Friday, March 10, 2006
**************************************************
Whatever I know, which is not much, has come from books. My knowledge of the real world is so limited that it might as well be non-existent; and whenever I have ventured outside in search of knowledge, I have returned to my books bloodied and defeated. But am I alone in this? Consider our revolutionaries at the turn of the last century. As long as they became intoxicated with Western ideas, they did no harm. But when they decided to act on them in the real world, their dreams turned into a nightmare. And consider what’s happening in Iraq today….
*
Socrates understood many things but he failed to understand one of the most important things, namely the fact that some day his conversations with fellow Athenians would be seen as a capital offense.
*
In a letter to the editor and speaking about “the authority of the scriptures,” a fundamentalist speaks of “the very foundation of facts that have withstood centuries of brutal attacks.” Astrology too has “withstood centuries of brutal attacks.” So what?
#
Saturday, March 11, 2006
***************************************
OTTOMANIZED ARMENIANS
***********************************
Some Armenians have been so thoroughly Ottomanized that their only source of wisdom seems to be Turkish sayings; and judging by the number of Armenian sayings and writers they quote, they have not heard or read a single one. Talaat and Stalin exterminated two generations of our ablest writers. These Armenians went further: they buried and forgot these writers ever existed.
*
GOSTAN ZARIAN
ON SOVIETIZED ARMENIANS
*****************************************************
In his TRAVELLER AND HIS ROAD and speaking of Sovietized Armenians who recycled Bolshevik propaganda to him, Zarian writes: “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 words have not been picked up from our streets. Danger, danger, danger!”
*
OUR PRESENT SITUATION
***********************************
If our situation is shituation today it may be because we are at the mercy of Sovietized bloodsuckers and Ottomanized charlatans whose Turcocentric view of life and understanding of their fellow men begins and ends with massacres. “You either massacre or are massacred,” they seem to be saying. “And if you can’t massacre your enemy with fire and sword, choose a more defenseless victim and massacre him with words.” And who could be more defenseless than Armenian writers? If they are no longer spitting on Raffi, Aharonian, and Derian, it may be because they don’t even know who these writers are.
*
AM I REPEATING MYSELF?
****************************************
If I am, it is because our Ottomanized and Sovietized brothers repeat themselves too by recycling filth that has not even picked up from our own streets but from alien gutters.
### [/B]

Sunday, February 26, 2006
************************************
The many ways those in power have to control our thoughts and emotions, especially the emotions of the thoughtless.
*
Most of his life, Gide writes in his World War II diaries, his efforts have been concentrated on understanding “the other,” that is to say, the enemy. It is such a pity that the world is run not by men like Gide but by the likes of Hitler and his dupes.
*
Armenian problems? What problems? Since we haven’t been able to solve them so far we must assume them to be an integral part of the human condition, like death and taxes.
*
Patriotism allows us to do nothing and to feel good about it.
*
Patriotism also allows us to think that if our heart is in the right place, we can’t go wrong. But what if the heart is controlled by a dysfunctional psyche?
*
An honest man is a charlatan’s worst nightmare.
*
That which we learn from books may not even register on our consciousness. But that which we learn from experience we can’t forget.
*
If your understanding focuses on yourself and ignores the other, your understanding of yourself as well as reality is bound to suffer because you are only a tiny fraction of a far larger reality, and tiny to the point of being invisible. And what is patriotism if not an extension of the self?
#
Monday, February 27, 2006
***************************************
In a tribal environment the myth of “pure blood” is taken seriously. It is different with the ruling classes and elites in general where mixed marriages are the norm rather than the exception.
*
After centuries of intermarriage a Turk is more difficult to define than an American. Something similar could be said of an Armenian. In the ghetto where I was born and raised there were Armenians who looked like Mongols, Germans, and Negroes but they all identified themselves as Armenian because (a) Armenians were the dominant tribe, (b) to identify themselves as anything else would have been against their own interests, and (c) because the offspring of mixed marriages were looked down at as mongrels.
*
There are harmless idiots and then there are dangerous idiots. A dangerous idiot is one who believes what his political and religious leaders tell him.
*
I understand idiots because I was one most of my life. Perhaps I still am for thinking that common sense and decency are transferable.
*
I was born again as a human being on the day I said to myself, “I am an Armenian, therefore I am an idiot.”
*
There exists an American school of thought that says, if you repeat to yourself “Today I like myself more than yesterday. Tomorrow I will like myself even more,” you will cease being a lousy bastard.
*
There is also an Armenian school of thought that says, if you repeat to yourself every day, “I am smart,” or “I am smarter today than I was yesterday,” you will cease being an idiot.
*
If two idiots meet and one says to the other “You are smart,” and the other replies, “You too are smart,” they will part with the conviction that, unlike most of their fellow men, they are not idiots.
#
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
*************************************
There is more to America than cowboys and Indians. There is also more to Armenians than the massacres. And yet, our press, our educational system, our editorialists, pundits, and academics conspire to reduce our identity, to distort our worldview, and to narrow our horizons when they emphasize the dark side of our recent past. They go further and cover up our failures and shortcomings, of which we have more than our share, because, they tell us, they come under the general heading of “dirty linen.”
*
Anyone who dares to discuss our problems is told to shut up unless he can solve them, or rather make them disappear as if by magic with a single verbal formula like abracadabra.
