as i see it - Pt. IV

[ara baliozian]

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

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Learning or understanding something you didn’t understand before means changing your mind about one or more things. Even animals learn. Only corpses don’t change their minds. Show me a man who has not changed his mind during the last ten or twenty years and I will show you a living corpse.

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There is a type of imbecile who believes in his own assertions simply because he made them in the presence of witnesses.

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A good friend of mine once said to me, “The reason why you are not popular is that you don’t write about sex and violence.” It is true, nothing I write is marketable. If anything, it’s the exact opposite, and I consider that sufficient reason to persevere.

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Some very complex problems solve themselves; some easy problems resist all solutions; and some solutions create more problems. There are only three of the many perversities of life. Get used to them.

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If he is a perennial underdog but speaks with the arrogance of a top dog, he must be an Armenian.

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Some readers disagree with me because what I say does not apply to them. Perhaps I should subtitle everything I write, “If the shoe fits…”

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[ara baliozian]

Thursday, June 15, 2006

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There was a time when I would get all kinds of calls urging me to translate or review this or that book. When the phone rings these days it’s either telemarketers or wrong number, and strange as it may seem, I prefer it that way.

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According to a Yiddish saying, there is a type of individual who is such a nobody that when he goes out of a room, it feels like someone came in.

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The first line of a poem titled “Credo” by Lucien Jacques (1898-1961): “I believe in man, that piece of filth.”

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After greed for money comes search for immortality. I once had a call from one of our national benefactors (who are outnumbered only by our self-appointed pundits who pretend to know everything there is to know about Turks and Armenians simply because their last name ends in

–ian) asking me to ghost his memoirs. He offered to travel all the way to my place in the middle of nowhere and to spend as much time with me as it was necessary to complete the task. Shortly thereafter I read his obituary in one of our weeklies.

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When told by an American philanthropist that he was writing his memoirs, Truman Capote (it may have been Gore Vidal) is quoted as having said: “Are you using a typewriter or a calculating machine?”

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From THE DEVIL’S DICTIONARY by Ambrose Bierce:

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“Birth: The first and direst of all disasters.”

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“Brain: An apparatus with which we think that we think.”

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“Calamity: Misfortune to ourselves and good fortune to others.”

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Corsair: A politician of the seas.”

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Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.”

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Patriot: The dupe of statesmen and the tool of conquerors.”

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[ara baliozian]

Friday, June 16, 2006

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THE USES AND ABUSES OF HISTORY

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History answers two sets of questions: (one) what happened and (two) why. When one of them (the what) is emphasized at the expense of the other (the why), the result is bound to be more propaganda and less history.

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On the subject of the Genocide: we tend to emphasize the facts or what happened, and the Turks prefer to emphasize the why and view the facts as of secondary importance. As for the rest of the world, like us, they too stress the what, but a different kind from ours, namely, “what’s in it for us.” The result is not dialogue, compromise, and consensus, but monologues that never cross.

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There is another disadvantage in stressing the importance of what happened in the past; we neglect the present, or what’s happening today. When I see nineteen articles and commentaries on the Genocide (or “Red Massacre”) in a single issue of our weeklies and none about its “White” counterpart (assimilation in the Diaspora, exodus from the Homeland) I may be justified in suspecting there is a planned and deliberate effort on the part of our leadership and academics to manipulate, mislead, and deceive the masses into thinking we are in good hands and our past problems are more important than our present ones.

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We share this in common with dogs: we know our masters but not our masters’ master. We know what we think and feel, but not why we think and feel as we do, or what were all the factors that went into shaping our state of mind.

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Facts don’t exist in a vacuum. They are products of a long chain of conditions, circumstances and thought processes or convictions; and convictions, as we know, can be wrong, especially when they stress one aspect of reality and ignore others.

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Consider the following scenario: A house is on fire. The owner accuses his next-door neighbor of arson. They quarrel. Result: both houses burn down.

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If you think I am being too tough on our historians and their dupes, consider the following two definitions from Ambrose Bierce’s justly celebrated THE DEVIL’S DICTIONARY:

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“HISTORY: An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.”

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“IDIOT: A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling.”

