observations

Thursday, April 19, 2012
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BREAKDOWN IN LEADERSHIP
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A headline in my morning paper reads:
“Soldier blames breakdown in leadership.”
How many of our historians have ever dared to use that expression –
“breakdown in leadership” – to explain any one
of our divisions, defeats, and catastrophes…
or, for that matter,
our status as perennial losers?
*
HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF
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You want something badly
and after getting it you are disappointed,
after which you want something else badly –
and so it goes.
It is almost as if we were programmed
not to learn from history.
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Saturday, April 21, 2012
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PATRIOTISM, ARMENIAN STYLE
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In our context, patriotism does not mean love of homeland;
patriotism means hatred of the same enemy,
beginning with Armenians who dare to disagree with us.
*
No one can be as dumb as a self-assessed smart Armenian.
*
When cornered about our divisiveness,
among other self-inflicted wounds,
we like to say there are divisions everywhere,
or we are a people like any other people.
Are we really?
We may be as dumb as most of them
but can we really claim to be as smart as some of them?
*
Never underestimate the cunning of a dumb Armenian
or the stupidity of a smart one.
*
The rich should be taxed more
not because they can afford it,
or because they exploit the poor
by overpricing their products or services.
but because they are jerks.
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Saturday, April 21, 2012
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OBSERVATIONS
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Shakespeare wrote about royalty for royalty.
With us it’s losers writing for losers.
*
My guess is – and this is only a guess –
more people have died in Armenia
than anywhere else in the world.
*
Has anyone ever heard one of our chic Bolsheviks say,
“I was wrong about Stalin”?
An infallible leadership will generate infallible citizens.
*
Instead of recycling Saroyan I recycle Zarian:
there you have the root of my failure.
*
To be misunderstood is a routine experience with me.
So much so that whenever I am understood
I begin to suspect what I write has no merit
because all I do is state the obvious.
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