Author: arabaliozian

Thursday, November 23, 2006
**************************************************
REFLECTIONS
**************************
Let others speak of Armenian pride. I prefer to speak of Armenian courage, the kind that allows us to take an objective look at ourselves and assess the damage that centuries of oppression has done to our psyche.
*
One of the hardest things in life is to convince an Armenian idiot that he is not a genius. I did not say that. One of my gentle readers did. And he was talking about me.
*
Dialogue is an unArmenian activity, and if you can insult someone from a safe distance, why stand on ceremony?
*
There is a type of reader who reads to have his views confirmed. The only way to please such a reader is to find out what he thinks about a specific subject and repeat it to him. As for good manners: I guess that’s making too many demands on victims of massacres.
*
There is something about me that Armenians don’t like. But perhaps it would be more accurate to say that there is something about Armenians that Armenians don’t like. Is it because they see reflections of themselves?
#
Friday, November 24, 2006
********************************************
Even as children in the ghetto we used to quote a Turkish saying that, if memory serves, went something like this: “Chok ghareshterma, bokhou chekar” – freely translated: “Don’t stir things too much, you may expose the shit.”
Listen to a German philosopher (Herbert Marcuse) saying almost the same thing: “Remembering the past may be a source of dangerous intuitions, which is why an established society has reason to fear the subversive contents of memory.”
*
Speaking of simplifications, I remember to have read somewhere the following assertion by a Turkish diplomat to an American politician: “Why all the fuss about Armenian massacres? We did to them what you did to your Indians. Think of Armenians as our Indians.”
*
Perhaps my mistake consists in not allowing my patriotism to direct and shape my analysis. But if I were to value my patriotism over my objectivity, I would do what our enemies do and say, in effect, even at our worst we are better; or, even our crap is better than their rose-jam.
*
I believe in Armeno-Turkish dialogue, but I also believe before we tackle that challenge, we should learn to engage in Armeno-Armenian dialogue.
*
I prefer a tolerant Turk to an intolerant Armenian.
*
Everyone writes these days: politicians, singers, actors, directors, Popes, Oriental carpet dealers (at least three of them wanted me to translate their memoirs into English), bordello madams, and serial killers… When my plumber found out I was a writer, he said he too was writing a book.
*
Why would anyone who knows anything about Armenians and Armenian literature choose to be an Armenian writer? I wish I knew. As for success: I shall consider myself a success if I survive…and so far so good.
#
Saturday, November 25, 2006
**********************************************
HISTORY-MAKERS AND HISTORIANS
*****************************************************
It is an undeniable fact that history is not always made by the best and the brightest. Think of the abysmal mediocrity of most kings and political leaders. It would be more accurate to say that more often than not history is made by the worst and the dumbest. Think of fascist dictators and their countless dupes and victims. To judge a nation by its history sometimes means judging a people by its criminals. Consider Armenians and Turks as cases in point. No doubt the majority of Armenians and Turks were peace loving decent folk lacking in political awareness and incapable of harming anyone. And yet, most Armenians and Turks today judge each other by the very few criminals who took it upon themselves to act in the name of their respective nations. Instead of combating this misconception, most historians legitimize and promote it. To them the average law-abiding, harmless citizen is ahistorical, therefore of no interest. In other words, instead of promoting mutual understanding, historians legitimize prejudice, and ultimately hatred. In the books written by royalist historians, for instance, the French Revolution is seen as a colossal blunder instigated and perpetrated by bloodthirsty agitators who committed many unspeakable crimes against humanity. In the eyes of anti-Bonapartist historians Napoleon is seen as the devil incarnate, and in the eyes of their adversaries as an agent of progress and enlightenment. We may not all be fanatics and chauvinists, but I suspect even the least patriotic and partisan among us carries within him traces of narcissism that leads him to say, “My country (or my ideology, or religion) right or wrong!” Perhaps the only way we will make any progress towards tolerance and peace is to teach ourselves to think and feel not in terms of countries, nations, tribes, and races, but in terms of human beings and humanity. And that’s where historians have failed us. What mankind needs is not patriotic historians but unpatriotic ones who will dare to emphasize the blunders and misdeeds of their own political leaders, because true patriotism consists in promoting self-examination and understanding as opposed to asserting moral superiority, because there are no such things as morally superior tribes, nations, and races, only morally superior human beings who do not, as a rule, brag about their moral superiority.
#

Sunday, November 19, 2006
**********************************************
Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), Italian philosopher and dissident: “There are those who lament and others who curse. But no one, or very few, ask themselves, had I lived up to my responsibility as a citizen, had I done what I should have done, maybe what happened wouldn’t have happened.”
*
When Orhan Pamuk mentioned the Armenian genocide in a recent interview, he was not being “a good Turk” as defined by the regime in Ankara, but an honest man. And when we blame all our misfortunes on others, including the Good Lord (“we are what God made us”) we speak not as honest men in full possession of our faculties but as dupes of nationalist leaders whose first and most important concern is not to serve the people but to project the image of competent statesmen.
*
And speaking of competence: It makes no difference how competent a right-wing (conservative) or left-wing (liberal) critic is, he will convince only his partisans. The same could be said about an Armenian or Turkish critic.
*
What matters about a critic is not his love of country, or his commitment to this or that ideology or school of thought, but his honesty and objectivity. A critic without honesty and objectivity is not and cannot be a critic, only a propagandist.
*
My analysis of the Armenian psyche is based on a close reading of our writers, beginning with Gregory of Narek (who at one point in his LAMENTATIONS identifies himself as “an abusive contradicter”), personal observations and encounters, and last but far from least, self-analysis. If I call some of my readers dupes, fanatics, and hoodlums it’s because I was all of these things. I at no time have said anything about my fellow Armenians that I am not prepared to say about myself. And when our dupes and hoodlums assume a morally superior stance and look down at me as a lesser man or a bad Armenian, I have every reason to suspect they fool no one, not even themselves. Hence, their faceless, nameless cowardly anonymity.
#
Monday, November 20, 2006
*******************************************
Daniel Varoujan (1884-1915), Armenian poet and Genocide victim: “What’s the use of acquiring knowledge and developing one’s esthetic judgment in a world run by ignorant scum?”
*
Anonymous (dates unknown), one of the greatest and most prolific thinkers of all time, very probably of Armenian descent: “In troubled waters, the scum rises to the top.”