*
We are more, much more than misunderstood victims if only because we are human beings, or rather, it is within our powers to be born again as human beings.
*
We have a small army of lawyers, PR men, lobbyists, propagandists, and fund-raisers who are fully equipped to handle our grievances. We don’t have to brainwash our children to think and behave as their unpaid hirelings or crusaders.
*
In a commentary in our local paper today I read: “A smart country is a country brimming with ideas, a country open to pioneering minds, a country not fearful of intellectual fertility, experimentation and daring – a thinking country.”
*
Even more to the point: “We need to be careful in our use of language, avoid reductionist marketing strategies, and celebrate the fully broad nature of smartness. Otherwise we will miss the Mozarts and Platos in our midst. And that would not be a smart thing to do.” Where, O where is the Armenian pundit capable of producing such a paragraph?
#
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
***************************************
Renan: “A good policy consists not in opposing what is inevitable but in being of use to it and in making use of it.”
We have been better at “being of use to it,” than “in making use of it,” alas!
*
Robin Hood did not steal from the rich, he simply returned to the poor that which had been stolen from them.
*
Gide in 1941, after the German occupation: “For years now, France has hardly given us any reason to be proud. The France of today has ceased to be France.” By France I assume he meant the leadership and its dupes.
*
Genocide is a plant whose seed is prejudice, and prejudice comes to us disguised as love of God and Country.
*
As the offspring of perennial underdogs and victims I refuse to assert moral superiority because to do so would mean adding hypocrisy to my previous list of vices.
*
If someone I don’t trust were to agree with me, I would disagree with myself.
*
Andrea De Carlo: “He tells me to follow my instinct. But what if I have two of them?”
*
ON WRITING (THREE PARAPHRASES)
*********************************************
If the first sentence comes from the gut, the rest is bound to follow. (Hemingway)
*
Before you sit down to write you must stand up and live. (Thoreau)
*
Force yourself to be brief and miracles may happen. (Chekhov)
#

Thursday, February 23, 2006
**************************************
Gide: “Faith moves mountains; yes, mountains of
absurdities.”
*
Misunderstanding is a constant theme in Gide’s
final diary entries.
“When an intelligent man makes an effort not to
understand, he naturally succeeds much more
cleverly than a fool.”
But I have also discovered that, when it comes to
misunderstanding, fools can be surprisingly
creative.
*
After seeing Olivier’s production of KING LEAR
Gide goes at some length to explain why he thinks
this to be Shakespeare’s worst play. Odd that he
does not mention Tolstoy, whom he admired, and
who also hated this play about which he wrote a
long essay as if he were trying to settle an old
score with a rival.
*
Communism has been defined as state capitalism,
and capitalism as socialism for the rich. Private
enterprise promotes greed, and government
programs legitimize waste. All systems are
designed by elites to favor elites.
As for revolutions: they only replace one set of
rascals with another. Which is why, during the
final years of his life,
Arthur Koestler (one of the most politically
astute writers of the 20th century) refused to
discuss politics.
*
Zarian observes somewhere that we are on the
verge of extinction not because we have been
victimized by ruthless tyrants, but because we
have lost our bearings, we have assimilated the
values of our oppressors, and we have betrayed
all those among us who have attempted to define
what is and is not Armenian.
#
Friday, February 24, 2006
***********************************
David Irving is now willing to concede that
millions of Jews died during World War II, but he
refuses to use the word Holocaust describing it
as a concept that “became cleverly marketed, like
Tylenol.” In view of his past blunders and
dishonesty, I find his semantic sensitivity
fraudulent.
*
Indifference is sometimes confused with strength.
It seems to me it is more akin to moral
feebleness.
*
The very same extremists who mounted violent
demonstrations against cartoons of the Prophet
are now demolishing holy shrines and beheading
teachers in front of the class for refusing to
teach only religion and riot.
*
Whenever I mention the many crimes committed by
organized religions I am reminded that atheism
too has produced its share of criminals, such as
Stalin. But I maintain that, unlike Marxism,
which is an ideology, Stalinism became a religion
and a highly organized one at that. Let me quote
Nikita Khruschev on Stalin: “It is impermissible
and foreign to the spirit of Marxism-Leninism to
elevate one person, to transform him into a
superman possessing supernatural characteristics
akin to those of a god.”
*
Mohammed is only a prophet and a messenger; and
yet, he is treated as a god in whose name all
kinds of unspeakable crimes are committed every
day. This is clearly seen by the overwhelming
majority of mankind except the criminals.
*
Because I have consistently refused to confuse
ideology with theology some of my partisan
friends think of me as a heretic and an enemy of
the people.
#
Saturday, February 25, 2006
************************************
In some people the instinct to assert
intellectual superiority is stronger than the
need to learn and understand.
*
Gide quotes Leon Bloy as saying: “One must puke
on others!” How about that for French refinement,
etiquette, and elegance?
*
At the turn of the last century Baronian made
savage fun of our leadership but history advanced
as if he had not written a single line.
*
Before I blame anyone, I blame myself – a
quintessentially unArmenian trait that. Before we
blame ourselves, we prefer to blame the rest of
the world, not just Turks and Kurds but also
Bolsheviks, the West, and the Good Lord Himself.
