as i see it

[arabaliozian]

as i see it

Sunday, December 7, 2008
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ON EDITORS AND MODERATORS
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When I am told there are divisions even in the best and most progressive nations, all I can say is that they can afford them.
*
Diasporan Armenians, who have not solved a single minor problem in their own community, think they are fully qualified to solve problems in Armenia on the grounds that the farther away a problem is, the easier it is to solve it.
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A nation whose mullahs and priests outnumber its intellectuals is a nation on its way to the devil.
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If we have more money we would have fewer problems, or so we like to think. This may explain why there are thousands of crooks on the Internet who are eager to share their wealth with us. Problems attract charlatans the way carrion attracts vultures.
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I have readers who review my writings the way pigeons review statues.
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What our editors and moderators share in common is fear of free speech, and of all fears, fear of free speech is the most cowardly.
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To violate human rights is to support those who plot the destruction of the nation.
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When it comes to free speech, our editors and moderators have made even of America another USSR.
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Only fascist regimes violate human rights with impunity.
Only fascist regimes commit genocide.
All genocides begin with the violation of the human right of a single individual.
#
Monday, December 8, 2008
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FREEDOMLAND
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My guess is, I would have been a better Christian had I been given the opportunity to choose being one. Likewise, I would have been a better human being, perhaps even a better Armenian, had I not been programmed to identify myself as one.
As a teenager in Italy I would wonder why successful Italian-Americans would choose to share their existence with foreigners when they could afford to live with their brothers and sister in their own lovely homeland. It never occurred to me to think that an Italian, any Italian, would prefer to identify himself as an American.
Brought up in an authoritarian environment, I was brainwashed to value patriotism above freedom.
*
No one ever proved the existence of Zeus, Venus, or Mars. And yet, Greeks believed in them. Which may suggest that a god doesn't have to exist in order to be worshiped.
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Albert Einstein: “I am a deeply religious nonbeliever.” I wonder how many religious propagandists quote this line minus the last word.
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I don't think God and Allah are one and the same Being. The same word, maybe. The same Being, no! I think God is God, and Allah only a pretender to the throne. That's how deep childhood indoctrination goes.
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If you are disposed to believe in something, you will believe it regardless of the quality of the evidence. The words “I believe” are invariably followed by an assertion based on hearsay.
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It is to be noted that in our context, when I speak of freedom, I don't just mean such unheard of and un-Armenian luxuries as free speech, but the freedom to work and provide for one's family.
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If you were to ask a faithful card-carrying member of the Party, he will tell you we enjoy free speech and anyone who says otherwise is a liar. One such specimen once said to me: “I contribute articles for our Weekly and so far none of them has been rejected or edited.” And it is this type of fool who asserts Armenians are smart.
#
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
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DEBUNKING AN ARMENIAN MYTH
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When Lincoln said, “You can't fool all the people all the time,” he should have added, like all rules, this one too has its exceptions. Consider the case of the Armenians who were successfully fooled for 600 years by the Turks.
*
In the Ottoman Empire we were told, if you are loyal to the Sultan, and by loyal we mean, if you let us fornicate with your most beautiful daughters and brainwash your healthiest and strongest sons to fight in our wars, and if your best and brightest talents serve the Empire with their Allah-given gifts, we will take good care of you.
And they kept their word. They took good care of us all right, but only in the way in which American gangsters use that expression.
*
The idea that we are smart is so deeply ingrained in us that I have met Armenians who don't even qualify as inbred morons but who think of themselves as great intellects, men of vision, and defenders of the faith. Figure that one out if you can.
*
We like to say Turks are dumb, and we forget that they ran a mighty empire for 600 years and we can't even run a small community without creating a thousand and one irreconcilable differences and internecine conflicts. How smart is that?
*
Gulbenkian was smart. That's why he left most of his fortune to the Portuguese. Now that's what I call being really smart.
*
Consider what's happening in our discussion forums today. Calling them forums is a misnomer. They are either clubs of mutual admiration or cesspools of verbal abuse.
*
I am told I am consistently negative. Do you know what does being positive really mean in our context? It means to blind oneself in one eye in order not to see that which may not be flattering to our collective vanity. And whenever one of us refuses to mutilate himself in order to adopt that mode of observation, we label him a defeatist, a pessimist, an enemy, a Turk in disguise.
Result? Honesty is out, charlatanism is in.
*
“Yes im anoush Hayastani.” He wrote that when he was young, brainwashed and very probably drunk.
“Yes im aboosh hayrenagitsneri.” Very probably his last unspoken words as he was banging his head against the wall of his cell in a Yerevan jail.
Now, let us pray.
#
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
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REFLECTIONS
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Some day Armenians and Turks may break bread together. But Armenians and Armenians?...
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If we blame others for all our misfortunes, we must then ask ourselves: What has been our contributions to our history? If nothing, what right do we have to complain? If something, what exactly?
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My critics hate my honesty more than I hate their dishonesty.
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Damaged egos are the biggest.
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Armenians read me for two reasons: (one) I write about them; and (two) to be ignored is the greatest insult.
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In a world where underdogs believe they shall inherit the earth and top dogs are convinced their position of eminence is a blessing from God, we will have self-satisfied cowards and guiltless bloodsuckers.
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Explaining things to someone who has no desire to understand is like trying to reason with the unreasonable.
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After they silence dissenters, brainwash children, and surround themselves with yes-men, tyrants assume God and the silent majority to be on their side.
#

[arabaliozian]

massacres

Thursday, December 11, 2008
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AMBITIONS
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When it comes to others, we like to speak the truth. We may even consider it our duty. But when it comes to ourselves, we become pathological liars. This mode of perception is developed so gradually that it escapes notice.
*
“You should write more like Saroyan,” I am told once in a while. But Saroyan wrote like Saroyan because had he written like Melville or Mark Twain he would have been a failure.
*
Chekhov thought the only way to be taken seriously as an author was by writing a novel in the manner of Tolstoy, Turgenev, and Dostoevsky. He tried very hard and never made it. But he became the greatest short story writer in world literature – with the possible exception of Guy de Maupassant, who also wanted to write a novel in the manner of Balzac and Flaubert, and he came close only by linking half a dozen of his short stories.
*
Speaking of short stories, below a short list of my favorite American short stories:
“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce;
“Kneel to the Rising Sun” by Erskine Caldwell;
“The Killers" by Ernest Hemingway;
“The Princess with the Golden Hair” by Edmund Wilson;
“For Esme – with Love and Squalor” by J.D. Salinger.
I notice immediately that the most remarkable thing about these stories is their uniqueness in style, character, plot, and atmosphere.
*
Trying to write like someone else is the surest way to fail; and if failure is your goal, you might as well fail your own way.
*
Once upon a time, when I went into this business, I did so with the aim of saving the nation. All my efforts are now concentrated on saving my soul. The paradox here is that I thought I was being modest in my initial ambition because I promised myself to be kind to everyone, including those who were rude to me. Not any more. The other day when a reader said something to the effect that after reading me he feels like committing suicide, I told him in his case that would indeed be an excellent idea.
#
Friday, December 12, 2008
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THE TROUBLE WITH MASSACRES
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The trouble with massacres is that the overwhelming majority of victims are almost always the most innocent and defenseless.
*
If I survived World War II and the Civil War in Greece, it was by pure luck. I cannot be proud of that. But I am proud of the fact that I have survived countless Armenian verbal massacres.
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No one has ever voted for me because I have never run for office, neither do I plan to do so. When I speak, I speak only for myself. If wrong, I can be exposed or corrected. My question is: Where is the harm in talking to people who never listen?
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A brainwashed person loses not only his power to think for himself, but also an important fraction of his other faculties, among them hearing and vision; and by hearing and vision I mean that which is clearly audible and visible to the rest of mankind.
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Has any one of our writers in the USSR ever victimized a single commissar? Has any one of our poets in the Diaspora ever silenced or starved a single boss, bishop, and benefactor, or for that matter, a single editor and moderator? Why then am I branded a dangerous offender by these gentlemen?
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If an Armenian cannot tell the difference between a victimizer and his victim, can he declare himself to be an Armenian, or for that matter, a human being?
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If brainwashing were declared a crime against humanity, as it should be, which one of our speechifiers, sermonizers, and ghazetajis would escape hanging?
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They speak of unity but after they divide us from the rest of mankind they divide us from our brothers and sisters; and they do these things in the name of God and patriotism.
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Hell is a creation of men who deserve to go there.
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With a little effort I could be more understanding and compassionate in my criticism, if only these things were not confused with symptoms of timidity and cowardice.
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What would be the value of a writer if he were to join a choir and sing in unison with the others? And yet, this is what's expected of me.
#
Saturday, December 13, 2008
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RANDOM THOUGHTS
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If you read historians with the mindset of a lawyer, you will find enough evidence to accuse even the most civilized nations with some of the most unspeakable crimes against humanity.
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In all organized religions, reason is a liability and credulity an asset. The same applies to all ideologies and superstitions.
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I have never brainwashed a child, or speechified in the name of patriotism or sermonized in the name of God. And yet, those who do these things look down on me as an undesirable intruder and an enemy of the people.
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Nobody deserves to be told the truth because nobody is equal to the challenge of facing reality. This is why at all times and everywhere propagandists have been more prosperous, popular, and powerful than thinkers, who more often than not have been treated like common criminals.
*
Driving defensively means to assume not all drivers on the highway are sober. Leading competently means to assume not all political leaders are sane.
#