*
Insulting Turkishness is against the law in Turkey today. Nothing new in that. Because in one of his letters Solzhenitsyn made a derogatory remark about Stalin, he was bundled off to Siberia. I assume there were corresponding laws under Hitler, Mussolini, Mao, Franco, and Genghis Khan.
*
What is considered an insult in Turkey? Mentioning the Armenian genocide for one, thus implying that the founders of the Turkish Republic may have been war criminals.
We are lucky; we don’t have a law against insulting Armenianism. That doesn’t mean, however, that if you dare to mention our scumbags (of which we have our share) you won’t be called a scumbag by loudmouth gutless, faceless, nameless. anonymous scumbags.
*
If Baronian and Odian were alive today and wrote with the same degree of honesty about our bosses, bishops, and benefactors as they did at the turn of the last century, not only they would be called scumbags by our ubiquitous commissars of culture and defenders of the faith, they would also be alienated, silenced, ignored, forgotten, and buried alive. There is more than one way to send an innocent man to the Gulag.
*
A thousand years ago Gregory of Narek (in addition to being a saint, also our Dante and Shakespeare combined) in his celebrated BOOK OF LAMENTATIONS (translated into English by Mischa Kudian, among others), made a long list of his personal failings (“a wicked and slothful servant, an abusive contradicter, an ass’s foal, inscrutable, wild and uncouth; the broken lock on a door; the useless coin buried beneath the soil; ever active in satanic inventions; slow in mine observance of promises; diligent in malignant acts of ribaldry,” and so on and so forth). If anyone were to write in that vein today, what would happen to him? Who would read him? How would our holier-than-thou brown-nosers react?
*
What happened to us between then and now? Is it conceivable that the only thing we learned from the Genocide are intolerance, dishonesty, doubletalk, and cowardice? Is it possible that the Turks did not just massacre our bodies but also our critical faculties?
*
To end on a more positive note: All nations spawn their share of white trash. Why should we be an exception?
*
A digression and a p.s. here: Has anyone ever accused Washington or Jefferson of war crimes? Why would anyone, let alone a Turk, even consider questioning the greatness, integrity, and nobility of such statesmen of vision as Talaat and Kemal? Unless of course… No, strike that! It is not my intention to cast aspersions on anyone here. I am just asking questions because, I don’t mind admitting, I know next to nothing about Turkish history, and I don’t understand, neither can I guess why, noble specimens of humanity like Talaat and Kemal would be in need of a law whose unmistakable intent is to protect their impeccable reputations.
#
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
****************************************
NOW THANK WE ALL OUR GOD
*******************************************
Siamanto (real name Adom Yerjanian: 1878-1915) poet and victim of the Genocide: “Our perennial enemy, the enemy that will eventually destroy us, is not the Turk but our own complacent superficiality.”
*
If our misfortunes are not our fault but must be ascribed to factors and circumstances beyond our control, such as bloodthirsty neighbors, geographic position, and the Good Lord Himself, it follows: literature lies, propaganda speaks the truth.
Political leaders are honest men, writers enemies of the people.
Which also means, our politicians have been consistently right and our writers consistently wrong.
Let us therefore trust our leaders and ignore our writers, and whenever possible, silence and starve them. They deserve no better.
*
Since our problems are not our problems but someone else’s, there isn’t much we can do except adopt a passive stance and wait until our bloodthirsty neighbors see the light and turn into vegetarians, our mountains and valleys yield oil or gold or some other valuable mineral, and the Good Lord takes pity on us.
*
Yeghishe was dead wrong when he said, “Solidarity is the mother of good deeds, divisions of evil ones.” Solidarity is for wolves. We prefer to live as divided sheep because we are morally superior to wolves.
*
Raffi was wrong when he said we have no future in Turkey. Mass exodus from Turkey in the 19th century would have been a tragic mistake. As for mass exodus from Armenia today (a million and a half so far): that must be seen only as a temporary minor setback in the aftermath of war and earthquake (those damn carnivorous neighbors and cursed geography again).
*
To conclude: we have nothing to worry about because we are in the best of hands. Let us therefore go down on our knees and give thanks to the Lord and His representatives on earth (our bosses, bishops, and benefactors), and count our blessings.
Amen.
#
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
***********************************************
MEMO
*************************
To readers who find my comments disturbing enough to foam at the mouth: In Hollywood, to put things into perspective, even when there are reputations and millions of dollars at stake, they say, “It’s only a movie.” And I say to you, “Relax, it’s only one man’s opinion.” There is no law that says only the right opinion by wise men may be voiced. None of us, not even you, can claim to be consistently right and wise. Only the abysmally ignorant and arrogant think their way of thinking is the only right one and all others should be ignored, and whenever possible, silenced. When I was young and foolish I too thought there were only a very limited number of ideas and worldviews and my familiarity with all of them allowed me to know which were right and which wrong. I was a fascist and I didn’t know it. I had no doubt whatever in my mind that all Turks were rapists and butchers, it was the patriotic duty of all Armenians to hate them, and the only good Turk was a dead Turk. It took me many years to appreciate the advantages of living in a multicultural and multiracial democracy and enjoying the fundamental human right of free speech. I wonder how many of my readers, be they bosses, bishops, benefactors, editors, and publishers of weeklies and periodicals suspect that treating someone who disagrees with them as an enemy is neither patriotic nor Armenian but fascist. This indeed may well be one of our most dangerous blind spots: namely, our tendency to confuse an Ottomanized and Sovietized brand of fascism with Armenianism. Speaking on this very same subject, Zarian has this to say in his TRAVELLER AND HIS ROAD: “They are spitting on Raffi. They are spitting on Aharonian. They are spitting on Derian. And that with the borrowed, consumptive spittle of Muscovite ‘masters.’ Even their filth is second hand. Even their trash has not been picked up from our streets but from foreign gutters. Danger, danger, danger!”
#

Sunday, November 12, 2006
*********************************************
I MAY HAVE SAID THIS BEFORE
*******************************************
“You are consistently negative,” I am told again and again. “Try to be more positive.” They never tell me to be more honest, as if honesty were negative, and Turks and massacres positive.
*
Some of my most faithful readers are hoodlums. Writers share this in common with bus drivers: they can’t choose their passengers.
