as i see it - Pt. IV

[ara baliozian]

Monday, May 16, 2005

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PROJECTIONS

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The most important allies of the Turks are neither the Americans nor the Israelis, but the indifference of the world, the opportunism of politicians, and our assimilation rate. It has been projected that by the year 2040 there will be 100 million Turks. How many Armenians? No one knows and no one cares, not even Armenians.

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INDIFFERENCE

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Consider the case of Virginia Woolf, one of the most sensitive writers of the 20th Century. After listening to her friends talking about the massacres, she noted in her diary: “I laughed to myself over the quantities of Armenians. How can one mind whether the [victims] number 4,000 or 4,000,000?”

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CONCLUSIONS

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Criticism and dissent are not pro-Ottoman.

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To repeat what you were told is not to think.

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Those who are on our side today will be on their side tomorrow because what rules alliances is not compassion but self-interest.

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To be a fool or a fanatic is a necessary precondition of infallibility.

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Censorship moronizes because it promotes uniformity of thought, and only the brain-dead think alike.

#

[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

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Censorship reduces men to sheep at the mercy of wolves who pretend to be sheepdogs.

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I wonder if I will live long enough to read an Armenian weekly in which Turks are not mentioned.

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As a nation we tend to confuse dreams with daydreams, and mirages with visions.

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Before you assert a certainty, question it like a devil’s advocate; and if you can’t shake it, question the advocate; and if you can’t shake him, cross-examine the devil.

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Some Turks are so narrow-minded and fanatical that they believe all infidels will burn in hell. They have their counterparts among Armenians.

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I don’t know what it feels like being a Turkish writer, but being an Armenian writer combines minimum wage with maximum abuse.

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In the prose of some academics, the dictionary speaks louder than the man does.

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Anthropologists tell us that for millions of years both god and the devil were known as a single entity, the Unknown. So that when someone spoke in the name of the Unknown, no one knew whether he meant god or the devil. It is the same today.

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Edward Gibbon (1737-1794), English historian: “I never make the mistake of arguing with people for whose opinions I have no respect.”

#

[ara baliozian]

Wednesday, May 18, 2005

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Our political parties may not have been of any political use to us (as Zarian once pointed out) but they have been useful to themselves by promoting (one) mutual admiration, and (two) reciprocal brainwashing.

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If you ask the average Armenian what are the lessons of the Genocide, he will tell you two things: (one) Turks are barbarians, and (two) the Great Powers of the West are corrupt and untrustworthy. By holding "them" responsible, we absolve ourselves of any wrongdoing. Three apples fell from heaven…

*

There are millions of alienated and assimilated Armenians today and if you were to ask them why is it that they have distanced themselves from their fellow countrymen, they will tell you what I have been saying, namely that Armenianism has become an ideology of hatred, lamentation, intolerance, and endless mutual bickering.

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We will never rise from the dust until we admit that we are biting it.

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When it comes to deciphering the Writing on the Wall, we might as well be functional illiterates.

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It has been said that sometimes it is easier to survive your enemies than your friends. We survived the Turks. Will we survive our fellow Armenians?

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If you are nasty by temperament, have the decency not to be sincere.

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I admire our benefactors and I appreciate their generosity, concern for the welfare of the nation, and involvement in community affairs. The only thing I have against them is their taste for flunkeys.

#

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, May 19, 2005

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Because so far I have not written an ode to the eternal snows of Mt. Ararat, in the eyes of some of my readers I am probably a lesser Armenian.

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Because I love lasagna and pizza as much as shish kebab and pilaf, I am probably a second-class citizen.

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Because Negro spirituals touch my soul as deeply as our sharagans, my patriotism may well be suspect.

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And since I write in English and call Canada my homeland, I may not even qualify as an Armenian in the eyes of our purists.

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A headline in the local paper today reads: “World is ignoring war in Darfur: Media are regrettably silent about 180,000 Muslims killed and two million refugees.” Why should we be surprised if the world is less than interested in refugees and massacres that happened nearly a century ago?

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One reason the Americans have so far refused to call it Genocide is that the Turks have convinced them that if they do, the Armenians will escalate their demands, and if not met, they will engage in acts of terrorism.

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Question: Is there a single Armenian entity today that can assert with any degree of certainty that Armenians will at no time engage in acts of terrorism even if their financial and territorial demands are not met?

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I poison the wells only in the sense that a dash of truth can poison a well of lies.

#

[ara baliozian]

Friday, May 20, 2005

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Some Armenians take it for granted that they have a license to insult a fellow Armenian and that the rules of etiquette they were taught as children do not apply to Armenians dealing with Armenians.

