy: “The higher I rise in the eyes of the world, the lower I sink in my own.” The opposite is also true: the lower we sink in the eyes of the world, the louder we bray and brag.
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One of our editors once called me to complain that some people didn’t like my kind of writing. Who? I wanted to know. He mentioned the name of a benefactor’s flunkey. Shortly thereafter the editor stopped publishing me. The flunkey must have made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. As the old saying has it: “Parai veren duduyu chalar” (freely translated, “He who pays the piper selects the tune”).
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People are educated to recognize and question the propaganda of other nations, never their own. Why should we be an exception? – you may well ask. Too late. Now that the cat is out of the bag, can you really believe everything you have been told?
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Monday, December 18, 2006
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ALL IS VANITY
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When I first read ECCLESIASTES, I immediately assumed all that talk of vanity referred to others, not to me. I wonder how many readers of the Good Book make the same mistake. To read and understand simple sentences is one thing; to apply what you read to ourselves is something entirely different, perhaps because it takes a different set of faculties, among them the ability to perceive the many strategies we adopt to deceive ourselves into thinking we are better than we really are.
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Nothing comes more naturally to an Armenian than to hate Turks and to criticize fellow Armenians; and when I say to criticize what I really mean is to engage in verbal slaughter.
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I have heard Armenians, who treat minor disagreements with fellow Armenians as provocations to engage in verbal slaughter, say that they don’t hate Turks, they only love justice.
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Why is it that we are outraged when we realize others may be as bad as we are?
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Far better men than myself have dedicated their lives to writing hoping what they say will make a difference. It hasn’t! Why do I go one? The only plausible answer must be, self-deception. If only deceiving others were as easy as deceiving ourselves.
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Self-deception is such a common aberration that it is not at all unusual to meet a self-assessed and civilized man who speaks like a barbarian.
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People who don’t understand themselves and the consequences and implications of their actions and thoughts expect to be understood in a favorable light. Speaking for myself: I never felt so misunderstood as when I was understood.
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Tuesday, December 19, 2006
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Everything that is negative in our collective existence is based on fact; everything positive is based on hope.
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If there is a constant in our political leadership is its mediocrity. If you hear someone say leader A is better than leader B, remember the old Muslim saying: “If you hear a mountain has moved, believe it. If you hear a man has changed, believe it not.”
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Is there a single Armenian boss or bishop in whose hands you would be willing to trust the future of your child? And yet, when it comes to the destiny of the nation, we repeat the mantra “It will take two or three generations…”
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One reason baby Tarzan survived in the jungle is that he had apes as parents and role models.
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If an Armenian hasn’t hated you, you don’t know what hatred is. An Armenian hates with the accumulated venom of six centuries – seven, if you count the Soviet era – of brutal oppression. Compared to Armenian hatred, all other forms of hatred might as well be expressions of affection.
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Armenians and Turks share the same illusion: trust in the official version of their past. Perhaps because their past is so unbearable that it would shatter their self-esteem if it were presented to them objectively. Turks see themselves not as victimizers but as heroes, and Armenians see themselves less as victims and more as martyrs.
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Concerned friends tell me it’s a waste of time writing for Armenians. They may be right. But if I were to write for odars I would use only my brain. When I write for Armenians, I use my brains as well as gut.
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To encourage others to give generously, fund-raisers publish periodic press releases with headlines announcing the amount of dollars collected. What they don’t tell you is how much of it ended in the wrong pockets.
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Wednesday, December 20, 2006
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Body language is to the spoken word what style is to writing. Words may lie but style does not. I have yet to read a single decent line written by a hoodlum.
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We all make mistakes, yes, certainly. But what if we are not equipped to do the right thing, and our worst mistakes are made when we think god is one our side?
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Whenever I think of making a reference to myself in my writings, the first thought that crosses my mind is: Why should anyone give a damn about what a nobody who lives in the middle of nowhere thinks? After which I switch my focus on reality.
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If you must speak of yourself, speak of your weaknesses. Let others speak of your strengths, assuming you have any.
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I write to confess my megalomania and the doubletalk of sermonizers and speechifiers.
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PRESS RELEASE / NEW BOOK
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Moscow. THE HORRIBLE SILENCE by Ara Baliozian,
has just come out in a Russian translation by
Ara Hakopian and Tigran Zakoyan. It is an
autobiographical novella wherein we read about
the author’s daily existence in a distant
Canadian town: his encounters and conversations
with friends, relatives, neighbors, and members
of his family, about his life in Greece, Italy,
and about Armenians and the Armenian Diaspora.