[arabaliozian]

as i see it

Sunday, December 14, 2008
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SUMMING UP (II)
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Free speech is a fundamental human right not only for men who know and understand everything and are therefore seldom or never wrong, but also for poor mortals whose knowledge and understanding are limited and whose opinions are more often than not more wrong than right.
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A man with a heavy burden of guilt is safer to deal with than a man who is innocent by reason of insanity or absence of conscience.
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A Turk who can tell right from wrong is morally superior to an Armenian who violates someone's human right in the name of patriotism.
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To say, because I know better and am therefore better qualified to silence you, is at the root of all massacres. To put it differently: All crimes against humanity begin with the violation of a single individual's human rights.
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I have yet to meet a patriotic Armenian with more certainties than doubts who did not harbor fascist sentiments.
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The brainless are more easily brainwashed to believe, even when they behave like swine, they are fully qualified to assert moral superiority.
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To those who say I have been silenced because I am an irrelevant mediocrity of no interest to the general reader, I say: Not all of us are endowed with superior intellects or able to discriminate what is and is not relevant.
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Nothing comes easier to a self-assessed genius than to look down on his fellow men as misguided fools in need of his political, intellectual, and moral guidance.
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Like all nations we too have our share of misguided fools and criminal minds who operate on the assumption they are leaders of men.
#
Monday, December 15, 2008
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THE POSITIVE IN THE NEGATIVE
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Aristotle: “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
*
At the turn of the last century, the Great Powers of the West were on our side and against our enemies. But no one ever bothered to ask them if they would be willing to sacrifice the life of a single soldier to save a hundred, a thousand, or even a million Armenian lives. Had they asked, they wold have been surprised at the answer.
*
It is not true that I receive only hostile or negative assessments of my work. To be fair to my readers, I also receive friendly or positive ones. Two reasons why I don't mention them is that (one) I may provoke my enemies to accuse me of self-promotion, and (two) I may make my friendly readers vulnerable to verbal abuse.
*
Saroyan was a “positive” write because he wrote for an American audience. If I write like Scrooge it may be because I write for an Armenian audience. Different strokes for different folks. On the positive side: in America we enjoy not only freedom of speech but also freedom of choice when it comes to reading matter. If you are the kind of reader who is big on positive stuff, by all means, feel free to bury your head in the sand until the next catastrophe, which, if lucky, you may not live long enough to experience or witness.
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Some of our most brilliant humorists (Baronian, Odian, Massikian) were also the most negative.
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My negative readers are positive in the sense that they are my main source of inspiration. Without them I would dry up and wither away.
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There are visible catastrophes, and there are invisible ones, as when you witness the collapse of your belief system.
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When a reader insults me, I know I have hit paydirt; and I would like to thank him for letting me stay in his consciousness rent-free.
#
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
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OF CABBAGES AND KINGS
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After gloating over the collapse of Communism, Americans are now witnessing the collapse of Capitalism and the triumph of the Welfare State not only for the poor but also for the rich; and when the rich apply for welfare, they speak in billions; and unless they get their way, they threaten the collapse of the economic structure.
Capitalists don't beg; they blackmail.
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Instead of speaking of cabbages and kings, let's speak of truth and lies; and if truth is beyond our reach, let's expose liars.
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It is in failure that the lies of an ideology are exposed.
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If you live by the sword, or if you use nationalism or patriotism as a sword, the writing on the wall will be the same.
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In a commentary today I read that President Bush has supported and invited to the White House dissidents from “China, Burma, Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela.” Are you thinking what I am thinking?
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George Will in ONE MAN'S AMERICA (New York, Random House, 2008): “The use of genocide as a plaything for political posturing is contemptible” (page 197). I urge all our Turcocentric ghazetajis, dime-a-dozen self-appointed pundits, and baloney artists to think of this line next time they use the word genocide. Further down George Will speaks of the “trivialization of a huge tragedy” that has become “fodder for semi-intellectual wisecracks...” and, I would add, an occasion for self-righteous riffraff to assert moral superiority. Elsewhere he speaks of “the beguiling simplicity of pure stupidity.”
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Where mediocrities enter, men of vision are blinded.
#

Wednesday, December 17, 2008
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WORDS
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Rudyard Kipling: “Words are, of course, the post powerful drugs used by mankind.”
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The defeated and deported Azeri who lives in a tent or ghetto is my brother. He is as guilty as the overwhelming majority of Armenians at the turn of the last century in the Ottoman Empire – Armenians like my mother (who was a baby) and father (not yet a teenager) who had no political ambitions or, for that matter, awareness. Next time you speak of war, think of the children.
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There is Russian roulette, and there is Armenian roulette. In Armenian roulette there are no empty chambers.
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If you insult me and I insult you back, who wins?
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By writing I hope to change the world. I know this to be an illusion on my part but I go on writing. Notwithstanding the fact that so far I have failed to change the mind of a single fanatic, hoodlum, partisan or fascist, I go on writing in the hope that some day I may hit on the right combination of words and ideas that may connect.
I know this to be another illusion but I go on writing in the hope that the invisible forces of history and the universe will combine to create the kind of fertile soil in which ideas may germinate into action. If this is another illusion, so be it!
#

[arabaliozian]

diary

Thursday, December 18, 2008
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WORDS (II)
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A man once went up to a French writer (may have been Valéry) and said: “I have a great idea for a book.” The writer interrupted him by saying, “Books are written with words, not ideas.”
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Marx had all the ideas, but Casanova knew the right words.
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You want to know why I write one-liners? To write a book, one must first learn to write a good line. Only then one may learn to write two lines....
*
When Moliere's “bourgeois gentilhomme” delivers the celebrated line, “You mean to tell me I spoke prose all my life and didn't know it?” Moliere's teacher could have replied: “Just because you speak prose, it doesn't mean you can also write it.”
*
It is easy to have all the answers if you ask the wrong questions.
*
In his recently published biography of V.S. Naipaul, Patrick French quotes him as having said: “I am enraged by the way Indians don't wish to understand their history, I am enraged.” Naipaul's book on India is titled A WOUNDED CIVILIZATION. The first Armenian novel in ashkharapar or the spoken idiom is by Khachatur Abovian (1805-1848) and it's titled THE WOUNDS OF ARMENIA. And to think that Abovian wrote his novel nearly a century before the real wound.
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The worst thing that can happen to a wounded nation is to be obsessed with its wound,
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A nation with a wounded soul will have a traumatized understanding and view anyone who says otherwise as an enemy of the nation.
*
What is Naipaul's rage to India? What is an ant's rage to an elephant?
#
Friday, December 19, 2008
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TWO WRITERS
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Adrienne Rich: “Lying is done with words and also silence.”
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In his “Reply to historians who are against senators voting for legislation against anti-Armenian denialists” (LE POINT, November 27, 2008), the French philosopher, Bernard-Henri Levy, writes that these historians expect us to believe that such a law, if passed, would terrorize historians' freedom of expression. “Who's kidding whom?” he writes. “It is not anti-denialist laws that terrorize historians, it is denialists who terrorize them.” To the question, “Why the necessity of a French law about a crime in which France is not implicated,” Levy writes: “I am not sure about that. We know for a fact that at least in two instances in 1919, in Marash and Hedjin in Cilicia, when the French army stood by and did nothing to protect the victims.” Where there is a crime against humanity, he goes on, all of mankind is implicated. “We cannot therefore justify ourselves by saying, we are not guilty of a crime, we only allowed others to commit it.”
*
In his introduction to L'OLOCAUSTO ARMENO (The Armenian Holocaust), Alberto Rosselli informs the reader that the bibliography on the subject is “vastissima” (very vast). In addition to Armenian sources, “which are obviously numerosissimi (very numerous), there are sources in French, American, Portuguese, Italian, Greek, Bulgarian, English, and Russian.” In addition there are eyewitness accounts of diplomats from as many countries, including Germany, “at a time when Germany was an ally of the Ottoman Empire.” Among the Turkish sources he mentions Taner Akcam and Orhan Pamuk. He also discusses the recent work of the German historian, Hilmar Kaiser. The book is divided into chapters devoted to the history of Armenia, the Armenian Church, the Hamidian massacres, the regime of the Young Turks, and Armenia today. In addition the reader will find here a chronology of the Ottoman Empire and a bibliography of books in Italian, English, and French.
After reading this book, I doubt very much if there will be a single Italian who will doubt the reality of the Genocide and the self-inflicted blindness of denialists.
Rosselli is a prolific historian and journalist who has authored books on Canada, the United States, the Ottoman Empire, the Soviet Union, Germany, Turkey, and Africa.
*
Groucho Marx: “The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made.”
#
Saturday, December 20, 2008
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A CIVILIZED ARMENIAN
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Reading Evelyn Waugh's DIARY – over 800 pages of boring gossip and venomous assessments.
On Edmund Wilson: “An insignificant Yank.”
On President Truman: “A wholly comic man.”
On Aldous Huxley: “I find his scientific imagery very flat and ugly.”
On Alberto Moravia: “A wop highbrow.”
In a December 1944 entry in Yugoslavia, he speaks of an encounter with “a toothless Armenian named Major Karmel...: he is quick-witted, funny, fond of wine and cigars, and with the adaptability of his race quickly dropped his original line-regiment heartiness and became human and civilized...”
A month later: “Illiterate Montenegrin Armenian called and was given clothes.”
There is more talk of food and booze here than books and literature. And this: “It is impudent and exorbitant to demand truth from the lower classes.”
*
BERNIE MADOFF
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A Jewish friend recently made fun of Armenian monks brawling in a church. Today I sent him the following e-mail: “I'd much rather see monks beating one another to a pulp in a church than a swindler like Bernie Madoff sucking the blood of his fellow Jews – and I am not implying here we don't have our share of mini-Madoffians.”
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GUTLESS YES-MEN
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A nation without dissidents is a gutless nation afraid of words and ideas. And those who support such a nation in the name of patriotism are misguided fools who believe ideas and intellectuals are irrelevant luxuries, perhaps even hostile elements.
#