*
Jacques de Groff (b. 1924), French historian: “The mediocrity of leaders has at no time slowed down the evolution of mankind.” True, in so far as, by alienating the best and the brightest, mediocre leaders (whose number one enemy is excellence) promote the brotherhood of all men and thus accelerate the decline and ultimate demise of nations and tribes.
*
If “a famous man is disgusting” (Ionesco), what could be more contemptible and repellent than a total mediocrity who thinks he deserves fame.
*
When I first came to Canada, I met an Oriental carpet dealer who thought of himself as the uncrowned king of the Armenian community. Whenever he saw me he would ask, “Are you making any money?” He died bankrupt.
*
Death is the first step of a long voyage, and if the voyage is into nothingness, so much the better.
*
My choice of cheerful epitaph today: “Here lies a dog who barked up the wrong tree.”
*
I would love the slums and gutters of my homeland more than the rivers, boulevards, and palaces of foreign capitals – if I had a homeland.
#
Monday, November 13, 2006
******************************************
RIDDLES WITHIN
MYSTERIES
WITHIN ENIGMAS
*******************************************
Unlike Christians, who believe in three gods (Father, Son, Holy Spirit), Muslims are convinced theirs is a better religion because they believe in only one God. It seems they find the concept of Trinity incomprehensible. So do I. So do most Christians. Which is why they call it a mystery. Religions call their contradictions mysteries.
*
Father and Son I understand. What I don’t understand is the necessity of the Holy Spirit (also called, until very recently, Holy Ghost), the Gray Eminence of the Triumvirate. If Almighty God is at the top of the food chain, why does He need an assistant or a VP? As a Christian I never thought I believed in three gods, perhaps because I was told otherwise. It’s astonishing the degree of trust we place in our elders. What is even more astonishing is our lack of awareness of contradictions within us.
*
To prove they are good Muslims, some Muslims don’t see anything wrong in behaving like bad Christians, and vice versa. And consider the case of the Armenian who in his effort to prove he is a good or even a better Armenian sees nothing remotely questionable in behaving like a hoodlum or a bad Turk. This to me is as incomprehensible as God or the concept of the Trinity.
*
To understand man, psychologists have come up with many contradictory theories and explanations. To understand God, theologians have done the same, probably because the need to understand and explain is as strong in us as the instinct to survive in animals. But unlike animals, in order to survive we are willing not only to kill, but also to die; and to cover up that contradiction, to invent such noble-sounding concepts as heroism, self-sacrifice, martyrdom, and patriotism.
*
To explain the concepts of good and evil, an African tribal chieftain is quoted as having said to C.G. Jung: “If I steal my enemy’s wives, it’s good. If he steals mine it’s bad.” We fool ourselves, or we allow our sermonizers and speechifiers to fool us (which is worse), if we think our motives are more civilized or noble.
*
After witnessing a horrible crime in his own neighborhood, a Canadian is quoted as having said in today’s paper: “You read about all this negative stuff coming from the Middle East, but guess what, there is a lot of negative stuff happening in Canada that is unspeakable!” To which I can only say, “So what else is new?”
#
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
*****************************************
IS HONESTY ANTI-ARMENIAN?
******************************************
Somewhere along the line it seems we as a nation decided that it is. That once upon a time we valued honesty there is no doubt. Think of our folks songs, think of our liturgical music, think above all of our architecture, and I don’t mean the derivative neo-Hellenic style but that of our small, humble, severe churches, shorn of all ornamentation, whose impact is as straight as an arrow.
What happened to our composers, architects, and our creative impetus in general? The answer must be obvious: we concentrated all our efforts on entertaining and pleasing our masters. We were Romanized, Arabized, Ottomanized, and Sovietized. Sinan and Balian became more Ottoman than Turks. The only Armenian feature in Khachaturian is his reliance on Caucasian (which doesn’t mean Armenian only) folk tunes; his orchestration is more Russian (Tchaikovsky) and French (Ravel).
Saroyan’s characters may be of Armenian descent but their aim is not to express the Armenian voki (spirit, ethos, or duende) but to amuse the average American reader. When a critic of TIME magazine said something to the effect that Michael (PASSAGE TO ARARAT) Arlen’s Armenians and Saroyan’s fictional characters shared very little in common and that Saroyan’s Armenians were less authentic, Saroyan wrote an angry letter to the editor saying he had at no time distorted his fellow countrymen, only “stylized” them. Stylized them to what end, except perhaps to make them more accessible to his non-Armenian readers. This is not what Shakespeare does with his characters. This is not what great writers do in their fiction.
What do Odian’s fictional Armenians share in common with Saroyan’s? Absolutely nothing. Saroyan’s characters are cute, colorful, harmless. Odian’s are the exact opposite – mean, narrow, full of piss, vinegar and venom. Saroyan’s Armenians have been Americanized, Odian’s Ottomanized.
Had we presented a united front against our enemies and maintained our independence, we would now be bragging about our own Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms, not to say, Dante, Dickens, and Dostoevsky…instead of Gulbenkian (who was Sultan Abdulhamid’s hireling) and Mikoyan (Stalin’s flunkey).
#
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
******************************************
ASSESSING AN ASS
*******************************
Whenever people assess themselves they tend to emphasize the positive and cover up the negative, and after they fool themselves, they think they have been successful in fooling others.
*
What is flattery? To say to a second-rater that he is first rate. To flatter someone means to imply that he is so bad that he needs to be propped up by lies.
*
Sometimes asking questions is more important than answering them. But if you ask the wrong questions, don’t expect to get the right answers.
*
The most effective way to expose a liar is by speaking the truth, not by speaking bigger lies.
*
To my critics I say, even literary giants like Thomas Mann and Solzhenitsyn were powerless against the likes of Hitler and Stalin. If you are a competent judge and I am what you say I am – a minor scribbler – what’s the harm in what I have been doing? Unless you assess your fellow Armenians to be such gullible dupes that they will be taken in even by a mental masturbator.
#

Thursday, November 09, 2006
******************************************
PROJECTIONS
**************************
Ask a poet and he will tell you we are a nation of poets.
Ask another who doesn’t much care for poetry and he will tell you we are a nation of vodanavorjis (versifiers).
Others will tell you we are a nation of speechifiers and sermonizers who can deliver more empty verbiage in five minutes than an entire contingent of Southern televangelists in a week.
A merchant will tell you we are a nation of merchants.
A pragmatist will dismiss mystics, beginning with Naregatsi (assuming he has heard of him) as worthless daydreamers.
