reflections

Sunday, May 01, 2011
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LEADERS
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The difference between
a democratically elected leader
and an autocratic one is that
the first are endlessly cross-examined
by the press and the opposition,
and the second surrounds himself
with yes-men and brown-nosers.
*
Freedom to an autocratic leaders means
the freedom to oppress, silence, and murder
defenseless civilians.
*
Closer to home:
our leaders divide the nation
not because they are men of principle
who place ideals above the interests of the people;
they divide because they love their own powers and privileges
above all else.
*
If we have leaders who lie to us,
why shouldn’t we have writers
willing to speak the truth?
I am not saying all writers are honest men.
What I am saying is that
most of our ablest writers
were murdered, exiled, and silenced
by autocratic regimes.
*
Leaders behave like criminals because
they can get away with it, or rather,
because the people allow them to get away with it.
*
Most of our misfortunes are rooted in subservience.
Dissent increases independence in others.
Dissent is positive.
Subservience is negative.
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Monday, May 02, 2011
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TO MY SWEET ARMENIA
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When his genocide book was unanimously ignored
by our academics, a friend (a career diplomat)
referred to them as “our Genocide mafia.”
Who would have thought that some day
the Genocide would become a “territory”
(in organized crime parlance)
and anyone who dares to muscle in it
would acquire the status of a non-person.
*
I am a stranger in a strange land,
and I feel more so among my fellow Armenians.
Last time I visited an Armenian community center
I promised to return in twenty-five years.
Now I have another reason not to live that long.
*
When the USSR collapsed
and Armenia’s borders opened up,
Armenians poured out by the thousand
and by the million.
*
“Yes im anoush Hayastani…”
It is not generally known that
Charents wrote that line
inspired not by Armenia’s "sweetness"
but by a similar poem on Russia by Pushkin.
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Tuesday, May 03, 2011
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REFLECTIONS
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No French king or Russian czar or Bolshevik commissar or fascist dictator, or pope, imam, and rabbi has ever declared publicly that he is in the business of moronizing innocent civilians. Don’t expect our own leaders to do so.
*
Did any one of our revolutionaries at the turn of the last century ever ask himself the following question: “If we carry on as we have been, what are the chances that the people may suffer?”
*
The only reason Osama bin Laden did not behave like Genghis Khan, Hitler, and Stalin is that he didn’t have their power.
*
Solutions are not inventions or discoveries like the theories of Newton or Einstein that revolutionized physics and cosmology. Solutions begin with the realization that we have been on the wrong track; and we can solve a problem only when we understand it; and it is up to us whether to use our brains or to run around like a chicken whose neck has been cut off.
*
All you need to do is allow reality to be your guide, not the empty rhetoric of speechifiers and sermonizers.
*
A kind reader once called me a philosopher. I am nothing of the kind. I am only a scribbler. You don’t need a Ph.D. to be honest with yourself and your fellow men.
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The idea that we are few is linked to the fact that most Armenians do not care to be identified as Armenians.
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Wednesday, May 04, 2011
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AS I SEE IT
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Several friends have urged me to change my name.
I have not done so because I don’t think of myself
as a commercially viable commodity.
*
What shapes our worldview is less
an objective study of reality and more
the educational system within which we were brought up.
*
Literature is a waste of time.
No writer has ever changed a damn thing.
Marx?
If he did change things he made them worse.
The same could be said of all prophets and reformers.
*
What has our literature changed?
As long ago as the 5th century AD
our writers (among them Khorenatsi and Yeghishé)
exposed the dangers inherent in a divided kingdom.
A millennium and a half later,
After many military defeats,
and a series of massacres and a genocide,
we continue to stand divided.
*
Why do I write?
The more relevant question is:
Why do they divide?
*
I share my ideas
the way a beggar shares the few crusts of bread
cast in his direction by fat men.
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