[arabaliozian]

justice

Sunday, December 21, 2008
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RECAP
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Some people don't feel the need to listen to a sermon or read a book on ethics in order to do the right thing, but they are invariably and consistently outnumbered by those who are convinced they are doing the right thing even when they behave like swine. Like all nations, we too have our share of black sheep. For a long time that's how I justified the existence of our riffraff. Not any more. I no longer feel the need to be their advocate. On the contrary, I consider it my duty to call a spade a spade. I realize of course that mine is not exactly a pleasant task or a profitable undertaking, but someone has to perform it, and if not I, who? Our Turcocentric ghazetajis are too busy delivering lectures on ethics to Turks; and our fundraisers know that the best way to appeal to the generosity of their victims is by flattering the hell out of them.
We all know that during the Soviet era our brothers and sisters in the Homeland had to cheat in order to survive. And who among us will dare to suggest that long centuries of subservience have had no influence in shaping our character as yes-men and brown-nosers? And who is naïve enough to say that this character trait of ours is not fully exploited by our leaders who take full advantage of it by making untenable dogmatic assertions that are as absurd as the claims of denialists. So what if in the process they alienate anyone who dares to think for himself? So what if they decimate the nation? Who says one must wear a shalvar and wield a yataghan in order to qualify as a Turk?
#
Monday, December 22, 2008
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ENEMIES
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Fascist regimes label anyone who refuses to be brainwashed an enemy to cover up the fact that they are the real enemies.
*
There was a time when both Tashnak and Ramgavar weeklies published my critical commentaries on the assumption that I was being critical only of the opposition. When after more than ten years they finally realized I was being critical of both sides, they stopped publishing me. That's when I was labeled an enemy.
*
An enemy of the nation: what does that really mean? What do we mean when we speak of the nation, or Homeland, or Armenia? Do we mean the real estate (mountains, rivers, and valleys?), or the culture (literature, music, and the arts?). I dare anyone to quote a single line from my books and commentaries that is critical of our real estate or music, architecture, and writers from Khorenatsi to Naregatsi, and from Abovian to Zarian..
*
Am I critical of the people? Yes, but only of the fraction that has been brainwashed and sees nothing wrong in it. Consider the case of Charents who allowed himself to be brainwashed by the Kremlin. When somewhere along the line he realized what had been done to him, he wrote to his muse:

“You were like a sister to me,
Truthful, pure and bright;
But I spat on your face.
I betrayed you one night
With a cold mistress,
Who sang to me dreams of iron,
And took me into a world without love.”
*
Bakounts went further and compared ideologies and regimes to temporary ailments, here today, gone tomorrow; and I quote: “They are just passing phenomena, a period when history is suffering from the flu, so to speak, a temporary ailment, after which, all the dead cities will rise again from the ashes, as long as there are still people in this world like Hovnatan March [the central character of his story], who will burst into tears whenever they hear the word Armenia, and who embrace this ideal as an alcoholic would grab his last bottle of brandy.”
*
I suggest the Armenia of Charents and Bakounts, or for that matter, the Armenia of Abovian, Raffi and Zarian, is not the same entity as that of our partisan propagandists and dividers, who silence anyone who dares to think for himself.
#
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
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JUSTICE
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In a commentary by an American academic I read today that there has been progress on all fronts in China except the judicial system. Lawyers who defend unpopular causes or dissidents are sometimes arrested, jailed, beaten, and tortured.
Armenia's abuses of power escape international notice because no one much cares what happens there, not even Armenians. Human rights is not exactly a topic we like to discuss even in the Diaspora. As far as I know none of our pundits has ever written a single commentary on free speech. To most of them, and especially to our Turcocentric ghazetajis, the freedom to write about massacres in the Ottoman Empire is the alpha and omega of free speech. And speaking of lawyers: a friend of mine, who happens to be a critic of the regime, tells me he is not allowed to enter Armenia and no lawyer wants to take his case.
#

[arabaliozian]

to life

Wednesday, December 24, 2008
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L'CHAIM
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In arithmetic, one plus one makes two. In life, the answer may be eleven or any other given number.
*
The Mekhitarist order was divided into two – the Venetian and Viennese branches. But I am told they have now decided to unite. The friend who communicates this news bulletin to me, remarks: “Now that they are both dead, they want to be buried together.” Which reminds me of the fact that while being “educated” by the Venetian branch, “Armenian solidarity” might as well have been a taboo subject.
*
Once upon a time there was a Chinese emperor whose ambition was to change the world. When he realized the world wasn't exactly in a cooperative frame of mind, he lowered his sight to trying to change his realm, then his circle of relatives and friends, and so on until he realized that he couldn't even change himself.
*
Confucius, Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammad, came close to changing the world, whether for the better or worse remains to be seen.
*
In life, the unpleasant surprises outnumber the pleasant ones perhaps because man is more easily addicted to wishful thinking than objective judgment.
#


Thursday, December 25, 2008
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HO HO HO!
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Speaking of Galileo, Pope Benedict XVI is quoted as having said, he had helped “the faithful to better understand and contemplate with gratitude the Lord's works.” It seems to me, the far more important lesson to be learned from the most famous victim of the Inquisition is that faith can sometimes lead those in power into punishing the innocent and intimidating the rest into blind obedience. In other words, what happened to Galileo is not an injustice that belongs to the irrevocable past, but an aberration inherent in all organized religions.
According to a cardinal, “Galileo Galilei was a man of faith who saw nature as a book authored by God.” The unmistakable implication being that those who speak in the name of God sometimes behave like functional illiterates.
*
Friends tell me I should not waste my time writing about nonentities. But what if these nonentities are in charge of our destiny?
*
Troubles come from unexpected directions, and like bullets, they hit you before you hear them coming because they travel faster than the speed of sound.
*
Anyone can get a lawyer. The trick is getting a good lawyer; and with a good lawyer you lose even when you win – when, that is, you get his bill.
*
I am fascinated by people who know or understand something that I don't; and I am repelled by people who believe things that I believed when I was a dupe.
#


