as i see it

[arabaliozian]

status

Thursday, June 4, 2009
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ON PROPAGANDA AND RELATED ATROCITIES
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Propagandists and their dupes are less like victimizers and victims and more like co-conspirators.
*
For every temptation to believe in a flattering lie there is a counter-urge to confront the truth no matter how unpleasant.
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To suppress a truth does not mean to obliterate it.
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If in crime it's cherchez la femme, in all verbal communication it's cherchez the unsaid or the covered up -- there it is, step one of deconstruction 101.
*
I don't understand everything and I don't want to understand everything because I already understand enough; I also understand that there isn't one hell of a lot I can do with what I understand except to become more aware of my own powerlessness.
*
Our history makes one point very clear: in time of trouble, when we need them most, our political parties were nowhere to be seen. But in time of peace they are all over the place -- in schools, churches, community centers, and the media, speechifying, sermonizing, editorializing, organizing demonstrations, lobbying, and, above all, rewriting history in their efforts to cover up their blunders and inability to face facts and to come to grips with reality.
#
Friday, June 5, 2009
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FAITH AND IMAGINATION
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Since the ancients could not understand the solar system, in their wisdom, they invented or imagined one they could understand.
All systems of thought, all organized religions and ideologies, are efforts to reduce a complex and incomprehensible reality to our own level even if it means perverting it in the process. Hence the celebrated dictum: “Man cannot create a single worm, yet he has created ten thousand gods” -- and, one could add, for every god, ten thousand lies.
*
The human brain is a miracle more complex than a thousand computers combined. Its urge to understand and explain is as irresistible as the urge to procreate, and to procreate at all cost, even if it means procreating charlatans and dupes willing to kill and die in the name of a lie.
*
God orders Abraham to butcher his son Isaac to prove his loyalty to Him. I challenge anyone to imagine a worst case of abuse of power.
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Is it possible to be honest and to speak of God or in His name? Even when Mother Teresa, that most exemplary of saints, lost her faith, she did not dare to say so openly when she was alive.
#
Saturday, June 6, 2009
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STATUS QUO
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Solutions to problems are unwelcome where exposing past blunders is not an option. Our leadership seems to be saying, “We will consider the viability of your solutions provided you do not question our infallibility.” They ignore the obvious fact that had they been infallible we would have no problems.
*
“What would you have done in their place?” is one of those loaded questions that is raised again and again. If you say, “I would have done things differently,” they will say, “So you think you are smarter? Easy to say, harder to prove.”
What I prefer to say instead is: “Very probably I would have done what they did, with one difference: I wouldn't spend the rest of my life blaming others and pretending I am infallible even as I go about committing the same blunder over and over again.”
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Our central problem today is a leadership that is incapable of doing what must be done because doing so would expose the past blunders of incompetent narcissists and their dupes who are infatuated with their own image.
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What blunder am I talking about? That of dividing our greatest source of power and refusing to learn the lessons of history.
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It takes two to tango. We have the leadership we deserve. Our tragedy, our real tragedy is centuries of hopeless subservience and the acquisition of layers upon layers of habits that spring from it, namely, our respect for authority even when this authority mimics Ottomanism and Sovietism.
*
Man's original sin is not tasting the fruit from the tree of knowledge but saying “Yes, sir!” not only to God (as Abraham did when ordered to cut his son's throat) but also to any impostor who speaks in His name.
#

[arabaliozian]

lessons

Sunday, June 7, 2009
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LESSONS
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In his Anatolian impressions, Lord Kinross (the future biographer of Kemal) mentions meeting some elderly Turks who bragged about teaching us (Armenians) a lesson during World War I that we would never forget. One could say, it is now their turn to learn they can't get away with murder – though if it were up to me, I would be reluctant to teach them anything if only because people who cling to their ignorance will have to learn the hard way, and the longer it takes the harder the lesson is bound to be.
But then, consider the absurdity of our own situation. We are trying to teach the Turks a lesson that the mighty of this world have consistently refused to learn (hence their unpopularity, gradual disintegration and inevitable downfall) even as we go about refusing to learn a more obvious lesson, namely that a house divided against itself cannot stand (hence our status as perennial losers).
#
Monday, June 8, 2009
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ON A NUMBER OF THINGS
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Intolerance is almost always a byproduct of a misguided idealism or a phony orthodoxy. But I am beginning to suspect that's not our problem. Our problem, our real problem, is mediocrity and its twin, opportunism.
*
We have a thousand voices supporting Genocide recognition but not a single whisper in defense of free speech.
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Man thrives on good food, good sex, and bad ideas.
*
We speak like parrots, drink like fish, eat like pigs, fight like dragons, live in asphalt jungles, and we call ourselves civilized human beings.
*
If a better world is ever discovered in the universe, we will do to it what we did to America and its Indians.
*
Human nature continues to elude me. No matter how hard I try I cannot understand why millions of people are fascinated by individuals who hit a ball with a modified stick.
#
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
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WITH MALICE TOWARD SOME,
WITH CHARITY FOR ALL
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My explanations are mine and no one else's. They apply only to my own brand of ignorance. If you agree with me, it may be because we share the same area of darkness. If you disagree with me, it may be because you are already in possession of your own explanations. In which case I can only warn you not to be taken in by flat-earth theories. Don't let appearances deceive you. The most obvious explanation may also be the most misleading. Remember, it is not the sun that revolves around the earth even if the Holy Scriptures (the Word of God) and the Pope of Rome said so and repeated for more than a thousand years. And if I repeat myself, it may be because I cannot reconcile myself to the fact that those who pretend to be wiser are no better than damn fools whose number one concern is not the welfare of the people but their infallibility, which is nothing but a mirage, an illusion, a figment of their imagination, and a Big Lie. We have been and continue to be at the mercy of bunglers who would rather preside over the destruction of the nation than give up even an invisible fraction of their powers and privileges.
#
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
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THE SCUM OF THE EARTH
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If you lose a friend on account of political differences, it maybe because he wasn't a good friend to begin with. I speak from experience. I have lost several friends because in their view I was on the wrong side of a political issue and their side happened to be infallible. To them I say, “Good riddance!”
*
It is a mistake to identify patriotism with a specific regime. I have nothing against patriotism provided it is willing to expose the swine at the top. As for the kind of patriotism that sings of the eternal snows of Mt. Ararat, I can only say, “Nothing further, your Honor.”
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Believers in one God (Christians, Muslims, Jews) should develop a consensus if they want to be believed.
*
I consider fascination with royalty a branch of zoology. The first and only thing I think when Prince Charles is mentioned is that he doesn't squeeze his own toothpaste on his toothbrush. The queen? She reminds of an aunt. As for the princesses: I am reminded of an old friend who when asked to name his favorite actor, he mentioned several familiar names. When asked to name his favorite actress, he said, “All of them!”
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Stendhal: “All my life I have always seen what I imagined rather than reality.” There is an element of wishful thinking in all thinking. Propagandists know this and do their utmost to exploit it, and the more successful they are, the greater the distance between us and reality.
#

[arabaliozian]

