shut up!

[ara baliozian]

SHUT UP!

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

After writing for Armenians for nearly three decades,

I have made the painful discovery that

demands for solutions and constructive criticism

simply mean "Shut up!"

You want solutions?

Read our writers.

What do you think our literature is about?

The eternal snows of Mt. Ararat,

the holy waters of Lake Sevan,

nightingales serenading the moon,

and chauvinist mumbo jumbo?

Begin with Khorenatsi’s "Lamentation,"

and you will find all the solutions you need there.

Khorenatsi was not a prophet.

He wrote about the problems he was facing 1500 years ago.

But you see,

nothing much has changed since then.

We still have patriots who demand solutions

and writes who provide them but are ignored,

sometimes even starved and buried alive.

Have you ever asked yourself the question:

If Armenians from Basil I of Byzantium (10th century) to Mikoyan (20th century) were smart enough to run empires, what is it that prevents them from running a community today?

I cannot name a single community in the diaspora

with a single first-class newspaper

(or, for that matter, center, school, and church)

but I can name many with at least two of each

and both sources of embarrassment

to all except the partisan panchoonies who run them.

Is it possible that we are at the mercy of hopeless mediocrities

whose greatest enemy is excellence?

[Pilafhead]

Actually, it can mean the opposite.

The doctor needs to tell me exactly how and why I'm sick; I can get medication from a pharmacist. Without some level of elaboration regarding my disease, I would either die or seek another physician. In either case, we are both worse off.