Friday, December 26, 2008
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TWO BOOKS
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The two funniest books I read this year are Christopher Buckley's satirical novel, SUPREME COURTSHIP, and Shalom Auslander's FORESKIN'S LAMENT: A MEMOIR.
Buckley's central character is a combination of Sarah Palin and Bugs Bunny (my favorite American of all time). I noted the presence of two Armenians: Setrakian, a prosecutor, and Harmookian, a senator.
Auslander's name is Shalom but his memoir is more like a declaration of war against Jewish beliefs, scriptures, customs, traditions, and dietary laws.
*
We all view reality from a different angle. If we want to enhance our understanding of the world, we must first come to terms with the fact that what we see is not what we get because what we see is only a fraction of reality, and a fraction so minuscule that it might as well be invisible to the naked eye.
*
There is a type of Armenian whose penetrating gaze sees and understands everything except the dimensions and depths of his own ignorance.
*
According to some eminent historians, the present conflict between the West and the Muslim world is “a clash of civilizations.” I disagree. Neither Bush and his gang of neo-cons, nor Saddam, Osama, and their brainwashed thugs represent anything remotely allied to civilization. Barbarism, yes. Civilization, no!
#


Saturday, December 27, 2008
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RECAP (II)
**************************************************
From our millionaires, we want money.
From our bishops, constant reminders of our moral superiority.
From our fund-raisers, declarations of our generosity.
From our people, credulity.
From our writers, flattery.
From our critics, silence.
Armenians are complex and unpredictable?
Nonsense!
We are more predictable than Pavlov's salivating canines.
*
Where there is a free press, fascism doesn't stand a chance.
One of the worst things that happened to America in the last century was Senator McCarthy. But McCarthy, unlike Franco, Mao, Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin, didn't kill anyone. Neither did he last as long for the simple reason that he was exposed as a bully by a free press.
*
Where there is no free press, or where there are barriers raised against the free flow of ideas (as that of “insulting Turkishness”), the people will be exposed to only one set of views. The result will be a society that is unhealthy and easily manipulated by those in power. This may explain why our bosses, bishops, and benefactors are unanimous in supporting our Turcocentric ghazetajis and in opposing dissent.
*
The trouble with any kind of barrier against free speech is that it tends to suppress legitimate criticism too and eventually creates a class of individuals who consider themselves beyond criticism.
*
If you say, Armenians don't like me on the grounds that I am consistently negative,
my answer is, you mean I insult Armenishness?
Is it being negative pointing out the obvious fact that, as members of the human race, we are as bad as the rest of mankind, including of course Turks, and that all suggestions of moral superiority are not just lies but asinine absurdities?
*
Where courage of one's convictions is equated with hostility or even treason, the result will be a generation of conformists, yes-men, and cowards afraid of their own shadows.
#

[arabaliozian]

reading

Sunday, December 28, 2008
****************************************
POWER AND KNOWLEDGE
**************************************************
Knowledge is power. Those who know mislead, exploit, and oppress the ignorant as surely as the mighty victimize the weak and defenseless.
*
All my life I wanted to find honest work, and when I finally found one, no one had any use for me. If I persevere, it's because, in Moliere's words: “I prefer a comfortable vice to a tiring virtue.”
*
The danger of belief systems is not their absurdities but the fact that they find strength in numbers, so that the average man with average intelligence feels justified in asking; “Who am I to contradict millions?”
*
If you share the same belief system with a fool, brother, look into it.
*
The language of power: Why try to reason, educate, and convince when you can brainwash, intimidate, and silence those who resist?
*
We like to be massaged – body, ego, soul – and we are willing to pay for it handsomely to speechifiers, sermonizers, and generally speaking, dealers in verbal crapola. As for writers who make us feel uncomfortable, we love to see them starved.
*
As for our so-called cunning: it consists mainly in devising strategies to avoid facing reality.
#
Monday, December 29, 2008
****************************************
READING BETWEEN THE LINES
**************************************************
In politics, and life in general, the meaning that resides between the lines often contradicts the meaning in the lines.
*
Only an unspeakably self-satisfied simpleton with the IQ of a jackass would violate someone's free speech on the grounds that free speech is not a fundamental human right but a privilege bestowed only on those who are infallible, among them himself.
*
My message: We may not be as good as we think we are.
The message of our leadership: We may be better than we think we are.
Needless to add, the naïve souls among us cannot see the connection between this shamelessly flattering self-assessment and the unspoken punch line that inevitably and invariably will follow, “mi kich pogh...”
*
My morning paper informs me today that the prime minister of Turkey called Israeli air strikes in Gaza “a crime against humanity.” He could have said, in war bad things happen to good people. But he didn't. He said “crimes against humanity” -- and so far only 300 dead. I suggest this may well be a new chapter in Turkish foreign policy.
*
The ambition of every Armenian dunghill is to be Mt. Ararat.
*
Thomas Mann: "The intellectual man is almost as much interested in painful truths as the fool is in those which flatter him."
#
Tuesday, December 230, 2008
****************************************
NOTES AND COMMENTS
**************************************************
“My grandmother once said to me...”
If your grandmother said that, who am I to contradict grandmotherhood, shish-kebab and pilaf?
*
If you are honest, you expose the dishonest. If you do something well, you drive the incompetent to bankruptcy.
*
My great failure in the eyes of my Armenian readers is that I write not as an Armenian but as a human being, as if being Armenian and being human were mutually exclusive concepts.
*
We owe all progress to losers. Winners are only the beneficiaries of the struggle initiated and carried out by losers. Winners only deliver the coup de grace.
*
If a fool refuses to learn from the wise, he will have to learn from life, and reality can be a harsh teacher.
*
Whatever wisdom I have I owe it to my folly.
#

[arabaliozian]

being armenian

Wednesday, January 14, 2009
****************************************
BEING ARMENIAN
**************************************************
“What's wrong with assimilation?” an assimilated Armenian once asked me, and I could not give him an answer.
*
In everything I say I speak not as an Armenian but as a human being who has done his utmost to go beyond political, racial, national, or tribal labels.
*
“You repeat yourself,” a Turcocentric ghazetaji who publishes a weekly anti-Turkish tirade once informed me. And when I said, “How many different ways are there of saying Turks are guilty of genocide?” he insulted me.
*
An Armenian who gets involved in Armenian affairs acquires two sets of unsettled scores: (one) against Turks, (two) against fellow Armenians who disagree with him.
*
Armenians use insults like voodoo pins – for long-distance murder.
*
A friend (may he rest in peace) once delivered the following dictum: “The only way to survive in this world is by adopting a form of insanity.” And I can't help thinking that the words of a dead man have a finality that the living cannot match.
*
The fate of the book hangs on the first paragraph, the same way that “the fate of the house depends on the wedding night” (Balzac).
*
Q: “Should I write every day or only when I am inspired?”
A: “If you have something to say, every day; otherwise, once or twice a year should be sufficient.”
#
Thursday, January 15, 2009
****************************************
GETTING AT THE SOURCE
**************************************************
The closer you get at the truth, the more enemies you make.
*
It is in disagreement that an Armenian exposes his true nature.
*
An intellectual's first enemies are not politicians but pseudo-intellectuals who rise not in defense of god and country but grub and ego. Their role model is neither Abovian nor Zarian but Talaat and Stalin. Their unstated aim is the extermination of the intellectual class. Verbal abuse comes more easily to them then a simple assertion of disagreement.
*
Sooner or later we must all come to terms with the fact that we belong to a nation that has been victimized not only by foreign but also by domestic enemies, and of the two, the domestic have been more dedicated and persistent.
*
The hardest thing for an Armenian to admit is that the enemy may not always be the other but himself. Only when we are willing to admit this, may we begin to understand the source of our tribalism and divisiveness.
*
To those who think I have no right to speak for them, only for myself, allow me to reiterate that I have at no time denied the fact that my analysis of the Armenian psyche is rooted in self-analysis. It is this realization that has saved me from applying for membership in one of our mafias. I have at no time felt the need to join a criminal organization to be a perpetrator.
*
The miracle is not that we have survived, but that there are still more or less smart and decent human beings willing to identity themselves as Armenian even when they are half-Greek, half-Russian, or half-Jewish.
#
Friday, January 16, 2009
****************************************
WHAT IS LITERATURE?
**************************************************
In his WRITING IN THE DARK: ESSAYS ON LITERATURE AND POLITICS (New York, 2008), David Grossman says, what made him decide to be a writer was the urge to invent stories. I thought of Scheherazade who invented stories in order to postpone her death. One could say that we too, like Scheherazade, write to postpone the death of the nation. But unlike Scheherazade, we don't write to entertain our masters but to expose the lies of their propaganda. This may explain why Scheherazade succeeded in realizing her goal and we have failed.
Fascists in Italy, Nazis in Germany, and Bolsheviks in the USSR lied to the people too and they were exposed not by writers (who tried very hard but failed) but by the reality principle. Italy and Germany lost a war and the USSR went bankrupt.
How to explain the fact that our lies have had a much longer lifespan?
We were a nation1500 years ago and we like to believe we still are. But are we? In the 20th century alone we experienced three genocides, one “red” (in the Ottoman Empire) and two “white” (assimilation in the Diaspora and exodus in the Homeland).
We have become a beggar among nations and at the mercy of – in the words of Avedik Issahakian (not exactly a critic or dissident) -- “earthquakes, bloodthirsty neighbors, and brainless leaders.” You may now guess which of these three “curses” (Issahakian's word) have been emphasized by our “brainless leaders” and their propagandists.
For every writer that mentions “brainless leaders,” we have dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of academics, historians, ghazetajis, speechifiers, and sermonizers who do their utmost to cover up the corruption, incompetence, and divisiveness of our leaders and to emphasize our “bloodthirsty neighbors and earthquakes.” And here is where intellectuals come in – to uncover that which is hidden from us.
I repeat myself?
And what do you think our propagandists do?
Another question: Has anyone ever complained that our propagandists, ghazetajis, speechifiers, and sermonizers repeat themselves? And what about our panchoonies? How many different ways are there of saying, “Mi kich pogh oughargetsek.”
To those who say, notwithstanding our prophets of doom and gloom, we have endured and we shall continue to endure, I ask: What if most of us, especially the best and the brightest, did not endure and will not endure?
#
Saturday, January 17, 2009
****************************************
DIARY
**************************************************
A Palestinian mother in Gaza: “My children can no longer play in the street.”
A suggestion: Why don't they take their damn war somewhere like Sahara or the Gobi desert?
*
Memo to myself: “Depressing thoughts are carcinogenic agents. You think too much about Armenians.”
*
My dissenting views are so extreme, it seems, that even our dissenters disagree with me.
*
If our past were a poem, it would be a lamentation to some, and a triumphal march to others.
*
When a reader insults me, I think, at least he has read and reflected on what I have written, and that's good enough for me. Beggars can't be choosers.
*
It is widely known among citizens of a democracy that politics is the second oldest profession and that in many ways it resembles the first. Fascists agree but they think this does not apply to them.
#