sin

Thursday, June 11, 2009
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ORIGINAL SIN
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We begin by saying yes to our parents, then to our schoolteachers and parish priest (or rabbi or mullah) after which we consider it our duty to say yes sir! to empty suits and bearded fornicators. And now think of the millions of innocent victims who perished just because some loud-mouth damn fool spoke in the name of a non-existent being or a misguided ideology or a phony orthodoxy. And if you think this sort of aberration belongs to the past, think again. I have seen it happen in my own lifetime and I see it happen again and again whenever I read the headlines in newspapers or watch the news on television. And why? Because we all think my speechifier or sermonizer knows better, his god is a better god, his ideas are better ideas...all of which combined makes us morally superior and we can do no wrong and anyone who says otherwise is a liar who deserves to be silenced and sometimes silenced permanently.
The very same people who taught us to believe tasting the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge was the Original Sin have brainwashed us to believe to gorge ourselves on the fruit from the Tree of Ignorance is our patriotic duty. If you have a better explanation, I am all ears.
#
Friday, June 11, 2009
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IT WAS WORSE THAN A CRIME,
IT WAS A BLUNDER
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There is a tendency in all of us to avoid confrontation especially when the opposition is more powerful. We call it playing it safe or being cautious. And yet, we look up to those rare heroic individuals who stand up for what is right even if it means losing their freedom and sometimes even their life. Think of Socrates versus the Athenian establishment, think of Jesus, Galileo, Gandhi, and Solzhenitsyn.
And now, let us consider the case of our revolutionaries in the Ottoman Empire. The reason they rose against the Empire was that they believed the Great Powers of the West to be on their side and with such allies they could not lose. But lost they did and it was not they who paid a heavy price but the people. Socrates and the others mentioned above relied on no one but themselves and suffered the consequences. Most of our revolutionaries survived to publish long-winded memoirs, to rewrite history, and to cover up their blunder. I don't find that heroic but cowardly and contemptible.
We all make mistakes, of course, but some of us are honest enough to admit them, sometimes even to apologize.
#
Saturday, June 12, 2009
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WHEN THE BLIND LEAD THE BLIND
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Baudelaire on the idea of superiority: “a satanic idea, if ever there was one.”
I have said many nasty things about self-assessed moral superiority, but I have never gone as far as calling it satanic. It takes the daring of a genius to see things as they are. The rest of us might as well be blind to reality.
*
Give a nobody authority or make him feel superior and he will speak in the name of god or historic necessity or greater wisdom and go on the warpath against infidels or inferiors or anyone else who stands between him and more power. Megalomania is a hungry monster that is never satiated. Even the popes of Rome, whose job was to preach love of the enemy, went to war.
But then, where would authority be without dupes? To believe in someone else and to ignore “the kingdom of god” which is within us, might as well be the source of all crimes against humanity.
*
Flaubert: “To be stupid, selfish and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.”
#

[arabaliozian]

mantra

Sunday, June 13, 2009
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ON KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING
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Socrates: “Know thyself.”
The Koran: “He who knows himself, knows God.”
The Bible: “The Kingdom of God is within you.”
Three synonymous statement.
Three different ways of saying the same thing.
*
“The Kingdom of God is within you,” and “Our Father Who art in heaven”:
I see a contradiction here. Which may suggest that the Bible cannot be the word of God. God does not contradict Himself. Neither does He speak with a forked tongue. Men do.
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Men contradict one another because they don't understand; they can only hope to move in the direction of greater understanding.
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I do not have a quarrel with God, only with men who speak in His name after which they legitimize crimes against humanity.
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God does not issue licenses authorizing men to speak in His name. Licenses are issued by men to other men against other men.
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Faith can be an asset as well as a liability. It is an asset when it leads to a greater understand and compassion for our fellow men. It is a liability when it makes us self-righteous, dogmatic and intolerant.
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Diogenes Laertius: “When Thales was asked what was difficult, he said 'to know one's self.' And what was easy, 'To advise another.'”
To advise another: in modern parlance, to sermonize and speechify.
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Sartre: “We believe that we believe, but we don't believe.”
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If I bore you, I apologize. If I challenge you, I consider my mission accomplished.
#
Monday, June 14, 2009
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ODDS AND ENDS
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If I am for honesty it is not because I love truth (which I will never know) but because I hate all those who deceived me when I was young, gullible, and could not yet think for myself.
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Am I a failure if so far the world has failed to provide me with a friendly audience?
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A good speechifier knows what the people want to hear and he doesn't mind submitting his intelligence to the rabble.
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Sometimes our first impressions are more accurate because they are based one a wider and therefore more balanced set of data. Afterwards we can be easily swayed by words.
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To attack and insult someone from a position of self-assessed infallibility is to openly declare oneself to be unteachable, unreasonable, and unspeakable.
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Long live fools and fanatics! If it weren't for them, I would run out of inspiration.
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We like to say there are always two sides to every story after which we readily give in to the temptation of believing our side.
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Tuesday, June 15, 2009
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ETCETERA
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The temptation to contradict is one that no Armenian can resist. It is a mental aberration and a pathological condition that only a radical shift in our educational system may cure. To begin with, we should teach our children that far from being smart, we may well be the dumbest people on earth. One reason: for more than a thousand years we have been the slaves of some of the most backward and brutal people on earth, Stalin's USSR being the latest. How can I forget the fact that during the Soviet era I would receive letters and phone calls from Armenian-Americans (I called them chic Bolsheviks) trying to convince me that the Russians were our Big Brothers (literally rather than in the Orwellian sense of these words), Solzhenitsyn was a traitor, the Nobel Prize committee a Jewish conspiracy, Paradjanov a syphilitic black marketeer and pederast, and Zarian a hireling of the CIA. I have myself been accused of being an agent of every secret organization on the planet, including the KGB, the CIA, the Mossad, and the Gray Wolves, whoever the hell they are.
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In our environment, fanaticism, ignorance, stupidity, and malice speak louder than their counterparts. As for actions: they speak louder than words only when they are directed against defenseless fellow Armenians, the more defenseless the better.
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If that's what I think about Armenians, why do I bother writing for them?
I go on writing for them because I refuse to believe that only brown-nosers and propagandists qualify as writers, and because I believe no one is beyond redemption. I speak from experience. Once upon a time I too shared all their prejudices, blind spots, and arrogance. If I can see the light, so can anyone else. If this is an illusion, may I never lose it.
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Michel Sardou: “God? I believe him when I need him. Like the rest of mankind. And if he fails to respond, I appeal to another.”
#
Wednesday, June 16, 2009
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OUR FAVORITE MANTRA
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A reader writes: “They massacred us because they hated us.”
That's racist talk and that's nonsense.
Not all Turks hated us. Some even risked their lives to save some of us, in the same way that today some of them are willing to risk their freedom to support our cause. No doubt Talaat and his gang of cut-throats were racist, but then, who wasn't? Even Americans of “all men are created equal” fame were racists. They didn't massacre all their minorities, true, only some of them. They were smarter than Turks. They divided and exploited them mercilessly. Where would America be today without its cheap labor? Empires are raised by brute force but maintained by divide-and-rule manipulation.
We are better at dividing ourselves – or rather, allowing others to divide us -- than dividing our enemies. This may explain why almost all talk of Armenians by Armenians ends with the mantra, “Mart bidi ch'ellank.” And because I explain and expand on this mantra, I am silenced. We want flattery, not criticism no matter how objective and honest. But flattery does not solve problems, it covers them up. Flattery does not build character, honesty does.
#

[arabaliozian]