In addition to the novella, the reader will find
here a comparative fictional study of the life
and achievements of two Armenian personalities
titled BILL AND BASIL, Bill being William
Saroyan, and Basil, the founder of the mightiest
imperial dynasty in Byzantium. The book also
contains selected passages from another book by
Ara Baliozian titled PAGES FROM MY DIARY.

Ara Baliozian was born in Athens, Greece, and
educated in Venice, Italy. Widely published in
English and Armenian, he has been awarded many
prizes and grants for his literary work. He is a
regular contributor to many publications in the
United States, Canada, Europe, and the Middle East.

His books include THE GREEK POETESS AND
OTHER WRITINGS, ARMENIA OBSERVED: AN ANTHOLOGY,
FRAGMENTED DREAMS: ARMENIANS IN DIASPORA, and the
best-selling study, THE ARMENIANS: THEIR HISTORY
AND CULTURE. His translations of such Armenian
classics as Grigor Zohrab, Zabel Yessayan, and
Kostan Zarian have been described as
“valuable,” “eloquent,” and
“brilliant”
contributions to world literature. He has himself
been translated into French, German, Greek,
Spanish, and Armenian.

“I read everything Ara Baliozian writes with
fascination and gratitude,” William Saroyan has
said.

The book can be purchased at
[url][/url]
or directly from Ara Hakopian,
, ( price $10.00, postage
included).
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Thursday, December 14, 2006
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ON A POPULAR DELUSION
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When it comes to god, there are three schools of thought: (one) god created man in his own image; (two) man created god in his own image; and (three) there is no god. In THE GOD DELUSION (New York, 2006), the American biologist Richard Dawkins seems to support the second and third schools. Here is how he describes the god of the Old Testament: “a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sado-masochistic, capriciously malevolent bully” — which could also be a fairly accurate description of an average Yankee redneck or a fundamentalist Muslim jihadist.
In her book, THE FORCE OF REASON, the Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, who like Tolstoy, described herself as “a Christian atheist,” asserts that there is no such thing as a moderate Muslim. Dawkins goes further and says fundamentalists of all faith exist because moderates legitimize and promote faith as a good thing. Which means, moderates create fanatics as surely as man creates god.
He explains the popularity of religions by saying children are “programmed” to believe anything their parents and elders tell them, which happens to be an undeniable biological fact observable not only in man but also in many other forms of animal life. According to Dawkins, a religious education is a form of brainwashing and as such should be equated with child abuse. This may explain why other forms of child abuse come naturally to those directly involved in organized religions.
It is to be noted that the above-mentioned Oriana Fallaci died recently (September 15, 2006) of cancer, aged 77. Her close friendship with Pope Benedict XVI, echoes that of Gandhi’s, a devout Hindu, with Tolstoy.
For more on the god of the Old Testament and Christianity, see also Bertrand Russell’s WHY I AM NOT A CHRISTIAN.
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Friday, December 15, 2006
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THE SECRET OF MY SUCCESS
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Readers – they are my only secret:
gentle readers, avid readers, concerned readers
willing to correct me
whenever I stray from the straight and narrow,
eager to remind me that
honey catches more flies than vinegar
(so does manure, but never mind about that now).
Writers of the past were not as lucky as I am.
During the Soviet era, for instance,
the only advice our commissars had for our writers
was a bullet in the neck.
Under Talaat in Istanbul
at the turn of the last century
things were no better.
But what’s done is done.
Let bygones be bygones,
and as my readers keep reminding me,
it doesn’t pay to dwell too much
on negative things;
and as the Good Book says,
“Let the dead bury their dead.”
After centuries of brutal oppression
we have finally emerged
from the darkness of the past.
We have seen the light
and no power one earth
can thrust us back into darkness.
My success is not mine alone
but that of Armenian literature as a whole,
and by extension, that of the nation.
For readers create great writers
as surely as great writers create masterpieces.
I have no doubt whatever in my mind
that we now stand on the verge of a Second Golden Age
beside which the First is as nothing.
A new generation of great writers is about to rise
from the ashes and soar
like a phoenix into the stratosphere
where masterpieces are born
and Nobel Prizes awarded.
All because of gentle readers
who are committed body and soul
to the welfare of our literature and culture.
