as i see it - Pt. I

[ara baliozian]

CONFESSION

************************

During the last couple of weeks alone I have been called by friendly as

well as hostile readers a hypocrite, a Turcophile, a racist and the son

of a whore. One good thing about being an Armenian writer is that they

don't mince words with you. They don't cushion their blows. Neither do

they sugarcoat their pills. They confront you with the unvarnished truth

as they see it. Therefore, it would be cowardly as well as misleading of

me if I did not reciprocate in kind by expressing my thoughts as

accurately and objectively as possible without circumlocutions and

euphemisms.

I am resigned to the fact that I will never be a popular writer. It is

extremely difficult to be even a writer if you write for an audience of

smart-ass imbeciles who are convinced they are way ahead of you and even

if you were to travel with the speed of light, you would never catch up

with them. But that doesn't bother me one bit. I am not a preacher. I

don't need to worry over the possibility of losing a member of my

congregation. Such a loss would not translate into a minus sign on my

income. If your income is zero, a thousand minus signs will not make it

less than what it is.

[ara baliozian]

TRIBAL PATRIOTISM

****************************

Tribal patriotism is an oxymoron. A contradiction in terms. Verbal crap.

It’s like saying positive negativism, Marxist capitalism, Christian

atheism, compassionate massacre and peaceful war.

To describe a partisan as a patriot amounts to saying that a brown-noser

is an honest man. Tribalists are dividers and destroyers of the nation,

and when they pretend to be its defenders they lie.

Whenever I hear one of our partisans speaking in the name of patriotism I

am reminded of the mafia in whose Sicilian jargon mafioso means "man of

honor." A member of the Communist Party or the ARF, the ADL and AAA may

speak of patriotism but what he practices is tribalism. He is loyal to

the Party and not the nation. He is committed to a fraction of the nation

and not the nation as a whole. In President Johnson’s inimitable words,

his pecker is in the pocket of the boss, and what the boss says goes

because the boss knows better.

Tribal people are loyal to the tribe and only to the tribe and to hell

with the nation or the homeland, which is what patriotism is: love of

homeland or nation.

[ara baliozian]

OSHAGAN

*********************

"No one understands the Turks as well as we do," Oshagan once bragged;

and after the Genocide he said:

"Our revolutionaries failed because they formed only tiny islands in a

Turkish sea."

Please note the antiseptic euphemism here: "Our revolutionaries failed,"

as opposed to "we suffered a genocide," or "a million and a half innocent

Armenians were slaughtered."

That’s the problems with us: we brag. We brag a lot. And when it comes to

learning from the lessons of history, we come up with reasons that are no

reasons at all but we readily accept them as such.

If we understood the Turks, why is it that Zohrab (a highly sophisticated

author, lawyer, diplomat) saved Talaat’s life?

And did we have to be massacred by the million in order to make the

earth-shaking discovery that we formed only tiny islands in a hostile

sea? Are we to assume our revolutionaries operated on the assumption that

the Turks were the islands and we were the sea? How many more centuries

did we have to live under the Turks in order to discover that they were a

majority and we were a minority? And how many more massacres did we have

to witness and experience before it became abundantly clear to our

revolutionaries that the Turks were capable of committing genocide?

Zarian once called Oshagan Eshagan (English equivalent: Jack S.

Avanakian). But to this day West-Armenians worship Oshagan as the

greatest writer of the 20th century and look down at Zarian because he

was an East-Armenian. It is to be noted that Oshagan himself was not

exactly a fan of East-Armenians. He treated them as creatures from a

different tribe. "They are incapable of understand us," he said. And he

himself made no effort to understand them, including Zarian. He

understood Turks or he said he did. But he did not care to understand his

fellow Armenians. There you have it: tribalism in action.

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, December 2, 2001

**********************************

 

1. Only people who are completely ignorant of history speak of 20-20 vision.

2. All ideologies are dangerous because sooner or later they fall into the

hands of bullies and I find it extremely difficult to believe there are

intelligent people out there who can't tell the difference between a public servant and a bloodthirsty bully.