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Like most Armenians, I too was brought up (make it, brainwashed) to believe we are smart. I never questioned or doubted this for many years even as an adult. I began to have second thoughts only on the day I listened to a radio interview with a Kurd speaking about Kurdish history and culture, and saying the very same things that an Armenian is brainwashed to say about Armenian history and culture.

*

It is to be noted that when the Kurd bragged about Kurdish history and culture, the Canadian interviewer never questioned any of his assertions, though he could have done so easily by saying, “If the Kurds are so smart, why is it that throughout their millennial history they have been at the mercy of lesser men?”

*

Until I started writing for Armenians, I did not know we had so many pundits (self-appointed) and experts (self-assessed) on any given subject. It is no exaggeration to say that for every writer, we have at least ten, sometimes even twenty, critics eager to demolish his ideas and tear him to shreds.

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With so many smart Armenians, why is it that our history has been such a disaster area? The standard answer to that question is our geography, which has been on the path of bloodthirsty Asiatic barbarians. One would think that the smart thing to do when on is on the path of a hurricane is to get out of its way. The standard objection to that line of thinking is, “How dare you suggest we should have abandoned our ancestral homes and the land of our fathers?” But entire continents today are populated by people who said to hell with our ancestral homes; as for the land of our fathers -- our fathers can have it.

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There is smart and there is pseudo-smart. We are not smart. We are pseudo-smart. Anything that is self-assessed is bound to be phony. I have never heard a really smart man say he is smart. That’s because smart people don’t brag. It is the deficient who brag and they brag to compensate their deficiency.

#

[ara baliozian]

Saturday, May 21, 2005

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There are no new ideas. Whether we like it or not, all our ideas are either echoes or paraphrases of forgotten quotations. Some of us like to quote Plato, others prefer Comrade Panchoonie.

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On the day my critics begin to agree with me, I will start wondering if I have succumbed to senility.

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Have I said this before? No matter. If something is worth saying, it is worth repeating.

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To be misunderstood is almost to suffer an injustice.

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Whenever an adult delivers a cliché, I am tempted to ask: How old were you when you first heard that line, five or seven?

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I suspect my critics will be unanimous in agreeing with me on the day I decide to be less "negative" - a rather indirect way of saying, when I adopt the role and mindset of a brown-noser.

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During a visit to the White House, a Turkish diplomat (may have been Ozal) is quoted as having said to President Bush Senior: "Armenians are our Indians." The memory of this statement makes me furious to this day, but the more I think about it, the closer I seem to get to reality.

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Vanity, it has been said, has a voracious appetite, which is why I dismiss as a lie any statement that flatters our collective ego.

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Arab proverb: "The ass went seeking for horns and lost his ears."

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It is in his efforts to appear morally superior that a man exposes his status as the scum of the earth.

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Kurdish proverb: "Those who do not go to war roar like lions."

#

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, May 22, 2005

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JACKALS AND JACKASSES

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We call our military defeats moral victories because we see ourselves as members of a morally superior nation. Question: Has there ever been a single nation in the history of mankind that saw itself as morally inferior? Would it not be closer to reality if all nations saw themselves as morally deficient in the eyes of the Lord? – I do not say in the eyes of their fellow men because they are seen as inferior anyway.

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Why is it that nations find it necessary to fabricate Big Lies?

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Where there are Big Lies there will also be Big Liars. You may now guess the identity of our Big Liars.

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Preston Sturges on his mother: “She was endowed with such a rich and powerful imagination that anything she said three times, she believed fervently. Often twice was enough.”

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What are some of our most frequently repeated Big Lies?

First nation to convert to Christianity (we saw it coming when no one else did). First nation to suffer a genocide in the 20th century (we didn’t see it coming because we were innocent sheep at the mercy of ruthless butchers and liars – namely, Asiatic barbarians and the corrupt West).

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I am anti-Armenian only in the eyes of readers who are anti-mankind, including a fraction of their fellow Armenians who are not, like themselves, dupes of Big Liars.

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In our eyes our genocide is a major tragedy and an international scandal. In the eyes of the world it is just another instance of a big fish swallowing a little fish. One nation’s tragedy is another’s cliché.

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On the subject of our bosses, bishops, benefactors and those who look up to them as political and spiritual leaders, I will say what H.L. Mencken once said of Americans and their democracy: “The worship of jackals by jackasses.”