When during a visit to an Armenian community center
I was asked why so far I had shown
no interest in encouraging a new generation of writers
but preferred to live in solitude in the middle of nowhere,
I had been dead wrong to reply:
“What the nation needs more today
is not writers but readers.”
The truth of the matter is
I have many more good readers than I deserve,
avid reader, concerned readers,
able literary critics all,
whose sole aim in life
is to raise our esthetic and moral standards.
My gratitude to them knows no bounds.
I am what I am because of them.
My success is not mine but theirs.
I say to them what Samuel said to God:
“Speak, Lord, for Thy servant is listening.”
God bless you.
God bless Armenian literature.
God bless Armenia.
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Saturday, December 16, 2006
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TOYNBEE, DESCARTES, ZARIAN, AND OTHERS
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If you say you disagree with Toynbee, you disagree with Descartes, and you disagree with Zarian, don’t be surprised if those who agree with Toynbee, Descartes, and Zarian disagree with you, and they disagree with you not because they are prejudiced against you or remotely interested in questioning your intelligence or honesty but because they respect more Toynbee’s understanding of history, Descartes’ philosophical judgment, and Zarian’s familiarity with recent developments in Armenian affairs, in most of which he was himself a participant in addition to being personally acquainted with the main players.
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Zarian: “Our political parties have been of no political use to us. Their greatest enemy is free speech.” Why free speech? Because it may expose their blunders and lies, which may spell their political and moral bankruptcy.
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Tell me what you are afraid of and I will tell you who you are.
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If you say your version of the past is the only true one, you do nothing but repeat the words of those who say exactly the same thing about their own version of the past, which may contradict yours.
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The problem with partisan versions of the past is that there will be other partisan versions.
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The statement “My party is infallible or morally superior,” will convince only fellow partisans and no one else. If I say I am a great writer, I may succeed in convincing only my mama at the cost of making myself ridiculous in the eyes of the world.
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If you write history with an ideological, religious, or nationalist bias, you can be sure that it will not be as objective, accurate and credible as that written by someone without an ax to grind.
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The trouble with people with an ax to grind is that even when they bury their ax, they remember where they buried it.
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Last night I heard an interview with a Catholic theologian who said, among other things, “All present wars are fought in the name of religion. Our only chance of preventing this from happening again is to alter our view of religion.” And I thought religions have had that chance for much more than a thousand years. Is there a single religion today willing to consider its history as one of failure?
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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?

Thursday, December 07, 2006
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IN DENIAL
********************
Even when I behaved like an idiot I thought I was being smart, and I thought I was being smart because I was in denial. And I am in denial today at this very moment when I think my words may change someone’s mind.
*
To be in denial is an easy concept to understand but difficult to detect in oneself. Censorship is a symptom of denial that masquerades as dedication, respect, and love of truth. If you say 2 plus 2 makes 4, and I say it makes 22, you don’t feel threatened. You may even smile. That’s because when truth is on your side, you don’t feel threatened by lies. But if you believe in an ideology or religion and someone questions its validity, you are tempted to punch him in the nose because you are afraid to be exposed as a jackass who has been betting on the wrong horse.
*
Tribes, nations, empires, and civilizations can be in denial as surely as megalomaniacs (which means being in denial of one’s mediocrity). I have a Jewish friend who is as close to me as a brother that I never had. We have exchanged hundreds perhaps even thousands of letters and e-mails. But whenever I question the validity of Jews being God’s Chosen People he refuses to talk to me for months.
*
The USSR was harsh on its dissidents not because it valued truth over lies but because it saw truth as a threat. How could a few words by (in their official estimation) harmless eccentrics and misfits in need of psychiatric care shake the foundations of a mighty empire?
*
To believe in propaganda amounts to saying all propagandists are liars except ours, who are men of honor and butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths, or anywhere else for that matter.
*
The aim of propaganda is to legitimize, promote, and reinforce a state of denial, but since everyone, except perhaps a handful of individuals who have mastered the demanding art of thinking for themselves, subscribes to a propaganda line, being in denial is considered a perfectly normal and healthy condition.
*
Under normal conditions murder is a capital offense, but in time of war soldiers are brainwashed by propagandists to believe that 2 plus 2 makes 22 and if anyone dares to disagree, he will be accused of treason, which happens to be a capital offense too. There you have it, another case of Catch-22.
