Sunday, December 23, 2012 ************************************* HISTORY ************************** What do we really know about our past and more particularly about the 600 years in the Ottoman Empire that preceded the Genocide? We know that we coexisted with the Turks very much like our concubines in their harems, our janissaries in their armies and our ablest men in their bureaucracy. Our patriarch in Istanbul was the Sultan’s tax collector. We know that some Armenians prospered and others led a subhuman existence very much like the Untouchables in India, the Blacks in America, the serfs in Russia, and the very poor in England (as anyone who has read Dickens knows). What changed was the fact that the children of prosperous Armenians were sent to Europe to complete their education and discovered a new life there. They wanted more freedom and power and were encouraged in their ambition by the West. Our teenagers confused Europe’s verbal support with military intervention and that was a fatal error for which the people paid dearly. Our revolutionaries were our “best and brightest” very much like “the best and brightest” who justified the American involvement in Vietnam. With one important difference. Whereas the Yanks are smart enough and secure enough to admit their blunders (see McNamara’s memoirs on the subject) we are too self-righteous, stubborn, and dogmatic to do so. As a result the offspring of our revolutionaries (or should I say blunderers) continue to portray themselves as dedicated patriots who can do no wrong – very much like their counterparts, the Kemalists, in Turkey. # Monday, December 24, 2012 ******************************************* REALITY ****************** Reality is too big and complex a concept to be grasped by a single mind, or, for that matter, a single school of thought, ideology, religion, political party or propaganda line. * After thousands of years of philosophical speculation and scientific research we can’t even answer the simplest of all questions – such as, why things exist. * When one or both sides assert Truth or God is on their side, paralysis is sure to follow. The problem with Armenians and Turks is that both their educational systems are politically controlled; and when dupes meet they can only parrot a propaganda line, and two divergent propaganda lines can never meet. # Tuesday, December 25, 2012 ***************************************** HUMBUG ******************** He who says we need solutions to our problems is a humbugger engaged in humbuggery. You want solutions? Read our writers beginning with Khorenatsi’s LAMENTATION. You want the kind of leader who will guide us out of the mess we are in? Read philosophers from Plato to Sartre. Even better, read the Scriptures where you may even find a self-portrait. * “Fools despise wisdom and instruction.” * “Like a dog that returns to his vomit is a fool that repeats his folly.” * “Do you see a man who is wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.” * “He who despises the word will die.” * “A poor man is better than a liar.” * “Better is a poor man who walks in his integrity than a man who is perverse in speech and is a fool.” * “A fool’s mouth is his ruin, and his lips are a snare to himself.” * “He who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and [cross-] examines him.” * “No respect is shown to the elders. Woe to us, for we have sinned! For this our heart has become sick, and our eyes have grown dim.” * Dim? Make it blind. And when the blind lead the blind…” So much for our bosses, bishops, benefactors and their dupes who believe we are in the best of hands. # Wednesday, December 26, 2012 ****************************************** ON REVOLUTION ******************************** The French Revolution succeeded because it was an essentially French affair – French citizens against a French king. The Russian Revolution succeeded for similar reasons. The American Revolution succeeded because it was a WASP uprising against a distant WASP monarch. Our revolution failed because we made demands on an alien despot who was the political as well as religious head of a disintergating empire. * To use the words of one of elder statesmen, we weren’t just “a frog trying to rape an elephant,” we were “infidel dogs” trying to f*ck “a wounded tiger.” To paraphrase Voltaire, and because it was a religious as well as apolitical confrontation, there were very few survivors. * This was clearly seen by foreign observers, diplomats, and missionaries as well as our own bureaucrats within the Ottoman administration, but our revolutionaries chose to ignore their warnings. * But perhaps the most important difference between our revolution and the others mentioned above is the fact that ours was not a popular uprising; but the uprising of a non-representative minority within an ethnic minority -- in view of the fact that most Armenians within the Empire were illiterate and lacked political awareness. * For more on this subject see Pars Tuglaci, THE ROLE OF THE DADIAN FAMILY IN OTTOMAN, SOCIAL, ECONOMIC, AND POLITICAL LIFE (Istanbul, 1993), and my DEFINITIONS: A CRITICAL COMPANION TO ARMENIAN HISTORY AND CULTURE (Kitchener, 1998). # Thursday, December 27, 2012 **************************************** YESTERDAY & TODAY ****************************** In America, yesterday’s hippies have become today’s bankers and CEOs. Something similar has happened to our revolutionaries: yesterday’s idealists have become today’s businessmen. * “America’s business is business,” a famous American once said. More recently an even more famous American (President John F. Kennedy) called businessmen sons of bitches. The full quotation reads: “My father always told me that all businessmen were sons of bitches but I never believed it till now.” (See BARTLETT’S FAMILIAR QUOTATIONS, 2012 edition, page 786.) * One of our elder statesmen from the Middle East once told me: Whenever the old revolutionaries met with their younger counterparts, they (the old) were treated liked losers and figures of fun. * Until our music and architecture acquire the purity and universality of their medieval ancestors, I will continue to think of Armenians as Levantinized and Sovietized mongrels or “Oreo” Armenians – that is, Armenians on the outside, Arabs, Turks, Russians, and Yanks on the inside. * Don’t think of honesty as a finished product but as a work in progress – as a goal towards which we either advance or retreat. And so far I see nothing but retreat. #