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Thursday, October 11, 2007
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RECAPITULATING
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German democracy works because Germany was denazified – a long, painful, expensive process carried out by the Allies. Something similar could be said of Japanese democracy. If Armenian democracy has been a failure so far it may be because no one bothered to de-Ottomanize and de-Stalinize us. As a result, we continue to be at the mercy of wheeler-dealers whose conception of leadership is similar to that of sultans and commissars – not as servants of the people but as their masters.
*
Because the writing on the wall is in invisible ink, we pretend not to see it. And whenever someone says, “I can see it and I will read it for you,” our first instinct is to shut him up.
*
We in the Diaspora are so absorbed in past massacres that we are blind to the two “white” massacres that are taking place today – namely, assimilation in the Diaspora, exodus in the Homeland.”
*
Speaking of our wheeler-dealers and their dupes who parade as superpatriots and accuse anyone who refuses to parrot their propaganda line of treason: consider the following passage in Polybius written more than two thousand years ago. The Greeks were divided, Polybius explains, because all men with genuine leadership qualities had been “systematically thrust into the background and hampered. When at length they did obtain leaders of sufficient ability, their power quickly manifested itself by the accomplishment of that most glorious achievement, the union of the Peloponnesus.”
*
Moral I: we may be unique (who isn’t?) but our problems are not.
*
Moral II: Wheeler-dealers are not in the business of solving problems but in perpetuating them.
*
Moral III: Where wheeler-leaders are the dominant minority, charlatans will flourish, and the agenda of charlatans is not exposing problems but covering them up. After all, who would want to send money to individuals who are better at creating problems than in solving them?
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Friday, October 12, 2007
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ARMENIANS AND BOLSHOI BOLSHEVIK B.S.
************************************************** *********
During the Soviet era we were brainwashed to believe the Russians were our Big Brothers (no, not in the Orwellian sense). Even some Russian intellectuals dismissed this preposterous claim as ridiculous in view of the fact that Armenians pre-existed Russians by a good number of centuries. I was reminded of this Big Brother b.s. the other day when I read in one of our discussion forums something to the effect that we should be grateful to our Big Brothers because if it hadn’t been for them we would have been wiped off the map. What we are not told in this context is that during World War II 350,000 Armenian boys died fighting in defense of Russia.
Questions: How many Russians died in defense of Armenia? Is it one or two? Who, pray tell, defended whom? It seems to me the more accurate question to be asked in this context is: How many Armenians did the Russians murder in cold blood in defense of their own Big Lies?
*
After World War II our pro-Soviet leadership in the Diaspora encouraged Armenians to repatriate. Cardinal Aghajanian openly opposed this move – an act of courage on his part since he had a sister living in Georgia (some believe this may have been the main reason why he was not elected pope in 1958). And speaking of Russians murdering Armenians (with the full cooperation of Armenians, of course): after the Bolsheviks had systematically exterminated our political, intellectuals, and ecclesiastical leadership in successive waves of purges, there were pro-Soviet Armenians in the Diaspora who went on preaching Big Brotherhood. If, after “purging” our intellectual elite in Istanbul, Talaat had declared he had done it to save Armenian literature, Armenian culture, and the Armenian identity, I have every reason to suspect some Armenians would have believed him, provided of course he had also awarded these dupes a medal, a title, and a steady income. We may be dumb but we also know how to take care of number one.
*
I remember a pro-Soviet Armenian archbishop in New York in the 1980s telling me, “There is no future for you in the Diaspora. But if you repatriate they will take good care of you there.” Take good care of me in what sense, I wondered. The mafia takes care of its own too.
*
The Catholicos of Etchmiadzin had better luck with Zarian. He promised to have his complete works published in Yerevan and informed him of all the fringe benefits that writers enjoy there. And Zarian, who ought to have known better (in two of his major works, TRAVELLER AND HIS ROAD and BANCOOP AND THE BONES OF THE MAMMOTH, published in the 1920s and ‘30s, he had exposed the aberrations and crimes of the regime) allowed himself to be seduced by the siren song of the Catholicos and moved with his family to Yerevan, where even his application for membership in the Writers’ Union was rejected.