We never bother to ask what have we done to
deserve so many enemies?
*
A contemporary Baronian is unthinkable perhaps
because after the Genocide, and unlike the Jews
(who have produced some brilliant satirists and
comedians) we prefer to lament crocodile tears
rather than have a good laugh at ourselves – at
our vanity, at our illusions, at our propaganda,
and ultimately at our lies.

Sunday, February 12, 2006
*************************************
Please note that the following notes and comments are meant for a mature audience. For children of 14 years of age and under, and Armenians of all ages, parental guidance is advised.
*
When I retire I may go into crocodile wrestling. After thirty years of writing for Armenians, it may be a safer and an easier way to make a living. It may even be more fun.
*
My credibility with some readers goes south whenever I assert that the very same people who speechify and sermonize about our culture are engaged in lobotomizing our literature. But consider the facts: under Sultan Abdulhamid II in Istanbul and under Stalin in Yerevan, we had many more brilliant writers than we have today under the leadership of our bosses, bishops, and benevolent benefactors.
*
Writing for Armenians is like fighting a war on two fronts – against the leadership and against the readership (as you can see I have successfully resisted the temptation of replacing the letter p with t). Instead of wrestling with a single crocodile maybe I should wrestle with two…
*
You cannot argue with someone who is in a position to silence you, as Socrates discovered 2500 years ago, and more recently Solzhenitsyn. As the French are fond of saying, “Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme merde.”
*
Writers cannot solve the problems created by politicians for the simple reason that politicians are the ones who acknowledge the existence of problems, and whenever they create them they refuse to acknowledge them. The reason why we have so far failed to solve our problems is not that we lack the IQ and the motivation but that the men at the top (a) hate to share power, and (b) they have become masters of the blame game. Which means that as long as there are Turks (and it looks like they will be around for some time) the blame-game will continue to be our national sport.
#
Monday, February 13, 2006
*************************************
NOT WITH A BANG BUT A WHIMPER
**********************************************
My guess is the EU will eventually agree with us on the Genocide controversy and ask the Turks to acknowledge responsibility. It may also agree with Turks by saying Armenian claims of monetary reparations and territorial claims are unrealistic because monetary compensation would make Turkey even more economically dependent on the EU, and because territorial concessions would create more problems than solve them.
*
ANOTHER SCENARIO
******************************
If the Turks agree to offer monetary compensation to survivors, they may set up criteria so easy that many phony claimants will abuse them. At which point they will set up a bureaucratic system so complex and tough that it will be a nightmare for the applicants and enrich only their lawyers.
*
DO YOU WANT TO BE POPULAR?
***************************************
If you say capitalists amass their fortunes by exploiting cheap labor or overpricing their products or both, you will not be very popular with our benefactors and their assorted hirelings. If you say the universal medium of all political parties regardless of race, color, and creed is propaganda, our partisans will call you an enemy of the people. If, on the other hand, you teach yourself to say “Yes, sir!” to everything you are told, you have a much better chance to achieve popularity.
*
MEMO TO MY CRITICS
*******************************
What you say is not what you think. What you say is what you were told when you could not yet think for yourself.
*
TWO INDECENT PROPOSALS
*********************************
Our benefactors are avid readers of our weeklies but only of articles in which their selfless generosity is discussed. This suspicion became a certainty to me when one of them once asked me to ghost his memoirs.
*
An editor once complained to me that a benefactor had agreed to support his weekly only if the editor agreed to publish a minimum of one article about him per week.
#
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
*****************************************
In the Byzantine Empire Christians who supported the depiction of images (iconolaters) and their opponents (iconoclasts) fought wars and massacred one another. Did the defeat of iconoclasts make for a better brand of Christianity? An irrelevant question. I mention this to point out the fact that history teaches us that man has consistently refused to learn from past blunders.
*
We say we want the truth but we are willing to die only for a lie — the bigger the lie the better.
*
Propaganda cannot solve problems. It can only create new ones. When Czarist propaganda in the 19th century was replaced by Communist propaganda in the 20th, things went from bad to worse.
*
By brainwashing people propaganda narrows their minds and reduces them to the status of apes who cannot think for themselves, they can only echo their leaders who rule by lies, coercion, and terror.
*
In a letter to the editor in our local paper I read the following Arab proverb: “The truth is good, but better to talk of the palm trees.”
*
For every propaganda line there will be a counter-propaganda line. In the same way that for every organized religion there will be one or more heresies. That’s because truth is one, but lies many.
*
One could also say that truth is one but the roads leading to it many; and when one kills one does not kill in the name of truth or God but in the name of a lie or Satan.
*
To say my road is the only true road is the biggest of all lies.
#
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
*************************************
In a commentary in our paper this morning I read: “Muslims are offended and insulted, and rightly so, by the controversial cartoons published in papers around the world.” If I were to demonstrate every time I feel offended and insulted, I would be a full-time 24/7 demonstrator and the earth from where I stand to the horizon would be scorched.
*
Perhaps I should feel sorry for the lawyer accidentally shot by Vice-President Cheney, but I don’t. He should have been more careful in his choice of friends and hunting companions. If I feel sorry for anyone it’s the quails.