#

[ara baliozian]

Monday, May 23, 2005

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Traditional values are fine provided they are separated from traditional abuses. As a nation, we prefer to discard the values and preserve the abuses.

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We can afford two, and sometimes even three, of everything – churches, community centers, schools (which also means two sets of schoolteachers), political parties, bishops, archbishops, patriarchs, and so on. But we can’t afford even a single writer who is free to speak his mind. We had many more independent voices under the Sultan than we do today. All we have today are partisan hacks and hirelings who blabber endlessly about Turks. What is even more shocking is a community that sees nothing wrong with this.

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A compulsive or pathological liar may be defined as one who even when he speaks the truth he makes it sound like a blatant lie.

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When it comes to sharing their capital, our capitalists are looked up to as role models of generosity and patriotism. But when it comes to sharing their ideas, our writers are treated as nuisances who should be insulted, starved, and silenced.

Talaat lives!

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There is a reason for this. The central message of our literature stands in direct contradiction with the central message contained in the speeches and sermons of our bosses and bishops. So that if our writers were allowed to speak freely, our “betters” would be exposed as pathological liars.

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What can be more degrading and ultimately more lethal to the health of a nation than to depend for its perception of reality on brainwashed propagandists and phony pundits with hidden agendas?

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I can tell I was brainwashed as a child because what sounded to me then as brilliant paradoxes meant to shock the average layman, sound now as common sense platitudes.

#

[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, May 24, 2005

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An Armenian doesn’t just disagree with a fellow Armenian, he disagrees with venom, sometimes even with lethal dozes of concentrated Ottoman venom.

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Am I any different? If I am not, I plead extenuating circumstances. I plead guilty to the charge that I disagree with our bosses, bishops and benefactors, and if sometimes I disagree with venom it may be because when they are wrong (as I believe they are) the result may be another massacre – if not “red” than “white” (i.e. alienation and assimilation). But if I am wrong, I will be exposed as a charlatan, ignored, and forgotten. Even at his most venomous, a writer can harm no one but himself.

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The truth is, Armenians are not particularly fond of their fellow Armenians. They may love them, or say they do, in the abstract but not in the flesh.

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Consider too that unlike our speechifiers and sermonizers I do not speak of love of country and countrymen, I speak only of solidarity and consensus. I appeal only to the self-interest of my fellow Armenians. I say, we don’t have to love our fellow Armenians in order to do what must be done --

unlike our bishops, who tell us to love our enemies but who cannot even be tolerant of their friends, if their friends do not parrot their sentiments and thoughts; and unlike our political bosses, who speak of love of country and countrymen even as they divide in order to rule, and by dividing they make us more vulnerable to our adversaries and to the so-called “social, historic, and political conditions” beyond their control.

#

[ara baliozian]

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

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You may have noticed that we are divided only when we are on our own. As subservient subjects and victims we have always been united, perhaps because our victimizers did not give us a choice. Think about that.

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I reject all statements that flatter our collective ego in the same way that our commissars reject any statement that may question their infallibility.

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If you combine the spirit of one law with the letter of another law, you can legitimize even criminal conduct.

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What makes an average liar a competent one is the ease with which he brainwashes himself into believing he speaks the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And if "God is truth" (in Gandhi's definition), it follows he represents God on earth like any mullah or ayatollah, who can declare jihad against anyone who dares to disagree with him.

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If you write a hundred lines, a commissar will ignore the 99 lines with which he cannot disagree and single out the one line with which he disagrees, even if it means distorting and misunderstanding both the spirit and the letter of that line.

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What the average Armenian wants to read in our papers these days is (a) his name, ( nasty commentaries about the nefarious Turks, and © positive articles about Armenians who have achieved some degree of success in the odar world. Literature, which might as well be synonymous with free speech, has acquired the status of a non-person in our collective consciousness. Stalin lives.

#

[Armen]

( nasty

style_images/master/snapback.png

 

Every time you post this "I feel so cool" emoticon I get one more reason to feel happier for the rest of my day. I don't know why but it realy makes me smile.

[ara baliozian]

MEGALOMANIA

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One of our elder statesmen once wrote me a nasty letter demanding why I write the way I do. In my reply – there was a time when I wasted a good fraction of my working life and income replying to every letter I received, no matter how unfriendly the writer – in my reply I explained that it is a writer’s function as well as duty to expose abuses of power and the dark side of life. To prove my point, I proceeded to make a list of great writers who had done exactly that --from Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Victor Hugo to Dickens, Sartre, and Solzhenitsyn. In his even nastier reply he accused me of megalomania by saying, “So you think of yourself as another Voltaire and Victor Hugo?” To which I could only say, “No, of course not. But I am on their side.” Shortly thereafter I read his obituary in our papers. Did I contribute to his demise by exposing his own dark side? I am not sure. But to say that I may have would be megalomaniacal on my part.

