contradictions

Sunday, August 31, 2008
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MEMO TO A YOUNG WRITER
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If a reader insults you publicly and apologizes privately, he will insult you again – publicly.
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If he believes to be right and you wrong, he will also believe to be morally superior. The words of such an intramural racist have as much weight as the words of an inbred moron and a skinhead. Ignore him. And never tell such a one to shut up. His mouth may well be his worst enemy, and your enemy's enemy is your friend.
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If they never ask themselves “What if I am wrong?” it may be because they are too afraid of being wrong and because being wrong even once would be a blemish on their record as infallible thinkers and observers.
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If a reader tells you he is disappointed in what you write, tell him cheerfully that a refund check is in the mail.
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If Jihadists act in the name of Allah and our superpatriots speak in the name of the Fatherland (which in their mouths sounds more like Fartland), it's because they are brothers under the skin.
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To think that if the ideology is right, the leadership must also be right is known as “Sartre's fallacy,” because Sartre was taken in by the likes of Stalin, Castro, and Mao. Ideology defines nothing. Power does. The more non-representative the power, the more perverse the leadership.
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If he has the disposition of a crocodile, the memory of an elephant, the venom of a Turkish viper, the compassion of Genghis Khan, and if his profanities are sandwiched between a cliché and a platitude, he must be an Armenian superpatriot. Avoid him.
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Remember, the rarest of all Armenians is he who speaks about the past without contaminating it with an ideological or racist propaganda line.
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Monday, September 1, 2008
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SCOUNDRELS
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All nations generate their share of scoundrels and we are no exception, with one important difference however: we take ours seriously. How to explain this scandal? Even after 600 years of brutal oppression in the Ottoman Empire we knew how to laugh at ourselves and our “betters.” At the turn of the last century in Istanbul our writers made merciless fun of our political agitators, religious leaders, and wealthy merchants. Zabel Yessayan, not exactly a humorist, wrote a savage satirical novel titled PHONY GENIUSES in which she excoriated our vodanavorjis.
Things are different today. As a result, we find ourselves at the mercy of inbred morons and wheeler-dealers who parade as geniuses and statesmen, fornicating bishops who advertise the sale of Oriental rugs in cathedrals, and dime-a-dozen pundits and academics whose unspoken slogan seems to be “whose bread I eat his song I sing.”
Is it conceivable that the Turks slaughtered not only our bodies but also our spirit? Why is it that the Holocaust has had the exact opposite effect on the Jews who now have a virtual monopoly on American comedy?
After violating our human right of free speech, has our leadership succeeded in brainwashing us into believing that laughter is un-Armenian, perhaps even pro-Turkish? What's next? Will they outlaw breathing? But perhaps on some level they have done that already and as a community we are no better than an assemblage of living corpses.
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In Arthur Schlesinger's JOURNALS: 1952-2000 (New York, 2007), I read the following amusing passage: “I recall Churchill explaining how it was possible for him to go to sleep every night when he was being vehemently criticized -- 'I simply say God damn them all, and then I sleep like a baby.'”
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Tuesday, September 2, 2008
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DIARY
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One reason I no longer write fiction is that I find reality more fantastic than anything I could imagine.
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Schlesinger, himself an establishment figure, writes in his JOURNALS: “Why can no one understand that the establishment is more likely to be wrong than to be right?” Our establishment figures are too insecure to admit as much. Why assume responsibility if they can blame all their blunders on Turks, the international community, the opposition, and the Good Lord Himself? There are no limits to their self-righteousness.
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As for the insults that are hurled in my direction: it seems to me they are motivated less by genuine disagreement and more by fear – fear of being exposed not as statesmen of vision but the blind leading the blind. And then there is the kind of idiot who think if he succeeds in silencing me or stops reading me, he will be the winner and I the loser.
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All they talk about is Turks and massacres, and their only message to the people is “mi kich pogh,” and because I point that out to them, they say I repeat myself.
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Schlesinger on academics: “Why does the academic environment seem to bring out the worst in otherwise decent individuals?”
I am surprised to note that, writing in the 1980s, he refers to some of his American contemporaries as “Stalinist” and “neo-Stalinist.”
Speaking of Nixon, Ford is quoted as having said, “Sometimes I wish I had never pardoned that son of a bitch.” An unfair remark that, when one remembers a tearful Nixon in his farewell speech to the White House staff saying, “My mother was a saint.”
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Wednesday, August 3, 2008
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CONTRADICTIONS
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When I had enough of their steady barrage of insults, I said something to the effect that the greatest insult for a writer is to be ignored. And sure enough, the insults stopped. They are as predictable as Pavlov's dogs but think they are smart because they were brainwashed to believe all Armenians are smart, including the Mongoloids among them. My guess is, after reading this they will start insulting me all over again and say they don't have to read me to insult me. And after reading this they will be torn.
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They don't write with their underdeveloped brain but with their overdeveloped intestines.
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In the same way that Armenians are brainwashed to believe they are smart, Hindus believe theirs is the most tolerant of all religions, provided of course one ignores their treatment of Untouchables. Seen from the perspective of Untouchables, Hinduism is probably the least tolerant of all religions. Hence the popularity of Islam in India and the countless intramural massacres.
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Everybody makes mistakes, except religious leaders, and Armenian political wheeler-dealers; and they don't make mistakes because they speak in the name of God, Truth, and Patriotism.
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For many centuries kings were successful in convincing the people that their power derives from God. The first and most important project of all men with power is to bankrupt common sense.
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Ignorance is a luxury only the very lucky can afford.
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The very same people who abuse free speech violate someone else's free speech.
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