3. When your adversary decides he is smarter than you, even when he agrees

with you he will disagree with you.

4. To hate is one thing, to program yourself to hate is another. The same applies to ignorance.

5. Once upon a time we were known as "hungry Armenians." We now have fat

bellies but we continue to be hungry -- hungry for ideas, hungry for

principles, hungry for a statesman of vision, and above all, hungry for

men and women who, in Florence King’s words will "rip the teats off

sacred cows."

6. In hope an optimist, in worry a pessimist, in fear a coward: that’s what

they mean when they speak of man being a bundle of contradictions.

7. I was visiting a friend and when I heard eerie screams from the upstairs

apartment, I said:

"Someone being tortured to death?"

"Newlyweds having sex," my friend replied.

Same occurrence, two diametrically opposed interpretations. It’s the same

in politics.

8. War is wrong. Wrong is a crime against humanity. But if it weren't for

war, I wouldn't be here today writing war is a crime against humanity.

9. The less they know the more they talk.

10. An Armenian is a wound in search of a bandage.

[ara baliozian]

Monday, December 03, 2001

*********************************

1. To some Armenians being Armenian means: "You either think like me or

else!"

2. There are atheists because there are believers who behave like swine.

3. There are no happy endings in the history of Armenian literature. It has

been the destiny of Armenians writers to be either a failure or a victim.

4. Has anyone ever seen an underdog rejecting on moral grounds the

opportunity to become a top dog? If the secret ambition of an underdog is

become a top dog, in what way he may be said to be different or morally

superior?

5. It has been said that our knowledge is finite but our ignorance infinite.

What remains to be established is: in what way our infinite ignorance

shapes our finite knowledge. What if this so-called knowledge of ours is

more akin to ignorance? What if an argument, or even a dialogue, is

nothing but an exchange of fallacies? Hence the old Chinese saying: "He

who speaks does not know and he who knows does not speak."

6. Never argue about politics with an Armenian. On second thought: never

argue about anything with an Armenian.

7. Perhaps the hardest thing about being Armenian is recovering your

humanity without becoming a cannibal.

[ara baliozian]

LATER (Monday, December 03, 2001)

*****************************************

 

1. Armenian history as written by Armenians is only one side of the story.

If our dead could only speak!

2. One must have a mind able to perform contortions of diabolical complexity

to believe that Armenians are smart and Turks dumb, and to know that for

six centuries they were our masters and we their slaves.

3. They crap on me because they say I am too critical of Armenians, and they

don't see crapping on a fellow Armenian as too critical but as fair,

just, and patriotic.

4. When a democratically elected leader commits a blunder, his successors

correct it; but when a despot makes a blunder he builds more monuments,

palaces, and underground bunkers.

[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, December 04, 2001

*********************************

There are two kinds of man: the brainwashable and the unbrainwashable.

The brainwashable is one who is easily seduced by platitudes, cliches,

slogans and oversimplifications. He is wide open to closed systems of

thought.

Ideologies, cults and organized religions of all kind are his main

breeding grounds.

The unbrainwashable is one who has developed the ability to think for

himself.

Homo sovieticus was eminently brainwashable.

Fascist regimes were veritable factories of the species.

Fascism and Sovietism may be dead but brainwashable people continue to

develop and prosper in the Middle East under the influence of such

aberrations as Ayatollah Khomeini, Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden.

Someday the DNA of this species may be isolated and its antibody

discovered. But until then mankind has no choice but to suffer them: to

be killed by them and whenever possible to kill them. Because killing

them is easier than deprogramming them.

Deprogramming them is time-consuming and not always successful. It has

been tried with mixed results in America.

If some day mankind is exterminated it will be because of brainwashable

people who think…strike that! They don't think! They follow. They repeat.

They parrot. They recycle. They recycle crap. They vomit someone else’s

vomit. And their message is not a message but an ultimatum. An ultimatum

that says: "You either agree with us or you die!"