*
I think it was Aldous Huxley who once observed that our planet is the insane asylum of the galaxy. If you reject or question the truth in this observation, it may be because you happen to be in denial.
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Friday, December 08, 2006
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ON BELIEF SYSTEMS AND
RELATED ATROCITIES
**********************************
It is an undeniable fact that some of our most cherished ideas about God and Country, or religion and patriotism, were instilled in us at a time when we had not yet mastered the demanding art of thinking for ourselves, and as such they should be rejected as “prejudicial” and “hearsay” because not to do so would mean allowing geography to determine our belief system. It is another undeniable fact that geography or mountains, valleys, and flatlands do not and cannot think. It follows; to allow an unthinking factor to define our thinking is not just wrong but absurd. And yet, this is what the overwhelming majority of mankind does. Result, intolerance, conflicts, wars, massacres, and atrocities with no end in sight; or, to put it more bluntly, lies in the name of truth, and the Kingdom of the Devil instead of the City of God.
*
Having seen this clearly, the eminent historian Arnold J. Toynbee concluded his monumental STUDY OF HISTORY with an appeal to mankind to reconcile all known religions into a single universal religion by granting equal status to all scriptures, prophets, and messianic figures. Needless to add, he was labeled a mystic, a prophet of mumbo jumbo, and a utopian daydreamer.
*
Was Toynbee a utopian mystic or a realist and pragmatist? He was, I believe, both. He was a realist in so far as he saw that what moves tribes, nations, empires, and civilizations is a belief system rather than self-interest, and as long as there are conflicting belief systems there cannot be lasting peace. He was a utopian mystic in so far as he thought man, as a reasonable being would be more than willing to give up his arrogant, not to say, groundless belief that he had a monopoly on truth for whose sake he would rather see the world go down in flames rather than to live in perpetual peace and prosperity.
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Saturday, December 09, 2006
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HUBRIS AND NEMESIS
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Ignorance of the law, including the moral law, especially the moral law, is no excuse. If you commit a transgression you can’t plead not guilty by reason of ignorance or unawareness. When the Greeks were defeated, humiliated, and enslaved by such “barbarians” as Macedonians, Romans, and Turks, it may not have occurred to them that their hubris in assuming to be the most civilized nation on earth may have provoked the retaliation of Nemesis. Have these catastrophes of millennial duration taught the Greeks a lesson? I don’t think so. Even in their present bastardized condition, they think, as the offspring of the greatest people on earth, they have every right to brag about their many contributions to world civilization.
To justify their hubris of considering themselves the Chosen, some learned Jews explain that they don’t mean it as an enviable privilege but, on the contrary, as a heavy burden and a thankless responsibility. But I agree with Toynbee: no matter how you slice it, baloney is baloney. Greeks, Jews, Brits, Nazis, Armenians: they are chosen by no one but themselves and no amount of sophistry can cover up or justify their arrogance. Which is why I shiver with disgust when I hear an Armenian bragging about how smart we are, how many languages we speak, how successful we have been in surviving where many others perished, first nation this, and first nation that. Why would anyone brag about being slaughtered by “bloodthirsty savages”? And smart in what? Selling Oriental rugs? It seems our need to brag is such that when we run out of positives, we brag about negatives.
How smart are we when we say the best and only way to solve our many problems is to sit on our collective ass for two or three generations until our problems solve themselves. Human problems do not solve themselves. It takes hard work and sometimes even blood, sweat, and tears. An average idiot with the minimum of political awareness knows this. But leave it to smart Armenians to pretend ignorance and unawareness.
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Sunday, December 03, 2006
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WORK IN PROGRESS
*************************************
Identifying oneself with a fraction of mankind — be it race color or creed, or nation, tribe, and party — means drawing a curtain on the rest and adopting a propaganda line; and as we know by now, for every propaganda line there will be a counter-propaganda line with all the familiar results – contradictions, conflicts, assertions of superiority, intolerance, and hatred leading to war, massacre, and atrocities. I see this clearly today but for a long time my “betters” did their utmost to make me an unthinking robot who will swallow their venom, ignorance, prejudices, and unsettled scores, and feel as though I were discharging my patriotic duty and acting in the name of a noble cause, as opposed to satisfying some imbecile’s lust for power.