A commissar will tell you in no uncertain terms that intellectuals are, in his humble opinion, no better than mental masturbators.
Ask me and I will tell you we are not even a nation but a collection of tribes divided by bosses (who believe to an ideology), bishops (god), and benefactors (capital). But whatever we are, we are first and foremost men of faith, even when what we believe in is unbelief. Which means we know what’s good for others better than they know themselves.
Ask me what I believe in and I will tell you I believe in the freedom to question the validity of all belief systems.
#
Friday, November 10, 2006
***************************************
REQUIEM FOR A DISSIDENT
**********************************************
NOVAYA GAZETA (the Russian paper for which Anna Politkovskaya worked): “As long as NOVAYA GAZETA exists, her assassins will not have a good night’s sleep.”
*
Mikhail Gorbachev in LA REPUBBLICA (Italy): “It is clear that they wanted to silence her. It is an assault on the free press and on all those who struggle for democracy in our country.”
*
THE TIMES (Great Britain): “She was a fearless critic of President Putin and the atrocities committed by Russians in Chechnya. One of these reasons cost her life.”
*
CORRIERE DELLA SERA (Italy): “Europe and the United States protest, Putin is silent.”
*
EL MUNDO (Spain): “The name of Anna Politkovskaya is added to the list of assassinated journalists who defended freedom.”
#
Saturday, November 11, 2006
********************************************
DIKRAN THE GREAT AND OTHER RASCALS
**********************************************************************
Perennial victims of empires, we brag about the fact that under Dikran the Great we too had an empire. We brag even when we have nothing to brag about. The Roman Empire, like so many other empires around us, bit the dust, we like to brag, but we Armenians continue to live and prosper. What unspeakable nonsense! What verbal manure! What trashy propaganda! If half of the world today speaks dialects of Latin, can we really say the Roman Empire has ceased to exist? The Ottoman Empire lasted much longer than the Roman Empire. Are the Turks justified in asserting superiority over the Romans?
*
What does it take to be an empire, beside greed and a bloodthirsty disposition? In all civilized and semi-civilized countries today there are laws that say you can’t just walk into your neighbor’s home and say, “Henceforth your property is no longer yours but mine. Disagree with me and you die!” And yet, this is exactly what empires do. Consider one of the most civilized empires in the history of mankind, the Athenian Empire. Greeks today brag about their culture as we brag about Dikran the Great. And yet, they condemned Socrates to death. As for Plato and Aristotle: they were so afraid they might meet the same fate that they spent a number of years in self-imposed exile. The Athenian Empire was based on military might, which meant war and taxation. When a city-state refused to pay its share of taxes, it was punished by ruthless massacres of civilians.
*
According to our chauvinists, we are a peace loving people, hence our status as perennial underdogs and victims. What does it take to be an underdog? According to Hegel, fear of death, that is to say, cowardice.
*
We like to brag not only about Dikran the Great, but also our millionaires. What does it take to be a capitalist? Exploitation. Our benefactors may not brag about their wealth but they love to make headlines in our papers and see their portraits hanging in vestibules of community centers, schools, and churches.
*
We brag about Dikran the Great because we can’t brag about Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, or Suleiman the Magnificent. But I suggest we and the rest of the world have nothing to brag about, and whenever a tribe, nation, or empire brags, it lies.
#

Sunday, November 05, 2006
******************************************
ARMENIAN ENEMIES,
TURKISH FRIENDS
***********************************
Is there a single Armenian today who thinks Turks are better than Armenians? Likewise, is there a single Turk who thinks Armenians are better than Turks? This may suggest that nationalism and racism are inevitable facts of life, which we must never give up combating.
No doubt some Armenians are better than some Turks, and vice versa, some Turks are better than some Armenians. Which reminds me of the following brief exchange in Zabel Yessayan’s autobiographical THE GARDENS OF SILIHDAR:
“Dad, is it true that Jews are bad people?”
“There is no such thing as a bad people, my child. There are only bad men and good men.”
“What about the Turks then?”
“Same with the Turks.”
*
Are Turkish writers today better than Armenian writers? According to the Nobel committee, and now the world community, at least one Turkish writer is better than Armenian writers.
I once heard an Armenian poet and author of several textbooks say that the Nobel committee was a Zionist conspiracy. And immediately after Pamuk was awarded the Nobel Prize, an Armenian friend, whose patriotism is such that it would not allow him to read “enemy writers,” telephoned to inform me that Pamuk did not deserve the Nobel Prize. But then, with one or two exceptions, this has been said of all Nobel Prize winners.
*
In a recent issue of the ARMENIAN REPORTER I read a letter to the editor that said something to the effect that, if we are better, why is it that hundreds of Jews have been awarded the Nobel Prize but not a single Armenian? Will this fact convince a single Armenian that Jews are better than Armenians? I suspect it may have the exact opposite effect by reinforcing the notion that the Nobel committee is an offshoot of THE PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF ZION.
*
Dissident Turkish historians today have more friends among Armenians than among their fellow Turks. Why should it be different for dissident Armenian writers?
#
Monday, November 06, 2006
***********************************
DIARY
***********************
Saddam Hussein has been condemned to death. Some see this as a major victory. I can only think of all the others in the Middle East and elsewhere who deserve to hang but who will die of natural causes?
*
We speak too much about Turks and massacres and not enough about intolerance, which happens to be the source of all crimes against humanity; perhaps because, if we speak of intolerance, sooner or later someone may ask, “How tolerant are we?”
*
If you keep asking the wrong questions, you will never get the right answer.
*
Only Armenians who know nothing about Armenian literature think my views are eccentric or anti-Armenian.
*
You cannot reason with men who are against reason.
*
In a cartoon by Wolinski, one Frenchman to another: “On account of Aznavour, Turks are threatening to boycott French goods. That’s not a problem because for some time now France has been exporting nothing.”
*
“As an Armenian, I value Armenians over Turks,” a gentle reader writes. I suspect a Mongol will never say, “As a Mongol, I value Mongols over Armenians,” probably because he doesn’t even know who Armenians are. And if swine could speak, no doubt they will say, “As swine, we value swine over jackasses.”
#
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
*****************************************
NOTES AND COMMENTS
*******************************
History is made by mobs that cannot think for themselves.
