my aim

May 9, 2010
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TO MAKE A LONG STORY SHORT
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Just because something happens, it does not mean it is God's will.
God has given us a brain and if we don't use it, we can't blame our blunders on God or, for that matter, on the Devil.
But the blame-game is the favorite sport of all losers, and we are no exception.
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“Turks, Turks, Turks,” say our leaders; never “the buck stops here.”
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To say we need solutions is to imply that our literature is a waste of time – a convenient line with which to suppress dissent or anyone who refuses to flatter our ego.
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We are not as good as we think we, Naregatsi tells us. We may even be worse than we like to admit. Which may explain why Naregatsi is our greatest and least read writer.
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If you want the truth, give up all hope for flattery.
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Where there are divisions, there will also be dupes who are easily taken in by false arguments.
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Nice Armenians exist, but only in Saroyan, who was himself far from nice, or so we are told by his wife and son in their memoirs.
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There is no money in dissent, hence the scarcity of dissenters.
There is money in flattery, hence the abundance of brown-nosers.
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A victim who collaborates with his victimizer ceases to be a victim.
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May 10, 2010
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AS OTHERS SEE US
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We have friends. So do Turks. In a review of Norman Stone's THE ATLANTIC AND ITS ENEMIES, I read: “...he (Norman Stone) has become a passionate advocate for Turkey against a very powerful Armenian diaspora.” (THE SPECTATOR, 24 April 2010, page 32.)
I suspect what is meant here is not that we are powerful but that we have some mighty powerful arguments in our favor.
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To cover up a scandal or a lie may be easy, but to cover up a million corpses is much more difficult. The Turks say the corpses are not Armenian but Turkish. What they ignore is the fact that you cannot bury a million bodies in the middle of a desert where no battle was fought.
A very powerful Armenian diaspora?
Don't make me laugh!
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In the same issue of THE SPECTATOR I also read the following: “...the real abuse by Roman Catholic priests may not be the groping of child bodies but priestly subversion of child minds.”
I agree! Brainwashing is as serious a crime as sexual molestation of defenseless boys and girls.
Organized religions compound their felonies by
(one) asserting infallibility, and
(two) by legitimizing intolerance.
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Thucydides: “The strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must.”
By dividing themselves and engaging in endless internecine conflicts, the ancient Greeks and contemporaries of Thucydides fell prey to Macedonians, Romans, and Ottoman Turks. And very much like us, they continue to divide themselves today. And again like us, they continue to find themselves at the mercy of powers beyond their control.
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Philip Pullman: “Wisdom works secretly and quietly, not in the great courts and palaces of the earth, but among ordinary people.”
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May 11, 2010
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COMMISSARS
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To how many of my critics and detractors I could say, some day if I ever write an essay titled “Portrait of a commissar,” I will use you as a source of inspiration. Like all commissars, you are better at shooting writers than understanding them. I wonder why. Is it because it is easier to shoot them in the neck than trying to understand them?
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Like all skinheads and fanatics, all commissars are wrong if only because they assert infallibility, which amounts to a bordello madam asserting virginity.
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It is much easier to say “It was God's will,” rather than, “It was our fault.”
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In all anti-democratic environments, the people are brainwashed to support and believe in liars and starve those who expose them.
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Why should God interfere when men adopt the Devil as their role model?
After giving us what we need to survive and shape our destiny, God tells us, “It's up to you to decide if you want to live like free men or die like slaves.”
You may now guess what has been our choice.
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“Many cities of men he saw and learned their minds,” Homer says of Odysseus. We too have seen many cities and a large variety of men, but what have we learned? -- except perhaps to brag about how smart we are and blame others for our misfortunes.
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You want solutions?
Read the Bible.
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
“Where there is no vision the people perish.”
And the people perish because
“When the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.”
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Unlike Protestants, Catholics are not encouraged to read the Bible. Neither, it seems, are Armenians – judging by the number of readers who demand solutions from me, as if I were a better writer than the Holy Ghost.
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Even so, I thank my detractors, for they are my most faithful readers.
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May 12, 2010
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MY AIM IN LIFE
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To make the incomprehensible comprehensible.
Also to convince the brainwashed
that they have been brainwashed.
Not an easy task, especially if the brainwashed
have also been brainwashed to believe they are smart.
I maintain our history,
or what they call nowadays, our narrative,
proves that some of us may indeed be smart in the marketplace,
but most of us are dumb in politics.
What if I am wrong and my critics right?
That's always a possibility of course,
but a very remote one, if my critics believe
what I believed thirty years ago.
As for those of my critics who think
they have all the answers:
No one but the Good Lord has all the answers --
I use the Good Lord as a point of reference.
I don't assert His existence.
I assume it.
There is a difference.
As for our genocide:
I believe the narrative of our nationalist historians
and Turcocentric ghazetajis to be wrong
in so far as it stresses Turkish responsibility
and covers up the incompetence of our leadership.
Lamentation is important.
But learning from our blunders is even more so.
Turkish responsibility does not justify
our own past and present irresponsibility.
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