trash

Sunday, March 02, 2008
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OBAMA
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He reminds me of Raymond Chandler’s line, “The room was as dark as the prospects of an honest politician.” If, unlike the Kennedys, he survives, I suspect he will accomplish very little because he and his followers underestimate the power of the establishment to obstruct populist reforms. Those in power, Hegel tells us, will give it up only after “a bloody struggle,” and, one could add, they will never give it up to a ventriloquist’s puppet. Too much exposure does not seem to work in his favor, perhaps because he has no depth, or if he has depth, he knows how to conceal it. He comes across as a one-dimensional do-gooder who knows all the right verbal moves, which make him predictable and ultimately boring. If I were Hillary, I would let him speechify himself to oblivion.
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GUEDIGUIAN
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A French journalist by the name of Isabelle Daniel has published a book titled CONVERSATIONS AVEC ROBERT GUEDIGUIAN (196 pages, 19 Euros), which LE POINT (Paris, January 31, 2008) describes as of great interest “from the first to the last page.” In the same issue of LE POINT I read the following quotation by a minor celebrity: “My father told me, some day you will fall in love with a woman and you will give her all that you have. Afterwards you will divorce her and give her half of everything else.”
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KARAJAN
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In a new biography of maestro Herbert von Karajan (from the Greek Karayannis, literally Blackjohn) we are informed that from 1933 to 1945 he was a card-carrying Nazi but that his wife was Jewish and Hitler detested him. While in Italy I remember to have been told the following anecdote. When after a concert at La Scala representatives of the Armenian community of Milan went backstage to shake his hand and tell him how proud they were of his success, he had no choice but to point out the fact that he was not one of them.
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Monday, March 03, 2008
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ARMENIANISM AS PATHOLOGY
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If to be human and to be Armenian is not a contradiction, it follows neither is patriotism and fundamental human rights. And yet, whenever I write about Armenians, I feel the need to remind myself and my readers that it is not as an Armenian that I write, but as a human being.
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Free speech: did we ever have it? Do we have it today in America? Have you ever met a partisan willing to concede our partisan press is not free?
A headline in our local paper this morning reads: “Suspicious vote spurs violence in Armenia.” In the final paragraph we are informed: “The state of emergency decree imposes severe restrictions, including banning all mass gatherings and ordering the news media reports on domestic political matters include only official information.”
So what else is new? Under Levon’s regime, I remember, an editor from Yerevan telling me his office had been vandalized and his reporters beaten up by thugs.
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In one of his books, Granian says non-partisan Armenians are to blame for all our problems because they refuse to get involved in community affairs. When in my review I pointed out that we had more reasons to blame our partisans because they had been successful only in one endeavor, namely creating, legitimizing, and subsidizing divisions, he called to inform me that I had misunderstood…he had not meant…what he really had meant…and so on. But I knew better. I had heard that cliché line about contemptible chezoks before, many times.
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Nothing could be more unpatriotic than to assume that as Armenians, it is our duty to cover up our failings or to pretend they don’t exist. To assert superiority, to speak with a forked tongue, to adopt a holier than thou stance, to violate a fellow Armenian’s fundamental human rights… all these things and more may be said to be an integral part of our pathological identity. Listen to Stepan Voskanian (1825-1901): “For thirty-five years I did not write a single word in Armenian. I was treated so shabbily by my fellow Armenians that I could not help hating everything that I held dear as a young man; and since I was starved by my own countrymen, I had to write in French in order to survive.” Elsewhere: “The position of an Armenian critic is very precarious these days. How is he to discharge his duties? If he speaks the truth, he is dismissed as an enemy. If he uses his common sense and says what he thinks to be right, he is rejected as a hostile witness.”
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And now, Simon Vratsian (1882-1969): “All our religious, political and cultural institutions share a single aim, the survival of the nation. If the nation perishes, neither Etchmiadzin nor Antelias, not even God in His heaven, can be of any help to us.”
How many of our present leaders have had the honesty to say as much?
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Finally, a detail that so far I neglected to mention. After World War II, repatriated women were also addressed as aghber by the natives. But being called aghber was the least of their problems. They were also bullied and intimidated. So much so that they would warn visitors from abroad not to complain or say anything remotely critical not only in the presence of officials and strangers but also in the privacy of their own homes and in the presence of members of their own families who happened to be native-born. I am not adopting a holier-than-thou stance. I am only suggesting to call some Armenians swine would be an insult to pigs.
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Am I wrong? If I am, ascribe it to human fallibility. I have at no time paraded as an infallible judge. If only the infallible were allowed to speak, the voice of the Pope of Rome would be the only one that is heard in our environment.
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Tuesday, March 04, 2008
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ON BELIEF SYSTEMS
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How do you convince a believer that what he believes in is false? That’s easy. It can’t be done. Don’t even try. It will be a waste of time. No amount of philosophical arguments or documentary evidence or eyewitness accounts will make him change his mind. That’s because Homo sapiens has a brain that is quintessentially brainwashable, which is worse than saying he is brainless. That’s why Genghis Khan, Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao had more followers than dissidents.
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During the Soviet era some very smart people in the West, including famous philosophers like Sartre, denied the existence of gulags. It was all a fabrication of the filthy bourgeoisie, they said. I remember, when I first published a critical commentary on Levon’s regime, I lost a friend who happened to be a historian. If our historians cannot learn from history, what can we hope for from our laymen?
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Consider a Christian, a Muslim, a Jew and their conviction that theirs is the only true religion for which they are willing to kill and die. It never even occurs to them that it was not they or their religious leaders who chose their religion for them but the fact that they were born and raised on this or that side of a mountain or river.
I am not advocating the abolition of all religions or belief systems. What I am saying is that they should be private affairs. The moment they get organized they become dangerous if only because they assert superiority and legitimize intolerance.
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When a nation is divided into two hostile groups, most people will be driven to take sides. Very few will dare to say “A plague on both your houses!” And why? Because that would be unpatriotic. It follows as night follows day, civil wars are the sincerest expression of one’s love of God and Country.
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There is nothing wrong with patriotism provided you keep in mind your enemy too has been brainwashed to believe there is nothing wrong in killing you in the name of God and Country.
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Wednesday, March 05, 2008
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HOOLIGANISM IN THOUGHT AND ACTION
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Only naïve souls with an unrealistic view of political leaders and their dupes are shocked over recent developments in Armenia. Speaking for myself, I shall resist the temptation of repeating two of the most hateful (to me) clichés in the English languages: “I told you so,” and “Let that be a lesson to you.”
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In his book ON MURDER, Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859) tells us, the trouble with murderers is that sooner or later they will think little of being late for their appointments. Likewise, the trouble with people who treat their fellow men like trash is that sooner or later they will think little of calling them trash.
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People don’t judge you by how much you know but by how useful you can be to them, even if the service you provide is flattering their ego by pretending they know better.
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I am beginning to suspect our genocide has become a favorite subject with us because it is a clearly defined black-and-white story that reinforces our self-assessed moral superiority. What kind of moral superiority is it that allows us to stab one another in the back even when we are not provoked, unless you consider questions like “How dare you expose my prejudices, or question the wisdom of my limitations, or the caliber of my Armenianism (which may well be disguised Ottomanism, Bolshevism, or hooliganism)” as provocations.
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