*
When I knew nothing I believed everything I was told by my elders. Now that I am no longer a child I spend most of my time trying to prove that I am no longer an impressionable idiot.
*
Some of our charlatans have become such experts in their field that they now believe in what they say.
*
Who qualifies as an intellectual? Anyone who has mastered the difficult art of thinking against himself. As for patriots and propagandists: for every intellectual, there are probably a thousand or even ten thousand of them.
*
Once upon a time I espoused every fallacy, prejudice, and misconception I now condemn. I know how hard it is to see one’s most cherished ideas as products of manipulators whose aim is to convince you to kill and die for what they only pretend to believe in.
#
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
******************************************
HERE WE GO AGAIN
**********************************
“You don’t always practice what you preach,” I am sometimes informed by disappointed readers. To which I can only say, “Here we go again!”
First of all, I am neither a preacher nor a propagandist (same thing). If I were, I would be paid for my work. But like everyone else, including preachers and their dupes, I stand for certain things (such as tolerance and solidarity) and am against others (censorship and authoritarianism…both in the name of patriotism, of course). That doesn’t make me a preacher, just an average Joe who values common sense and decency over charlatanism.
So much for my positives. On the negative side, I am willing to concede that I have little patience with and no sympathy whatever for anonymous and faceless hoodlums who take pleasure in flinging mud at me hoping some of it will stick. They may even think if they make themselves repellent enough I may give up in disgust and fall silent. This may indeed happen some day, but not yet – at least not today and probably not tomorrow.
However, I am willing to compromise and make the following solemn promise. On the day I achieve perfection, I may see the wisdom in bullies and liars, and on the day I achieve sainthood, I may forgive and love them. In the meantime, my advice is: Don’t hold your breath!
#

Thursday, November 02, 2006
*******************************************
ON WISDOM, LOVE, AND
RELATED ATROCITIES
*******************************************
Men say they value knowledge over ignorance but live as though they loved ignorance more.
*
Since our ignorance far exceeds our knowledge, in whatever we say about the visible and the invisible world (the universe and god) there will be more uncertainty than certainty. Unless mankind comes to terms with this gray area of uncertainty, we shall have wars, revolutions, and massacres.
*
There is a difference between being right and being wise. Our revolutionaries at the turn of the last century were right, but were they wise?
*
Either we de-Ottomanize and de-Sovietize ourselves or we go on confusing a dehumanized existence with survival.
*
I am afraid all this talk of Turks and massacres has turned us into pillars of salt.
*
Indians believe verbal communication is not the only way to transfer wisdom, and that being in the presence of a wise man is enough to absorb wisdom by spiritual osmosis. Perhaps our problems stem from the fact that for six hundred years we kept the wrong company.
*
One doesn’t fall in love with a person, one falls in love with an image, an abstraction, a projection, a lie, a symbol…and symbols don’t fart.
*
If I am nice in person and nasty in my writings it may be because in my dealings with my fellow men I may respect their limitations and ignorance, but in my writings I am merciless.
#
Friday, November 03, 2006
****************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
**************************************************
No one, not even bosses, bishops, and benefactors, is in a position to say his definition of Armenianism is the only valid one.
*
Like war, genocide is such a colossal blunder that it must be handled very carefully, even if it means attending it “by a bodyguard of lies” (Churchill).
*
Literature and big money don’t mix. I feel ill at ease in the presence of benefactors who are constitutionally incapable of respecting anyone they can hire and fire; and I can sense this contempt even in the presence of their flunkies who are, as a rule, less diplomatic in their dealings with “honorable beggars” (Baronian).
*
You may have noticed that smart Armenian operators hide their political loyalties. I remember once when I asked a friend to which party he belonged, he replied, “I am with the good guys.” No one believes me when I say I am not just non-partisan but anti-partisan. Shaw is right. The trouble with crooks is that they assume everyone is a crook.
*
Hating the enemy is easy. Trying to understand him much more difficult. I admire people who choose understanding. But I see something inconsistent in someone who pretends to understand his enemy but hates his own brother.
#
Saturday, November 04, 2006
*******************************************
VARIATIONS ON A FAVORITE THEME
************************************************
Literature is neither glorified gossip nor entertainment. Literature is more like a guerrilla campaign against a minority of cynical manipulators and a majority of unthinking underdogs who have a fatal admiration for all top dogs, including serial killers like Hitler and Stalin.
*
The greatest and most dangerous illusions are the infallibility of faith and the nobility of patriotism. To me, the statements “I am a man of faith, therefore I am wrong,” and “I am willing to die for my country, therefore I am a potential murderer,” are as valid as “I think, therefore I am.”
*
The source of wars and massacres is neither greed nor evil but love of God and Country.
*
Armenians who believe what their pundits and academics tell them resent it when Turks do the same thing.
*
Do your utmost to agree with those who disagree with you. Even if you learn nothing from them, you may learn tolerance, and tolerance is a far better means of acquiring wisdom than intolerance.
*
In time of war, fathers bury their sons. Under fascism, criminals jail law-abiding citizens.
#

Sunday, October 29, 2006
****************************************
IF THE SHOE FITS…
********************************
Whenever I feel mean, unforgiving, and full of venom, I ascribe it to my Ottoman heritage.
*
A false friend can be more dangerous than a mortal enemy. That’s because a false friend knows where your Achilles’ heel is and he strikes when you least expect it.
*
A false friend is one who escalates a minor disagreement to terminal hatred and verbal slaughter.
*
My false friends outnumber my enemies because being naïve and gullible (dumb for short) I have been brainwashed to believe I am smart and can’t be taken in.
*
I have said and repeated that I am smart so often that I now have no doubts on that score.
*
My position is so vulnerable and my weaknesses so many that no matter how absurd the flattery, I swallow it hook, line, and sinker.
*
Because I consider all defeats moral victories, I am invincible. Or, as they say in diplomatic circles in Washington: “Whichever way the shit goes down, my ass is covered.”
#
Monday, October 30, 2006
********************************************
ON OBJECTIVITY
*******************************
Objectivity is like common sense, even fanatics don’t complain that they don’t have enough of it. But the truth of the matter is, we either underestimate or overestimate people, including ourselves. The aim of racism is to legitimize this widely practiced aberration.
As a child I was brought up to underestimate Turks to such a degree that I could not conceive of a day when I would read such oxymoronic phrases as “a great Turkish pianist,” or “a widely translated Turkish novelist and winner of the Nobel Prize who has been compared to Thomas Mann.”