[ara baliozian]

LATER [Tuesday, December 04, 2001]

****************************************

1. Those who speak of rules will never agree with those who speak of

exceptions.

2. One thing that writing for Armenians has taught me:

If you expose a falsehood you make a thousand enemies.

3. To some Armenians to assimilate means to die as an Armenian in order to

be reborn as a human being; to others it means committing

identity-suicide or self-genocide. Who is right? The jury is out on that

one.

4. What is the difference between the Ottoman police at the turn of the

century silencing the Sultan▓s critics and Armenian editors in the

Diaspora today who silence their boss▓s critics? What do we accomplish if

we replace one Sultan with many mini-ones?

5. What the Middle East needs now is an organized religion that will teach

its adherents to kill themselves without killing innocent civilians. If

that happens, the Middle East problem will at last have found its

solution.

6. Turks seems to be the central concern of our partisan papers. If you

don't believe me try the following experiment: next time you get hold of

a partisan paper, separate the headlines that refer to Turks and Azeris

from those that refer to Armenians and don't be surprised if the first

outnumber the second.

[ara baliozian]

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE ARMENIAN NATION

***********************************************

Once upon a time

we lived in a land of oppression and massacre.

But then, our revolutionaries sprang into action

and ushered in an orgy of genocide

followed by a period of dispersion and exile,

which led to an era of stagnation, alienation and assimilation.

[ara baliozian]

THE MESSAGE

*********************

The message of all dissidents of all ages

may be abridged thus:

The emperor has no duds,

no dick,

no balls,

and no brains.

 

ON LITERATURE

************************

Solzhenitsyn once said:

"No regime has ever loved great writers,

only minor ones."

He should have said:

No regime has ever loved literature,

only recycled crap.

Or even better:

No tyrant has ever loved honest men,

only subservient brown-nosers.

 

 

THE HAVE AND HAVE NOTS

********************************

One reason why the wealthy are nasty folk is that

the poor are after their money.

I speak from experience.

The poor are even after my money.

Sometimes even the not so poor.

And I am not even wealthy.

 

 

THE WILL OF GOD

***************************

History is not the will of God unfolding.

If it were, theologians would be writing our history books;

and theologians (both Muslim and Christian)

would agree that the Armenian Genocide was the Will of God.

Which is one reason why

whenever a man speaks in the name of God

I am tempted to worship the Devil.

[ara baliozian]

BULLIES

*********************

Some people use the truth like a club

with which to clobber their adversaries;

and whenever truth is not on their side,

they use lies the same way.

Their primary concern is neither truth nor lies

but to assert their own superiority or infallibility.

Their it is: the root of all autocratic regimes.

To speak of democracy or human rights to this species

is like speaking of animal rights to wolves and hyenas.

[ara baliozian]

CONFESSIONS OF A DUPE

*****************************

One reason I have developed an extreme, perhaps even a pathological,

aversion for dupes is that I was one most of my life. Like most children

I too was taught to respect and trust my elders. As a Catholic I was

brought up to believe anyone who was not a Catholic was a heretic on his

way to the devil. As an Armenian I was taught the world was populated by

inferior hostiles. In the 1930s in Germany I would have been a Nazi and

in Russia a Communist. I understand Nazis and Stalinists. What I don't

understand √ what I can't understand √ is a Nazi who refuses to grow up

and abandon his early illusions. What I can't understand are Stalinists,

chauvinists and anti-Semites who try to hide behind harmless masks by

identifying themselves as anti-capitalists, anti-Zionists, or

anti-American imperialists. What I will never understand are individuals

who even when there is no one to brainwash them, they brainwash

themselves. And please, don't try to explain them to me because I refuse

to understand them lest I become one of them myself.

[ara baliozian]

INTOLERANCE

************************

Intolerance means violating free speech.

Violating free speech means murdering ideas;

and where ideas are murdered,

people will be massacred;

and there is no such thing as the murder of the guilty only.

It is not in the nature of those who commit massacres

to discriminate the innocent from the guilty.