*
No one (except perhaps the Pope of Rome) dares to assert infallibility, because doing so would mean provoking ridicule; but everyone argues as if he were infallible in his judgment. The hardest thing for a dogmatist, fanatic, and patriot is to say, “You were right and I was wrong”; and the hardest thing for a self-assessed smart person is to say, “You are smarter than I am.”
*
Some may describe what I have been doing “masochistic self-examination,” others “deconstruction,” which may not be the same as destruction but shares something with it. But then, all creation begins with destruction.
*
When we argue perhaps our real goal is to assert some kind of superiority – if not in IQ than in wisdom or patriotism. But suppose we were to come right out at the beginning of an argument and say, “What I think is right because I am smarter and wiser than you”: would anyone believe us?
*
If you think my views are unorthodox or anti-establishment or radical in any way, allow me to quote a passage from a recent commentary (September 30, 2006) by Rev. Frank Morgan, a local faith columnist who died last week at the age of 92: “Don’t claim to have all the truth and don’t claim that other faiths are lesser faiths than your own. And be very sure that if your thinking about God and His will has not changed since you were in public school, then you really need a spiritual refit.” And from another commentary (June 15, 1991): “I believe the Bible to be the greatest and surest guide to faith and life. I am also convinced that if you take it literally, you will lose that guide. It [the Bible] is a story of people’s growing understanding of God and His will for us. We still have a long way to go.” In other words, none of us can claim to be a finished product because we are works in progress.
*
On the subject of having a long way to go: I remember to have heard an old story about a man who went all over the world in search of something or other, only to come back home and discover it in his own backyard.
*
Before we engage in an argument, we should ask ourselves: “Is my central concern love or hatred? And worse, is it hatred in the name of love? What is it that motivates me, tolerance or intolerance, arrogance or humility?” If you can’t answer these questions clearly and unequivocally, it only means one thing: you are in deep sh**!
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Monday, December 04, 2006
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ON PRIDE
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“I am proud to be the offspring of a persecuted nation,” writes a reader, thus proving that one can be or pretend to be proud of anything, including degradation. Speaking for myself, I can’t say I am proud of anything, and I have every reason to suspect no one who has ever been persecuted, really persecuted, can be proud of it.
*
We were persecuted because we were defeated. We were defeated not because God made our enemies strong and us weak but because they were united and we were divided. We were divided because our wheeler-dealers parading as representatives of God on earth and leaders of men failed to unite us. To say we are proud of being the offspring of a persecuted nation amounts to bragging about being divided, defeated, massacred and scattered to the four corners of the world like unwanted, uninvited, and useless autumn leaves. I have heard of people bragging about their success. Leave it to Armenians to brag about their failures.
*
“I am glad we never had an Ataturk,” I read elsewhere. As a matter of fact we had several potential Ataturks, among them General Antranik and Nejdeh, but we also had many more mini-sultans and crypto-commissars who excel in only one endeavor – obstructing the path of all those who attempt to achieve solidarity. This minor detail is not stressed in our textbooks because that would amount to admitting incompetence. I say these things not to gloat over our failures but to point out the simple fact that only after we admit failure we may aim at success. To be satisfied with our incompetence and failures also means to perpetuate them.
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Tuesday, December 05, 2006
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ON GOD, ETC.
*****************************
Like most of my fellow Christians I was brought up as a believer. In my teens I lost my faith. Today I am no longer sure what to believe. I can say the same about so many other things, including my Armenian identity and everything that is connected with it. Lucky are those who are born, raised, and grow old with certainties, which they never question, doubt, or lose.
*
I agree with Descartes who once said the only way to reason and make sense is to assume that everyone, including an army of invisible cunning demons, were out to deceive you. One of my very few certainties is this: if I ever see the light and regain my faith, it will not be a belief in the god of our priests, televangelists, imams, and mullahs.
*
I don’t mind admitting that I tend to simplify complexities, but my simplifications are more akin to counter-simplifications: I simplify to expose the simplifications of meaningless clichés and slogans of propaganda, which are simplifications twice removed from reality, and not so much lies as absurdities whose ultimate aim is to remove us from the demands that life makes on us.