*
Speaking of hunting expeditions, one of Norman Mailer’s novels is titled WHY ARE WE IN VIETNAM which is about a hunting expedition in an American forest and in which the word Vietnam is not even mentioned. To dramatize the kind of mindset that drove the U.S. to the war in Vietnam, what Mailer does, and he does it brilliantly, is to quote from the hunters’ incessant talk which is crude, coarse, and peppered with profanities. To some Americans, Mailer is saying here, war is nothing but a hunting expedition.
#

Thursday, February 09, 2006
************************************
Once upon a time I was a fascist and I didn’t know it. I didn’t know it because I was brainwashed by fascists who didn’t know it either. Since I could not think for myself I aped my elders who were too traumatized by six centuries of tyranny that culminated in wholesale massacres, deportation, life in the ghetto, and still another World War to even begin to understand the difference between fascism and democracy. I understand their confusion and political disorientation. What I refuse to understand is the pretended confusion of individuals born and raised in a democracy who behave like fascists in the name of patriotism, as if patriotism and fascism were incompatible or mutually exclusive concepts. They are not. As far as I know no one has ever accused Hitler and Mussolini of being unpatriotic. It was Stalin himself who named World War II a “Patriotic War.”
*
I define a fascist as anyone who thinks nothing of violating someone’s fundamental human right of free speech in the name of a misguided or self-serving definition of patriotism. A fascist has no use for free speech and does not consider that a serious aberration because he is either ignorant or pretends not to know that the worst crimes against humanity begin with the violation of someone’s human right.
#
Friday, February 10, 2006
**********************************
Once more I have been asked to solve our problems. Once more we are invited to pretend that solutions are obscure verbal formulas like abracadabra that when spoken they will usher us into a new Golden Age. Once more I shall have to remind our dupes that solutions cannot be ordered the way you order pizza with or without anchovies.
*
In the 5th century (that’s 1500 years ago) two of our foremost historians (Khorenatsi and Yeghishe) exposed two of our central problems (corruption in high places and divisiveness) and provided their solutions (honesty and solidarity). I will let you decide what are two of our central problems today.
*
I have said this before, I will say it again, and it bears repeating: Finding solutions is not our problem, implementing them is.
*
After lobotomizing our literature our leaders spread the rumor that so far our writers have failed to solve our problems.
*
Let us assume for the sake of argument that our literature has been a waste of time and an irrelevant commodity that has ignored our problems. Let’s go further and declare all our writers to have been mental masturbators who did nothing but sing songs about the eternal snows of Mount Ararat and the glories of the Armenian language. What about our faith? We brag about being the first nation to convert to Christianity but fail to practice what we pretend to believe. What could be easier than to convert to Christianity and what could be more difficult than to be good Christians?
*
When Yeghishe spoke against divisiveness he was only paraphrasing a well-known passage from the Scriptures: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” When was the last time our leaders behaved as though they had read and understood the meaning of this passage?
*
After quoting two medieval historians allow me to quote a 20th-century author if only to illustrate the distance we have traveled during the last fifteen centuries. “Our political parties,” Gostan Zarian tells us, “have been of no political use to us. Their greatest enemy is free speech.” And, “Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another.”
#
Saturday, February 11, 2006
***********************************
Once in my salad days when I contradicted a fellow Armenian with some degree of vehemence, he said, “You may be right” with complete indifference, smiled, and turned his back on me. That’s when I learned an important lesson: in an argument let the facts speak for themselves. No need to assert the moral strength of your argument. Believing in the moral strength of your argument may color your perception of the facts and thus weaken your position.
*
If the Pope doubts his faith seven times every day (as Italians are fond of saying) one is justified in questioning all belief systems, especially if they are based on the words of a schoolteacher, a parish priest, a bishop, a mullah, an ayatollah, or a political boss – especially a political boss.
*
Politicians and truth might as well be mutually exclusive concepts. Sometimes you will be much closer to the truth if you believe the opposite of what a politician says, and sure enough, for every politician who says one thing there will be another who says the opposite.
*
Facts are important provided you also keep in mind that they do not exist in isolation. You may not be able to contradict facts but you may argue against their context. I suspect one reason we don’t see eye to eye with the Turks on the Genocide is that we emphasize the facts and they emphasize the context.
*
There are honest Turkish writers and historians today who are willing to accept the facts of the Genocide. On the day some of our own historians (most of whom enjoy the support of a political boss, which might as well be the kiss of death on their objectivity) express a willingness to consider their context, we may have a better chance of reaching a consensus.
*
And if, at this point, you are tempted to contradict me with vehemence and accuse me of being a revisionist, a denialist, a traitor to the Cause, and perhaps even the lowest form of animal life, I will say, “You may be right” with a smile.
#

Sunday, February 05, 2006
**************************************
Corrupt and incompetent regimes survive by creating an enemy, thus persuading the people to blame their problems on external factors and to ignore internal ones. The Nazis had the Jews, the Soviets the capitalist West, Americans the Communists (during the Cold War) and more recently, Al Qaida. And we have Turks.
*
We say we hate no one, we only want justice. But instead of cleaning our own backyard we concentrate our efforts on decontaminating someone else’s street. We say Turks and Americans do not recognize the reality of our Genocide because they are morally corrupt. But instead of teaching morality to our own leaders, we try to reform theirs.