[arabaliozian]

history

Sunday, January 18, 2009
****************************************
AGAINST DOGMATISM
**************************************************
A doctor in Australia speaking of people in isolated villages: “You must always have a translator with you because when they don't understand a question, they say yes.”
It is the same with underdogs everywhere. They think it is safer to say “yes, sir!” even when they are told to drop their pants and bend over.
We said yes to Christianity; we said yes to atheism under the Soviets; and in the Ottoman Empire some of us said yes to Islam. We said yes to capitalism in the Diaspora and yes to communism in the Homeland. And today we say yes to our bosses, bishops, benefactors, and their assorted gangs of neo-commissars and "mi kich pogh" panchoonies.
*
A famous Armenian soprano speaking of a Gomidas love song during a radio interview:
“Armenians are shy.”
“You mean coy.”
“No, shy.”
“You are not shy!”
We like to think, since most odars, not to say Armenians, are ignorant, we can say anything we want about Armenians and get away with it; and it comes as a shock when we are contradicted.
*
“To know is to remember,” Socrates used to say. It follows, to remind is to teach.
*
No matter what you say, there will be those who disagree with you. Remember, there are still flat-earth theorists and dupes who think Hitler and Stalin were messianic figures.
*
There are honest disagreements and there are Armenian disagreements. If throughout our millennial history consensus has been with us an unattainable Utopian goal, it’s because our disagreements are seldom honest disagreements.
*
Honest men with honest disagreements may agree to disagree and thus develop a consensus -- which means working together, as opposed to thinking alike.
#
Monday, January 19, 2009
****************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
**************************************************
“I don't like making enemies,” a writer tells me. And I cannot help thinking that the only way to avoid making enemies in our environment is by joining them, if only with your silence.
*
When I was young I trusted and respected my elders. But with old age comes mistrust and suspicion. So much so that whenever I run into an honest man these days I feel like a born-again human being.
*
Gone are the good old days when a commissar could permanently silence a dissident with a memo or a phone call with three monosyllables: “Shut him up!” Their only weapon now is verbal abuse. But the trouble with insults is that there are only a limited number of them and only a limited number of times they can be repeated. It has happened to me more than once that after repeatedly and almost daily abusing me for a year or two or even more, they have given up and fallen silent.
*
Obama's greatest achievement so far is that he survived the insults of his adversaries and is now willing to have them as advisers, and this not in the name of a belief system but common sense.
*
I am not surprised to read the following headline in one of our weeklies:
THOSE WHO WERE NOT AFRAID OF SOVIET INJUSTICE ARE NOW AFRAID OF ARMENIAN JUSTICE.
*
When an Armenian asks you a question, you can be sure of one thing: he knows the answer.
#
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
****************************************
ENEMIES
**************************************************
Emile Littré : “Man is a most unstable compound, and earth a decidedly inferior planet.”
*
When it comes to religion and politics, the prevalent attitude among leaders towards the masses is: the less they know and understand the better – because then they can be more easily manipulated and misled. As a result, we know more about the dark side of our enemies than they do; and we know less about ourselves than we should. It follows, anyone who dares to say all men are more or less the same, or Turks are our if not brothers than half-brothers is promptly labeled a traitor.
*
Our enemy, our real enemy, is not the Turk but knowledge, understanding, and objective judgment. Socrates was guilty of exposing the ignorance of his “betters.” Galileo knew something that the scriptures did not. Solzhenitsyn did not think the men in the Kremlin were morally or intellectually superior, he was therefore guilty of objective judgment. As for writers like Zabel Yessayan, Charents, and Bakounts, among others: they were too smart to be taken in by Bolshevik propaganda – though smart in this context does not mean a higher IQ but the ability to use one's common sense and to think for oneself.
*
Napoleon once said, “A man with ideas is my enemy.” Which may suggest that rulers prefer to rule over the brainless. In their eyes, to expose the lies of their propaganda might as well be a crime against humanity.
*
The Turks have a saying: “Chok ghareshterma, bokhou chekar.” Freely translated:
“Don't get involved (or mix it up too much), you may expose the sh**.”
*
Those who have dared to confront tyrants have always been a tiny minority, and tiny enough to be almost invisible to the naked eye.
#
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
****************************************
HISTORY
**************************************************
We have advanced from one form of oppression to another accompanied by long-winded sermons and speeches in the name of God and Country. Who speaks in the name of the people? Who dares to see a cause-and-effect connection between our corruption, incompetence, divisiveness or lack of vision and our status as perennial victims? All we contribute to our narrative is lies. Consider our press: most of it is about Turkish criminal conduct and our minor celebrities. Our problems – from massacres to earthquakes – fall on us without warning like thieves in the night. “Mart bidi ch'ellank.”
*
We like to think, since we are not guilty of genocide, we are not fascists. But to silence dissent or to be deaf to dissenting voices is if not fascism than it is saying yes to fascism.
*
There is an idiot in all of us, including the most wise. Likewise, there is a killer in all of us, compliments of our crocodilian ancestors. This may explain why sometimes intelligent men are deceived by fools, and decent men are misled by criminal psychopaths; and here, I could make a long list of famous men who supported Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin.
#

[arabaliozian]