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Around the same time I also received several phone calls and letters from another one of our elder statesmen (our communities are lousy with them) who claimed to have written “the Armenian Bible,” which if translated into English would ultimately unite and save the nation. The Jews had the Old Testament, he explained, the Christians the New Testament, and the Arabs the Koran. We had no corresponding holy book to give us a sense of identity and common goal. Hence the total absence of focus in our collective consciousness resulting in a high rate of assimilation. Next I received a manuscript of about a hundred pages (the book was about a thousand pages long) with a note saying: “Please read it and let me know what you think. Don’t be afraid to be critical, though I can’t imagine what you would find to be critical about….” In my last letter to him I wrote that it was a remarkable piece of work, perhaps even a masterpiece, and I hoped he would be successful in finding a translator equal to the task. (As you may have guessed by now, all this took place in my phase as a brown-noser.)

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It is to be noted that both elder statesmen made it abundantly clear that they were also benefactors having contributed vast sums of money to Armenian charities, schools, and churches, in addition to being personally acquainted with Aram Khachaturian, Anastas Mikoyan, the Catholicos of Etchmiadzin, the Patriarch of Istanbul, and all the bishops and archbishops within a radius of two thousand miles.

#

[ara baliozian]

Friday, May 27, 2005

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ON VICTIMS AND VICTIMIZERS

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There are victims and there are victimizers. Armenians have been victims, or so we like to say, repeat, and believe. But Armenians have also been victimizers. All you have to do to see Armenians as victimizers is to read a history of Armenian literature or the biography of an Armenian writer.

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Whenever I say anything remotely critical about Armenians, I am immediately reminded that our defects are human defects, and therefore universal. All thinkers and writers – from Socrates to Solzhenitsyn – have been misunderstood, rejected, excommunicated, silenced, starved, insulted, driven to suicide, or executed by their own people. Nothing unusual in that. Granted. But then what is so unusual about a writer criticizing his own people? It happens all the time. All writers do it. It is their function and it is their duty. A writer who emphasizes the positive and covers up the negative is not a writer but a propagandist, and propagandists are a dime a dozen.

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We have problems. We have some very serious problems. Who benefits if we cover up and ignore them? Only those in power, that is, the victimizers. Because where there is power there will also be victims.

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If it is the destiny of all writers to be persecuted, let us leave the persecution to future Talaats and Stalins; and let us not pretend we don’t have in our midst commissars who parade as selfless servants of the community during the day and behave like gravediggers at night.

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And if you were to say, “If it is a writer’s duty to criticize his people, then there is a right way and the wrong way of doing it. Obviously you are the wrong man for the job.” But then, who is the right man? Does he exist? Has he ever existed? Is there a right way of calling a fool a fool and a dupe a dupe? What does one gain by calling him intellectually challenged? Was Socrates the wrong man for the job? If you were to ask a Stalinist today about Solzhenitsyn, he will tell you Solzhenitsyn deserved his exile in the Gulag because he was an enemy of the people and his ultimate aim was the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Even fascists and executioners see themselves as victims, or as Sartre once put it, “All violence is counter-violence.”

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Am I a bad writer? In the eyes of my critics, very probably I don’t even qualify as a writer, in the same way that in my eyes, my critics don’t even qualify as intellectually challenged kibitzers; or in the eyes of all victims, their victimizers don’t even qualify as human beings.

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Moral I: There are no golden apples from heaven, only rotten lemons on earth.

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Moral II: We are all in the same soup concocted by a nefarious cook.

#

[ara baliozian]

Saturday, May 28, 2005

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OF ROPES AND HANGMEN

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If we are right and we persevere, victory will be ours! The Genocide may be said to have been a direct result of this Big Lie. And consider the work of our Genocide scholars: do they hope victory will be ours or do they think it is all a waste of time? No one knows.

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Academics produce books. That's how they make their living. None of them will ever claim his aim is to change the world; and even when on those very rare occasions they succeed in changing the world, it is not always for the better - e.g. DAS KAPITAL.

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A wise man once said that it is not polite to mention ropes in the house of a hanged man. Not only we insist on speaking about ropes, but also of capital punishment, hanging judges, hangmen, and what it feels like dying of a broken neck.

