dogs

Thursday, August 23, 2012
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OF DOGS AND FLEAS
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Where there is abuse of power there will be victims.
Where there are victims there will be victimizers.
Where there are victimizers there will be dissent.
Where there are fascists there will be violations of human rights.
*
Under Stalin we had Stalinists
who were brainwashed to believe
they were not fascists but patriots.
Under Hitler we had pro-Nazi anti-Semites.
And under Putin today we have Putinists.
Even Talaat had his share of Armenian supporters,
among them Zohrab, himself a highly sophisticated
and brilliant intellectual, political leader, diplomat and writer.
*
Sometimes I am asked:
What would you have done in their place?
-- meaning Armenians in fascist regimes.
My answer: I don’t know.
Very probably I would have done
what they did – i.e. taken the easy and safe way out:
be a Nazi under Hitler, a Stalinists under Stalin, and so on.
But having done so I wouldn’t expect future generations
to look up to me as a hero or a role model
or a lover of freedom and a defender of human rights,
or a noble specimen of humanity.
*
The problem with fascists is that
they dig their own graves with their own hands
and expect the rest of the world to look up to them
as morally superior.
*
I don’t spin theories.
I speak of historic reality.
If you lie down with dogs,
you will get up with fleas.
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Friday, August 24, 2012
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“KILL A COMMIE FOR CHRIST”
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The aim of philosophy is to introduce meaning
into a meaningless world.
The aim of religion is to introduce cannibalism.
Remember: no one has ever killed anyone
in the name of Socrates or Spinoza.
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What makes the 1% smart is greed.
What makes the 99% dumb is cowardice.
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The bloodthirsty disposition of the few
and the cowardice of the many:
there you have it – an abridged history of mankind.
*
Trying to make a good impression on others
by pretending to be better than we are
might as well be an admission of inferiority.
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Saturday, August 25, 2012
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POLITICS 101
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If a political leader cannot see the coming catastrophe,
what is he good for? – besides making bombastic statements
about past achievements?
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We are so hungry for past achievements that
we even brag about being the first nation in the 20th century
to be targeted for genocide.
Has anyone ever bragged about being run over by a truck?
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Once upon a time I too was a patriot.
I looked up to our leaders
the way Turks look up today to Ataturk,
the way the Soviets looked up to Stalin
and Germans to Hitler.
But I am no longer a child.
*
Propaganda explains nothing.
Its sole aim is to convince and persuade
by avoiding all explanations.
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Nationalism is a game in which
victory invariably goes to the strong,
never to the just.
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I am against chauvinism for two reasons:
when we emphasize the positive in us
and cover up the negative,
we run the risk of deceiving ourselves.
But when we do the same to others,
we may make friends,
and we need friends more than we need
self-satisfied blind men
who pretend to have 20/20 vision.
*
If our leaders could not see through
the likes of Talaat, Stalin, Hitler,
and more recently, Assad,
they might as well have been blind,
and “when the blind lead the blind
both shall fall into the ditch,”
which is exactly where we are today – the ditch,
compliments of our “betters.”
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