jingo

Thursday, January 22, 2009
****************************************
JINGOISM
**************************************************
“If I love my country I am justified in hating those of my countrymen who do not share my views.”
*
“If I speak in the name of patriotism it means my heart is in the right place, which also means no one can challenge my views, unless of course they are willing to make themselves vulnerable to charges of anti-Armenianism, pro-Ottomanism, and treason, which, as everyone knows, happens to be a crime punishable by death, and rightly so.”
*
“Since our failings are human failings shared by all of mankind, we should stop bitching about them.” It follows, exposing incompetence, intolerance, corruption, greed, and divisiveness, among other failings, is classified as bitching, which common sense tells us, is unmistakable evidence of anti-Armenianism.
*
According to an old Jewish saying, “Some people are such nobodies that when they go out of a room it feels like someone came in.” Something similar could be said of the jingoist arguments mentioned above. No matter how often they are contradicted and rejected they are voiced again and again as if they were gospel truths.
*
Armenians are a strange breed indeed: they can take centuries of subservience and brutal oppression but they can't stand straight talk. They believe in freedom but not in free speech. Figure that one out if you can.
#
Friday, January 23, 2009
****************************************
DZOUR NESDINK, SHIDAK KHOSSINK
**************************************************
Those who oppose free speech operate on two assumptions: (one) free or uncontrolled or unsupervised speech will inevitably lead to verbal abuse; and (two) they are themselves infallible when it comes to drawing the line that separates freedom from abuse. History tells us these two assumptions have been more open to abuse than free speech, and more crimes have been committed in the name of censorship than in the name of free speech.
*
In the same way that war is diplomacy by other means, genocide is censorship by other means.
*
Freedom without free speech is a fascist illusion.
*
No matter how hard I try I cannot agree with a belief system or ideology that legitimizes the violation of someone's fundamental human rights.
*
It is my ambition to speak of reality. Let others speechify, sermonize, and propagandize about their pet abstraction. A nation that does not have its feet firmly planted in reality is a nation that may survive (in the same way that animals in a zoo survive) but cannot live. Survival is life to the same degree that slavery is freedom.
*
Flaubert said: “Everything must be learned, from reading to dying.” And for an Armenian, engaging in dialogue with a fellow Armenian.
*
I preach but I don't always practice what I preach. When the other day I read that a member of this group wanted to have his name removed because he was “too busy,” my first uncensored thought was, “Busy doing what? -- beside pulling his dick.” Immediately I decided to keep this nasty thought to myself, and if I write it down now for everyone to see it's because I want to underline the discrepancy between theory and practice. I offer it not as a justification but as an explanation.
*
To be a good Armenian is not the same as being a good human being, and I'd much rather deal with a good human being than an Armenian who considers himself la crème de la crème.
*
And here is a rule without a single exception: An Armenian who considers himself la crème de la crème doesn't even qualify as la crème de la scum.
#
Saturday, January 24, 2009
****************************************
DEMOCRACY
**************************************************
Power does not mean imposing your will on others. Power means responsibility, accountability, and service. Politicians are not our lords and masters or highnesses and excellencies, but our servants. They do not represent God on earth but the will of the people, and the people is not an abstraction but you and me. The more power they have, the greater their burden of responsibility and accountability. I say these things because I had an Armenian education and I was not taught any of it. You might say, I enjoy sharing my discoveries. If there are those who are not aware of these things it may be because it took mankind millions of years to formulate them, and after having formulating them it took many more centuries of strife to realize them. That doesn't mean all power structures today are democratic. Far from it. As a matter of fact, undemocratic regimes today outnumber democracies, and even more to the point, the temptation of tyranny and fascism is a constant in all democracies.
*
How long before we reject the Ottoman and the Soviet from within us and are born again as human beings?
*
If I speak in the name of common sense and decency, am I then an enemy of the people who should be insulted and silenced? If you disagree with me it must be because you have a better explanation. If you do, why don't you let me know what it is and I will be more than happy to make it mine.
*
Remember, a good Armenian is first and foremost a good human being and he would be recognized as such not only by those who agree with him but also by those who disagree.
#

[arabaliozian]

analyzing

Sunday, January 25, 2009
****************************************
SOME NOTES ON THE ARMENIAN PSYCHE
**************************************************
Let me begin with a warning to the reader: I don't understand everything, neither do I claim to have truth on my side. I write as I do because those who understand everything or know the truth are either silent or have failed to convince all of us. Therefore, consider what follows only as fragments from a work in progress.
*
Why are Armenians mean to one another? What is at the root of our dogmatism, mutual intolerance, and divisiveness which have made of us perennial losers and underdogs? Puzant Granian once quoted to me a teacher of his who used to say, “There is a Turk in all of us.” This may suggest Armenians are not harmless Saroyanesque clowns whose sole aim in life is to entertain and amuse odar audiences, but more like carnivores who “survive by cannibalizing one another” (Zarian).
*
We are divided because we lack a common pool of values, customs, traditions, and language. We have as many as 43 dialects, not all of them mutually comprehensible. We might as well be foreigners and barbarians (the Greek word for foreigners) to one another.
*
Solidarity is a function of the leadership not of the people. Where leaders disagree, people quarrel.
*
Our conquerors divided and ruled us for so many centuries that divisiveness has entered our DNA and become the central component of our identity.
*
For millennia we took it from barbarians because we had no choice in the matter. We now have a choice and not only we refuse to take it but we also feel liberated enough to verbally slaughter anyone who dares to disagree with us.
*
In his LAMENTATION, Naregatsi (our Dante/Shakespeare) explains that like all men we too are walking encyclopedias of failings (or sins). The only way to come to terms with this fact is by becoming aware of it in the hope that the reality principle (or God) will reward us with understanding, forgiveness, acceptance, and serenity. It follows, when a fellow Armenian arouses the worst in us, we should be grateful to him for making us aware of the Turk within, for, according to Freud, the aim of civilization is to make the unconscious conscious.
*
God bless you and God bless the divided tribes of Armenia.
#
Monday, January 26, 2009
************************************************** **
ON THE FALLACY OF DOGMAS
************************************************
In the USSR the economy was controlled; in the U.S. it was free. Both went bust. This may suggest a number of things, among them:
(one) all systems are open to abuse and corruption, and no system is foolproof;
(two) sooner or later all dogmas are exposed as fallacies by the reality principle;
(three) more often than not crises are created by experts or self-assessed superior intellects;
(four) the stronger an opinion, the weaker its foundation in truth;
(five) to know all there is to know about a specific academic discipline does not mean to know more about life;
(six) next time you run into someone who knows better, consider the possibility that his superior knowledge may be inferior to your ignorance;
(seven) a political party will have a better chance to survive if its party line is a zigzag;
(eight) when it comes to their own expertise, all experts are optimists.
#
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
************************************************** **
REPLIES
************************************************
“I disagree with you because I have more than one bishop, historian, and professor on my side.”
I could always claim to have God on my side (“A house divided against itself cannot stand”) but I refuse to take the name of the Lord in vain.
*
“Has it ever occurred to you that a divided house may have a better chance to survive because if one half perishes the other may continue to live and prosper?”
Maybe so but let's see if this theory applies to us. Once upon a time we had vibrant communities in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, how many of them survive today? And let's consider the Armenian-American diaspora: judging by its rate of intermarriage (80% I believe) and assimilation, the consensus is it may not make it to the next century.
*
“The Diaspora may perish, but the Homeland will live!”
If in the Diaspora we have a high rate of assimilation, in the Homeland they have a higher rate of exodus. I have heard it said that the only people who don't want to emigrate are the cops.
*
“We have the leadership we deserve.”
No one deserved the likes of Sultan Abdulhamid II, Talaat, and Stalin, not even our leaders.
*
“I believe in the immortality of the nation because Armenians are men of faith.”
Faith is not enough. We must also do what must be done. Which means mutual tolerance, solidarity, dialogue, compromise, consensus, and above all respect for human rights, including that of free speech. If our bishops, historians, professors, and pundits don't believe in free speech, even He, whose name I refuse to to take in vain, and all His angels and archangels cannot save us.
#
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
************************************************** **
VICTIMS
************************************************
No one, not even Armenians, are interested in Armenians as human beings, only as victims – victims of massacres, earthquakes, wars, and starvation. Whenever Armenians are mentioned in the odar press, the chances are it will be in connection with Turkish criminal conduct during World War I.
Armenians as victims. Speaking for myself as a human being rather than as an Armenian, I say enough of this miserabilism! Enough of our status as perennial victims. What could be more repellent than pity?
*
An old friend whom I have not seen or exchanged a single word in fifty years comes to see me. He comes armed with a fat dossier outlining his economic plan. He wants to improve conditions of life in the Homeland. Someone must have told him as a writer I may be in a position to introduce him to benefactors. He goes away a thoroughly disappointed man.
*
Once when I expressed a pedestrian wish to a woman (Armenian), she was outraged. “You are a writer!” she said. Did she want a sonnet? I have never written a sonnet in my life. On a good day and with a little bit of luck and daring, I may manage a third-rate haiku, but that's as far I am prepared to go. Even a fourth-rate sonnet I consider altogether beyond my ambitions and capabilities.
*
A writer? An Armenian writer? What could be more contemptible! I am only a human being who does some scribbling on the side. If you find what I say irrelevant I suggest you read our writers, who, you may be interested to know, were also victims of both foreign and domestic tyrants.
#