To the same degree that I underestimated Turks I overestimated my fellow Armenians. When I finally realized that Armenians were human beings, like the rest of mankind, with their share, perhaps even more than their share, of failings, I experienced a state of shock that lasted several years during which I came close to becoming an alcoholic.
If I am too critical of Armenians today and not critical enough of Turks, it is because I don’t know and I will never know everything there is to know about them, or for that matter about myself.
Historians like Toynbee and philosophers like Sartre tell us it is impossible to know everything about the past, and history is not a story with a fixed plot but a narrative that must be constantly updated and rewritten.
As human beings we are therefore condemned to pronounce verdict only on partial and sometimes even hearsay evidence.
To rely on a politician’s version of the past is like assuming the roles of judge and jury and relying on the evidence presented by a single lawyer whose aim is not to prove the innocence of his client but to challenge the prosecution to dispel all doubt as to the guilt of the accused.
When an Armenian poet said, “Human justice, I spit on your face,” and long before him, when Dickens has one of his characters say, “The law is a ass!” they were emphasizing this very same point and the impossibility of achieving objectivity and impartiality.
Historians, even honest and well-meaning ones, are human beings like the rest of us: they may know better about some things, perhaps even many things, but they don’t know everything. We should trust their judgment on big things as much as we trust ours on little things.
Only almighty and all-knowing god may be objective, but as far as I know the word isn’t even mentioned in the Bible, where we are asked not to judge our enemies but to love them.
#
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
***************************************
PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL REFLECTIONS
***************************************************
God created the universe in his own image. Astronomers tell us there are many more stars in heaven than grains of sand on earth. And now, consider the fact that the earth isn’t even a star but a planet, and relatively speaking, about the size of only an almost invisible fraction of a dust particle. Need I say more?
*
MORE ON RACISM
***************************
In a fable by La Fontaine titled “The Wolf and the Lamb,” the wolf accuses the lamb of having spoken ill of him last year. When the lamb says he wasn’t even born last year, the wolf replies, “It must have been your brother.”
*
TURKISH PIANISTS
*****************************
I asked a professor of music if he had ever heard of a famous Turkish pianist. “Two of them,” he replied to my racist astonishment. “Is one of them good with Brahms?” I asked next. “His recording of the Intermezzi is famous,” he said after naming him.
*
As an Armenian I began to make sense of things only on the day I realized that some Turks may indeed be horrid (Turks may agree with me on this) but our own “betters” are not as good as we think they are (I don’t expect Armenians, especially our “betters,” to agree with me).
#
20TH-CENTURY ARMENIAN LITERATURE
***********************************************
A MOTHER’S HEART
********************************
By AVEDIK ISSAHAKIAN
************************************
There is an old tale
About a boy
An only son
Who fell in love with a lass.
*
“You don’t love me,
You never did,” said she to him.
“But if you do, go then
And fetch me your mother’s heart.”
*
Downcast and distraught
The boy walked off
And after shedding copious tears
Came back to his love.
*
The girl was angry
When she saw him thus
And said, “Don’t you dare come back again
Without your mother’s heart.”
*
The boy went and killed
A mountain roe deer
And offered its heart
To the one he adored.
*
But again she was angry
And said, “Get out of my sight.
I told you what I want
Is your mother’s heart.”
*
The boy went and killed
His mother, and as he ran
With her heart in his hand
He slipped and fell.
*
“My dear child,
My poor child,”
Cried the mother’s heart,
“Did you hurt yourself?”
*
(Translated by Ara Baliozian)
#
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
*****************************************
EXPOSING LIES
*****************************
A politician is a politician regardless of nationality, and as a politician he shares more things in common with other politicians than with his own people.
*
The one endeavor in which politicians excel is making wrong appear right. In his last days, Hitler blamed not himself but the German people. Since they had failed to live up to his expectations, he is quoted as having said, they deserved to be wiped off the map.
*
We live in a world where the credibility of lies is greater than that of truth, hence the popularity of organized religions and ideologies. I am not saying all ideologies and religions are wrong. It is ideologues and religious leaders who say that. It is popes and ayatollahs, bishops and mullahs who say if you don’t trust the salvation of your soul into their hands, you are no better than a heretic and an infidel dog and will burn in hell for eternity.
Since at all times and everywhere heretics and infidels have outnumbered true believers, there must be more people in hell than anywhere else.
*
If you say I repeat myself, I will make a deal with you: on the day a preacher says he is no longer against sin, I will consider changing my tune.
*
I think it was Aldous Huxley who once observed that the earth is the insane asylum of other planets. That makes more sense to me than the idea of a compassionate and loving god being guilty of the greatest holocaust (i.e. hell) in the history of the universe.
*
Exposing lies can be a catastrophic career move.
#

Thursday, October 26, 2006
*****************************
DIARY
**********************
Paul Johnson on Brahms’s Intermezzo in B flat minor: “I have a beautiful recording of it by the Turkish pianist Idil Biret, a pupil of Cortot…”
My first thought: Biret must be either Armenian or half-Armenian. Once a chauvinist, always a chauvinist.
Even when one’s mind adopts an anti-chauvinist stance, one’s gut remains chauvinist.
*
It never pays to examine too closely a man’s ancestry. If he identifies himself as a Patagonian, a Hottentot, or a Mongol, we should take his word for it. Speaking for myself, you may simply identify me as a human being.
*
Socrates said, “Of the gods we know nothing.” But if you read the Bible from beginning to end you will reach the exact opposite conclusion: Of God we know everything and then some!
*
Memo to an Armenian writer:
If you have more than two or at most three fans, you must be doing something wrong.
#
Friday, October 27, 2006
*****************************************
ARMENIAN INTELLECTUALS
***************************************
During the Soviet era I wrote about twenty letters to writers in the Homeland asking if I could interview them. Only one of them replied suggesting I write a letter of congratulations on the 25th anniversary of the magazine he was then editing. I had never seen or heard about his magazine but I wrote a brief cliché-ridden paragraph, which he promptly published, and that was the only thing by me that ever saw the light in Soviet Armenia.
*
Last summer I was interviewed by e-mail by an Armenian editor in Moscow. When he disagreed with my answers, he sent follow-up question with whose answers he also disagreed. This routine was repeated a few more times. When the interview finally appeared, it bore the following Pinteresque title: “Interview with an Armenian Dissident: Incomprehensible Answers to Misunderstood Questions.”