*
What are our chances of success? If the past is an index, nil. And if you think I am sharing privileged or inside information, some kind of Da Vince code, think again. What I have said so far is known to every journalist, historian, politician and layman who has acquired the ability to use his common sense and the confidence to trust his own judgment.
*
To those who say what the Turks did to us was evil and to reject its reality is a crime, I say, yes, certainly, no doubt about that, I agree. But it is also true that neither Germans nor Russians, neither Yanks nor Turks are evil. They commit evil acts only when they behave like dupes and allow themselves to be taken in by corrupt, incompetent, and degenerate leaders who legitimize prejudice and promote hatred. I say therefore, instead of focusing our hatred on a specific enemy, let us oppose all corrupt power structures that commit crimes against humanity regardless of race, color and creed, beginning with our own, not because we are worse than others but because we are in a better position to reform ourselves.
#
Monday, February 06, 2006
**************************************
Faith, we are told, can move mountains. What we are not told is that more often than not it can also misleads us into biting more than we can chew. The Soviets believed they were going to change the world and they ended up destroying themselves. Something similar happened to the Nazis in Germany and the Fascists in Italy. While aiming at immortality they committed suicide.
*
Speaking of suicide: suicidal Muslim fanatics today believe they will be rewarded with 73 virgins.
*
All nations that declare war believe victory will be theirs, if not military victory than moral victory, because God or Right is on their side. The list of believers and losers could sketch to infinity.
*
Closer to home, our revolutionaries at the turn of the last century believed the Ottoman Empire was about to collapse and they were the rightful inheritors of our historic lands.
*
Another definition of faith: a faculty designed to lead Homo sapiens to the abyss of nothingness.
*
Whenever I am accused of being a pessimist I cannot help thinking: If only our revolutionaries had been more pessimistic!
*
Today we believe our cause is right but after countless demonstrations around the world, editorials, memoirs, monographs, speeches and sermons, what have we accomplished? Not a single red cent in reparations, not a single inch of historic soil annexed, not a single victim resurrected. And what are the chances that in the next century we shall achieve that which we failed to achieve in the last? The question of a pessimist or a realist? You decide.
*
Here is another question for you: Can an Armenian with a Turcocentric worldview be an authentic human being? Or, How much of his Armenianism or humanity must he sacrifice in order to acquire a Turcocentric worldview?
*
About faith, I will say this: Don’t believe everything you read in books or hear in sermons. Rely more on your own reason, common sense, and experience. To think the worst sometimes makes more sense than to believe in miracles. And remember, during the last five millennia Ararat has not moved an inch.
#
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
************************************
There are two kinds of words: words that are spoken at the right time and place and words that are spoken at the wrong time a place. Example of the second kind: when you shout “Fire!” in a crowded place and create panic. There are also two kinds of ideas: ideas that have been handed down like second-hand shoes, and ideas that are based on one’s own sweat and tears. A Turcocentric worldview belongs to the first category.
*
I grew up in a ghetto surrounded by survivors of the Genocide. They did not have a Turcocentric worldview not only because they were too busy trying to survive in an alien and hostile environment but also because they were too pragmatic to allow the past to define their future.
*
As a student in Italy I met a good number of Armenians from Istanbul and their attitude was very similar to that of survivors.
*
The French have an expression that speaks volumes: “C’est la guerre!” – meaning, in time of war, or in time of troubles (to use Toynbee’s terminology) things happen, all kinds of things, including unspeakable things. Sometimes unspeakable things happen even in time of peace.
*
When party bosses push their young editors to print dozens of Genocide stories in every issue of their weeklies, they do so to cover up the fact that they are lobotomizing Armenian culture.
*
I am not saying we should forgive and forget. What I am saying, there is a difference between dealing with today’s problems (whose solutions are within the realm of possibilities) and making the Genocide a collective obsession that paralyzes our will, poisons our worldview, and in the end may lead us to a dead end.
*
Speaking of dead ends: we sometimes forget that so-called historic Armenia happens to be historic Kurdistan too. So that if by some miracle we are successful in annexing our historic lands we may have to contemplate the very real possibility of a war on two fronts, which raises the question: How many of our sermonizers and speechifiers are prepared to die in defense of Mount Ararat?
##
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
****************************************
When I was a child I believed everything I was told. I had no reason to question the authority of my elders. If they had told me to kill and die in the name of a cause I would have obeyed. Since I could not think for myself I confused subservience with wisdom. I suppose all fanatics could plead not guilty by reason of infantilism.
*
It is true that criminals don’t respect authority either. But compared to the crimes legitimized by authority (slavery, terrorism, war, and massacre) criminals, even the worst of them, are only isolated petty amateurs.
*
We are told Islam forbids any illustrations of the prophet for fear they
could lead to idolatry. Does that mean Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism are idolatries? And is not to kill and die in the name of a cause whose legitimacy is questioned by the majority of mankind the surest symptom of idolatry?
*
Kofi Annan: “Aggression against life and property can only damage the image of a peaceful Islam.” But is not “peaceful Islam” an oxymoron? Has not Islam been warlike from its inception? Did it not conquer a good fraction of three continents by fire and sword?
*
In a letter to the editor by a local Muslim praising religious tolerance in Canada and condemning the publication of cartoons of the prophet in Europe, I read: “Government is a guardian over all private and pubic (sic) sectors.” I like to believe the misprint was intentional.