poor/rich

Thursday, June 17, 2009
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WHEN THE RICH FIGHT
IT IS THE POOR WHO DIE
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When the fat cats on Wall Street made a mess of the world economy, they gave themselves a fat bonus, as the poor lost their jobs, their savings, and their pensions. Worse was to follow. The top dogs in Washington bailed out the fat cats with the money of the very same victims who had been skinned alive. It's always the same story.
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To identify a people – any people – with the regime – any regime – amounts to identifying the victim with his victimizer.
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We either parrot the words of cunning manipulators or we learn to think for ourselves.
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If you think slavery in a democratic America was a mistake that has been corrected, consider the legitimacy of the Vietnam and Iraq wars. All men are created equal? If true both Bush Jr. and Chaney would be among the dead now.
Closer to home: after leading the people to genocide our own “best and brightest” blame it on the rest of mankind, as if mankind had suddenly changed the rules of the game on us; and what is even more unbelievable, they are believed. Speaking for myself: I have trouble deciding which is more reprehensible: the massacres or the cold-blooded and calculated deception.
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A smart Armenian is one who says, “I don't want to be like my people. I want to learn from my mistakes.”
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In our case, “Know thine enemy” and “Know thyself” might as well be synonymous statements.
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In this morning's paper I read: “...much of the world remained an unwelcome place for many...” You may now guess who the “many” are and who are responsible for driving them out.
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To paraphrase Saroyan: “Empires may rise and fall but bloodsuckers hang in forever.”
#
Friday, June 18, 2009
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THE WAGES OF SIN
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Hannah Arendt: “If we do not know our own history, we are doomed to live it as though it were our fate.”
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At the beginning we were divided by deep valleys, high mountains, and long winters. What divides us today? Nothing but habit. Habit compounded by ignorance. Habit so deeply entrenched that it might as well be in our DNA. If two Armenians on a desert island don't build three churches (the third being the one they stay aware from) they will feel as though they had a monkey on their back.
*
One reason solidarity has eluded us so far is that we pretend to be ignorant of the consequences of tribalism. It is not easy to convince a tribal people to become a nation by submitting their will to a centralized authority. But the alternative – that is, allowing geography or habit to shape our destiny – is infinitely harder. We know now that the alternative has been defeat by a smaller but better organized tribe, followed by centuries of degrading subservience, mass deportations, and massacres (both “red” and “white” -- that is, alienation and assimilation). Knowing this we continue to stay divided and to waste valuable energy, resources, and emotional investment on genocide recognition, a cause that so far, and after almost a century, has failed to resurrect a single victim or to annex a single square inch of historic Armenia.
*
It is said of masochists that if they fail to find a sadist, they become their own sadist. That, it seems, is the alternative we have chosen – to wallow in self-pity and to beg others to support our cause, as if others supported us when we needed them most. As if others support anyone that is not in their own interest.
*
There are two kinds of failings or sins: those we commit knowingly and the others. But sooner or later we are punished for both. And the wages of sin is death.
#
Saturday, June 19, 2009
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QUESTIONS IN SEARCH OF AN ANSWER
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Chekhov: “If I cannot answer the most important questions, am I not fooling the reader?”
Why do things exist?
What is the meaning of life?
Why did Socrates say, “The only thing I know is that I don't know”?
If “a house divided against itself cannot stand,” are our dividers with us or against us?
If our house collapses, who must be held responsible?
If not our dividers, who?
Who benefits from our divisions?
What is the meaning of our genocide?
If the Turks are bloodthirsty barbarians, why is it that it took us six hundred years to figure that out?
How smart are we if we believe in the propaganda of our dividers?
Why is it that for every Armenian who says one thing there will be another who will say the exact opposite?
Why is it that a fully grown adult feels the need to repeat what he was taught as a child by his schoolteachers and parish priest?
Why is it that “the cradle of civilization” has become the grave of common sense and decency?
Why did Zarian say “Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another?”
Why is it that we have many poets but not a single philosopher?
Why is it that Armenian stories end with the words “Three golden apples fell from heaven”?
Is that why we suffer from an advanced case of collective concussion?
#

[arabaliozian]

pride

Sunday, June 20, 2009
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TOURIST PRIDE
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“I am proud of my Armenian identity,” I am reminded by readers once in a while by way of questioning my own loyalty to the Homeland. We live in a world where everyone is brainwashed to be proud of his ethnic identity, even when we vote with our feet and choose to live on foreign soil and consider our homeland as “a nice place to visit.”
*
JERMAG CHART
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Only the naïve and the blind believe because the Turks are not massacring us today we are not being exterminated. Who is doing the extermination? To put it differently: Who is at the source of our alienation? Who else but Turks, of course! What else is Armenianism if not Turcocentrism? Michael Arlen (Kouyoumdjian) saw this clearly when he warned his son to stay away from Armenians because “they dwell too much on Armenian problems...distant repellent events...They are sweet people, but you can't let them too close. They end up boring you to death.”
*
ROOSTERS
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The nice thing about our brand of politics is that when we do something right, no matter how insignificant, we behave like roosters who believe if it weren't for their vocalizing the sun wouldn't rise. But when we do something wrong, no matter how catastrophic, we blame it on others. A win-win situation if there ever was one.
#
Monday, June 21, 2009
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X
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Supporting a corrupt regime has nothing to do with patriotism and everything to do with treason, betrayal, and cowardice. And the problem with political corruption is that as a rule it gets worse rather than better. It gets worse until it becomes unbearable. Which is what's happening in Iran today. And which is bound to happen in our own homeland sooner or later. And if our brothers and sisters in the Homeland never rise against the regime, we shall have no choice but to conclude that subservience has become such an integral part of our character as a nation that we no longer even take notice of it.
*
If I am for revolution in Iran, why am I against our revolutionaries in the Ottoman Empire? Two reasons: (one) they had a Plan B only for themselves, and (two) they relied on others.
If you are David confronting Goliath, you'd better make damn sure (one) you are one of God's Chosen; (two) you are technologically more advanced than your adversary; and (three) you have developed the necessary skill to use your new equipment.
*
The American, French, and Russian revolutions succeeded because the revolutionaries had the support of the majority. The majority of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, in addition to being a very tiny minority, lacked political awareness. I know because my father was one of them, and most of the Armenians in the ghetto where I grew up were refugees, spoke Turkish among themselves, and were illiterates who signed their name with an X.
#
Tuesday, June 22, 2009
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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
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It's an old trick familiar to all religious leaders: whenever they want to do the devil's work, they speak in the name of god.
*
It took a world war to prove Hitler wrong; and it took the collapse of the Soviet Empire to prove Stalin wrong. It is the fate of an immovable object to meet an irresistible force.
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“There is corruption everywhere.” That's the kind of talk the corrupt love to hear; and they will call anyone who repeats that line a true patriot.
*
A suicidal man should not brag about surviving still another attempted suicide.
*
If it can happen to someone else, it can happen to me. Even if I am god's chosen, I am not the only one.
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Every Armenian should carry a sign with the warning: "Contradict me and make an enemy for life!"
*
Two Armenians were having a quiet conversation. It can happen.
#
Wednesday, June 23, 2009
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WHAT ABOUT US?
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“There is a lot that we don't know,” a friend tells me speaking of our past.
And whose fault is that, may I ask?
Ours or theirs for failing to share what they know?
We will never know everything.
Nobody ever does.
Does that mean we should withhold judgment or submit our intelligence to those who may not have enough of it themselves?
Who benefits from our ignorance?
*
Most of my readers don't like me. That's because I hold a mirror up to them and they don't like what they see. They blame the mirror and they blame me for holding it up to them. They never blame themselves. That's the beauty of the blame-game. It allows you to paint yourself all white and the opposition all black.
*
A regime with enemies will have enemies even among its own people.
A regime that speaks of exterminating the enemy will invariably start by killing its own people. Isn't that what's happening in Iran today?
And what about us?
#

[arabaliozian]

memoirs

Thursday, June 24, 2009
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MEMOIRS
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Because I was born in Greece to Armenian parents in a multicultural ghetto of refugees from the Ottoman Empire whose common medium was Turkish, I learned three languages without any effort on my part. I never asked anyone about the meaning of words or their definitions: I just knew. Something similar happens in the realm of ideas dealing with religion, ethics, and justice. I accepted them as facts rather than as prejudices, misconceptions, assumptions, fallacies, theories, or hypotheses. As a result, ideas that I encountered later in life – ideas like atheism, agnosticism, the brotherhood of all men, democracy, and passive resistance – appeared at first as alien, sometimes even as incomprehensible. Which is why intolerance comes naturally to all of us. It is tolerance that must be taught and learned, and more often than not, it is neither taught nor learned.
*
In my twenties I tried to teach myself Japanese and Zulu, among other languages. Today I remember only one word in Zulu -- “kitab” (book), and I remember it because it is the same word in Turkish.
*
And now allow me to tell you my favorite Nasreddin Hodja story:
It is said that in his youth the Hodja made a fortune as a smuggler. Everyone knew this but but no one knew what was it that he was smuggling, not even the border guards who would search him and his donkey thoroughly every time he crossed the border, which he did frequently. Many years later when one of the border guards met the Hodja and asked him what was was it that he was smuggling, the Hodja replied, “Donkeys.”
*
Speaking of smugglers: When an American customs officer asked Oscar Wilde if he had anything to declare, Wilde is said to have replied: “Only my genius” -- no doubt one of the most dangerous commodities known to man.
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Friday, June 25, 2009
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ACADEMICS
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If the overwhelming majority of our academics stay away from Armenian studies, it may be because they have no desire to submit their intelligence to someone who may not have enough of its himself – namely, bosses, bishops, benefactors and their flunkies. As for the very few who get involved in Armenian studies, they invariably end up recycling the propaganda line that says, we did nothing wrong and the rest of the world did nothing right. To say otherwise would amount to biting the hand that feeds them.
If history is the propaganda of the victor, these academic charlatans seem to be saying, we will make ours the consolation of the loser.
*
What have we learned from history?
Only this: power means above all the power to cover up blunders and to misrepresent defeats as moral victories.
*
Because 2500 years ago Herodotus introduced his HISTORIES with the warning that he intends to speak of the great deeds and achievements of both "Greeks and barbarians," he was torn to shreds by Greek critics (among them Plutarch) as a lover of barbarians.
*
“If you are nice to them, they will be nice to you.” This is a rule that works with gentlemen but not with bastards -- and the world is full of them – and I don't mean gentlemen. And the trouble with bastards is that you can never be nice enough to them. Lower your pants and they will resent you for not bending over.
*
Three things to remember: (one) a fruitful failure is better than a sterile success; (two) “Thou shalt not” does not always work; and (three) Sooner or later a prejudice will bite your ass.
*
What I write may best be described as a digression in a footnote of a book that I will never write.
#
Saturday, June 26, 2009
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INTELLECTUALS AND ACADEMICS
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An intellectual is someone who dedicates his life to ideas.
An academic is someone who dedicates his life to his career.
Once upon a time we had intellectuals but no academics.
Today we have no intellectuals but over a thousand academics.
Which may explain why in literature even the Turks are ahead of us.
*
Likewise we have many nationalist historians but not a single historian.
A nationalism historian is one who places the interests of the nation above the interests of mankind. In other words, he makes of history a branch of political propaganda.
*
In the following two quotations, a 19th-century German philosopher and a 20th-century British historian reflect on historians.
Arthur Schopenhauer: “Clio, the muse of history, is as thoroughly infected with lies as a street whore with syphilis.”
A.J.P. Taylor: “Human blunders, usually, do more to shape history than human wickedness.”
*
There is an old saying: “Historia magistra vitae” (The past is our great teacher).
There is another, even older, saying: “Omnis homo mendax” (All men are liars).
*
I have two kinds of hostile readers: those who say they don't understand me, and those who understand me too well. As for the brainwashed: they are like parrots, disposed to understand only other parrots.
#