*
Long before I met Vahé Oshagan I was told he was, like his illustrious father, partial to blunt talk, especially when dealing with lesser writers in no position to retaliate. So when I found myself seated beside him at a banquet in an Armenian community center, I told him in no uncertain terms what I thought of his poetry, which was not one hell of a lot; to which he said: “You and I have nothing further to say to each other.” When I got up to leave, I heard him say: “Not so fast, my friend!”
Did he get even? I no longer remember. But he did say I was wasting my time translating a phony like Zarian, and if I wanted to make myself useful I should get busy translating such worthy and authentic writers as his father.
Shortly thereafter mutual friends informed me that Vahé Oshagan’s opinion of me was so low that it could not be quoted or even paraphrased in polite society. Strange as this may seem to some readers, this development flattered my vanity instead of offending my ego.
#

Saturday, October 28, 2006
******************************************
THEORY AND PRACTICE
*********************************
Theory: Since you and I are Armenian, we must be brothers.
Practice: Since you and I belong to different tribes, we cannot even begin to communicate with each other.
*
ENIGMA
***************************
Being wrong I understand. What I don’t understand, and I doubt if I ever will, is being catastrophically wrong with total unawareness, like the good citizens of Athens who condemned Socrates to death with the unshakable conviction that they were discharging their patriotic duty.
*
TRANSLATION
************************
Perhaps a modern translation of the commandment “Love your enemy” is “Humanize yourself.”
*
HOW TO READ
****************************
When I don’t understand a sentence or a paragraph I seldom reread it because (a) I lose interest in a writer or translator who makes no effort to make himself accessible to the general reader, and (b) the certainty that someday I will read the same idea in another context more clearly expressed.
*
If an idea is good, it will be remembered, rephrased, and repeated an infinite number of times.
*
TO KNOW IS TO REMEMBER
****************************************
All so-called new or original ideas are as old as mankind. The meaning of the word “original” is going back to the origins. We sometimes forget that when we speak of the history of ideas, what we mean is written ideas. For thousands of years men could not write. That does not mean they did not think.
#

Sunday, October 22, 2006
*******************************************
HONESTY: A DEFINITION
*********************************
Public relations, political rhetoric, advertisements, and propaganda combine to legitimize bullshit and to redefine honesty as “disguised dishonesty.”
*
In America you have to advertise even when what you are promoting is a book exposing the damage advertisements inflict on our perception of reality.
*
ON TURKS
****************************
The most important issue that unites us today is the Genocide, which also means (in the words of both Chekhov and Sartre, an unlikely pair) that the most lasting bond among people is hatred of the enemy.
*
Our hatred of Turks may unite us, but what if this same hatred may make us more like them? Or rather, what we think of them.
*
Whenever I speak of Armenian hatred of Turks I am reminded that Armenians don’t hate Turks or anyone else, they only love justice.
I am willing to concede that whenever I speak of Armenians I have a natural tendency to project; and ever since I was a child I saw Turks the way they are depicted in Armenian cartoons today: fat, mustachioed slobs in shalvars and fez wielding a yataghan dripping with blood – not exactly lovable characters, you might say.
*
A VICIOUS CIRCLE
***************************
Bullshit is widespread because it works; it works because most men are dupes; and they are dupes because their educational system was designed by bullshitters.
#
Monday, October 23, 2006
********************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
*********************************
Once, when I asked a fellow Armenian if we are from the same planet,” he replied: “We are not even from the same galaxy.”
*
Sometimes understanding a Turkish enemy can be as difficult as understanding an Armenian friend.
*
God did not create Armenians in His own image, Turks did.
*
Fortune Cookie: “The only rose without a thorn is friendship.”
*
We emphasize the positive in us and cover up the negative without realizing that doing so amounts to engaging in deception, which is probably much worse than all our negatives combined.
*
If we assume that in every conflict there is right and wrong, or good guys and bad guys, we shall have to conclude that we will have peace in this world only when the good guys doubt their goodness seven times every day.
*
I would define a bad guy as a good guy who never questions or doubts his goodness. Certainty is the source of all evil.
*
God has visited mankind with countless disasters and catastrophes like floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, storms, tsunamis, hurricanes, tornadoes, epidemics, starvation, and son on, but men continue to worship and thank him.
*
When reminded of Stalinism or jihadism, defenders of Marxism and Islam will tell you that all systems, including Christianity, have had their share of abusers. But that to me is the best reason why we should question the validity or usefulness of all ideologies and organized religions.
#
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
************************************************
BROTHERS, FRIENDS, ENEMIES
**********************************************
Dale Carnegie once wrote a best-selling book titled HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE. Had he been an Armenian, he would have written a book titled HOW TO SURVIVE YOUR FRIENDS.
*
Frederic Raphael on Carnegie’s book: “Probably among the dozen most blandly wicked books ever written.”
*
Some day if I ever write my memoirs the shortest chapter in it will be subtitled “My Armenian Friends.”
*
George Santayana has said that a friend is someone with whom “we can be most human.” It follows, an enemy is someone we dehumanize.
*
Plutarch once defined a brother as someone “who has come out of the same hole.” (How about that for subtle elegance?) One could also define an Armenian as someone whose ancestors were born in a valley or on a mountain somewhere in Transcaucasia two thousand years ago.
*
During the last few years I acquired two Turkish friends. At this rate my Turkish friends will outnumber my Armenian friends. To those who think the reason why I am making more Turkish friends and Armenian enemies may be because I am anti-Armenian: I suggest to confuse criticism with hostility is to subscribe to the notion that leaders and their dupes are always right and dissenters always wrong. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Saddam Hussein, and the Ayatollah subscribed to this notion too.
*
Jose Maria Aznar (Spanish diplomat): “Why is it that we must always be apologizing to them and they never? Has anyone ever heard a Muslim apologize for having occupied Spain for eight centuries?”
*
If Alexandre Dumas’s three Musketeers had been Armenian, their slogan would have been “Every man for himself!”
#
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
************************************************
ON LOVE, HATE, FRIENDS, ENEMIES,
AND RELATED ATROCITIES
****************************************************
A true friend is someone who in your absence, when others speak evil of you, does not add his voice to the chorus, and afterwards does not repeat their words to you.