#

Sunday, January 22, 2006
**********************************
If you think my contempt of our leaders is exaggerated, ask one of them what he thinks of the opposition.
*
All analysis is self-analysis of the old self by the new self.
*
I have had many unforgettable encounters and experiences but I did not think of them as unforgettable until much later.
*
Whenever we are understood better than we understand ourselves we say we have been misunderstood.
*
When I was a boy I thought I could achieve anything I wanted. I had the appetite of a giant. But as I grew older I began to resign myself to the fact that one cannot afford to have the appetite of a giant with the stomach of a midget.
*
Everything is connected with everything else. You cannot step into the same river twice because countless imperceptible changes have taken place within us as well as in our surroundings, including the position of the planets and stars.
*
Nothing can be as vulgar as the need to prove oneself smarter than others.
#
Monday, January 23, 2006
****************************************
BOOK REVIEW
************************
ESTABLISHMENT: STORIES, ARTICLES, POEMS, TRANSLATIONS. By Vahe Avetian (290 pages, Yerevan, 2005).
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In her review of Vahe’s first book, INDEPENDENCE ARMY (Yerevan, 2005) Ashkhen Keshishian said it was “the best thing that could happen to our otherwise gray and moribund literary scene.” Another reviewer went further and called it “a volcanic eruption.” In his second book, ESTABLISHMENT, Vahe continues his struggle against ignorance and intolerance, the twin sources of most of our problems.
When told by hostile readers – make it, psychoanalyzed by phony Freudians – that his criticism is a result of a suppressed childhood trauma and a way of settling personal scores with unidentified adversaries, he explains he is only introducing critical criteria established in the West. At best, he goes on, “I only translate and paraphrase for readers who may not be familiar with foreign languages.”
Elsewhere he writes: “The consensus about me seems to be that I am a megalomaniac and a self-centered egoist because I speak incessantly about myself. It follows, as night follows day, that those who speak in the name of the nation and mankind are humble altruists.” I find this type of scorching sarcasm irresistible. If others find it unsettling, so much the better.
A word of warning: Vahe’s style is colloquial, direct and deliberately crude. If you are easily ruffled by unbuttoned exuberance or provoked by unleashed fury this book is not for you. But if you like to be exposed to the testimony of an honest witness, if you prefer your vodka straight, and if you are not afraid to shake the hand of an hombre whose grip is bone-crushing, Vahe is your man!
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Tuesday, January 24, 2006
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One reason I enjoy writing for my fellow Armenians is that it allows me to play Pollyanna’s glad game and say, “I am glad we don’t live in the USSR and my readers are in no position to denounce me anonymously to a commissar of culture.”
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If 1% of the charges leveled against me were true, I would not wait to be tried and found guilty by a jury of my peers. I would hang myself from the nearest tree.
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There is a type of prejudiced individual who thinks by saying, “I am not prejudiced,” he absolves himself of all prejudice. That’s what I call confusing abracadabra with thinking.
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Some of my readers are disappointed, even angry, when I refuse to join the chorus of our sermonizers and speechifiers in order to make it unanimous. It doesn’t even occur to them how ridiculous, not to say absurd, their position is. Unanimity among us is like Mark Twain’s weather, everyone talks about it but nobody does a damn thing – nobody, especially those who are in a position to do something…such as bishops. Why do we need two bishops within the same city and neighborhood? The answer must be obvious: if we needed only one, the other one will have to be discarded, or even worse, relegated to number two position; and in case you didn’t know, number two is the most hated number among Armenians, especially those who have achieved number one status.
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Wednesday, January 25, 2006
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You cannot separate politics from literature. Everybody, including tyrants, know this except our dime-a-dozen pundits who analyze our present problems (some of which are as old as our history) without first reading our major writers (all of whom wrote about them).
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If you cannot separate politics from literature, neither can you separate literature from politics. The Mekhitarists thought they could do that and they condemned themselves to irrelevance. The Vienna branch has been reduced to an empty library and the Venice branch to a museum.
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Some of our pundits don’t even write about Armenian politics. They write about Turkish politics of which they know and understand even less.
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And what do our pundits know about our history beyond the usual clichés – first nation to convert to Christianity and first nation to be subjected to wholesale massacres in the 20th Century? At best they may also know about the Tourian assassination in New York in 1933. What else? And they know whatever they know from a nationalist and partisan perspective, which means their judgment has been polluted with recycled propaganda.
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To sum up: we continue to be at the mercy of dupes who succeed only in covering up the blunders of our corrupt and incompetent leadership and reinforcing our image as perennial victims. They thus end up doing more harm than good. So what else is new?
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Thursday, January 19, 2006
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Learning from history is a special faculty: some people have it and some don’t. If an entire generation of smokers were to die of cancer tomorrow, they would be replaced by a new generation of smokers. Something similar could be said of thieves, drunk drivers, sexual molesters, prostitutes, johns, pimps, and corrupt politicians who go on about their business as if they were immune to prosecution.
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Speaking of smokers, I read the following in the paper this morning: “Doctors worry about face transplant patient because she is using her new lips to take up smoking again which could interfere with her healing and raise the risk of tissue rejection.” Obviously what this patient needs more than a new face is a brain transplant.
