leaders

Thursday, January 12, 2012
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LEADERS
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Who are our political leaders?
What do I know about them?
I know more about Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann
than about our own leaders.
If I try hard enough I may remember a handful of names
but afterwards I do my best to forget them.
About leaders in the Homeland
I have been told by an insider that
they are former KGB agents.
True or false?
I don’t know and I care even less.
About leaders of the Diaspora:
I remember an elder statesman telling me
some of them were Turks
who spoke Armenian fluently
and knew all there was to know about us.
True or false?
Does anyone care?
I no longer have any illusions.
I know for a fact that even in the so-called
open democracies of the civilized West
politics is a filthy business.
I shudder to think about our Ottomanized Diaspora
and Sovietized Homeland.
Poor Armenia – forever an orphan
at the mercy of manipulators
who are themselves manipulated by alien interests,
like dogs who know their master
but not their master’s master.
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Friday, January 13, 2012
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ONCE UPON A TIME
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Once upon a time almost everyone I met was older than I.
Now, almost everyone I meet is younger.
*
Once upon a time I had many questions
and I believed in the answers
that I was given by my betters.
*
Once upon a time I believed everything I read in the papers.
Now, I trust our editors as much as I trust
our bosses, bishops, and benefactors.
*
Once upon a time I loved to travel,
explore unfamiliar places and meet new people.
I now find solitary confinement preferable.
*
The world has become a strange place
but the strangest of all places is my own homeland
and the strangest of all people are my fellow countrymen.
*
If we don't know why things exist,
what can we really know?
*
One does not have to be an insurance broker
to know that heroes have a shorter life span than cowards.
*
Murder Inc. is a capitalist phenomenon.
Under communism murder becomes a monopoly of the state.
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Saturday, January 14, 2012
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MORE VARIATIONS
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If you want to know more about Armenians,
read about Turks.
*
Very early this morning,
in a 30-minute radio documentary on Turks,
I heard a pundit say:
“Subservience to the military and amnesia
come naturally to Turks.”
*
Their unspoken slogan, like ours:
“The Sultans are dead. Long live Ottomanism.”
*
So what else is new?
The more I peer into our collective unconscious,
the less I like what I see there.
*
To some of my readers I am an enemy
because they don’t like to see their reflection in the mirror
that I hold up to them.
*
No one has ever said
confronting oneself is a pleasant experience.
*
Where there is amnesia
there will also be unspeakable memories.
*
They call us “Christian Turks,”
in the same way that the Yanks call their natives
“American Indians.”
The defeated have as much choice in identifying themselves
as dogs.
*
Solon, the Lawgiver (7th century BC)
in an address to the Athenians
(I quote and paraphrase from memory):
“Individually you may well be very smart
but collectively you behave like damn fools.”
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