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We cannot change the Turks; neither can we resurrect a single victim. And after countless commentaries, articles, memoirs, demonstrations, monuments, memorial services, letters to the editor, sermons and speeches, we have failed to annex a single inch of our historic lands.

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If we are right and we persevere, victory will be ours? Possibly. But it is equally true to say that if we think we are right and we behave with the obstinacy of mules, we may fail.

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Let us admit that we have never been good at guessing games. Nietzsche says somewhere that if you deal too much with idiots, you are liable to become an idiot. What if too much talk of massacres and Turks permanently damages our perception of the world as hell on earth, and of our fellow men, including fellow Armenians, as hostile witnesses and enemies?

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I am not saying we should forgive and forget - only a saint can do that and none of us qualifies. What I am saying is that I want to live my life without reference to Turks and the hope that some day they may see the light.

#

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, May 29, 2005

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When an expert writes a book for laymen, he doesn’t write everything he knows, only that which will be accessible to the average reader; and as everyone knows by now, for every expert there will be another who will contradict him.

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I was born and raised in Greece. I have lived and dealt with Greeks and I have read a great deal about them. What do I know about Greeks and their history and culture? I know that there are more than a thousand books on the subject and if I were to read all of them I would discover something new in each one.

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I have lived in Canada for many years. What do I know about Canadians and Canadian history and culture? What do I know about the small city where I live? The truth is, I don’t even know the names of my next-door neighbors.

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What does the average Armenian layman know about Turks or, for that matter, Armenians? But then, what an Armenian knows is one thing and what he pretends to know another. In mathematical terms, if what he knows equals to zero or even minus one, what he pretends to know will be closer or equal to infinity.

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We are a nation of ignoramuses parading as experts on any given subject.

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Reality has been compared to a vast mosaic, puzzle, or Oriental carpet. What we know is only a tiny fraction of it. Sometimes an expert will discern a pattern but it will be only a guess, which will be contradicted by another expert.

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Entire books (incomprehensible to laymen) have been written about “the meaning of meaning” and about why 2+2=4. And no philosopher so far has been successful in answering (to the satisfaction of all philosophers) the question, “why things exist.”

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Perhaps the true meaning of knowing is, the greater the area of knowledge, the greater the area of ignorance. Or, to understand more consists in the awareness that what we don't understandand and may never understand

far outweighs what we understand.

#

Edited May 29, 2005 by ara baliozian

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, May 29, 2005

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When an expert writes a book for laymen, he doesn’t write everything he knows, only that which will be accessible to the average reader; and as everyone knows by now, for every expert there will be another who will contradict him.

*

I was born and raised in Greece. I have lived and dealt with Greeks and I have read a great deal about them. What do I know about Greeks and their history and culture? I know that there are more than a thousand books on the subject and if I were to read all of them I would discover something new in each one.

*

I have lived in Canada for many years. What do I know about Canadians and Canadian history and culture? What do I know about the small city where I live? The truth is, I don’t even know the names of my next-door neighbors.

*

What does the average Armenian layman know about Turks or, for that matter, Armenians? But then, what an Armenian knows is one thing and what he pretends to know another. In mathematical terms, if what he knows equals to zero or even minus one, what he pretends to know will be closer or equal to infinity.

*

We are a nation of ignoramuses parading as experts on any given subject.

*

Reality has been compared to a vast mosaic, puzzle, or Oriental carpet. What we know is only a tiny fraction of it. Sometimes an expert will discern a pattern but it will be only a guess, which will be contradicted by another expert.

*

Entire books (incomprehensible to laymen) have been written about “the meaning of meaning” and about why 2+2=4. And no philosopher so far has been successful in answering (to the satisfaction of all philosophers) the question, “why things exist.”

*

Perhaps the true meaning of knowing is, the greater the area of knowledge, the greater the area of ignorance. Or, to understand more consists in the awareness that what we don't understandand and may never understand

far outweighs what we understand.

#

[ara baliozian]

Monday, May 30, 2005

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When an Armenian wants to validate his ideas, the chances are he will quote his grandmother rather than a boss, bishop, or benefactor. Perhaps what we need today, and what we have always needed in the past, is to be ruled by a committee of grandmothers.

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How to stop bullying in schools: this has become a hot topic in both Canada and the United States recently. There has been a spate of studies, hearings and recommendations. I wonder why is it that so far bullies have been allowed a free hand. The only answer I can come up with is that capitalism and militarism legitimize and promote bullies, who are seen as future captains of industry, generals, and men with leadership qualities.

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Because I was brought up with anti-Turkish prejudices, I make up for it by being against all prejudices, including, and above all, pro-Armenian prejudices.