[arabaliozian]

big lies

Sunday, June 27, 2009
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BARE-FACED BIG LIES
************************************************** ****
“God's chosen people.”
“Superior race.”
“The Cradle of Civilization.”
Do you know who popularized the idea of Armenia being the cradle of civilization? A hard-up odar alcoholic academic who got himself a fat check from an Armenian foundation and hoped to get another.
“God's chosen people”?
Chosen for what, may I ask? To be scattered, insulted, abused, and periodically slaughtered by, among others, the self-assessed “superior race” of Aryans?
*
Flattery, especially self-flattery, needs no proof. And if you tell a dumb person he is smart, he will not ask you to prove it.
“It is written”?
All that means is that some megalomaniacal idiot confused his illusions with the voice of God. It happens all the time. The inspired loud-mouth charismatic charlatan is a routine occurrence in history and its latest manifestation is the televangelist in the “Land of Liberty,” where one of the bloodiest civil wars in the history of mankind was fought in defense of slavery.
*
What I find incomprehensible is not that some readers disagree with what I say but that they don't disagree with the state and direction of our collective existence. They are eager to question the words of a scribbler but not the actions and policies of those who are in charge of our communities and the nation. Figure that one out, if you can.
#
Monday, June 29, 2009
*****************************************
ONE DAMN THING AFTER ANOTHER
************************************************** ****
In their efforts to advance a new thesis, some odar academics – those we like to quote – have made such extravagant claims on our behalf that even some Armenian scholars (among them Sirarpie der Nersessian) have rejected them as unjustified, unverified, and erroneous.
*
Our bruised egos are so hungry for flattery that sometimes we take a disguised insult as a compliment. Case in point: “It takes seven Jews to fool an Armenian.” Translated into ordinary parlance, this simply means: “If you think Jews are bad, I've got news for you: Armenians are seven times worse!”
*
There is a big difference between being God's children and being the dupes of charlatans who speak in the name of God.
*
If history is “an unending dialogue between the present and the past” (E.H. Carr, WHAT IS HISTORY?), what has been our contribution to this dialogue beside victims?
*
Everything that I say today stands in direct contradiction to an early conviction which was instilled in me by individuals with a narrow and dogmatic agenda that distorted reality and perverted my judgment.
*
We like to brag about our genius for survival. The irony here is that those who did the actual surviving did not brag about it. I know because I grew up surrounded by them.
*
The sad truth is, those who do the most harm to their fellow men are the least aware of it.
*
If there is a god, he must be a thirsty one.
#
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
*****************************************
REFLECTIONS
************************************************** ****
Man is at his most creative in his invention of lies.
*
The biggest lies are half-truths.
*
If you speak against those who speak in the name of God,
they will accuse you of speaking in the name of the Devil.
*
To be brainwashed means not to question the honesty and wisdom of your abusers.
*
A nationalist historian writes about his nation and its enemies.
A historian writes about the past and the conflicting interests of nations.
*
Nothing offends me more than being insulted by a fool who has been brainwashed to believe he is smart.
*
If you don't have an agenda, everyone with an agenda will be against you.
*
Self-esteem is not a reliable index of worth, in the same way that dogmatism is not an index of certainty.
*
It is a universally shared human weakness to prefer flattery to criticism, but it is a dangerous addiction to prefer lies to truth.
*
To those who accuse me of having a very low opinion of my fellow Armenians, I can only say, nobody really gives a damn what I or anyone else thinks. What matters, what really matters, is whether or not I can tell the difference between fact and fiction.
#

[arabaliozian]

armenians

Wednesday, July 1, 2009
*****************************************
ARMENIANS SPEAK WITH A FORKED TONGUE
************************************************** ****
I don't believe everything I am told.
Neither do I believe everything I read in the papers,
especially if it's favorable to someone;
in which case what I want to know is:
How much is he being paid for saying these things?
People lie.
People lie all the time, not only because they don't know the truth
or if they know it, it happens to be against them,
but because they feel more comfortable when they lie.
*
We all lie when it comes to our problems,
and the greatest liar is he who says,
“We need solutions.”
Because that's the last thing we want.
Have you ever met a bishop willing to resign his position
or vacate his cathedral for the sake of solidarity?
Have you ever met a national benefactor
willing to utter a single word
against the worship of money?
Have you ever met a boss
who was not a loud-mouth megalomaniacal narcissist
all sound and fury signifying nothing?
*
I doubt if there is a single Armenian today
who does not know what our problems and their solutions are.
Even a child knows where divisions are the problems,
solidarity is the solution.
Where worship of money is the problem,
respect for ideas is the solution.
*
Our greatest intellectual of recent times was no doubt Gostan Zarian,
whose life and work prove that
we have no use for intellectuals and their ideas.
What we need is a messianic figure willing to be crucified.
But even then there is no guarantee
that will be the end of our problems.
Remember the brief life and career of another messiah
who was accused of blasphemy by his own people
and continues to be rejected by them even today,
after they have had two thousand years
to reconsider their position on the subject.
#
Thursday, July 2, 2009
*****************************************
PLATO, OSHAGAN, AND ZARIAN
************************************************** ****
Everything I write is a paraphrase. I am as original as a cook who combines ingredients available in all supermarkets. If the result is edible or if what I say make sense, I am satisfied. I leave originality to my betters.
*
Plato was a great philosopher, and according to some, the greatest. A 20th-century English philosopher (may have been Whitehead) once said that all of Western philosophy is nothing but footnotes to Plato. Was Plato an original thinker? We know that most of his DIALOGUES are based on the conversations of his teacher, Socrates. As for Socrates, very probably most of his ideas came from predecessors, who, like himself, never wrote a single line. To say otherwise is to imply that for almost a thousand years Greeks did not think, speak, discuss, and contradict one another.
*
According to the Oshagans (pere et fils) Zarian was a plagiarist. What was their intention in saying that? To warn the nation not to be taken in by a charlatan or to establish themselves as the alpha males of 20th-century Armenian literature? If Zarian was a charlatan, what about the bosses, bishops, and benefactors whose support they (the Oshagans) enjoyed?
*
An academic by the name of Stern (I forget his first name) once wrote a detailed study with copious footnotes and a bibliography, in which (unlike the Oshagans) he proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that everything Sartre wrote can be traced to an illustrious predecessor. Result? Who speaks of Stern today?
*
If you want originality, read the Oshagans (whose works are being translated into English, I am told). But if you want to understand what's happening to us today, read Zarian.
#
Friday, July 3, 2009
*****************************************
ON ARMENIANS
************************************************** ****
There is a brown-noser and a bastard in all of us – the brown-noser is reserved for odars, the bastard for our fellow Armenians. Somewhere between the two there is a human being, but he is well-hidden.
*
We will think twice before contradicting an odar, but we will contradict, insult, and crap on a fellow Armenian as if it were our patriotic duty.
*
An Armenian is never as smart as he thinks he is. But that's not his real problem. His real problem is that he is incapable of imagining how unspeakably stupid he can be.
*
Nikol Aghbalian is right, we are a tribal people; or, in the words of Gostan Zarian, our concept of nation begins and ends with our mountain, our valley, our village, our church, and our chickens.
*
Dissatisfied with what you have just read? Your refund is in the mail.
#
Saturday, July 4, 2009
*****************************************
UNTITLED
************************************************** ****
Criticizing odars is a waste of time.
They have critics of their own.
They don't need our 2 cents.
They might even tell you to go back where you came from.
I speak from experience.
If by criticizing others we try to cover up our own problems
on the grounds that nobody is perfect,
we delude ourselves.
*
We may not know all there is to know about our past.
Nobody does.
But we should know one things for certain
even if it may be hard for some of us to admit it.
We should know that what we were told in our formative years,
what we read in our papers today,
and what our speechifiers and sermonizers tell us,
is irrelevant nonsense.
We should know that the dark pages in our history
are not tragedies but blunders,
and only when we see them as such
may we arrest our downward spiral
and be born again as a nation.
#

