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Sunday, September 13, 2009
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RATS
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When New York publishers rejected Thoreau's works, he said: “My bait will not tempt the rats, they are too well fed.”
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FASCIST RATS
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If the Axis powers had won World War II, there would be a law now that says, all mention of the Holocaust is a criminal offense. America being a democracy, recognizes the primacy of free speech. As a result there is no corresponding law that deals with the extermination of Indians and the slavery of blacks. No one can arrest a black minister for saying “God damn America!” instead of “God save America.” Indian, black, and even white writers are as free to write big books on America's criminal past as white racists are free to think they did to the Indians what the Indians were doing to one another and what they did to the whites whenever they had the power. As for slavery: even the Greeks at the apex of their civilization (5th century BC) had slaves. Even wealthy blacks in America had slaves. In Africa the blacks enslave one another even today. And if the blacks could enslave whites, does anyone think they would refuse to do so on moral grounds? Hence, the animus against Obama.
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WHITE OPPOSITION TO OBAMA
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Obama is not an American. He is a Muslim. He befriends terrorists. He was born in Africa. He is an illegal President. He is a Nazi. He is a liar. The secret aim of his health care reform is to bankrupt white America. And when that happens, we will be at their mercy and they will do to us what we did to them.
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CLOSER TO HOME
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The Jews are doing to the Palestinians what the Romans did to them. Armenians (with the help of Greeks and Kurds) will be glad to do to us what they did to the Azeris and we did to them. The natives are restless. The rats are afoot!
That's not paranoia but reality, and a reality with so many precedents in history that it might as well be as routine and predictable an occurrence as sunrise and sunset.
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OVERHEARD
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“Multitasking is a myth. You can't chew gum and fart at the same time.” Neither can you stop blaming blacks for planning to bankrupt whites long enough to blame the chief executive officers (all of them as white as la crème de la scum) for bankrupting the world economy.
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Monday, September 14, 2009
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ON FAITH
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To believe means to believe the unbelievable.
To believe means to believe your belief system to be the only true one.
Not to believe in what someone else believes, or not to subscribe to his belief system, does not mean to disagree with him but to be immune to his Big Lie.
Faith is a prejudice that is at the root of countless conflicts and many more victims. But people continue to cling to it as if it were a self-evident truth rather than a Big as well as a Dangerous Lie.
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I believe the Genocide happened.
My Turkish friend believes it never did.
We disagree because we were exposed to two different sets of educational systems or propaganda.
My friend has written a big book (over 800 pages) in which he proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Genocide is a fabrication of Armenian propagandists.
I have read this book and I remain unconvinced not only because I have read bigger books in which the Genocide is documented but also because I believe it happened, and he who believes is not open to reason or documentation or evidence.
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Propaganda is worse than hearsay evidence – it is fabricated evidence. Hearsay evidence is not admissible in a court of law. Fabricated evidence is perjury and perjury is a serious criminal offense punishable by law. And yet, those who recycle propaganda outnumber those who think for themselves a million to one – roughly speaking of course. This is especially true in authoritarian regimes. It is different in democracies. There are schools of thought in the United States today that assert both Pearl Harbor and 9/11 could have been prevented.
I believe the Genocide could have been prevented too.
I believe those who assert the Genocide was inevitable are wrong. Because if it was inevitable, why is it that no one saw it coming? Why is it that no one warned the people?
“To what purpose?” my partisan friends demand to know whenever the subject comes up.
“So that the people would weigh their options and make an informed decision.”
“Such as?”
“Such as to stay put and be butchered or get the hell out.”
“And abandon all their possessions?”
This response reminds me of Paul Valéry who somewhere speaks of a man who refused to let go of his umbrella and was run over by a bus.
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I believe the Genocide to be a result of two colossal blunders committed by nationalist fanatics and fools on both sides. It goes without saying that to massacre innocent civilians is a far more serious crime than stupidity or ignorance.
Ignorance may be the most innocent of all transgressions but in life it is the most severely punished. If there are inflexible laws in life, this surely must be one of them.
And speaking of inflexible laws, here is another: If you refuse to learn from your blunders, you condemn yourself to repeat them.
What have we learned from our genocide?
What else but to say we are at the mercy of inevitable historic conditions or forces beyond our control?
Same mistake, same propaganda, same Big Lie fabricated and recycled by men who are too lazy or stupid to think for themselves.
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Tuesday, September 15, 2009
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A PAGE FROM MY DIARY
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A frequently asked question: “What would you have done in their place?”
My answer: Probably what they did, but having done so I wouldn't compound the felony by spending the rest of my life pretending to be the exact opposite of who and what I am; neither would I expect others to look up to me as a role model, or a leader of men, or a noble specimen of humanity, or a man of vision.
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If you ever ask an Armenian writer (assuming you can find one) to describe the nature of his employment, the chances are (if he is an honest man) he will say: “It is a demanding job with a negative income in a carcinogenic environment.”
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I have dealt with too many of my fellow countrymen to be a friend of the human race.
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I believe free speech to be a human right. I am therefore guilty of unArmenian activities.
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Where wishful thinking enters, disappointment is sure to follow.
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The first paragraph in the propaganda of barbarians reads:
“We are civilized.
We speak the truth.
Those who disagree with us are liars
and the world will be a better place without them.”
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The difference between those who think and speak for themselves and those who recycle propaganda is that the propagandists are never wrong.
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The height of luxury for me is the ability to say “Talk to my lawyer.”
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Writers cannot silence politicians but politicians have been silencing writers for centuries.
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I speak in defense of human rights. The opposition speaks in the name of God, Capital, and Patriotism. I have as much chance to survive as a vegetarian who is surrounded by a tribe of starving cannibals.
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Someday I would like to meet an Armenian who is not driven by the need to prove himself smarter or more patriotic than I.
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Judge an idea or ideology not by its definition but by its history.
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Wednesday, September 16, 2009
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NOTES / COMMENTS
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W. Somerset Maugham: " Suffering makes men petty and vindictive."
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A friend writes:
“The lawyer husband of a former student of mine was part of a non-partisan U.S.
commission to monitor the last elections in Armenia. They found irregularities.
Afterward, the 'winner' of the presidency asked his defeated opponent to come see him in his office. When the ex-candidate stepped into the President's office, a bunch of thugs beat the opponent so badly he had to be hospitalized. As his opponent was being beaten, the President said, 'That's for being insolent.'
Democracy comes to Armenia."
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I believe in being diplomatic with Turks but not with Ottomanized Armenians; and I call an Armenian Ottomanized when he does with his tongue what the Turks did with their yataghans.
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Eugene O'Neill: “[Members of the State Department] are trained to be conspirators, card sharps, double-crossers and secret betrayers of their own people."
That's what I mean when I say our “betters” are our worst.
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When it comes to the Genocide, we agree on one important point with the Turks: if it weren't for the meddling of the West, it wouldn't have happened. It follows, the West too owes us an apology.
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