CONFESSION (XXII) ************************* Since I have no political ambitions I don’t mind admitting that I have been wrong most of my life and I am probably wrong today. If to be right means to kill someone I’d much rather be wrong. * My favorite illusion: As human being most people are equipped to see the light of reason. * Addicts of the blame-game refuse to believe that we have played a key role in our history and we continue to do so today. * Anonymous: “History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.” # WORSE THAN A CRIME ************************************* A friend of mine once wrote a book titled AS OTHERS SEE US but was careful to quote and discuss mostly friendly witnesses. * I committed a worse blunder: I wrote a book on Armenian history from which I excluded anything that may be remotely classified as negative; and what’s even more repellent to me now, I never thought of what I was writing as propaganda. Like all idiots and dupes I believed it was my patriotic duty to treat my readers as idiots and dupes. * Assad’s crime we are told is using poison gas to kill his own people. What we are not told is that his blunder consisted in having made no effort to reconcile and unite his fragmented nation. * I think it was Talleyrand who once said to Napoleon: “It was worse than a crime, Sire, it was a blunder.” # ON TEXTBOOKS ********************************* There is one past but there are ten thousand historians. * ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY ********************************* There are two basic approaches to the study of history: objective and hysterical. * FROM AN OBJECTIVE STUDY OF ARMENIAN HISTORY *********************************** We were divided by Turks; we were divided by Bolsheviks; and we are now being divided by our own Ottomanized, Stalinized, and moronized bureaucraps (sic). * FROM A TEXTBOOK ON POLITICAL SCIENCE AND DIPLOMACY ************************************************** Never fight your enemies if you can divide them. Remember the Armenians. * FROM A TEXTBOOK ON BRAINWASHING ******************************* After you moronize them you can even convince them to be just about the smartest people on earth. # DISAGREEMENTS ********************************* Many readers disagree with me. That does not surprise me in the least. In human affairs disagreement is the rule rather than the exception. * Lawyers and politicians disagree all the time; so do bishops and imams; and in our case bishops (Etchmiadznagan) and bishops (Anteliassagan). * More often than not however, disagreements are rooted not in ideas but in sources of income, or power and prestige. We live in a world where ideas have become as relevant as the song of a non-existent bird in an imaginary forest. * Speaking of our ruling classes, and more specifically our neo-commissars and crypto-Panchoonies: they have discovered a new way of dealing with their critics: they refuse to acknowledge their existence; and it seems to work provided of course you ignore the high assimilation rate in the Diaspora and the exodus in the Homeland. Criticizing them might as well be an exercise in futility; and exposing their would be like trying to kill a man who is committing suicide. #