[arabaliozian]

jacks

Sunday, July 5, 2009
*****************************************
JACKASSES
************************************************** ****
I learned to read in time of war when books were luxuries beyond our means. We had only one in the house – a dilapidated elementary school anthology with black and white drawings. The story on page one was not so much a story as an exchange of insults:
A street urchin to a donkey driver:
“Good morning, mother of jackasses.”
“Good morning, my son.”
*
An exile is someone who lives in an alien country.
A double exile is an exile whose homeland is ruled by aliens,
and no one can be as alien as one's fellow countrymen.
*
You cannot speak of freedom to a slave
who cannot see or feel the weight of his chains.
*
A fool who fools another fool
thinks of himself as smart.
*
Don't think of me as a writer or as an Armenian.
Think of me as a fellow human being
who writes not for readers
but for his younger self
when he was brainwashed, manipulated, and abused
by bastards with an agenda.
*
A few years ago I wrote a series of short stories whose central character was named Jack S. Avanakian – an Armenian-American variation on Odian's Panchoonie.
Once when asked by an interviewer what I was working on, I replied I was planning to write an autobiography titled “The Swan-Song of a Jackass.”
“Why a jackass?”
“Because only an obstinate jackass would go on writing for thirty years for even more obstinate jackasses."
#
Monday, July 6, 2009
*****************************************
BAD HABITS
************************************************** ****
It was only in old age that I learned to assume responsibility for my actions. Until then one of my favorite mantras was, “As a result of political, social, and cultural conditions beyond our control...” which translated into dollars and cents simply means, “not my fault.” The longer we postpone kicking a bad habit, the harder it gets doing what must be done.
*
A dishonest leadership will spawn a dishonest educational system and dishonest citizens. It is widely known that during the Soviet era everyone engaged in petty larceny. They had no other option if they wanted to survive. There are over a thousand Armenians in California jails today. You may now guess their country of origin. Habits are easier to keep than to give up.
*
In the Ottoman Empire we were Ottomanized; in America Americanized; in the Middle East Levantinized; in the USSR sodomized – meant to say Sovietized – not that it makes a difference. It was inevitable. It was as a result of political, social, and cultural conditions, blah, blah, blah!
*
At the turn of the last century our political leaders were idealistic intellectuals, daydreaming poets and revolutionaries inexperienced in the ways of international diplomacy. They tried to transplant progressive Western ideas into an essentially Asiatic environment. Today our leaders are shrewd, down-to-earth, practical businessmen and cynical bureaucrats whose defining feature is contempt for ideas. National benefactors are our kings and heroes now. As for our vodanavorjis and mdavoragans: they are no better than contemptible beggars and brown-nosing academics.
*
Who in his right mind would choose a corrupt, incompetent, and undemocratic leadership over freely elected honest administrators whose first and most important priority is the welfare of the people?
Next question: When was the last time in our millennial history when we the people were given a choice? Bad habits are easier to keep than to give up.
*
Let us now pray!
#
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
*****************************************
ON OUR CELEBRITIES
************************************************** ****
As a child I was brought up to brag about Gulbenkian, Saroyan, Mikoyan, Mamoulian and our Byzantine emperors. As an adult I discovered that Mikoyan was so fearful of Stalin's secret police that he slept with a revolver under his pillow planning to kill himself if they came to arrest him in the middle of the night. And when Stalin ordered the purge of “enemies of the people” in Armenia, Mikoyan went about it with the thoroughness of Talaat, with one difference: whereas in Talaat's holocaust Zarian, Oshagan, and Zabel Yessayan survived, by the time Mikoyan was through his purge there were no survivors except for a handful of yes-men like himself.
*
It is common knowledge that only 7% of Gulbenkian's vast fortune is earmarked for Armenians. I will not speak of his private life because it is not fit for human consumption.
*
At no time did Rouben Mamoulian extend a helping hand to Armenian actors, and in this he was not different from his Jewish bosses who were against hiring actors that looked remotely Jewish.
*
Saroyan's fictional characters are typical Armenians only in the sense that Tevye the Milkman (of FIDDLER ON THE ROOF fame) is a typical Jew. Saroyan “stylized” (his word) Armenians to make them more palatable and harmless to his American audience. But according to his most recent biographer, near the end of his life he was suspicious of all Armenians, including his own children.
*
As for our Byzantine emperors: their foreign policy was consistently anti-Armenian.
*
Raffi once said that “treason and betrayal are in our blood.” What he failed to add is that this is especially true in our “best and brightest.”
Celebrity is an impure concept. To admire some Armenians simply because they achieved fame and fortune in foreign countries and to ignore the achievements of many others, among them Naregatsi, Abovian, Raffi, Baronian, Odian, and Zarian, is to choose the wrong role models for our children and, in doing so, to corrupt our values and to undermine the integrity of the nation.
#
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
*****************************************
GRAPHIC PORN
************************************************** ****
Finally a book by a distinguished scholar (see below) in which the work of nationalist historians is described as “graphic porn.”
*
One reason the Balkans are a vipers' nest of internecine conflicts is that each ethnic group has its own version of the past wherein it represent itself as innocent victim and its neighbors as “guilty bastards.” To combat this trend, a group of multi-ethnic enlightened historians has decided to produce textbooks that are objective, honest, and fair to all sides, and whenever there are two contradictory versions of the same event, to give both sides of the story.
One of these historians, Nenad Seber by name (a British citizen of mixed parentage) is quoted as having said: “Turkish history says the Ottoman Empire was incredibly enlightened, a heaven of religious tolerance, a golden age for the Balkans. According to Greek history books, it was 5 centuries of rape, slavery and butchery. We've moved away from all that. In our Ottoman Empire workbook, for example, we've got a Turkish historian talking openly about the Armenian massacres.”
For more on this subject, see Justin Marozzi's THE WAY OF HERODOTUS: TRAVELS WITH THE MAN WHO INVENTED HISTORY (Philadelphia, PA, 2008).
#