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When I speak of Ottomanized Armenians or Ottomanization in general, it is not because I am prejudiced against Ottomanism (whose abuses may not be worse than the abuses of many others -isms, beginning with nationalism, imperialism, Stalinism, Nazism, fascism, anti-Semitism, and so on…). Rather, I am against Armenians who preach Armenianism but practice Ottomanism and are totally unaware of the contradiction.

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I committed some of my most unforgivable blunders when I was sure I was right.

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Since there is no humor in the Bible and some of the most brilliant comedians today are Jewish, one must conclude that one of the preconditions of acquiring a sense of humor is five thousand years of persecution. As for common sense and decency: that may take a little longer.

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Whenever I say something that makes sense, I make another enemy.

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Once upon a time we thought the world was on our side. We now think it’s against us. Some day when we grow up we may discover to our astonishment that nobody gives a damn.

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Am I wrong? Probably. Since I have no political ambitions, I don’t mind admitting that I don’t know much and I understand even less.

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[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, May 31, 2005

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ON CRITERIA

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You can tell a man’s character by the criteria he uses to judge other men.

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A rule without exceptions:

Only the scum of the earth assert moral superiority.

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Even the smartest Armenian is not qualified to judge the dumbest Armenian, probably because it is the dumbest Armenian who assesses himself as the smartest. And because a really smart Armenian knows that he may be smart in one, two, or three fields, but he might as well be a complete ignoramus in a thousand others.

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Only a mentally challenged kibitzer suffering from verbal diarrhea will assess himself as a competent judge of men, and only a moral moron will judge his fellow men by the number of their university degrees. According to Franklin D. Roosevelt (or one of his speechwriters): “A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car, but if he has a university education he may steal the whole railroad.”

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Mario Puzo, who ought to know what he is talking about: “A lawyer with a briefcase can steal more than a thousand men with guns.”

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I remember to have read somewhere that more university graduates become criminals every year than policemen, janitors, or garbage collectors.

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There are good men and bad men. Likewise, there are good Armenians and bad Armenians as there are good and bad Turks. If it had been up to good Armenians and Turks there would have been no massacres. And if some day Turks and Armenians learn to coexist to their mutual benefit it will be because of the good men on both sides. Because if it were up to the bad, history would repeat itself; and history tends to repeat itself because bad people are more ruthless in their pursuit of evil aims. One reason: good people use only good means to rise to the top, whereas bad people use both good and bad means.

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Good men know that all massacres are alike in the sense that the victims are invariably innocent and defenseless women, children, and old men. Only bad men say, “When we massacre our enemies, it’s good. When they massacre us, it’s bad.”

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[ara baliozian]

Wednesday, June 01, 2005

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Since 1922 Armenians have killed more Turks than Turks have killed Armenians. At the going rate we may have a good chance of getting even in about two million years, give and take a millennium or two.

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In this context it is also worth mentioning that since 1922 Armenians have killed many more Armenians than they have killed Turks. At the going rate, and if you add up the assimilated (or victims of our self-inflicted "white massacre") we may be extinct long before we settle our score with the Turks.

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It is not unusual to meet the proud Armenian who thinks he has a license to behave like a bad Turk.

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To those of my readers who get all worked up whenever they disagree with me, I say, "Relax, take it easy, you have nothing to worry about. I am only a slum-dwelling failure on my way to oblivion."

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I am not complaining. There are advantages to being a failure. You don't have to put up with agents, accountants, lawyers, editors, and psychiatrists. I see only one advantage in being a success: you get a better class of critics.

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Whenever I run out of things to say, I read my critics. Nothing stimulates me more than unspeakable perversity coupled with loudmouth arrogance.

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If historians criticize one another of misunderstanding or misinterpreting the past it may be because, as more or less reasonable men, they cannot grasp the fact that, the absurd and the irrational play a more important role in human affairs than reason, common sense and decency.

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Deep Throat is a Jew. One more reason why I love Jews. Haldeman and Ehrlichman were loyal to the boss. One more reason why I loathe bosses and fascists.

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Thursday, June 02, 2005

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STAGES

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STAGE I

As a child I couldn't tell an Armenian from an odar. They were all human beings to me.