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Are corrupt politicians obstinate ignoramuses who view history as a meaningless succession of chance occurrences? I am not sure. I suspect greed or power deprives them not only of their moral compass but also of their reason.
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Friday, January 20, 2006
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THOMAS MANN
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MANN ON MANN
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“The creative genius must first become a world in itself, in which only discoveries and not inventions, remain to be made.”
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He could write about medicine with the competence of a physician (see THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN), about music with the expertise of a composer (DOKTOR FAUSTUS), and about ancient Egypt with the authority of an Egyptologist (JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS).
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MANN IN MY LIFE
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It was at the age of 14 or 15 and in Venice that I first read DEATH IN VENICE in an Italian translation. Failed to make contact. Found his fictional characters cold and distant. But I persevered. I went on to read ROYAL HIGHNESS and TONIO KROEGER. Again nothing happened. Then, in my early twenties I read CONFESSIONS OF FELIX KRULL, CONFIDENCE MAN, his last unfinished novel, in an English translation, and that’s when I got religion.
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MANN AND NABOKOV
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Notwithstanding the fact that LOLITA and DEATH IN VENICE share a common theme (the morbid and obsessive infatuation of an adult for a minor – an American girl and a Polish boy respectively — that ultimately ends in the early death of both men) Nabokov loathed Mann with the contempt of an aristocrat for the bourgeois. Mann’s international popularity and Nobel Prize were no doubt two more contributing factors to Nabokov’s hostility.
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MANN AND SARTRE
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As a bourgeois, Mann lacked Sartre’s ferocious hatred of the bourgeois and a clearly defined political line. In the words of a critic: “He was always both conservative and radical, thoroughly proper and deeply demonic.” His fictional characters (like Naphta and Settembrini in THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN) argue endlessly about all the central political and philosophical issues of the day without reaching any apparent conclusion. As a youth, and unlike his brother Heinrich, Mann was seduced by German nationalism, but when it evolved into Hitler’s National Socialist (or Nazi) Party, he rejected it violently (see below). His attitude towards the United States, where he lived for a number of years during World War II and after, changed from admiration for FDR’s New Deal to outrage and disgust for the abuses of McCarthyism.
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LUKACS ON MANN
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“There is in Mann’s writing that now vanishing sense of bourgeois dignity which derives from the slow movement of solid wealth.”
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MANN ON HITLER
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“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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Hitler attempted to have him assassinated but failed. Hitler’s antagonism was not just political. He resented the fact that THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN sold more copies than MEIN KAMPF.
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Saturday, January 21, 2006
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The first paragraph of a front page article in one of our weeklies today reads: “A top leader of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) renewed late Thursday calls for President Robert Kocharian to take tough action against widespread corruption and other manifestations of ‘injustice’ in Armenia.”
This to me is a typical instance of empty verbiage compounded by double-talk. There is only one way to combat injustice and corruption in high places and that’s by strengthening the judiciary. Because without an independent and co-equal judiciary, the executive branch is bound to run amok. Sometimes even with an independent judiciary (as in a well-established democracy like the United States) the executive branch has a tendency to abuse its powers.
And now the question we should ask is did we in the Diaspora ever have anything resembling an independent judiciary? And if we by a miracle acquired such an institution tomorrow, how many of our leaders would escape impeachment on grounds of corruption, abuse of power and incompetence?
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Sunday, January 15, 2006
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A writer is first and foremost a national nuisance. On the day he achieves popularity he has outlived his usefulness.
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There are as many explanations of the past as there are perspectives. God’s perspective is the only one that matters. But since a worm cannot have the perspective of an eagle, to speak in the name of god must be just about the surest symptom of charlatanism.
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If you are brought up to believe you are right, you can be sure of only one thing: that’s the worst kind of being wrong.
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To sum up: We may not be dumb but we are far from smart, and in politics our performance has been an unmitigated fiasco. Our leaders may be compared to a drunk driver without a license who keeps having head-on collisions but is allowed to go on driving. And the source of our poor performance has been and continues to be intolerance of dissent, which also means a total inability or stubborn unwillingness to engage in dialogue.
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To those who ascribe my views to 20/20 vision, I say it doesn’t take the expertise of a political scientist or the foresight of a historian to guess that a tribal revolution against an empire, and a wounded empire at that, has the chance of a snowball in hell.
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Monday, January 16, 2006
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Most of my thinking goes into exposing what they are thinking.
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Propaganda works because it flatters the go; criticism doesn’t for the opposite reason.
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If you ignore the ignorance factor in human affairs a great many things remain unexplained or they are ascribed to so-called “unforeseen factors beyond our control.”
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The past is a seamless web and everything is connected with everything else. Understanding consists in connecting two apparently unconnected dots.
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If anyone ever dares to criticize one of our bosses, bishops or benefactors, an entire chorus of brown-nosers, parasites, hangers-on, flunkies and yes-man rise to his defense. But if a dissident is silenced, it’s like a tree that falls in the middle of an uninhabited forest on a different planet.
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Tuesday, January 17, 2006
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I don’t believe in the moral superiority of the victim if his secret ambition is to be a victimizer.
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My conception of great distances: that which exists between what politicians know when they speechify and what they don’t know when they are accused of an offense or a blunder.