[arabaliozian]

misery

Thursday, July 9, 2009
*****************************************
MISERABILISM
************************************************** ****
Whenever I say tribal divisions have been at the root of all our defeats and miseries, someone is sure to raise his voice and say: “What chance did we have against much more powerful enemies like the Romans, Arabs, Tatars, Mongols, Turks, and Russians, among others. But I maintain we were defeated not because we were small and our enemies big, but because we could not shed our tribalism, which is as true today as it was then. There is no limit to what a nation, any nation, no matter how small, can achieve if it stands united. As a case in point, consider Vietnam versus France and the United States, the mightiest empire in the history of mankind. America lost the war not only because Vietnam's resistance was heroic, obstinate and single-minded but also because America was divided – successive Administrations were for the war but an important fraction of the people was against it.
Which is another benefit of solidarity: it tends to divide the opposition.
Closer to home: in his magisterial 12-volume STUDY OF HISTORY, Toynbee speaks of Urartu versus the Assyrian Empire, one of the mightiest empires of its time. Though repeatedly attacked by the formidable military machine of Assyria, Urartu stood its ground and never lost its independence. And why? I will let you answer that question.
What's done is done and cannot be undone. We cannot change the past, only our perception of it. If I write about past blunders and failings it is not to rub salt on our collective wound but to expose present blunders and failings, which we refuse to acknowledge because we have become so subservient to authority, any authority, including our own, that we believe what we are told, even when what we are told is a bare-faced lie.
We go further: instead of analyzing our present condition objectively and honestly, we speak endlessly about someone else's criminal conduct. To what end? To remind us of our status as victims and to assert moral superiority?
Speaking for myself: I do not feel morally superior to anyone, and I am fed up to the point of disgust with our status as perennial victims. And if you, gentle reader, do not feel as I do, I can only say, to each his own. I for one have no intention of standing between you and your miserabilism.
#
Friday, July 10, 2009
*****************************************
“I BELIEVE IN AMERICA”
************************************************** ****
Remember the opening line of THE GODFATHER? The screen is dark. The voice is that of an undertaker. His name is Buonasera (“good night” in Italian). His daughter has been raped and beaten by two hoodlums and since he cannot get justice in the courts, he begs for justice from Don Corleon (“heart of a lion”).
*
I once had a friend who also believed in America. He was a chain-smoker. He breakfasted on bacon and eggs with buttered toast. He was a chic Bolshevik (a middle-class Armenian-American who hated Tashnaks, supported the Soviet system, and believed the Russians to be our Big Brothers), until he had a heart attack, open-heart surgery, and the Soviet Union collapsed.
*
What do we really know about what goes on within us or around us? What do we really know about our past? How many of us are interested in reading historians as opposed to ghazetajis and dispensers of “graphic porn”?
The Garden of Eden.
The Cradle of Civilization.
The Battle of Avarair.
Is anyone out there really interested to know that the Battle of Avarair is Mamigonian propaganda? It never happened.
*
We live in darkness. What we don't know far exceeds what we know. And it is this area of darkness that is exploited by advertisers, ideologues, propagandists, sermonizers, speechifiers, and fund-raisers. To say “I believe in America” also means “I believe in American lies.”
*
Why am I saying these things?
What am I driving at?
What is the moral of the story?
Only this:
“Don't be a fool!”
#
Saturday, July 11, 2009
*****************************************
THE ENEMY WITHIN
************************************************** ****
After publishing an interview with a Tashnak leader, in which he reminisced about his predecessors and the way they had shaped his character and worldview, a Ramgavar leader wrote a letter to the editor in which he exposed Tashnak leaders as phonies and myself as a dupe.
More recently, in Gourgen Mahari's memoirs, I read about an encounter with General Antranik in which he is quoted as having said that Tashnak leaders deserve the hangman's noose.
It is common knowledge that the heroes of one nation are more often than not unknown nonentities to its enemies.
The French Revolution spawned two sets of historians, Royalists and Republicans. Even when these two factions agree on what happened, they disagree violently on its reasons, motives, and consequences.
In my edition of the SOVIET-ARMENIAN ENCYCLOPEDIA the most frequently quoted authorities in the bibliographies on a large variety of subjects are Marx, Engels, and Lenin.
What I am trying to say here is that anyone who subscribes to a belief system is a dupe or a pathological liar to those who subscribe to a different belief system; and this is true not only of nations and their enemies but also of groups within the same nation or, for that matter, religion or ideology. Stalinists and Trotskyists, Catholics and Protestants, Sunnis and Shias. The irony here is that there is more intolerance and hostility within the same religion and ideology than between alien belief systems.
Whom to believe? My answer is to dismiss all of them as pathological liars inebriated with their own self-righteousness.
There are of course many honest men who are also believers. I have nothing against them, except the suspicion that their critical faculties may not be fully developed.
To those who say it is not skeptics and critics who build cathedrals and raise empires. J.S. Bach was neither a critic nor a skeptic.
I have no use for empire builders.
As for Bach: I worship him to such a degree that I have dedicated a good fraction of my life to the study of his works; and as far as I know, no one has ever been victimized, deceived, or exploited in his name.
#

[arabaliozian]

glory

Sunday, July 12, 2009
*****************************************
THE POWER AND THE GLORY
************************************************** ****
One way to explain our status as perennial underdogs is to say that our ruling classes have spent more time, energy, and resources fighting among themselves and collaborating with our oppressors than serving the interests of the people. The reason why I think as i do is that I have an instinctive loathing of all power -- be it the power of emperors, kings, sultans, popes, ayatollahs, bosses, commissars, and revolutionaries, especially failed revolutionaries who end up doing more harm than good, after which they waste the rest of their allotted time on earth rewriting history, brainwashing the people, and portraying themselves as heroes and our victims as martyrs. And what is even more outrageous, they are believed by some. And whenever a dissenter comes along – and our literature has been one of dissent – and explains things to us honestly and objectively, we either silence him or ignore him, sometimes we even betray him to the authorities, the very same authorities that have dehumanized us.
“Mart bidi ch'ellank / esh bidi menank.”
*
If I knew how to pray, I would go down on my knees and say:
“O Lord, I implore you from the depths of my heart,
help me to see that so far
everything I have said, written, and thought
has been wrong, and that our leaders
have been men of vision and humble servants of the people,
and all our dissidents have been
no better than the scum of the earth.
For thine is the power and the glory.
Amen.”
#
Monday, July 13, 2009
*****************************************
A SIMPLE APOLOGY
************************************************** ****
Allow me to introduce myself: “A.B., Armenian scribbler.” Which in our environment stands for less than nobody. And worse. In the words of one of our national benefactors, speaking to an elderly writer and teacher who had dared to contradict him: “I hire and fire people like you every day.” And yet, every statement I make is carefully analyzed by some readers as if a single wrong word in the wrong place would mean the total collapse of their inner world and the disintegration of the Homeland.
And what is it exactly that I have been saying? Simply this: I don't believe everything I am told by our sermonizers, speechifiers, and fund-raisers who operate on the assumption that the more they flatter us the more generous will our contribution be to their cause.
If I have been wrong, what has been my greatest mistake? Only this: to think that if my aim is to understand what's happening to us, I prefer to learn from our writers, most of whom worked for minimum wage or even nothing, unlike our bosses, bishops, and benefactors, who as far as I know have at no time been dependent on the charity of swine.
And now, may I share with you some of the things that I have learned:
From Movses Khorenatsi I have learned that our decline as a nation began in the 5th century A.D. (see his LAMENTATION).
From Yeghishé I have learned that in a divided nation, both the dividers and their dupes are destined to bite the dust.
From Naregatsi I have learned that it is a waste of time blaming others for our misfortunes and blunders. We should instead examine our conscience.
From Baronian and Odian I have learned that our religious and political leaders are not our “betters” but our worst.
From Zohrab I have learned that a free press is a key ingredient in every healthy community.
From Zarian I have learned that cannibalism and Christianity are mutually exclusive concepts.
To those who say my selection of writers is biased and reflects my preconceptions and prejudices, and that there are many others who have been more positive in their assessment of our past; I say, yes, I agree. From Hagop Oshagan I have learned that a writer with a family to support will say anything to please those on whose goodwill he depends for his survival. And the sad truth is, such writers have always outnumbered the dissidents.
If I am a pessimist, it may be because so is our literature, but not to worry: for everyone who thinks as I do, there are hundreds perhaps even thousands who produce the kind of verbiage whose sole intent is to flatter our bruised egos and to convince us into believing we are in good hands and we never had it so good.
“Mi kich pogh oughargetsek.”
*
When asked by a friend to respond to some of his critics, Orson Welles is quoted as having said: “Cannot imagine what you expect me to write...beyond simple apology for having been born.”
#
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
*****************************************
PROJECTIONS & CONJECTURES
************************************************** ****
Armenians bore the hell out of me –
their stiff-necked dogmatism,
their addiction to brag,
their pathological preference for comfortable lies
and their phobia of painful truths;
their endless internecine conflicts,
their deep insecurities which find expression
in loud-mouth (borodakhos) arrogance...
Relax! I am not talking about you, gentle reader.
I am talking about myself when young.
I have no doubt whatever in my mind that,
unlike me, you are a noble specimen of humanity
and butter wouldn't melt in your mouth,
or anywhere else for that matter.
*
A nation that has been lied to consistently
will be inclined to believe only liars.
*
You cannot speak in praise of capitalism
in a communist country and vice versa.
It is a risky business
discussing democracy with fascists;
and nothing can be as hard
as trying to reason with dupes of propaganda.
What could be more subversive
than a lecture on atheism in a cathedral,
or a speech on human rights in an Armenian community center?
*
I don't study history in order to enhance my self-esteem.
I study history to understand my fellow men and myself.
Anyone who studies history for any other purpose
is doomed to understand nothing.
*
Armenianism is an “ism” like any other ism.
It should be carefully analyzed and not adopted as a belief system.
*
More blood has been shed in the name of patriotism
than any other ideology or religion.
If patriotism means loyalty to one's nation
and disloyalty to the rest of mankind,
I want no part of it.
“My country, right or wrong!”
should also stand for “My country, rich or poor,”
and “My country, in peace or war.”
A true patriot living in self-imposed exile is an oxymoron
(with emphasis on the last two syllables);
and a warlike patriot who is unwilling to kill and die
speaks with a forked tongue.
#
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
*****************************************
OF CABBAGES & KINGS
************************************************** ****
As an underdog, I identify myself with underdogs of all nations and I loathe all murderers and rapists even when they call themselves Alexander the Great and Suleiman the Magnificent. How “Great” was our own Dikran to his victims?
*
Once upon a time I had an insatiable curiosity about Armenians. I read and reviewed books – sometimes as many as three at a time – in which Armenians were mentioned. Not any more. I have had enough of their subservience to authority, that is to say, to bearded cassocks, empty suits, and fat-bellied slobs.
*
It is not “white man who speaks with a forked tongue,” but power. For centuries the average dupe believed kings ruled in the name of God. And when the Czars (Russian for Caesars) were replaced by commissars, things got from bad to worse.
*
The historic evidence seems to suggest that when men rule, it is more likely that they do so in the name of the Devil.
*
How do you convince the average Armenian who has been brought up to believe he is smarter than the smartest “hria” that his political IQ hovers somewhere between +1 and 0?
*
Orson Welles: “Magic is directed almost entirely to men. Women hate it – it irritates them. They don't like to be fooled. And men do.”
#

