right?

Sunday, August 29, 2010
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AM I RIGHT OR WRONG?
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That's up to the reader to decide.
I am not in the business of proving myself right
and my adversaries wrong.
All I am interested in doing is sharing my understanding.
If I were interested in proving myself right
I would write a thesis with footnotes and a bibliography.
But I leave that to academics
who tend to choose a subject and stick to it
to the end of their career.
No one in his right mind
would call writing for Armenians a career
or even a job. If I were to place it somewhere
it would have to be between a hobby
and a complete waste of time.
As a victim, what motivates me is less love of victims
and more hatred of victimizers,
especially the kind that begin by deceiving children
and end by sodomizing them – sometimes literally.
And if you think Armenians are morally superior
to Catholic priests, ask yourself:
Who drilled that nonsense into your head?
What motivates you to believe him, beside wishful thinking?
If some readers disagree with me,
it may be because so far they have failed
to deprogram themselves, which means
they continue to believe everything that happened to us
was someone else's fault
and our sole contribution to history
has been providing victims to alien tyrants.
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Monday, August 30, 2010
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ONE OR TWO THINGS ABOUT MYSELF
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I have a phobia of boring the reader.
My secret ambition:
to write three-line essays as in a haiku.
*
The best Armenian joke I know:
bosses, bishops, benefactors.
*
Books I consider necessities, everything else a luxury.
Books I get free of charge from the public library;
luxuries from the dollar store.
*
Something to brag about:
I have never delivered a speech in my life;
and I have never heard a speech that didn't bore me.
*
I am beginning to think of death as liberation.
Writing for Armenians may have something to do with this.
*
The first time I met an honest Armenian,
I thought he was crazy.
*
Who will disagree with me if I say
to have an Armenian friend is to harbor a potential enemy?
*
I neither preach nor teach. I share.
There is an element of coercion in both preaching and teaching.
A preacher relies on a captive audience,
and a teacher on his own authority.
Sharing is between equals; it does not exploit or violate anyone's freedom.
*
Because Negro spirituals touch my soul
as deeply as our sharagans, my patriotism may well be suspect.
*
To be misunderstood is almost to suffer an injustice.
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Tuesday, August 31, 2010
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GREED
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“We defeated fascism and communism,” American like to brag.
Maybe. But it is equally true that both fascism and communism helped them by committing suicide.
And Americans may be next.
*
According to a British pundit, “The banks lost money but the bankers made a fortune and now live in big mansions.”
But according to an American observer: “The salaries and bonuses of chief executive officers are less than 1% of the total."
Whom to believe?
Statistics can lie, of course. The average citizen can't afford to make his own statistics and must therefore rely on statisticians. What matters here – what needs to be carefully and objectively analyzed – is the mindset of the men at the top who focus on their welfare so much that every other consideration is ignored.
So what if millions lose their jobs?
So what if some losers commit suicide?
So what if it's bad public relations?
Bankers pay millions to their PR men: let them earn their keep and bury the problem in statistics, sophistries, and legalities.
*
If Obama loses it will be because he helped top dogs and ignored the plight of underdogs – the very same mindset that toppled fascism and communism.
Even assuming Obama is doing what must be done: his failure consists in his inability to convince the people; and when a politician failes in that department, nothing and no one can save him.
*
A headline in the Op-Ed page of my morning paper today reads: “Billionaires bankrolling U.S. Conservative movement.”
They are saved with taxpayers' money and they demand tax cuts for themselves.
They make so much money that they don't know what to do with it, and they want more! -- more for themselves and less for everyone else.
And they call Obama a communist and a fascist.
Toynbee is right: “Empires and nations are not killed: they commit suicide.”
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Wednesday, September 1, 2010
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REPUTATION AND SELF-ESTEEM
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Whenever I exercise my critical faculties and my fundamental human right of free speech, I am told I besmirch our reputation in the eyes of the world.
Allow me to quote two eminent witness on the subject of reputation:
Saint-Simon: “My self-esteem has always increased in direct proportion to the damage I was doing to my reputation.”
Tolstoy: “The higher I rise in the opinion of others, the lower I sink in my own.”
*
It was during the Watergate hearings that I discovered the greatness of democracy.
*
We have swallowed the poison of murderous alien tyrants for such a long time that we confuse their absence with freedom, and our rotten paternalism as a mandate from heaven.
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Who benefits when we cover up our contradictions? Surely not the people.
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