*
As long as we say to our leaders “You are our best and brightest,” they will never try harder, and even as we sink into oblivion they will continue to brainwash a new generation to brag about our genius for survival. And if you were to accuse me of always seeing the dark side of things, allow me to remind you that (one) optimism thrives in insane asylums, and (two) it was optimists who said if we rise against a tottering empire (with the blessing of the Lord and the support of the West) we will recover our historic lands and live happily ever after. What they didn’t know or refused to consider is that the Good Lord may or may not care what happens to His Chosen People (which we may or may not be), and the mighty West may be too divided (very much like us) to be in a position to help us, or for that matter, itself. Our revolutionary heroes were too naïve and simple-minded in their simplifications to know what Herzen knew nearly a century before they went into action, namely that “nature and history are full of the accidental and the senseless, of muddles and bungling.”
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Wednesday, December 06, 2006
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ASSERTIONS AND CONTRADICTIONS
*************************************************
Confronted with an assertion, I think of its contradiction and if I see any merit in it, I know the assertion to be full of holes. The roots of some of the most important ideas are not to be found in life or reality but in contradictions. Hating the enemy comes naturally to all of us, but only a revolutionary of genius could come up with the idea of loving the enemy. For centuries kings were thought to be representatives of god on earth, until someone had the brilliant idea that they may well be representatives of the devil, and as such they deserved to be “strangled with the guts of the last priest.” Closer to home, the loudmouth dupe who preaches Armenianism and practices Ottomanism.
*
I look forward to the day when the English language will acquire a new verb – “to iraq” (pronounced I rock), meaning to make a royal mess of things in the name of god, freedom, progress, justice, and everything else that is good in life. After Saddam sodomized Iraq, Bush iraqed it. But when it comes to iraqing things, no one can beat our “best and brightest.”
*
The first four words from god’s memoirs: “Big mistake – creating man.”
*
To those who brag about being fluent in more than one language, I say: “What’s the use of speaking seven or seventy-seven languages if you are going to make an ass of yourself in all of them?”
*
A nation needs heroes willing to die in its defense, yes, certainly! But what a nation needs even more are leaders who value peace over war, especially wars they cannot win.
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Thursday, November 30, 2006
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BEFORE AND AFTER
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For most of my life others set the terms and conditions and I had no choice but to accept them. (Sounds familiar?) I was born again as a human being on the day I decided to set my own terms and conditions; and even when I lost (which I did most of the time) I felt as though I had won.
*
Like parrots, the brainwashed have no use for free speech.
*
“Treason and betrayal are in our blood,” Raffi tells us. So are criticism and dissent. Not even our toughest critics, including Gregory of Narek, have gone as far saying “Mart bidi ch’ellank!” (We will never acquire the status of human beings.) Compare this popular mantra with such propaganda lines as “first nation this” and “first nation that,” and “Armenians are smart.” How can anyone be smart who is also deaf and ignorant of what people are thinking and saying?
*
For the brainwashed there are two kinds of propaganda – theirs and ours. As for honesty and objectivity: they might as well be subversive concepts. If honesty is subversive and objectivity an instrument of the devil, does that mean we have a marked preference for dishonesty and charlatanism? What’s next? We might as well get out our shovels and start digging – and I mean digging our own graves. Toynbee is right: nations are not killed, they commit suicide.
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Friday, December 01, 2006
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A QUESTION OF CREDIBILITY
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Why would anyone choose to believe a minor, disgruntled, and marginalized scribbler who can’t make ends meet and ignore textbooks written by established academics? You may choose to believe whomever you wish of course (and I say this to readers of all colors, creeds, and races, including Armenians and Turks) as long as you keep in mind that academics are hirelings of the state, that is to say, politicians, and as such they are as subservient to the power structure as diplomats and bureaucrats. Even the mightiest empire in the world, like the United States of America, cannot afford to choose textbooks written by historians who emphasize its dark side and its crimes against humanity, or textbooks written from the perspective of its victims (“white man speaks with a forked tongue,” or “white man is the devil”). Until the collapse of the USSR, Communist textbooks did not mention the Gulag; so much so that even Nobel-Prize winning intellectuals of the West dismissed all talk of the Gulag as capitalist-inspired anti-Soviet propaganda.
*
Textbooks, commentaries, editorials, and memoirs of the Genocide are safe because they stress what has been done to us at the expense of what we could have done and what we can do today to solve our many problems. When it comes to what we can do today, for instance, we are given to understand we can do nothing but wait and hope that in two or three generations the corrupt among us will see the light and solve our problems, after which we may live happily ever after. Our subservience to “the blind forces beyond our control” is such that we have become deaf and dumb to the fact that by adopting a passive stance we are committing genocide by other means (exodus from the Homeland, assimilation in the Diaspora). I am not advocating covering up and forgetting the 1915 Genocide. What I am saying is that we should not allow it to paralyze our will.
