misery

Thursday, July 9, 2009
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MISERABILISM
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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.
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Friday, July 10, 2009
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“I BELIEVE IN AMERICA”
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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”).
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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.
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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.
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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.”
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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!”
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Saturday, July 11, 2009
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THE ENEMY WITHIN
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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.
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