BULLIES

******************

A bully's unspoken motto:

"There is more wisdom in my ignorance

than in your knowledge."

SKEPTICISM

********************

My favorite ism is skepticism

because it questions the validity of all isms,

including its own.

[ara baliozian]

JUST A THOUGHT

****************************

When Armenians say Armenians are incapable of committing massacres, I

don't believe them. When Turks say Armenians massacred more Turks, then

Turks massacred Armenians, I don't believe them either. But when a

Russian eyewitness writes that Armenians massacred Turks with the same

savagery as the Turks massacred Armenians. I begin to have second

thoughts, and one of the first second thoughts I have is that perhaps we

are not members of a morally superior race; neither are we unique or

different. Perhaps we are the same as everyone else, including Turks.

To those who say Turks rewrite history,

I say, so does everyone else and we are no exception.

To those who say Turks are guilty of genocide,

I say so are Jews (according to the Old Testament)

and Greeks (according to their own historians),

and more recently Americans and Germans (ditto).

Hindus in India have massacred millions of Muslims and vice versa.

I could go on mentioning Spanish conquistadors,

Pakistanis in Bangladesh, Russians in the Caucasus,

Zulus and Tutsis in Africa (or is it Hutus?)….

Why am I so eager to prove that our claim of uniqueness is bogus?

Because if we are not unique neither are our problems;

and if others can solve their problems, so can we;

and anyone else who says otherwise is a liar and an enemy;

and because I say that I will be called a liar and enemy, of course –

which, in case you didn't known, is known in academic circles as the

"blah-blah-blah school of criticism."

[ara baliozian]

LIARS

*************

If you want to understand Armenians, read Dostoevsky on Russians. And if

you want to understand Armenians who can't even lead a mutt to the

nearest fire hydrant but speak as if they were rulers of the universe,

read his essay on lies and liars ("Something about Lying" in ESSAYS OF

THE MASTERS, edited by Charles Neider. New York: First Cooper Square

Press: 2000).

Every Russian lies, Dostoevsky tells us here. Even more or less honest

Russians lie (more or less). They lie because they are afraid of the

truth; they lie because they are ashamed of themselves; they lie because

they want to make a good impression; and they lie because they have no

self-respect.

Deep inside somewhere a Russian knows to be a phony and an ignoramus but

in the presence of others he pretends to be a pundit (Dostoevsky uses the

word "erudite"); and he thinks he can get away with it because he has an

even lower opinion of his fellow Russians. He is as transparent and

fragile as glass but he tries to project the image of one who is as solid

and impenetrable as rock. He is essentially a performer, a poseur with a

pathological need of an audience. He loves to deliver lectures on

subjects he knows nothing about. Though contemptuous of his fellow

Russians, he demands their respect.

Is he a tragedy or a farce?

Or perhaps he is a pathological case who deserves our understanding and

compassion.

To put it differently: Is the history of the USSR a gigantic sinister

farce or a case of mass hysteria?

And what about our present situation?

Can anyone answer this question honestly?

[ara baliozian]

THE BOOMERANG SCHOOL OF CRITICISM

************************************************

1.

When we were children we called each other names, as all children are in

the habit of doing, and the most popular form of retaliation was

repeating the very same insult that our adversary had inflicted on us.

-Fool.

-You are the fool!

-Liar!

-You are the liar.

I have noticed that some of my adult critics practice this school of

criticism, which could also be called the blah-blah-blah school of

criticism.

2.

This much said let me add that I owe a great deal to my critics. They are

my most faithful readers and my most reliable sources of inspiration,

even when they practice blah or boomerang criticism.

3.

I would have given up writing for Armenians twenty years ago, were it not

for a letter by an old lady (who died shortly thereafter--may Allah have

mercy on her soul, if she had one) who happened to be a pillar of the

Armenian-American community. In this letter she accused me of corrupting

the young and of changing the tone of Armenian-American journalism.

Whenever she now read any one of our weeklies, she said, she invariably

came across articles, commentaries, and letters to the editor expressing

views similar to mine. All her life, she went on, she had done her utmost

to be positive about Armenian affairs and there I was, demolishing her

good work.

