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April 4, 2010
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LAMENTATION
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“You are consistently negative,” I am told again and again by the very same readers who are the cause of my negativism.
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We speak as though our problems need solutions.
We speak as though generations of our writers lived, worked, and died in some other dimension inaccessible to us.
Poor Armenian people!
Poor Armenian writers!
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Poor Armenian writers.
After we bury them, we re-bury them again and again whenever we ignore their works.
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We have been so thoroughly dehumanized that ideas mean nothing to us.
Money, yes!
Ideas?
Who gives a damn?
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Jesus died for our sins, we are told.
Generations of Armenian writers died to save us but we continue to wallow in ignorance, apathy, materialism, envy, intolerance, and arrogance.
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I work for nothing.
I write for readers who know better.
Writing for Armenians is akin to mating with a shark.
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We speak of nationalism because we have been de-nationalized as thoroughly as we have been dehumanized.
Our own backyard comes first.
As for the nation – who gives a damn?
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Oppressors don't want the oppressed to have ideas. What they want is subservience. In their eyes, freedom is a dangerous commodity. As for ideas...in Napoleon's words: “A man with an idea is my enemy.”
It is the same with our bosses: all they want from us is subservience.
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After the Sultan, Talaat.
After Talaat, Stalin.
After Stalin, our bosses and their assorted hirelings of Jack S. Avanakians and “mi kich pogh” Comrade Panchoonies, and communities whose favorite words are “Yes, sir!”
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Even when we speak of others, we speak of ourselves. Think twice before you say another word on Turks.
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April 4, 2010
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FROM DUST TO DUST
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Confucius: “Let us leave the spirits aside, until we know how best to serve men.”
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Our parish priest (Anteliassagan) refused to bless my mother's grave on the grounds that she had been cremated. “We don't believe in cremation,” said he.
I wonder, was he trying to obstruct her path to heaven?
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According to N.T. Wright, a contemporary theologian: “People are so preoccupied about who gets into heaven that they forget that much of the New Testament is about how we conduct our lives in the here and now.”
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They lead us like sheep not to green pastures but to a den of wolves.
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What makes me to repeat myself is not senility but the conviction that a truth should be repeated as often as the lies of our Jack S. Avanakians and “mi kich pogh” Panchoonies.
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More quotations from Confucius:
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“Respect spiritual beings but keep them at a distance.”
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“Only the wisest and the stupidest of men never change.”
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“The path to duty lies in what is near and men seek for it in what is remote. The work of duty lies in what is easy and men seek for it in what is difficult.”
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“When you see a good man, think of emulating him; when you see a bad man, examine your own heart.”
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April 5, 2010
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READING RAFFI
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We sent Khrimian Hairik to Berlin, and Sylva Kaputikian to Moscow.
Diplomats and revolutionaries: where are they when we need them most?
Raffi's answer:
“We are like sheep without a shepherd...We don't have an aristocracy. We have neither elites nor leaders. What we have are merchants and clergymen [and vodanavorjis, he could have added]. Merchants are trash. As for the clergy: they have always been against individual freedom.”
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“Where there is oppression, there is cowardice, ignorance, and sloth. A man needs freedom to discover the benefits of freedom.”
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“What's done is done. What we must do now is assess the damage and figure out how to avoid the next catastrophe.”
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“War, bloodshed, massacre: they will be with us so long as the principle of Might is Right prevails.”
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“The prevalent mentality among us is, every man for himself. As long as I can take care of myself, why should I give a damn about anyone else?”
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“Those who are in charge of our destiny are themselves a gang of criminals. What are our options? Who can help us? Not even God, it seems, perhaps because we have too many sins on our conscience.”
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“Our capitalists are the most corrupt and degenerate members of the community. Nothing good can come from them. They are men without a country. They worship only money. Profit is their only homeland.”
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In what way are our national benefactors different from Raffi's capitalists if they allow their flunkeys to behave like commissars of culture and to subsidize ghazetajis whose obsession with Turks far exceeds their concern for fellow Armenians? And what about our fornicating bishops and bosses who so far have delivered nothing but empty verbiage? Has anything changed during the last 150 years? Once upon a time we were slaves. We are now slaves of former slaves.
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Here is Raffi again:
“No power on earth can deprive you of your freedom. No one can enslave you if you refuse to be enslaved. Where there is slavery there are also men willing to assume a passive stance. Oppressors know this and they count on it.”
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April 6, 2010
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PATRIOTISM
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Nationalists begin by asserting a superior brand of patriotism and end by committing massacres.
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All genocides are committed in the name of nationalism, and sooner or later all nationalists are exposed as fascists.
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I have yet to meet an Armenian who thought his own brand of patriotism to be inferior to someone else's.
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If I have been silenced, it's because our fascist editors and publishers have been successful in convincing their readers that I am an enemy not of fascism but of the people and the fatherland.
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They accuse me of emphasizing the negative, whereas they are in the business emphasizing the positive; and emphasizing the negative means “corrupting the young” and “undermining the authority of the gods,” which happen to be the charges leveled against Socrates and against all dissidents in general.
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To be a dupe of propaganda means supporting fascists whose ultimate aim is the destruction of the state, or so history or reality tells us.
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Patriotism is a mask that hides killers, and killers not only of the enemy but also of their fellow countrymen.
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Patriotism appeals to the emotions, and “emotions are judgments opposed to those arrived at by reason” (Epicurus).
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There is nothing new under the sun. What I have been saying was said by Greeks more than two thousand years ago.
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