#

[ara baliozian]

Saturday, June 17, 2006

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The need to ask questions can be irresistible, and the temptation to believe in answers, no matter how false, can be overwhelming.

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There are three ways of going wrong: when you don’t know, when you think you know, and when you think.

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A conformist does not think of himself as a conformist, that is to say, as someone who has been indoctrinated to believe that subservience is a commandment from above and not to obey it is a capital offense.

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I am single because I would never marry anyone willing to marry me. Consider my long list of liabilities: I am Armenian….

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We inherit our parents’ fears and acquire some new ones of our own. Which may explain why most of us view subservience to our mini-sultans and neo-commissars as ordained from above.

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You don’t have to be right to be influential. Logic and common sense are less popular than that which is false, accessible, and flattering.

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“Literature consists in making crap look like rose jam,” Jean Genet tells us. Since I have so far failed to acquire that magic skill, I have reconciled myself to being an unpopular failure.

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In Michael and Ellen Kaplan’s CHANCES ARE (New York, 2006) I read the following: “Once you know that daisies usually have an odd number of petals, you can get anyone to love you.”

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[ara baliozian]

Sunday, June 18, 2006

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It’s not easy writing for an audience of laymen who think they are wiser than writers if only because, unlike writers, they deal with reality every day.

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Since we can never be sure to be right, let us at least make an effort not to be catastrophically wrong, as we have been in the past.

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Sometimes to be understood can be much more painful than to be misunderstood.

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Dissidents have been victimized not because they were wrong but because they were right.

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As things stand, I suspect we are a nation whose writers and poets outnumber their readers.

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Whenever I write “nation” I think “collection of tribes.”

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We have a rich literature but a destitute readership.

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Under Talaat and Stalin, our writers risked their lives. Today our academics are afraid to risk their income brackets. Result, an abundance of books on massacres and Turks.

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[ara baliozian]

Monday, June 19, 2006

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Where everyone believes he is among the chosen, being unchosen becomes a privileged condition.

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Why should I be on the side of little men if their sole ambition in life is to be big men in order to oppress little men?

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Unlike some of my fellow Armenians, I will not pretend to know everything there is to know about Jews, but I can make the following assertion with some degree of certainty: even at their worst, they are not as bad as those who hate them.

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The more accurately I describe our tribal ways, the greater the number of readers who would like to cannibalize me in order to prove they are better Armenians.

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“If you gaze long into the abyss,” Nietzsche warns us, “the abyss will gaze back into you.” Elsewhere: “Nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment.” And: “No one is such a liar as the indignant man.”

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There is a price to be paid for writing too much about Turks and massacres. Or, writing about Turks is not the best way of de-Ottomanizing ourselves.

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More quotations from Nietzsche:

On benefactors: “This is the hardest of all: to be modest as a giver.”

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On bishops: “After coming in contact with a religious man, I feel the need to wash my hands.”

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[ara baliozian]

#

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

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Once more I stand accused of plotting the ruin of the nation by promoting miscegenation – a word I have never used if only because it is a favorite by the likes of Nazis, members of the KKK, and racist bigots in general.

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The overwhelming majority of Armenians today are very probably of missed parentage. If it were up to our racists, they should be classified as lesser Armenians or second-class citizens.

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What destroys a nation is not miscegenation but intolerance, racism, arrogance, prejudice, and ignorance.

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What defines a man is neither his race nor his nationality but how much he has contributed to the welfare of his fellow men regardless of race, color and creed.

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If miscegenation were such a bad thing why is it that some of our most ardent nationalists, from Abovian to Zarian, married odars? And how does one explain the fact that some of the most popular political leaders were either foreigners or the offspring of mixed marriages: Napoleon was not a Frenchman but a Corsican, Hitler was not a German but an Austrian, Stalin was not a Russian but a Georgian; closer to home, the Mamigonians were of Chinese descent and the Bagratunis identified themselves as Jews.

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Throughout world history, from Alexander the Great to our own, the ruling classes and elites (the very same individuals who promote nationalism) have practiced miscegenation as a matter of course. Neither the czars of Russia nor the kings of England were pureblooded Russian or English. The Greek royal family was not Greek but German.