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STAGE II

As a boy I was taught to believe Armenians were special - first nation this, first nation that; the "Queen" of translations (about our version of the Bible); Dick the Big; at a time when the French ate raw rabbit in their caves, we had fine palaces, magnificent cathedral, world-famous philosophers, and a Golden Age; our music, our literature, our multimillionaires, our celebrities in all fields of human endeavor, and so on and so forth… If we were special, it followed that the rest of the world was second class. In short, I was a proud hook-line-and-sinker Armenian. Not only was I a racist but I also took it for granted that racism was a virtue and an asset. I sank lower than a snake's belly full of buckshot; and when you sink that low, the only way is up.

*

STAGE III

I now think we are as good or as bad as the rest of the world and worse than some.

*

When asked if he was really an Armenian, Michael Arlen Sr. is said to have replied: "Who would want to identify himself as an Armenian if he wasn't one?" And he warned his son to stay from them, or so Jr. writes in his best-selling PASSAGE TO ARARAT.

*

As a boy Zarian's didn't much care about Armenians. He was fluent in Russian and French but not in Armenian. Then, in his twenties, he discovered his Armenian identity and believed Armenians to be the Chosen People and Armenia the messiah among nations. After learning to read and write in Armenian by the Mekhitarist monks in Venice, he went to Istanbul and started writing for Armenians. To make a long story short, and a short story shorter, he died (or was murdered) in Armenia alone, unhappy, rejected, silenced, and ignored. One of the final entries in his notebooks (published posthumously) reads: "Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another.

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MORAL I: If you find yourself in Stage II, don't look down at those who are in Stage III - they may know something you don't know.

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MORAL II: There is more merit in being a humble human being than a proud Armenian.

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MORAL III: Propaganda poisons the mind, racism is a bloodthirsty perversion, and no matter how you slice it, pride is baloney.

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[ara baliozian]

Friday, June 03, 2005

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Two weeks ago our local paper published a commentary in which it was said that the Jews are not always on the side of genocide victims. An angry letter to the editor said, not true, the Jews have always supported all victims. In my letter to the editor I said that if by Jews we mean Jewish scholars, yes; but if we mean the Israeli government, no. “In the case of the Armenian Genocide,” I added, “the Israeli government has been on the side of the perpetrators.” My letter was not published. I didn’t mind. As an Armenian writer, I am used to being muzzled.

*

The hidden message in our censorship: a nation that has survived a series of massacres over three decades may not survive a critic. But what if we were systematically massacred because we ignored our critics?

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The aim of propaganda is to prove that a Big Lie is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

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Once an Armenian develops a grudge against you, he will spend the rest of his life trying to prove that you are a scumbag and he sits at the right hand of god even when it is the other way around. Gandhi once said no man is beyond redemption. But as far as this type of Armenian goes, no power on earth and in heaven can save you if you dare to disagree with him.

*

Some readers want me to be nice. I write, I do not engage in diplomacy. Others want me to be positive. That belongs to the didactic branch of literature. I am in exploration. I probe. Sometimes you need a scalpel for that.

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[ara baliozian]

Saturday, June 04, 2005

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When asked why he writes, a writer is quoted as having replied: "So that idiots may have something to think about in twenty years."

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The problem with most Armenian writers is that they want to achieve popularity long before they are murdered by a foreign tyrant or starved by their fellow Armenians.

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Am I right or wrong? I am not sure. But I know this: if I am wrong, my voice will be drowned by a chorus of loud-mouth chauvinists, charlatans, partisans and panchoonies, none of whom will ever dare to question the authority of any one of our bosses, bishops, and benefactors.

*

If all Turks vanished from the face of the earth tomorrow, Armenians wouldn't miss them because an Armenian friend wouldn't be much different from a Turkish enemy.

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Charles Péguy: "Out of ignorance and a sense of duty most decent people are liable to turn into criminals."

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You can't talk ethics with a bishop: he thinks he has a monopoly on the subject. You can't talk sharing power with a boss: he thinks he is the best-qualified man for the job.

You can't talk money with a benefactor: he won't listen to anyone who makes less than he does.

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Scottish proverb: "The devil's boots don't creak."

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All persecuted minorities and victims tend to view freedom as the freedom to persecute and victimize.

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La Rochefoucauld: "No man is clever enough to know all the evil he does."

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"I paint with my prick," Renoir is quoted as having said.

Some of my readers think with theirs.

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[ara baliozian]

IN THE NAME OF LITERATURE

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If what I say has been said before by many other Armenian writers (among them Khorenatsi, Yeghishe, Raffi, Baronian, Odian, Voskanian, Shahnour, Zarian, Massikian), it follows that whenever I am muzzled, it is not I who is being muzzled, but Armenian literature.