[arabaliozian]

lies

Thursday, January 29, 2009
************************************************** **
THE BLAME-GAME
************************************************
What makes the blame-game irresistible to charlatans like Governor Blogojevich of Illinois is that it allows them to portray themselves as morally superior even when irresponsible, corrupt, greedy, and guilty as hell. One important difference between Blogojevich and our own wheeler-dealers is that no one died as a result of the Governor's misconduct. Even more important: Americans have a justice system and a legal maneuver known as impeachment. Do we even have a word for it? And if we do, when was the last time anyone heard it? Which may explain why very soon Illinois will be rid of Blogojevich but we will continue to be at the mercy not of one Blogojevich but a whole gang of them.
*
When our speechifiers and sermonizers speak of unity, they remind me of wolves who would like to see sheep gathered in a single enclosure as opposed to being scattered all over the forest.
*
The comments of our Turcocentric ghazetajis sometimes read like memoranda to a non-existent foreign office staffed by invisible bureaucrats anxiously waiting for their input and advice.
*
At one time or another I have been accused of all those things that I have exposed and ridiculed, including fascism, racism, Antisemitism, anti-intellectualism, and intolerance. I don’t mind pleading guilty to the charge of intolerance: I am indeed intolerant of stupidity and ignorance parading as knowledge and wisdom. I am also intolerant of greed, double-talk, tribalism, chauvinism, yes-men, Ottomanism, Stalinism, cowardice, treason, and arrogance. If by being tolerant of these things I will be a better Armenian, I say, No thanks! I’d much rather be an honest human being.
#
Friday, January 30, 2009
************************************************** **
THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME
************************************************
With unemployment soaring everywhere, many Armenians may decide to return to the Homeland, get organized, and throw the rascals out. Wishful thinking on my part? I am not sure. Such a movement has already started in France and Russia, and I expect any day now America may follow.
*
I am so used to being insulted by readers that I feel ill at ease when one of them is kind to me. And when I insult a reader I expect him to say it comes with the territory and to forget about it, as opposed to holding a grudge for ninety-nine years. But I guess that too comes with the territory – that is, unforgiving Armenians with the memory of elephants and the venom of seven Turkish vipers.
*
Anti-intellectualism has been a constant in our history because it allows hoodlums the luxury of looking down on their betters and assuming a morally superior stance on the grounds that God and Country are on their side.
*
They rise in defense of God and Country. As for me, I rise only in defense of that most uncommon of all human faculties: common sense.
*
Everything I write is an answer to a specific question, objection, or criticism. And yet, some of my readers complain that I ignore them. I suspect what these readers want is not answers but attention, flattery, propaganda, and lies. To them I say: It’s been a pleasure disappointing you.
#
Saturday, January 31, 2009
************************************************** **
BIG LIES
************************************************
Dupes and fools are the backbone of a nation because they are willing to kill and die in the name of a Big Lie.
*
Between a Turkish friend and an Armenian enemy I would choose a Turkish friend. Who in his right mind wouldn't? Many Armenians alive today owe their life to Turkish friends, and many victims of the Genocide, including some of our most beloved writers and poets, owe their death to Armenian traitors.
*
We know the family trees of royal dynasties but not of the masses, to which most of us belong. And the leaders, elites, and top dogs of all nations are, like Obama, mutts.
*
Turks call themselves Turks because they have been brainwashed to believe they are Turks by men who were not themselves Turks. We are all products of mixed marriages.
*
The Byzantine Empire was Greek but some of its greatest emperors and generals were of Armenian descent. The so-called Ottoman Empire that succeeded it was as much Greco-Armenian as Turkish. Most of our own kings and generals were imported talent.
*
At the turn of the last century, the kings and queens of Europe were related to Queen Victoria and to one another; that did not prevent them from fighting a world war that was meant to end all wars (another Big Lie) but resulted in the bloodiest war in the history of mankind.
*
Germany's most dangerous enemies were neither the Russians nor the French but the Nazis (from “national socialism”), in the same way that Russia's greatest enemies were the Bolsheviks, whose supreme leader was a Georgian, whose belief system was based on the theories of a German Jew.
*
World history is full of Big Lies like that one and the Biggest of them all is that political leaders are selfless servants of the people and their number one priority is not number one but the welfare of their subjects.
#

[arabaliozian]

old age

Sunday, February 1, 2009
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IT TAKES ALL KINDS
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My friends may forget me, but my enemies never will. That is why I never lose an opportunity of making one. Most of my enemies however are not enemies because I offended them in any way, but because I failed to flatter their colossal egos, which, in their eyes, might as well be a crime against humanity comparable to a massacre of civilians.
*
Ignorance is not a crime, neither is credulity. But some of the worst crimes against humanity were committed by fools and dupes – and, of course, leaders who knew how to organize and use them.
*
A dupe may also be a man of cunning who is infatuated with his own brain power, judgment, and perception of reality.
*
Even after Stalin's crimes were exposed, there were many Armenian-American academics, poets, writers, and merchants who were pro-Soviet (I called them chic Bolsheviks). I know this because I would receive angry letters and telephone calls whenever I published a commentary critical of the regime.
*
Even dupes with a negative IQ are smart enough to believe only in things that are clearly to their advantage. The reason there were so many chic Bolsheviks in America is that the regime treated them as celebrities whenever they visited the Homeland. I will never forget the archbishop who once said to me: “If you ever decide to establish yourself in the Homeland, they will take good care of you.”
Moral: Be aware of charlatans offering unsolicited advice that may sound flattering to your vanity.
#
Monday, February 2, 2009
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THE ABYSS
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If I write about our dark side it's because no one else does. If our Turcocentric ghazetajis and their role models, our nationalist historians, are to be believed, Turks are our only dark side. But when writers like Raffi, Baronian, Odian, and Zohrab wrote, they stressed our failings, not those of other nations. And then there is Naregatsi, a saint: our greatest and least read writer whose sole subject was the abyss within. Next time you feel like bragging about your Armenian identity, read Naregatsi. Whenever I run into an Armenian who brags about our celebrities, multi-millionaires, our Mikoyans and Mamoulians, our Arlens and Saroyans, and above all about our survival as a nation, I begin to see more merit in a dignified death. To those who brag about Armenia being the first nation to convert to Christianity, may I ask how successful have they been in loving not only their enemies but also their fellow Armenians?
*
I had the following exchange with one of our editors last week:
“We need poetry and fiction,” said he.
“What about essays?” I asked.
“You can do your preaching elsewhere,” was his reply.
My guess is this editor would have rejected Naregatsi on the grounds that his writings did not qualify as vodanavors and massals.
*
Speaking of massals and grandmother stories: Once when I asked another one of our editors why he published so many grandmother stories, he explained: “Because grandmothers have played an important role in our lives.”
Have they? That was news to me. Has any one of our nationalist historians included a chapter on grandmothers in his texts?
Speaking of my own grandmothers: I never knew one of them because she died long before I was born. The other one lived in another town and I saw her once or twice a year. She never told me a single story.
#
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
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POLITICIANS AND WRITERS
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The difference between politicians and writers is that politicians understand people and writers want to be understood. Politicians understand people in the sense that they know all about their need for flattery and big lies, such as “chosen people,” “superior race,” “first nation this/first nation that.” One could even say that politicians are in the business of inventing and exploiting big lies, and writers in exposing them. This may explain why to this day Hitler, an unspeakably mediocre intellect, has his admirers, and Thomas Mann, a writer of genius, his detractors.
*
The chosen people: If one is to adopt history, facts, and reality as an index, it would be more accurate to speak of the unchosen people.
*
To speak of superiority even as one behaves as the most depraved of criminals: what could be more asinine, perverse and inferior?
*
Perhaps one reason big lies are popular is that they combat repellent truth that are even bigger.
*
What could be more absurd than dupes at the mercy of control freaks speaking of freedom?
*
It is not safe being a law-abiding citizen among criminals, or to speak one's mind among the mindless.
#
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
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WITH OLD AGE
COMES OBJECTIVITY
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With old age comes objectivity, which means the more aware I become of our failings, beginning with my own, the more clearly I see the strategies we employ to cover them up.
We survived because we were divided.
It is all the fault of the bloodthirsty barbarians that surround us.
There is nothing wrong with us.
It's all the fault of the rotten world in which we are condemned to live.
Had we lived in a civilized world, we would have been a role model to all nations.
As for our critics, beginning with Naregatsi: all they do is project their rotten problems on the rest of us because misery like company.
Hence our fondness for massals and vodanavors like “Yes im anoush Hayastani” and the eternal snows of Mt. Ararat.
Between “once there was and was not” we have a marked preference for “was not,” at the end of which three golden apples will fall and we will live happily ever after.
#