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I have said this before and I will go on repeating it: I find all assertions of moral or racist superiority odious and I’d rather deal with a good Turk than a bad Armenian.

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[ara baliozian]

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

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TALAAT AND I

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When told not all Armenians were guilty, Talaat is said to have replied: “After what we have done to them, if they are not guilty today, they will be guilty tomorrow,” or words to that effect.

For many years, whenever I was told not all Turks were guilty, I would think, “After what they have done to us, they are all guilty!”

Readers who insult me today may plead not guilty on grounds of ignorance, but the same cannot be said of those who were better at programming us to hate the Turks but not to love our fellow Armenians.

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THEN AND NOW

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When I was young I tried to change the world; in my old age I try to share my understanding and so far I have been as successful in the second enterprise as in the first.

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BENEFACTORS AND WRITERS

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Benefactors are more popular than writers because they share their money, and everyone is convinced he has more than his share of understanding but never enough of the green stuff. Between thirst for knowledge and greed for money, who among us will choose knowledge?

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KNOWLEDGE AND IGNORANCE

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What you think of yourself is only half the story. What others think of you is the other half. Knowledge based on only one half of the story is closer to ignorance.

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[ara baliozian]

Thursday, June 22, 2006

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Once in a while I am compared to such famous writers as Camus, Mencken, and Vidal only to be told that I am a total mediocrity and a miserable failure.

I don’t mind admitting that no matter how hard I try I will never be as good a writer as Camus and Vidal, or Arlen and Saroyan. But I hope my detractors will agree with me when I say, if I were as good a writer as they are, I would be treated with such respect by my fellow Armenians that no one would dare to say anything remotely critical about me; and if anyone did, my fans would tear the poor bastard to shreds.

As a better writer, moreover, I would have been exposed to an entirely different set of experiences and thus would have acquired an entirely different perspective on my fellow Armenians. I might even have been misled into thinking that Armenians are indeed among the Chosen. That’s because, even the greatest of writers have an ego that is not immune to flattery.

If I write as I do it may be because I write not as a first-class giant in world literature but as a second-rate scribbler; and if God in His infinite wisdom made me who I am, namely a mediocrity and a failure, He must have done so for a purpose, and who am I to question His judgment?

Do I really believe I am a mediocrity? That is not a question that I would even consider replying because experience has taught me to assess oneself is to make an ass of oneself. Besides, trying to be honest in a dishonest world keeps me so busy that I consider it a waste of time to engage in endless speculations and controversies about intangibles with men who seem to be more interested in who I am and less in what I say, more on my status and less on the reality we confront.

However, I will say this in my favor: if readers who have read Camus, Vidal, Saroyan, Mencken, Arlen, and many other great writers take the trouble to read and assess me, then I must be going places.

#

[ara baliozian]

Friday, June 23, 2006

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FROM HOMER TO HITLER

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The Greeks had a word for everything, but I doubt if they had one for miscegenation, perhaps because even their gods fornicated with mortals. (How low can you get?)

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By inventing fornicating gods, the Greeks may have understood that if fornication with mortals was uppermost in their gods’ minds, why should we pretend to be any better?

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By proscribing fornication, Christianity invented a literary genre (fiction) whose central concern is fornication. But the Greeks were ahead of the rest of us there too – after all, is not adultery what propels the action in the ILIAD?

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To how many of our racists I could say, “Please, don’t waste your breath on me. I too have read MEIN KAMPF.”

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[ara baliozian]

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Saturday, June 24, 2006

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In the following definition from THE DEVIL’S DICTIONARY, Ambrose Bierce was not thinking of Armenians but he might as well have been: “RESPONSIBILITY: A detachable burden easily shifted to the shoulders of God, Fate, Fortune, Luck or one’s neighbor. In the days of astrology it was customary to unload it upon a star.”

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When asked what he knows now that he did not know on the first day of his presidency, Bush is said to have said something to the effect that he had learned to be more careful in his choice of words. It is to be noted that he did not say he learned to be more careful in his thinking or more objective in his judgment or more tolerant of opposing views and arguments, only more carefully with his vocabulary.