*
In Jason Goodwin’s THE SNAKE STONE (London, 2007), a stateless Polish diplomat in 19th-century Istanbul, delivers the following line to Yashim, a eunuch: “Together we make a man, you and I. For you are a man without balls, and I am a man without a country.” Some day if a novelist ever writes about an Armenian character, my hope is he will not describe him as a man without balls, without a country, and without a brain.
#
Saturday, October 13, 2007
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READING, WRITING, THINKING
************************************************** *
Once, recently, when I said something to the effect that our writers were my role models, one of our Turcocentric ghazetajis took me to ask for my arrogance. “How dare you compare yourself to our great writers?” said he. Of course, I had done nothing of the kind. But I will gladly amend my statement by saying I may or may not know anything about literature, but I do know something about honesty and being an honest witness. And were not our writers honest witnesses?
*
My advice to those who have not yet mastered the alphabet: Do not attempt to read between the lines.
*
Armenians, who hate to read, love to read our brown-nosers. Knowing this, our brown-nosers dish it out with a trowel, and they are believed because their credibility stands on a higher level than the credibility of our writers.
*
Justin Kaplan, biographer of Mark Twain: “The first rule of biography: shoot the widow.” If anyone ever decides to write a biography of one of our bishops, he shouldn’t worry about shooting widows. What he should worry about is being shot at by one of his loyalists.
*
There is only one worse thing than a wheeler-dealer parading as a statesman, and that’s a man of the cloth getting involved in politics. I cringe whenever I see a mullah or a bishop shaking hands with a “statesman.”
*
To our anti-Semites, I say: Leave anti-Semitism to anti-Semites. The world doesn’t need more of them. I have never seen a sign saying “Wanted: anti-Semites.” But if I ever do, I will be in touch.
*
As Brahms was fond of saying on his out from a party: “My apologies to those I may have failed to offend.”
#
**********************************************
RECAPITULATING
***********************************
German democracy works because Germany was denazified – a long, painful, expensive process carried out by the Allies. Something similar could be said of Japanese democracy. If Armenian democracy has been a failure so far it may be because no one bothered to de-Ottomanize and de-Stalinize us. As a result, we continue to be at the mercy of wheeler-dealers whose conception of leadership is similar to that of sultans and commissars – not as servants of the people but as their masters.
*
Because the writing on the wall is in invisible ink, we pretend not to see it. And whenever someone says, “I can see it and I will read it for you,” our first instinct is to shut him up.
*
We in the Diaspora are so absorbed in past massacres that we are blind to the two “white” massacres that are taking place today – namely, assimilation in the Diaspora, exodus in the Homeland.”
*
Speaking of our wheeler-dealers and their dupes who parade as superpatriots and accuse anyone who refuses to parrot their propaganda line of treason: consider the following passage in Polybius written more than two thousand years ago. The Greeks were divided, Polybius explains, because all men with genuine leadership qualities had been “systematically thrust into the background and hampered. When at length they did obtain leaders of sufficient ability, their power quickly manifested itself by the accomplishment of that most glorious achievement, the union of the Peloponnesus.”
*
Moral I: we may be unique (who isn’t?) but our problems are not.
*
Moral II: Wheeler-dealers are not in the business of solving problems but in perpetuating them.
*
Moral III: Where wheeler-leaders are the dominant minority, charlatans will flourish, and the agenda of charlatans is not exposing problems but covering them up. After all, who would want to send money to individuals who are better at creating problems than in solving them?
#
Friday, October 12, 2007
*************************************************
ARMENIANS AND BOLSHOI BOLSHEVIK B.S.
************************************************** *********
During the Soviet era we were brainwashed to believe the Russians were our Big Brothers (no, not in the Orwellian sense). Even some Russian intellectuals dismissed this preposterous claim as ridiculous in view of the fact that Armenians pre-existed Russians by a good number of centuries. I was reminded of this Big Brother b.s. the other day when I read in one of our discussion forums something to the effect that we should be grateful to our Big Brothers because if it hadn’t been for them we would have been wiped off the map. What we are not told in this context is that during World War II 350,000 Armenian boys died fighting in defense of Russia.