Perhaps I should explain that before writing that particular letter she

had written another and a much more "positive" one in which she praised

my dedication and promised to organize a banquet in my honor. To which I

remember to have said that I was not in the habit of traveling several

hundred miles for lunch and that I preferred to have a cheese sandwich

with a cup of coffee in my own kitchen.

[ara baliozian]

Monday, December 10, 2001

********************************

 

1. A disgruntled reader in the Ottoman Empire or the USSR could easily

silence a writer by denouncing him to the police.

All those who miss the good old days, please raise your right hand!

2. Armenian justice in the Middle, I am told, was more akin to its Ottoman

and Soviet variants. Which leads me to conclude that the criticism of

fanatics has nothing to do with criticism: rather, it is more akin to

assassination by other means.

3. Never criticize a people that has experienced massacre.

They will tear you to shreds to prove you wrong and themselves right.

4. The justice of victims can be as ruthless as the justice of victimizers.

5. Russian proverb: "Dwell on the past and you will lose an eye.

Ignore the past and you will lose both of them."

[ara baliozian]

LATER THE SAME DAY

[12/10/01 2:13 PM]

********************************************

 

1. Writing for Armenians is like preaching vegetarianism to an audience of

cannibals.

If you come out of it alive you should consider yourself the luckiest man

on earth.

2. My best allies are the colossal egos of my enemies.

3. We talk too much about God and Country and not enough about honesty. It

should be the other way around. Only then may we count on God's cooperation.

4. Among Armenians, if you don't know somebody who knows somebody you might

as well resign to your present status as a nobody.

5. If you haven't read the writers who were killed by Talaat and Stalin or silenced by our partisans in the Diaspora, on whose side are you?

6. To how many of my fellow Armenians I could say:

Recover your humanity, you have nothing to lose but your Ottomanism.

7. The main purpose of an Armenian political platform is to organize hatred:

hatred for the Turks and, above all, hatred for the opposition.

The rest is mumbo jumbo.

8. With enough checks and balances even a mediocrity may behave like a

statesman. Without checks and balance even the greatest statesman may

behave like a serial killer.

9. I think it was Verdi who once observed that sometimes your enemies are a

better source of publicity than your friends,

[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, December 11, 2001

*********************************

An Oriental carpet dealer has a higher opinion of his fellow Armenians

than a poet because the average Armenian spends a hundred times, perhaps

even a thousand times, more money on rugs than on books.

For a carpet dealer to have a low opinion of his fellow Armenians would

amount to biting the posterior of the goose that lays the golden egg.

The same applies to fund-raisers, some of whom, according to an insider

(himself a former fund-raiser) make as much as $100,000 (a hundred

thousand) a year √ which probably exceeds the combined lifetime income of

all 20th-century Armenian writers.

This may explain why I find the patriotism of fund-raisers and Oriental

carpet dealers slightly suspect. But then, I am not the type who looks up

to people with fat bellies, especially when they preach idealism,

self-sacrifice and dedication to me.

[ara baliozian]

LATER [11 December, 2001]

**********************************

When as a boy I became interested in literature and spent endless hours

in the company of books, I was warned against a literary career. "You'll

starve!" they said. Not me, I thought. I wasn't going to be one of those

mediocre vodanavorjis who deserve to be starved anyway. (Please, remember

that I was brought up in an Ottoman environment among survivors of the

Genocide most of whom not only spoke in Turkish but also thought and felt

in Turkish). I dismissed their warnings as alarmist. I was going to be

different. I was going to be better. Nobody ever told me that among

Armenians the better you are the harder they starve you.

[ara baliozian]

ON SECOND THOUGHT

****************************

Do I want to see my fellow Armenians united?

Hell no!

People are seldom united for a good cause or reason.

What is politics if not organized hatred?

At the turn of the century the Turks were united against us.

Today we are united (more or less, of course) against them.