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Don’t tell me what you should think; tell me what you think. On second thought, don’t tell me what you think because when an Armenian says what he thinks, out pops an insult.

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By insulting another we also insult ourselves by exposing the absence of reason in our thinking, lack of manners in our conduct; and if we speak in the name of God and Country we also run the risk of exposing the moral bankruptcy of both.

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[ara baliozian]

Sunday, June 25, 2006

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A chicken and egg question: Is it dupes who create bad leaders or bad leaders who create dupes?

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Hitler was a horrible human being. He behaved decently only once in his life -- when he committed suicide. If only he had done so at the beginning of his career rather than at the end. Even so, unlike some others, he at least made one good decision in his life.

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When it comes to the injuries inflicted on us by others, we have the memory of elephants; but when it comes to the injuries we inflict on others, we behave more like advanced cases of Alzheimer’s.

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Universal education has its drawbacks. After a semester of algebra, biology, chemistry, history of philosophy, a couple of novels by Dostoevsky, and a play by Shaw, I was convinced I knew everything I needed to know. This may explain why for every two writers today we may or may not have a reader, and the chances are that reader will assume he knows better.

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For every truth there are ten thousand lies because that truth pretends to be the whole truth, which is a lie.

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[ara baliozian]

Monday, June 26, 2006

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Every ideology has its declared (as well as undeclared) agenda and propaganda line clearly discernible to others but not always to its adherents, especially not those who confuse ideology with theology.

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When assessing yourself it’s useful to remember the meaning of the first syllable of the verb “to assess.”

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To rely on your instinct in your judgments means to allow your human brain to become an instrument of your animal drives.

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When dealing with dinosaurs a crocodile skin is no defense.

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A charlatan is a dupe with a college education.

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If you wouldn’t argue with Genghis Khan, why would you even consider arguing with someone to the right of him?

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Jilly Cooper (b. 1937) British novelist and critic, in her review of THE HITE REPORT, on American women: “They certainly know how to rape the language. One girl said she was ‘devirginized’ at twenty-five, another found it hard to resist married men, ‘because all my friends are adulterizing.’ My favorite was the girl who described her private parts as ‘plain but with charisma’.”

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[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

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Everything I say about Armenians is a confession. I invent nothing. When I observe a tendency or a contradiction in myself (such as, to brag or to wallow in self-pity, or to pretend to be better than I am by ignoring my shortcomings in the hope that others will not take notice of them) I make sure that these are results of my Armenian upbringing and education rather than personal failings.

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The trouble with fanatics is that once they get hold of an idea, they cease asking questions and entertaining doubts. As a former fanatic, whenever I subscribe to an idea I now consider its opposite and invariably I see some merit in it. When Marx said, “I am not a Marxist,” I suspect that’s what he was doing too. It is such a pity that his followers appropriated his assertions but rejected his doubts.

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On the day they reject the validity of doubts and the importance of dissent, empires begin to dig their own graves. You may now draw your own conclusions about nations and tribes or, for that matter, collections of tribes that pretend to be nations.

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Oswald Spengler (1880-1936), German philosopher and historian: “Real historical vision belongs to the domain of significances in which the crucial words are not ‘correct’ and ‘erroneous, but ‘deep’ and ‘shallow’.”

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Arnold J. Toynbee (1889-1975), British historian: “It is unlikely that a writer will not retract some of his previous propositions if he has reconsidered them genuinely.”

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John Constable (1776-1837), British painter: “No two days are alike, not even two hours; neither were there two leaves alike since the creation of the world.”

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[ara baliozian]

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

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C.G. Jung (1875-1961), Swiss psychiatrist quoting an African chieftain’s definition of good and evil: “When I steal my enemy’s wives, it’s good. When he steals mine, it’s bad.” We echo this chieftain whenever we say, “Our propaganda line is right, my enemy’s propaganda line is crooked.”

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Marcel Proust (1871-1922), French author: “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” It could also be said that real understanding consists not in the reassertion of old arguments but in the acquisition of a new self.

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In disagreements very often the clash is not between two sets of ideas but between two incompatible selves.

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I suspect all explanations whose aim is to legitimize a propaganda line.