*
A Turcocentric view of life marginalizes the nation as surely as our bosses, bishops, and benefactors marginalize anyone who refuses to say “Yes, sir!” to whatever they say, no matter how absurd. As for the corrupt seeing the light and solving our problems: don’t hold your breath; they will be too busy proving their integrity, statesmanship, self-sacrifice, patriotism, and moral superiority, not to say defending with everything they’ve got the source of their power, prestige, and wealth, to have any time left for solutions.
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Saturday, December 02, 2006
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GRANDMASTERS OF THE BLAME GAME
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Shortly before she died, one of our self-appointed partisan pundits wrote me an angry letter saying I had ruined the Armenian-American community. There was a time, she explained, when everyone was happy. Now everybody was bitching. And everybody was bitching because my kind of writing had started the trend. She was lying of course. And she was lying because lying comes naturally to our pundits. Had I been born before the Tourian assassination in 1933, she would have pinned that on me too, no doubt.
*
The other day I read an editorial in one of our partisan weeklies written by still another self-appointed partisan pundit that said, in effect, Armenians are their own worst enemies because Armenians like Rouben Mamoulian had not helped a single Armenian in Hollywood. The implications were unmistakable: what had prevented the Armenian community from going down the drain had been the idealism, dedication, hard work, and vision of statesmen like him and his kind. As for legitimizing intolerance and promoting divisions and mediocrity: they must be ascribed to my kind of bitching, of course.
*
I could have written a letter to the editor but I didn’t. I knew better. Once, many years ago, when I didn’t know better, I wrote a letter to the editor of this same weekly pointing out some factual inaccuracies in an editorial, only to be told: “We don’t as a rule publish letters that question our editorials.” I did not ask why not because I guessed the answer: “Because we are infallible!” If the Catholics have their Pope, if Muslims have their imams, and Turks have their Ataturk, why can’t we have a corresponding figure, and if we don’t have him, why can’t we pretend to have him, and by feeding him royal jelly, elevate him to the status of a king, that is to say, a representative of god on earth?
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Sunday, November 26, 2006
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ON SELF-KNOWLEDGE
****************************************
Of the many forms of ignorance the worst is ignorance of the self. If you don’t know yourself you don’t know where you are going, and once you get there you may even discover it was a big mistake getting there. If you don’t know yourself, what else can you possibly know and understand?
*
My troubles begun on the day I decided I was smart. That’s when life went into action and devised a thousand ways to prove that I was a damn fool.
*
On the day you close your mind, life will start opening it, and the longer you resist and keep it shut, the harder and more painful the operation will be.
*
For a long time I didn’t see any practical benefit in using my imagination until I realize that reality has so many layers that the only way to penetrate them is by using my imagination.
*
Memo to readers who find me depressing:
Read our great writers instead and if you find them even more depressing, have the courage and honesty to admit you are what the pigswill of our propaganda has made you, “a compulsive liar drunk with the folly of deceptive wine” (Gregory of Narek).
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Monday, November 27, 2006
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CRIME STORIES
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My kind of writing is not my favorite kind of reading. May I confess that I have never been able to read Montaigne’s ESSAYS from beginning to end. I prefer crime stories. I love Ed McBain, Richard Stark, Simenon. THE KILLERS is the only Hemingway story I have read three times. Chandler’s FAREWELL, MY LOVELY I have read four times with undiminished excitement for its poetic use of slang. No other story has given me as much pleasure as Hammett’s DEAD YELLOW WOMEN. I love these writers not so much for the suspense they provide as for their wit, humor, and dialogue. If I could, I would write crime stories. But my experience with cops and killers is next to nil. I have been inside a police station only once, many years ago, when I reported a roaming German shepherd attacking pedestrians. The burly cop at the desk didn’t even bother to look at me, he simply grabbed the phone on his desk and I didn’t wait long enough to hear what he said.
*
My fascination with crime stories began with Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle of Sherlock Holmes fame, and Dostoevsky’s CRIME AND PUNISHMENT. And my fascination with Simenon (the most prolific of them all, over 600 titles) began with Andre Gide’s JOURNALS, where he describes at considerable length his own fascination with Simenon.