Questions: How many Russians died in defense of Armenia? Is it one or two? Who, pray tell, defended whom? It seems to me the more accurate question to be asked in this context is: How many Armenians did the Russians murder in cold blood in defense of their own Big Lies?
*
After World War II our pro-Soviet leadership in the Diaspora encouraged Armenians to repatriate. Cardinal Aghajanian openly opposed this move – an act of courage on his part since he had a sister living in Georgia (some believe this may have been the main reason why he was not elected pope in 1958). And speaking of Russians murdering Armenians (with the full cooperation of Armenians, of course): after the Bolsheviks had systematically exterminated our political, intellectuals, and ecclesiastical leadership in successive waves of purges, there were pro-Soviet Armenians in the Diaspora who went on preaching Big Brotherhood. If, after “purging” our intellectual elite in Istanbul, Talaat had declared he had done it to save Armenian literature, Armenian culture, and the Armenian identity, I have every reason to suspect some Armenians would have believed him, provided of course he had also awarded these dupes a medal, a title, and a steady income. We may be dumb but we also know how to take care of number one.
*
I remember a pro-Soviet Armenian archbishop in New York in the 1980s telling me, “There is no future for you in the Diaspora. But if you repatriate they will take good care of you there.” Take good care of me in what sense, I wondered. The mafia takes care of its own too.
*
The Catholicos of Etchmiadzin had better luck with Zarian. He promised to have his complete works published in Yerevan and informed him of all the fringe benefits that writers enjoy there. And Zarian, who ought to have known better (in two of his major works, TRAVELLER AND HIS ROAD and BANCOOP AND THE BONES OF THE MAMMOTH, published in the 1920s and ‘30s, he had exposed the aberrations and crimes of the regime) allowed himself to be seduced by the siren song of the Catholicos and moved with his family to Yerevan, where even his application for membership in the Writers’ Union was rejected.
*
In Jason Goodwin’s THE SNAKE STONE (London, 2007), a stateless Polish diplomat in 19th-century Istanbul, delivers the following line to Yashim, a eunuch: “Together we make a man, you and I. For you are a man without balls, and I am a man without a country.” Some day if a novelist ever writes about an Armenian character, my hope is he will not describe him as a man without balls, without a country, and without a brain.
#
Saturday, October 13, 2007
**********************************************
READING, WRITING, THINKING
************************************************** *
Once, recently, when I said something to the effect that our writers were my role models, one of our Turcocentric ghazetajis took me to ask for my arrogance. “How dare you compare yourself to our great writers?” said he. Of course, I had done nothing of the kind. But I will gladly amend my statement by saying I may or may not know anything about literature, but I do know something about honesty and being an honest witness. And were not our writers honest witnesses?
*
My advice to those who have not yet mastered the alphabet: Do not attempt to read between the lines.
*
Armenians, who hate to read, love to read our brown-nosers. Knowing this, our brown-nosers dish it out with a trowel, and they are believed because their credibility stands on a higher level than the credibility of our writers.
*
Justin Kaplan, biographer of Mark Twain: “The first rule of biography: shoot the widow.” If anyone ever decides to write a biography of one of our bishops, he shouldn’t worry about shooting widows. What he should worry about is being shot at by one of his loyalists.
*
There is only one worse thing than a wheeler-dealer parading as a statesman, and that’s a man of the cloth getting involved in politics. I cringe whenever I see a mullah or a bishop shaking hands with a “statesman.”
*
To our anti-Semites, I say: Leave anti-Semitism to anti-Semites. The world doesn’t need more of them. I have never seen a sign saying “Wanted: anti-Semites.” But if I ever do, I will be in touch.
*
As Brahms was fond of saying on his out from a party: “My apologies to those I may have failed to offend.”
#