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The aim of propaganda is not to promote understanding but to advance a specific political agenda.

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One begins to understand history only after exposing the half-truths and lies of propaganda.

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Not to lose an argument should never be an a priori decision.

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The purpose of an argument is not to win it but to lose it and in losing it to enlarge our horizons.

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One does not reason in order to legitimize irrational conduct, and what could be more irrational than prejudice, hatred, and ultimately war and massacre?

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You may have noticed that when leaders promote war or revolution they do so on an assumption of ultimately victory, which history has proved to be a Big Lie 50% of the time.

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It is no exaggeration to say that wars are lost even when they are won.

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And very often all a war succeeds in doing is to lead to another war.

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Do politicians lie if they believe in their own lies? An irrelevant question, because an honest politician is as inconceivable as a truthful propaganda line.

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[ara baliozian]

Thursday, June 29, 2006

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OBITER DICTA

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Charles Peguy (1873-1914), French author: “Out of ignorance and a sense of duty most decent people are liable to turn into criminals.”

Why should I be surprised when I hear a so-called self-assessed patriotic Armenian voice the opinions of a skinhead with the brains of a sardine and the voracious energy of a hungry shark?

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When hit-and-run critics hit, they invariably hit below the belt.

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To write a good sentence sometimes it is necessary to reject a dozen or more versions of it. Likewise, to subscribe to a good idea sometimes it is necessary to reject a few of them, beginning with the ones that were foisted on us when we could not yet think for ourselves.

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It is not only politics that makes strange bedfellows. Both Marxist and Catholic thinkers agree on their rejection of charity as a way to solve social problems. According to Jacques Maritain, one of the most respected Catholic philosophers of the 20th Century, “Charity is no substitute for justice withheld”; and according to Lenin, charity, by masking the contradictions of an unjust system, succeeds only in postponing the coming revolution.

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Speaking of skinheads and dupes: consider the unspeakable crimes committed in the name of Marx and the number of dupes or “useful idiots,” among them some of the most eminent thinkers of the West, who produced a vast amount of pro-Stalin verbiage worthy of skinheads.

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[ara baliozian]

Friday, June 30, 2006

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Whenever I underestimate a fellow Armenian, I am seldom disappointed.

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Mine is a lose/lose situation. I am fighting our leaders and their dupes. It’s an uneven fight -- not just two against one but a thousand against one. My only allies are the alienated and the assimilated most of whom no longer even care to identify themselves as Armenians because they have seen the light and consider themselves born-again human beings.

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Are the alienated a minority or a majority? That’s not a subject we like to discuss because the answer may reflect badly on us. When odars dislike us we can always dismiss them as pro-Turkish, which in our context might as well mean the lowest form of animal life. But how do we explain the alienated who may well be in the majority?

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What’s uppermost in the mind of the average Armenian? If we assume our press to be a reliable index, the answer is the Genocide and its recognition. Speaking for myself (and I don’t pretend to be a typical case) may I say that I am fed up with all the incessant talk of Turks and massacres, which so far have succeeded only in reinforcing our image as perennial losers and victims.

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One does not have to be a mind reader to know that what’s uppermost in the mind of the unemployed is finding a job. What’s uppermost in the mind of an Armenian who works in an alien environment is to return home and be with his family and friends. What’s uppermost in the minds of the old and the sick is proper medical care and living conditions. What’s uppermost in the mind of a student is to graduate and not to be forced into emigration. What’s uppermost in a young woman’s mind is not to be forced into prostitution in Saudi Arabia or babysitting in Bulgaria.

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These are not concerns that are addressed by our self-appointed pundits who prefer to ascribe all our problems on Turks and to pretend we have no other concerns than their failure to recognition the Genocide.

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[ara baliozian]

Saturday, July 01, 2006

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Cormac McCarthy, in BLOOD MERDIAN (New York, 1985): “Do you know what happens with people who cannot govern themselves? Others come in to govern for them.”

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In whatever I read these days I see references to Armenians even when Armenians are not even mentioned.

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In a textbook on history: “A state controlled system of education aims at indoctrination as much as pragmatic instruction.”