The Germans were united against the Jews;

the Russians against bourgeois decadence;

and the Muslims are united today (more or less, of course, as all tribal

people tend to be when it comes to consensus) against Israel and all its

supporters.

Even when hatred succeeds in destroying the enemy,

it invariably ends up destroying itself.

Call me anything you want but not a frustrated despot

who wants to unite his people against a common enemy.

What I really want instead is to see my fellow Armenians as worthy

citizens of the world who make positive contributions to their respective

communities and the world at large (yes, including Turkey).

Call me a dreamer or a daydreamer or even a utopian mental masturbator!

After being called a son of a whore and a preacher,

anything else is bound to be an improvement.

[ara baliozian]

Wednesday, December 12, 2001

************************************

There are those who think by writing one or more articles in our weeklies

they have made a valuable contribution to the solution of our problems.

There are even those who think if they succeed in solving all our

problems, the nation will be grateful to them. I thought so too when I

was young, naОve and inexperienced √ in short, a dumb jerk. The truth is

(and historic evidence is clear on this point) no power on earth, not

even a messiah, can solve the problems of a nation that does not want to

solve its problems. And if you are ever successful in solving all our

problems, consider yourself lucky if they let you live.

[ara baliozian]

LATER (December 12, 2001)

*********************************

It was Maimonides, a medieval Jewish philosopher, who said that for every

wise man you meet, be prepared to deal with ten thousand fools, or words

to that effect. He also said: "Astrology is a disease, not a science."

A thousand years of progress and what do we have? For every astronomer

today there are probably ten thousand astrologers and a hundred thousand

fools who believe in them.

It is the same in politics. Think of the millions of dupes who were taken

in by the likes of Stalin and Hitler and completely ignored the voices of

such dissidents as Thomas Mann, Solzhenitsyn and our own Zarian.

If this be progress then it must be the progress of a disease.

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, December 13, 2001

*********************************

In one of Russellss autobiographical books, written when he was eighty, I

come across the following passage: "In the modern world, if communities

are unhappy, it is because they choose to be so. Or, to speak more

precisely, because they have ignorances, habits, beliefs, and passions,

which are dearer to them than happiness or even life."*

But according to our dime a dozen pundits, there is nothing wrong with

our "habits, beliefs, and passions." As for our "ignorances": Impossible!

Absurd!! Unheard of!!! We are, after all, a nation of experts on any given subject; so much so that, if you give us five minutes, we will solve any international problem you care to mention - from the Middle

East to the United States, and from the Balkans to Patagonia.

As for solving our own problems: we have none, of course. Our problems

are not ours but someone else's: Turkish barbarism, the double-talk of

the Great Powers, Yankee imperialism, Jewish villainy, and, if you talk to a partisan: the opposition.

Which is where Russell comes in: We are unhappy, he tells us, because we have many problems. We have problems because we choose to have them. We choose to have them because we are infatuated with our own prejudices,

fallacies, recycled chauvinist crap, and ignorance. And because we refuse to acknowledge this fact, we guarantee the survival of our problems even if their survival means our own extinction.

 

*Bertrand Russell, PORTRAITS FROM MEMORY AND OTHER ESSAYS. London: George

Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1956, page 54.

[ara baliozian]

LATER [12/13/01]

***************************

1. When I went into this business I made a commitment to be courteous to all

my critics no matter how rude, ignorant, and fanatical. But I now know

something I didn't know then: there are so many of them that it is much

more practical to ignore the buggers.

2. It is said that a little learning is a dangerous thing. But having met

several Armenian academics, I tend to think a lot of learning can be

lethal.

3. I have heard some Armenians say we should forgive the Turks, but I have

never heard an Armenian say we should forgive our fellow Armenians.

4. "He who seeking asses found a kingdom." When I first read this line in

Milton's PARADISE REGAINED, I thought: So far many asses but not even the

shadow of a miserable igloo.

5. To how many of my so-called patriotic readers I could say: "Dear friend,

no matter how hard I try I can't take you seriously because your thoughts

used to be mine when I was a brainwashed boy of nine."