[arabaliozian]

comments

Thursday, February 5, 2009
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NOTES AND COMMENTS
************************************************
You cannot solve a problem whose existence you refuse to acknowledge.
*
Armenians are not litigious by nature – they learn it from their leaders.
*
Fascists don't believe in dialogue and compromise, only in consensus and unanimity. Even when there are ninety-nine voices saying yes, and only one saying no, they feel the need to silence the sole dissenting voice.
*
To know a great deal about Turks and next to nothing about Armenians, except their status as victims: that, it seems, is the mission of our Turcocentric ghazetajis.
*
The reason why I am consistently negative is that my life and work may be divided into three distinct periods:
(one) past -- naïve and sentimental;
(two) present -- old and cynical;
(three) future – unprintable and unmentionable.
*
“After all, we are Armenians!” – meaning , anything we say or do must be accepted and forgiven, including that which would be normally unacceptable and unforgivable. Some Armenians use Armenianism the way cold-blooded killers use the plea of insanity.
*
There are as many versions of the past as there are ideologies, religions, nations, tribes, and schools of thought, all of whom assert to have a monopoly on truth. To say therefore that our own version of the past is true but the French, Russian, Patagonian, or, for that matter, Turkish versions of their own past is false, is to bury our heads in the sand.
#
Friday, February 6, 2009
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ON EASTERN MYSTICISM
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What can we learn from schools of Eastern mysticism? Or rather, what has the East learned from its own mystics? To those who say the ideas of Eastern mystics have universal validity even if they have been corrupted by their religious and political leadership, I say, the same could be said of Christianity and its mystics.
Gandhi, a Hindu, learned a great deal from the Bhagavat Gita and other Hindu scriptures. But he also learned from Tolstoy (a Russian), Ruskin (an Englishman), and Thoreau (an American).
*
If history teaches us anything it is that no matter how noble an idea or ideology, sooner or later it will be corrupted and perverted by an authoritarian elite whose greatest concern will not be the welfare of the masses but its own powers and privileges.
*
What can we learn from mystics of both East and West? Only this: the mystical experience is not transferable and all efforts to express it in words are destined to fail. For more on this subject see Aldous Huxley's THE PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHY, and Arthur Koestler's THE LOTUS AND THE ROBOT. Also of interest, the writings of Krishnamurti, an Indian mystic, who said, “If you follow someone else, you are on the wrong path,” or words to that effect. This is true of individuals as well as nations. Our greatest exponent of this particular idea is Gostan Zarian. See his TRAVELLER AND HIS ROAD and BANCOOP AND THE BONES OF THE MAMMOTH, both available in English.
*
Arthur Koestler on Zen Buddhism: “Inarticulateness is not a monopoly of Zen; but it is the only school which made a philosophy out of it, whose exponents burst into verbal diarrhea to prove constipation.”
Elsewhere: “Zen always held a fascination for a category of people in whom brutishness combines with pseudomysticism, from Samurai to Kamikaze to Beatnik.”
Koestler is much better on Indian mysticism and its countless aberrations, including Gandhi's.
*
Finally, here are two of my favorite Buddhist sayings: “Look not for refuge to anyone beside yourself”; and “Foolish friends are worse than wise enemies.”
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Saturday, February 7, 2009
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DIARY
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It is written “You can't cook pilaf with words.” It is also written “Soft words can break bones.”
*
Once upon a time a man went all over the world in search of buried treasure only to discover on his return home that it was buried in his own backyard.
Moral: It's a waste of time searching wisdom in what you don't know.
*
To be the slave of former slaves is not freedom.
*
In a recent edition of the PETIT LAROUSSE ILLUSTRÉ (the most widely used French-language reference work) there is an entry on Talaat Pasha wherein we read about what an Armenian did to him as opposed to what he did to the Armenians. As a matter of fact, there is only one Armenian mentioned and that is in the final line, which reads: “He was assassinated by an Armenian.” The innocent reader is left with the impression that some bloodthirsty crazed Armenian victimized an innocent Turkish statesman.
*
In all fairness to LAROUSSE: in its entry on ARMENIA we read: “1915: The Young Turks committed genocide (1,500,000 victims).”
…
DIKRAN THE GREAT is identified as a Parthian. Armenian emperors of Byzantium are not identified as Armenian; neither are such Armenian writers as Adamov and Troyat.
…
Pierre Gaxotte: “There is no such thing as History, there are only historians.”
#

[arabaliozian]

maxims

Sunday, February 8, 2009
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REACTIONARIES
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We sometimes forget that our revolutionaries, as well as dictators like Stalin, Hitler, and Mao, began their political careers as dissidents; but the only important lesson they appear to have learned is that, if it is easier to silence dissent, engaging in dialogue is a waste of time.
*
Even as they dig us deeper into the hole, they speechify about the light at the end of the tunnel.
*
On Armenian TV, a schoolmarm was delivering a report to a silent audience. At one point when she mentioned someone's contribution of a thousand dollars to the school, the audience woke up with a thunderous applause.
*
To think someone else's thought is not thinking. To think, to really think, means to explore the not-yet-thought.
*
The brainwashed cannot think; they can only think they are thinking.
*
Understanding is a solitary endeavor. Prejudice is gang-driven.
*
What is literature? In the preface of a history of French Literature I read the following: “Literature is not just something that writers produce. Oral literature preceded written literature and it has always coexisted with it. Conversation, unless it is purely utilitarian, is also a form of literature.”
What happens when two Armenians disagree? The answer must be, they produce anti-literature.
#
Monday, February 9, 2009
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ONE-LINERS
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Flattering the scum of the earth does not qualify as love of one's fellow men.
*
Mahatma Gandhi was not awarded the Nobel Peace Prize but Arafat was.
*
My brilliant career: from a young man to watch to an old junkyard pit bull to be avoided.
*
If like me, you were brought up on a steady diet of propaganda, you should have more questions than answers.
*
Barbarians may be civilized. It is much more difficult with riffraff.
*
To top dogs, words like democracy and human rights are just words that hardly register on their consciousness. To underdogs like me they may well be a matter of life and death.
*
Etienne de Silhouette (1709-1767): French politician and financier under Louis XV who balanced the budget by taxing the privileged classes and the rich. His enemies gave his name to linear designs as a symbolic reference to the condition to which his victims (those he taxed) were reduced by the time he was through with them.
*
No one believes anyone who assesses himself, and only gullible fools believe in gypsy fortune-tellers. To those who say, sometimes gypsies can be right, I say, they may well be, but an Armenian who brags never is.
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Tuesday, February 10, 2009
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ON SAROYAN
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In Athens, I read him in Greek, in Venice in Italian, and in Canada in English. He sounded good in all of them.
The three books that I enjoyed most:
HERE COMES, THERE GOES, YOU KNOW WHO,
PAPA YOU'RE CRAZY,
MAMA I LOVE YOU.
Not his best works, granted. What I loved about them was their spontaneity. It was this quality that encouraged many to become writers – most of them, like Kerouac and his followers, mediocrities.
I saw Saroyan only once in the 1950 in a schoolyard in Kokinia, a suburb of Athens. He spoke very briefly, with a booming voice, in Armenian, to an audience of about a hundred fellow countrymen. His two children were with him. Afterwards people went up to him, shook his hand, and exchanged a few words. I was too intimidated to follow their example.
About twenty years later, I wrote him a letter asking for an interview. A few years passed before I heard from him. He apologized for the delay, agreed to the interview, complained about a recent interview with an Armenian poet (who was later murdered in Moscow), mentioned Zarian (he knew him but couldn't figure him out, he said). To my astonishment he also said he reads everything I write, and wanted to know if I have written any fiction. In reply I sent him some of my published fiction but I never heard from him again. Someone who knew Saroyan well once said to me: “Saroyan is interested only in Saroyan.”
In the memoirs of his son Aram, and wife, Carol Matthau (referred to as “Carol Saroyan Saroyan” in Truman Capote's last and unfinished nonfiction fiction, ANSWERED PRAYERS, because she married him twice) Saroyan appears as a wholly unSaroyanesque character.
*
Being Armenian looks easy only in Saroyan’s fiction. In reality it is such a demanding enterprise that most Armenians give up the effort and assimilate, and I for one do not blame them.
*
The most amusing line that I remember from Carol Matthau's memoirs: “As Armenians like to say, when I say la, understand lalabloo.”
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Wednesday, February 11, 2009
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MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS
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If Naregatsi, Raffi, Baronian, Odian, and Zarian, among many others, failed, what are our chances of success? Next to nil! We may, however, succeed if the “angularity of time” is in our favor. Life is unpredictable, the future uncertain, and the world as dangerous a place as the mouth of a volcano. Who would have thought that American capitalism would one day degenerate to socialism for the rich? Who would have imagined that three multi-millionaire chief executive officers, hostile to unions, would come to Washington in their private jets, united, begging for taxpayers' money?
*
We are much more transparent than we think we are, and we expose ourselves more not by what we say but by what we avoid saying.
*
Why should anyone care what a marginal scribbler thinks or says? -- unless of course he exposes a wound, at which point he becomes a nuisance, a menace, a disturber of the peace, and an enemy of the people.
*
There are those who read me for the sheer pleasure of sending me abusive e-mails, and they are my best sources of stimulation.
*
Why fight an adversary who is his own worst enemy? Why kill a man who is hanging himself?
*
You start winning when you no longer care whether you win or lose.
*
It is only when you try to change the status quo that you acquire a better understanding of the powerful forces that hold it together.
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