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Once, many years ago, when I published an interview with a prominent Tashnak intellectual, a Ramgavar intellectual wrote an angry letter to the editor saying everything the Tashnak said was a big lie. The Tashnak replied by saying everything the Ramgavar said was a bigger lie.

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The choice we confront today is between dead-end contradictions and creative dialectic. You may now guess what we can look forward to.

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Heine’s definition of aristocrats: “Asses who talk about horses.” Something similar could be said of Armenian partisan intellectuals when they speak about one another.

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To those who seem to have all the answers, Martin Heidegger has this piece of advice: “Try to reach the point from which the question can one day be asked.”

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[ara baliozian]

Sunday, July 02, 2006

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A wrong answer that makes us feel good will always be more popular than a right answer that makes us feel bad.

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There are two radically different ways of viewing our genocide: (a) as an unpredictable occurrence, or act of God (or the devil, depending on your credo) like, say, a volcanic eruption, a tsunami, or cancer; and ( as an inevitable but foreseeable result of actions freely and deliberately undertaken by us, similar to those of a chain smoker who operates on the irrational assumption that he is invulnerable because God, or Right, or justice happens to be on his side. The first school of thought implies that we were innocent victims of satanic forces beyond our control, and the second, that all our actions were symptomatic (see below for a definition) because driven by death wish whose reality we denied or refused to acknowledge.

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Examples of actions driven by death wish: tribal divisions, defeat, unconditional surrender, centuries of subservience, followed by a naive trust in the verbal support of the West, badly executed and catastrophically timed acts of isolated revolt against a ruthless empire fighting for its own survival.

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My primary aim here is not to expose our blunders or to cover up the criminal conduct of the perpetrators, but to emphasize the fact that we have been and continue to be a far greater threat to our own survival than our worst enemies.

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Freud’s definition of symptomatic acts: “Acts which people perform automatically, unconsciously in a moment of distraction; and to which they would like to deny any significance.”

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[ara baliozian]

Monday, July 03, 2006

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THE WISDOM OF PROVERBS

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It is not at all unusual for a smart man to behave like a fool. That’s because to pretend to know is easy; to preach easier; but to do the right thing something entirely different.

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We know, for instance, that “unanimity is the best fortress,” but throughout our millennial history we have allowed tribal leaders

(princelings, nakharars, and similar riffraff) to divide us; and they have divided us for one and only one reason, to satisfy their lust for power (“too many chiefs, not a single Indian”). Which amounts to saying, we were taken in by their empty verbiage.

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We know that what tribalism does to a nation, nationalism does to mankind. We also know that preachers of nationalism are no better than mongrels (if not literally than morally) who speak with a forked tongue. We also know that “a maker of idols is never an idolater.” And yet, we have shed our blood in the name of nationalism and we continue looking up to speechifiers who go on preach it to us.

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It is an established fact that most of our nationalist leaders survived the Genocide to write their memoirs, some of which run to more than a thousand pages. We are told, “behind an able man there are always other able men.” Likewise, behind a fool there are always other brown-nosing fools. And when their blunders are exposed, they write memoirs to explain why it was not they who were wrong but the rest of mankind; and as always, they find their share of dupes who are more than willing to be taken in by their regurgitated propaganda.

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To those who say, “We did not shed our blood for nationalism, but freedom. Our slogan was not ‘Armenia, Armenia ueber alles!” but “Freedom or Death!” Yes, of course, no doubt about that, it goes without saying, I believe you. And what did we do after gaining our freedom, may I ask? We became the slaves of the Kremlin. We refused to convert to Islam to save our lives only to embrace atheism to advance our careers. And why? The answer must be obvious: after centuries of subservience to foreign tyrants, subservience has become part of our character, and “character is destiny” -- or, “habits are cobwebs at first, cables at last.”

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We know that tyrants oppress and liars deceive. The questions to be asked at this point are: Does it make any difference if the tyrant or liar is an odar or one of us? In what way are we better off in the knowledge that the enemy is not at the other side of the wall but among us?

