Sunday, March 18, 2007
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THE BLACK AND THE YELLOW
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Time is the greatest magician. It turns black to white, and night to day; it exposes crooks and does away with the obnoxious effortlessly, all the while remaining invisible. Writing history is trying to understand and explain the incomprehensible tricks of this magician knowing full well that one’s efforts are doomed to failure. That is why historians from Herodotus to Toynbee have been accused of lies and charlatanism. And speaking of black and charlatanism: there is a Canadian by the name of Black, Conrad Black, who had everything any man ever desired —wealth, power, intellect, looks, and an attractive, young, and smart wife (both Lord and Lady Black are prolific writers) who now stands accused of crimes that could land him in prison for 101 years. And then there is Bush whose understanding of history never went beyond Hollywood westerns — a good guy on a white horse liberating Dodge City from the nefarious grip of a bad guy and his gang of cutthroats. With one difference: unlike Gary Cooper, Henry Fonda, and Alan Ladd, this particular Texan never planned to confront the bad guy himself at high noon or at any other time of day or night. He was going to let others do the killing, dying, maiming and being maimed. He may think of himself as the leader of the mightiest empire in the world but he is neither Caesar nor Alexander the Great or Napoleon. Even Hitler had more first-hand experience of war than he.
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The easiest thing in the world, to solve someone else’s problems; the hardest, to solve one’s own.
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Monday, March 19, 2007
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FROM MY DIARY
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Once in a while, when I’ve got nothing better to do, I google myself and read some of the comments. When the insults or words with more asterisks than letters outnumber the positive comments, I know I have not lost my touch and must be on the right track.
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It is said, on the day Christians discovered the Bible, every Protestant became a pope. Something similar could be said of the average Armenian who discovers a belief system or ideology: he becomes either a Torquemada or a commissar.
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War becomes a viable option provided (a) it is winnable, and (b) the enemy is in the league with the devil.
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Most Americans are against the war in Iraq today because (a) the war seems unwinnable, and (b) the only way to win it is to adopt the tactics of the enemy by doing to them what they would do if they had weapons of mass destructions, i.e. nuke them back to the Stone Age.
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Tuesday, March 20, 2007
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WHEN YOU SEE A BAD MAN
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In an Armenian-Turkish discussion forum on the Internet, a Turkish writer has posted an article in which he quotes several foreign and ostensibly objective observers to prove that Armenians are no better than the worst scum on earth, thus implying that if [that “if” must be emphasized] if the Turks did what they are accused of having done to the Armenians, they did the world a favor by cleansing it of such vermin. What seems to escape this particular Turkish patriot’s attention is that, if what he says is true, then part of the blame must be shouldered by the Turks themselves because after 600 years of uninterrupted life in the Ottoman Empire, Armenians must be seen as products of Ottoman culture.
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Question: What was it that made the Turks wait for 600 years to do what must be done? Compassion? Next question: Has anyone ever advanced the theory that compassion has been a central concern of the Ottoman Empire, or for that matter, of any other empire, especially at a time when its own survival was at stake?
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This Turkish writer forgets that until the turn of the last century Armenians were known as “the most loyal [and therefore the most desirable and useful] millet” within the Ottoman Empire. It is only when the Empire began to disintegrate and every national group claimed its place in the sun that Armenians became the worst scum on earth. In other words, the reason why Armenians were targeted for extermination was not their moral turpitude or defective DNA but the most human and universal desire of all: that of self-determination. But again, it should be emphasized that most Armenians, very much like most Turks, lacked political awareness. The troublemakers were as non-representative of the nation as a whole as was the Young Turks’ ephemeral regime.
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The world will be a better place on the day we all stop projecting our worst instincts on an alien group and start examining our own conscience. There is an old saying: “When you see a good man, emulate him. When you see a bad man, examine your own heart.”
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Wednesday, March 21, 2007
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ON A COMMON FALLACY
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Politicians operate like lawyers: it is their job to defend their side at any cost even if their side or client happens to be a serial killer. To this day Talaat, Mussolini, Stalin, and Hitler have their friends in the same way that Lincoln, FDR, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King have their enemies.
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Most political controversies are based on the assumption “our side speaks the truth, the other side lies.” Translated into dollars and cents, this simply means: my self-interest matters more than your self-interest. Whenever I read an opinion or commentary that assumes this fallacy to be a self-evident truth, I know I am dealing with a dupe and a moral moron.
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We all know there is a difference between self-interest and self-sacrifice. We look up to heroes and martyrs and down on charlatans and swindlers. A politician is more akin to a charlatan than to an honest man, and propaganda works because there is a swindler in all of us.
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THE VOICE OF WISDOM
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Georges Braque: “Art disturbs, science reassures.”
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Choderlos de Laclos: “Crooks have virtues as honest men have weaknesses.”
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André Gide: “The appetite for knowledge is born in doubt. Stop believing and start learning.”
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Claude Lévi-Strauss: “Wisdom consists not in providing true answer but in asking the right questions.”
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