*
Friends play a central role in the lives of some, enemies in others.
*
If I ever see the light and am born again, I will keep it to myself and let my words and actions speak for themselves.
*
Faith tells us not to hate our enemies, and if we can’t manage that, to think of hatred not as a religious or patriotic duty but as a failing and an aberration.
*
The word heaven in a religious context is not a place but a dimension, and the dimension is not outside somewhere but (very much like the kingdom of god) within us.
*
When a Canadian writer said to a publisher she had written a book about the Armenians, the publisher said: “If it’s about the massacres, we will accept it.” There is no business like shoah business.
*
According to an American pundit in this morning’s paper: “Far too many people have already been killed for Bush and his advisers to admit that their ‘war of choice’ was all a mistake.” True. The bigger the mistake, the harder it is to admit it. If you step on someone’s toes in a crowded place you can say “Sorry!” and get away with it. But what can you possibly say for killing two million innocent civilians except “I didn’t do it!”
*
A cartoon by Bouchard depicting a slave in the middle of a Roman orgy declaring: “Someday we will all be equal and everyone will have his own slaves.”
#

Thursday, October 19, 2006
****************************************
THE CAPITALIST AND THE PAUPER
*********************************************
When warned by his prosperous host not to spit on the floor, Diogenes is said to have spat on the man’s face explaining he could not find a meaner receptacle. I challenge anyone not to love such a man.
*
ON STYLE
***********************
If you have a choice between a long paragraph and a brief sentence, choose the sentence. Between a sentence and a single word, choose the word. Between a word of two or more syllables and a monosyllable, choose the latter. Between a monosyllable and silence, why say anything?
*
FROM BUNS TO BUGGERS
*********************************************
When in his famous Berlin speech Kennedy identified himself as a “Berliner,” he did not know and no one warned him that a “berliner” is a bun, in the same way that a frankfurter is a sausage, a hamburger is a hamburger, and bugger is short for Bulgarian. Now, to say “I am a berliner” may not be as bad as saying “I am a bugger,” but it is in that neighborhood.
*
SEMANTICS 101
*******************************
There is a difference between smart and smart aleck, and between wise and wisenheimer. We are not smart, we are alecks; neither are we wise, we are heimers.
*
ON PROGRESS
*************************
We owe progress more to the evolution of the thumb and the invention of zero and less to the so-called greatness and nobility of the human spirit.
*
ON BEING OBJECTIVE
*********************************
If I have a low opinion of my fellow Armenians, it may be because I have an even lower opinion of my fellow men, myself included.
*
MEMO
************************
I write to remind myself, and in reminding myself I hope to remind others that it takes honesty and courage to be objective, and no matter how objective we are we can never be objective enough.
*
CONFESSION I
************************
Charlatans are not born but made.
*
CONFESSION II
*****************************
In my younger days I produced a great deal of chauvinist crapola because as a slum-dweller I was dependent on the charity of swine.
#
Friday, October 20, 2006
********************************************
ARMENIANS IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE
************************************************
ON HORESEBACK THROUGH ASIA MINOR by Frederick Burnaby (originally published in 1898, reissued in 2002) contains many references, not all of them flattering, to Armenians – their monasteries, churches, priests, bishops, officials, bazaars, money-lenders, newspapers, schools, women and so on.
“Armenian women were closely veiled whenever they left the house,” we read here, and: “In many instances, an Armenian was not permitted to see his wife before marriage, and had to take her, as the Yankees say, ‘on spec.’”
Elsewhere: “An Armenian lady is in no way educated. She is the slave of her husband, and has to do all sorts of menial work for him – wash his feet, rub them dry, and wait at table. From her earliest childhood a girl is brought up to consider herself as a slave in her father’s house. Until Armenians abandon these barbarous customs, their so-called Christianity will not do them much good.”
*
In an appendix titled “The Corruption of Armenian Officials,” we are told Armenians are divided into Gregorians, Protestants, and Catholics, and their officials, in addition to being “disgustingly servile,” are as corrupt as their Turkish counterparts.
To readers who may begin to suspect that the author may have been a Turcophile, I suggest they read Yervant Odian’s realistic novels. But we don’t have to travel back in time to verify Burnaby’s observations. Let us ask instead if anything has changed now that we live in a free and democratic country like the United States.
*
On the subject of the Armenian press, Burnaby has this to say: “Armenian newspapers frequently publish news which cannot be agreeable to the Government, and they are not interfered by the authorities.”
What would happen today if one of our editors were to publish an unflattering article about one of our bosses or benefactors? No need to use our imagination here because when one of our editors did exactly that, he was dragged to court, almost driven out of business on a legal technicality, suffered a stroke, and almost died. A grim reminder of the old French adage, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
*
Another one of Burnaby’s observation that is worth quoting: “The Armenians who profess the Armenian faith detest any member of their community who has accepted the Roman Catholic or Protestant doctrines, the Christians being much more intolerant than the Turks.”
*
About the author we read: “Frederick Gustavus Burnaby was an extraordinary person. Reputed to be the strongest man in the British Army, he was also fluent in seven languages…. He spent five months riding across some of the cruelest winter landscape in the world before hastening home to write this best-seller.”
*
Please note that the Index is misleading. The references to Armenians in the text are many more than the number of pages cited in the Index.
#
Saturday, October 21, 2006
****************************************
DISAPPOINTMENT
***************************
A surprise call from a gentle reader asking about my health. “I heard you were sick,” he said. When I told him there was nothing wrong with me, he was inconsolable.
*
ON SO-CALLED FACTS
**********************************
When a man deals only in facts and certainties, you can be sure of one thing: the facts on which his certainties are based have been carefully and cunningly selected, tailored, and doctored.
*
SOUND BITES
***********************
In a totalitarian environment to think for oneself can be a capital offense.
*
In my youth I never asked myself “Am I right?” because I was always right.
*
Turks called us their “most loyal millet.” By loyal they meant subservient or, in the words of an English traveler, “disgustingly servile” – a noteworthy distinction.
*
A jackass does not ask himself, “Am I a jackass?” It is the same with charlatans and dupes.
*
I try to be objective; therefore I am an enemy of the people.
*
Cowards are better equipped at playing it safe than heroes.
*
Stanislaw Lec (1909-1966), Polish writer and dissident: “No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.”
*
“The mob shouts with one big mouth and eats with a thousand little ones.”
#