fascism

Sunday, August 30, 2009
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A DEFINITION OF FASCISM
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WHAT WE NEED
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-Foreign investments, economists, entrepreneurs, industrialists.
-A police force with the latest computerized gadgets.
-A disciplined and well-trained army with the best hardware and delivery system money can buy.
-Law-and-order judges.
-Medical doctors, specialists, and hospitals with up-to-date diagnostic tools.
-Experienced and competent mechanics and repairmen.
-Architects, artists, and sculptors,
-Four-star chefs.
-Athletes of all kinds.
-Actors, directors, singers, dancers, and choreographers.
-Composers, conductors, and instrumentalists.
-Novelists, poets, playwrights.
-Experts in all fields of human endeavor.
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WHAT WE DON'T NEED
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Dissidents.
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Monday, August 31, 2009
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COVER UP
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There is only one way to never make mistakes and that is by not admitting them.
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Watergate was exposed by a free press and an independent judiciary. We have neither the first nor the second. As a result, our blunders can safely remain covered up and our blunderers can continue to parade as men of integrity and able statesmen worthy of universal respect.
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When after the collapse of the Soviet Union a KGB agent established himself in America, published his memoirs in which he said they (the KGB) had been successful in planting their own agents into the ARF leadership, and I quoted the relevant passages in my review of the book, a very angry insider called and started yelling at me, “How dare you write such nonsense!”
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When Antranik Zaroukian, as a member of the Party, asked permission to edit a literary periodical independent of Party control, permission was denied. Result: a moribund literature and a stagnant press monopolized by Turcocentric editors and ghazetajis.
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Something similar could be said of our political parties in the Homeland, whose main function appears to be to cover up their collaboration with the Kremlin and the systematic extermination of our ablest men. Result: the nation remains at the mercy of leaders who are the offspring of criminals who got away with murder.
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Now, consider what happened in France immediately after World War II. All those guilty of collaborating with the Germans were immediately arrested, tried, found guilty, and condemned to death as traitors. Marshall Petain (called “Putain” = whore), former minister of war, hero of World War I, and head of state during the occupation, was among the condemned. Result: the French judiciary recovered its independence, the French press is flourishing, and French literature is so alive and well that writers of all nations feel welcomed enough to give up their mother tongue and write in French. Ionesco (Romanian), Beckett (Irishman), and Adamov (Armenian), three of the most influential playwrights in world literature, wrote in French.
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And speaking of Armenian writers writing in French: A best-selling writer by the name of Mamikonian (I forget her first name) was recently approached by Armenian monarchists who urged her to be the queen of Armenia. When she rejected the offer, they threatened to abduct her children. For a while she and her family were under police protection. For all I know, they still are.
Moral: Some Armenians would rather be a second-rate French writer than the first-rate queen of a nation that was first to convert to Christianity and first to be almost exterminated in the 20th century (and why we like to brag about that, I will be damned if I know).
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Tuesday, September 1, 2009
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CONFESSION
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We have spent millions on Genocide recognition,
but not a single penny on Genocide prevention.
And when I speak of genocide
I speak not only of what happened in the Ottoman Empire
nearly a hundred years ago,
(and thus belongs to the irrevocable
and irreversible past)
but also of what is happening today even as I write
(that is, alienation and assimilation in the Diaspora
and exodus from the Homeland).
When it comes to the “red” Genocide,
not only we pin the responsibility on the Turks,
we also paint them all black
(Asiatic barbarians, bloodthirsty savages, jungle predators),
and ourselves all white.
But when it comes to our own “spitak chart” (white slaughter)
we plead not guilty
by reason of historic, political, social, and cultural conditions
beyond our control.
I submit that to be a big lie!
I could make a long list of indictments
that may suggest otherwise, among them,
useless internecine conflicts, divisions, incompetence,
corruption, dogmatism, intolerance, double talk,
waste of valuable resources, mismanagement,
misrepresentation, contempt for free speech,
violations of human rights,
the need for a free press,
absence of vision
(remember, “where there is no vision, the people perish”),
and charlatanism.
Conditions beyond our control?
Not guilty?
Not responsible?
Bare-faced lies and worse.
Much worse!
Lies told by idiots and believed by dupes with negative IQs.
But this is not so much an indictment as a confession.
Until very recently I too spoke like an idiot
and believed everything I was told by my “betters,”
whom I now believe to be our worst!
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Wednesday, September 2, 2009
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DIARY
(Parental guidance is advised)
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A quiet day. On the Internet, only three hostile comments which make me think of Koestler's remark – “Nothing can be as sad as the loss of an illusion.” To grow up might as well be synonymous with to lose illusions. What is life if not a cemetery of buried illusions? If the first act of a play is about an illusion, the final act is bound to be tragic.
How to explain the fact that even after a century, Armenians continue to cling to the illusion that they are as white as snow and it is the rest of the world that is rotten? My only explanation: what J.S. Bach is to music, what Paganini was to the violin, what Casanova was to women, what Casals was to the cello, what Bobby Fisher was to chess, and what Tiger Woods is to golf, we are to the blame-game.
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Reading a big biography of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I still cannot connect his life to his work. Where did ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE come from? A paragraph from Balzac married to a plot by Faulkner written with a touch of Kafka?
Also reading Richard Price's LUSH LIFE. His fast-moving dialogue fascinates me even when there are times when I cannot follow its logical progression and slang.
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Helene Mercier: “Music opens before us a realm in which it is emotions that give meaning to life.”
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A headline in my morning paper: “Turkey, Armenia to set up diplomatic ties.” Let others see progress here. I see nothing but the prescription of a placebo to a patient suffering from terminal cancer.
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