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[Armen]

And what did we do after gaining our freedom, may I ask? We became the slaves of the Kremlin. We refused to convert to Islam to save our lives only to embrace atheism to advance our careers. And why? The answer must be obvious: after centuries of subservience to foreign tyrants, subservience has become part of our character, and “character is destiny” -- or, “habits are cobwebs at first, cables at last.”

 

This is a wrong piece Ara. You know for sure that there was no alternative to that. ALL the countries surrounding Russia were incorporated in USSR.

[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

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Of all blunders, confusing ideology with theology is the most dangerous.

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Generalizations about fellow human beings belong to the realm of propaganda and as such should be dismissed as lies.

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A religious leader who says “believers are good and infidels bad,” and a political leader who says “we are among the chosen and our enemies the scum of the earth,” should be tarred, feathered, and driven out of every city, town, and village on the face of the earth. Then and only then we may have peace.

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One of the most hilarious scenes in American literature takes place in the first chapter of Cormac McCarthy’s BLOOD MERIDIAN (New York, 1985). A total stranger interrupts a sermon in a tent in the middle of nowhere and calls the preacher an impostor, a fraud, a usurper, a fugitive from justice wanted in four states, a child molester, and a man who has been caught “having congress with a goat.” “Hang the turd!” a member of the congregation yells. “Shoot the son of a bitch!” says another. Later, in a saloon, the stranger is seen drinking. When asked, “How did you come to have the goods on that no-account?” he replies: “I never laid eyes on the man before today. Never even heard of him.”

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[ara baliozian]

This is a wrong piece Ara. You know for sure that there was no alternative to that. ALL the countries surrounding Russia were incorporated in USSR.

 

we were not just incorporated.

even some armenians in america believed in stalin.

i used to call them "chic bolsheviks."

even some of our ablest poets wrote odes to lenin.

even some of our greatest intellectuals betrayed their fellow writers during the stalinist purges in the 1930s. there are entire books written on the subject.

even after the collapse of the ussr, Sylva Kaputikian declared "I am proud to have been a member of the communist party!"

and she was awarded the stalin prize./ ara

[Armen]

we were not just incorporated.

even some armenians in america believed in stalin.

i used to call them "chic bolsheviks."

 

Stalin was a great person and a great evil. And there were some Irish, Brit, German, French, Jewish and Scotish Americans who believed in Stalin as well. After all, the country he led defeated Hitler. At least the Jews had to be thankful to him for that ...

 

even some of our ablest poets wrote odes to lenin.

even some of our greatest intellectuals betrayed their fellow writers during the stalinist purges in the 1930s. there are entire books written on the subject.

 

Half of the globe was doing the same...

 

even after the collapse of the ussr, Sylva Kaputikian declared "I am proud to have been a member of the communist party!" and she was awarded the stalin prize./ ara

 

First of all she was not awarded the Stalin prize for that particular statement. That was long before ...Second, there was some very strong irony in what she said ... and I think you should read between the lines.

 

If you review the history of the last days of the Soviet Union, you will see that the collaps of the USSR started in Armenia and Karabagh.

[ara baliozian]

Wednesday, July 05, 2006

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According to a recent best-selling book by an American sociologist, crowds behave more wisely than individuals. If true, how does one explain the fact that throughout history war-makers and propaganda have been more popular than peacemakers and objectivity? How does one explain the fact that in the name of such slogans as “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” “Workers of the World Unite,” “Deutschland, Deutschland ueber alles,” and “Allahu akhbar,” crowds have been moved to commit some of the worst crimes against humanity? Closer to home: consider the fate of best-selling books that no one remembers after a year or two.

*

My most popular book (sold over ten thousand copies), THE ARMENIANS: THEIR HISTORY AND CULTURE, is also my least honest book not because it contains lies – it doesn’t: every assertion in it is footnoted – but because it emphasizes the positive and ignores or covers up the negative. Which may suggest that crowds value bias and flattery over honesty and truth.

*

A wise man – it may have been G.B. Shaw – once said there is only one way to end wars and that’s by shooting the war-makers. And yet, consider the fate of war-makers like Alexander the Great and Napoleon (who died natural deaths) and that of peacemakers like Jesus Christ (crucified) and Mahatma Gandhi (assassinated).

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