*
There are some crimes stories in which the guilty party is neither the butler nor any of the usual suspects, but the narrator himself. On second thought, perhaps I too write crime stories when I focus on the origins of our complexes and contradictions, and instead of naming the obvious suspects (bloodthirsty neighbors and cynical West) I cross-examine myself.
*
A headline in this morning’s paper reads: ISTANBUL: ALMOST 25,000 PROTESTERS DENOUNCE POPE BENEDICT. Nothing astonishes me more than the self-righteousness of the guilty. Instead of denouncing Muslim extremists, terrorists, insurgents, and jihadists, they protest against a remark made by a Christian emperor a thousand years ago. Figure that one out if you can.
*
Speaking of self-righteousness: One of Simenon’s favorite themes is the guilt of the victim. In many of his stories, Simenon explains and to some extent justifies the criminal by exposing his victim’s insensitivity and unawareness of the consequences of his actions. And that’s what I am after too – our past and present unawareness, which at times assumes criminal dimensions.
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Tuesday, November 28, 2006
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WRITERS AND CRITICS
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The Catholic novelist and winner of the Nobel Prize (1952) Francois Mauriac (b. 1885) gave up writing fiction after Sartre, (b. 1905), a relative newcomer on the French literary scene and an atheist to boot, published an essay critical of his work. This may suggest that a competent critic has the power to deconstruct, demolish, and reduce to silence even a universally admired great writer.
*
I look forward to the day when someone with average or even below average intelligence will give me a similar treatment and I will quit writing this stuff and go back to writing fiction. But so far I haven’t had much luck in my critics. If they are not brainwashed partisans or brown-nosing self-appointed Turcocentric pundits, they are intellectually challenged skinheads whose insults I find stimulating rather than wounding.
*
Are we heading in the direction of a new renaissance or are we on our way to the devil? If you answer this question by resorting to chauvinist clichés and platitudes, then we have nothing to look forward to.
*
I grew up with the notion that there was more truth in an Armenian lie than in an odar truth. It took me many years to realize that a lie is a lie and it makes no difference whether it is spoken in Zulu, Turkish, or Armenian. The same could be said of propaganda.
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Wednesday, November 29, 2006
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LET’S TALK TURKEY
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Common sense tells us, when two witnesses contradict each other, both can’t be right.
*
Experience tells us, to say all politicians lie except ours, is to declare oneself to be a certifiable dupe of nationalist propaganda.
*
Warning: If you question the validity of these two assertions, no need to read any further.
*
Since some of my Armenian readers are convinced I am a pro-Turkish denialist, and some of my Turkish readers take it upon themselves to correct my occasional pro-Armenian and anti-Turkish lapses, I must conclude I am on the right path. It is not part of my agenda to please, mislead, or accuse anyone. There are already more than enough hirelings who make a comfortable living (thank you very much) by doing these things.
*
“The Armenians were punished because they sided with the enemy,” a gentle Turkish reader reminds me. By “punished” he probably means deported and not massacred. Which is it? Since both of my grandmothers survived and both my grandfathers perished, I must conclude some were deported, others “terminated.” As for siding with the enemy, this may indeed be true of Armenians on the Russo-Turkish border, but definitely not of Armenians on the mainland, except for the very few agitators and revolutionaries who may have acted in the name of the people but who represented no one but themselves, very much like the Talaat, Jemal, Enver troika. The overwhelming majority of Armenians in the ghetto of refugees where I grew up were both illiterate and devoid of political awareness. To accuse them of harboring secret territorial ambitions and betraying the Empire is not just wrong but absurd. I don’t remember my father saying anything remotely kind about our political parties or remotely unkind about Turks. I write these lines not as an Armenian but as a human being, and my intention is not to assert moral superiority but to understand why two people who lived side by side for six centuries prefer to believe their political leaders and to ignore the testimony of witnesses who value honesty and objectivity above prejudice and nationalist propaganda.
*
How can any tribe, nation, or race assert moral superiority and believe in it? Even worse: How can it also believe that in doing so it will not arouse the contempt and hatred of all men? The ancient Greeks knew better. They believed that pride or arrogance (hubris) is punished by the gods (Nemesis). And yet, in their eyes, all non-Greeks were barbarians. What happened next we know. They were defeated and colonized by Macedonians, Romans, and last but far from least, Turks. And unbelievable as this may see, even after centuries of enslavement, even in their present bastardized condition, they continue to cling to the notion that they are the real Chosen People. Figure that one out if you can.
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