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If the average Armenian doesn’t much care about the integrity and competence of his leadership, why should the world give a damn?
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If I were to identify the most repellent facet of our collective existence today, it would have to be the blatant opportunism and cowardice of our academics that jabber endlessly about the Middle Ages and the Genocide as if our present degrading conditions were of no concern to anyone.
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We talk too much about God and Country and not enough about honesty. It should be the other way around. Only then may we count on God’s cooperation.
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I shall attain wisdom on the day I give up writing. But as long as I think by writing I can change things or anyone’s mind I am condemned to remain an obstinate fool.
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Wednesday, January 18, 2006
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Whenever our editors see a positive story about Armenians and a negative one about Turks they print it to reinforce the by now familiar propaganda line that says Armenians are good and Turks evil. As an Armenian I find this editorial policy prejudicial and embarrassing. In the name of tolerance, objectivity and fair play I should like to see more stories about the thousands of Armenians who live happy lives as Turkish citizens and at least one story about a happy Turk in Yerevan. To those who say “We are not guilty of genocide, they are!” I say I have every reason to suspect, for the same reason that I would hate to be identified with any Armenian political party or regime, there are many Turks today with a similar disposition, and they may turn out to be our best friends, or at least much better friends than countless other people who know little or nothing and care even less about what happened to us at the turn of the last century.
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Thursday, January 12, 2006
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UNDERDOGS
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Has anyone ever seen an underdog rejecting on moral grounds the opportunity to become a top dog? If the secret ambition of an underdog is to become a top dog, in what way he may be said to be different or morally superior?
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SHITHOUSE READERS
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Once upon a time I had as many as fifty thousand readers: that’s when our partisan as well as non-partisan editors in Canada, United States and Middle East printed everything I wrote. So what if most of these readers were of the (what’s known in the business as) “shithouse” variant? – that is, they read me in the john. A reader is a reader even if he does his reading while engaged otherwise. And now that our editors have conferred upon me the status of non-person, how many readers do I have? Hard to say. A dozen? Two? It doesn’t really matter. I can always console myself by repeating the old Chinese proverb: “If you think the right thoughts, you will be heard thirty thousand miles away.”
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ON WRITING
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The most important thing to remember is the less art the better. Be brief. Write 100 pages, reduce them to one page, squeeze that page into a single paragraph, and discard it into the wastepaper basket.
Be honest. Forget all about the crap you have been exposed to by sermonizers and speechifiers. Speak from your own experience and testify on what you have observed with your own eyes. Do these things and you’ve got it made, which in our environment means making the maximum number of enemies.
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PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
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If I had a choice between dealing with a proud Armenian and a humble Turk, I would choose the Turk.
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MEMO
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I have said this before and it bears repeating: the problem with hating Turks is that inevitably and before the end of the story the hatred spills over on fellow Armenians.
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THE LAST CHAPTER
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In a biography I am less interested in the subject’s birthplace and schooling and more in the manner of his death. I may skip the first chapters but never the last.
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Friday, January 13, 2006
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Man’s infinite capacity for blunder (including my own) never ceases to amaze me. Which may explain why my favorite mantra is: “So what if in a less than perfect world I am myself less than perfect?”
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What do the Old Testament and MEIN KAMPF share in common? The absurd and ultimately self-defeating need to assert moral superiority.
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I write with some authority on absurd assertions because at one time or another I have myself subscribed to them.
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According to Heidegger, “When we are considering a man’s thoughts, the greater the work accomplished the richer the unthought-of element in that work.” In other words, the more you understand, the more aware you become of that which eludes your understanding. Or, in religious terms, the closer you get to god, the less you understand him.
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Sartre’s version of this phenomenon: “Man is not the sum of what he has, but the totality of what he does not yet have, of what he might have.”
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Awareness of ignorance is, therefore, also knowledge.
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Saturday, January 14, 2006
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THE POSITIVE AND THE NEGATIVE
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Baronian and Odian did not speak about Ottomanized Armenians in Istanbul at the turn of the last century, but about human nature. Honorable beggars and Panchoonies continue to be with us today. The reason some of us remain unaware of their existence is that those whose task it is to enhance our perception of reality believe in emphasizing the positive and covering up the negative.
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THE FRUITS OF SUPERSTITION
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In their efforts to kill the devil, 363 Muslims in Mecca kill one another. Like so much else in life designed to make us feel good, superstitions too come with a price.
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THE TROUBLE WITH HONEY
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Some of my readers accuse me of using too much vinegar and not enough honey. “Honey,” they like to remind me, “catches more flies.” To them and to everyone who believes in the wisdom of the ages, there is a Spanish proverb that says: “Haceos de miel, y os comeran las moscas” (Make yourself honey and the flies will eat you).
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CONTRADICTIONS
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I am read by readers who find me unreadable. I am hated by Armenians who tell me Armenians are loving people. I am called a jerk by individuals who consider themselves noble specimens of humanity. I am torn to shreds by chauvinists who tell me I should be more constructive. I am called son of a whore by individuals who have assessed themselves as paragons of virtue. I am told to go to hell by born-again Christians. If anyone were to ask me now: “What is the most terrible curse you can think of?” I would reply: “May your offspring choose Armenian literature as a career!”
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