Sunday, November 7, 2010
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ON LEADERS AND LEADERSHIP
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There is a sheep and a goat in all of us.
We may believe what we are told
by those who know better
(or pretend to know better)
but we also entertain doubts.
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We have more questions than answers
and no one has the final answers.
Leadership consists in dividing and deceiving.
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Armenians and Turks share one important thing in common:
they are both dupes of their own leadership.
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There are no good leaders;
only good public servants.
In an ideal world anyone with leadership qualities
(and I can't imagine a more repellent quality)
would be treated as a potential criminal in need of a shrink.
*
If as a community we are a disaster area today
it is because of the phenomenon known as
too-many-chiefs-and-no-Indians.
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If there are two sides to every story,
there will also be leaders willing
to exploit the dupes of one side against the other.
Everything that is bad in life we owe to leaders;
and everything that is good to public servants.
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As long as there are imams and popes
there will also be infidels.
What could be more oxymoronic as well as moronic
than to think the only way to assert one's own humanity
is by dehumanizing others?
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Where am I going with this?
My aim is to understand that which is incomprehensible.
My ambition in life is to take a single step in the right direction
in a field without signs and without a center.
*
Mankind will always be at the mercy of leaders
willing to divide by stressing the interests of one side against the other.
If we could only teach ourselves
to think against ourselves.
*
To the self-righteous I say:
Get used to the idea that you may not be
as right as you think you are.
No one is – especially those who have no doubts.
In life, the questions will always outnumber the answers,
and the doubts will always outnumber the certainties.
To think otherwise is the source of all evil.
*
Who is a dupe?
If you think your leaders care more about you
than about their own powers and privileges, you qualify!
And may the Good Lord
(if He exists)
have mercy on your soul
(if you have one).
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Monday, November 8, 2010
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REFLECTIONS
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While reading an article on Istanbul written by two Canadian tourists, I was wondering if Armenians would be mentioned; and sure enough they were, but not by the tourists but by an Oriental carpet dealer trying to sell them a kilim. “Why,” he demands to know at one point, “don't more Americans visit? Is it because of the Armenians who died after the First World War?” -- implying, we all die sooner or later; no one lives forever; what's so special about these damn Armenians who are out to starve me?
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Turks say we massacred them.
Why did we do that?
The obvious answer must be: Because after six hundred years of subservience we had had it up to here! And if that's not a good enough reason, I like to know what is.
*
We say they massacred us.
Why did they do that?
Again, the obvious and common-sense answer must be: They thought if we win, they will have to be subservient to us.
Subservience may be good enough for inferior races like the Armenians, but unthinkable for those born to rule.
Which may suggest that, no matter how you slice it, they were racists and what they did qualifies as a crime against humanity.
*
What if we too are racists?
If we are, it may be because we earned the right – when we let them rape our daughters and use our sons to satisfy their imperial greed by forcing them to kill and die in their own wars.
*
The difference between Turkish and Armenian racism is similar to that which exists between murder one and self-defense. The sentence for the first is life imprisonment, and for the second, not guilty (which of course is not the same as innocent).
*
Anyone who says or implies you don't have to think for yourself because I will tell you what to think on the grounds that I know better (and this is as true of our former rulers as it is today of our Ottomanized elites), uses persuasion as surely as a castrator uses a knife, and the organ he itches to delete is much more valuable than the other one.
*
Readers who would gladly see me destroyed urge me to be more constructive.
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Armenians are not smart.
It is my ambition to repeat that as often as our propagandists say Armenians are smart.
There is no such thing as a smart dupe.
All dupes are dumb.
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Wake up Armenians! You have nothing to lose but your nightmares.
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Tuesday, November 9, 2010
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THEORY AND PRACTICE
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If I keep things short it's because I am myself so easily bored by what I read that I have developed an acute phobia of boring my readers.
*
When fornicators preach chastity, they say: “Do as I say, not as I do.”
Why should anyone be allowed to make a comfortable living by doing the opposite of what he says?
Imagine a cop who delivers lectures on law and order during the day and turns into a serial killer at night.
Imagine a political leader who promises peace and prosperity for a thousand years and delivers war and pestilence.
On second thought, no need to imagine anything, just read a history of the 20th Century.
Imagine a lawyer – strike that! Bad example.
*
No one likes to be called a crook, especially crooks.
Likewise, no one likes to be called dumb, especially the dumb.
Everyone prefers to be called smart, including the dumb – especially the dumb.
Which may explain why we call ourselves smart.
Self-flattery is as Armenian as pilaf and shish-kebab.
*
A few years ago, one of my books, titled FRAGMENTED DREAMS (out of print now), was withdrawn from classrooms because some parents thought it may lower the self-esteem of their children.
Because I judge a nation by its history as opposed to its propaganda, I have acquired enemies among Turks as well as Armenians.
Some people (present company suspected) are so abysmally insecure that they think truth, instead of setting them free (as the Scriptures tell us) will shatter their image in their own eyes.
*
As for our academics who, even as I write, are busy shaping the character and worldview of the next generation: I am acquainted with several of them and they strike me as individuals who will say and do anything in exchange of a regular salary.
*
The problem with speechifiers is that after they deliver the same speech three or four times, they start believing in their own nonsense.
No one who submits his intelligence to individuals who don't have much of it themselves (namely, bosses, bishops, and benefactors) can claim to know better.
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Wednesday, November 10, 2010
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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
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A reader once called me “a self-appointed critic,” as if popes and imams, or for that matter, commissars and our own Jack S. Avanakians are in the habit of appointing their own critics, and unless you have a license to practice, what you say ain't worth a sh*t.
*
Speaking of his fellow countrymen, Ben Hecht once said: “The American does not aspire to overthrow the thieves and oppressors half as much as he does to become one of them.”
If you have a single shred of evidence to suggest that we are morally superior, I would like to see it.
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Do you remember the very first question you were asked as a child? I do! “Whom do you love more, your father or your mother?” That's when I began to suspect adults are nuts.
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Sheep go where their shepherds take them; but there is a wolf in every man, as there is a Spartacus in every slave. This is a rule with only one exception: Armenians. The average Armenian dupe is a sheep in sheep's clothing.
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Writing for Armenians means making yourself vulnerable to the insults of readers who are equipped to understand only recycled crapola. Deviate an inch and run the risk of being called an idiot by idiots.
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If I continue to function today it's because I work for nothing and I can't be fired.
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Like all -isms Armenianism too has its deceivers and dupes. With one difference: our dupes don't consider themselves dupes because they think they are too smart to be dupes.
Well, I've got news for them!
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