*

Any reader who is interested to know what these writers (mentioned above) and many others (Armenian as well as odar) have said about us and is too lazy or unable to read them in the original, I suggest he consult my DICTIONARY OF ARMENIAN QUOTATIONS, which happens to be out of print but may be obtained through the American and Canadian interlibrary loan system, which is free of charge.

*

If I speak in the name of our writers, it follows, our censors and editors (but I repeat myself) act in the name of commissars of culture whose aim has been and continues to be not culture but its systematic perversion. And as if that weren't enough, these butchers portray themselves as the defenders of the faith and the saviors of the nation. Because butchers never go about their bloody business in the name of the Devil, but in the name of Allah, and since they control the press, the schools, and the pulpits of the nation, they have no trouble in shaping the judgment of dupes.

*

Where everyone speaks in the name of God, Capital, and Ideology, the question we should ask is who speaks in the name of literature? The answer is and must be the same people who spoke in the name of Soviet literature under Stalin, German literature under Hitler, and Italian literature under Mussolini. That is to say, the very same people who silenced (sometimes permanently) Charents, Bakounts, Zabel Yessayan, Mahari, Mandelstam, Solzhenitsyn, Akhmatova, Thomas Mann, Gramsci and many others.

*

Talaat and Stalin are not dead. They live, and the massacre continues…

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[ara baliozian]

Monday, June 06, 2005

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PARALLELS

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If we are special and unique, it follows we are also morally superior and therefore beyond criticism. Beyond criticism means we have no use for critics and dissent might as well be anathema, treason, and betrayal. Which is where I come in or from the general to the specific.

*

My life has been a succession of blunders. It all began when I was born as an Armenian. It’s been downhill ever since. For a long time I couldn’t see this, but it is as clear as daylight now. This is not a confession but an admission of facts based on objectively assessed data. And now from the specific back to the general, and from the present to the past.

*

Our historians, schoolteachers and propaganda are unanimous in telling us that our troubles began with the birth of the nation on the crossroads of bloodthirsty barbarians on the warpath. Things have been going downhill ever since. Overrun, conquered, and ruled by Romans, Persians, Byzantine Greeks (some of whom were Armenians), Arabs, Turks, and Russians, our history has been a succession of defeats, subservience to scum, massacre (by ditto), dispersion, exile, alienation, and assimilation (or “white massacre”).

*

Moral of the story: Sorry, I see none. If you do, please go ahead, enlighten us and in the process make me that rarest of all oxymorons: a happy Armenian.

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[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, June 07, 2005

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Our political parties should make a joint declaration to the effect that in so far as they have failed to unite and strengthen the nation, they have been a liability rather than an asset.

*

Had Goliath been an Armenian, his defeat would have been called a moral victory in our textbooks, and David’s version of the story anti-Armenian propaganda.

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Since most of our revolutionary leaders survived the massacres, we must assume they had a Plan B for themselves but not for the two million.

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An Armenian is that paradoxical creature who hates no one except fellow Armenians who do not share his hatred of Turks.

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An Armenian loves freedom but hates free speech.

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There are two kinds of dupes: dupes who believe in someone else’s lies, and dupes who believe in their own lies.

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I don’t need to know the truth to recognize a lie, in the same way that I don’t need to have seen the light to say that, for the blind leading the blind, walking by a ditch can be a risky business.

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[ara baliozian]

Wednesday, June 08, 2005

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I grew up in a ghetto among survivors and as far as I remember the possibility of Turkish acknowledgment of the Genocide wasn't even mentioned, perhaps because the idea of being dependent on Turkish goodwill, compassion, or justice was so alien, not to say repellent, that it was dismissed as absurd long before it surfaced.

*

Stressing one side of the story at the expense of the other may end up doing more harm than good by raising questions about our objectivity. I would go further and say that even if there is no other side to the story, we should pretend that there is. To say that Turks are Asiatic barbarians is not a valid argument in the eyes of those who have dealt with both Armenians and Turks and have perceived little or no difference in their conduct. On the other hand, to say that the Genocide was a result of collective insanity amounts to providing them with a good reason to plead not guilty by reason of insanity.

*

Leonardo da Vince, himself the designer of weapons of mass destruction, once called war "pazzia bestialissima" (the most beastly madness), which may suggest that collective insanity is not a rare but a routine occurrence in history. Which may also suggest that Turks are no different than any other nation, including the most civilized, progressive, and democratic.

*

Having said this, I will not be surprised if I am accused of being on the side of denialists. But then, as an Armenian writer I have been exposed to so much ego-driven verbal bowel movements that I can take nothing an Armenian says seriously.

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