[arabaliozian]

different

Thursday, July 16, 2009
*****************************************
AND NOW FOR SOMETHING DIFFERENT
************************************************** ****
Shortly after Henry Fonda asked for a divorce from his wife, she killed herself by slitting her throat with a razor – not my favorite method of vacating the premises.
He once explained his multiple marriages by saying: “If I made penetration, a proposal was the next step.”
*
Joan Crawford on Otto Preminger: “Otto is a dear man, sort of a Jewish Nazi, but I love him.”
*
Lee Marvin to Marlon Brando: “I'm thinking of changing my name. To Marlow Brandy.”
Brando: “I think I'll change my name, too. To Lee Moron.”
*
A critic to Charlie Chaplin: “You never have any interesting camera angles.”
Chaplin: “I don't need interesting camera angles – I am interesting.”
*
Ernest Borgnine begins his autobiography by quoting a chestnut vendor's sign that said: “I don't want to set the world on fire, I just want to keep my nuts warm.” He adopted that as his “philosophy,” he writes.
In his old age he once sat on the knees of a Wal-Mart Santa Claus and said: “I would like a blonde,” and the Santa replied: “So would I.”
Unlike his movie image, Borgnine comes across as a harmless and lovable fellow. He has something nice to say about everybody, except Shelley Winters, which is understandable.
*
Orson Welles on Anthony Asquith: “My God, he was polite. I saw him, all alone on the stage once, trip over an electric cable, turn around, and say 'I beg your pardon' to it.”
#
Friday, July 17, 2009
*****************************************
THE TROUBLE WITH HONESTY
************************************************** ****
The trouble with being honest is that you will never know how many people will get hurt. But that's all right as long as you are one of them.
*
It happens to me more or less regularly: I try to solve a problem but I am not sure if I can. I go ahead anyway on the grounds that doing something is better than doing nothing, and trying is better than giving up – and by the time I am through, I have created more problems for myself.
Moral: The most important thing to know about digging a hole is to know when to stop.
*
A Turkish friend once said to me: “Why is it that you and I agree on everything except the Genocide?” The only answer I could come up with was: “Probably because we have been brainwashed by two different sets of propagandists.”
*
Speaking of disagreements: Have you ever noticed that whenever you successfully demolish a bureaucrat's arguments, he says, “Let me check with my supervisor.” And when he comes back, he does so with a decision that is invariably against you.
I have lost more arguments against invisible and non-existent supervisors than anyone else.
*
German saying: “A dog knows his master, but not his master's master.”
*
Nothing comes more naturally to victims of a great injustice than to inflict minor injustices on their friends.
*
One of the most incomprehensible things about human beings is their willingness to subject themselves to the verbiage of speechifiers and sermonizers.
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Saturday, July 18, 2009
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THERE IS NO BUSINESS LIKE...
WRITING FOR ARMENIANS
************************************************** ****
Do you really know how I feel when I write?
I feel like a nun promoting virginity
to an audience of bordello madams and pimps.
*
In their efforts to make me see the light,
my critics succeed only in reinforcing my convictions.
I probably have a similar effect on them.
But then, my aim is not to change anyone's mind
-- I am not a miracle worker –
but to let our Jack S. Avanakians know that
they can't fool all the people all the time.
*
I know they read me because they correct me.
As for those who insult me,
I don't take them seriously.
Anyone who takes a dislike at me
will insult me without reading me,
and even when he reads me,
he will make no effort to understand what he reads.
On the contrary: he will go out of his way to misunderstand me.
*
Do you know why I never run out of things to say?
Because I use my enemies as my muses.
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[arabaliozian]

warning

Sunday, July 19, 2009
*****************************************
WHO IS A GOOD ARMENIAN?
************************************************** ****
A good Armenian is first and foremost a good human being.
In that sense, a good Turk is a better Armenian than a bad Armenian.
A good human being, even if he is a Turk,
contributes to a pool of goodness
without which evil would triumph.
*
Who is a bad Armenian?
A bad Armenian is one who says “Yes, sir!”
to his superiors on the grounds that
they know better.
*
Some of the worst crimes against humanity
were committed by men who obeyed the laws of the land
and believed everything they were told
by men who were convinced God or truth to be on their side.
And they believed that because they could not tell the difference
between God and the Devil, or between truth and lies.
*
Eleventh Commandment:
Thou shalt not believe sermonizers and speechifiers
who pretend to know better
but whose superior knowledge is nothing
but a vipers' nest of lies, superstitions, and prejudices.
*
To me, the quintessential bad Armenian is he
who not only divides the nation
but pretends to do so not to satisfy his ambition
but to save the nation.
Now then, name a single Armenian
who has done less dividing and more uniting.
*
If our dividers are bad,
what about those who support them in the name of patriotism?
Are they good or bad Armenians?
They can't be good.
That much we can say.
But are they really bad?
Hard to say.
At best they are misguided dupes.
At worst, they are fools
who have not yet learned to think for themselves.
Or, as the German saying has it:
“They are like dogs who know their master,
but not their master's master.”
#
Monday, July 20, 2009
*****************************************
JERKS
************************************************** ****
The world is full of them, and you will find them in the most unexpected places. If you don't believe me, listen to far better men than myself:
Arnold J. Toynbee: “Private intellectual enterprise, unlike private economic enterprise, lives by co-operation not by competition.”
One of our white-haired elder statesmen (may the Good Lord have mercy on his soul) once warned me that our academics form mafias and if you are not a member, they treat you like an unwanted interloper trying to muscle in their territory. We have a genocide mafia; we have a pro-Oshagan mafia...speaking of which: once many years ago, I tried to organize a pro-Zarian mafia, sinner that I am (as 19th-century Russian novelists liked to say); but I was successful in recruiting only one member, who turned out to be a quisling and defected to the Oshagan side. I felt betrayed then, but I am grateful to him now. The world can do better with one less jerkoff.
*
Toynbee again: “I am convinced that irreverence, where irreverence is due, is one of the cardinal virtues.”
In other words, when our “betters” behave like our worst, it is our patriotic duty to treat them with contempt rather than respect.
*
Toynbee: “It is always easier, both intellectually and morally, to debit one's ills to the account of some outside agency than to ascribe the responsibility to oneself.”
Or, it is easier and more convenient to play the blame-game than to examine our conscience. Naregatsi's LAMENTATION may be said to be an extended dramatization of this idea.
When an eminent 20th-century British historian agrees with an 11th-century Armenian mystic who has been compared to Dante and Shakespeare, it is as sure a thing as money in the bank.
*
What follows is my real favorite:
Toynbee: “In the life which Man has made for himself on Earth, his institutions, in contrast to his personal relations, are the veritable slums, and the taint of moral obliquity is still more distressing in the least ignoble of these social tenements of the Human Spirit – for instance, in the churches and the academies – than in such unquestionably malignant institutions as Slavery and War.”
Chekhov once said, “There is no fool like an academic fool.” And according to an Armenian proverb: “If a beard were a sign of wisdom, goats would be philosophers.” To put it differently: Don't believe everything you are told even if the teller is a bishop or a professor – especially an Armenian bishops and an Armenian professor.
#
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
*****************************************
REVIEWING THE SITUATION
************************************************** ****
Optimism is unjustified when it ignores or covers up the seriousness of a problem on the erroneous assumption that what needs to be done it being done because we are in good hands.
Pessimism is also unjustified if it leads to defeatism, despair, and and paralysis.
*
What are some of the problems we face today?
In the Homeland, an unemployment rate so high that it results in mass exodus, prostitution, and brain-drain.
In the Diaspora, divisions that deplete valuable resources by duplicating facilities and services (schools, churches, libraries, fund-raising bureaucracies, and so on), and a high rate of alienation and assimilation (also known as “jermag chart” = white massacre).
Another serious problem that we face in both the Homeland and the Diaspora is the fallacy that patriotism consists in supporting not so much the Homeland as its leadership no matter how corrupt and incompetent.
*
A historic instance of optimism run riot is that of our dominant state of mind at the turn of the last century in the Ottoman Empire. Had our revolutionaries been pessimists and operated on the assumption that things could go not just wrong but catastrophically wrong, the outcome would have been less tragic.
*
Perhaps the function of a writer is to introduce pessimism in an environment ruled by optimists and vice versa; and in that sense, to stimulate not popularity but disapproval, disagreement, ridicule, rejection, and insults, all of which, may I add, are, to me at any rate, more congenial than the consent of brainwashed dupes and inbred morons.
#
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
*****************************************
A WORD OF WARNING
************************************************** ****
One of the inevitable facts of life is that at one time or another we all become dependent on people who may know something we don't know. In a strange city, we depend on taxi drivers. When we experience chest pains, we check into the emergency and are examined by a cardiologist. When something goes wrong with the plumbing, we call a plumber. Where does an Armenian writer fit into this system? Nowhere. Who needs him? Nobody! What does he know that we don't know? Nothing!
*
The function of a historian is not to reconstruct the past by quoting witnesses and relevant documents – that's not history but “ant industry” (Spengler) – but to explain why things happened as they did.
The function of literature is not to entertain the reader by writing love stories, or odes to the mother tongue, or sonnets to the eternal snows of Mt. Ararat, but to understand reality.
*
When in the 19th century Raffi said Turkey was no place for Armenians, he was ignored. When Zohrab predicted the massacres, they said, “Zohrab effendi is exaggerating.” When Bakounts called communism “an infection,” he was betrayed to the authorities and purged. And when Zarian exposed the lies of the Kremlin, they called him a CIA agent.
Why am I saying these things? Simply to warn those of my readers who may harbor secret literary ambitions.
*
To be an Armenian writer means not only to be dependent on the charity of swine but also to recycle the propaganda of philistines, fools, and liars. If, on the other hand, you decide to speak the truth as you see it, my advice is, first declare financial independence and grow the skin of a crocodile...and may the mercy of the Lord be with you. Amen.
#

[arabaliozian]

money

Thursday, July 23, 2009
*****************************************
MONEY
************************************************** ****
Whenever the subject of compensating writers for their work comes up, we are informed there is no money. Which of course is another one of our big lies. My first paying job at the age of 18 was as translator for a partisan daily in Athens, and I was paid handsomely.
*
Near the end of his life, Granian, himself a prominent Tashnak and world traveler, once said to me: “We organize lavish banquets to celebrate anniversaries of total mediocrities, after which we have the audacity to say, there is no money...”
*
In a commentary I once wrote, I made fun of anniversary banquets and I remember to have said something to the effect that, unlike our Jack S. Avanakians, neither Tolstoy nor G.B. Shaw celebrated their 40th or 50th anniversary of their debut as writers. This must have offended a recent celebrant who called a friend of mine to tell him I should stop persecuting him. As Cagney would say: “They can dish it out but they can't take it.”
*
One of our philistines once wrote me an angry letter saying, “You are a writer. Behave like one, for heaven's sake. Stop talking about money. It's undignified. Imagine if you can Mozart or Beethoven talking about money.” In my reply I explained that I did not have to imagine anything, and that if he took the trouble to read Mozart's and Beethoven's letters, he would see that money is mentioned more frequently than any other subject.
*
You may have noticed by now that like most people I prefer to speak of my minor victories and to ignore my major defeats. May I therefore assure you, gentle reader, that my major defeats far outnumber my insignificant victories, and if I don't speak of them it may be because if I did I would be even more depressing, gloomy, unbearable, and unreadable.
*
One reason I don' mind exposing the negative aspects of our collective existence and ethos is that for everyone who writes as I do, there are dozens of apologists eager to explain and justify our ways on the grounds that everybody does it. There is some truth in that. There is no such thing as a stupid or incompetent nation, only stupid and incompetent leaders.
#
Friday, July 24, 2009
*****************************************
REALITY & ILLUSIONS
************************************************** ****
Compared to Armenians, Canadians have very few problems, and yet, they spend an inordinate amount of time discussing them in their media, unlike Armenians who spend even more time ignoring or covering them up.
I scan the latest issue of my Armenian weekly:
Navasartian games in California,
a new school building in Michigan,
a jubilee evening dedicated to one of our dime-a-dozen elder statesmen,
a headline with the word “basterma” in it,
articles about half-a-dozen minor celebrities
and their even more minor recent triumphs.
And now, consider the headlines in this morning's local paper:
Murder investigations and trials, burglaries,
a large variety of other crimes and misdemeanors,
waiting time in hospital emergency rooms,
several articles on greedy and incompetent administrators
and their phony expense accfounts,
car accidents, politically incorrect civil servants,
corruption in high places,
the unemployment rate,
the sorry state of the economy, and so on.
If one were to judge Canadians and Armenians by the contents of their printed media, one would have to conclude that Canada is a morally bankrupt country on the verge of disintegration, and Armenians in their homeland and diaspora never had it so good because they are in the best of hands and everything that must be done is being done.
And if you believe that, I have no choice but to assume you also believe in Santa Claus and the theory that maintains the earth is as flat as a pancake.
#
Saturday, July 25, 2009
*****************************************
THINGS TO REMEMBER
************************************************** ****
If it took brainwashing to convince you, it can't be true.
*
One of the safest assumptions you can make is that, the most important things you were taught as a child were lies.
*
At all times and everywhere, what we don't know far exceeds what we know, and this applies even to the wisest among us – from Socrates (“The only thing I know is that I don't know”) to Chekhov (“If I can't answer the most important questions, am I not fooling the reader?”).
*
We should teach our children to doubt and to question rather than to accept our answers as established truths.
*
The function of a truth is not to establish itself but to raise more questions.
*
Some of the greatest crimes against humanity were committed in the name of established truths.
*
When an established truth is contradicted by another established truth, the result will be two big lies. Case in point: American democracy versus Russian communism.
*
At the root of all empires there is a big lie.
*
And now, from the general and the abstract to the specific and the concrete:
If the most important function of the State is to reconcile conflicting interests, it follows, during most of our historic existence we have been a collection of stateless tribes at the mercy of fools who have done their utmost to brainwash us into believing they are smart.
#